by Tom Kratman
“It’ll be all right, girl,” Aida said. “Come with us.”
That promise meant nothing. But what can I do? They can just kill me here and then carry my body and dump it. And they might make it hurt more if I don’t go easy. Yes . . . they’ll hurt me more to punish me for making them clean up the mess. I can’t take any more pain. Quietly except for some hopeless sniffling, Maricel forced herself to stand.
Lox and Aida guided the unsteady, swaying girl out of her cell, through an open area with a bunch of tables and the smell of food, then through a hatch and up several flights of stairs. The hopeless and helpless weeping never quite stopped. Indeed, it grew louder and still more hopeless, the closer she came to deck.
Once on deck, Maricel heard gunfire. A girl couldn’t grow up and work in or around Tondo and not recognize the sound. This, though, was way out of line with anything she’d ever heard in her life. And she had no clue what those bright green lines arcing across the sky were.
Suddenly, the green lines all disappeared as great flames began billowing up to the sky. It hadn’t quite registered before then that she was very close to home. It took a moment or two more to realize the flames were coming from TCS headquarters.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, “all my friends.”
They led her to the gunwale. This is where they put a bullet in my head, she thought. God, please let it be over quickly. I don’t want to be shot then drown.
They stopped her just before she reached the ship’s edge. The woman spoke then.
“Do you know why we band together into nations, girl?”
The question seemed so totally out of the blue that Maricel didn’t really even comprehend it. She shook her head, a gesture that meant, in this case, I don’t understand.
Aida took it wrongly, assuming the girl meant she didn’t know why. She answered the question herself. Pointing towards the flames, she said, “We band into nations for just that reason. In the real world, little tribes like TCS are destroyed. They can’t compete against determined bands of raiders. It takes more power than that to defend yourself against people like yourself, people with no law above themselves.”
Ah, now Maricel understood the question. She wasn’t sure she understood the answer and, given that she was going to die, the answer didn’t really matter anyway.
“It’s the flaw in some utopian schemes,” the woman continued. She looked at Maricel’s uncomprehending face and said, “You don’t understand that word, do you?”
“No.” Sniffle. Just get on with it, will you?
“Never mind; here’s the truth, a truth I’ve been trying to find for the last . . . well, for the last good long while. People band into nations, real nations—not travesties like TCS, gangs that fancy themselves nations—to defend themselves. It requires an emotional commitment. The limits of nations are not how far their borders can reach, but how far their hearts can. People with tiny hearts, people like TCS, can never reach very far, can never gather enough similar hearts together to defend themselves. Only real people, and real countries or causes, can do that. That’s why TCS is going to die tonight.”
Maricel lifted her chin. As death came closer, and her own resignation to it grew, she found a little spark of pride in herself. If I couldn’t live well, at least I can die well.
“Are you telling me this so I’ll know why you’re going to kill me? I already know why.”
“Nobody’s going to kill you, girl,” Aida said.
“I got the story from Malone. They took a vote, Zimmerman’s closest friends. At first they were going to do to you what was done to him.”
“Peter asked them,” Aida said, her head inclining towards Lox, “which one was going to haul on the rope. None of them would volunteer. Then they thought about it some and took another vote.”
Lox spoke then, softly and gently. Aida suspected he was ashamed.
“What it came down to, Maricel,” Lox said, “was that when we thought about it, we really couldn’t blame you. We—all of us—prostitute ourselves. And after . . . questioning you . . . I was pretty confident you didn’t expect anyone to be killed, certainly not the way Zimmerman was.”
The girl broke down again. Chin on her chest, she cried, “I didn’t. I really didn’t. I’m so sorry.”
“We know,” Lox said. “I’m sorry, too. About . . . well . . . you know.”
Lox reached a hand into his pocket, pulling out a thick envelope. “We were all given a few thousand dollars worth of Philippine pesos before we came here. That’s pretty routine in our work; never know when you might need some getaway money, after all. One way or another, we never give the getaway money back. It’s always ‘expended.’
