Girl Rides the Wind (19 page)

“I’m sorry about this,” she said to the man whose arm she’d severed, speaking in Mandarin. “I can’t leave you here, and maybe it’s better this way for you, too.” The
wakizashi
slipped beneath the armor plate protecting his chest and found enough vital organs to ease him out of this world. Surveying the scene – three men dead, one about to die, if he wasn’t dead already – she noticed the video screen lying nearby, where the commotion had deposited it, and smashed it so as not to have to settle the question of what had so fascinated them.

It took a moment or two to collect whatever grenades they carried and strap them to the receiver assembly of the big gun. She rigged a cord to pull the pins from a distance and ran for all she was worth. Bursting from the foliage, she glanced right and saw Durant resting on all fours halfway to the Zodiac, and from deeper in the forest she heard the sound of more soldiers – Diao’s men – moving through underbrush.

“Cover and pray, Sarge,” she said, and threw herself on top of him just as the grenades went off. It took longer than she thought safe to pick herself up and pull him onto her shoulder. “We’re out of time.”

A few yards in front of the line of breakers, which had only grown since she’d formulated her plan, Durant leaned on the rubber gunwale, and Emily tossed the M4 she’d scavenged earlier into the boat, so that the two of them could push past the breakers. As soon as the first wave picked it up, she got behind Durant and shoved him up and over so she could follow the undertow out before heaving herself in. Once they’d cleared the rough water and were in deep enough to run the engine, she pulled herself into the boat and propped Durant securely against the portside tube, and turned directly into the storm.

“Take the tiller.” She wrapped his hand around the bar as the waves tossed the boat around. “Hold her steady.”

“Where are we headed?”

“Out there.” She jerked a thumb toward a dark bank of thunderheads, which looked like they might begin to swirl.

“Oh, shit.”

“Just don’t roll us over, Sarge. I need to take care of some business.” She scrambled along the bucking floorboards, rounding up the M4 and the grenade belt.

“What kind of ammo are you packing?”

“It looks like three High-Explosive rounds and a Star Parachute round.”

“Wait until we’re farther out,” Durant yelled over the wind. Muzzle flashes appeared at the treeline as they crested what felt like a four-foot swell and pitched down the other side, the propeller screaming above the wind whenever a wave levered it out of the water. “Fire the SP round at a hundred fifty yards. Aim high so it hangs for awhile and blinds ’em.”

“The wind may blow it over the trees.”

“It doesn’t matter… a low shot won’t be any use to us.”

“Check, Sarge.”

“Remember, you still can’t shoot anyone.”

“This totally sucks. These assholes killed Tunafish, and my whole crew, not to mention Farah...”

“…and Oleschenko and the rest of my squad.”

She knew that vengeance means nothing to the dead, and Durant probably understood this, too. But it was comforting, and maybe even helped focus her attention on the task, to imagine that killing these men would ease their friends’ passage.

The Zodiac nose-dived into a trough, which at least gave them cover from gunfire, as harrowing as the down-angle seemed, with the next crest looming even higher. One needed a sort of faith in the generosity of the waves – they wouldn’t break this far out, and their tiny bark could ride them back up again. When the Zodiac crested the next wave, and the wind whipped her hair loose from its ponytail, Emily fired the SP over the beach and shielded her eyes. Durant had been right: the round ignited at a few hundred feet up, and once the parachute deployed, it drifted down for the next twenty or thirty seconds. Emily fired the HE rounds at the remaining Zodiacs, hoping to destroy them, or at least hold Diao’s people at bay, if anyone was crazy enough to follow them out. Each time they crested another wave, she sprayed the beach with bullets until she’d emptied all the clips, by which time they were probably out of range

A lightning bolt sizzled the air a few dozen yards to her right and lit up the scene, letting her glimpse a line of waves stretching to the horizon.

“Okay, I get the message,” she said, rising up from her knees to stare down the storm.

Durant looked at her through half closed eyes, struggling to stay alert on the tiller. “What the hell was that? I mean, doesn’t lightning normally hit things like us on the water?”

“I guess it found a better conductor over there. Can you hold the tiller a little longer while I see what kind of supplies we have in this boat?”

