Rebound (32 page)

The sergeant touched him with the blade tip, its cold steel indicating its fierce presence against his skin. “I’m going to
cut you here, here, here, and here,” he said, the knife touches forming a circle on the man’s belly, “until we can pull your
guts through and you can walk back to your hideout holding them in your hands to keep them off the dusty road.”

“No! No!” the man screamed. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“Where is your hideout?” the sergeant asked, showing him a map.

The fat man put a trembling finger on one place. “Here. It’s stony ground. The command bunker is linked to other dugouts by
tunnels.”

“Tell me more,” the sergeant said, looking at his knife blade again.

The fat man couldn’t help it. He was not able to stop himself from talking and trembling.

“Faster!” Dartley rasped at Harry. “I still got a job to do.”

Harry drove fast for Happy Man’s residence.
They had not waited for army regulars at the burning truck. Dartley wanted to beat them to Velez so he could claim his scalp
as his own. It took them about twenty minutes on the winding roads to get there. They drove through the big ornamental gates
and down the drive. It was almost a half mile long and ended in a big courtyard with an old statue in the middle, next to
a very large old house dating from early Spanish days. An army chopper was parked at the far end of this yard, and three dead
soldiers lay facedown between it and a door to the house.

Dartley and Harry cocked their MAClOs and approached with caution. They were met by soldiers who waved them on. General Bonifacio
strode to meet them. His right shoulder was soaked in blood, but he was not letting the wound hold him back.

“I thought I could take him by surprise,” the general said briefly. “I was wrong. I lost some good men, and Happy Man got
away.”

Dartley nodded sympathetically. “He has a talent for that, sir.”

“Bullshit!” the general said. “I blew it by trying to get him before you could. Also, I figured that if we all arrived here
in force, he would just come out to meet us and shake our hands. I had other plans for him.”

Dartley said, “I get paid no matter whether you, I, or someone else whacks out Happy Man. I don’t want any competition with
you, sir, to see who does it first.”

“You don’t have any competition from now on. He’s all yours.” He had certain men stay
behind and ordered Dartley, Harry, and some others to the chopper. When they were aloft, he said, “We’ll see how Roscoe James
is getting on,” as if that explained everything.

The helicopter followed radio instructions and touched down at a landing zone occupied by three others. A colonel reported
that the men were all in position, had found several openings to dugouts, and were just waiting for him to say “Go.” The general
told him to proceed.

“Tell them we need some of them alive,” Roscoe James said in a persnickety tone as he walked up to them. “You know, boy,”
he said accusingly to Dartley, “you’ve already killed their commander today. Eduardo Cristobal was his name. That goddam missile
of yours burned him to a crisp, and I’d have liked to talk to him.”

“Sorry about that,” Dartley said.

Roscoe had heard by radio that the general had fucked up over Happy Man. He wasn’t saying a word about that, only picking
on Dartley for successfully nailing an NPA regional commander. He punched Dartley on the shoulder to show that he was kidding.
In a way both he and the general were testing Dartley to see how much he could take without making a comment. Dartley could
take a lot.

They watched one man work with an old M7 portable flamethrower. He held the riflelike launcher connected by hoses to metal
tanks on his backpack, and long spurts of jagged flame spat out of the muzzle, entering the tunnels in the stony ground. Smoke
rose from other places on the ground, revealing hidden entrances as
things burned inside. Other soldiers were rolling grenades into tunnel mouths, causing the roofs to collapse into the shallow
tunnels and dugouts. Guerrillas appeared in two and threes, none showing any signs of fight. As they were led away Roscoe
and a Filipino officer compared their faces against photographs. They did not stop any of the total of eleven men who surrendered.

“We won’t need any of them,” the officer called to the soldiers escorting them. “Take them down the road a way.”

The officer’s message was clear, and the men were led like lambs to the slaughter. Except one. He started shouting and kept
it up, in spite of being struck with rifle butts.

“I’m Joker Solano!” he yelled repeatedly. “I bet you have a photo of me there. You’d recognize me if I shaved.”

Roscoe winked at the Filipino officer. They had recognized him, all right.

“You!” Joker shouted to Roscoe. “You are an American. CIA, no? I can tell you about the Russians. But you have to save me
from these animals. Listen to this. Does the name Code 647 Defense Support Satellite mean anything to you?”

Roscoe turned to the Filipino officer. “What do you say? Would you mind if he came along with me for a little chat?”

“Not at all,” the officer said.

“I’ll bring him back to you if he doesn’t tell me everything I want to hear,” Roscoe said grimly.

General Bonifacio was standing near Dartley
as this was happening. He commented in an undertone, “Roscoe is letting that slimy, son-of-a-bitch Joker off the hook. You
have to admire a brave fighting man even if he is on the other side. But snakes in the grass like Joker are no good to either
side—yet they’re the ones who survive.”

“Sooner or later, what they do catches up with them,” Dartley said.

Bonifacio said, “Which brings us back to another venomous serpent—Happy Man Velez. I lost him today. So now it’s up to
me
to find him. Go back to Manila and get in touch with my headquarters. As I said, Happy Man is yours.”

Dartley was about to thank him but was interrupted by volleys of gunfire as soldiers executed the ten guerrillas down the
road.

In five days the Velez family had come to an understanding with the military: Happy Man’s younger brother was to take over
as family head; none of the family’s real estate, bank accounts, or businesses would be threatened in any way; no legal proceeding
would be started; and no public denouncements of Happy Man would be made. In exchange, all the family had to do was refuse
to fund the fugitive. The military asked for nothing further, knowing that Happy Man without money was like a flower without
water. Cutting off his funds included those in Switzerland, New York, and the Bahamas. He had no passport, anyway. The military
had everything, his driver’s license and birth certificate. Two days later Happy Man was spotted with a group of Tausug in
the Sulu Islands.

