by Tom Anthony
REBELS OF MINDANAO
A NOVEL
TOM ANTHONY
Copyright © 2008 by Tom Anthony
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form....
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Anthony, Tom.
Rebels of Mindanao : a novel / Tom Anthony.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8253-0514-6 (alk. paper)
1. Intelligence officers--United States--Fiction. 2. Undercover
operations--Fiction. 3. Terrorists--Fiction. 4.
Insurgency--Philippines--Mindanao Island--Fiction. 5.
Muslims--Philippines--Mindanao Island--Fiction. 6. Manobos
(Philippine
people)--Fiction. 7 Mindanao Island (Philippines)--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3601.N568R43 2008
813'.6--dc22
2007052193
Acknowledgments
I want to thank my sons, Michael Anthony for his persistence over several years of pushing me to write this story and for his detailed comments and constructive criticism throughout the process; and Christopher Anthony for his inspiration to record images I observed in Mindanao.
Eric Kampmann, Beaufort Books, New York, saw something worthy of being published; Arnold Dolan, editor, Trish Hoard, copy editor and Margot Atwell, Associate Publisher, for pulling it all together.
My special thanks to:
Brigadier General Ramon Ong, Philippine Armed Forces, Retired, for vetting my work and for making corrections in four languages.
The Otaza, Payen, and Otakan families, whose names I borrowed to create fictional characters, and for telling stories around our cooking fires and on the beach in Mindanao, which expanded in creating Rebels of Mindanao.
General Fidel V. Ramos, for teaching me to “Care, Share and Dare,” in writing and in life.
Freddie Aguilar and Sean Hayes, whose lyrics I quote with their permissions, adding song to the story.
An article published in the New York Times Magazine, July 21, 2002, “It Only Looks Like Vietnam,” by Donovan Webster, quoted in my book, gave me a new perspective.
Thank you Emalyn, my source for inspiration in all things, and our daughters Emily and Elaiza.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
1 ISTANBUL
2 DUTY AND HONOR
3 THE LADY LOVE
4 ELAIZA
5 THE TURK
6 THE EMBASSY
7 UGLY MARIA
8 STAGCOM
9 A MESSAGE FOR MAHIR
10 THE MANGO TREE
11 THE DAM ON THE AGUSAN
12 SERGEANT STARKE
13 THE SCHLOSS CODE
14 THE MISSION
15 THE OTAZA BROTHERS
16 KADAYAWAN
17 PURSUIT
18 DELUSION
19 THE CHINOY
20 JIHAD
21 SERENDIPITY
22 LZ KORONADAL
23 TASK FORCE DAVAO
24 SULTAN KUDARAT
25 REBELLION
26 THE TRIANGLE
27 JUNGLE PATROL
28 ITIG VILLAGE
29 HOLY WARRIORS
30 BULUWAN
31 DEATH AND VIRTUE
32 MARTYRS
33 RADIO FREE MINDANAO
34 KING OF BATTLE
35 BIRDS OF A FEATHER
36 OLD GENERALS AND EMPTY CHAIRS
37 MOUNT APO
38 THE PAYOFF
39 PACO PARK
40 DREAMS
Epilogue
REBELS OF MINDANAO
Prologue
Today, the Philippine Archipelago consists of 7,121 islands at low tide, with seventy-five million inhabitants growing at a five per cent rate each year, speaking some seventy-five different languages or distinct dialects, less a few each generation as indigenous tribes are absorbed or become extinct. Five hundred years after being consolidated into a country forced upon them by the conquering Spanish, the separations of waters and religions still keep the peoples from melding into a single nation.
Ocean barriers isolate the islands from potential invaders but also hinder the adaptation of new technologies. Despite its vast expanse and diversity, the Philippine Islands was defined as a single nation for the convenience of the colonialists. After the Spanish, foreign domination continued under the Americans, who brought in a form of democracy. Filipinos attempted to make their culture fit their masters’ with varying degrees of success and often accepted religious sects of splinter churches as alternatives to the Catholic dogma of the Spaniards. After independence from the U.S., in 1946, the central government in Manila inherited a cumbersome structure.
