The Philippines
Present Day
The sun slowly crept below the green hills surrounding a small camp nestled against the banks of the swollen Cagayan River. Long shadows slid along the ground, soon covering the encampment, as the once-bright world turned to dusk. With night approaching, the jungle slowly came to life. Creatures called to one another, filling the air with a cacophony of noise.
Jennifer March stepped out of the large, green, military-style tent that she and several other people had been using as a makeshift office. She paused, with her hands on her hips, and took in the symphony of the night before running a hand through her short, caramel-colored hair. She was reminded that she hadn’t had a decent shower in over a week, and was not likely to get another one for a few more. Baggy, khaki-colored shorts and a loose-fitting shirt hid her lithe physique. After brushing some dirt off her arms, Jen began to wonder if she would ever feel clean again.
Just shy of thirty, Jennifer March had recently thrown herself into her work with a renewed passion and vigor to avoid having to deal with the messy implosion of her two-year relationship with an older colleague. It had been comfortable at first, but ultimately it was doomed. Jen wanted to know that it was going somewhere; her boyfriend would always avoid the issue whenever she raised it. One day, six months ago, she’d had enough. She packed her bags, moved back in with her mother in Charlotte, North Carolina, and refused to talk with anyone about her decision to leave. At the expense of everything else, her work had now become the only focus in her life.
Three months ago, a local farmer who was clearing the land along the riverbank to plant crops for his family stumbled upon the mangled wreckage of what could only be an old military transport plane. After many calls to the authorities and various scholars, the plane was identified by a professor from the University of Luzon. The wreckage was unmistakably the remains of an old U.S. Dakota transport plane that had crashed sometime during the Second World War. Having lost numerous planes to probable mechanical breakdowns or enemy action during the war over the Philippines, the U.S. State Department financed the dig. They were eager to identify the exact plane and to repatriate the remains of any U.S. servicemen killed in the crash.
Forensic archaeology was far from Jen’s field of expertise, but when the original team leader went down with appendicitis a day before the team of grad students was scheduled to leave, Jen volunteered to step up, but only if she was allowed time off from teaching to write a book about their findings.
When they arrived in the capital of Luzon, Jen and her gang of a dozen graduate students was met at the airport by her counterpart on the dig, Professor Carlos Laurel. Laurel was a large and jovial man who wore pop-bottle glasses and a constant smile on his broad face. Jen and Laurel instantly hit it off, and a strong bond soon developed between the two disparate groups of students living and working shoulder to shoulder in the heat and humidity of the Philippine jungle.
Her stomach rumbled loudly, reminding Jen that once again she had worked straight through lunch. She turned in the direction of the communal mess, walked over, and joined a short lineup that consisted of local workers mixed in with Filipino and American grad students, all loudly chatting away like a gang of old friends. When she saw the meal, she cringed. Chicken, rice, and steamed vegetables. Again. With a weak smile on her face, Jen grabbed her food and found a seat in the far corner of the mess tent. She dug out a small black notebook from a pocket in her shorts, and reviewed her day’s work while she picked away at her unexciting meal.
“May I join you?” said a voice with a strong Filipino accent.
Professor Laurel stood beside Jen’s table, with a heaping tray of food. With a quick smile, she motioned for him to join her.
“A good day, wouldn’t you say?” said Laurel, as he chewed a heaping forkful of rice.
“Oh yes, very much so,” Jen replied, thumbing through her notebook. “The serial numbers on the engine block will identify which missing plane it could possibly be. I emailed the photos taken this afternoon of the engine, along with its serial number, to the Department of Defense. I suspect that by tomorrow morning, we should have a flight manifest of those U.S. and Filipino service personnel who are still listed as missing on the flight. From there, we can go about expanding the search for the remains, if any have survived this long.”
“The jungle is not too kind on the dead. If the local animals did not cart off the remains after the crash, then they would have decomposed very quickly in this humid climate. For the families’ sake, I hope we do find something that can be returned home and buried with some dignity,” said Laurel.
Jen thought about Laurel’s words for a moment. “Amen to that.” She was about to go over her thoughts about the next day’s dig with Laurel, when a small, lean, bespectacled Asian-American girl wearing a tight-fitting Lady GaGa world tour T-shirt walked over to their table, holding a plate with nothing but vegetables on it.
“Can I join you two, or is this not business talk?” asked Alanis Kim, looking down at the empty spot at the table.
Jen shrugged her shoulders; Laurel did not even bother to look up from his food.
Kim slipped down onto the chair and cleaned her cutlery with a napkin before cutting up some broccoli. “Oh, I hope I wasn’t intruding?” she said.
Jen shook her head. She had noticed that Kim had an overly active imagination, and had become the de facto team gossip. Nothing escaped her vigilance. An innocent smile or friendly wave at an associate was instantly turned into the latest romance or secret affair between seemingly unconnected colleagues, all of which was recorded and posted on Facebook and Twitter for the world to read.
“You should really slow down when you eat,” Kim lectured, as she watched Laurel clean his plate until not a scrap remained.
A loud belch escaped Laurel’s mouth. He patted his belly and smiled over at the horrified student.