“Anyway, the boys kicked in what was left and asked me to give it to you.
“It’s about seven hundred thousand pesos,” he said. “It’s not a huge amount but . . . maybe it’s enough for you to start over. I dunno . . . go to school . . . start a business . . . Or you can just waste it. Get drunk and forget about what we . . . what I . . . had to do to you. Your choice.”
He handed the envelope over. Maricel took it wonderingly, her grip loose as if not believing it was real. She’d never even seen that much money in one place at one time. Even so, it didn’t seem right to look in the envelope. Instead she asked, “You’re not going to kill me? You forgive me?”
“No and yes,” Lox answered. “Well . . . almost yes. We don’t ‘forgive’ you so much as we can’t find it in our hearts to blame you, not entirely. And, yes, you’re free to go. We only held you this long so you couldn’t warn TCS.
“We’re really . . . ” Whatever Lox was about to say was lost as the girl really started to cry.
Lox asked, “When I was . . . questioning you, and just now, you said you had a baby. Where is he, or she?”
Through her sniffles, Maricel answered, “He. I always leave him with my mother when I have to work. My mom lives well north of Tondo. My baby’s safe.”
Navotas, Republic of the Philippines
“All rounds expended,” said the leader of the Eland Section. The dozens of holes in the walls of TCS headquarters sat as smoking testimony to that.
“Roger,” said Stocker. He crouched behind a wall about a hundred meters up Lapu-Lapu from North Bay, enjoying the spectacle thoroughly. “Still need your machine guns for a few minutes. Break. Platoons, commence your assault.”
There was hardly any fire coming back at the troops. At first there had been, as TCS’s several hundred armed “soldiers” in the building rushed to the windows. They, however, couldn’t see in the dark. Stocker’s machine guns, RPG-29 Vampires, machine guns, some rifles, snipers, etc. could. It had been a matter of only a few minutes work to beat down the TCS’s attempt at defense, leaving the windows clear and a not inconsiderable number of bodies on the inside floors. Whatever TCS was doing inside—and Stocker suspected that was mostly praying for deliverance—it wasn’t inconveniencing their attackers in the slightest.
A new machine gun—or perhaps two of them, it was hard to tell with Pechenegs—joined in the shooting somewhere on the other side of the building.
“Captain,” transmitted Moore, now back with his own platoon since Kiertzner was back with company, “They’re trying to get out the back.” Moore chuckled. “We’ve demonstrated what a bad idea that is.”
“No prisoners, no survivors,” Stocker repeated.
“Well, duh, sir.”
In Stocker’s field of view, three teams of four raced forward to the building’s walls. Two of the teams ran toward the southern wall, One disappeared around the corner where the wall turned north. He wasn’t worried about them; steady machine gun fire directed at that wall gave testimony that they were well supported.
In each team two men were riflemen. One carried a double satchel charge, twenty pounds of C-4 in two bags, tied together, with a length of fuse and a friction igniter hanging out. A fourth man humped one of the Russian flamethrowers that had been drawn from Bland’s well-yo
u-never-know-what-might-turn-out-to-be-useful stocks. Stored empty, they’d been in behind the little toe-popping mines.
Focusing on the nearer team lunging at the southern wall, Stocker saw the riflemen lash at the windows as they ran. Short bursts, but enough to frighten anyone from peeking out. When they reach the wall, all flattened their backs against it. The riflemen, one after the other, took out grenades, armed them, released the spoons, and—after a brief delay—tossed them through the nearest windows. Smoke, dirt, and the remnant shards of glass flew out, pelting the asphalt. There were also a couple of screams. Then the flamethrower man stepped back a few paces. A long tongue of bright orange flame, mixed in with blackish streaks, lanced out and through the window. Some of the liquid fire splashed against the window frame, but most landed inside. The screaming coming through the windows grew very loud. More flames lanced out, before the tank petered out, leaving the nozzle dripping a mere few drops of liquid agony. The continuing, and apparently growing, flames suggested there was plenty more burnable material inside than the flamethrower had sent there.
