Countdown: H Hour (39 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one

concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

—Niccolo Machiavelli,
The Prince

Laurel, Batangas, Republic of the Philippines

Seven hundred and fifty grain bullet. Velocity at the muzzle of one thousand and fifty feet per second. Kick like a freaking
mule
.

That was the other reason Yamada was the one carrying the Whisper .510; he had the mass to absorb it. That recoil was a more or less gradual phenomenon, of course, helped immeasurably.

His target didn’t have that saving grace. The half-inch bullet impacted about two inches above, and half an inch to the right, of his absolute center of his sternum. The sternum shattered
instantly
, driving fragments of bone into heart and lungs. The bullet, itself, precision cast bronze, dumped most of its energy into that, and most of the rest into meat and spine. It exited the body with very little energy left, barely enough to travel another hundred meters and bury itself partway into a tree.
That
made a sound where the killing had not. But it wasn’t the kind of sound a barely trained security goon was likely to recognize.

In Yamada’s scope, the second, still living, guard turned towards something, the sniper knew not what. He didn’t really care, either, so long as the guard remained visible. Still tracking in his eyepiece, the sergeant carefully and rather slowly turned the bolt, withdrew it, then slid it forward before locking it home. The brass casing made a very soft sound as it was ejected, and none at all when it hit the soft floor of the jungle. The hand went to the stock and the finger to the trigger. Squeeze . . .

As a practical matter, the next shot had to be quick, before the target stumbled over the body or went to investigate what Yamada suspected was an odd sound coming from behind him. Need for speed or not, though,
Calm yourself, shooter. Calm. You are the . . .

Click. Phhhhttt.

Again, that mule’s kick drove into the prone sniper’s shoulder. Again there was a tiny report from the muzzle, too faint really for anyone to hear who wasn’t just about right next to it. This time, though, when Yamada looked at the target it was still plainly and obviously standing.
Oh, shit, I . . .

Yamada realized that Trimble was thumping him lightly on the shoulder. Nobody did that unless the shot was a success. The sniper looked again, more carefully, as the body crumpled to the ground. Yes, it had been standing, just as might a chicken with its head cut off.

The head was simply
gone
. Unseen, Yamada smiled with satisfaction.
Heh, heh; “quality is job one.”

Trimble sent to Lox, “Team Three. Two tangos down. Moving up to make sure.”

“Make sure” was code for “cut their fucking throats, if any.”

MV
Richard Bland
, Wharf at Barangay 129, Tondo,

Manila, Republic of the Philippines

“Team one; tangos eliminated.”

“
Bland
, Team Four. The van’s stopped. But they’re getting out. They didn’t hear shit.”

“Team Two. Ditto, my targets didn’t react. Don’t think they heard even a ‘whisper,’ either.”

“Roger . . . roger.” Lox breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Even Aida, whose area of expertise this was far from, breathed more easily.

The pilot, on the other hand, shouted, “Yee haw!”

Lox looked over the pilot’s screen and picked a spot approximately equidistant from the still slowly walking Welch to the van. The van’s headlights, which had been dimmed, suddenly flared.

Lox thought about how to control the movement of the shooter teams forward.
Grid coordinates
?
No way; they either have to break out the hand-held GPS, or the maps. Maps mean light, since NVG’s aren’t worth a damn for reading them. We’ll go polar, then.

He sent a direction and distance to move from where they were, a polar coordinate, to Team One, and another to Three. That, they could do with a compass, which gave off less light than an anemic firefly, and a pace count, which gave off none. Then he ordered, “Okay, Teams One and Three. Move on those directions, then find a position from which you can cover Terry. You should be able to scope him when you get there.”

“Roger . . . Roger, already moving.”

Laurel, Batangas, Republic of the Philippines

Welch walked slowly, about as slowly as he thought was credible in someone TCS believed to be a pure civilian. Whether it was slow enough, slow enough for a couple or three shooter teams to get in position, he didn’t know.

He was nervous; only a fool wouldn’t have been. That nervousness may have lessened when his earpiece told him that four of the TCS’s six outlying security people were down. It didn’t go away. He didn’t try to make it go away either.
I’m not that good an actor, no kind of actor at all, as a matter of fact. If I don’t sound nervous they’ll get suspicious.