Of the three large island groups-Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao-Mindanao, in the south, is the most tormented. Mindanao could stand alone as a nation and has the resources to do so, with no contiguous nations to dispute the natural boundaries of the oceans. As England sent its outcasts to Australia, so Spain sent its troublemakers to Mindanao, La Tierra del Destirro, the land of the exiles. Outlaws and undesirables from the north were deposited onto this island of Moro pirates-the Muslim terrorists of three centuries past. Over the intervening centuries, some things have changed, others not at all.
A war of insurrection has raged in Mindanao for much of the last forty years without much outside attention. Muslim rebels, who fought against the Americans when they replaced the Spanish, then with them to throw out the Japanese, continue their insurgency against foreigners who send in only missionaries and token soldiers. Brother against brother, Christian against Muslim, poor against rich, on it goes …
1
Istanbul
The blast killed a dozen worshipers at the Beth Israel synagogue in downtown Istanbul, attracting international news coverage. It was a significant event for Mahir Hakki. Now, for the first time in centuries, he thought, we are taking the fight to them.
The rusty old car that Mahir and his friend Jamal had loaded with explosives had rolled slowly down the hill, crashing through the door below a Star of David. Mahir was careful to push the button on the remote control a microsecond after, when only the foreign Zionists were near the car. He wanted to make sure that no innocent countrymen of his would be hurt. Mahir told his friend, “We want our patriots to understand the struggle. Then all of them will join in jihad.”
Back in the spring of 2004 when Mahir was working in the only tire store the Turkish European Trading Company had been able to hold on to, Gregory P. Mount, the vice president for marketing at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, came to Istanbul with his wife and son, taking a sentimental journey back to where he had started out so many years before. He could not resist walking by the old store and talking to the guy there about tires.
“I remember when this was just a used tire shop,” he told the worker.
Mahir replied to the stranger, “Then you would know my father, Hassan.”
“Yes. An old and very good friend of mine. How is he?”
“My father passed away fifteen years ago.”
The time had slipped away for Mount. He was surprised, “Mahir. Is it you? I knew you when you were a small child.”
“And you sir … are?”
“Greg Mount, Goodyear International, retired.”
“Ah, yes, you helped my father, and started the good and the bad.”
Mahir explained the history of the rise and fall of the House of Hakki when Mount took him to lunch at the Sheraton Hotel, while Mount’s wife and son shopped in the bazaar for hand-made rugs and hammered brass tables. Mahir let out his venom, but in a courteous way. He held no personal grudge against his father’s old friend, and his mother would surely like to see the Englishman
again. So Mahir invited Mount to come out to their house by the sea some day, some indefinite day in the future that would never come; their lives were not on parallel paths.
Mahir told Mount, “I don’t hold you personally responsible. But your company is a part of it, the informal global conspiracy of Jews and Christians. No American can be elected president of your country nor an Englishman prime minister unless he first swears allegiance to the State of Israel, a government and a people who are the eternal enemy of Islam.”
“Mahir, that is just not so.” Mount was not offended, rather flattered in a backhanded way that this young man would be so forthcoming with him. “I don’t think the Israelis are your enemies: they just want to have their homeland.”
But Mahir was not convinced and told Mount, “The Jews had their own place, carved out of the land of the true believers, but that was not enough. Now they extend their settlements into other Arab lands, and when they have enough squatters in them, they will call a vote.”
Mount saw no future in the argument, so he let it rest and asked, “Mahir, can I help you in some way now?”
“No, you can’t, now. I have no hate for you. You must live your life with your philosophy, as I must mine. I must be responsible to Allah for what I do and for the consequences.”
“Enshallah.” Mount thought that he understood and had said the one right word.