Fuel exhausted, the flamethrower man raced back across Lapu-Lapu to his initial assault position, a smoldering building on the TCS side of the road.
Now it was the turn of the trooper carrying the satchel charge. Before moving to throw, he pulled the ring on the friction igniter, then stopped and watched for emerging smoke and bubbling plastic on the fuse. Yes, it was lit.
The demo man only moved away from the sheltering wall a few feet, and that at an angle, before cutting in again to stand right next to the window. He took the satchel’s straps in both hands, then twisted his torso away from the window. Centrifugal force lifted the satchel to about waist level. As it started to fall, the man whipped his torso in the other direction. The satchel charge swung wide, then entered the window. The straps bent at the window frame. Where the satchel was going now—except that it was definitely inside—was anyone’s guess.
Even across the sound and fury of battle-approaching-massacre, Stocker heard, “Let’s get us de fuck outa here!”
Then, in the few seconds before the blasts began, Stocker lifted his loudspeaker to his lips and spoke the message that was the point—or at least the exclamation point—of the exercise. The words, electronically amplified, echoed across the scene of carnage. “Before you cocksuckers decide to hang somebody, you really need to find out first just exactly who his friends are.”
Everywhere Diwata turned was fire and death. The concrete of the floor was nearly covered with blood. If she hadn’t been asleep, if she hadn’t gotten up with bare feet, she’d have slipped in it.
She could see now, despite the lack of electricity, but that was far more curse than blessing. Everywhere were the dead and the dying. Some, caught by some kind of liquid fire, burned alive before her eyes, screaming and clawing at the fire that would not go out.
Flames were licking up the walls and across the roof. A stuffed chair in the open storage area to the west suddenly flashed into flame, disappearing in a cloud of smoke almost completely. The smoke reached her and she began to choke. Covering her mouth and nose with both hands, she turned and fled back toward her own chambers.
She opened a door, then passed through.
She heard someone speaking in English in an electronic voice: “Before you cocksuckers decide to hang somebody, you really need to find out first just exactly who his friends are.”
Oh, God, no. For that? They did this for that? What kind of monsters . . .
She never quite completed that thought. Faster than her mind could register it, there was a blast and a shockwave that collapsed a wall upon her, pinning her down. The wall was already on fire. Flame touched her hair crisping it in an instant. Her face began to char. Down below, she could feel the fire eating into the flesh of her legs and torso.
No, no . . . not burning...no, not burning . . . not that . . . don’t let me die like that . . . don’t . . . “Aiiaiaiaiaiai!”
MV Richard Bland, Wharf at Barangay 129, Tondo,
Manila, Republic of the Philippines
All kinds of boats and ships were pulling out, streaming away from Manila, Tondo, Navotas, and anything to do with battles in what had been a peaceful, if gang-controlled, port.
Neither police nor fire department had come to help yet. They probably wouldn’t. This was unsurprising; after all, Tondo and the rest of the area held by TCS had been a “nation,” a no-go area. The fire burned merrily and probably would until long after sunrise.
There were still firefights going on all over the area as the five remaining gangs, armed by M Day with captured Moro weapons, duked it out for dominance. Every gang member dead had to be counted as a plus. And every gang member with a tattooed face was soon going to be dead.
“Everyone aboard, Sergeant Major?” Warrington asked Pierantoni.
“Yessir. And the Elands back aboard and stowed in containers.”
“Casualties?”
“Light,” the sergeant major answered. “Lots to be said for surprise, you know.”
“Not even any really badly wounded from this go-round,” said Cagle. “There is a lot to be said for surprise.”
Kiertzner, also standing by, quoted, “Americans; they’ll cross an icy river, in the middle of the winter, in the dark, to kill you in your sleep. On Christmas.”
“Well,” Warrington countered, “in this case, Her Majesty’s subjects got to do the killing.”
