In the Presence of My Enemies (12 page)

Basilan—so that’s where we were. For the first time in five days, Martin and I knew our location, although the name didn’t ring a bell. Basilan, we learned later, is a small island only about forty miles across, just off the tip of Mindanao’s Zamboanga Peninsula. Heavily wooded, it’s a poor island to start with, made all the worse since the Abu Sayyaf sprang up in the early 1990s and established their stronghold here. Fear and chaos have since become the daily reality.

Tess did as instructed, using the sat-phone. Whether her message was immediately heard by decision makers or not, we don’t know. But after some ten minutes, the shooting stopped. Amazingly, no one in our group was injured.

We sat in the coconut shelter trying to calm our nerves for a while. I had obviously never been shot at in my life, and neither had most of the other hostages. What a jolt to be going along in my day and suddenly find myself in mortal danger!

If someone had told me that this was the first of seventeen eventual firefights over the next months, I think I would have died on the spot.

As our nerves began to settle, one of the captors cooked a big pot of rice and passed it down the line of hostages. Each of us reached in and grabbed a handful. I was still so tense I really didn’t feel hungry, but I took some anyway. I knew I’d better seize the opportunity to gain nutrition while it was available. The pot was passed back and forth several times. The outside of the pot was blackened from having been placed over an open fire, so our hands were soon covered with black soot. There was no place to clean up, however; instead, we were quickly herded out the door and down the trail to another site, since the AFP knew we were here.

Less than an hour later, we stopped. Angie, Fe, and I really needed to use the bathroom. We weren’t sure what to do, with so many men around us, so we just went off into some tall grass. Meanwhile, the Abu Sayyaf began rigging up their hammocks to some trees.

But then, for some reason or another, they decided this wasn’t a good spot after all, and we were put back on the trail. As we hiked farther into the jungle, the terrain became much rougher and heavily forested. When we sat down for a rest again, we were attacked by a nasty swarm of bees. People jumped up and began to run and scream, even though the captors tried to get us to calm down. Several hostages got stung and began to cry.

The whole morale of the group plunged in that moment, as we realized that everywhere we turned, things were only getting worse. Fear wrapped itself around me.
How is this ever going to end?
I wondered. Darkness fell, and as we continued walking, they roped our wrists together like a chain gang. Martin was in front of me, Chito behind. We plodded on single file for another couple of hours and finally came to another coconut hut. This one, unlike the first, was full of husks; we had no choice but to sit on top of them, which was very uncomfortable.

A few civilians were around, and we could sense the tension in the air—something was going to happen. From the few pieces of English thrown into the conversations around us, we knew they were talking about a jeepney. Close to eleven o’clock, one rumbled up, and we were all herded onto it in the pitch-blackness—except for Sonny, Eldren, and Armando, the three Dos Palmas employees, for whom there simply wasn’t space.

“Just keep them here,” a guard directed.

The Abu Sayyaf piled onto the roof and we headed out. As we pulled away, one of the hostages said, “I wonder what’s going to happen to Sonny. . . .” We learned much later that he and Armando were both beheaded within hours. Eldren was subjected to the same attempt, but it was botched. He escaped with his life, and a major neck scar.

The first driver was obviously inexperienced and went barreling down the bumpy trail at way too fast a speed, jostling all of us inside and perilously bouncing the guards above. One even fell off, as I recall. Sabaya soon took over the wheel, although he had trouble shifting the gears as well.

After an hour or so, we began to see houses and lights. We were coming to a town. Suddenly, we screeched to a stop under some lights. “Move, move, move!” came the order from a guard, who wanted us to get out of the jeepney as quickly as possible.

There was only one problem: We were still all tied together by the rope. The first person tried to step down, but the cord was all tangled, and our exit turned into a big pileup on the ground. The guards continued to scream at us, “Move! Move! Move!” obviously upset that we were wasting precious time. Eventually, we stumbled out onto the ground and were directed toward a small, one-story, U-shaped hospital. Later we learned the name of the town: Lamitan.

