by Tom Kratman
“Until after dark. We’ve done too many exchanges in the daytime. Time to vary things a bit, I think.”
“You think maybe they involved the police?” Lucas asked.
“Nah! Least of our worries.”
“You sure you want to give the three back?”
“Sure,” Diwata replied. “It’s just sound business practice to keep our word. We start acting like the Moros and people will stop paying and take their chances with something else.”
“Okay,” Lucas agreed. “I need a couple of hours to get security out.”
Safe House Alpha, Hagonoy, Bulacan, Luzon,
Republic of the Philippines
Terry had never really expected to lay eyes on the place again. But it was there. It was safe. And it still had a couple of vehicles, now reinforced by several more, that Lox hadn’t felt obliged to burn. The whole area still stank of smoke and gasoline where Lox had torched two of the vehicles and three of the outbuildings.
Welch and Graft stood side by side. Around them, to their front, were another sixteen men of Alpha Company, in four teams of four. All wore mufti, though there was, in the semicircle of vehicles behind the teams, enough equipment for a small army.
Welch and Graft weren’t obviously armed, though each had a pistol under his light suit jacket. Graft’s weapon was in a shoulder holster. Welch had his in a high waist holster, from which he’d been practicing an initially awkward quick draw for quite some time.
The others sported a mix of weapons, though each team had one .510 caliber Whisper rifle, a .338 Lapua, a light machine gun—because, as Graft had said, “Ya never know, boss, when you might need one”—and a suppressed submachine gun. The light machine guns, Whispers, and Lapuas were equipped with thermal scopes, while the team leaders, carrying the submachine guns, wore goggles. Under their mufti, Welch and Graft wore body armor of the highest quality. The others did not, given that their mission would require a certain lightness on their feet.
Each vehicle also contained a laptop with an integral GPS, wireless and with a brand new sim card. Welch and Graft were wired for sound, with a long range radio, earpiece, and button mike. The others were similarly equipped, except that their microphones were of the boom variety.
Welch’s and Graft’s car had a leather satchel on the floor of the passenger seat. The satchel had been stuffed nearly to bursting with cash. What they hadn’t been able to do with their own bank draft had become easy, though too late for Zimmerman, once the Ayala payment was released from escrow. The back also contained weapons and ammunition for Graft and Welch, plus enough to rearm Benson, Perez, and Washington, should that prove necessary.
The phone rang, the panel showing Benson’s number as the caller. Welch held up a single fist for absolute silence, then answered it. “This is Terry.”
Diwata relayed her instructions.
Terry answered with, “Late model Suzuki Jimny, silver. License plate is TIM three nine eight.”
She then asked, “Do you have any questions?”
“No, none,” Terry replied.
“Good.” The cell went dead.
“Lox, can you hear me?” Welch asked.
“Got you, Terry,” answered Lox, sitting in the RPV’s control station with his injured leg propped up on a cabinet. Aida was with him.
“My destination is Rizal Monument.”
“That’s on the coast, just southwest of Central Old Manila,” Aida said. “You’ll be passing within a couple of miles of where your men are likely being held.”
“Will they make the exchange there?” Welch asked.
“Not a chance,” Aida said.
“Okay. Lox, take control of the teams and get them somewhere not too far, and not too obvious.”
“I’m sending them roughly to the four curves of Santa Ana Racetrack,” Lox sent. “Gentlemen, if you’ll check your laptops you will see your four destinations.”
“Good luck, everybody. Remember, weapons free is if I throw them the bag and our people are known present, or when I draw. If I pass it to them or place it on the ground? Hold your fire.
“Let’s go.”
Rizal Monument, Manila, Republic of the Philippines
One hour and four minutes later, Graft turned the silver Suzuki onto Roxas Boulevard, passing the obvious obelisk of the Rizal Monument on his left. Past the obelisk, he turned left on Kalaw Street, and then left again to head northwest on Roxas. When the phone didn’t immediately ring, Welch directed him to circle the park. The Suzuki went right on Burgos, right again on Orosa, then took another right back onto Kalaw. Graft was just about to head northwest on Roxas again when the phone rang.
“My name is not important,” said a male voice. “Nagpayong Ferry Station. You have half an hour.”
MV Richard Bland, Twenty-two miles Southwest of Corregidor, Manila Bay
The cranes, all three of them, were whining as Pearson reconfigured the containers aboard his ship for maximum feasible innocence of appearance. The CH-750’s were folded up, containerized, and struck below. The remaining MI-28, likewise, was partially disassembled and containerized. All the grunts were down below anyplace a customs official might look, except for a half dozen in merchant sailor dress.
He’d been careful, though, to leave the control station for the RPV up on the partial top level of shipping containers.
“Pity we can’t track the cell phones from here with the RPV,” said the pilot.
Lox responded, “Maybe No-Such-Agency can do that shit. Maybe. But it’s out of our league.”
“Yeah,” the pilot agreed. “Still a pity.”
Lox looked over at Aida, intently following the map displayed on the monitor. “Why the ferry, Aida?”
