by Ian Barclay
Dartley’s peace conference was a huge success; this was something new, and the warriors finished up the funeral and other bodong in order to take part in it. Since Happy Man Velez was widely regarded among the Kalingas as the man behind the government dam projects, they all readily agreed that he should be killed if a way could be found to do it so that the Army would not blame them. Happy Man’s enemies in Manila would be secretly pleased at his death. Yet they would send in the army on punitive expeditions to show the mountain people that they could not knock off powerful people when they wanted. Dartley said he would kill Happy Man with their help, and when he had done the job, he would leave traces to show that it had been an American who was responsible. By the time the authorities found these, he expected to be back in Maryland.
Using their skills of moving through the forest undetected, Kalinga warriors penetrated Happy Man’s outer defenses, getting to within a few steps of the house and remaining undetected. But Dartley did not fool himself that he could do the same. Besides, the reports that the Kalingas brought back were not good. Velez had a private army of full-time gun-toting goons numbering somewhere between forty and a hundred, depending on which Kalingas were talking. All carried either M16s or shotguns and moved in patrols of three or more men around the clock. Against them, Dartley could muster a little more than fifty Kalingas, about twenty of whom had guns—all bolt-action or shotguns except for the three captured M16s and two more spares from the car trunk.
The Kalingas had their own methods of warfare, and none of these included taking orders from Dartley. So far as the American could understand, it was every man for himself in Kalinga fighting. Since Happy Man’s house was fortified and his goons disciplined, a surprise attack would probably result in more confusion than real damage. Dartley had no interest in inflicting punishment on the Velez goons. All he wanted was to hit Happy Man neatly and split the scene while people were still wondering what was happening. According to Rafael, the Kalingas would have none of this. They wanted something like Dartley dragging Happy Man’s body around town while waving the Stars and Stripes. It no longer surprised Dartley that the Kalingas knew what an American flag looked like. But he recognized that he could not depend on them to do what he wanted in a firefight. He could not even tell how accurately Rafael was translating what he or the Kalingas were saying. Maybe Rafael had his own ideas, too, which he attributed to either side as it suited him….
A breakthrough came from Rafael’s version of what four Kalinga scouts had seen near the Velez house. None of the warriors had laid eyes on Happy Man, saying only that they saw an armor-plated Jeep Cherokee come and go and that they knew he traveled in it. But they prided themselves on getting within earshot of the guards, even though they could not understand what they were saying.
Rafael said, “The four were hiding in bushes only half a spear’s throw away from nine Velez men. Two of the men were arguing, which, of course, appealed to the Kalingas. Then some of the guards left and came back with farm workers and their fighting cocks. This was when the two guards who were arguing went at each other with knives. One stabbed the other in the side and walked away while the remaining men carried the wounded man into the house.”
“That makes one less for us to deal with,” Dartley concluded, not too interested.
“The tupada!” Harry said excitedly. “Tomorrow is Sunday. Maybe the guards will be there. Maybe Happy Man too!”
Benjael and Rafael agreed. The cockfight, or tupada, was the big Sunday sporting occasion in country towns. A high-liver like Happy Man would have little else to do up here.
They saw local men walking by the side of the road with a fighting cock nestling in the crook of an arm. Benjael drove, with Rafael beside him and Dartley in the backseat with the brim of an old straw hat pulled down over his face. Benjael had dropped Harry in Balbalasang early that morning. The cockfights were to begin in the early afternoon, at no particular fixed time so far as they had been able to find out. Harry was to check out the town and meet them on the edge at two o’clock. He was dozing in the sun when they arrived.
“We are in luck,” Harry said as he got in the backseat. “Yesterday three busloads of tourists got into town with an Army escort. Two of the buses are filled with Japanese men, but the third has American servicemen—maybe sixty or seventy of them. A lot of them are going to the tupada. You won’t be noticed.”
When the car got into town, Dartley saw that what Harry said was true. There were bored-looking groups of nineteen- and twenty-year-old Americans wandering in the streets, with a few older-looking ones, all servicemen. Apparently the charms of the pretty, rustic town had worn off, and they were in search of more active entertainment. The Japanese were all middle-aged and walked in larger groups, photographing just about anything that came along, including the Americans and themselves, as well as the pretty girls, waterfalls, and orange trees.
The cockpit was a large, roofed structure, open on all four sides. It was in a small town park, and the members of the crowd wandered among flower beds or sat on the grass as well as crowded into the cockpit. The fighting area was a dirt patch about ten feet by ten, surrounded by the tiers of heavy planks that served as seats. The owners of birds proudly held them in one arm and strutted around themselves, heavy with rural macho.
Dartley split up from the other three and mingled in the loud, good-humored push as people tried to catch a close view of various birds before they placed their bets. About twenty of the U.S. servicemen were there, some looking disapproving, others pushing with the Filipino locals for a close look and a bet. It occurred to Dartley that Happy Man would be presented with an easy target here but could not resume his killing of Americans in a place where it could be traced to him so easily. Dartley tried to keep out of conversation with them, but that wasn’t the way things were going to be. A red-faced man with a brush cut and a barrel chest gave him an elbow in the ribs.