My heart sank.
This is the last thing this place needs!
I thought.
Patients are already sick and trying to get well—and here in the middle of the night comes a bunch of terrorists with their captives. Now even more lives are going to be endangered.

Three of our captors—Hurayra, Bro, and Zacarias—began bashing out the jalousie windows with their gun butts. I think they were just trying to intimidate the staff with the noise of the shattering glass. They ushered us hostages from the courtyard into a one-bed patient room that happened to be unoccupied.

“Start taking baths,” we were told, since this place finally afforded soap and freshwater—well, at least cold water. Someone suggested we should go alphabetically. Of course, we Burnhams loved that idea!

But by the time Martin and I got into the washing area, gunfire had erupted outside again. The hospital was getting blasted. This was a surprise to the Abu Sayyaf; they really didn’t think the government troops would have the nerve to fire on a hospital. Their plan had been to stage this confrontation and thus force negotiations. I think they figured that after some talking and compromising, they would get concessions from Manila, the hostages would be released, and we would all go on our way.

But clearly, things weren’t going according to plan. The AFP didn’t care that this was a hospital and did not hold off as expected.

Martin and I dumped water over ourselves very quickly and got out. As for clothes, we had no choice but to put our dirty sets back on. We sat down in a corner to wait, choosing a spot on the floor far away from the door, just in case hostile forces came bursting in. As the gunfire ebbed and surged, one of the other hostages pointed to the windows just over our heads and told Martin and me we’d better move to a safer spot in the room. We did, now watching the door and windows closely. In the midst of this chaos, believe it or not, one of the captors poked his head in the room and handed us some Cokes and “biscuits” (cookies). We ate quickly, but with gratitude.

Imam, an elderly man with a goatee, stood guard at our door. His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and I thought he looked like somebody’s nice grandpa. However, he was Abu Sayyaf nonetheless, and several of his family members belonged to the group as well.

I studied him as he stood by the door, gun in hand.
Why is he sitting here?
I wondered.
He’s too old for heavy fighting. Maybe his job is just to wait and watch . . . and if things go badly tonight, he’ll be the one to shoot us all?

I nudged Martin and pointed to Imam. “Do you think he’s been given the order to shoot us if things go wrong tonight?” I whispered.

True to his nature, my husband saw things differently. “Oh, no,” he assured me. “I don’t think anyone’s planning to kill us. What they want from us is money.”

* * *

As the wee hours of the night wore on, the fighting intensified, and we were moved into another room, this one with two patients lying in their beds. I’m embarrassed to admit what happened next. The other hostages promptly began to loot the room, taking everything from baby powder to soap to the patients’ clothing. We had suddenly become as unscrupulous as our captors. The law of “I need this, so I’m taking it right now, whether it’s mine or not” held sway.

What’s the difference between us and the Abu Sayyaf
? I said to myself.
We’re all stealing.
Someone held out a toiletry item to me. “I’m not taking that,” I answered. “It’s not mine. We’re stealing from these people!” The other hostages continued to get cleaned up in this patient room, while the rest of us sat outside on the floor along the hallway. As I sat there, I pondered what I had just witnessed. Up to this point, I had assumed we hostages were “the good guys.” Now I had to admit that when you’re thinking only of yourself and your own needs, you’ll do just about anything.

What I would have hotly denied that night in Lamitan, of course, was the prospect that before the year was out, I would behave in much the same way.

In time, nurses moved the two patients out to other rooms in order to give us their space entirely. They also brought us some hospital scrubs to wear, which we gladly accepted. Martin finally got to change his shirt.

The gun battle continued throughout the rest of the night. The sun came up that Saturday morning, and we were exhausted from no sleep. Yet the firing continued. Some kind of aircraft arrived overhead and began to fire mortars at the hospital; one of them hit the operating room. A canister of oxygen exploded, starting a fire. Several of the Abu Sayyaf went running to fight the fire, while their comrades continued shooting.

