by David Poyer
“We’d like to look it over,” Teddy told them. “Before we get into the price. If you don’t mind.”
Che told Sosukan something in a peremptory tone. The kid, who’d been sitting a few feet off combing his hair, jumped up at once. One of the men around the fire handed him what Teddy was pretty sure was a Sten, a weapon he’d seen pictures of but never actually met. Sosukan racked the bolt casually. He slung it and motioned to them to follow.
The beach was another couple of hundred yards, through low brush with only a few palms clattering overhead now. Oberg could smell the sea, and it smelled good. Rock formations towered. This would be a good place to evade aerial surveillance. The automatic weapon he spotted set up under a palm-frond screen would discourage any helicopter that ventured too close, too.
The boat was moored in among the rocks, with fronds scattered over its decks. He followed the kid down to it and waded out through the warm water till they reached where it swung to lines leading shoreward. As he heaved himself over the gunwale something rustled in the fronds. He hoped not rats. He didn’t like rats. They acted too human.
Around here the boats tended to be plywood and bamboo outriggers, and for a motor, a motorbike engine with a steel rod for a drive shaft, and a pathetic little hand-hammered propeller. This one was about forty feet long, fiberglass, camo-painted in brown and green, with three huge four-stroke Honda outboards bolted on at the stern like swollen silver ticks. The SEALs had done a lot of VBSS—visit, boarding, search, and seizure—ops during the war. Teddy didn’t figure this made him an expert, but he’d done over fifty boardings, sometimes two a day, and a goodly number had been on hostile decks. He tried to look at the boat from that point of view. It wasn’t new, but it wasn’t that old, either. Still it had seen hard use, with scuff marks along the gunwales, a crushed-in section aft bristling with yellow glass fibers beneath the gelcoat, and a charred place in the well that looked as if someone had built a cooking fire there. Small-caliber bullet holes were patched with what looked like shoe-repair glue.
He tapped the fuel gauge, then followed the gas lines to the motors. He turned the wheel to check the linkage. “Feels kind of loose.”
The kid said nothing. Kaulukukui came back from an enclosed cubby in the bow, dusting his hands. “Smells like they used it for the head. This the only boat you guys got, brother?”
The kid shrugged.
“Kind of small,” Kaulukukui added. “How far we got to go in this?”
“You know how far. And we don’t need to discuss it in front of him.”
“All I’m wondering, has it got the range? Will it make it?”
“Hell, it’s a boat,” Oberg said. “Let the commander tell us if it’ll make it or not.” He glanced at Sosukan, who was watching casually. He strolled over, took the Sten away from him, and doubled his arm behind him. He applied a little pain. “My GPS,” he said into the kid’s ear.
The boy hung from his hands. He tried to hook Teddy’s leg. Oberg applied more force. Not too much, he didn’t want to break anything.
“In my pocket,” Sosukan muttered.
“Good boy.” He patted him, dropped the magazine out of the Sten, ejected the one in the chamber, and stripped the cartridges out with his thumb.
Just five, all green with corrosion. He spun, throwing them far out into the bay. Then handed it back and patted the boy’s cheek.
Who turned a slow burning red, and gave him the sort of look Oberg remembered from his own adolescence. When the assholes who hung around his mother, hoping for a producer credit, for money, for whatever glamor they could rub off her, used to patronize him, or worse, tried to be his Daddy Buddy. And those had been the good ones.
Yeah. He remembered that look. The one that said, I’ll kill you, motherfucker. Just as soon as I get the chance.
12
Southern Mindanao
It was raining again. For the third day straight. Monty sat by the rutted mud track, jungle boots off, picking the leeches out from between his toes. They’d chowed down good, leaving bloody stains on his socks. He pinched the head off a fat slick brownish-red body, shuddered, and flicked it into the brush as the gate squealed down on rusty hinges.
The hinges were rusty, the gate was rusty, the old Chevy truck was orange with the rusty frost that grew in the tropic heat and rain the way mold grew on his shoes and scum on his teeth. He liked to keep himself clean, but it didn’t seem possible here no matter how often he sponged off and brushed his teeth. He scratched his crotch. Something was growing there, too. But when the rebels—he was sure they were rebels, now, if not bandits—began skidding the cases over the tailgate, down to the churned-up ground, he stopped scratching.
