Sudden Threat

by A. J Tata

  “Die, sumbitch,” Kurtz yelled with the most emotion he had shown since the deployment. He released on the rebel a violent and pent-up force that nothing could stop. Pumping six shots into the persistent little man with the odd-looking pistol-rifle, Kurtz charged him. The man had fallen to his knees with his pistol cocked limply in a raised hand, trying to hang on, trying to secure one more victory. Kurtz took his M4 and jarred the man’s yellow teeth loose with a slashing rip of the butt stock against his face. Then he felt hands on him, all over him, pulling him away.

  Meanwhile, Taylor moved fast. He called for the medics, who came running. He had Barker call his platoon sergeant and tell him to hold the medevac. Then he checked Teller, who was obviously dead, his head precariously connected to the rest of his body by half of a neck. As he lay on the dirt with his vacant eyes open, a picture of his pregnant wife and two-year-old child peered up at Taylor from beneath his camouflage band. Tears welled in Taylor’s eyes, but there was no time for grieving.

  Taylor held Captain Garrett, propping his head in his lap. He was still alive. The bullet had not entered the brain, but he was bleeding heavily.

  Doc Gore, an enlisted medic, quickly took control, checking for cranium penetration. Good news, there was none. He whipped a bottle of Betadine out of his kit bag and poured it liberally on the captain’s wound. It was only a graze, but a deep one. Then he pulled the captain’s first-aid gauze from his pouch and placed pressure on the wound, wrapping the loose ends around Garrett’s head. He told Lieutenant Taylor to take off the captain’s boots so that he could check for any paralysis that might have been caused by the force of the bullet’s pulling the captain’s helmet off. With the commander unconscious, though, he was unable to proceed. He wrapped him in a space blanket, silver on one side to attract and retain heat, and green on the other side because it was Army equipment.

  Taylor responded to the medic’s next request for a sheet of plywood, which some of the headquarters troops brought to the scene. With Taylor’s help, Doc Gore slid his commander’s limp, but living, body onto the plywood and tightened tie-down straps across him. From there a group of almost too many volunteers carefully walked the three hundred meters to the helicopter. It was out of their hands now.

  The helicopter took off. There was no need wasting precious time with Teller. He was dead, and to load him on the aircraft would have taken another five minutes—time enough to kill the commander or Sergeant Cartwright.

  Taylor organized the troops quickly, ordering them back to their battle positions. One hundred percent security, he told them. Once the dust settled from the departing helicopter, having billowed in small puffs above the ground, he walked to where his longtime best friend, Mike Kurtz, sat against the white sheet metal of the Quonset hut whence the attacker had come.

  Taylor sat next to him, pausing, then said, “He’s still alive.”

  Kurtz looked up and gave Andy a blank stare that made commentary on so many things, his pain, his sorrow, and his guilt for not moving the commander sooner. He wanted to reset the clock and do it again, like in training or at the hundreds of football practices that he and Andy had suffered through. He was hurting, and his friend knew it.

  “Mike,” Andy said, barely controlling his emotion, “he’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

  Kurtz, the senior lieutenant, with Rockingham having been ordered by Colonel Fraley to go to Manila the day before, simply said, “Let’s go to full defense and be prepared for another attack.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Manila International Airport, Philippines

  Matt felt the Gulfstream make a bumpy landing along the concrete runway of Manila International Airport. He looked at the stiff windsock, which was pointing directly at the landing strip, indicating strong crosswinds from Manila Bay.

  Jack Sturgeon, the pilot, rolled the craft to a stop on the tarmac. Sturgeon had briefly come back and introduced himself to Matt and Rathburn, having them both sign a logbook that he kept for his daughter and wife in California. Matt simply inscribed, “I know you’re proud of your dad—Matt.”

  Matt felt Sturgeon pull the airplane to a stop. He looked through the oval window and saw that the morning was still a dark gray. The flashing red and orange wing lights pumped like strobes.