Mahir thought to himself, all this he does not understand. “And early this very morning the country of my birth, once the heart of a great Turkish empire, signed a military cooperation agreement with Israel, the enemy of Islam. I’ve got to help shape the future that my son, the last of the House of Hakki, will live in.”
The young rebel and the old world traveler parted forever after lunch, friendly across the generations, but the conversation confirmed for Mahir what he had already believed: there was no hope for his personal future. He made a decision. He would dedicate one year to Allah alone and the rest of his life to his family, especially to his new son. He will have done his part.
He sought out and agreed to work with Jamal, an acquaintance from school days in Istanbul. Jamal had told him about the Syrian with Al Qaeda, who would support them with money and technology. Their first assignment from Al Qaeda was easy for them. Jamal had been trained in Yemen and taught Mahir how to make the bombs. The two terrorists-in-training placed homemade explosives inside one of the old GM wrecks that Mahir fixed just enough to get to the synagogue. His homeland was becoming too intimate with their Zionist neighbors in the eastern Mediterranean, and it was time to send a clear message that Israel was not wanted as a partner of modern Turkey in anything. The Yankees thought the struggle of the Muslims would be only against Israel; it was time to introduce them to the global dimension of the war, of jihad in many countries at the same time.
By the time he personally met the Syrian, Abdul Sali, Mahir was already a committed revolutionary and an experienced bomber. He would have done his duty for nothing, but when Sali offered to pay him 500,000 U.S. dollars to undertake one new mission, he calculated he could thereafter spend all his time on the Marmora Sea, his son could someday establish a new technology business, and he would make the hajj. He accepted the assignment.
The next week Mahir Hakki was on board a freighter out of Istanbul as an ordinary seaman. They stopped in Izmir for two days to take on freight, and Mahir took the opportunity to stroll along the quay, wondering what his father had seen fifty years before when he walked on the same smooth stones. After loading, the freighter sailed on to its destination, and the smoky old ship docked on the northern coast of the island of Cyprus at the port village of Kyrenia, the Turkish enclave on the mostly Greek island. While the sailors were enjoying a few hours’ leave and the chance to drink small cups of very black, bitter coffee and to dally over sweet honey cakes in the open-air cafes downtown as they watched the local girls, Mahir disappeared. Dressed in old jeans and a white tee shirt like the ordinary sailors who would be returning to the ship sometime in the early morning hours, he left with only a canvas sports bag containing his gear for the coming journey. Between a branch of the Bank of Turkey and the post office, he saw a blue Ford, as promised, driven by a man in traditional Arabian dress. Mahir immediately entered the car. The driver drove away without saying a word and traveled to the green line that separated the Cypriot capital of Nicosia into a Greek zone and a Turkish quarter known as Lefkosia. Mahir left the car at that point and continued on foot to his next rendezvous, his meeting with Sheik Kemal.
2
Duty and Honor
General Luke Hargens, in his two-star general dress blue uniform with a rainbow of medals over its breast pocket, stood next to Charlie Downs, a civilian wearing a dark blue suit. Cadets in full dress uniform marched in precise formation to military music onto the Plain at West Point. Hargens and Downs had joined up with the long gray line, the other graduates of the U.S. Military Academy back for their reunion parade. Downs teased Hargens.
“Luke, stand at attention, they’re playing the Official West Point March!”
“Stand at ease, Charlie, and suck up your gut. The only reason I flew in for this is because you persuaded me.”
“It’s been a long time since I last met you here. You were the Commandant then; only a one-star.”
Hargens doesn’t remember exactly, and wrings his bony hands. “A lot has happened since then, Charlie.”
“Yeah, you went on to get another star before you got that soft job in Manila. What a deal.”
“You can talk. We all know what you really do.”
“Too bad Thornton isn’t at this parade, hearing this music-he’d call it ‘The Humper.’ Remember our plebe year at the academy when we all snuck off base?”
“I remember that. He talked some girl into smuggling us back long after taps. It must have been two in the morning. We were in the back seat of her car under a blanket.”
“I was in the trunk.”
“A ballsy thing for plebes to do.”
