Sudden Threat

by A. J Tata

  Abe had had little contact with the Filipino people during his stay in Mindanao. He had read much about them and their history and truly felt sorry for his country’s past treatment of their people. In part, he felt good about producing weapons for the Filipinos so they would no longer have to rely on other powers for their own security. He believed the time had come for them to forge their own history instead of always being the pawn of some higher power’s struggle.

  So, as he reached out his hand, he was reaching in compassion to a people for whom he held great pity. He wanted to talk with them and experience at least some of their culture. He wanted to be able to tell his family about the Filipino people and how they were struggling in a world that recognized only raw power. True to his liberal beliefs, Abe reached his hand toward the young boy, obviously hurt, lying there like a wounded deer maimed by a hunter’s bullet. His next poem would be about him, he was sure.

  CHAPTER 11

  Matt Garrett peered through the scope of his SIG SAUER and tried to assess everything he was watching.

  He saw a Japanese man running on a gravel path as if he was doing exercise, which was strange enough. Then he saw the man drop and do some push-ups. Matt watched as a young Filipino soldier approached the Japanese man.

  Adjusting his sight ever so slightly, Matt was able to pick out the faces of two well-camouflaged American soldiers.

  They must be part of Peterson’s team that jumped in last night.

  Matt was on ground higher than any of the other participants in this uncoordinated drama, and he could plainly see that the situation was headed for tragedy. The Japanese could be a martial-arts expert. The Filipino could be Abu Sayyaf. The Special Forces soldiers might be wanting to kill anything because of their loss last night. There were multiple combinations and algorithms that could play out, yet none was what he would consider to be positive.

  Just when he thought the strange situation could not deteriorate any further, he saw three Asian soldiers running up the path from the east. They were brandishing weapons that looked like small machine guns.

  Quickly assessing the situation, he shot the three Japanese guards, who were sprinting toward the man in the orange jumpsuit. His silenced SIG SAUER made no noise at all, and the three men dropped to the ground, dead, though as he swung his weapon’s sight back to the American soldiers, he saw them scanning with their own weapons. They had heard or seen something and were spooked.

  Matt did what he always believed was best to do in that type of situation; he remained perfectly still. If they saw him, they might shoot him. He presumed he had just saved someone’s life … by taking three. He didn’t want to think of the other possibilities, perhaps that the three men he had killed were simply doing rifle physical training and joining their commander on a jog.

  No, the men were reacting to something, most likely the Americans who had cut the fence, which was probably wired with sensors. That triggered the response, and the guards were coming to close up the hole in the wire.

  Matt reasoned that if that were truly the case, then they might have remote-viewing cameras and monitors around whatever facility the fence was protecting. That caused him to wonder just what the hell was happening there.

  Could it be related to the Predators?

  Major Ramsey and Sergeant First Class Benson were scanning the far side of the track as they watched the three Asian military men running at full speed suddenly fall as if shot.

  “What the hell was that?” Benson asked.

  “Those guys were shot,” Ramsey said. He moved his scope slowly back and forth, seeing nothing.

  Their attention was drawn back to Eddie as he dragged the man in the orange jumpsuit twenty-five meters through the scrub brush. As Ramsey’s instincts kicked in, he pulled a roll of tape out of his ruck along with a set of plastic, disposable flexcuffs like those the police use during riots. Quickly, he taped the man’s eyes and mouth shut then tightened the handcuff around his wrists. After surveying the situation, they moved quickly along the route back to the base camp, passing through it and stopping some fifty meters to the other side. Benson dropped off, informing the rest of the team what had occurred and that they had five minutes to prepare to move.

  Then they walked for what seemed like hours, emerging from the jungle highlands, walking across a low valley plain and reentering another jungle, this time only steeper. They found their way using their night-vision goggles, but the Filipino and the prisoner had none, and the group could only move as fast as the slowest man could struggle blindly through the jungle. Ramsey was surprised at how little resistance the prisoner gave and had cut the flex cuffs for ease of movement.

  As they struggled up the steep face of a rock outcropping, the captive grabbed at a rock with his bound hands, then lost his grip, dragging his fingernails along the face as he fell several meters. SFC Jones watched as the darkened figure let out a muffled scream and tumbled into him, knocking him back and down before he had a chance to move. As he fell, his rucksack protected his body, absorbing the force of the impact on both men. He heard the unpleasant sound of metal scraping on rock and silently swore at the prisoner, hoping the radio had not absorbed the impact of the fall.

  The team re-formed and helped the captive to the top of the rocks, where one might expect to find an eagle’s nest, and set up a new patrol base.

  They were high above the coastal town of Baganga, some eight kilometers south of Cateel. Ramsey had decided to stop for the night, what little of it remained.

  Ramsey knelt next to Benson.

  “Hell of a hump we just did, Major,” Benson said.

  “You think it was Ron?”

  Benson, who was using his knife to cut some thorny vines from his pants, looked at his leader in the moonlit night.

  “Had to be somebody. You know anybody else who can shoot like that?”

  CHAPTER 12

  Matt had made three precision kills with his silenced weapon, then watched the two Americans disappear to the south into the dense jungle with the young Filipino and their hostage.

