“What’s all that shit bouncing around in the back of the truck?” Matt asked, looking in the mirror. Barefoot turned and looked.
“That’s my film and commo gear. Remember, I was supposed to do a satellite linkup and conduct a live interview of your brother?”
“Zachary,” Matt whispered. “We’ve got to find my brother.”
Matt maneuvered around the patches of drying rice that farmers had laid on the cement road. He felt the noose that had been around his neck since landing in Manila slacken just a bit.
His new mission: find Zachary … and they could join forces to fight their way out of there.
Chapter 71
Takishi rode atop the bridge of the lead ship as it approached the port of Manila. He watched in the darkness as the captain adroitly maneuvered the large commercial tanker alongside the international port just south of the Pasig River delta. The pier was 150 meters wide and 450 meters long.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw the huge rock outcropping of Corregidor Island, which guarded the mouth of Manila Bay. His countrymen had fought valiantly there. There would be no such fight again. American airborne forces would not come descending from the sky as they had almost sixty years ago to secure the mouth of the bay. He saw the second ship steaming past Corregidor and made a mental note that the other two should be docking at Subic about then. He wondered in amazement how his countrymen had developed such an awesome supertanker, and had actually converted ten of them to roll-on-roll-off military transport ships and even an eleventh to — well, he did not want to think about the Shimpu.
The Shimpu was an entirely different matter altogether.
Mizuzawa had made the decision to launch four ships, each carrying a nine-thousand-man Japanese combined arms division consisting of tank, infantry, and attack helicopter maneuver battalions after Talbosa had failed to cooperate on the three American hostages. He had planned to introduce force into the island of Luzon at some point in time, mostly for control purposes, but he believed that the situation could get out of hand rapidly if Talbosa turned on them. Control of the Philippines was absolutely vital to the remainder of the plan.
Takishi had flown in his Shin Meiwa to Mindanao to find Commander Talbosa in a small thatch hut in Cateel, recovering from wounds received in combat.
“When you told me about Garrett being in Magsaysay prison, I ordered them all executed,” Talbosa had told him. He had been shot and nearly fatally wounded. Only his familiarity with the Cateel area had allowed him to get to the beach, where some of the peasants had provided medical care and escorted him to Takishi’s airplane.
Takishi’s medical team had patched up Talbosa during the flight, and Takishi had a security team take Talbosa to the Presidential Palace, placing him “in charge.”
“You will respond to my every order, do you understand?” Takishi demanded.
Talbosa gave Takishi a long look and nodded. Weak from being wounded, he walked quietly into the Presidential Palace, where he was greeted by fellow warriors, who had executed their portion of the coup expertly.
“I thought I was close to your Matt Garrett until you told me where he was,” Talbosa said.
Takishi had looked at the weakened warrior and said, “Slippery son of a bitch.” Stone had contacted Takishi too late for either saving Keith Richards, Rathburn, or killing Matt Garrett. Takishi shook his head at the irony. There were minute degrees between life and death. If only he had gotten the word a day or two earlier, he could have saved his friend, Rathburn, and eliminated a major thorn in the side of the Rolling Stones, Matt Garrett. For the first time a jolt of sadness coursed through him as he realized his Harvard classmate, Bart, was dead … because of him.
After dropping Talbosa in Manila, he had flown to the location of the oil tankers north of Luzon in the Philippine Sea, landing his seaplane amidst the collection of ships. There he boarded the command and control ship, Ozawa, and radioed the prime minister with the news about the death of Rathburn.
Mizuzawa reacted sharply, fearing American intervention for the sake of revenge if nothing else. He had been pleased with the American president’s speech. They had guessed right. The Americans were focused on Iraq and stymied by an unexpected variable, the Philippines, for which they had no plan.
But protecting American lives was another issue. Would the Americans respond with military force and try to restore the democracy, using the deaths of a dignitary and the women as an excuse? It was possible. He was not willing to take the chance. They had been one step ahead of the Rolling Stones and needed to act before the Americans could foil their gambit.
If they could move immediately, gain a military foothold on Luzon, they would have checkmated the Americans, once again. They would appeal to the United Nations for a response to the situation. Mizuzawa knew the United Nations would not do anything about the revolution in the Philippines; they never did anything meaningful anyway.
Takishi felt the ship nudge the side of the cement pier. There was no activity in the large port area. The fighting had served to halt most of the commercial shipping. What was in the docks at the time of the revolution, the peasants had pilfered. The insurgents had not yet organized the Philippine naval vessels, though they had sunk several of the ships during the revolt. A few Corvette attack boats were still operational, yet were of no use to Talbosa until he could train some men how to operate them.
It was all coming together smoothly Takishi thought, and he sent Mick Jagger a text message.
we are achieving satisfaction.
Stone did not need to know just yet that the Japanese were attacking the island of Luzon with the equivalent of four infantry divisions, about the same size force that the U.S. was planning on using in Iraq. Charlie Watts had played his part for the Rolling Stones, but his role had always been a means to an end, and he was going solo.
Takishi’s highest priorities were to his country and his prime minister.
While Mick Jagger had the money and the ideas about how to stoke the dying embers of nationalism around the globe in order to crush rampant Islamic fascism, his other contact in the American government was equally influential.
And on that thought, he sent a text to that individuaclass="underline"
tanks are rolling.
It was fun to be a chess piece and control the board. Takishi found it rather easy to out-maneuver the thinly veiled machinations of the Americans.
Momentarily he received a text in return:
beautiful.
Then almost immediately after the first he received another:
perfect.
He heard the captain tell him they were prepared to unload the ship. He stepped down from the bridge, and heard the first Model 90 tank roar to life.
This will be easy.
Chapter 72
It was a close call, letting the Japanese move ships into the harbor.
Sewell looked at Stone. Meredith was sitting next to him. She was distraught, fighting the notion that Matt might be dead and that she might have sent him to his death in that airplane.
They sat in the National Military Command Center. CNN played on a large screen to their front. The Joint Chiefs of Staff flanked them. Each was wearing a headset that tuned him in to the operations of their respective services. In actuality, the commander of Pacific Command in Hawaii was orchestrating the operation through his joint task force commander, Admiral Dave Jennings, who was on the USS Carl Vinson command and control ship in the Celebes Sea.