It was “the delivery.” But what were they delivering? He’d asked Oberg twice, and both times gotten a half smile and a shrug.
In the days past they’d gotten to know the Filipinos a little. Some of them, at least; there seemed to be about sixty or seventy of them in the camp, counting women and kids. The guy in the black beret, the closest thing they seemed to have to a leader, was Captain Abu. Abu stood beside him now, watching the others sweat around the tailgate. The squat smelly guy in the black head wrap was Izmin. Another, in a checkered Palestinian-style headdress, said very little; Monty thought he’d made out “Ibrahim” when they addressed him.
What was interesting was that he hadn’t so much as spoken to a single woman so far. He’d caught glimpses of them on their way in and out along the trails, and going down to the sea. Sometimes they carried water, or what he guessed was food, tied in banana leaves. But they kept out of sight, and even when you caught a peep they drew cloths across their faces, though their brown, scab-pocked legs were bare from the knees down.
He flicked away the last leech, for now anyway, and reached for his wet socks. The long-haired teenager, Sosukan, and Izmin, and others Monty didn’t know the names of, short wiry guys with knotted muscles from years of hard physical labor, were working on the crates, prying at the lids with knives and machetes. With a little dying shriek of reluctantly extracting nails, one came off.
The dark metal was coated with thick caramel grease. A rime sheened the wood, too. The weapons were scarred, heavy varnish over dark wood. They looked as if they’d been banged around in trucks, or thrown against something hard. Curved magazines covered the bottom of the box. A dusting of fine sand clung to them like brown sugar on fresh doughnuts.
Sosukan held one up to the gray-green light. Abu spat something angry, and he flinched and handed it over. The leader fingered a knob and jerked a lever up and down. Then looked around.
“Obie?” he called into the jungle.
Teddy Oberg hadn’t shaved since they got to the camp. He’d told the rest of the team not to, either. He’d traded his pants for the same camos the rebels wore, and found a black T-shirt with a ripped pocket and cheap dark glasses. With a green do-rag, he was starting to look like them, though he was bigger than any of the Mindanaoans. Monty rubbed his chin. His was growing in, too. Kaulukukui, though, didn’t show the slightest fuzz. Maybe the Hawaiian couldn’t grow a beard?
“What’s he got, Monty?”
He nodded toward Captain Abu. “Wants you to check out the shipment.”
Oberg took the weapon the way a postal worker might reach for the next piece of parcel-rate. He pushed something in and with one jerk pulled the whole back off and then the inner mechanism out. Looked it over, slapped it back in, ran the bolt back and forth. Looked down the barrel, and said something in the language that the rebels didn’t speak between themselves, but that they apparently all understood. Henrickson figured it was Tagalog, or maybe, Bisaya.
“What kind of rifles are those, Teddy?”
“These?” Oberg sounded surprised he had to ask. He thrust it into his hands, and Monty flinched at its greasy weight. “AKs. Seven-six-two by thirty-nine.” He frowned up into the truck. “Yeah, there’s the ammo. Mikhail Kalashnikov’s finest. You don’t know AKs?”
“I guess. Russian?”
He pulled another one, squinted at the stock. “Hungarian.”
“Where’d they come from?”
Oberg didn’t answer, just pulled out another rifle and gave it the same jerking apart, examination, and reassembly. By now Abu and Izmin and the others had theirs, too, and were jabbering and pointing them at each other. Triggers clacked. Monty backed off, hoping whoever had carried them last hadn’t left one loaded.
He’d been wondering how they were going to move the crates, it was a long way from camp and there wasn’t even a trail, but over the next hour a silent train of women emerged from the jungle. Loaded with four or five rifles each, or boxes of ammunition, or jerricans of fuel, they melted soundlessly, bent over, back into the green. Out on the road the rain speckled the water in the ruts, but not once did one of the Abu Sayyaf—he’d picked that name up from Oberg; they apparently didn’t consider themselves part of the MNFL anymore—move out from under the cover of the trees.