“If we had gotten caught, no careers for any of us.”
“If we had gotten caught.”
“He was always the maverick. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, personally. What we couldn’t do by e-mail. Our old roommate Thornton lives in Mindanao, Luke, over there where you are.”
“Yeah, I know. He’s gone local.”
Downs had to smile, but it was fleeting. “He took on a job for me in Eastern Europe toward the end of the Cold War. He thinks he screwed up.”
“He told me part of it. He gets up to see me from time to time and we’ll have a beer at the Manila Yacht Club. He’s ashamed he let you down.”
“He didn’t. But he still thinks I don’t trust him. The contact he recruited was killed. He thinks it was his fault.”
“The Polish woman? What was her name? He thinks he caused her death. That’s why he moved to Mindanao, as far from Eastern Europe as he could get.”
“He wanted to call his own shots. Couldn’t do that in the Army.”
“I know. When we were teaching here, he already had his honorable discharge in his rear pocket, ready to get out and be on his own.”
As the color guard passed, they came to attention and saluted the flag. Then Downs nodded toward MacArthur’s statue behind them, “You know there’s been trouble in the Philippines ever since he returned, sixty years ago.” Downs paused a moment, then continued. “I have some serious info for you. The Philippines may lose Mindanao.”
“We paid a big price for those islands in World War II. What do you know that I don’t?”
It had been forty-four years since Luke Hargens and Charlie Downs had first marched onto the Plain at West Point with their classmates, and forty years since the last time they had marched together with those same guys, their number since reduced by war, disease, and accident. When they were cadets, they would take the bus from the West Side Terminal in Manhattan north along the Hudson, cross the George Washington Bridge and then follow the Hudson R
iver north, the river clogged just beyond the bridge with row after rusting row of Merchant Marine vessels left over from World War II, a reminder of how many soldiers and sailors had shipped out of New York on one-way tickets to win that particular war.
This trip Hargens had made in a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car, sitting in the back seat with Downs. The two had been in intermittent contact by e-mail for the last several years and knew fairly well what the other was up to personally, although they worked in different departments. Downs was a man who really knew what was going on in the world in his position as Director, Force Deployment and Strategy, a think tank within the State Department. He had worked in that capacity in Washington for the last two administrations, and although he did not usually get into the oval office, he advised those who did.
Downs had wanted to savor the trip with Hargens back up the Hudson for their reunion weekend and was glad they had hooked up to share the eighty-five miles it took to ride from Newark Airport to West Point. Hargens respected Downs by not getting too political with him, although Downs was very ready to talk about the world situation in general and Hargens had his concerns about how the U.S. Army was being overstretched. They agreed about many things, but not everything.
Downs had e-mailed Hargens in Manila, where he now served as the Commander of JUSMAG (Joint United States Military Assistance Group), the combined force of Americans who provided the muscle for U.S. diplomacy in the Philippines. He could hardly order Hargens back to the U.S., but told him they needed to have an important talk, something not suitable for official correspondence across department lines. When they arrived at the South Gate of the academy, the guard saluted the placard on the front windshield and waved them through.
At West Point that weekend, during the official reception for the class of 1964 at the Hotel Thayer, Hargens made the time to talk to as many of his classmates one-on-one as he could—a fascinating collection of individuals, all from the same mold but each one unique after having followed different paths. He walked around the Point four or five miles each of those three days, covering the grounds alone in civilian clothes, reminiscing. One walkabout he made in the early pre-dawn hours when the academy grounds were quiet and dark, lit only softly by the area lights. He thought he would be stopped by military police security, but instead they just saluted him; it must have been something about the way he walked at that unusual hour, and how he held his bearing; they knew he had to be an old grad. He walked by monuments to Patton and Eisenhower, Lee and Grant, and shortly before dawn he looked up to see MacArthur, perpetually holding his binoculars carved in stone, cold hard stone, looking toward his landing in the Philippines, keeping his promise to return. And next week Hargens would be returning to the Philippines.