“Clark?” he asked in a Midwestern accent.
Dartley nodded, not smiling.
“Thought so. You look Air Force. I can always tell. But I ain’t going to say a word, though some of us Navy boys might like to kick your ass, just for something to do in this goddam burg. They’re good kids, but hell, it’s a relief to talk to a grown man for a change. You know this game?”
“I’ve never been to a cockfight before,” Dartley said. “I been stationed over here only two months. This is the first leave I got.”
“And you came up here to rebel country on your own? I could tell you was a greenhorn just by seeing you alone here—and I ain’t going to say nothing about anyone in the Air Force being dumb.” He slapped Dartley on the shoulder. “Wanna make some money? You just stick with me and I’ll show you how this works.”
Dartley was relieved that the Navy man’s dislike of the Air Force made him want to talk about the cockfights instead.
“They don’t have no fixed card—that’s why you gotta get close in to find out what’s going on,” the Navy man explained. “In that corner the contests are arranged and the fighting spurs are selected. You get a look at the birds here. Which do you like for the next fight?”
Dartley watched the owners of a yellowish-white bird and a pied bird hold the right leg of the fowl out for a man to hold a steel spur to it, having picked the blade from an array laid out on a cloth. The owner in each case nodded his approval, and the spur was tied to the bird’s leg. Then the two men carried the fowl to the dirt area and, still holding them with both hands, faced them at each other so that their bills were just out of reach. The neck feathers of the birds ruffled up, and their wattles grew red with rage. They struggled in their handlers’ clutches to get at one another.
The crowd roared with excitement as they saw the birds’ fighting urge. Dartley searched among the faces and was interrupted by the Navy man with another elbow in the ribs.
“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you wanna lay a bet?”
“I like the pied bird,” Dartley said mechanically.<
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“That’s a piece of shit with feathers stuck on it,” the Navy man said. “They’re offering three-to-one against it.” A Filipino with his arms outstretched shouted something in English to them, which Dartley did not catch. “Man says if you bet in dollars, he’ll pay you in dollars. But I wouldn’t lay more’n five bucks on that lame hen you picked.”
“You got change of a hundred?” Dartley asked.
The Navy man laughed. “Man, you flash a hundred-dollar bill here and win, you’re liable to bankrupt this town’s whole economy—least you’ll do is end up owning this cockpit, if no one kills you first. Uncle Sam always pays you Air Force assholes way too much, if you want a Navy opinion.”
Dartley’s eyes again scanned the crowd as he half listened to his Navy buddy place the bets. He spotted Benjael, who shook his head slightly, meaning he had seen nothing. He didn’t see Rafael, and Harry was so small that he would be lost only a few yards away in this heaving, shouting crowd, frantically placing bets on the two birds being goaded by their handlers.
The scores of bets were all being handled by one man, and not a peso was changing hands. This man stood at the center of the tier of seats, arms outstretched with his hands signaling acceptance of bets shouted to him while he screamed the odds and begged people to hurry in a kind of weird English and what sounded like several other languages or dialects. The two handlers were holding the enraged cocks apart on the ground now, and the shouting grew frantic as last-second wagers were placed.
When the birds were released, they came together in a slap of talons, beaks, and flapping wings. Dartley could see them try to peck out each other’s eyes while ripping at one another with their claws. They separated and came at each other in repeated rushes, ripping, clawing, tearing, and pecking one another with a speed and ferocity that Dartley had never before thought barnyard fowl capable of. The pied bird, at a point when Dartley though he might be winning, instead tried to run. But the yellowish-white cock buried its steel spur deep in its body before the pied bird could get away and then pecked fiercely at the top of its head.
A man rushed in and picked up both birds. He held the half-dead cock Dartley had bet on before the victor, who pecked at the losing bird’s head.
“He has to peck twice to be declared the winner,” the Navy man said.
The yellowish-white bird was pleased to oblige, and part of the crowd yelled their approval.
“If the winning bird refuses to peck the loser twice, it’s declared a draw,” the Navy man said. “Sometimes the winning bird is half-dead himself and doesn’t have the strength to do it.”
Dartley watched as the man who had been taking bets looked from loser to loser, and each man in turn threw down the money owed, sometimes a whole roll of peso bills in a rubber band. The sailor handed Dartley five dollars, and when the man looked up to Dartley, he threw down the bill, which was crumpled in a ball and was neatly caught.
“He remembers all those bets?” Dartley asked, watching the man throwing up wads of money into the crowd now, as well as receiving them. The money sometimes passed from hand to hand to its owner.
“Just try to shortchange him by a nickel and you’ll find out what he remembers,” the Navy man said.
Dartley handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “Get him to change this for you and I’ll see you over at the corner where they fit the spurs.”
The Navy man took the bill with a pitying look on his face. “First you’re up here by yourself in rebel country, and now you hand someone you’ve never seen before a hundred-dollar bill. Where does the Air Force go to find guys like you?”
Dartley grinned. “For a sailor you got an honest face,” he said, and slipped away into the crowd.