Of course; the recon drone they’d heard pass over that first day. He’d heard it again last night, waking on the rickety floor of the hut to hear its mosquito song vibrating above them in the dark.
Finally Kaulukukui swung himself out of the empty truck. He looked at the trampled, muddy ground. Rubbed his big flat hands together, then pushed grease off them onto his jeans. His broad face was friendly. Henrickson wondered how this guy had gotten into the SEALs. He looked like he’d be more at home behind some food counter. But probably that had helped him doing the undercover drug thing he’d mentioned once. “Hey. Sumo. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Does it strike you that these guys, this Abu Sayyaf outfit—don’t they seem kind of isolated out here?”
“Isolated?”
“I mean, they act more like bandits than fishermen. Should we be giving them guns?”
The SEAL stared. “We get their boat. And we got the AKs for free.”
“That’s not what I mean. Uh, what I’m trying to say is, I feel like I’m with Castro in the hills, or the Viet Cong, or something.”
Kaulukukui smiled. “These guys aren’t Communists.”
“I didn’t mean Communists. Guerrillas, I guess. Why are they hiding out here in southern Mindanao? Why’s someone surveilling them with drones? Why—”
The Hawaiian’s big soft hand engulfed his biceps. It squeezed gently, like a padded set of hydraulic shears. “Be cool. All taken care of, Monty.”
“What do you mean?”
“Teddy cleared it. With the Army here, the governor, everybody. Don’t worry your little head about it. Okay?”
He went back to the front of the truck as the engine started. Monty hadn’t seen the driver at all. The guy had never gotten out of the cab. Now he gunned it, rocked back and forth to free the big tires, then snorted the vehicle around, smashing down small trees. Soon it was a fading growl, then not even that.
He looked around. “Sumo?” he said, not very loud. Then, a little louder, “Uh, Sumo Man?”
Fifteen minutes later Kaulukukui was there again, all at once, preceded by no noise whatsoever, as if materialized out of the dripping green. He held one of the AKs like a big pistol. Henrickson looked from his broad splayed brown feet, to the machete in his belt, to the gun. Kaulukukui was still smiling, but now he didn’t look quite so much like a displaced sushi chef.
Back at the village he found Oberg sitting in the middle of a rapt circle, showing the locals how to clean the rifles with rags and the kerosene they used in their lights. He started to edge past, but the SEAL waved him in. “Monty, you’re gonna be carrying one of these. Grab Rit and Donny, get them over here, too.”
“Me?”
“We don’t have a lot of guys to do this with. Don’t worry, I won’t make you a shooter. But you’re gonna be carrying.”
Kaulukukui brought Carpenter and Wenck over from their hut to join the cleaning session. Oberg joked with the Filipinos, making them laugh uproariously. He took the guns apart one after the other, till they were piles of parts on the blankets, then slapped them back together so quickly it looked like a magic trick. The rebels oohed and aahed. Henrickson sat trying not to scratch his balls, his unease growing.
When dusk came Oberg put the last weapon aside and stretched. The rebels rose, each picking up his new rifle, and ambled off. No, strutted; they stuck out their legs like the scrawny village roosters. Sosukan lingered, smiling at Oberg, but finally he left, too. The smell of roasting meat and the women’s lilting songs drifted from the cook fires.
Oberg turned to him. “Learn anything today, Monty?”
“I’ve got a problem with this.”
“Yeah, you look like you ate something bad. Let’s get it out in the open. Let’s get some of that beer, too.”
“All that trucker brought was Gold Eagle, Teddy. No Red Horse. No San Miguel.”
“Fuck. Well, beer’s beer.”
Carpenter came back lugging the case. There were already several bottles missing. Monty didn’t like warm beer but he took one. He shifted on the blanket, hoping his crotch wasn’t rotting away. Oberg hand-signaled them to sit close together. Monty noticed both SEALs had their rifles where they could reach them, and pulled his own closer. Oberg toasted them and wiped his mouth. “Okay, Monty. Shoot.”
“These are bad guys, Teddy. Why are we arming them?”
“Sumo Man said you were bellyaching. Why don’t you get with the program?”
