Countdown: H Hour (36 page)

He’d heard similar sounds before, of course, at other men’s funerals, in all corners of the former British Empire, wherever Great Britain still felt it had an interest. Among those places was Pakistan.

Kiertzner looked very intently at Mahmood’s face.
Aha
!
Gotcha, ya bastard.

Come on in
, thought Simon, waiting hidden in the bushes as the Harrikat probed cautiously forward.
Come on in, you bastards; the water’s fine.

The RPV, before it left to refuel, had told him they were coming. A quick look at the map . . . a little intuition for just how the lay of the land would direct them . . .
and here I am, with a full platoon, in a shallow C, two dozen claymores, three Pechenegs, and them not having a clue.

The claymores had been daisy chained on site, using det cord, with only the end mines primed with wire. Simon held both clackers, one in each hand. If one failed; the other would work.

Firing burst out in the distance well behind Simon, a combination, he thought, of small arms and heavier machine guns. Someone among the Harrikat to his front shouted something, which shout was repeated up and down the line. Whatever caused it, they threw caution to the winds, and surged forward, maybe fifty-five or sixty of them.

Smiling, Simon squeezed the clackers. A tsunami wave of pellets rolled outward, propelled on the blast wave of the explosives. Like light trees and buildings caught at the front of a tsunami, the leading—and more than a few of the following—Harrikat were simply bowled over and washed under.

And then the machine guns and rifles kicked in.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

“I’m Spartacus!”

—Tony Curtis, in
Spartacus

MV
Richard Bland
, east of Caban Island

Mr. Ayala was still unconscious. Even so, under the care of TIC Chick and one of the humanitarian doctors, he was improving. Whether he’d make it or not was still on the iffy side, but that iffy needle was slowly edging over toward, “Yes.”

“I’ll better my previous offer,” Paloma Ayala said. “Half a million for every one of the filthy, butchering swine you bring me over sixty.”

Welch shook his head. “No, Ma’am. That’s very generous, of course”—
and I am
so
going to take a massive amount of shit back at regiment for losing one of our only two helicopter gunships, at about fifteen or twenty million a copy to replace
—“but a deal’s a deal. We’ll bring you all we can capture for the price you previously offered. Matter of fact, Captains Stocker and Warrington are still on the island, aided and guided by the aircraft, hunting down the last of them now. I’m afraid we’ve killed most of them already.”

Mrs. Ayala tsked with disappointment, then brushed that aside, saying, “I’ve sent for some of my own people to join me by boat to help me deal with the ones you present me.”

“Your people?” Terry asked.

“Well . . . not technically,” Mrs. Ayala admitted with a scrunch of her aged, but still nigh perfect, nose. “Technically, they’re a company of Philippine Marines. But their colonel has been on my . . . our payroll for many, many years. They’ll do what I want done.”

Terry shrugged. “That’s up to you, ma’am. There is one thing, though.”

“Yes?” She couldn’t help sounding suspicious. She’d never had a good reason to trust anyone but her husband, not even her own children.

“How are your connections with the Philippine government and general staff?”

Madame laughed.

A video camera recorded as Daoud screamed from the electricity coursing through his body. Before the current jolt, he’d simply moaned, from the set of vice grips tightened around his left testicle.

Lox, seated, leg heavily bandaged over his sewn-up wound, supervised some of the Marehan in the process. None of them, barring Adam and Labaan, had ever so much as seen a science fiction book. But, by God, they knew how to inflict pain. Moreover, they’d all asked to join. After all, they’d lost their old homes and needed a new one. This was part of the price of joining.

“I won’t tire of this, Daoud,” Lox said, once the electricity cut off and the Pakistani slumped, quivering, to the bare mesh of the naval bunk to which he’d been tied. “And the pain won’t end, for either you or Mahmood, until I have the name of that ship and the name of its owner. And both stories
match
.”

“You’ll kill me either way,” the assistant wept.

“Not necessarily,” Lox lied. “But, tell you what; if you don’t tell us, not only will your agony go on indefinitely, but when we do kill you, we’ll change you into a woman, first. You’ve seen our medical department, haven’t you?”

God, that hack was an evil,
evil
man. Hmmm . . . maybe I shouldn’t have loaned that book to Madame.

Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,

Republic of the Philippines

Eighty-three surviving Harrikat sat, wrists and feet bound, in the sand. A bit over half of them were wounded, some more or less seriously. Nobody from the detachment had bothered with giving them any medical care. This wasn’t, or at least not directly, because of what they’d done to Mr. Ayala. No, it was that, given what they’d done to their prisoner, what Mrs. Ayala was probably going to do to the survivors would be such a nightmare that dying of untreated wounds would be a mercy.

