Rebound

by Ian Barclay

  “We won’t need any of them,” the officer called to the soldiers escorting them. “Take them down the road a way.”

  The officer’s message was clear, and the men were led like lambs to the slaughter. Except one. He started shouting and kept it up, in spite of being struck with rifle butts.

  “I’m Joker Solano!” he yelled repeatedly. “I bet you have a photo of me there. You’d recognize me if I shaved.”

  Roscoe winked at the Filipino officer. They had recognized him, all right.

  “You!” Joker shouted to Roscoe. “You are an American. CIA, no? I can tell you about the Russians. But you have to save me from these animals. Listen to this. Does the name Code 647 Defense Support Satellite mean anything to you?”

  Roscoe turned to the Filipino officer. “What do you say? Would you mind if he came along with me for a little chat?”

  “Not at all,” the officer said.

  “I’ll bring him back to you if he doesn’t tell me everything I want to hear,” Roscoe said grimly.

  General Bonifacio was standing near Dartley as this was happening. He commented in an undertone, “Roscoe is letting that slimy, son-of-a-bitch Joker off the hook. You have to admire a brave fighting man even if he is on the other side. But snakes in the grass like Joker are no good to either side—yet they’re the ones who survive.”

  “Sooner or later, what they do catches up with them,” Dartley said.

  Bonifacio said, “Which brings us back to another venomous serpent—Happy Man Velez. I lost him today. So now it’s up to me to find him. Go back to Manila and get in touch with my headquarters. As I said, Happy Man is yours.”

  Dartley was about to thank him but was interrupted by volleys of gunfire as soldiers executed the ten guerrillas down the road.

  CHAPTER

  16

  In five days the Velez family had come to an understanding with the military: Happy Man’s younger brother was to take over as family head; none of the family’s real estate, bank accounts, or businesses would be threatened in any way; no legal proceeding would be started; and no public denouncements of Happy Man would be made. In exchange, all the family had to do was refuse to fund the fugitive. The military asked for nothing further, knowing that Happy Man without money was like a flower without water. Cutting off his funds included those in Switzerland, New York, and the Bahamas. He had no passport, anyway. The military had everything, his driver’s license and birth certificate. Two days later Happy Man was spotted with a group of Tausug in the Sulu Islands.

  Harry had returned exhausted to his family, but a rich man by Tondo standards. He wished Dartley good luck and told him to count him out of further attempts on Happy Man’s life. He now fully agreed that he was not made for that kind of work.

  Dartley hired Purcell to fly him in the Cessna to where Happy Man had been seen. The Sulu Islands stretched like stepping-stones from the Philippines’ large southern island, Mindanao, to Borneo. There were 448 small islands, inhabited by fiercely independent Moslem people who did not regard themselves as part of the same nation as Manila. These Moslems, called Moros, carried on a violent rebellion during the 1970s, which had not completely died out. The different ethnic groups also warred with each other, and private yachts and pleasure craft were warned to use extreme caution when entering the area. There were no roads. The only way to travel was by plane and boat.

  The Tausug, or “people of the current,” were the dominant ethnic group. They were fishermen, traders, pirates, smugglers, and craftsmen of textiles and weapons. Dartley had to assume that Happy Man had promised them independence when he gained power, which made them his supporters. Being out of touch with the rest of the Philippines, they were probably unaware of recent developments and thought Happy Man was still the powerful wheeler-dealer they had known from before.

  After three days of island-hopping with the plane, Dartley pronounced himself satisfied. They flew back to an island where Dartley bought a diesel launch he had seen earlier and liked. Purcell helped him load the four battered golf bags into the boat, along with provisions he had purchased.

  They shook hands. “You’re not going to be able to phone me from down here,” Purcell said.

  “I was lucky to get hold of you those other times.”

  The coral atoll encircled the calm waters of the lagoon, with only a narrow entrance to deep water outside. Outside this ring of living coral, the reef fell away abruptly, vertically in places, into water almost two miles deep. Dartley had followed this cliff face down in diving gear and found it teeming with living creatures, some not too friendly. His launch was anchored inside the lagoon where the glowing, living coral that reached only inches on the wave-swept reefs grew three feet high or more. Close to the launch was anchored the motor yacht Dordogne, a kind of mini-Cousteau expedition of young Frenchmen funded by a large European corporation with the environmental guilts. When Dartley arrived in his launch, they were pleased to have him tow a magnetometer from his outboard-engined rowboat in search of magnetic anomalies that indicated metal beneath the water.

