by Tom Anthony
Mahir took the opportunity to ask Lateef, “Why does Kumander Ali trust me, why does he assign me, a foreigner, to a position of command?”
Lateef was pleased to fill in the blanks. “Kumander Ali is turning over tactical leadership for an important mission to you, Brother Mahir, because you are an ideal leader,” Lateef told him. “You are more educated than most of us. And you speak Arabic and English, which will be very useful as our new nation grows in the future. But most of all because you chose to stay with us and share our struggle. Now that you are one of us, you should choose a new code name, perhaps an English alias, so we will know what to call our Turkish brother.”
Mahir decided instead that he would insist that his men all address him simply as Brother. Many chieftains, even those leading only a few of their tribesmen, liked to make up tough, Hollywood-sounding nicknames, like Kumander or Commander, but as a leader he would not choose such a new name; he liked the sound of Brother in this foreign land. He had an important assignment. He commanded a unit of the newly forged NPA alliance. It was a big job.
The number of warriors was increasing by the hour as new recruits, usually groups of five to ten at a time, continued to show up. Bright smiles glowed as the campfire coals reflected enthusiasm and commitment. At home they were big fish in little ponds. Kumander Ali let them all believe that they were in charge and herded them into a loose order of battle by assigning campfire sites. Enough of them were spread around at least to protect Ali’s personal headquarters from surprise.
When the minor leaders appeared at Kumander Ali’s headquarters, each of them expecting to assume command, he entertained them with betel nut chews and warm Coca Cola, and then made his speech. “Be aware of the tricks of the devil. The Americans want to talk to us because they are losers. We have started a war we will win, and then we must build our nation. Get rid of the foreigners, make your swords drip with their blood, move forward with God’s blessing.” He gave them each a banded stack of a few hundred-dollar bills, suggesting that they share it with their followers, after exchanging the large foreign notes into pesos at a good rate. The impressed tribal leaders hastily departed with their stash as the twilight would soon turn into night. Thoughts of combat leadership were quickly forgotten, as the faction chiefs were anxious to get away before their followers heard about the windfall.
While passing into the street after counting his money, one of the important chiefs slipped his roll of cash into the crotch of his briefs, to make it more secure in case he was accosted. Realizing that he might have been observed, he made a pretense of scratching himself in various places. To complete a façade of poor personal hygiene, he made exaggerated and noisy gestures of blowing his nose into the nearby gutter where slimy water flowed slowly. He then proceeded along his way, satisfied that no one would suspect that he carried so much wealth. He felt proud about his role and his high position in the NPA hierarchy.
Distracted by the negotiations of the afternoon, Ali was not aware that Task Force Davao was on the move until Lateef informed him that forward sentries had seen movement below. Ali ordered Lateef to organize a defense immediately.
Lateef’s men got lucky. They blended into the tree line below Itig town and parallel to the sugar cane field that Captain Agustin had been ordered to cross with one of the platoons from his infantry company to probe the NPA perimeter. The NPA outposts had been well instructed this time; they were ordered not to fire until Lateef fired his pistol, or they would lose a week’s incentive pay of candy bars for firing too early. This was a serious threat; they held their fire.
Hayes was close to Captain Agustin as they moved forward, expecting eventually to find a guard leaning against a tree and smoking somewhere, if he was awake. But Hayes was surprised when he heard a single .45 pistol shot, followed by a hail of hostile bullets. The task force probe had been successful. Ironically, Agustin’s men found the enemy, but not surreptitiously; they had been found first. Agustin’s men had advanced too far forward without cover and too quickly. They were forced to back away, unaware that Mahir’s NPA fire team was positioned behind a wooden pole fence outlining the field.
Major Hayes jumped away from his position and sprinted for cover away from his unseen adversaries. But an Abu Sayaf sniper fired at him and a rifle bullet hit his leg, breaking the thighbone. Hayes had been told to remain out of the line of possible fire, but because he was too far on the flank, the patrol could not rescue him while they themselves were doing the low crawl under a fusillade fired over their heads by Lateef’s irregulars.