He moved calmly and unhurriedly through the crowd, catching Benjael’s eye and giving him a confident nod to let him know that he had seen Velez, too, and that everything was okay. Benjael would now cover his escape and alert Harry and Rafael, too—if he could find them. For the first time in days Dartley was in control of things. In situations where other men’s hearts thumped and fear or rage blocked their thought processes, Dartley’s reaction was the opposite. His movements became deliberate, and his mind raced coldly like a digital calculator. While still talking with the Navy man he had seen the first two rows of the tiered planks on one side of the pit cleared of their occupants by some rough-looking dudes. No one gave them any argument, just moved out of the way fast. A few moments later some well-dressed gents were ushered to the front row, Happy Man Velez among them. The guards slipped into the second row behind them, sitting between them and the crowd. This was what Dartley had been waiting for, yet his heart didn’t thud. He only cracked a joke with the Navy man, faded into the mob, and eased his way over toward his target.
There was a lot of coming and going between the matches. Dartley avoided open spaces where he might be spotted making his way toward Velez. It was much slower and harder going staying where the crowds were thickest, but this way, even as a tall American, he did not stand out in the pandemonium. By the time he had worked himself into a fairly good position, the two birds of the next match were being held almost beak-to-beak in the pit, to work up their fighting spirit.
His timing was right. As fight time neared, the voice of the man taking the bets became more frantic, and his hand signals fluttered like those of a mad symphony conductor. He respectfully kidded the rich men in the front row and their guards in the second row, drawing a flurry of shouted bets from them. This seemed to change the odds, which in turn brought on a whole new binge of shouted bets.
Dartley waited until the guards in the second row were so caught up by the lure of fast money that they had forgotten why they were here. The American hit man eased his way to the edge of the crowd. No one in this crowd of excited fans could be bothered by some no-account foreigner moving around—he probably was made sick by the sight of a little blood or thought that this was a cruel sport, and foreigners who thought things like that should stay home and not come to places like Balbalasang to bother people like them for whom the tupada was the big thing in their lives. They let Dartley move them out of his way and push past them, until he had a clear view of the bigheaded, beefy man with a wide smile in the front row.
Dartley’s Pindad automatic was tucked in his pants at the small of his back. He reached beneath his loose sport shirt, whipped the gun out, and leveled it in a two-handed grip at his target. As the gun came out, Happy Man leapt to his feet, pointing his finger and yelling a final bet on one of the fighting cocks.
Dartley had no time to delay, no time to readjust his aim. The barrel aimed at the base of Velez’s skull was now leveled at his chest, after he jumped up and half turned around. Dartley’s finger squeezed the trigger, and he saw the bullet nick Happy Man’s shirtfront. He followed his first shot with a second and a third, before Velez’s body flopped down out of sight beyond the rows of seated men.
Between the sounds of the first and third shots, a time span of maybe a little less than two seconds, the roaring crowd lapsed into total silence so that the third shot echoed and reechoed under the roofed structure with open sides. The shooting frightened one handler into releasing his bird, and it furiously attacked the one still held. That handler released the bird in order to save it, and the two fighting cocks went at it—spurs, talons, and beaks—ignored by a Balbalasang crowd for the first time in living memory.
Happy Man’s guards angrily faced the crowds with automatic pistols and revolvers, searching for someone to shoot at. No one moved or made a sound, not wanting to draw attention to themselves—not even those who had seen the American shoot and run from the edge of the crowd. This way Dartley gained valuable seconds.
Benjael was waiting, gun drawn, covering bystanders in the town park. He pointed with his free hand, and Dartley ran that way, Benjael right behind him. Harry drove the car next to the curb and opened the back door, Dartley and Benjael piled in, and Harry gunned the motor and headed for the hills.
When
they were high above the town, close to where they would enter the forest on the color-coded trails, Harry pulled in at an overlook. Dartley got out and held his radio up, waiting for a signal. They heard nothing but crackling and static for a few minutes. Harry was anxiously checking out the road behind them to see if they had been followed.
“F4 to T2. Do you read me?” It was Rafael’s voice over the radio.
“Loud and clear, F4.”
“Man up and walking. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest. Do you want F4 to KK?”
“Yes. F4 to KK. Positive.” Dartley switched off his radio and got back in the car. “Let’s go, Harry. What are we waiting for?”
Harry turned around in the driver’s seat and looked at Dartley. “You really mean it?”
“Move it, Harry!”
Harry turned the car around and nervously turned back toward town.
“No, I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Happy Man said. “Get us to the cars and I’ll go to the hacienda. I only have a few bruises. This vest is damned uncomfortable, but it’s worth the trouble of putting up with that. The bullets didn’t even break my skin, and I was hit by three.”
The guards tried to rush him to the cars, but suddenly Velez would have none of that. He walked up and down the dirt pit and kicked at the pair of cocks fighting there. He smiled up at the crowd and waved at them. They stared down silently at him, fearful that their slightest movement would draw gunfire from the guards. After he had walked up and down a while to show that he was physically unafraid, he shook some hands and allowed his guards to escort him to the cars, taking care to move with dignity through the town park.
