Sudden Threat (33 page)

Over the past five days he had become drawn to Major Ramsey. Abe found himself respecting the commander’s authority and command presence. In his society, it was natural to be drawn to the source of power and obey. He had noticed in Ramsey an ability to remain calm even in the most dangerous situations. To Abe, the more confusing the situation, the more stressful, the more dynamic, the more the major would retreat into his inner sanctum and draw from a deep reservoir of knowledge and power and control.

Like adding ballast to a listing ship/the man in green/leads his men/they the arrow/and he the tip.

He patted his empty pockets for a pen to jot down the thought, then hoped he could remember it.

He had no ideological differences with the men. In fact, he had found himself to be quite similar in character to his captors, who were beginning to accept him. After fixing their radio, a quite simple task, they identified with him. He was of use to a team consisting entirely of useful people. He had been a burden but had become an asset.

In the growing darkness, Abe looked down at his jungle fatigues with the crazy black, green, and brown patterns interwoven in the fabric. He was beginning to be like them, he thought. As they walked, he carefully chose his steps through the dense underbrush to avoid the dreaded black palm plants and any poisonous snakes that might be lurking, as was usually the case. He stepped first with his heel, rolled his foot gently to the side away from the arch, then pushed quietly with his toes.

He still did not carry a weapon but could taste the excitement as they moved like an invisibly connected team through the jungle. Each man knew where the others were, always looking in a full circle. Turning slowly halfway, then back again. Lifting an arm to quietly push a branch aside. Letting the insects fly about his face. He was learning the discipline of martial arts that he had eschewed as a young man in Japan. So many of his friends had trained in the jujitsu and karate skills, but he had chosen piano lessons and engineering at an early age.

That night, as he moved in synch with the soldiers through the lush green highlands, he felt something instinctual that had never been there before. He had the taste of copper in his mouth. His heart beat fast, but in control. He wanted to be a part of the team.

He watched as Major Ramsey halted the patrol in the darkness. They had doubled back on their trail and were about six and a half kilometers northwest of Cateel. Their initial path was only two hundred meters below the slope they occupied. A rare clearing in the forest connected their current position to the previously traveled path. Abe watched as Ramsey gave instructions to Benson, who quickly went about the business of implementing them. Ramsey then slipped his rucksack off his shoulders, grimacing as he did so, and set up the tactical satellite radio.

“Bravo six, this is Bushmaster six, over,” Chuck whispered into the radio. The sun had fallen behind the mountains to his rear. He faced east, peering between two mahogany trees into the clearing. Slipping on his night-vision goggles, he saw Benson directing his men into different positions and tacking what looked like fishing line ankle high to trees near the other side of the clearing. They worked quickly and professionally, knowing exactly what to do, despite their hunger and fatigue. Three days ago they had officially run out of food. Most of the men had conserved their MREs, however, and had lasted up until that point only through Eddie’s expert foraging.

“Bushmaster six, this is Bravo six romeo, over,” a voice responded. Ramsey sighed with relief. His connection to civilization was intact.

“This is Bushmaster six, get me your zero-six, over.” The romeo, the radio operator at the other end, told him to wait. Ramsey looked at Abe, who was watching his team prepare their position. He had gained respect for the man over the past five days. Abe had so willingly given them the information about the weapons-production plants that he believed the man to be telling the truth as he knew it. Abe’s help with the radio had been instrumental both in contacting the outside world and maintaining faltering morale in his team.

“This is Bravo six,” Captain Garrett’s voice came back, “good to hear from you. We’ve been trying to contact you.”

“This is Bushmaster six. Yeah. We have some enemy hot on our trail. We lost another man,” Ramsey said.

“Christ. Chuck, this is Zachary,” he responded. They were emotionally connected, Garrett and Ramsey, two West Point classmates finally recognizing each other in the midst of an impossible situation. It was only natural that they forgo proper radio procedures and share a moment of friendship. It
was
lonely at the top, and sometimes leaders needed reassurance.