“
I
’m
afraid there’s nothing I can do,” Admiral Crichton said. “Captain Diao reported a friendly fire incident, and three of his men have the wounds to confirm it.”

“How convenient,” Theo said in a low growl. “They have flesh wounds and we have six dead Marines, including Oleschenko.”

“Don’t forget a downed Phrog, with its entire crew lost,” Perry added.

“If only we could pin that on them.” Theo fumed, staring at the map spread out on the table.

“All that matters is the ordinance we found on the scene,” Crichton said. “Not to mention the active terrorist base you found in the caves under that mountain.

“One old Soviet 12.7mm doesn’t mean anything,” Theo said. “I’m sure the Chinese can acquire as many of those as they want. The more interesting question is how it got blown up in the first place.”

“I still have my doubts about that base,” Perry added. “Ongpin was a little to anxious to get us out of there.”

“I feel the same way about all of it, but my hands are tied.” Crichton snapped his laptop shut and stared down at the same map, brow furrowed with frustration. “My orders come from SECNAV, and his come from the top. We have to let the Chinese leave the ship, and close down Operation Seabreeze.”

“How soon can we start the search for our two missing Marines?” Theo asked.

“They are presumed lost at sea.”

“With all due respect, sir, that doesn’t make any sense,” Perry said. “The Phrog crashed several hundred yards inland with its crew intact except for…”

“This also comes from the top, Lieutenant Commander. I know you have a personal connection to her, but…”

“Do you actually think she fell out of her own bird, sir?”

“No, of course not. But these are political decisions, and the Phillipine government does not want the
BHR
stirring up trouble down here, and neither does SECNAV, not while we’re negotiating a new base agreement for Subic Bay and the other stations down south.” The Admiral pushed back from his desk and got up to pace the room. “If only you could give me something concrete to bring to the Joint Chiefs, then maybe SECNAV…”

“Her weapon was not recovered in the wreckage,” Perry offered. “We found it a few hundred yards south, along the western ridge.”

“You know as well as I do, SECNAV will say it could have fallen out in flight.”

“Can we at least have more time to search the crash site?” Theo asked.

“Not unless you mean to search in the dark. We set sail tomorrow morning, at first light.” Crichton rubbed his chin and considered Theo and Perry from a new angle. “I knew her father. He pulled me out of a few scrapes back in the old days. I’d like to find her alive as much as anyone. All formalities aside, tell me what makes you so sure she’s still alive. Man to man… is it just a gut instinct, or wishful thinking, or something more substantial?”

“It’s Durant,” Theo said, without a moment’s hesitation. “He didn’t just disappear. His unit was shot up and his body hasn’t been found.”

“So, he pulled her from the wreckage… then what?”

“Or she rescued him,” Perry said. “They’re very close, those two. He only put in for a transfer from Quantico to be of service to her. He had a cushy post back home.”

“I think they took off in a Zodiac. One of them is still unaccounted for.”

“Probably blown away in the storm,” Crichton said. “Even if it wasn’t, even if they took it, do you really think they could have survived out on the open sea? The Harrier squadron already worked a gridsearch to the southwest this morning. If they were out there, that’s where the storm would have carried them.”

They didn’t back down, Crichton observed after they were gone, even though Hankinson’s shoulders slumped toward the end. But these are SEALs. They’re used to pulling out improbable successes through sheer determination. Once they’d been choppered back to the
BHR
, Crichton opened his laptop again and waited for a response.

“I don’t know why I should trust you,” he said. “If you screw this up, it means early retirement for me.”

“You know as well as I do, it’s the same reason I’m going to trust you,” the familiar, husky, female voice crackled over a secure line. “It’s because of her.”

“Fine.” Crichton resisted the urge to cross himself on hearing those words, as if they were a sweet balm to his troubled heart. “As soon as your bird lands, I’ll set you up with Hankinson, and you can brief him. The two of you are going off the books, no official position, no standing with the Filipinos, and no one to bail you out if you get in too deep. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Do we have a contact in Palawan?”