  Grabbing his rucksack and SIG SAUER, Matt followed Rathburn and Sturgeon down the steps. He awkwardly lifted the ruck with his good arm, though he was surprised at how much better he felt after nearly two days of rest. The Percocet and antibiotics were doing their jobs.

  “Leave that here until we get past the formal-ities,” Rathburn directed, pointing at the rifle.

  “Never more than an arm’s length away from my weapon, sir,” Matt countered.

  “I don’t want it visible, so hide it in your ruck. We’re not at war here, for God’s sakes.”

  “Excuse me. We just had an American soldier killed in a shoot-down of two C-130s.”

  “That was an accident. Now do as I say,” Rathburn demanded.

  Matt looked at Rathburn for a long moment and stuffed the weapon into his ruck. They deplaned and walked toward the terminal building.

  Matt noticed his shoulder was beginning to bite him a bit and decided he needed a Percocet, but opted for a Motrin. He walked into the latrine of the terminal and cupped some water into his hand to swallow the horse pill.

  The advisory committee remained on the airplane for the moment. Rathburn was a bit miffed that there was no delegation to meet him. He wandered around the empty terminal, looking for the red carpet, Matt presumed. Meanwhile, Sturgeon needed to file a flight plan for the next leg of his trip to Okinawa.

  They all looked curiously at one another, think-ing they heard the soft, but rapid, sound of distant gunfire.

  Growing concerned with the rising noise of gunfire toward the inner city, Rathburn picked up a phone to call the embassy. Matt extracted his weapon from his rucksack as the three men stood near a service entrance that led through two glass doors onto the airport tarmac. A long, dark hallway went in the opposite direction, toward the baggage-handling area.

  “What do you make of all that gunfire?” Rath-burn asked Matt.

  “Sounds like a combat zone,” Matt said, stepping outside with his weapon at the ready.

  “Up in the tower I could see Army trucks going everywhere. Green and orange tracers too.”

  The staccato sounds of small-arms fire continued, growing louder. Suddenly Matt thought about the women on the airplane and that he should probably have them join the men in the terminal. Best to keep everyone together.

  As Matt jogged back on to the runway, he watched as a colorful truck with several hood ornaments drove along the runway and stopped less than fifty meters from their airplane.

  Three men poured from the back of the red truck and set up RPG launchers on their shoulders, aiming them at the Gulfstream. Standing on the tarmac, screaming, “No!” Matt leveled his weapon on the gunners as three rocket-propelled grenades left smoking vapor trails flying from their launchers and impacted into a wing and the side of the airplane.

  The fuel tank in the wing exploded with a bright orange fury that immediately began to spew flames and black smoke skyward. On either side of the wing, the grenades pierced the thin sheet metal and exploded beyond their impact points inside the passenger cabin. Matt knelt as he fired into the attackers. The heat from the fireballs that erupted pushed him back and, as he turned, he thought he could see people, women, running desperately down the aisle. Their movement was visible through the elongated series of windows as in some B movie as they tried to escape what was now a blazing inferno. Moments later, the aircraft exploded in an enormous eruption, billowing black smoke.

  Matt sensed someone behind him, spun to his left, and swept his rearward attacker’s feet off the ground. In a swift movement, he punched the small man in the stomach hard while grabbing the pistol with another hand. He noticed a knife moving to his side as he turned the pistol into the face of his initial a
ttacker and shot him point-blank.

  Sidestepping the lame thrust of a second attacker, Matt spun the now-dead rebel who had been holding the pistol into the path of the next insurgent.

  “Hey, Joe, put down the pistol, no?”

  “No,” Matt said, then stopped when he realized what had occurred.

  Two insurgents were holding Rathburn and Sturgeon by the neck, with knives pressing into their carotid arteries.

  “Drop the gun, or we kill these Joes.”

  Matt sized up his predicament. He could really care less about Rathburn, a Beltway lightweight, but he presumed the man had a family. Sturgeon did have a family and actually seemed like a decent guy. Matt eyed a total of four Filipinos, Abu Sayyaf, he assumed. Two were holding Rathburn and Sturgeon. One was talking to him from the same vicinity near the door to the terminal, and one was standing near him with a knife and pistol aimed at him.