“Running guns to rebels, pirates, whatever these guys are—that’s not part of our mission.” He asked Carpenter and Wenck, “What do you guys think? This feel right to you?”
The sonarman shrugged; Wenck just looked at him with big puppy-dog eyes. He turned back to Oberg. “What about the Commander? What’s Lenson say about it?”
“Lenson ain’t here.”
“Right, but does he know you’re doing this?”
Oberg said, “No reason he should. The guy’s a Shoe. Not just a Shoe, a fucking Annapolis Shoe. We need a boat, I get a boat. We need weapons, I get them. Why bother him with details?”
“What if these guys start robbing banks with these guns? Or shooting up some village? Aren’t these Moros?”
“Morons,” Carpenter cracked.
“Shut up, Hooters.”
“Shut up yourself, Coconut Head.”
“I told you, it’s cleared with the Philippine Army,” Kaulukukui said.
Oberg cleared his throat. He sat forward, and Monty almost couldn’t meet those big blue eyes. “Henrickson, you been at TAG longer’n I have.”
“Damn right.”
“And you’re a hell of a good analyst. But TAG Charlie’s new to you, right?”
“It’s new to everybody.”
“Fair enough, but stop shittin’ kittens, okay? And stop acting like we’re stupid.”
“I never said—”
“Yeah, you did. Didn’t he?”
“Yep,” said Kaulukukui. He wasn’t smiling now.
Oberg leaned even closer, breath to breath, and tapped his knee. “When you go operational, you’re crossing into spec ops territory. You don’t just analyze shit, you got to get your hands dirty sometimes. Which is why Sumo and me are here. Okay? And from what I hear, there was some reluctance to release us to you. We didn’t ask for this mission. That’s not how we operate. The Army, the Rangers, they’ll bust their asses to get a mission. We got more missions than we got SEALs. But we’re the guys got handed the job: join up and make this Team Charlie concept work.
“Now, the way we work is, tell us what you need, and we’ll get it done. We get the intel, rock-drill the shit out of it, then we do it. Sometimes that means working with local groups that aren’t the kind of people the U.S. wants to snuggle up with. I’m not gonna get into the politics of Mindanao, but shit, you’re right—these are not good guys. They’re pirates—that’s why they’ve got the kind of boat we want. It just makes better cover. Okay?”
Henrickson scratched h
is groin and fidgeted. The men opposite were liaisons to what the military called the “black community.” “Black” in the ancient sense of “black arts”; arcane, unrevealed, and most likely, evil. Usually the uniformed services avoided it, but now they were reaching out. Involving TAG. He wasn’t sure if they were supposed to, or who they were reaching out to. The CIA? He didn’t think the Navy wanted to get close to the Agency. This Filipino rebel movement, whatever it was? He shifted again, but couldn’t get comfortable.
“How about it, Monty? We on the same page now?”
“I guess so,” he muttered, wishing Lenson was there.
“Jesus,” the SEAL said. He took out a notebook. “Now listen up. We’ve got a lot to do. And here’s the plan.”
Rit Carpenter was carrying fuel down to the boat that afternoon when it happened. Nobody else on the trail, just the two of them, and the declining sun shining softly through the jungle—hazy, like it was shining through smoke, or maybe milk, through the trees down by the water, but night already almost here on the shadowy trail. The air so hot and close you ran sweat just standing still, and the hum of the insects like a room full of tiny clocks all clicking and ticking and once in a while alarms going off.
He came to a bend in the trail screened by the banana trees, where it was nearly dark, and there she was gliding toward him, in one of those sarongs or whatever, blue with a pattern of flamingos or egrets. The moment their eyes met something clicked, like a misaligned vertebra snapping back where it belonged. No mistaking that. Just a word or two, a murmur; a touch.
Then they were slipping through the whispering waxy leaves of the bananas, pushing aside webs bearing huge yellow-and-black spiders, into the dimness. She let the headscarf drop as soon as they were out of sight of the trail.
She didn’t kiss like an American, or like the Korean girls who’d learned it from TV. In fact she didn’t open her mouth at all. That wasn’t what lifted him out of his shoes, and it sure wasn’t her perfume. She smelled of fish and hard work, but her hand knew the way to third base.