“You should eat more,” said Laurel. “You might be able to attract a man if you put some weight on. I like my women with a bit of meat on them.”
Kim scrunched up her nose at the thought. “I guess that takes Professor March out of the equation, then.”
“Kim, really,” admonished Jen, shaking her head at the graduate student’s inappropriate remarks.
“I have a beautifully round girlfriend waiting for me in Manila,” said Laurel, with a warm, unconcerned smile on his face. “I’m going to get a coffee and perhaps some cake. Can I get you two beautiful ladies anything?” he asked, rising from the creaking table.
Both women asked for a cup of green tea, but no cake. Laurel nodded and went off to fetch the order. A moment later, Laurel returned and handed a piece of cake heaped with icing to Kim with a smile on his face that said, you had better enjoy it.
They spent the rest of the evening discussing the next day’s plans and goals. Feeling fatigued, Jen turned in early and was out seconds after her head hit the pillow.
The next morning began like any other. There was a quick, chaotic breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs, followed immediately by the daily brief from Professor Laurel on the activities ahead, which to Jen always seemed more like a sermon. After that, the students broke down into their respective teams and went about the painstaking work of carefully excavating the crash site.
As Jen had predicted, an email was waiting on her computer in the morning from the DOD. It was the manifest of the doomed flight known by its call sign, Whiskey-35. Jen skimmed the document and saw that seven American and five Filipino servicemen had been on the plane when it disappeared over the jungle on March 3, 1945. The plane had been bound for Manila, but when it failed to arrive on time, a search was initiated. After two weeks of fruitless effort, the search was called off, and the plane was officially listed as missing.
That was, until today.
Jen smiled to herself; things were going as planned. She quickly printed off a couple of copies of the flight manifest—one for herself, the other for Professor Laurel—and stepped out from the d
ingy tent into the bright morning sunlight. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses and headed off into the already humid morning to look for Laurel and share her news.
The crash site was marked off with yellow barrier tape, in the rough shape of an airplane. All around the dig, students and local workers toiled side by side; most had grown used to the stifling heat and humidity that seemed to envelop the site throughout the long day.
Jen soon found Laurel, his head down, looking over some mangled remains that vaguely looked like a plane’s steering wheel. She looked at the bent wheel and wondered how the men had felt in the last seconds before the crash, knowing they were going to die. A cold shiver ran down her spine. Shaking the morbid thoughts from her mind, Jen handed Laurel a copy of the flight manifest. Together, they began to discuss the next step in trying to find the crew’s remains, when an excited voice called out. Jen and Laurel trotted over to the site of the commotion. A group of students and locals were huddled around a shallow hole. Gently prying the people apart, Jen and Laurel stepped down into the depression. The smell of freshly dug earth wafted in the air.
“What do you have there, Joseph?” Laurel said to one of his students.
“Professor, I found this,” said the student, as he held up a pair of rusty-looking military identification discs.
Laurel took them in his large hand and reverently examined the discs. “Where exactly did you find these?” asked Laurel, his voice serious.
“Right here, sir,” said Joseph, pointing to a recently uncovered patch of dark earth.
Laurel bent over, his large frame blocking the dig from view. Brushing more dirt aside, Laurel found a pair of broken glasses embedded in the earth. He picked them up and stared down at the distorted shape.
“My God, do you think we have found one of our missing soldiers?” asked Jen, peering down at the objects in Laurel’s meaty hand.
Laurel stood and looked around at the anxious crowd of students peering at him. “These items belonged to one Sergeant Thomas Henry. He is one of the crewmen listed as missing on the flight manifest, so we have the first evidence of remains from the crash. Now, the real work begins.”
A murmur raced through the crowd of onlookers.
“What are you all doing standing around and gawking?” said Laurel with a huff, as he helped himself out of the hole. “Come on, everyone, there’s still plenty of work to be done before the sun goes down tonight.”
With that, the crowd broke up and everyone went back to work, excitedly discussing the find.
Laurel reverently handed Jen the dirt-covered items and headed off to supervise another part of the dig.
Jen stood there, staring down at the mangled pieces of metal in her hand, and wondered who Sergeant Henry was, and if he still had any living relatives back in the States. She was about to return to her tent to catalog the find when the sound of automatic gunfire tore through the air. Jen flinched at the noise and turned to look in the direction of the shots.
Screams filled the air. A young man, his hand held to a bloody wound on his head staggered past Jen. His eyes were full of terror.
More gunfire suddenly erupted from another direction.
Jen froze in her tracks. She did not know which way to turn. People were panicking all around her, running, screaming, and crying as they were forced toward the center of the camp.
A man wearing an ill-fitting camouflage uniform emerged from behind a tent and fired a burst into the air. With a crooked smile, he walked forward, a rusted AK-47 clenched tightly in his hands.
“You, that way!” yelled the man at Jen, as he pointed toward the camp’s mess tent.
Jen stood there, wide-eyed, staring down the barrel of the still-smoking AK.
“Now,” said the man, raising the assault rifle until it was aimed at Jen’s head.