Lateef’s fire team leader on the left flank saw Hayes go down, and went to end his pain and noise, but seeing that he was an American officer, thought Kumander Ali might have a better use for him, alive. He ordered two of his riflemen to wrap the American in a cloth sack and drag him back to headquarters. They tied up his wound, but did not set the broken bone sticking out through his torn trouser leg, thus they only succeeded in stopping him from bleeding to death for the time being.
Captain Agustin, after learning that Major Hayes’ body had been recovered by the hostile forces, decided to advise Colonel Liu immediately on this sudden development. As soon as there was radio contact, Agustin reported, “Cardinal 6, this is Cardinal 3, observer probable KIA, body carried back by withdrawing NPA, over.”
Colonel Liu understood. “Damn,” he said out loud to no one in particular, “they’ve killed or captured Hayes. What an awful mess. I gotta get him back.” And he then went back on his radio, this time to De la Rosa’s artillery. “Redfire 6, this is Cardinal 6, Fire Mission, over.”
They exchanged call signs and protocol, and Liu ordered, “Give me one volley of high explosive, 100 meters due south of Itig, Charlie one six four, over.”
“Roger, Cardinal 6, on the way,” reported the fire direction center. A minute later six artillery rounds exploded on target, but also right on the STAGCOM position.
“What the hell!” Starke yelled as the first round exploded.
Thornton knew what it was. “Damn him, Liu’s started too soon again. Our surprise is ruined. We’ll have to move forward. Let’s get the hell outta here!”
Behind the first explosion, Thornton saw the NPA withdrawing and fired at them with his carbine. Like it or not, the battle had begun and they were suddenly in the middle of it as more rounds exploded all around them. Elaiza motioned the other Otazas forward to follow her. An NPA soldier rushed them while Thornton was kneeling near her firing his rifle, but Elaiza shot their attacker with her pistol full in the chest just as Thornton fired at a charging enemy behind her. Their eyes met in a microsecond-thank you-and then the second round of Liu’s artillery hit, and with a whoop and a flash both of them were thrown up into the air, Elaiza disappearing behind a ball of fire and smoke. Pedro tackled Thornton, whose clothing was on fire, and wrestled him to the ground, rolling him to put out the flames.
“Pedro, let me up,” Thornton was still dazed, but keenly aware of what had happened. “I’ve got to find Elaiza!”
“She’s gone,” was all Pedro could say. Thornton charged into the area of the blast’s impact, but there was nothing to see, and he collapsed in shock and sorrow.
32
Martyrs
They gave Major Hayes an aspirin and drinking water, hoping to keep him alive; perhaps he could be traded for something. But if he died, at least his corpse would be an embarrassment to the Americans and his death in a battle with the AFP would prove to voters in the coming election that the capitalist Americans were supporting the Tagalogs in oppressing the poor farmers of Mindanao. Hayes regained consciousness at times during the night, smelling the aroma of rotting jungle undergrowth and camp refuse. But the smell of his own clotted blood and the decomposition of his festering wound forewarned him of the distinct possibility of gangrene and a short future, which could end in the Philippine jungle. He spent the night in and out of consciousness, in and out of pain.
The leaders were moderately surprised when Mahir wal
ked into camp leading Elaiza on a rope tied around her neck, her hands bound in front of her. She did not seem special to them, just another woman, probably one of the girls who did the cooking for the American trespassers. He untied her hands and put her with their other captive. They would find a use for her.
In a moment of awareness, Hayes thought, “Does it matter? Does anyone care? Does it make a difference if my name will be carved on a stone memorial somewhere in Manila, or maybe just a photograph with a heroic caption hung perpetually on the embassy wall after my body is shipped back to Harlingen for my wife and kids to bury?”
He thought he was dreaming. Suddenly a woman was sitting beside him; he recognized her. He mumbled a name Elaiza did not understand, “ … is it you?” he heard himself asking.
“Major Hayes, what have they done to you?” Elaiza tried to comfort him.
Recognition finally dawned. “Oh. Elaiza. Most of this I did to myself. I should not be here.” Hayes looked down at the plastic tape that tied his hands. “What happened to you?”
