Then he sees Kelog. The green bird hops fatly down the steps, its metal spur scraping on the concrete. Ignacio picks it up, coos to it and places it gingerly beside Howard like some kind of fucked-up prison guard. Howard tenses and pulls away, expecting some immediate confrontation. But Kelog ignores him and pecks at the feed spread evenly across the metal bed. It’s just a chicken, after all.
Ignacio pulls the rear door down, sealing Howard and Kelog inside. Moments later the engine starts and the truck bed vibrates, making the grain hop like popcorn. The truck lurches forward. Howard knows they can only be going one of two places. Either Ignacio and Littleboy have given up on their plan—who would blame them?—and are taking him to the countryside to cut his throat and bury him, or they’ve actually found someone to sell him to. Either way, if he’s going to save himself, it’s got to be now.
“I know what you’re doing, and it’s a stupid move,” he says when the rear door opens again, about a half hour later. The sun still isn’t up. He briefly registers the sound of waves, but keeps his eyes fixed on Ignacio.
“Stupid for who?” Ignacio asks, a nervous half-grin still smeared above his chin. He produces a pack of cigarettes and lights one. He offers one to Howard.
“It’s stupid for everybody. Listen,” Howard sits up, his bound wrists before him in a gesture resembling prayer, and accepts the cigarette. “I get how you’re looking at this. You want to sell me. That’s simple. That’s fine. That happens all the time. I’ve done stuff like that. But listen. From a rational perspective, from a purely financial outlook, it’s stone dumb. It’s dangerous for everybody. Like I said, I’ve got money. I’ve got cash. You really want to sell me? That’s fine. But leave the bidding open. Let me buy me.”
“Nope,” Ignacio says.
“Nope?” Howard shakes a little. The simple ridiculousness of it is maddening. “I’m offering you a guaranteed payday, more than any fucking fisherman can give you, and all you say to me is nope?”
“Yup.” Ignacio lowers his cigarette so Kelog can puff. He strokes the rooster’s green feathers with his free hand and says nothing more. Howard briefly indulges in a fantasy wherein he’s rescued and arranges to have Ignacio killed in prison. Tortured, and killed.
“Easy, boy,” Ignacio says. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you look angry.”
“I’ve been hiding it,” Howard says.
“Can’t see why.” Ignaco stubs his cigarette out on the grain and Kelog pecks at the ash. A moment later Littleboy joins them, holding a length of folded burlap. “Now listen,” Ignacio continues. “We’re going to put this on you. While you’re in here you’re going to be nothing but a fat, heavy sack of rice. You do anything that rice doesn’t do, like move or talk or fart, then it’s just going to scare the shit out of us. I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ll panic. Get me?”
“Yes.”
Ignacio puts a finger to his lips. “Hush,” he says. “Rice.” Then he nods at Littleboy and they roll Howard in the coarse fabric. They lower him off the truck and onto a broad dolly. Howard listens hard as they wheel him down a ramp, ready to shout if he hears the slightest wisp of human noise. Their feet make crunching gravel noises, and then hollow wooden noises. Waves crash like falling bricks. A few moments later Howard is upended and rolls into the bobbing bottom of a boat. The boat dips as Ignacio and Littleboy get in after. They’re at a pier—it’s got to be Manila Bay considering the length of the drive. There’s always someone awake at Manila Bay.
Then, in the distance, he hears it. Unmistakable. A voice speaking Tagalog.
“Help!” Howard screams. “Help! Help me!” He punches through the sack, but catches only air. “Help!”
Ignacio and Littleboy laugh. “It’s the radio, genius,” Ignacio says. Then he revs the outboard, and with a splash of cold, oily water, they’re off.
THE BOAT ROCKS TERRIBLY. Howard lies under burlap in the stern, getting sprayed whenever they hit a wave, which is often. The outboard alternates between a drowning gurgle and rip-roaring in the air whenever they crest a swell. It isn’t long before Howard has to hold his head up just to keep it above the collected water. He’s so angry he imagines he might have a heart attack or aneurism or something, and the thought of dying on the way is a morbid thrill. He curses. He bangs his feet against the benches and gunwales.
Ignacio pulls the burlap away from Howard’s face and glares down at him. “Be nice,” he says.
“Let me sit up, I’m going to drown down here.”
