by Tom Kratman
“I won’t tire of this, Daoud,” Lox said, once the electricity cut off and the Pakistani slumped, quivering, to the bare mesh of the naval bunk to which he’d been tied. “And the pain won’t end, for either you or Mahmood, until I have the name of that ship and the name of its owner. And both stories match.”
“You’ll kill me either way,” the assistant wept.
“Not necessarily,” Lox lied. “But, tell you what; if you don’t tell us, not only will your agony go on indefinitely, but when we do kill you, we’ll change you into a woman, first. You’ve seen our medical department, haven’t you?”
God, that hack was an evil, evil man. Hmmm . . . maybe I shouldn’t have loaned that book to Madame.
Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,
Republic of the Philippines
Eighty-three surviving Harrikat sat, wrists and feet bound, in the sand. A bit over half of them were wounded, some more or less seriously. Nobody from the detachment had bothered with giving them any medical care. This wasn’t, or at least not directly, because of what they’d done to Mr. Ayala. No, it was that, given what they’d done to their prisoner, what Mrs. Ayala was probably going to do to the survivors would be such a nightmare that dying of untreated wounds would be a mercy.
Mrs. Ayala was already on the beach when the Philippine Navy landing craft, bearing both the number 296 and a considerable resemblance to the U.S. Army’s Runnymede Class, dropped its ramp to disgorge Captain Ramos and his hundred and eighty-odd Philippine Marines. A Philippine Air Force helicopter would be along shortly to pick up and transport Mr. Ayala to St. Luke’s, in Quezon City. The rescued women and children would be transferred by the LCM to the Philippine craft later on.
The Army’s Scout Ranger Regiment would be credited with the actual rescue, even though they weren’t sending anybody at all until sometime next week. The Filipino Armed Forces had more in common with the U.S. Armed Forces than a bit of history prior to and during the Second World War. Wouldn’t do not to let every service branch have its share in the glory, after all. M Day, on the other hand, didn’t care who got the credit, so long as it wasn’t them. At least for the time being.
The captain reported in to Madame, saluting very formally even though she was a civilian in no official capacity. Ramos had been told by his colonel to do whatever she said, which sounded fairly official to him. He’d also gotten the message to bring an engineering kit, some heavy duty lumber, and a lot of rather large nails.
The captain didn’t know, but strongly suspected, that he and his company had been chosen because of his vitriolic hatred not just for Moro separatists, but Moros, in general. Ramos had had also been told that, whatever the facts on the ground, he and his men were going to get credit for rescuing over a hundred Christian women and children from Harrikat slavery . . . provided, of course, that he and they kept his mouth shut about what really happened
I can do that easy, thought Ramos. My men? Well, for a while, anyway. Maybe longer. The big lie works best, they say.
The Bland’s own LCM was waiting, and had been from a couple of hours before, when the Filipino LCU dropped ramp. The body bags holding Feeney and Hallinan, the helicopter crew, and nine of Stocker’s men were already aboard. Semmerlin, still better than half deaf, had been found sitting over the corpses of the two who’d gone looking for him. Psychologically, he seemed in a pretty bad way. He, too, was already aboard the LCM along with several hundred weapons, both M Day’s, now gone redundant, plus a large stockpile from the Harrikat. They were kept very separate.
Stocker told his acting first sergeant, Moore, to, “get the men out of the tree line and onto the boat. Don’t pull the guards out, though, until the Filipinos take over, formally.”
“Yes, sir,” Moore had answered.
While Moore trotted off to take care of that, Stocker, wet, filthy, and stinking from hunting the Harrikat, walked over to make any final arrangements with the Filipino captain.
Madame waited to speak until the last of the Kanos had sailed off in their boat. So nice it was of Peter to lend me that book, she thought. It was so full of such wonderful ideas. Even if the author is apparently some kind of communist.
Her speech to the surviving Harrikat was partially borrowed, partially her own. She said, in effect, “You all know what you did to my husband. You all know that you’re going to die. But, since I am a Christian, I am very solicitous of your souls. So before you die you are all going to be thoroughly Christianized.” Her hand went to the gold cross at her neck.
“I don’t suppose any of you would care to save your lives by identifying your leader?”
Janail, tied like the rest and mixed in with the rest, his face half hidden by a dirty bandage and some blood borrowed from one of the dead, stiffened for a moment, until he realized that none of his men were going to turn traitor. Fools. I’d have sold you out in a heartbeat.
Seeing not one of the prisoners was going to take her up on her offer, she said, “Good. I wouldn’t have spared you anyway.”
Then, turning to Ramos, she said, “Crucify them. Here. In the sun. Start with their wounded. I don’t want any of them to die before they feel the nails.”
At about the time the fifth of the Moro prisoners was being nailed to one of the crosses assembled by the Philippine Marines, a small and very young girl walked out of the jungle and toward Paloma. The inside of the girl’s thighs were bloodstained. She carried a knife in her hand.
The old woman seemed to be in charge. Maria walked right up to her and asked, “Can I watch?”
Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City, Metro Manila,
Republic of the Philippines
The sign out front read:
General Headquarters
Armed Forces of the Philippines
The sign fronted an almost full length shelter from the rain out in front of the broad, mainly two story headquarters of the Philippine Armed Forces. Terry and Aida didn’t see that, though. After Jake landed them in a nearby field, they were picked up by a long limousine with dark glass, whisked around the building, and shunted in through a side door. There a lieutenant colonel of the Philippine Air Force met them, then led them to the mahogany-paneled office of the Chief of Staff, a khaki clad General Delfin Santos.
Welch towered over Santos almost as much as he did over Aida. Still, the general didn’t seem overly impressed, and was certainly unintimidated. Welch, himself, was at least mildly impressed at that.
After shaking hands, and giving a slight bow to Aida, Santos waved his hand at a couch and several chairs surrounding a coffee table set in an alcove to one side of his massive desk.
“Before we get to whatever it is the Ayala Clan asked me to discuss with you,” Santos said, “I want to extend my personal appreciation to you and your organization . . . Maj . . . Mr. Welch, for freeing our people.”
The general’s English was, predictably, excellent, and his thanks seemed sincere. Even so, he seemed embarrassed. It should have been our own, freeing our own, Santos thought. What is wrong with our country that we have to rely on foreigners?
Terry nodded, saying, “We were glad to do it.” Though, in retrospect, I probably wouldn’t—no, I wouldn’t—have traded Kirkpatrick for them, if I’d known in advance that that was the price.
“I understand you took losses,” Santos said.
“A few,” Welch admitted. Reticence was habit; in the organizations in his military background, casualties were never admitted to in any detail. Santos didn’t press for names or numbers. His special operations forces were about the same, admission of casualties-wise.
“My condolences, again. Now, what was it you wanted?” And didn’t Mrs. Ayala say to give you whatever it was?
Welch pulled out from a satchel a report from Lox concerning the interrogation of Mahmood and Daoud. This he handed over to Santos.
“The important part is the first paragraph,” Terry said.
Santos read, his eyes widening in fury as he did. “They .
. . those fucking animals . . . in Manila? How can I believe this? I can’t; it’s beyond belief.”
Terry passed over the videos made of the interrogation, one for each of the prisoners. “Here’s proof,” he said.
Aida added, “General, I was there for part of the interrogation.” Lox had deliberately kept her out of the more painful parts. “I’ve read the report and I’ve reviewed the tapes. It’s all true. The Harrikat was going to use the money from Lucio Ayala’s ransom to buy two nuclear weapons from the Russian, Prokopchenko. One of those was going to be used on a smaller city here on Luzon. The other was going to be hidden in Manila and used if we didn’t accede to the Harrikat’s demands to withdraw from Mindanao.
“They would have killed tens, hundreds of thousands. Possibly millions.”
“So far as we know,” Welch said, “Prokopchenko still has the weapons aboard his yacht, the Resurrection. Since he really doesn’t need the money, we think he has some other political objective in selling them. You may still be a target.”
His normally olive face gone pale, Santos said, “We’ll find that yacht.”
“And take it?” Welch supplied. “Recommend against. There’s no necessary outside limit to what the Russians will do to keep news of this out of the press. And they have an interest in recovering their weapons.”
“So?”
“Inform them and let them handle it,” Welch advised. “They’re not barbarians. And they’re not incompetent or, at least, their own special operations forces are not. Bloody minded and ruthless? Yes. Incompetent? No. And they have a reach, even close to here, that you cannot match. They can find the yacht in a matter of minutes to hours, and be on it in mere hours after that. You’ll still be looking for it a month from now.”
Uncertainly, Santos said, “I will consider it, Mr. Welch. And, one thousand times more than before, you and your people have our thanks. What about the men who gave you this information?”
“We can turn them over to you, if you want them,” Welch said. “If not, they’ll be shot this evening and their bodies will be dumped at sea.”
Aida flinched. She’d known that it was coming but . . . it was so contrary to the law she’d devoted her life to upholding that it grated on her soul.
“Yes, just go ahead and shoot them,” Santos said. He looked intently at Welch’s face. “There’s more?”
“Yes, General,” Terry admitted. “I have a problem with one of your local gangs, TCS. I would like your permission to handle it myself, and your guarantee that the Philippine Armed Forces will take a hands off approach while we settle matters.”
Santos’s gaze turned to Aida.
“He doesn’t want to admit it,” she said, “because it’s painful. TCS grabbed four of his men, killing another one in the taking. One of the four they’ve already hanged like a dog and sent a video. They’re demanding ransom. Mr. Welch intends to recover his own men and destroy the gang in Tondo. When he says, “destroy,” he doesn’t mean hurt. He means destroy.” God, haven’t I seen that already?
“You want to launch an attack on our people on our soil?” Santos sounded somewhere between incredulous and infuriated.
“Are they your people?” Welch asked. “Are they really yours when they deny any respect for or obligation to your own laws, your own citizenship, and your own country? Is it your soil, when your police have no authority there and TCS rules it like a private fiefdom?”