“I’d better be going,” Aida said. “If you folks are leaving now I . . . well, the truth is I hate the sea.”
“You won’t take us up on that job offer?” Pearson asked. “Lox says you’d be a boon to the regiment. And you wouldn’t be on Third World pay scales, you know; you’d be on ours.”
“I’ve got to think about it,” she replied. “Yeah, it’s a lot of money compared to my pension. Still, it’s not a light decision. And I have to consult my children and grandchildren. And, too, this is my home.”
“I understand,” the captain said.
“What about Welch and the rest of the company?” Pierantoni asked.
“We’ll be sending the LCM in to pick them up at Calatagan. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Okay.”
“What about the fucking tranzis?” Stocker asked.
“Already ordered their tickets, at our expense,” Pearson said. “In gratitude for the help they gave—maybe not too willingly but they still gave—with our wounded. We’ll drop them at Singapore and they can fly out from there.”
“Singapore?” Stocker sneered. He was still on an adrenaline high from dealing with TCS. “Ho Chi Minh City would be more appropriate. And I still think walking the . . . ”
“Andrew!”
“Oh, all right. Let the shits go.”
Warrington chuckled. “Anyway, let’s give Aida time to debark and then let’s get the hell out of here and head for home.”
EPILOGUE
I
Camp Crame, Quezon City, Republic of the Philippines
Aida wasn’t really all that sentimental about the desk she’d been given and allowed to keep even after her semi-retirement from the police. Even so, cleaning it out was a break with the past. That was hard.
One of the younger men in the office stopped by, leaning on the door. “You’re not leaving us, are you, Inspector?”
Aida shrugged. “Got a good offer elsewhere,” she said. “And you people don’t give me enough useful work to keep even a grandmother occupied.”
“Where you going?”
“Guyana,” she said. “That’s over in South America.”
“You speak the language?”
“They speak English. I can speak that.”
“Well, we’ll all miss you. And don’t forget, ‘Home is where the heart is.’”
“I never will forget,” she said, heart beginning to break. “But sometimes you have to go away to protect what matters to your heart.
“Magpakailanman dito sa puso ko.” Forever
in my heart. “Now go away before I start going all sentimental.”
II
Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,
Republic of the Philippines
Janail hung now only by the nails. His cramped legs had no more strength to support him. Suffocation and death would follow soon.
The funny thing was that it didn’t hurt anymore. He was past pain and past cares. He only wanted to get it over with. He was almost bored.
The funnier thing was that the pain had gone away sometime in the night, about the time he’d decided—surely a devout atheist would have called it a delusion—that he’d been wrong, all these years, that there was a God, that Mohammad was his prophet. After all, hadn’t a vision of God, sitting in judgment over him, come as clear as revelation in the night?
He still had that vision engraved on the synapses of his brain, the stern-faced Allah, in boundless glory, surrounded by all the beings of the universe, his slaves, saying in a beautiful voice, “You have greatly sinned, Janail.”
Then the Moro had wept, not with the pain but with the shame. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have been such a fool. My God, forgive me.
He felt death hovering near. Janail had been waiting for this moment. Using up the last of his strength, he lifted his head high, then rested it against the stirpes of his cross. “I . . . testify,” he tried to shout, though it came out as little more than an inarticulate croak. “I testify that . . . there is . . . no god but Allah . . . I..I . . . tes . . . tes . . . I . . . Mohammad . . . is . . . messenger . . . of . . . ALLAH!”
“And there went the last one,” thought Paloma Ayala, with vast satisfaction. Her Marines were already taking down the other crosses. Indeed they were mostly already down. The wood formed a great pyre, assembled nearer to what used to be the Harrikat camp. The pyre was covered already with the bodies of men who had died, oh, very hard. Beside it was a great, hand dug ditch. The Moros would be burned in a few hours, and their ashes dumped, scrambled, and then buried. The other two hundred and twenty or so, the ones killed in action, would be left out for the vultures of the press to feast upon.