  So Peterson was not alone.

  His position afforded him a view of the action that had unfolded beneath him and an unnatural flattened expanse of land to the east, his left. He was well protected by an assortment of large rocks and tall pines. The climb down the back side of the mountain had been less difficult than the climb up the western slope, yet knowing Peterson’s body was still up there weighed on him emotionally.

  He tried to understand what he had just seen. Obviously, there were survivors from the jump, and they had taken captive a jogger. Three Asian men, who he now realized were Japanese soldiers, had quickly responded to the breaching of the metal fence. As he watched, there were about ten soldiers standing at the location from which the man had been abducted.

  One man in particular seemed to be in charge. He was in civilian clothes and wore a pearl-handled revolver on his hip, like a cowboy. An old officer’s hat, like MacArthur’s, shielded much of his face, making it difficult to ascertain all of his features, but Matt could see that the man in charge was taller than any of the others.

  His information on the Predators had led him to believe that China was developing the unmanned aerial vehicles for clandestine use against the United States or its allies. His mission was to find out whether that was true.

  Yet, there he was in some uncharted rain forest of a remote, yet strategically vital, Philippine island, and he was watching Japanese soldiers and businessmen move about what appeared to be an old mine.

  Knowing he had no chance of catching the Special Forces team that had bolted into the jungle, Matt eased away from his perch and moved to the north, away from the gaggle at the fence.

  As he approached the fence on the northeastern side of the compound, Matt saw that there was a sensor wire running through the chain link and every fifty meters or so there was a solar panel and battery pack that powered each sensor. Matt’s experience told him that some enterprising villagers
had probably toyed around with stealing the batteries for their own purposes, so he continued walking along a minor path that mostly paralleled the fence.

  Sure enough, when he reached a spot that afforded him a view, albeit darkened, of Cateel Bay, Matt saw that not only was the battery and solar assembly missing, but there was a small tunneled area beneath the fence. Either an animal had burrowed underneath, or an enterprising villager had evaded the sensors in that fashion.

  Matt scraped some loose dirt out of the hole, slid his rucksack underneath, then snaked his way under the fence, the barbs of the chain link scratching at him as he burrowed. Soon he was inside.

  He grabbed his rucksack and weapon, continuing downhill until he saw the opening.

  Kneeling behind a tree, Matt placed his PVS-18 night-vision monocular to his face and scanned the area like a pirate searching for land. He saw the group rounding the corner about seventy-five meters southeast of his position.

  He noticed a rail spur that led to a concrete ramp at the mouth of the complex in the mountain. What looked like an old mine shaft actually was some type of extremely well concealed facility. On the rail spur sat five flatbed cars and four armored vehicles or tanks. The Japanese soldiers seemed to have stopped in the middle of driving what looked like a German Leopard tank onto the last railcar, as the mammoth machine was perched precariously half on the last car and half on the ramp. It seemed to Matt that everyone was moving in the direction of the abduction, so he efficiently moved to the line of railcars and observed closely the tanks, committing to memory every detail possible. Six wheels, the two in the middle almost touching, an armored skirt, and what appeared to be a 120mm main gun.

  This is the Japanese Type 90 Main Battle Tank.

  He heard a sound less than fifty meters away and looked up. He noticed the taller, pearl-handled-revolver aficionado break away from the gathering and begin walking to the east with two armed personnel.

  Interesting.

  Matt backed toward the fence, stepping past some generators and telescoping lights like one might see at a Little League facility in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa. As he reached the perimeter fence, Matt followed the pearl-handled-revolver man in parallel and watched as they exited a small gate that was well guarded by at least four soldiers. He had moved along the fence about two hundred meters from where he had started. Not wanting to lose time by heading back to where he had initially gained entrance to the compound, Matt retrieved his Leatherman and cut the fence. He pushed out a small section, scooted through it, then pushed the section back in, as if someone had just cut his way into the compound.

  A siren immediately began wailing in the background, and searchlights, those telescoping lights, began crisscrossing as if he were a prisoner escaping from Alcatraz. Behind him he heard the harsh commands of a Japanese guard team. His sense was that they had a general idea of his location but did not yet have a bead on him.

  With clarity, Matt understood that he was in a tenuous position. The facility behind him, teemed with armed Japanese soldiers, and the Pacific Ocean lay to his front.

  The trail on which he ran pushed him in a due easterly direction, and he could at last hear the water of Cateel Bay lapping at the shore. Two shots ricocheted through the leaves above his head. Probing. Spray and pray. They did not have a fix on him yet, he believed.

  He reached the beach, kneeling next to some chest-high scrub. Thankfully, he was in superb physical condition, and his breathing remained calm. He smelled the faint odor of dead fish, as if he was near an area where they were either dumped or cleaned. Or both.

  Listening, Matt heard the men talking in Japanese.

  “I’m getting a report of another break-in.”

  “Have the defenses go to full alert. We cannot afford a compromise at this point.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you. To refuel and to inspect the fleet. I have already called for another engineer to take Abe’s place. I will talk to Talbosa about him. He is not to survive. Clear?”