“Sit up then, what am I, your mother?”
The color drains from Ignacio’s face as the boat dips into a trough between waves. Then, as it rises up to the top of the next crest, he turns a shade of green. He sends a mouthful of spit over the side.
Howard sits up, untangling himself from the sack. The boat is small, bangka style, with bamboo outriggers that shudder as they slap the waves. The city still looks nearby behind them, but the horizon ahead is indistinct. Dawn light shines pink on the whitecaps. Ignacio squats by the engine block, white-knuckling the tiller. Littleboy looks ill up at the bow, his knees pressed together, his eyes glued to the bottom of the boat. Only Kelog is relaxed, perched on the stem of the bow like an obscene maidenhead.
Ignacio takes out his cigarettes again and tries to light one. With the boat rocking as it is, it takes a while for him to connect with the lick of flame from his lighter. His hand holding the tiller drifts and they begin to turn, parallel to the oncoming swells. The boat sways, and tips. Ignacio’s face goes puffy, and he overcorrects, sending them too far in the other direction. The boat does one complete circle.
“That won’t help your belly,” Howard says, gesturing at Ignacio’s cigarette. “That will make it worse.”
Ignacio ignores him.
“Can you swim?” Howard asks. “This boat … I don’t know.”
Ignacio says something in Tagalog and Littleboy reaches across the bench and strikes Howard on the back of his head. He pitches forward into the dirty water sloshing between Ignacio’s feet. He stays down there for a moment, trying to rid his expression of satisfaction. Then, as he’s about to struggle back into a seated position, he notices something beneath Ignacio’s seat. It’s a clear plastic container, about five gallons or so, filled to the brim with extra fuel. There’s not much space under the aft seat, so the container lies on its side. The nozzle that should be on top is just beneath the surface of the water they’ve taken on. Howard reaches out quickly with his bound hands and cracks the nozzle open. He sits up and watches gasoline flow out into the saltwater splashing about their ankles. Then he watches Ignacio smoke.
THE MORNING SMOG begins to lift. Birds circle in the haze above. A shoreline becomes distinct ahead. It’s a long swim, but Howard’s an optimist. Anyhow, he’s better in the water than on land.
Ignacio savors his cigarette and Howard prays he takes his time, keeping one eye on the slowly emptying container. Everybody notices the smell and Ignacio peeks back at the engine with a worried look. He says something to his brother in Tagalog—something calming. The cherry burns down, almost to the filter. Ignacio makes to chuck it overboard but Howard grabs his wrist. He pinches the cigarette, fingers burning a little, and drops it into the bottom of the boat. Then he tosses himself overboard.
It’s not quite an explosion, but the boat lights up without an argument. Howard’s bound wrists make dogpaddling impossible, so he turns on his back and kicks away, like he used to do after surfacing from a dive with Benny, his BCD inflated, his son waving at the hired Costa Rican boatmen and the boatmen waving back cordially. Backpedaling like this, he can see the burning boat. Kelog screams and flames lick up Ignacio and Littleboy’s legs, but they seem hesitant to get into the water. Finally they hold hands and jump, kicking wildly to grab hold of the bamboo outriggers. Kelog stays onboard, flapping madly about the hull. His feathers catch, and sizzle, and his owners splash water up at him, trying to douse him. It’s no use. Finally he takes off, wings smoking as
Ignacio and Littleboy beg him to get into the water. The flames on him grow and trail behind like luxurious feathers. Kelog is a bright lick of green and yellow, flying straight up. By the time the flames burn out there’s nothing left of him to fall.
The saltwater has loosened Howard’s binding by now, and he’s able to get his wrists free. He turns to the island and swims. All his injuries—his bandaged ear, his sliced forearms, his stabbed shoulder—sting in the water, but it has a wonderful, invigorating, antiseptic feel. The island looms large ahead. A rocky beach with palms. The broken hulls of concrete buildings peeking out from a mosaic of lush vegetation. Green cannons pointing straight up at the sky. Jagged coral cuts into Howard’s palm and that, too, is a wonderful feeling. His bare feet find rocks, and hedges, and soon he’s wading.
And there are people on the beach. Five men stand in a row at the point where the jungle meets the sand. They wear badges around their necks that shine brightly in the morning sunlight. The police have come. Never mind that they’re fuckups. Never mind that they’re late. They’re here, and Howard is happy.
