Rebound (21 page)

The yellowish-white bird was pleased to oblige, and part of the crowd yelled their approval.

“If the winning bird refuses to peck the loser twice, it’s declared a draw,” the Navy man said. “Sometimes the winning bird
is half-dead himself and doesn’t have the strength to do it.”

Dartley watched as the man who had been taking bets looked from loser to loser, and each man in turn threw down the money
owed, sometimes a whole roll of peso bills in a rubber band. The sailor handed Dartley five dollars, and when the man looked
up to Dartley, he threw down the bill, which was crumpled in a ball and was neatly caught.

“He remembers all those bets?” Dartley asked, watching the man throwing up wads of money into the crowd now, as well as receiving
them. The money sometimes passed from hand to hand to its owner.

“Just try to shortchange him by a nickel and you’ll find out what he remembers,” the Navy man said.

Dartley handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “Get him to change this for you and I’ll see you over at the corner where they fit
the spurs.”

The Navy man took the bill with a pitying look on his face. “First you’re up here by yourself in rebel country, and now you
hand someone you’ve never seen before a hundred-dollar bill. Where does the Air Force go to find guys like you?”

Dartley grinned. “For a sailor you got an honest face,” he said, and slipped away into the crowd.

He moved calmly and unhurriedly through
the crowd, catching Benjael’s eye and giving him a confident nod to let him know that he had seen Velez, too, and that everything
was okay. Benjael would now cover his escape and alert Harry and Rafael, too—if he could find them. For the first time in
days Dartley was in control of things. In situations where other men’s hearts thumped and fear or rage blocked their thought
processes, Dartley’s reaction was the opposite. His movements became deliberate, and his mind raced coldly like a digital
calculator. While still talking with the Navy man he had seen the first two rows of the tiered planks on one side of the pit
cleared of their occupants by some rough-looking dudes. No one gave them any argument, just moved out of the way fast. A few
moments later some well-dressed gents were ushered to the front row, Happy Man Velez among them. The guards slipped into the
second row behind them, sitting between them and the crowd. This was what Dartley had been waiting for, yet his heart didn’t
thud. He only cracked a joke with the Navy man, faded into the mob, and eased his way over toward his target.

There was a lot of coming and going between the matches. Dartley avoided open spaces where he might be spotted making his
way toward Velez. It was much slower and harder going staying where the crowds were thickest, but this way, even as a tall
American, he did not stand out in the pandemonium. By the time he had worked himself into a fairly good position, the two
birds of the next match were being held
almost beak-to-beak in the pit, to work up their fighting spirit.

His timing was right. As fight time neared, the voice of the man taking the bets became more frantic, and his hand signals
fluttered like those of a mad symphony conductor. He respectfully kidded the rich men in the front row and their guards in
the second row, drawing a flurry of shouted bets from them. This seemed to change the odds, which in turn brought on a whole
new binge of shouted bets.

Dartley waited until the guards in the second row were so caught up by the lure of fast money that they had forgotten why
they were here. The American hit man eased his way to the edge of the crowd. No one in this crowd of excited fans could be
bothered by some no-account foreigner moving around—he probably was made sick by the sight of a little blood or thought that
this was a cruel sport, and foreigners who thought things like that should stay home and not come to places like Balbalasang
to bother people like them for whom the
tupada
was the big thing in their lives. They let Dartley move them out of his way and push past them, until he had a clear view
of the bigheaded, beefy man with a wide smile in the front row.

Dartley’s Pindad automatic was tucked in his pants at the small of his back. He reached beneath his loose sport shirt, whipped
the gun out, and leveled it in a two-handed grip at his target. As the gun came out, Happy Man leapt to his feet, pointing
his finger and yelling a final bet on one of the fighting cocks.

Dartley had no time to delay, no time to
readjust his aim. The barrel aimed at the base of Velez’s skull was now leveled at his chest, after he jumped up and half
turned around. Dartley’s finger squeezed the trigger, and he saw the bullet nick Happy Man’s shirtfront. He followed his first
shot with a second and a third, before Velez’s body flopped down out of sight beyond the rows of seated men.