“I know. I’m glad it’s you down here. Any luck with that helicopter?” Chuck asked, hopefully.

“He’s on the way. He departed our area about an hour ago and will try to island hop and steal gas until he can reach you. We’ve moved. Like I said before, this whole place is under attack by Abu Sayyaf. We can still hear fighting down in Olongapo. I know you’re sucking, man,” Zachary said.

“Okay,” Chuck said, hopeful. “Any way to predict when he’ll be here?”

“Couple of days at the worst. If he’s lucky, about twenty-four hours.”

“Okay. I think we can hold out. Zachary …”

“Yeah.”

“If I don’t have a chance later … thanks. I know you could use that Black Hawk. You didn’t have to send it.”

“I’ll see you in a couple of days, and we’ll drink a San Miguel and go chase bar girls,” Zachary said, Slick looking at him with a smile, hopeful that he could go too.

“Listen, I’ve got some important intelligence that you need to get to your higher. I can’t seem to get bird sixty-five right now, so you have to relay this information, over.”

“Send it,” Zachary said.

“We have captured a Japanese engineer who has been working in a weapons-production plant on the island of Mindanao for the past six months, break,” Chuck said, taking a moment to spit some smokeless tobacco from his bearded lips.

“We found him jogging in an orange running suit. He said that there are four production facilities on Mindanao. Three produce tanks and helicopters and the other produces small arms and ammunition, over.”

A long moment of silence ensued. He assumed the commander was copying.

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Zachary responded.

“I kid you not. What I need to know is, were there any tanks or helicopters in the Abu Sayyaf attack this morning?”

“None that I saw. We captured about ten enemy, and they all had new M4s and M16s. Hell, we just got those M4s a couple of years ago ourselves,” Zachary responded.

“Yeah. I know what you’re talking about. Listen, I’ve got about a battalion of insurgents hot on my ass. Just get that information to your higher headquarters. Then we won’t have died in vain over here. Gotta run, out,” Ramsey said without emotion.

CHAPTER 58

Subic Bay, Luzon Island, Philippines

Zachary dropped the hand holding the radio handset into his lap and stared into the darkness. His company position was facing west on the slope of the rain forest just north of Subic Bay. The hopelessness of Ramsey’s situation perversely gave him optimism. His father had always told him never to feel sorry for himself, because somewhere somebody had it worse than he did.

Immediately, Zachary called the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division (Light) headquarters in Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. He had Slick angle the small SCAMP dish between a saddle in the mountains behind them. He had positive contact with bird 65.

He contacted the headquarters and passed the message to a tired young lieutenant pulling shift duty in the early-morning hours. The International Date Line separated Hawaii and the Philippines, but in reality the time difference was only six hours. For Zachary in the Philippines, it was 2200 hours, yet for the lieutenant in the division operations center, a rather monotonous duty, it was 0400 hours of the same day. The old joke was that someone could fly from Manila to Hawaii and get there before they left.

The lieutenant assured Zachary that he had the message. Zach had asked him to repeat the message, but the lieutenant would not respond. Zachary presumed that he had raced to the division commander with the information.

However, in typical fashion, he had scribbled some shorthand notes, something about finding some old Japanese weapons on a Philippine island. He relayed the message to Captain Garrett’s battalion operations center, which was busy preparing for a massive deployment to Guam to begin establishing an intermediate staging base for possible combat operations. The officers and enlisted men of the unit would periodically gather around the television sets in the dayrooms and watch cable news, listening for the latest updates.

Japan had intervened, and it seemed that they were going to be able to get Captain Garrett’s company and all of the other Americans out of the Philippines. The only issue remaining concerned fighting the insurgents. The president had not committed himself yet, stating only that he would take whatever action was necessary to protect American lives.

The young private on radio watch in the battalion headquarters took the message from the sleepy division lieutenant. He found the message interesting and took it immediately to Lieutenant Colonel Buck, who was in his office stuffing a sleeping bag in his rucksack.