She shook her head. “Doubt it has anything to do with the ferry. It has to do with the lake?”
“Huh?”
Aida traced with her finger just above the screen. “Only two ways around it from there, south and east. South there are two roads for part of the way, but only one continues on past Los Baños. They’ll watch that one. The other’s a single road all the way. They’ll be watching that, too, in case a convoy follows, even at a distance.”
“Kinda clever,” Lox said.
“They didn’t get where they are by being stupid.”
“It’s maybe even more clever than they know.” Lox called Welch. “Boss, we have a problem. Rather, we’ve got two of them.” After explaining what Aida had seen, Lox added, “But they could try to make the trade on either the south of the lake, or the east of it. We need to split the teams up to cover both.”
“That’s pushing our margin of safety down pretty low,” Welch sent back.
“No shit, but I don’t see a lot of choice.”
“Any sign they’ve moved our people from their headquarters?” Terry asked.
The pilot shook his head. “I’ve been watching closely. Nothing like that on screen.”
“No, boss,” Lox replied.
“Yeah . . . crap. Okay, split them up, two each way.”
Los Baños, Laguna, Republic of the Philippines
“Go to the mahogany farm a mile west of Saint Anne College, Lucena,” said the man at the other end of the phone.
Terry was about to answer, “Okay,” when Aida piped in, in his earpiece, “You’re too calm. That’s suspicious. Act frustrated.”
Terry was about to answer her with a “Roger” when he remembered just who was still listening on the other end of the cell phone. He extemporized, “Will you fucking people make up your minds?”
“You ever want to see your people alive again, Kano,” said the voice, “you shut the fuck up and do what you’re told. The mahogany farm, one hour.”
MV Richard Bland, Twenty-two miles Southwest
of Corregidor, Manila Bay
“Are they going to make the switch at the mahogany farm?” Lox asked Aida.
“No way,” she said. “It’s much too soon.”
“Besides,” said the pilot, “they can�
��t make the switch until they take our people from their headquarters. As near as I can tell, they haven’t.”
“Aida,” Lox asked, “are you sure, absolutely sure, they’ll have been keeping our people at their headquarters in Tondo?”
“Absolutely?” She shook her head. “No. But everyone they’ve ever kidnapped before—that would talk to us, I mean; not all of them would—had the same story, a place—sometimes in the basement, sometimes on a different floor—with five or six mesh cages, and guards, that they were never moved from except to go to the bathroom and then right before the exchange. Every one of those that we’ve been able to track the route of, before they were exchanged, that route led back to Tondo, to their building.
“They’re not political, except in the sense that they’ve got de facto political control of Tondo. They’re not on the run. They don’t have people ready to betray them at a moment’s notice and, in Tondo, for sure, they don’t have our police looking for them or their victims.
“They’re their own country, at war with everyone else. That basement’s just a POW camp. And you don’t move POW’s just for the hell of it.”
MV Richard Bland, Five miles West of Tondo, Manila Bay
“I think I’ve got something,” said the pilot.
The only way to tell it was night outside was by the green screen on the pilot’s control board. Once the sun had set he’d switched out from his day camera to the nighttime version. In all that time, none of the three had moved from the container. Welch and Graft were now on the seventh leg of their ride to nowhere.
Lox and Aida rushed to the screen. A van was parked at one corner of the building, TCS headquarters, that took up an entire block of the subdivision. It was impossible to tell the color, given that the camera turned everything light colored a sort of pale green. White was Lox’s guess.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen something park that close to their headquarters all day,” the pilot said. “Nobody else had even tried.”
“They’ve got their enemies,” Aida said. “So they’re touchy about car bombs.”
“Where did the van come from?” Lox asked.
“No clue. One minute it wasn’t there and the next it was. And . . . oh, oh.”
Lox looked intently at the screen. A half a dozen of the locals, armed, were helping then prodding three much taller men into the back of a van. It was impossible to make out any detail, of course; the RPV was patrolling at a sufficient height to make hearing it impossible and seeing it almost so. Still . . .
“They’re walking like their hands are bound. And I’m pretty sure the short one is Benson. Also . . . two light skinned, one dark. That’s them.”
He called Terry. “Boss, they’re moving our people. Light van, possibly white. We’re going to follow with the RPV.”
“Roger.”
When they came aboard, having climbed a ladder from a harbor patrol boat that had taken station alongside, Pearson noticed that both the pilot and the customs officials were heavily tattooed. It wasn’t a surprise; Aida had briefed him already.
“Captain,” she’d said, “how do you suppose TCS grew as much as it did and is as well armed as it is? They took control of that part of the port long ago.”
The pilot did his job competently enough, guiding the ship to a smooth docking at the wharf next to Barangay One Twenty-nine. The customs men turned their tattooed faces to the totally fraudulent ship’s manifests presented by the captain. They’d figure their cut as the containers were unloaded. For now, they just needed to get a handle on what was there to take their cut from.