Chapter 27
SAVING HOWARD BRIDGEWATER
Efrem Khalid Bakkar hopes the fire kills them so he won’t have to. He stands with Ka-Pow on the rocky Corregidor beach, watching Ignacio’s little bangka burn. It bobs in the chop, flames licking out the rudder shaft, glowing from stem to stern. The kidnappers jump overboard and retreat to the outriggers, trying to douse their boat with backward bailing. A single fireball shoots skyward and fizzles. Efrem watches Howard Bridgewater backpedal away from the smoldering bangka. Ignacio makes to follow, but turns back after a few strokes, coughing out seawater and smoke. Reynato points from their boat to his throat, finger a blade. It wouldn’t have been different if they’d landed and submitted placidly to handcuffs. Efrem levels his custom Tingin. With two shots he snaps the blackening outrigger struts. Hugging bamboo, the kidnappers float safely away. Efrem mimics Reynato’s pantomime, fingerslicing his own throat. From this distance, with this fog, Ignacio and Littleboy look as dead as he says they are.
Ka-Pow recovers Howard, dazed and sputtering, from the shallows. Reynato doesn’t look all that thrilled, but says they’ll get some food at the Corregidor Island Hotel to celebrate anyway—his treat. He plucks sawtooth blades of cogon grass and has them draw to see who’ll hang back on the beach with Howard until the Coast Guard comes to pick him up. On the first draw Efrem comes up short and Reynato has them do it over because Efrem is the hero of the day. On the second draw it’s Lorenzo, who throws up such a weepy stink at being excluded that Elvis volunteers just to shut him up.
Despite heavy fog and rough sea, Ignacio actually managed to get his bangka pointed in the right direction. They sank just off the northwest coast of topside Corregidor, and from there it’s an easy two-kilometer walk to the tourist hotel at the south dock. Reynato, Racha, Efrem and Lorenzo stroll at an easy pace, emerging from the dense jungle onto a little paved road that meanders from one cluster of war ruins to another. Reynato passes cigars and matches all around, keeping his unlit as always. His mood lightens and soon everybody, including Efrem, is smiling. A trolley approaches with the first morning tourists and Reynato makes a big show of jumping out from behind a crumbling wall and shooting at them with a phantom rifle. Children on the trolley return fire from the barrels of pointed index fingers and squeal with delight when Reynato clutches where his heart would be and falls backward into high grass. He waits for the trolley to disappear before standing and brushing himself off. “Where were you guys? You just let that happen.”
To Lorenzo’s delight, brunch at the hotel is served buffet style on an outdoor veranda overlooking the bay and the city beyond. They pile plates high and take a table in the corner. Reynato toasts them with a mimosa flute. “You’re good at what you do because you do good things,” he says. “Here’s to all those people worse than us.” They clink rims and begin eating. As Efrem chews he watches a television mounted above the buffet. A young newswoman in too much pink talks about the kidnapping as though the kidnapping is still a thing to be talked about. He checks Racha’s wrist-fused-watch and sees that it’s been over an hour since they left the beach.
“They don’t know yet,” he says, gesturing at the screen with buttered toast.
Reynato, munching bacon, glances up. The news lady cuts to stock shots—clips of a press conference given by Howard’s son mixed with older footage of an Abu Sayyaf terrorist with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher hoisted over his shoulder. The newswoman narrates the montage, outlining perilous possibilities. “Maybe Elvis has no signal on the beach,” Efrem says. He takes out his own cell phone and sees he has full bars. “I’ll make sure they get the message.”
Reynato takes Efrem’s phone and pockets it. He dabs the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Easy does it, Mohammed. You’ll get credit soon enough.” They regard one another, the hurt and confusion on Efrem’s face a little diffuse because he’s been feeling it so often lately. Credit is not what he was after. Reynato, knowing this, blinks first. He crosses to the television and flips the channel to live cockfighting championships. Racha and Lorenzo, oblivious to the tension, get seconds and thirds at the buffet. They eat with noisy gusto long after Efrem has slid his half-full plate across the table. Lorenzo produces a flask of lambanog from his plastic poncho and fortifies their mimosas. He interlocks elbows with Racha and they sip daintily, braying and spilling. Celebration is a matter of course for Lorenzo at mealtimes, but Racha isn’t known to act the fool with him. Reynato eyes him suspiciously. “And what are you so happy about?” he asks.
