Rebels of Mindanao (38 page)

While Pedro hurried Vicente and Reymundo into the back seat of the jeep, Thornton checked his map and determined his route to the coordinates where Elaiza was being held. Almost before they were loaded, Thornton drove away from the command post too fast for road conditions, the steering wheel and gearshift comfortable in his hands, reminding him of active duty in other times and places. He bumped past the tents of the infantry brigades now guarded by only a few soldiers, and raced along the main road to Bual, the village north of the artillery positions, then into the foothills of Mount Apo.

In the narrow ravine, Mahir was thinking his last thoughts: “If we had stayed in our camps the infidels would just have stayed in their
homes. Our side could have enjoyed the simple pleasures of Mindanao without needing to divide this overgrown jungle and defend to the death the right to establish a new Islamic nation. What good is this dream now? We don't have the money, and we don't even know where to escape.” Mahir was suddenly aware that he might never see his home and family in Turkey again.

Mahir did not know about the complete destruction of the main force at Itig; he was too far up the mountain to have observed it. His guides had erred, judging incorrectly that they would not be discovered while crossing an open plain offering only scant foliage. It had cost the lives of many NPA troops with good rifles, men and guns hard to replace.

Just as these thoughts occurred to him, Mahir was hit with a single bullet in the chest. He screamed in pain but with wild shots emptied his weapon at Thornton who was rushing down the ravine, rapidly closing the distance between them. Reymundo, crouched behind a tree, continued to empty his M-16 magazine, peppering the ravine with well-aimed shots at the few armed NPA soldiers still standing.

Thornton finally reached Mahir and saw that Elaiza was slumped on the ground, maybe dead, maybe unconscious, but definitely not reacting to what was going on around her, just a motionless heap against a pile of rocks. Infuriated, he grabbed the Turk, slamming him against the rocky wall. Blood was beginning to froth out of his mouth, but he was still conscious and struggled to defend himself, thrusting a dagger against Thornton who knocked it aside with his drawn Walther PPK. Thornton placed the barrel directly under Mahir's jaw and shouted into his ear, “Turk, I know you speak English, so listen good. Give my regards to the 72 virgins,” and pulled the trigger, firing the final shot of his personal war.

Thornton dropped Mahir's lifeless corpse and ran to Elaiza. Pedro had propped her body up to a sitting position and gave a thumbs-up to Thornton who suddenly felt enormous elation and happiness. He held her in a close embrace until she stirred awake and saw who was holding her. Sobbing in relief, she threw her arms around his neck and held him as tight as she could.

“I can't hear,” Elaiza said, and Thornton nodded.

“Artillery.” He mouthed the word slowly, and she read Thornton's lips. “I'll take care of you.”

Pedro replaced Thornton as the driver so Thornton could lift Elaiza into the front seat where he could hold her as Pedro drove. They were all anxious to get out of the area, as it would become an artillery impact area again soon.

The four men and one woman remaining of the STAGCOM team withdrew out of the ravine and were soon back at Liu's headquarters, where Liu proudly updated the enemy body count from the victory at the Itig radio station and told them about the even larger victory as the decimated enemy was forced away from the destroyed village and went in full retreat to parts unknown, perhaps never to regroup again. Thornton figured correctly that the scattered enemy was being pursued doggedly at the moment by Philippine Army troops. He secretly hoped that the seasoned soldiers of Task Force Davao had no interest at all in the hassle and administrative complications of taking captives.

As an army medic checked her, Thornton wiped beads of perspiration from Elaiza's forehead and made her drink water.

“I see you got her, did you get ‘it'?” Liu asked Thornton when he realized that Elaiza was going to be OK.

“Yes, I got it too, I think,” Thornton answered.

“Well, I haven't seen any bags. I was busy elsewhere when you returned. Got it?” Liu asked, a hint of a smile on his face. “In fact, we have reports of burned money drifting along what once was a street in Itig.”

“Anyway, you're all lucky STAGCOM saved you from having to decide how to divvy up the percentages this time.” Thornton didn't know whether Liu might have succumbed to some political deal Galan had offered, but now it seemed Liu was telling him he didn't take any deals. There would be no secret slush fund to corrupt a future election.