  Really, he thought, I could make quick work of these clowns if they didn’t have knives ready to slice through Rathburn’s and Sturgeon’s necks.

  “Let them go, and I’ll drop the weapon,” Matt directed.

  “You think we stupid, Joe?”

  “My name’s not Joe, dipshit, now let them go,” Matt ordered again.

  “Okay, watch this, Joe,” the man holding Sturgeon commanded as he removed the knife from Sturgeon’s neck and lifted it high.

  Before he brought it down, Matt fired a single bullet into the man’s head. Sturgeon quickly lifted the arm of the man holding Rathburn, hoping to use the surprise that Matt had created to their advantage. It worked.

  Another shot, and Matt had killed the insurgent who had been holding Rathburn.

  As he turned toward the attacker closest to him, a shot rang out from the distance, felling the man. Quickly, though, Matt realized that the bullet was intended for him and not the insurgent as two truckloads of wild-eyed rebels poured from the backs of Jeepneys.

  Matt lifted his hands, as did Rathburn and Sturgeon when they saw the M4s and AK-47s aimed at them. Soon, several insurgents were upon them, pushing them onto the concrete and taping their eyes and mouths shut along with tying kite string around their hands and feet.

  “How’s this, Joe?” the Filipino said just before ramming the sharp toe of a boot into Matt’s rib cage. He heard an audible pop and felt a deep pain in his ribs. Immediately he knew he had at least two broken ribs and possibly a bruised lung. Another kick in the same location made him sure about the lung; he could only pray it was not punctured. He could sense people walking quickly all around him. He heard many loud shouts on the tarmac, men he presumed celebrating their wily destruction of an airplane and the deaths of some American women.

  The kicking had stopped, but the concrete ground pressed against his bruised side, making his breathing difficult. When he tried to roll over to his left side, his shoulder screamed with pain and a hand grabbed a clump of his hair as a foot slammed down on his neck. Feeling the steel of a weapon against his temple, Matt heard a voice say, “I kill you, Joe.”

  The man seemed happy that he was in control. Matt knew intuitively that it was the voice of an Abu Sayyaf rebel. When they spoke Tagalog among one another, he was certain of it.

  “What do we do with the Yankees? Kill them?”

  “Magsaysay. Kill one by one. Get information, put on television. Use reporter’s equipment.”

  Matt listened to this exchange. He knew Fort Magsaysay was in the central highlands of Luzon Province, about a four-hour drive from Manila, on a good day.

  The rebels walked the men toward the airplane. Matt could feel the heat licking his face, making him sweat in the already-boiling morning. Their captors forced them to lie down in the bed of a truck. Matt surmised that it was the same truck that had escorted the rebels who had attacked the airplane.

  The searing pain in Matt’s shoulder never dulled as he began calculating how he was going to kill his captors.

  The one time I hang out with a bureaucrat and this happens, Matt steamed. He closed his eyes and endured the long, bumpy ride.

  CHAPTER 39

  U.S. Embassy, Manila, Philippines

  The blades from the medevac UH-60 rapped against the humid morning air, the aircraft hovering above the landing pad of the U.S. embassy in Manila. The landing area was a white concrete slab atop the three-story redbrick building surrounded by black wrought-iron-gated fences.

  The embassy was in the heart of Manila on Roxas Boulevard and had a sweeping view of the horseshoe-shaped Manila Bay to its west, across Roxas. Palm trees lined the bay, obviously planted and not growing wild, framing the beach and water like a portrait.

  Two marines guarded the front door, which was nearly fifty meters beyond a high brick wall with a black iron gate that prevented locals from gaining access to the compound. The Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group had a skeletal team of ten military personnel assigned: Fraley, two Marine Corps guards, an Army major, a doctor, and the medevac crew. The ambassador was in charge of these men who all contributed to the overall effort on what was called the country team.

  Inside the embassy was an operations center where the country team had two satellite-capable radio systems. Maps of the major islands hung on the walls, plotting movements of Abu Sayyaf units and hot spots of activity.