“I’m OK. You’re a mess. Don’t blame yourself for what these hoodlums have done to you.” Elaiza’s hands were free, but one of her legs was tied firmly to a tree on a long leash, and the armed guard who watched them both prevented any escape. She sat by Hayes and put her hand on his forehead.
Hayes flinched. He tried to control his pain and told Elaiza, “There was a time before, during the first Gulf War, when I almost died in combat. I wish I had. Am I going to die now? How would my life have unfolded if I hadn’t gone on that patrol for my idle curiosity? I don’t want my family to know how I died.”
“I’ll tell them,”—Elaiza looked into his eyes and touched his chin to make him look at her—“I’ll tell them the way you’d want me to.” From the way she said it, Hayes now knew he would never see them again.
Walking between the shacks carrying a cup of Nescafe, Kumander Ali looked down at Hayes. Ali was preoccupied with planning what to do now that he knew the Filipinos had located his headquarters. Would they get the Americans to call in an air strike? He had heard about so-called smart bombs which could be quietly guided downward from unseen aircraft thousands of feet above the clouds, accurately impacting in the common area of the camp, even before his men could leave the area. While random ideas like these bounced around in his head, he decided to relocate most of his military force after reeducating them with his philosophy. Then they could scatter back to their villages with money in their hands and a list of approved voters in their pockets.
Ali did not want the eternal responsibility for feeding his followers and the entourages they had brought with them on the trek. It was one thing to join up with the movement; it was another thing to live off of it. He heard but could not see a jet fly over; it was too low to be a commercial liner on a flight path into the airport at Koronadal, and too high to have seen them, unless there were some new optical technologies the Philippine Air Force had that he did not know about. Now he heard fixed-wing military aircraft whirring in the distance parallel to the coast, while two helicopters chop-chopped in the opposite direction low over the palms. He was beginning to suspect all sounds.
Mahir went over to Hayes and looked at his wound but did not touch him or his bandaged leg, tied with what was really more of a tourniquet than a bandage. The flesh had turned a speckled black below where the wound was tied off to keep blood from pumping out, probably early symptoms of gangrene.
“What does it all mean?” Mahir thought, but only asked Hayes in English, “Are you happy to die here?”
“You, Brother, have the power to let him live.” Elaiza was still beside Hayes.
“Shut up, woman!” Mahir was not interested in some female’s ideas about brotherhood.
“I am not happy to die anywhere just yet,” Hayes answered his captor with a surly and proud, slightly crooked smile, “but I may not get my wish.”
Mahir observed more than spoke, “I think you will get your chance to meet your God soon, whether it is your wish or not.” He could not help throwing out his question, almost rhetorically, “Was it worth it to you?”
Hayes did not give Mahir the satisfaction of hearing his doubt, but thought, “It doesn’t seem so now, but it did before. Most men dying in combat die suddenly, without having a chance to think about it; their decisions were made in their minds long before they found themselves faced with the choice.” The single aspirin was not doing much good; thank God the bandage was tight. It throbbed, but it would hurt worse if blood were allowed to pump into the dying flesh. The blood vessels in his leg were lying open, and Elaiza chased away the fat, black flies attracted to the wound.
Seeing life begin to slip from his captive’s grasp, Mahir thought about his own wife and son, their own future. Why take chances? He had enough now to live his dream, their dreams together. Why can man not quit when he is ahead and just live his life? Why waste it on these hopeless souls and their desperate dreams?
Neither Mahir nor Hayes would ever know the answers to the questions they were asking themselves and each other.
Mahir did not stop Elaiza from ministering to Hayes. He just left them alone.
Two women were preparing lunch for their men in a grassy patch between the huts. They had carrots today, and they peeled the skins of the vegetables and fed them to the goats. Waiting for the food to cook, a naked child defecated while several piglets waited in anticipation for him to finish. Mahir wondered why, in a society that is underfed to the point of malnutrition, the part of the vegetable that contains the most nutrients and vitamins would be discarded. They were lucky today also to have rice with the vegetables—rice steamed in covered cooking pots, rice that was imported from Vietnam, the new breadbasket of Southeast Asia. The Philippines, with all its rainfall and tropical heat and once an exporter of the grain, could no longer grow enough rice to feed its own population; land usage was being converted to more valuable crops, like banana and mango, for export to Japan and Europe. Mindanao was a fruit basket, but for the NPA in bivouac such delicacies were hard to locate, and they ate what they found. Mahir saw the impossibility of the NPA cause in this vignette; these were the lucky ones, those who had rice today. Go ahead, let them vote, nothing will change, nothing matters.