Liu told them, “Be careful where you go: the insurgents still are active north of here,” as he headed back to the command post.

“I have three tough guys with me, Reggie.”

“Four tough guys! Did you forget about me?” Elaiza gave Colonel Liu a farewell peck on the cheek.

“Get out of here, Thornton; you have some things to tend to.” Liu was doing Thornton a favor, and they both knew it. “You can keep that damn old jeep.”

With the motor running, Elaiza squeezed into the front seat next to Pedro who was ready to drive, and leaned against Thornton sitting beside her. As the wheels began to turn, he felt her warmth against his shoulder and they were finally able to catch their breath. The other two Otaza brothers sat in the rear.

The STAGCOM remnants jolted down the path in the jeep, Pedro doing his best to guide the vehicle north. They passed camps of reinforcements continuing to move up from General Santos City to help Task Force Davao exploit its victory and to expand operations into the northern provinces. Thornton counted enough vehicles full of men to constitute another full brigade of infantry. A brigadier general he did not recognize was in an open jeep near the head of a convoy. The entire force would soon be joining Liu in moving northwest around Mount Apo and west of Itig to cut off and kill as many of the retreating NPA as they could catch. Headquarters, AFP, at Fort Aguinaldo in Manila, would announce another entire army division had been “unleashed” with a single mission: to wipe out the New Peoples Army, having already killed its chief, Kumander Ali, the Communist insurgent leader.

The STAGCOM team drove away from the northern slopes of Mount Apo, crossed the Pulangi River at Kabakan and took the main road north to Malaybalay. They rode in silence from the hot mid-day humid heat into the cooler but still humid early evening. Pedro was chain-drinking coffee from a thermos while the others dozed or gazed out the window. When they reached the sea, they turned east and took the coastal road toward the port city of Butuan, where the brown waters of the Agusan slide a continuous load of uprooted inland trees and shrubs into the ice-blue salt water of the warm Mindanao Sea.

T
hornton watched Elaiza while she slept. A few tears etched a wet pattern down her brown cheeks as they washed off yellow dust gathered during the encounter on Mount Apo. She was tough, and Thornton saw it only as strength when she could cry as she did now, thinking about how many of her countrymen had died. And tomorrow she would have to deliver Juanito's body to his mother.

The jeep bounced on the uneven pavement, and Elaiza woke. Thornton pointed to a wagon with Dole painted on the side pulled along by a small tractor, stacked high with greenish pineapples. He asked her quietly, “What do you think, are those going back to Davao City for export? Where do you think they'll end up?”

“In world markets, maybe Tokyo, Los Angeles, or Paris.” She thought about what those places might look like.

“Like us someday?” Thornton teased a bit. “Or maybe the fruit will just be appropriated by leftover NPA squads on the way to Davao. The
stragglers no longer have outside cash for support, and the Philippine army won't cooperate with them anymore, now that they've won.”

“Some victory.” Elaiza began to nod off. She rested her head on Thornton's shoulder and slid her hand under his shirt, falling asleep.

After Butuan, they turned right and followed the road south along the Agusan upstream to Prosperidad, turned right again and crossed over the river into the Manobo village where Pedro and his brothers lived and would now get back to their pig farms and taro plantings.

When they disembarked, a young girl wearing a torn Lakers tee shirt tied at the waist for a dress, took Elaiza to an amakan hut, whose walls were constructed of tough grass husks, woven close enough to keep out larger pests but loose enough to ventilate. Elaiza's cousins were surprised that she took the big white guy into the hut with her to rest after their baths from a bucket of sun-warmed water.

Elaiza was relaxed and happy to be back safely with her tribe of aunts, uncles, and cousins, and became animated after her nap, having recovered and now feeling rested after the long drive. The others were already gathered on the porch of one of the larger houses. As often as he could, Pedro did the talking, asked the questions, then answered the questions himself to the entertainment of his shyer clansmen, but today there was a new level to the meanings of the stories he told. Pedro, Reymundo, and Vicente played some quieter music and strummed slower songs then they had played at the start of their adventure. They praised Juanito, whose body Colonel Liu had had delivered and was being cleaned in one of the huts and prepared for burial. They told stories about him when he was a boy, not that long ago.