Terry had spent most of his life lonely. In this, he was probably a match for ninety percent or more of the men and women of M Day. He, and they, had found a route out of loneliness with the Army, or whatever their original service had been. And, after their official service, they’d found a better than fair substitute with the corporation . . . the regiment.

He hadn’t defeated it, however, not entirely, until he’d met his wife, Ayanna. For a brief moment, before forcing his mind back to the job at hand, he thought of her. At that, “thought” was probably not precisely the right term; it was more a rush of feelings and well-remembered images.

Stop it, Welch. That’s for later.
With a mental sigh, he pushed her, reluctantly, out of his mind.

Ahead, and a little to his left, two bright lights flared. They were far enough away not to blind, but they certainly diminished his night vision.

Assholes.

Again the cell rang.

“You see our headlights?” asked the now familiar male voice.

“I see them,” Terry answered.

“Follow them. I’ll keep on the line and tell you when to stop.”

Crap. No more two-way conversations with Lox. I wonder if that’s part of their plan or just serendipity.

“I heard, Terry,” Lox whispered in his earpiece. “I’ll keep you posted.”

You would think,
thought the leader of Team One,
that after owning this place for forty-five years, then fighting two campaigns here against the Japanese, that
somebody
would have made a decent map of the area. But nooo; that didn’t happen.

He sent the whisper to the
Bland
, “We’re in a patch of low ground. It wasn’t on the map we studied before coming here. We do not have, and probably won’t get, a good shot. We’re cutting left to find a better spot, but don’t count on our finding one.”

MV
Richard Bland
, Wharf at Barangay 129, Tondo,

Manila, Republic of the Philippines

“Shit,” said Lox. He looked over at the pilot’s control board, counted the numbers from TCS—again, and really unnecessarily—and made a decision.

“Terry, we’ve only got two teams in position to cover you, Three and Four. And Four also needs to take out the van. That’s not enough. Give them the money and get our people back. I repeat, give them the money and get our people back. Abort the rescue.”

“No,” answered Welch. “I don’t think so.”
Maybe we get our people back that way. But maybe we don’t. And that much money in criminal hands will go a long way toward rebuilding their organization. Maybe if we’d been able to ambush the roads out. But we couldn’t. So, no, we take our chances. And if I don’t make it, Ayanna, honey, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.

Laurel, Batangas, Republic of the Philippines

“What was that you said?” asked the ripe-with-suspicion voice on the cell phone.

“I was talking to myself,” Terry replied. The nervousness in his own voice came naturally. “Almost stepped into a gully. Just avoided it. Barely.”

“Okay. Come forward another hundred and fifty feet and stop. We’ll come to you the rest of the way.”

“I hear you.”

Welch heard a continuous stream of reports in his earpiece. “Three . . . tracking two tangos northernmost . . . Four . . . we’ve got targets on Terry’s right . . . Two . . . still have shots, relatively long range, on their OP . . . tracking . . . tracking . . . good targets . . . ready . . . ready . . . ”

Terry stopped. His pace count told him he’d gone the distance TCS had demanded. The lights from the van were much brighter now. His night vision was shot. On the other hand, the approaching nine silhouettes—six TCS and three of his own, he figured—were plainly outlined by those same lights.

But I can’t tell yet who’s who. Shit.

As the people from TCS and their captives got closer, however, Terry was able to make out who was who. This prompted the thought,
Double shit,
since Benson, Perez, and Washington were pushed out in front of their guards.

“Three . . . clear shots . . . Four . . . clear shots . . . ”

Lox said, “Four, concentrate on the people close to Terry. Switch to the van after that.”

“Roger.”

“Boss,” Lox whispered, “we’ve got everyone but the middle three. They’re gonna be yours. And I still think you should abort.”

Will they respond
?
Welch wondered.
Will our people get out of the way
?
They’ve certainly been some dumbasses to date. Maybe Lox is right; give them the money. But . . .

At a range of under fifteen feet the approaching party stopped. That same voice—Lucas’s, though Welch didn’t know that—demanded, “Where’s the money?”

“Where’s my guarantee?” Terry asked.

“I don’t have time for this bullshit,” Lucas replied. “If we were going to keep them we wouldn’t have brought them here. And if I wanted you dead I could have given the order any time.”