  As Major Hewit and Lieutenant Rockingham stood atop the embassy roof and watched the medevac helicopter hovering above the landing pad, Hewit wondered where they had gone wrong. A firefight at Subic Bay, fighting in the streets, and they could not contact Major Ramsey’s Special Forces team.

  The Black Hawk prop wash created a cool wind atop the JUSMAG roof in the early morning haze. It was an ominous sight to Hewit and a fearsome one to Rockingham, the soldiers running low beneath the chopping blades of the helicopter, carrying a wounded comrade.

  Rockingham recognized immediately that the four soldiers carried a piece of plywood with a man lying on it. He ran out to help them, then stopped and nearly gagged when he saw Captain Garrett. He was filthy, his face streaked with matted blood and caked with white dirt. His uniform showed white salt stains where he had sweat through them. A bandage was tied neatly around his head, obviously protecting a wound. He was unconscious—or dead.

  Rockingham shuddered.

  Major Hewit noticed that the concerned look on the faces of the soldiers showed a deep amount of admiration and respect for the man that they carried. They all searched for the doctor with anxious eyes.

  Hewit had summoned the country team physician, an Air Force doctor named Colonel (Retired) Anthony Mosconi, who had stayed in country after Clark Air Base closed. His wife was Filipino, and he preferred to stay in her country as long as feasible. The doctor had a room in the JUSMAG headquarters dedicated to the general practice of caring for the embassy and JUSMAG staffs on a one-day-a-week basis. It had been a while since he had done any combat triage or surgery, but he remembered it well and hoped he would not have to make any tough decisions.

  The decision was easy. One of the patients was ambulatory, walking with a crutch provided by the medevac pilot. He had a leg injury, but a quick inspection showed the medic had done a professional job of cleaning and dressing the wound. Turning his attention to the man on the plywood, he saw captain’s bars on the soldier’s uniform.

  Must be the commander. Poor guys—eight thousand kilometers away from home, and their commander gets shot.

  He shined a small flashlight into the captain’s eyes while the four enlisted soldiers waited close by, hoping, praying for good news.

  “Fix him, Doc. I don’t care what it takes, fix him,” said Sergeant Spencer, a tall black squad leader in Barker’s platoon. The doctor looked somberly at Spencer’s serious face and moist eyes.

  Looking over the doctor’s shoulder, Rockingham felt guilty that he had missed the action with his company. Rock was incensed that Fraley had forced him into the situation, but Captain Garrett had told him not to fight it, and to get back as quickly as he could.

  “
Maybe you’ll be able to get some intel,” Zachary had said.

  Rockingham talked with the four soldiers about the night’s activity, but they were seemingly incapable of communication as they watched the doctor work on their commander in the brightly lit room that seemed more like an office-made-operating room than a genuine doctor’s workplace.

  CHAPTER 40

  “What’s your name, son?” the voice asked. This was another dream, he was sure. He was inside of a dirty Coke bottle, trying to look out beyond the dusty glass. There were people standing above him, but their faces were large, then small, then large again as he rolled inside the bottle. Voices. He heard voices trying to talk to him. It was his brother Matt, calling his name. He could not see him, though, only hear a voice. The voice again, calling, pleading for him to come. Then he saw Kurtz rising from his crouch, yelling at him, grabbing his arm and pulling. He heard the voice again, calling a name. The voice. He must remember the voice. If he could only hang on, he could pull himself out of the bottle and find the troubled voice.

  “What’s your name?”

  The doctor broke an ampoule of ammonia inhalant open beneath Zachary Garrett’s nose, causing his face to wrinkle. That was a good sign, the troops realized as they watched, peering intently down upon their leader. The doctor had taken off the bandage and handed it to Sergeant Spencer, revealing a long, jagged wound that ran a thirteen-centimeter course above his left ear. The doctor surmised that the wound was more ugly than severe, and concluded that the impact of the helmet being ripped from his head must have knocked him unconscious. Must have been one hell of a big bullet!