“I’ve arranged for an officer at NS Ulugan Bay to coordinate with you. She’s working on finding you a seaplane.”

“Is this someone we can trust?”

“Yes, but I think it’s gonna be more a matter of getting her to trust you.”

“What about weapons?”

“You’ll have to improvise. She’s got no authorization to recquisition any ordinance, not without alerting SECNAV to your mission.”

“
I
don’t see
why the Admiral couldn’t just chopper us over from the BHR last night?” Perry tried to stretch the kink out of his shoulder, standing next to a twin-engine island-hopper on the tarmac of an airstrip in Berong. “Did we really need to steam twelve hours north in order to panhandle our way back down here?”

Connie didn’t hear any of his griping, having collected her pack and set off to find transport. He was left hauling the other bags she’d insisted on bringing, one a silver-sided briefcase, the other one oblong and heavy, with a sticker that implied it contained fishing equipment.

“Hey, the jitney’s are this way.”

“A car will take too long,” she called over her shoulder and walked on. “The only road winds through the mountains.”

When he finally caught up to her at the door of a ramshackle hangar at the far end of the only runway, she was in the middle of negotiations with a little man in blue coveralls and a mouth sparse in teeth.

“Puerto Princesa is fifty thousand pisos,” the little man said, eyeing the two of them suspiciously. “Plus expenses.”

“Ulugan Bay?” Connie said, rising up to her full height, which raised her head several inches above his.

“Hundred thousand.”

“We want to leave now.” Connie gestured to a brightly-colored helicopter across a grassy field.

“No pilot now. You leave in three hours.”

“Two hundred thousand if we leave now.”

“No pilot. No leave now.” He gestured to a shack behind one of the main hangars on the airstrip, which could have been either a restaurant, an informal pilot’s lounge or a brothel, if one judged only by external appearances.

“Five thousand US if we leave now,” Connie said, reaching into the pocket of her jacket to extract a wad of hundred dollar bills, “…and five hundred for you if you go find the pilot, now.” She peeled off five crisp, hundred dollar bills and waved them in front of his eyes. He tried to look unimpressed, but the dilation of his pupils indicated otherwise.

“Wait here,” he cried, when Connie made a gesture suggesting she was about to look for another helicopter ride. The little man snatched at the money and ran off in the direction of restaurant-pilot’s lounge-brothel.

“There goes five hundred bucks you’ll never see again.” Perry struck a non-chalant pose, leaning against the hangar door, but wondering all the while how they were going to pay for any of this trip. It hadn’t occurred to him that finances might prove a sticky point when he accepted the Admiral’s offer to give him a week’s leave for unspecified purposes. Perhaps he’d imagined all the pesky logistical problems would simply work themselves out. He resisted the urge to reach for his wallet and count out for himself the hundred forty seven dollars he already knew it contained.

The little man returned within a few minutes, grinning ear to ear and trailing a larger, younger man who sported a stylishly weathered, leather “flyer’s” jacket and a resentful expression, as if to announce to everyone that he had something he’d rather be doing. Large as he was compared to the little man (who turned out to be his grandfather), he wasn’t quite as tall as Connie, and certainly nowhere near Perry’s dimensions, and once he come close enough to realize the size difference wasn’t in his advantage, his demeanor inclined somewhat more steeply towards hospitality, though with some reservation for the bargaining power a touch of suspicion could provide.

“Bongon is ready to take you,” the little man said.

“What do you want to see in Ulugan Bay?”

“Just tourists,” Connie said. “We hear it’s beautiful scenery up there.”

“Tourists usually want to see the islands south of Puerto Princesa, or El Nido.”

Connie tilted her head to assess the expression on Bongon’s face. “How much to take us to Ulugan Bay, right now?”

“Eight thousand, in advance.”

Perry’s eye’s widened, until Connie said, “I’ll give you ten thousand, when we get there, no more questions.”

“That’s probably twice what he makes in a year,” Perry whispered in her ear. “Do you really have that much, because…”

Bongon turned to the little man. “Make sure the tank is full, Lolo.”