Between the sounds of the first and third shots, a time span of maybe a little less than two seconds, the roaring crowd lapsed
into total silence so that the third shot echoed and reechoed under the roofed structure with open sides. The shooting frightened
one handler into releasing his bird, and it furiously attacked the one still held. That handler released the bird in order
to save it, and the two fighting cocks went at it—spurs, talons, and beaks—ignored by a Balbalasang crowd for the first time
in living memory.

Happy Man’s guards angrily faced the crowds with automatic pistols and revolvers, searching for someone to shoot at. No one
moved or made a sound, not wanting to draw attention to themselves—not even those who had seen the American shoot and run
from the edge of the crowd. This way Dartley gained valuable seconds.

Benjael was waiting, gun drawn, covering bystanders in the town park. He pointed with his free hand, and Dartley ran that
way, Benjael right behind him. Harry drove the car next to the curb and opened the back door, Dartley and Benjael piled in,
and Harry gunned the motor and headed for the hills.

When they were high above the town,
close to where they would enter the forest on the color-coded trails, Harry pulled in at an overlook. Dartley got out and
held his radio up, waiting for a signal. They heard nothing but crackling and static for a few minutes. Harry was anxiously
checking out the road behind them to see if they had been followed.

“F4 to T2. Do you read me?” It was Rafael’s voice over the radio.

“Loud and clear, F4.”

“Man up and walking. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest. Do you want F4 to KK?”

“Yes. F4 to KK. Positive.” Dartley switched off his radio and got back in the car. “Let’s go, Harry. What are we waiting for?”

Harry turned around in the driver’s seat and looked at Dartley. “You really mean it?”

“Move it, Harry!”

Harry turned the car around and nervously turned back toward town.

“No, I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Happy Man said. “Get us to the cars and I’ll go to the hacienda. I only have a few
bruises. This vest is damned uncomfortable, but it’s worth the trouble of putting up with that. The bullets didn’t even break
my skin, and I was hit by three.”

The guards tried to rush him to the cars, but suddenly Velez would have none of that. He walked up and down the dirt pit and
kicked at the pair of cocks fighting there. He smiled up at the crowd and waved at them. They stared down silently at him,
fearful that their slightest movement would draw gunfire from the guards.
After he had walked up and down a while to show that he was physically unafraid, he shook some hands and allowed his guards
to escort him to the cars, taking care to move with dignity through the town park.

Once they were in the back of the Jeep Cherokee, safe behind the steel-plated roof, floor, sides, and doors, looking out through
the inch-thick bullet-proof plastic glass in the windows, Reuben Montova said admiringly to Happy Man, “You were great back
there. You were a hero. A living monument! In three days’ time you will be a mythological figure through the Philippines.
If only a TV camera had been there to record it all in living color for future generations…”

Rafael pocketed the hand-held radio and kick-started the light Honda motorcycle he had stolen. He had waited behind, at the
edge of the crowd at the cockpit, on Dartley’s orders to put the fail-safe plan into operation if Dartley did not get an opportunity
to make a strike during the
tupada.
Now Dartley had tried and failed. It was time for the plan they had coded KK. He sped out along the narrow dirt road that
led to the Velez hacienda. About three kilometers away from the house he slowed and watched the surface carefully. Gradually
he road at hardly more than a walking pace, looking into the roadside vegetation from time to time.

He nearly fell off the bike when two almost naked Kalingas, carrying bows and arrows, jumped out on the road alongside him.
They waved their arms wildly and pointed to a place in the
road. Rafael managed to swing the bike around to avoid crossing over this section of the road. He looked carefully at the
surface of the road but saw nothing unusual. The two Kalingas then helped him lift the light motorcycle off the road and into
the undergrowth, where Rafael saw whole groups of Kalingas crouched in waiting, armed with bows and arrows, rifles and shotguns.
Plan KK was set to go—both K’s standing for Kalinga.

“He was one of those Americans from the bus,” Ruben Montova said in back of the Jeep Cherokee.

“I saw no one,” Happy Man said. “I felt the bullets hitting me—they felt like stabs from a knife. I thought I was finished,
and I remember scanning the crowd for a moment to see who it was that had shot me, but all I saw was a sea of faces.”