Pedro asked Thornton, somewhat rhetorically, “What's the difference between them and us anyway? Simply how we spell or say God? Desperate people do desperate things, and a desperate populace cannot be defended against itself.”

Reymundo finally had something to say, not just to his brother, but as much a reflection to himself, “Here, in Agusan, the communists are the Muslims. They do not know the labels outsiders give them.”

Thornton said, “How ironic. We thought we were fighting communist insurgents, but we wound up fighting a religious war as much as an economic ideology.”

Elaiza had a new personal perspective after her recent experience, “The Abu Sayaf, and the others, whatever labels they or we make up, terrorize our people and make us poorer. We are well rid of them all.”

“A few hooligans threatened Manila, provoking a real revolution in Mindanao, and the Muslims nearly won their civil war,” Thornton said. “They had hoped, more or less correctly, that the U.S. would ignore a local war in the Philippines because U.S. forces are overstretched-too many things going on all over the world at the same time. It almost worked.”

They became quiet and watched the wood fire burn down to coals, and turned on the radio, barely able to receive Wolfgang Moser's late night program from Davao City, playing his usual Strauss and Beethoven.

Then came the message for Thornton, relayed by Moser from some new point of contact at the Davao consulate. The D.J. announced, “Now my eager listeners,
Goetterdaemmerung”
but he actually played Mozart's Piano Concerto #21, a clear signal to Thornton, who smiled, remembering one of the key words they had included in the Schloss Code. In the Port of Davao, a small motorboat had pulled way from the dock, with Lateef and the twins sitting together on the deck. It headed south, toward Indonesia, but as soon as it hit international waters, the passengers heard a screeching sound and looked up in the direction of its source. The object streaking in from a very high altitude penetrated and destroyed the boat even before it exploded.

In the Manobo camp, they had the feeling Juanito would be rejoining them at any moment, but he would not, ever again. Starke would have enjoyed this evening too. Feelings of loss, yet resurrection, hung around. Strangely there was no hurry now to do anything.

During the night, Pedro packed up his gear. Thornton wanted to say good-bye and job well done, but Pedro had trouble with that sort of thing. He had not committed himself and his brothers on this mission for Thornton. He had done it for Elaiza, whom he had to protect. He was the patriarchal head of an extended family; his brothers also had their own duties to fulfill. And with the NPA incapacitated, no longer a constant threat to their fields and family, they could grow old and get fat, hook up on the Internet and converse with their daughters working overseas. Pedro looked forward to digging his own plot and growing
some Calabasas commercially. Maybe
Magbabaya
, the name he gave to God, would be generous to him this year, or he would have to make a special offering to that woman priestess if his personal prayers failed. He might even have to go to a Catholic mass also; just to be sure all the bases were covered. While the others slept, he left during the night without saying goodbye. He had a brother to bury tomorrow.

T
he first cock crowed at 4:47
AM
, making an early invitation to the proximate hens well in advance of dawn or any rival crowing of competing neighborhood roosters similarly anchored by one foot, tied with plastic tape to poles near the adjacent shack, limiting the cocks' competitive activity to a six-foot radius and any hen that might intentionally or accidentally stray within.

“Tomas, give me a full body hug,” were Elaiza's first words of the day. It turned out to be more than just a hug, but it was definitely full body contact. They took turns removing the remaining clothing preventing their moist skins from touching everywhere and let their perspiration and aromas mingle. Whatever the day would bring, it was a good start. He hoped she would not jump up to shower for a while, at least not until the last of the breeding cocks tied outside their window was satisfied that the sun was completely risen and silence would return. They stayed that way a long time, neither awake nor asleep.

“This is why men wage war and engage in commerce,” Thornton teased her, enjoying the feel of Elaiza's smooth, lean form fitted next to his, “so they can have a few moments in their lifetimes that are this pure and simple.”