  The conversation continued, but a coughing airplane engine drowned the voices.

  Matt looked all around, then into the bay, and for the first time noticed the float plane sitting about ten meters to his front. The tail of the airplane was toward the beach, and the prop wash blew directly onto him.

  He looked to the west along the trail he had traveled and saw the faint beam of flashlights sweeping and the disturbing sound of search dogs barking.

  Not good.

  Operating mostly on instinct, Matt tightened his rucksack on his back and moved parallel with the shoreline until he could enter the water near a grouping of Bangka boats. As he stepped into the bay, he could see the three men handling a small Zodiac, the sound of whose engine further masked his movement.

  By then all four turbo propellers of the airplane were spinning loudly. Matt waded behind a Bangka boat in which he had placed his rucksack and rifle. To the naked eye, the boat would appear to be drifting slowly toward the airplane, as Matt’s shoulders were just above the level of the warm water, but his head was below the rim of the boat.

  As he entered the backwash area of the propellers, he was blasted with salt water and hot air. He grabbed his ruck and rifle and pulled himself up onto the float plane’s landing gear well, which on that aircraft, was perpendicular to the fuselage as opposed to underneath it.

  He released the Bangka boat, and it blew onto the beach. Matt could still see the Zodiac making its way to the starboard side of the aircraft, so in one deft movement, he leapt inside the port cargo door and rolled to the floor. He brought his weapon up to eye level but only saw the darkened hull of an airplane and an open cockpit door.

  In his periphery, he saw the Zodiac approach. In the rear of the plane he found two pallets of combat rations, behind which he hid.

  The tall man with the pearl-handled revolver boarded and strode to the cockpit, where he entered and took a seat.

  Matt saw the man’s head swing around and stare at the rear of the airplane, directly at him. Matt tensed as he watched the Japanese man step out of the cockpit and walk toward him. The man pulled a long knife from a sheath opposite his holster as Matt cradled the SIG SAUER, his trigger finger firmly in place.

  The two pallets were about five feet high, filled with tan boxes of rations and other supplies. As Matt pressed his body into the back of the pallet, trying to make himself as small and invisible as possible, he noticed that flexible white binding straps secured each box. He was unable to see the man now, save for the toe of a cowboy boot that was pointing in his direction.

  Matt felt the pallet tug and heard a “pop” followed by some rustling noises. Soon the boot toe turned in the opposite direction and he heard both cargo doors close on either side of the airplane.

  Confident that the man had not seen him, Matt peered around the corner and saw him stepping into the cockpit holding a combat ration in one hand.

  Soon thereafter, they were speeding along the smooth waters of Cateel Bay until they were finally airborne.

  To God knows where.

  CHAPTER 13

  The climb through the treacherous mountains had nearly killed Abe. The only thing keeping him alive, he knew, was his physical-conditioning regimen for the past six months. The same path that had led to his capture had prepared him to survive the kidnapping.

  Upon waking, Abe sensed he was still bound and gagged, his back smarting from the fall and the tips of his fingers bloody and sore. He had heard of such Islamic extremists, and how they were capable of such actions, but never expected anything to happen to him. He was sure he could reason with them. A Filipino voice spoke to him in broken English, occasionally mixing in a couple of Japanese words. A hand tore off the gag and placed a cup of water to his lips. Abe thanked the provider, using slightly better English. The Filipino asked him questions, and he responded. Still blindfolded, Abe had the sense that others were around him, listening.

  “What you doing here?” the vo
ice asked him.

  “I manufacture,” he replied. “You Abu Sayyaf?” Abe’s weak voice asked.

  “Abu Sayyaf! I spit on Abu Sayyaf!” the man said. He sensed the man move, as if to elevate, perhaps preparing to strike him.

  “What make?”

  Abe told him that they were making helicopters and tanks for the Filipinos so they could achieve independence from foreign powers and fight the insurgency.

  “Traitor!” the Filipino screamed, slapping him across the face.

  Abe felt others move quietly around his questioner, perhaps pulling him back.

  The man regained his composure, though, and continued questioning.

  “Japanese?”

  “Yes. Japanese,” Abe responded.

  “Other Japanese with you?” Again Abe responded affirmative.

  “Name?”

  “Abe. Mister Kanishi Abe,” he said slowly.

  The questioning continued, and Abe gladly told them everything. He mentioned the number of Japanese in his plant and the number of plants, as well as how long the facility had been operating. One plant produced small arms, such as rifles and pistols, he believed, while his and two others made tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and attack helicopters. He kept reiterating that the weapons had been ordered by the recognized government of the Philippines. At least that is what Mr. Takishi had told him.

  Abe simply did not understand what all of the confusion was about. Needless to say, he was scared. Despite his fear, he realized that his situation was definitely good material for a poem; something to do with the blinded man groping for reason.

  The images of his family tumbled through his mind as a wave of sadness settled over him. He was tired, hungry, and had no quarrel with his captors. It would be so simple to let him go. The hand placed a bowl of rice in his lap, and he ate voraciously but awkwardly, with his hands still cuffed.