Mrs. Ayala was already on the beach when the Philippine Navy landing craft, bearing both the number 296 and a considerable resemblance to the U.S. Army’s Runnymede Class, dropped its ramp to disgorge Captain Ramos and his hundred and eighty-odd Philippine Marines. A Philippine Air Force helicopter would be along shortly to pick up and transport Mr. Ayala to St. Luke’s, in Quezon City. The rescued women and children would be transferred by the LCM to the Philippine craft later on.

The Army’s Scout Ranger Regiment would be credited with the actual rescue, even though they weren’t sending anybody at all until sometime next week. The Filipino Armed Forces had more in common with the U.S. Armed Forces than a bit of history prior to and during the Second World War. Wouldn’t do not to let every service branch have its share in the glory, after all. M Day, on the other hand, didn’t care who got the credit, so long as it wasn’t them. At least for the time being.

The captain reported in to Madame, saluting very formally even though she was a civilian in no official capacity. Ramos had been told by his colonel to do
whatever
she said, which sounded fairly official to him. He’d also gotten the message to bring an engineering kit, some heavy duty lumber, and a lot of rather large nails.

The captain didn’t know, but strongly suspected, that he and his company had been chosen because of his vitriolic hatred not just for Moro separatists, but Moros, in general. Ramos had had also been told that, whatever the facts on the ground, he and his men were going to get credit for rescuing over a hundred Christian women and children from Harrikat slavery . . . provided, of course, that he and they kept his mouth shut about what really happened

I can do that easy,
thought Ramos.
My men
?
Well, for a while, anyway. Maybe longer. The big lie works best, they say.

The
Bland
’s own LCM was waiting, and had been from a couple of hours before, when the Filipino LCU dropped ramp. The body bags holding Feeney and Hallinan, the helicopter crew, and nine of Stocker’s men were already aboard. Semmerlin, still better than half deaf, had been found sitting over the corpses of the two who’d gone looking for him. Psychologically, he seemed in a pretty bad way. He, too, was already aboard the LCM along with several hundred weapons, both M Day’s, now gone redundant, plus a large stockpile from the Harrikat. They were kept very separate.

Stocker told his acting first sergeant, Moore, to, “get the men out of the tree line and onto the boat. Don’t pull the guards out, though, until the Filipinos take over, formally.”

“Yes, sir,” Moore had answered.

While Moore trotted off to take care of that, Stocker, wet, filthy, and stinking from hunting the Harrikat, walked over to make any final arrangements with the Filipino captain.

Madame waited to speak until the last of the Kanos had sailed off in their boat.
So nice it was of Peter to lend me that book,
she thought.
It was so full of such wonderful ideas. Even if the author is apparently some kind of communist.

Her speech to the surviving Harrikat was partially borrowed, partially her own. She said, in effect, “You all know what you did to my husband. You all know that you’re going to die. But, since I am a Christian, I am very solicitous of your souls. So before you die you are all going to be thoroughly Christianized.” Her hand went to the gold cross at her neck.

“I don’t suppose any of you would care to save your lives by identifying your leader?”

Janail, tied like the rest and mixed in with the rest, his face half hidden by a dirty bandage and some blood borrowed from one of the dead, stiffened for a moment, until he realized that none of his men were going to turn traitor.
Fools. I’d have sold you out in a heartbeat.

Seeing not one of the prisoners was going to take her up on her offer, she said, “Good. I wouldn’t have spared you anyway.”

Then, turning to Ramos, she said, “Crucify them. Here. In the sun. Start with their wounded. I don’t want any of them to die before they feel the nails.”

At about the time the fifth of the Moro prisoners was being nailed to one of the crosses assembled by the Philippine Marines, a small and very young girl walked out of the jungle and toward Paloma. The inside of the girl’s thighs were bloodstained. She carried a knife in her hand.

The old woman seemed to be in charge. Maria walked right up to her and asked, “Can I watch?”

Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City, Metro Manila,

Republic of the Philippines

The sign out front read:

General Headquarters

Armed Forces of the Philippines

The sign fronted an almost full length shelter from the rain out in front of the broad, mainly two story headquarters of the Philippine Armed Forces. Terry and Aida didn’t see that, though. After Jake landed them in a nearby field, they were picked up by a long limousine with dark glass, whisked around the building, and shunted in through a side door. There a lieutenant colonel of the Philippine Air Force met them, then led them to the mahogany-paneled office of the Chief of Staff, a khaki clad General Delfin Santos.

Welch towered over Santos almost as much as he did over Aida. Still, the general didn’t seem overly impressed, and was certainly unintimidated. Welch, himself, was at least mildly impressed at that.