And what’s bizarre, thought Pearson, as the pilot and customs agents left the bridge, is that, while they’re at some level corrupt, and members of a criminal gang, they were more polite and honest than half the customs agents in half the ports in the world. He mentally sighed. I am reminded of the Roman merchant who joined the gang of Attila the Hun.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested
You will find it better policy to say:
“We never pay any one Dane-geld . . . ”
—Rudyard Kipling, “Danegeld”
TCS Headquarters, Tondo, Manila, Republic of the Philippines
Lucas said, “Out of your cages, Kanos, you’re going to get redeemed.” He motioned for Crisanto to open the cages holding the filthy and stinking prisoners. This, the ex-Philippine Marine did, being careful to only open one at a time. As each of the Americans was dragged out, a group of Crisanto’s men flipped them over to their bellies and lashed their wrists together.
“Now, no fucking talking, assholes.”
Benson kept his face carefully blank. At this point, they’d been confined, and tightly, long enough that they were almost incapable of walking under their own power. There was nothing wrong with the sergeant’s mind, however. Terry and the regiment might pay or they might not. They might try a rescue. On balance, I think that’s more likely.
“Where are we going?” Benson asked.
He was rewarded with a kick to his side, from Crisanto, just above the hip. It landed close enough to his kidney to be staggeringly painful. Benson gasped from it, biting his lip against crying out. Nor did the pain go away right away.
“ ‘No talking,’ the man said. That means no questions.”
When the pain faded enough to allow a measure of thought, Benson tried to concentrate on what he and the other two might be able to do to help, in the event of a rescue. Nothing came immediately to mind. The best he could think to do was whistle a couple of bars from Tom Lehrer’s “Be Prepared.”
At first, TCS made the Americans walk under their own power. When Washington fell over, though, Lucas ordered Crisanto to help them. Two of the latter’s men, one on each side, grabbed the Americans’ bound arms, holding them up. Their shuffling steps remained uncertain.
There was a van, white painted, with short curtains hung around the rear windows, outside one of the headquarters’ broad double doors. The back doors were open already; Crisanto’s men helped the Americans stuff themselves into the back. Those back doors were then locked from the outside. After that, Lucas, Crisanto, and four of Crisanto’s men piled in the seats in front. The Americans didn’t see it, but two of the captors waved hands under their own noses at the stench.
“Keep your head and eyes to the rear,” Crisanto said, pulling out a Philippine Marines issue combat knife and rapping Searle’s head with the butt to add an exclamation point.
Benson said nothing, Instead, once the passenger doors closed, and the van started moving, he leaned his shoulders into, first, Washington and, then, Perez, seated to either side of him, and began flexing and exercising his legs, at least insofar as the cramped space permitted. Again he whistled a bar from “Be Prepared:” Don’t solicit for your sister; that’s not nice.
Overhead, the RPV descended to about twelve hundred feet, its stabilized camera controlled by an image contrasting computer back on the Bland. At that range, the license plate could be read. The computer could also analyze the color of the van, presented green to the viewers on the screen but not to it, to differentiate the target van from every other.
The aircraft was still quiet enough not to be heard below, at least by anyone inside a vehicle, with the sound of the engine running and of the road vibrations. Unfortunately, the stall speed of a fixed wing RPV is somewhat greater than that of a van at a red light.
MV Richard Bland, Wharf at Barangay 129, Tondo,
Manila, Republic of the Philippines
“Fuck!” cursed the pilot, “I lost them.”
Lox, who had almost begun to nod off, jerked alert, heart pounding. “Wha . . . what? What happened?”
“They stopped at a light”—the pilot’s finger tapped the map display—“right here at Capulong and Juan Luna. I had to do a three-sixty. The camera lost them behind a building, which fucked up the stabilization. By the time I did the turn and reacquired the same spot, the light had
changed and they were gone. I guess I was following too close but I wanted the license plate.”
“Shit. Shitshitshit. Aida?”
“What lane were they in?” the policewoman asked.
“Ummm . . . left lane.”
“Follow Capulong, east,” she said. “It will become Tayuman. Then it will link with Arsenio H. Lacson Avenue. Lacson goes south which is, I think where they’re heading.”
“Do it,” said Lox. “And once you reacquire them, if you do, get some altitude so you don’t lose them again.”
“What if we don’t find it?” Aida asked.
Lox shook his head. “I don’t know. Things get a lot harder, anyway.”
Long minutes passed, with the image of the ground passing underneath the RPV flashing across the screen. There were other vans, even white ones. The paint, however, didn’t quite match. There were variables in manufacture, variables caused by exposure to the sun. There were even variables caused by a none-too-skillful job of repainting a stolen van.
The pilot set his curser on one likely candidate. It looked the same but then so had another that the computer had rejected. He clicked to mark the van for analysis, then moved the curser to a different box and clicked to begin the analysis.
The answer came flashing back on the screen: “Match.”
Lox reached over and squeezed the pilot’s shoulder. In another context, and with a different tone of voice, his next words might have been friendly. “Now don’t lose them again.”
Then he went back to directing the four shooter teams to keep them in as close as possible to Welch and Graft, without arousing suspicions.