Some time later, we were moved again back into the hallway, perhaps because it was more interior. Imam continued to sit and watch us, cradling his M16. Bro, a big, muscular warrior type with long and unusually wavy hair, came running back through the hall to rejoin the battle after fighting the fire. As he tiptoed between people’s legs and bodies, he kept saying, “Excuse me . . . excuse me . . . excuse me.” Martin and I looked at each other and couldn’t help but chuckle at the display of politeness amid the carnage. It was so typical of Filipino courtesy.

By now the AFP had cut off the hospital’s electricity and phone service. This infuriated the Abu Sayyaf, of course, who had hoped to use the phones to call the press and set up interviews.

Martin was summoned to the courtyard to make another communication on the sat-phone; signals were clearer out there. It made me nervous to have him leave my side, and especially to venture outside. But there was no choice.

“Call your mission in Manila,” said Sabaya. “Tell them to call the American embassy, and have
them
call President Arroyo.” The message was to be in the same vein as before: Stop firing on the hospital; you’re endangering not only hostages but patients as well.

As Martin stood outside with the phone pressed to his ear, he soon heard the familiar voice of our friend Bob Meisel, NTM office chief in Manila. Bob didn’t recognize Martin’s voice at first, and it took a while to convince him that it was really Martin on the phone. Meanwhile, gunfire echoed in the background. There was no chance for honest talk, of course. Martin could only deliver his message as ordered.

“Martin, is Gracia with you?” Bob wanted to know.

“Yes, she is.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“Well, she’s not right here beside me. She’s inside the hospital.”

In the background, Sabaya kept saying to Martin, “Remind them that the Geneva Convention prohibits hostilities against hospitals!” Martin did as instructed. But it was all he could do to keep a straight face. It seemed so ironic—here was Sabaya, a radical terrorist, lecturing official governments on the rules of engagement as spelled out in the Geneva Convention!

By this point, the phone battery was dying, and the conversation ended abruptly.

Somehow in the middle of all this confusion, the Abu Sayyaf got word that Reggie and Rizza’s ransom money had arrived. Since we were in such a public place, it would be easy to recruit a civilian to take them out of the hospital.

The captors decided that Divine’s little boy, R. J., should be released as well. They had said on more than one occasion that R. J. was an “innocent” and should never have been kidnapped in the first place. When he learned that he was going to have to leave his mother, R. J. was terrified and began to cry. But Divine encouraged him, telling him it was for the best and that she would join him soon.

She struggled to stay calm—we all did—as we watched him leave the hospital with Reggie and Rizza. These events motivated the other hostages to get back on the sat-phone and try to make their own arrangements for release.

The day wore on, and the shooting raged without abatement. We ached for quiet so we could finally sleep, but that was not to be. My nervousness began to show itself in diarrhea, but a trip to the bathroom meant crossing the main corridor that opened to the front entrance—an open-fire zone. I took the chance a few times but then grew afraid to risk it.

“Is there another bathroom I can use?” I asked one of the nurses.

There was, inside an unoccupied patient room. As I entered the room, who should I see sleeping comfortably on the bed but an Abu Sayyaf member! Now I had a new worry:
What happens if he wakes up while I’m in the bathroom?

I ducked back out to tell Martin. “I’m going to go ahead and use the bathroom in there,” I told him. “But if I don’t come back within a couple of minutes, you need to come looking for me, okay?” He promised he would.

Despite the gunfire all around, the nursing staff tried to manage the situation as best they could, even though I know they were scared themselves. They provided blankets for us to cover ourselves with when glass shards began to fly from the shooting. That was a good thing—except that under the blankets it was absolutely sweltering. It was about this time that someone named Sniper, a guide who knew Lamitan well and served the Abu Sayyaf, got shot directly in the eye. He was brought in from outside and laid in the hallway where we were all sitting. Blood poured from his face, and he moaned pitifully.

Nurses came over and began to bandage his eye. His breathing grew heavy and labored. Suddenly, his head turned to one side and he began to vomit blood onto the floor. As if in reply, the artillery from the sky grew all the louder. We watched in horror and sadness as Sniper writhed in agony.