They were airborne within fifteen minutes, with both packs and Connie’s two bags stowed in the rear. Bongon cackled and called out scenic landmarks as they flew a few hundred feet above the waves, coasting the western shoreline of the main island. Small inlets and the occasional white-sand beach slipped by on their right, though mostly mangrove forests crowded up against the water’s edge. Some thirty minutes north of Quezon, Bongon pointed out his favorite restaurants, some just barely visible as they went by, and a “famous” seafood restaurant looked to Perry to be little more than a beach shack.

“There, just past Bobosawen, see? That’s the best hotel on the island.”

North of Anepahan, he clucked over a rolling coconut palm plantation. “Largest in the world,” he claimed. Connie nodded, as if she were impressed, or even interested in this information.

The further north they went, the softer the coast became, rocky points and mangroves giving way to broad beaches. Tourists could even be seen on catamarans, or dangling from parasailing rigs, their concerns so different from the ones that preoccupied Perry.

Just past Tacgawayan, a rocky finger jutted out into the sea, and Bongon soared over it, rather than swinging around to the west, and on the other side, the smooth beaches gave way to more rocks and trees, until they crested another peninsula just north of Oyster Bay. A long, thin spit of land fronted the east-facing opening to the larger bay, and Bongon turned east to cross it.

“Rita Island,” he said. “Ulugan Bay is to your right. I can set you down in Buenavista or Macarascas.”

Connie pointed to what appeared to be a large, maritime construction project off to their left – barges and tugboats, surrounded a dredge at the mouth of a west-facing inlet across from Rita Island. “Take us there.”

“Nothing there,” Bongon protested, with a disarming grin on his face. “No town, just construction. Not for tourists.”

“Put us down in that clearing by the roadway.”

Once everything had been settled, and Bongon had lifted off, twelve thousand dollars the richer for his trouble, Perry managed to get his bearings. The roadway on which they stood hadn’t been paved yet, and the base-course of sand and gravel sprouted a cloud of dust whenever a vehicle drove by. Fortunately, incipient signs of civilization were not far to seek: a gatehouse at the entrance of a massive construction site.

“I take it you don’t want me to ask about the money,” Perry said.

“You didn’t think Michael would send me here without the resources to do the job, did you?”

“Is this an op, then?”

“You can think of it that way, if you like. Whatever it turns out to be, finding her is only gonna be the beginning. You realize that, don’t you?”

The gate guards betrayed no understanding of what these two strangers might want from them. But a few moments later, two men emerged from a black Humvee with tinted windows.

“Private security,” Connie whispered.

“This is a restricted area,” the larger of the two men said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” When Connie flashed an ID, with ONI in large, block letters along the top, the man changed his tone, but still refused them admittance. “I’m sorry, Commander, but I still can’t let you through.”

Connie dangled a sheet of paper in front of him and said, “Tell your supervisor the request comes from Emily Hsiang.” He retreated to the gatehouse and picked up the phone.

“Do I need to know who that is?” Perry asked.

“Do you want to know?”

“I guess not.”

“Let ’em through,” the man said, leaning out the gatehouse door. “I apologize for the delay, ma’am.” Connie grunted a reply Perry couldn’t quite make out, and the man pointed off to the left. “You’ll find the LT by dock seven, down that way.”

O
nce again
, Perry found himself trailing behind as Connie’s long legs strode ahead across a hectic construction site, forklifts and front-end loaders rumbling in all directions.
Was a single mind organizing all this chaotic activity?
Most of the men buzzing along the waterfront were locals, dressed in civilian motley. But Seabee badges were also visible here and there, and Perry thought he spied an Underwater Construction Team, or at least their equipment peeking out from a large shed.

A moment’s distraction and he’d lost track of her, though it didn’t take long to locate her voice, already caught up in a discussion that promised to get heated soon, with an officer whose face he couldn’t quite see. Not bothering to peek over Connie’s shoulders, which filled the doorway to a smaller shed, it occurred to him that the voice inside sounded familiar. With a groan, he unloaded the gear he’d been lugging, and stacked it next to the door, and thought better of inserting himself into the conversation.

“I don’t see how I can help you, Commander. As far as I can tell, you have no orders or any official business here. I’m surprised you even got past the gate.”