Jen instantly snapped out of her stupor and darted for the mess tent, stumbling over the body of one of their local workers, a ragged bloody hole in his back. Her mind shrieked in horror at the sight, but Jen fought to stifle a scream as she joined the mass of sobbing and terrified students corralled in the mess tent.
A minute after it had begun it was all over. An uneasy silence filled the camp.
Jen sat at a crowded table like everyone else; her hands were locked together on top of her head. It was truly an uncomfortable position, but Jen dared not move. The last student who did got a rifle butt to the head for his troubles. Jen saw that the men guarding them were mainly dressed in rags and old uniforms, and wondered if they were anti-government rebels. She was confused; she had been told the area was safe. Surreptitiously looking around, Jen searched for Professor Laurel. He wasn’t among them. She closed her eyes and silently prayed that somehow, he had managed to get away to warn the authorities. A moment later, her hopes were crushed as a dead body was dragged along the red dirt path between the rows of tents, a hole blasted in its skull. Jen’s heart skipped a beat when she saw that it was Laurel. A couple of younger girls screamed and broke out crying at the sight of the professor’s bloodstained body.
Jen bit her lip. She had to do something, but what? She was at a loss; she had never been so scared in her entire life, but she knew that somehow she had to fight the fear and stay calm. With this many American and Filipino students in one place together, someone would inevitably be coming to help them—she hoped.
The tent doors opened. A man in immaculately pressed camouflage fatigues entered the tent. He stood a solid six feet tall, with wide, powerful shoulders, short blond hair, and unforgiving, dark-blue eyes. A cold-blooded killer’s eyes, thought Jen. This was a man to be feared. He was unlike the others; they were Filipino, while he was white and looked European to Jen. The man stopped in front of the frightened group, dug out his cell phone from his pocket and made a quick call. Once done, he put the phone away and fished out a piece of paper.
“Good day. My name is David Teplov, and you are all now under my protection. There has been some trouble in the local area, and I have been dispatched to bring you all to a safe location,” said the man in Russian-accented English.
“But you murdered Professor Laurel,” protested one of the local workers.
“If you speak another word, I will make sure that you join him,” Teplov replied, with a cold, lizard-like smile, as he looked out over the crowd of terrified faces.
The once-defiant worker turned his head away and tried hiding behind a student.
“Now, let’s all be civil about this. I want to see Miss Jennifer March,” said Teplov.
Fear gripped Jen’s stomach. Why did they want her and not someone else?
For a moment, no one moved.
Teplov looked over the crowd and shook his head. With lightning-fast reflexes, he drew a Russian-made, MP-446 9mm semi-automatic pistol, walked straight to Alanis Kim, and jammed the gun into the petrified girl’s face. “Stand up now, or I will blow this girl’s brains all over the ground!” snarled Teplov.
Kim whimpered in fear and tried to pull her face away from the cold barrel pressed against her glistening forehead.
Teplov tightened his grip. Kim screamed.
Jen stood, staring at the killer. “I’m Jennifer March. Please don’t hurt her. I’m begging you. You have me. Now please, put your pistol away.”
Teplov smiled as he slowly pulled his pistol away from Kim’s terrified face, placed it back in its holster, and looked over at Jen. “There now, that’s better.”
“What could you possibly want with me?” said Jen, looking around at the worried faces of the students and locals alike.
“That is not important right now. I have a vehicle waiting at the edge of the camp for you,” said Teplov with a wave of his hand. “As for the others, they will be joining you shortly, once a couple more of my trucks arrive.”
Jen stood there, not believing a word. The look in the killer’s cold eyes told her that he could not be trusted. She could not just leave the students there; they were all looking to her for leadership, now that Professor
Laurel was dead. She tried playing for time, hoping that by some miracle, someone would come and help them. “I have your word that my people will be unharmed if I come with you?” Jen asked, as she locked eyes with Teplov.
“Miss March, I have not given you my word, not once, but if it will make you come with me, then you have it,” Teplov said, an artificial smile on his face.
Jen knew she had no choice. Even though she felt as if she were condemning everyone to certain death, she nodded. She walked out of the tent without saying another word, Teplov motioning her to an idling, beat-up, old-looking, military-style Humvee. A couple more Humvees sat waiting at the far end of the camp. A young man wearing a red beret, green shorts and nothing else opened the rear passenger door of the lead Humvee. Jen felt the man’s leering gaze. She ignored the mercenary and held her head high as she silently climbed into the back of the vehicle.
Teplov barked some orders in Tagalog, the local language, to the men guarding the students, and climbed in the passenger side of the vehicle. He looked back at his hostage. “Hang on, the road out of here is a little bumpy,” he said with a grin.
Jen stared back at him; she might have been scared out of her mind, but there was no way that she was going to let him see it in her eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest and sat back with as defiant of a look on her face as she could muster.
Teplov laughed loudly, turned around, and motioned to his driver to go.
As the vehicle slowly left camp, Jen looked out of the window at the people she was leaving behind. She prayed that Teplov would keep his word and not harm anyone else, but deep down, Jen knew that he was probably going to kill them all.
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