After shaking hands, and giving a slight bow to Aida, Santos waved his hand at a couch and several chairs surrounding a coffee table set in an alcove to one side of his massive desk.

“Before we get to whatever it is the Ayala Clan asked me to discuss with you,” Santos said, “I want to extend my personal appreciation to you and your organization . . . Maj . . . Mr. Welch, for freeing our people.”

The general’s English was, predictably, excellent, and his thanks seemed sincere. Even so, he seemed embarrassed.
It should have been our own, freeing our own
, Santos thought.
What is wrong with our country that we have to rely on foreigners
?

Terry nodded, saying, “We were glad to do it.”
Though, in retrospect, I probably wouldn’t—no, I
wouldn’t—
have traded Kirkpatrick for them, if I’d known in advance that that was the price.

“I understand you took losses,” Santos said.

“A few,” Welch admitted. Reticence was habit; in the organizations in his military background, casualties were never admitted to in any detail. Santos didn’t press for names or numbers. His special operations forces were about the same, admission of casualties-wise.

“My condolences, again. Now, what was it you wanted?”
And didn’t Mrs. Ayala say to give you whatever it was
?

Welch pulled out from a satchel a report from Lox concerning the interrogation of Mahmood and Daoud. This he handed over to Santos.

“The important part is the first paragraph,” Terry said.

Santos read, his eyes widening in fury as he did. “They . . . those fucking animals . . . in
Manila
? How can I believe this? I can’t; it’s beyond belief.”

Terry passed over the videos made of the interrogation, one for each of the prisoners. “Here’s proof,” he said.

Aida added, “General, I was there for part of the interrogation.” Lox had deliberately kept her out of the more painful parts. “I’ve read the report and I’ve reviewed the tapes. It’s all true. The Harrikat was going to use the money from Lucio Ayala’s ransom to buy two nuclear weapons from the Russian, Prokopchenko. One of those was going to be used on a smaller city here on Luzon. The other was going to be hidden in Manila and used if we didn’t accede to the Harrikat’s demands to withdraw from Mindanao.

“They would have killed tens, hundreds of thousands. Possibly millions.”

“So far as we know,” Welch said, “Prokopchenko still has the weapons aboard his yacht, the
Resurrection.
Since he really doesn’t need the money, we think he has some other political objective in selling them. You may still be a target.”

His normally olive face gone pale, Santos said, “We’ll find that yacht.”

“And take it?” Welch supplied. “Recommend against. There’s no necessary outside limit to what the Russians will do to keep news of this out of the press. And they have an interest in recovering their weapons.”

“So?”

“Inform them and let them handle it,” Welch advised. “They’re not barbarians. And they’re not incompetent or, at least, their own special operations forces are not. Bloody minded and ruthless? Yes. Incompetent? No. And they have a reach, even close to here, that you cannot match. They can find the yacht in a matter of minutes to hours, and be on it in mere hours after that. You’ll still be looking for it a month from now.”

Uncertainly, Santos said, “I will consider it, Mr. Welch. And, one thousand times more than before, you and your people have our thanks. What about the men who gave you this information?”

“We can turn them over to you, if you want them,” Welch said. “If not, they’ll be shot this evening and their bodies will be dumped at sea.”

Aida flinched. She’d known that it was coming but . . . it was so contrary to the law she’d devoted her life to upholding that it grated on her soul.

“Yes, just go ahead and shoot them,” Santos said. He looked intently at Welch’s face. “There’s more?”

“Yes, General,” Terry admitted. “I have a problem with one of your local gangs, TCS. I would like your permission to handle it myself, and your guarantee that the Philippine Armed Forces will take a hands off approach while we settle matters.”

Santos’s gaze turned to Aida.

“He doesn’t want to admit it,” she said, “because it’s painful. TCS grabbed four of his men, killing another one in the taking. One of the four they’ve already hanged like a dog and sent a video. They’re demanding ransom. Mr. Welch intends to recover his own men and destroy the gang in Tondo. When he says, “destroy,” he doesn’t mean hurt. He means
destroy
.”
God, haven’t I seen
that
already
?

“You want to launch an attack on our people on our soil?” Santos sounded somewhere between incredulous and infuriated.

“Are they your people?” Welch asked. “Are they really yours when they deny any respect for or obligation to your own laws, your own citizenship, and your own country? Is it your soil, when your police have no authority there and TCS rules it like a private fiefdom?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot, General,” Aida added. “I’ve been with the police most of my life, now, either active or semi-retired with special duties. I’ve thought about it even more since Mr. Welch and his people arrived.