“Sir, division got a message from Captain Garrett about him finding some Japanese weapons,” the private reported. Lieutenant Colonel Buck, looking tired, stared at the private, waiting for the rest of the message.

“So tell me something important. What was it, an old World War II stock or something? Christ, the guy’s fighting for his life, and he calls us about old Jap weapons,” Buck said, shaking his head. “Thanks, Pitts,” he said to the young soldier.

Pitts saluted and went back to his post three offices down in the battalion headquarters. Officers were bustling about, filing deployment reports and coordinating the multitude of staff actions. The communications officer brought a white box into the operations center. “Just signed for this from division,” he said, seeming unsure as to its contents. The officer departed without further instructions.

The metal box had a white shoe tag on it that read scamp. Pitts being fresh out of communications school from Fort Gordon, Georgia, knew the acronym. It was a satellite radio. During crisis times, new and improved equipment seemed to creep out of the woodwork. Pitts, with nothing better to do, set the SCAMP into operation, and keyed the encryption variable into the encrypting port. He then ran onto the second-floor balcony of the operations center’s building and aimed the white metal box at bird 65, as he had been taught in the division communications refresher course.

“Lightning signal, this is Knight six romeo, communications check, over.”

“Knight six romeo, this is Lightning signal, keep all communications to a minimum, over,” came the lieutenant’s sleepy voice. Pitts was proud of himself though. He had set up the complex device with ease. He delighted in the fact that he had done so on his own initiative.

“Pitts, is that you?” a voice came over the radio. Pitts rubbed his shaved head. He recognized the voice. His best friend in basic training had been a young soldier named John Cane. They called him Slick because he considered himself such a ladies’ man.

“Pitts?”

“Slick?” he responded, both totally ignoring proper radio communications procedures.

“It is you!” Slick responded. He had been monitoring the radio and could hear Pitts as if he were only a kilometer away.

“Hey. Got your message,” Pitts said.

“Yeah. Some pretty wild shit, isn’t it? Scary—”

“Get off the net!” The lieutenant’s voice overrode their improper conversation. The two privates gave a “roger, out” and each went about his business, Slick listening for word about a hoped for extraction of his company, and Pitts wondering what was scary about finding some old World War II Japanese weapons in the Philippines.

There were probably tons of them everywhere, he figured.

CHAPTER 59

Mindanao Island, Philippines

Major Ramsey saw the first man enter the engagement area slowly. He was glad to see them attacking at night. It meant that they still did not know they were fighting Americans. Or if they did, they were stupid. The insurgents, to his knowledge, had no night-vision goggles. Chuck Ramsey’s team did. All except Abe. Ramsey had given Jones’s goggles to Eddie, who had become an indispensable member of the team now. Eddie held down the pivot position in the L-shaped ambush. He would be firing diagonally across the engagement area.

Looking through his goggles, Ramsey saw three infrared chemical lights glowing softly. Invisible to the naked eye, they were clearly evident through the goggles. The lights were positioned perpendicular to Eddie’s line of fire. Benson had tacked the three lights to tall bushes along the main trail cutting across the open field to be used as fire-control measures. When the lead member of the enemy patrol reached the last light, Ramsey would initiate the ambush with a claymore. The other two lights helped divide the engagement area into sectors of fire to avoid redundancy of killing. The five men positioned along the top portion of the L, facing downhill, would fire between the two lights farthest away, almost directly down the hill. The other six men would fire along the slope of the hill, directly across the frontage of Ramsey’s position. That would produce an effective cross fire that might, once and for all, get this particular enemy off his ass.

By then a four-man patrol was at the second light, directly in the middle of the engagement area. Ramsey could see a man feeling his way with one hand in the darkness, ensuring no branches or twigs caught his eye. He looked like a blind man, groping his way through an unfamiliar room. Soon, he
would
be blind, Ramsey thought to himself.