Rebound (8 page)

He opened an English-language Manila paper on the bed, searched for the words he needed and cut them out with his nail scissors.
Using cellophane tape, he stuck the words on a leaflet for a porn show someone had handed him in the street. He read the message
thoughtfully, then folded the paper twice and put it in his pocket.

It was dark by the time he reached Laguna province in his car. He pulled over once he had left the main road and taped newspaper
over his license plates. He drove slowly, and soon his headlights picked out the cinder-blocks of the high wall around the
Velez compound. He eased up to the gate and got out, leaving the engine running and the headlights on. Floodlights came
on, illuminating the whole area in front of the gates but leaving the sentry box in shadow.

Dartley stood before the gates, took the folded piece of paper from his pocket, and held it up. “Mr. Velez is expecting me.”

Two different guards were on duty now. Both had M16s and pistols. They looked Dartley over and remained respectful to this
foreigner. Dartley passed the paper between the bars of the gate to one of the men. He unfolded it and read it aloud slowly,
turning sideways to use the car’s headlights, while the other guard looked over his shoulder: “From Now on, Two of yours For
every One of theirs.”

The Pindad in Dartley’s right hand spat flame. A 9 mm slug tunneled into the skull of the man who was reading and turned end
over end, searing and pulping his brain matter into a gray mush. He dropped to the ground with the paper still clutched before
his sightless eyes.

The second and third bullets from the Pindad traveled between the bars of the gate toward the other guard, who was in the
process of bringing his M16 barrel to bear on Dartley. The first of these bullets buried itself in his left shoulder, and
the second tore away the side of his throat, leaving his severed windpipe, esophagus, arteries, and veins hanging out like
ripped-out plumbing in a condemned building. He collapsed and lay twitching.

Dartley could hear the man’s wheezing and the gargling of blood above the smooth-running engine as he walked back to his car.

Happy Man sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his left hand around the neck of a bottle of Martell Cordon Bleu cognac,
his right hand slowly massaging his stiff cock, which protruded from his torn pants. His jowls sagged with exhaustion, his
beefy shoulders were slumped, his distended belly hung over his belt. The fat fingers of his soft, sweaty left hand massaged
the neck of the bottle in time to the fingers of his right hand, masturbating himself.

Through layers of cigarette smoke, he stared with glazed eyes at the dancers in the room, mostly half-dressed beautiful women
who danced in wild abandon with the few men on the floor, with each other or by themselves. Four phonograph speakers boomed
Manila rock in Taglish, a mixture of Tagalog and English, studded with Chinese and Spanish words. From time to time
one of the women slipped over to give him head, ready to dodge out of the way when he struck at her with his bottle, a sign
he had had enough for the moment. His business adviser shouted final prices to him from the New York and Tokyo stock exchanges,
along with news of major worldwide real estate transactions, tactfully ignoring whatever happened to be going on. Happy Man
was fairly far gone, but he was still able to ask awkward questions that his business adviser could not answer to his satisfaction.
When that happened, Happy Man swung at him with the bottle in his left hand, usually missing. Once he stopped in mid-swing
to pour some of the fiery amber liquid over the graceful neck and bare back of a woman squeezing his cock between her tits.

When a man with a razor scar crossed the room toward Happy Man, the dancers scattered out of his way, and the business adviser
discreetly withdrew. The scar ran from the bridge of his nose diagonally across his right cheek to his jawbone, a livid white
furrow across his golden skin. He had fierce, glittering black eyes that looked directly into Happy Man’s without the fearful
respect of the others in the room.

He spoke in a low, grating voice after accepting a swig from Velez’s cognac bottle. “I sent the message to the Presidential
Palace, saying we thought it was an army move against us and that they had better releash their dogs.”

Happy Man looked at him blankly. “What message?”