Mahir told the women to give a bowl of their rice to Elaiza. She fed it all to Hayes, except for a few spoonfuls she fed to a wounded enemy soldier propped on the other side of the tree. The latter was a human being too, and he was her countryman.
Mahir leaned against the pole holding up the corner of the tent in front of Ali’s headquarters. After watching the two for a while in thought, he said to Hayes, “You have come here for an evil purpose, and you will die knowing you have died stupidly for an evil cause.”
“Evil is blowing up a synagogue. Stupidity is blowing it up on a Friday, when no Jews are present, killing only your own Muslim brothers. Stupidity is blowing up a workers’ barracks in Saudi Arabia, not knowing that the Americans had moved out of it two years before. Even if you think I’m evil, you must know that you are fighting for a stupid cause, and you must live knowing that.” Hayes’ answer to Mahir just came out spontaneously. He had not even thought about the flawed logic of his enemy before in the exact words that conveyed his thoughts, since “stupid” was a word that hit hard in this culture, especially when the hearer knew it was true.
The day became hotter, and more flies gathered. Hayes’ presence was beginning to irritate his captors. Lateef approached where Mahir was standing and discreetly took charge of the situation. He ordered the guard watching Elaiza to tie her hands again and push a ball of cloth into her mouth and tape it in place. They had heard enough from the woman.
Lateef was more experienced in these matters than Mahir. Under Ali’s orders, he cut the tourniquet and Hayes twitched as blood seeped rather than pulsed out of his limp body. The suddenness of the pain caused by the blood flowing into crushed muscles brought him back to life enough to say through dry lips, “I thought Allah did
not allow the killing of innocent people.”
Lateef was the one to answer, irritated at the insolence, “Allah does not allow the killing of innocent people, but you are a killer, and the Koran teaches that killers should be killed.”
“Then you are not a true Muslim, you who pretend to be a judge, you who permit violence to guide your life.” Hayes could act as judge as well as Lateef and Ali.
But Ali had already determined that since Hayes had little time to live, no matter what happened, he wanted to get the most leverage possible from his death, an event sure to stir up the Americans. Better to be proactive, execute him rather than let him die, get some good press out of it. Lateef moved Hayes inside the radio station and tied him to a stool.
Hayes’ execution was broadcast in a dramatic special presentation on Radio Free Mindanao—not like the executions of infidels shown on prerecorded videotape by Middle East TV networks. Native music set the tone and commentary continued on the air. Hayes could not be heard saying anything that seemed intelligible, but it did mean something when the embassy labs studied the recording later. The description of the proceedings was narrated in detail by the announcer, saying, “This is how we deal with nonbelievers who oppose us.” Listeners heard the surreal rustlings of preparation, a stool moving on a concrete floor, steel chinking on steel, muscles moving against muscles, a muted chop, than another, a chair falling and muffled noises, people talking calmly in stage whispers, then silence. The images were more powerful imagined than when actually seen.
33
Radio Free Mindanao
For his breakfast the day after Hayes had been executed, Mahir cracked an egg and dropped it into a frying pan sizzling with cooking oil; the yolk broke and spread out crackling into a shapeless mass. He watched the sibilantly cooking egg and thought it a premonition. It seemed to resemble Mindanao on the map—a raised irregular formation in the center and bubbling arms reaching out into the turbulent sea around it, one arm reaching south toward Sabah, North Borneo, the other arm arching north toward Leyte in the Philippine Sea, with scattered island globules swimming alone in a boiling sea of fat. Mahir saw the NPA and himself snapping and sputtering against the inevitable, a foreboding of the approaching battle.