“I’ve thought about it a lot, General,” Aida added. “I’ve been with the police most of my life, now, either active or semi-retired with special duties. I’ve thought about it even more since Mr. Welch and his people arrived.
“General . . . civilization requires police. But equally police require civilization. If there is no civilization, if there is only barbarism, with no law that is widely respected, the police are powerless. And you know the politicos won’t let your people do anything about it.”
“Soldiers can’t build civilization, either,” Welch said. “But, when allowed, we can destroy barbarism so that civilization can grow, or at least survive. That’s what I’m asking, General. Let me and my men destroy some of the barbarism that’s grown up here.
“And then we’ll get out of your hair.”
“But this . . . ? It’s sure to come out,” Santos objected.
“Actually,” said Aida, “we have a trick for that.”
MV Richard Bland east of Caban Island
“So what are we going to do with the hooker?” asked Graft. “Terry said it was up to us.”
“I say we string the cunt up,” Malone replied, “just like Zimmerman.”
There was a general chorus of agreement on that, not least from Zimmerman’s closest comrades.
“She’s not entitled to a trial, at least?” asked Lox.
The men of A Company generally ignored that, except to boo it down. What was a trial to them?
“What are you bitching about, Lox?” Malone asked. “You had the bitch spread-eagled on a table, naked, with electrodes to her tits and clit.”
“Yeah, I did,” Lox agreed. “Wish to hell I hadn’t. Going to be a long time before I forget about that. Going to be a long time before I sleep easy again, if I ever do.”
Lox focused on Malone, intently. “So . . . Malone,” he asked, “you going to put the rope around her neck? She’s tall but she doesn’t weigh much; you going to haul her up? I’m not going to help you. You want to watch her kick? Watch her face turn blue while she gags and tries to puke through the rope? You going to get under her once you tie the rope off so you can enjoy the smell of her shit when she lets loose her bowels?
“Or are you just trying to divert attention from the fact that you fucked up, hmmm?”
Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,
Republic of the Philippines
The Philippine Navy landing craft was gone for the time being, bringing the freed slaves back home. It would return in a day or two to extract the Marines, as well.
Paloma Ayala ran fingers through her long hair, culling from it some of the grains of sand the wind had blown up. She sat under an awning put up by her Marines, a defense against the fierce sun overhead. Beside her, in the sand, sat a young girl, apparently much abused. She seemed to be enjoying the spectacle even more than Paloma, herself, was.
Mrs. Ayala’s eyes gazed with satisfaction on the small forest in front of her. There was no trace of pity in them, any more than the Harrikat had shown pity or mercy to her husband. Paloma has asked Maria if she could identify the leader, but the girl answered, no, that she’d never really gotten a good look at him.
When one of the Marines approached to disarm the girl of her knife, Paloma ordered him away. She was quite sure the girl would never harm her with the blade. What she was going to do with the girl she wasn’t nearly as certain of.
But I think maybe I can make good use of someone who hates the Moros as badly as she does.
There were eighty-three crosses fixed upright on the beach. From each, by nails through wrists and heels, hung a man or a corpse. Most still lived, only those badly wounded previously having passed on.
The screaming and the begging were over now. If any man still had energy left, it was only to moan, to weep, and to extend his own life at the cost of much pain.
Janail wasn’t so much a man any more as a thing of pain. Pain was everywhere. It was where his wrists had been penetrated by the nails. It was in every nerve that passed by those wounds, extending from his fingers to his shoulders. It was in the bones of his heels where the nails held him fast to the post, the stirpes. It ran from his toes to his thighs. It was every cramped muscle in between, as well. It was an agony in his lungs, struggling to breathe under the strain on his chest.
It was in Janail’s mind, because he knew there would be no relief from the agony until he died. Perhaps worst of all, it was an agony both mental and moral, arising from a kind of moral confusion, as he prayed for death, to a god in which he did not believe, even
as his cramped and aching legs pushed up against the piercing nails to relieve his chest and extend his life.
And it had only been six hours. Janail had at least another sixty to endure.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
One of the tests of the civilization of people
is the treatment of its criminals.
—Rutherford B. Hayes
TCS Headquarters, Tondo, Manila, Republic of the Philippines
Diwata was already mentally selecting the next candidate for hanging, later in the day, when she got the call. “I have the money,” said the voice she associated with Terry.
“I’ll call you back in two hours,” she answered, then hung up. Picking up her own phone, she called Lucas, telling him to report to her. He arrived at her office door in a matter of minutes.
“The Kanos are going to pay,” she said. “Set it up.”
“You going to call them for their initial instructions?” Lucas asked.
“Yes,” Diwata said. “I’ll tell them one car and one car only, no more than two men, and demand the make, model, color, and license plate. No weapons. I’ll also send them first to the Rizal monument, at the Luneta; make sure you outpost it to see if they’re trying to cheat. If they’re clean when they get to Rizal, you contact them directly afterwards for further instructions.”
Lucas nodded. It was a good choice for the purpose, open enough to see and crowded enough that his scout wouldn’t be noticed. “How long do you want me to run them ragged?” he asked.