The man with the scar was Ruben Montova, and he was the only person in the room not on
Velez’s payroll. He kicked at a woman who tried to get near to give Happy Man a blow job. “The message found in the hand of
the dead guard: ‘From now on, two of yours for every one of theirs.’ Remember? You had two men gunned down tonight at your
gate, five hundred yards from here.”

“I remember,” Velez said in an irritated voice, pulling himself together. “You said we believe the Philippine army did it?”

“Yes, I hinted that the president must have gotten orders from Washington and passed them on to one of his generals, or else
that that pig Bonifacio did it himself on direct American orders.”

General Pominador Bonifacio’s links with the CIA were well known. The government had often tried to get rid of him since he
could not control him, but the general’s American ties, his own political following, and the fact that he was by far the most
effective general against the communist New People’s Army combined to make him invulnerable to his enemies within the government.

“That bastard Bonifacio would come after me with jet fighters and tanks if he thought it would be tolerated,” Happy Man said
in a voice laden with self-pity.

“And you’d better be careful you don’t make a big mistake, or maybe some people who normally don’t like each other much may
put their differences aside and count you out of the game.”

Montova had made millions despite not being a member of the Marcos power group. He and Velez understood that their alliance
was
based on Montova’s expectation that his millions would be turned into a billion—meaning that Happy Man would become president
and reward his friends. He and Velez used each other as a sounding board, both having basically the same understanding of
power. Montova treated Velez like dirt much of the time, but this was only while he openly admitted that although he might
be Velez’s match in brains and ruthlessness, he could never match him in wealth, illustrious family name, and, most important
of all, the raw ability to command. It never ceased to fascinate Montova how people
cowered
before Happy Man, even when he was falling down, drooling and half out of his mind. Happy Man was like a great actor who had
only to walk on the stage to electrify an audience. Montova had to make threats. Happy Man had only to stare. In Ruben Montova’s
opinion Velez was a born leader whose firm hand could make the Philippines great again.

“I don’t believe Bonifacio had a hand in this,” Velez stated. “If he wanted to give me this message, he would never have put
it in words, and he would never have hit two low-ranking men like guards at my gate. He would have hit inside our organization,
someone close to me and worthy of his attention. Like you, Ruben.”

Montova smiled ruefully and looked at Velez in admiration. Here he was, lying on the floor sloshed with his dick hanging out
and he could make sense when he wanted to. A great leader. A man of the people.

“You think it’s the Americans?” Montova asked. “The CIA?”

Happy Man lolled his head from side to side and sucked on the bottle. “The CIA wouldn’t go after me. They can’t get involved
in an extended war with us—they have too much to lose if even a single killing was traced back to them. They would have to
go straight to the top for maximum results with the least exposure to risk.”

Montova nodded. “And the communists? The New People’s Army is being blamed for the Yankee deaths, and they’re taking some
extra heat from the army because of it. They’d like to get you.”

“No, they wouldn’t. They depend on me as a check to the government’s power. Anyway, they have infiltrators in our movement.
They don’t need to shoot through the bars of the gate at us. That’s it, Ruben! Don’t you see? The bars of the gate.”

“Tell me,” Montova said patiently.

“This is someone who doesn’t know our organization, who doesn’t have either the knowledge or means to hurt us where it counts.
This is just some patriotic nut who thinks he can bluff me. Maybe he’s an American, maybe Filipino.” Happy Man laughed and
his jowls shook. “Two for one, he says. That’s fine with me. I can hire dumb guards by the thousand. What do I care if he
uses them up? He’ll never get to me.”

The corporal knocked on the general’s door at eight
A.M.
sharp and poked his head in.

“Yes.”

The corporal said, “The American military attaché, sir.”

“Send him in.”

A small, thin American with a gaunt face walked into the office with his hand extended. “Hi, Phil,” he said.

General Bonifacio rose to meet him and shook his hand warmly. They walked together away from the desk to a glass-topped table
and some easy chairs. The general had gotten the nickname Phil when he was a major on a training course at Fort Bennington,
Georgia. Americans had been unable to handle his first name, Pominador, and settled on Phil, for Philipines. Some other Filipino
officers on the course with him continued to call him this as a joke after they all came home. The name stuck.