Racha holds both hands in the air, displaying cracked palms and grizzled knuckles, as though that’s an answer. He stands and takes his shirt off, turning proudly while people at nearby tables gasp at his sagging adhesions, his missing nipples. He grins and says: “Not a scratch!”
Reynato crosses his arms over his chest. “You must have missed it.”
“Nope,” Racha says. “I checked two times.” He runs his fingers up and down the waxy discolored horror of his torso. “Nothing!”
Concern creases Reynato’s forehead. He orders everyone into the toilet where they strip Racha naked and search him for a new wound. As easy as Howard’s rescue had been, it was still a mission. Ka-Pow’s rules dictate that Racha should have been hurt. That’s how his particular bruho magic works—soaking up the evil that finds its way into every mission and keeping it off everybody else. If Racha’s come through unscathed it means there’s still some evil floating around out there, looking for a place to settle. Reynato questions him while Efrem and Lorenzo probe his unfortunate topography. “You sure you didn’t slip on a rock? Step on an urchin? Stub your toe? How’s your ankle? How’s your instep? Is that blood in your nose? Those look like new shoes, any blisters? Any rashes? Bite your tongue? The path was thorny, any scrapes? Does anything itch?”
But nothing itches. They don’t even find a mosquito bite. “Maybe it was that thing last night?” Racha asks. “Maybe the pepper spray counts?”
You know that’s not how it works, Reynato snaps. He seems discouraged—even angry. They give up searching and he leads them all back to the table. He says that everyone gets lucky sometimes. Then he takes Glock out of his belt and checks it twice to make sure it’s loaded and the safety is off. He shifts in his chair and eyes the exits. He can’t finish eating.
Racha, pitying his boss’s distress, forks himself in the knee.
REYNATO IS ON EDGE the rest of the morning, and though he doesn’t show it, Efrem is too. He gazes out over the bay as they leave the restaurant. Private yachts sway in the wakes of trawlers, but the Coast Guard boats at Sangley Point are still. Back in Manila the police station is quiet. He glances topside and sees Elvis leading Howard into an ancient bunker for shelter from the sun. Howard, filthy as when they plucked him from the shallows, follows in a daze.
Rather than returning topside, Reynato insists they board one of many brightly painted
tour trolleys to waste the whole day trundling about ruined barracks and mortar emplacements. They pose listlessly for pictures by a beachside MacArthur statue. They crowd into the Malinta tunnel for historical lectures by animatronic soldiers. They haggle gift shop cashiers to tears. They visit a kitschy outdoor chess set with pieces big as children. Lorenzo challenges Efrem to a game, and cheats, and wins. The tour ends. The sun reddens and dies in the South China Sea. The Coast Guard never comes and Efrem doesn’t get his phone back. He peeks at Howard and sees him running from the bunker, chased by Elvis as a horse, pinned by Elvis as a python, carried back into hiding by Elvis as a colony of tremendous ants. They’re not saving him from anything. They’re saving him for something. Killing time.
Efrem doesn’t speak as they walk back to the topside beach. The moon, low on the horizon, throws long shadows against the ruins. He lags some paces behind the others, and then stops walking altogether. Reynato turns and regards the distance between them without closing it. “Is there a problem?” he asks.
“You’re going to kill him,” Efrem says. “You’re killing Howard Bridgewater.”
Reynato cocks his head and grunts. Duckfooted, he walks over and takes Efrem’s cheeks in his small palms. “Mohammed,” he says. “My friend. What have I done to give you this bad impression of me? You ever see me do a thing like that?” He leans in close. Efrem sees moonlight in his braces. “If I remember right, your tally puts us all to shame.”
Efrem steps back. “Don’t lie to me.”
Reynato steps with him, keeping hold of his cheeks like a bridle. “I lie plenty,” he says, “but never to you. I’ll admit to some dramatizing, but among you bruhos I’m honest to a fault and I’d appreciate you not saying otherwise.” He pauses, looking pained, like a father taken out of his son’s confidence. “And I’ll be honest now, even though a part of me would rather lie. The smarter part of me, I’m guessing. Especially because we both know I could get away with it. But, what the hell?” He smiles. “I’ll keep the streak alive.”
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