“Send one of them to me,” Terry demanded. “One of them and I’ll toss you the bag. Four million dollars. Just send one to me . . . as a gesture of good faith.”

Lucas hesitated. It really wasn’t unreasonable, what the Kano was demanding. He put his hand in the small of the big black’s back and pushed. The Kano—Lucas vaguely remembered he’d given his name as “Washington”—stumbled forward, then tripped on his cramped legs, falling to his knees.

“Come on, Washington,” Terry said, gently. The black stood a whole head taller than either of the other two prisoners. “Just come this way and get past me.”

Lucas reached down, grabbing Washington by his collar, and tried lifting him up. All he really managed to do was half choke him. Slowly, with difficulty, and gagging, the black arose on unsteady legs. Once up, his captor gave him a gentler shove, propelling him forward toward Welch.

“Start walking uphill,” Welch repeated. “In the direction I came from.” Once Washington was abreast of him, Terry pulled his left arm—the one holding the satchel—backwards.

Benson whistled “Be Prepared.”

Terry threw the satchel as hard as he could, directly at Lucas’ face. Even as it was in the air, he carried the motion through, his right hand sweeping back, pushing the light coat away and exposing the pistol he kept in a high holster at his belt.

As soon as he saw Terry’s right hand move, Benson threw himself into Perez. Both began to keel over in a heap.

As Terry’s hand folded around the exposed grip of his .45, three shots rang out, the sound of the bullets’ passing splitting the air. Only two of those three sonic cracks passed close by.

On Welch’s left one of the people from TCS was flung back, his weapon flying, his legs picked up bodily from the ground, and his arms being driven inward by inertia. The one to
his
right simply exploded at the torso, the spray of blood, bone, and guts visible in the van’s headlights as it flew out his back.

Welch didn’t see that. Neither did he see the very similar fates of the two TCSers on his right. With his pistol coming out, his brain and the narrowed vision of his eyes were focused entirely on the silhouettes of the three armed men in the middle.

There was another shot. The light from the headlights had been fierce. The newly flaring light, though most of it didn’t come from the headlights, grew fiercer still as the van, parked about fifty meters away, suddenly blossomed into a fireball. Team Four, or one of their snipers, at least, had gone for the gas tank.

Except as a glow on the edges of his consciousness, Terry didn’t see any detail. The two snipers from the team, however, could. They laughed inwardly, in the couple of moments before the flash caused their scopes to temporarily overload, as the fireball engulfed the driver of the van, flashing his hair to a crisp, and then began burning him alive. His mouth was opened in a scream of pure agony, though if any sound came through it was overwhelmed by the roar of the gas-driven flames.

Crisanto, disgraced ex-Philippine Marine, was possibly the only one present, besides the captives and their ransomer, who immediately understood what the shots meant. If anyone else had, it was the six victims, two each to either side, and two back at the van. For all but one of those, though, their understanding, if any, was probably cut rather short by nearly instantaneous death.

With that instant understanding, Crisanto began bringing his rifle down at the big Kano standing in front of him. He was a touch younger, hence a touch faster, than the Kano. He also had the advantage that he didn’t have to reach for and draw his weapon. He got the first aimed—or at least reasonably well-pointed—shot off.

Unfortunately for Crisanto, that shot was a little too well-pointed and too close range. The bullet left the muzzle spinning and yawing. It never had time to stabilize in straight and level flight before impacting at a poor angle on the ceramic plate mounted on the front of the Kano’s body armor. It staggered the Kano back about half a foot, to be sure. But he was simply too big to be knocked off his feet without the bullet getting through to send ripples through his flesh and his nerves utterly haywire from shock and pain.

The Kano fired. His shot wasn’t particularly well aimed, more of an automatic reaction to being struck on the chest plate. The .45 muzzle flashed with a bright yellow streak of flame, sending its bullet, much slower and larger, but also yawing, into Crisanto’s abdomen. What had been a disadvantage when hitting an armor plate was a large advantage when hitting soft flesh and hard bone: the .45 caliber bronze-jacketed lead dumped all its energy into the TCSer’s body, and that in a particularly sensitive area. The Filipino bent at the waist, losing his grip on his rifle, as his body was flung backwards.