By coincidence, the military attaché was an old boy from Georgia. Or maybe it was not a coincidence—the CIA was devious. Roscoe
James was the top-ranking military adviser at the American Embassy despite being a civilian and keeping an eye on what was
happening to military aid. He was also the top-ranking CIA man in the Philippines. When Filipino power brokers were annoyed
at Washington, they complained to the American ambassador. When they were really mad, they yelled at Roscoe James.

Phil was mad at Washington. He told Roscoe about the accusations against him from the Presidential Palace. The general had
no way of knowing that they had originated with Velez and couldn’t have cared less. The fact was, the government was considering
the possibility that he was starting to take power into his own
hands, and that was exactly the kind of idea he didn’t want being aired in the Presidential Palace.

“It ain’t us, Phil.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God. There’s no way Langley would mount an operation here without funneling it through me.”

The general smiled tightly. “Those sound like famous last words, my friend.”

“All right. Maybe. But I promise you, Phil, if the company is doing this one, they’ve left me out of it. And I’ve had very
good relations with home recently, as you have reason to know. You and me are in tight with everyone stateside. You’ve been
straight with us. We’d be crazy to stab you in the back. They understand that.”

“I hope they do.”

General Bonifacio had been restrained twice from attempting a military takeover of the Philippines. It had taken all of Roscoe’s
powers of persuasion on both occasions to get him to hold back. The CIA had to make him some heavy promises. It occurred to
the general that the CIA might be trying to weasel out of these promises by conspiring to topple him from his army rank.

“And I’m almost a hundred percent certain it’s not military intelligence, either. Everyone from the Joint Chiefs of Staff
on down have been warned this is a hands-off situation until further notice. Now I’m going to go right back and get on the
scrambler to verify what I’m telling you. Then I’ll walk back in that door if I have nothing to hide.”

“If you don’t come back?”

“Then you’ll know I’ve resigned and you can form your own conclusions.”

“I believe you, Roscoe,” the general said. “But I want you to tell our mutual friends that if this kind of talk continues
at the Presidential Palace—you know, things about me taking power into my own hands—it will force me to make my move.”

“If you grab power, Phil, Congress will suspend all financial aid. That’s something you can depend on.”

The general smiled. “Sure they will. Until I let the communist guerrillas win a few battles close to your bases. That will
change their minds.”

“We may not be that easy to blackmail,” Roscoe James said, not believing what he said.

The general laughed. “I’ll play things Uncle Sam’s way, Roscoe, so long as nobody moves against me.”

“I think it may be some career guys at one of the bases who pulled this stunt out at Happy Man’s place. We’ll kick ass until
we find them. I’ll be back in an hour or so with word from back home.”

General Bonifacio said he would be waiting.

Lieutenant Commander Harris Lamont had shepherded the two members of the U.S. senator’s staff around Subic Bay Naval Base
all morning and had carefully answered all their questions, repeating some of the data while they took notes. The American
government was the third largest employer in the country—about 43,000 Filipinos worked at Subic and Clark. The Navy would
find it impossible to replace the
inexpensive, skilled Filipino work force at Subic, which was the center of support operations for 90 ships, 550 aircraft,
and 70,000 troops of the Seventh Fleet in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Cam Ranh Bay, once the big U.S. Navy base in South
Vietnam, was now the biggest overseas Soviet naval installation. It was only seventy minutes away across the South China Sea
by jet, and the Russians had submarines, support ships, bombers, and reconnasissance planes based there. The latest report
the lieutenant commander had seen listed more than a half dozen long-range Bear surveillance and antisubmarine aircraft, a
dozen Badger bombers, and several swing-wing M19-23 supersonic interceptors. America had to hold on to her Philippine bases,
no matter what the cost, in order to preserve the neutrality of the region.