“I saw nothing, either,” Ruben said.

“Because you were hiding your head under the seat,” Happy Man said, kidding him.

“Maybe I was,” Ruben admitted. “I almost peed in my pants, opposite all those people. And no one was even shooting at me.
That’s why I admire your courage, Ruperto. All the same, I think you shouldn’t have left all those men behind us in town.”
They were driving back to the hacienda with four guards in the Cherokee and four more in a Trans-Am a few yards in front of
them.

“I had to leave them there to take care of my guests, who will come out to the hacienda later. I also want them to check the
identity of
every American in town. There can’t have been more than a hundred Americans in Balbalasang today. Think what that gives us.
Before it could have been any one of many thousands of men. Now it has to be one of less than a hundred. I warned the guards
not to get in a fight with any of them. They are only to check their names at the hotels where they are staying and count
how many leave on the bus tomorrow. I’m going to have pressure put on the American Embassy to make them weed out that rogue
serviceman who is assassinating innocent Filipino citizens.”

“Such as yourself,” Ruben suggested.

“Myself most of all!”

They went on talking and joking in the high spirits generated by a close brush with death and unharmed escape. They were thrown
from the seat to the floor when the driver of the Cherokee slammed on the brakes to avoid rear-ending the Trans-am in front,
which had come to a sudden stop in the middle of the road, its front wheels and front end sunk into a trench across the road.
Happy Man looked out a window and saw, to one side, part of the twig, leaf, and dirt cover that had concealed the trench still
suspended over it. Next thing he saw was Kalingas.

They poured out of the roadside vegetation, firing as they came. Their bullets and shotgun blasts shattered the windshield
and side window of the Trans-Am. Velez saw three or four Kalinga bowmen loose arrows into the car’s four guards. The driver
backed up the Cherokee fast, and inside they all listened to bullets tapping against and bending the inch-thick plastic
glass and scraping along the outside of the steel plates protecting them. The tires were constructed of extra-hard rubber
and, so far, seemed not to have sprung a leak.

The driver skidded the car around a hundred and eighty degrees after building up speed, and they quickly headed away from
the ambush with bullets spattering off the rear steel plate and plastic window.

“Why now?” Happy Man exploded. “Those fucking Kalingas have been taking shit from me for several years! Why pick this time
to get back at me?”

“They are inconsiderate, ungrateful, ignorant people,” Ruben assured him.

“The CIA has recruited them,” Velez muttered. “They’re working for the Americans. I see it now. This whole thing was a carefully
laid out plan. The busload of Americans. The Kalingas. Did you see all those Japanese in town? I bet they were in on it too.
They’ll do anything for the Yankee dollar.” He suddenly looked at Ruben in alarm. “How do I know they haven’t bought you?”

“Because I can make much more money by sticking with you.”

Ruben’s hard, realistic tone calmed Happy Man right away. He grinned at his confidant, reassured. They understood each other.

They were racing back along the road toward town when the guard in the front seat beside the driver pulled back the sliding
glass that separated the compartments. He said, “We just got a radio call. There’s an unidentified car
approaching us along this road from the town side.”

Happy Man thought fast. “The Kalingas must have radioed to someone that we escaped. The CIA would have trained them. Now,
they know that this is an armored vehicle, which I don’t think they knew before. So they’ve come out to get us on the road.
They know there are no turnoffs along here. They think they have us trapped. Stop this car! Now!”

Happy Man, Ruben, and three guards piled out quickly.

Happy Man said, “There’s a tenant farmer not far off the road from here. We can get horses from him and take a back path to
the hacienda.” He said to the driver, “You go along the road. They can’t harm you. Delay them all you can. I’ll radio right
now to town for more men.”

Dartley sat in the middle of the backseat, his M16 across his knees. Both rear side windows were rolled down all the way,
and he held himself ready to throw fire to either side. Harry drove, and Benjael sat alongside him, the barrel of his M16
poking out the window, ready to deliver- raking fire to their front. Harry was sweating so much, his hands were slippery on
the steering wheel.