Harry had returned exhausted to his family,
but a rich man by Tondo standards. He wished Dartley good luck and told him to count him out of further attempts on Happy
Man’s life. He now fully agreed that he was not made for that kind of work.

Dartley hired Purcell to fly him in the Cessna to where Happy Man had been seen. The Sulu Islands stretched like stepping-stones
from the Philippines’ large southern island, Mindanao, to Borneo. There were 448 small islands, inhabited by fiercely independent
Moslem people who did not regard themselves as part of the same nation as Manila. These Moslems, called Moros, carried on
a violent rebellion during the 1970s, which had not completely died out. The different ethnic groups also warred with each
other, and private yachts and pleasure craft were warned to use extreme caution when entering the area. There were no roads.
The only way to travel was by plane and boat.

The Tausug, or “people of the current,” were the dominant ethnic group. They were fishermen, traders, pirates, smugglers,
and craftsmen of textiles and weapons. Dartley had to assume that Happy Man had promised them independence when he gained
power, which made them his supporters. Being out of touch with the rest of the Philippines, they were probably unaware of
recent developments and thought Happy Man was still the powerful wheeler-dealer they had known from before.

After three days of island-hopping with the plane, Dartley pronounced himself satisfied. They flew back to an island where
Dartley
bought a diesel launch he had seen earlier and liked. Purcell helped him load the four battered golf bags into the boat, along
with provisions he had purchased.

They shook hands. “You’re not going to be able to phone me from down here,” Purcell said.

“I was lucky to get hold of you those other times.”

The coral atoll encircled the calm waters of the lagoon, with only a narrow entrance to deep water outside. Outside this ring
of living coral, the reef fell away abruptly, vertically in places, into water almost two miles deep. Dartley had followed
this cliff face down in diving gear and found it teeming with living creatures, some not too friendly. His launch was anchored
inside the lagoon where the glowing, living coral that reached only inches on the wave-swept reefs grew three feet high or
more. Close to the launch was anchored the motor yacht
Dordogne,
a kind of mini-Cousteau expedition of young Frenchmen funded by a large European corporation with the environmental guilts.
When Dartley arrived in his launch, they were pleased to have him tow a magnetometer from his outboard-engined rowboat in
search of magnetic anomalies that indicated metal beneath the water.

Dartley didn’t find much and left after two days, saying he would come back. The Frenchmen said fine, not really expecting
to see him again, and went back to work on the seventeenth-century Chinese wreck they had discovered on the reef. The Ming
Dynasty porcelains had
spilled from the wooden hold of the ship, and the coral had grown around them. Most of the dishes and vases not washed away
over the years or smashed to pieces were embedded in the coral, like saucers in hardened tar. The Frenchmen made archaeological
maps and cut blocks out of the coral fifteen to twenty feet beneath the surface. The cost of doing this would not be covered
by the value of the porcelain, but this was not a concern. They had government approval and had brought along three staff
members from the National Museum of the Philippines and two members of the Coast Guard, all of whom sat in the shade all day
nursing their M16s. Dartley felt guilty when he hit several Tausug towns, ostensibly for supplies, and gossiped about the
gold-laden galleon the Frenchmen had found on the reef. He had seen the gold coins himself, he said, and the sold gold crucifixes
and altar candlesticks that weighed more than five kilos apiece. Then he went back to the atoll and to towing the magnetometer.

The wildlife fascinated him. He spent literally hours watching brightly colored fish and nameless creatures crawl, swim, and
eat each other in the crystal-clear, bright blue waters. Huge manta rays glided past, barely moving their wings, with their
open mouths looking like the grillwork of a 1950s Chevrolet. At sunset weird psychedelic colors spread over the sea pools
in the coral reefs, one the color of arterial blood next to one that was metallic green, then another that was turquoise.
After dark he drank San Miguel beer with the Frenchmen and traded
good-natured insults about their native lands, which seemed farther away than the moon.

Dartley was up before dawn each day, keeping watch. But the Tausugs arrived in the middle of the day. Two of their four small
ships blocked the lagoon’s entrance to the sea; there was no escape for the motor yacht or the launch inside. Dartley came
out of his cabin and crawled onto the deck of the launch with his HK91 sniper rifle. This West German weapon fired 7.62 mm
bullets and was considered one of the most accurate and reliable.

Dartley ignored the Tausugs who were yelling at the French, who, needless to say, screamed back at them in their language.
Dartley was waiting for one heavyset man whose lookalike brother he had already killed and whom he failed to kill in person
at the cockpit. He would know him for sure if he were with these Tausugs. Happy Man had to be desperate for money, and here
was uncountable wealth in sunken Spanish gold. There couldn’t be many other big-money attractions in the Sulus.

Then Dartley saw him emerge from one of the boats blocking the lagoon channel. The tide was low, so Velez was able to jump
out and walk along the top of the coral reef.

Dartley found him in the sights. Remembering the bullet-proof vest, he eased up until it was centered on the jawbone, just
beneath his left ear. He gently pressed the trigger. It was a single shot. Perfectly executed. Velez’s head shattered, and
he crumpled onto the coral reef.

This was all Dartley wanted all along—a
simple, neat execution—and instead he had spent his time in the midst of confuson and bloodshed.

The Tausug had turned mean on seeing Happy Man’s death. They were exchanging gunfire with the two outnumbered Coast Guard
men, and the unarmed Frenchmen were scattering for cover while still talking nonstop.