  Dartley didn’t find much and left after two days, saying he would come back. The Frenchmen said fine, not really expecting to see him again, and went back to work on the seventeenth-century Chinese wreck they had discovered on the reef. The Ming Dynasty porcelains had spilled from the wooden hold of the ship, and the coral had grown around them. Most of the dishes and vases not washed away over the years or smashed to pieces were embedded in the coral, like saucers in hardened tar. The Frenchmen made archaeological maps and cut blocks out of the coral fifteen to twenty feet beneath the surface. The cost of doing this would not be covered by the value of the porcelain, but this was not a concern. They had government approval and had brought along three staff members from the National Museum of the Philippines and two members of the Coast Guard, all of whom sat in the shade all day nursing their M16s. Dartley felt guilty when he hit several Tausug towns, ostensibly for supplies, and gossiped about the gold-laden galleon the Frenchmen had found on the reef. He had seen the gold coins himself, he said, and the sold gold crucifixes and altar candlesticks that weighed more than five kilos apiece. Then he went back to the atoll and to towing the magnetometer.

  The wildlife fascinated him. He spent literally hours watching brightly colored fish and nameless creatures crawl, swim, and eat each other in the crystal-clear, bright blue waters. Huge manta rays glided past, barely moving their wings, with their open mouths looking like the grillwork of a 1950s Chevrolet. At sunset weird psychedelic colors spread over the sea pools in the coral reefs, one the color of arterial blood next to one that was metallic green, then another that was turquoise. After dark he drank San Miguel beer with the Frenchmen and traded good-natured insults about their native lands, which seemed farther away than the moon.

  Dartley was up before dawn each day, keeping watch. But the Tausugs arrived in the middle of the day. Two of their four small ships blocked the lagoon’s entrance to the sea; there was no escape for the motor yacht or the launch inside. Dartley came out of his cabin and crawled onto the deck of the launch with his HK91 sniper rifle. This West German weapon fired 7.62 mm bullets and was considered one of the most accurate and reliable.

  Dartley ignored the Tausugs who were yelling at the French, who, needless to say, screamed back at them in their language. Dartley was waiting for one heavyset man whose lookalike brother he had already killed and whom he failed to kill in person at the cockpit. He would know him for sure if he were with these Tausugs. Happy Man had to be desperate for money, and here was uncountable wealth in sunken Spanish gold. There couldn’t be many other big-money attractions in the Sulus.

  Then Dartley saw him emerge from one of the boats blocking the lagoon channel. The tide was low, so Velez was able to jump out and walk along the top of the coral reef.

  Dartley found him in the sights. Remembering the bullet-proof vest, he eased up until it was centered on the jawbone, just beneath his left ear. He gently pressed the tr
igger. It was a single shot. Perfectly executed. Velez’s head shattered, and he crumpled onto the coral reef.

  This was all Dartley wanted all along—a simple, neat execution—and instead he had spent his time in the midst of confuson and bloodshed.

  The Tausug had turned mean on seeing Happy Man’s death. They were exchanging gunfire with the two outnumbered Coast Guard men, and the unarmed Frenchmen were scattering for cover while still talking nonstop.

  Dartley sighed and went below to the cabin to fetch the M60 and the unused Miniman missile. He’d clean the Tausug off the coral with the machine gun and remove the boats from the channel opening with the Miniman. That ought to convince everybody.

  But Dartley was annoyed to have to steep himself in indiscriminate bloodshed again after a nice clean kill.

  A Bullet For The Butcher!

  In the Philippines, desperate Communist guerillas and ruthless government forces vie for total control. In the middle of this bloody free-for-all, one powerful jungle warlord is determined to carve out an impregnable empire for himself. His method:’ send out his elite private goon squad to murder any American within reach-and grab the prize pieces in the ensuing chaos.

  It’s a million-dollar job for Richard Dartley the world’s most select assassin-for-hiref the man with many aliases and a thousand : ways to kill, For him, the fatal hit should be a simple matter of clear pl^fehing and clean execution. But amid the shifting loyalties and tangled intrigue on America’s newest and hottest battleground, he knows damn well things are a lot more dangerous than they seem…

  THE CRIME MINISTER