Rebels of Mindanao (2 page)

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.

G
eneral 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 River 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.

Hargens got back to the Hotel Thayer just as early breakfast was being served. He was not tired, his body still on Western Pacific time, twelve time zones out of phase. He would get tired later, but now he was too excited. He went through the buffet line and sat down alone at a table for two by the window, the Hudson far below seeming not to move. Downs walked over and they exchanged firm handshakes and a kind of masculine half-hug.

“Thanks for being here,” Downs said.

“Thanks for pulling me back.” Hargens was quiet and sincere. “You really harassed me into making the trip, or I wouldn't be here.” The weekend was turning out to be more meaningful for him than he had anticipated. “But I have to admit, a football weekend here is really something to see.”

“Luke, do you remember where you were on the day the last helicopter left Saigon?” Downs was ready to talk.

“I was already a lifer and back in the States, in the Career Course at Benning. Where were you?”

“I was teaching here at West Point before I got out of the army and started at DOS. Thornton was here teaching then too, German language.”

“So tell me, Charlie, what is it that's eating you up?”

“OK, here it is. Some Turk, a smart, determined guy named Mahir
Hakki, is carrying five million in cash from Syria into Mindanao. Al Qaeda intends to finance an Islamic revolution.”

“Oh boy-they could do a lot with that. Like win the war. So why don't you just have your CIA boys take him out?”

“Can't. The President doesn't want to hear about it. He's in too much trouble overseas already. Too much going on. And President Cayton of the Philippines can't tell his guys the whole story. They'd just keep the money and finance themselves or, worse, the insurrection. We need a consultant we can trust.”

Hargens brought Downs up to date. “OK. I get you. I had dinner with Thornton last week in Manila. He lives in Mindanao, owns a small construction company there.”

“I had our guys check him out, Luke. He still looks like a Ranger.”

“He always kept in shape; not that big but he wrestled, played football. The girls always liked him.”

“Yeah, he liked them too; part of his problem. Do you think we could get him one more time?”

“I don't know. He's living well now, never did get married again. The last time I saw him he was wearing a safari suit with some kind of bead necklace and looking ten years younger than you Washington types, still has blond hair. It would take some convincing. He thinks you don't trust him after what happened in Eastern Europe.”

The two old roommates grew quiet for a moment, gazing down at the Hudson, silent and gray, remembering. Then Downs continued, cautious because he was speaking out of school, crossing department boundaries with an unauthorized plan. “Luke,” he started slowly, but then decided just to lay it all out. “We need Thornton. The CIA informed the State Department that Al Qaeda intends to instigate revolts and stage terrorist attacks simultaneously in several countries within the next month or two, and to set off dirty nuclear weapons within the U.S. at the same time. Their theory is that if we're kept busy at home, we won't have the will or the means to handle other conflicts in the world at the same time.”

“They may be right. Glad you D.C. guys are wising up.”

Downs continued, ignoring Hargens' sarcasm, “We know that Al Qaeda is sending the cash from a source in Syria into Mindanao very soon. They
want to create chaos, but we don't know exactly how they intend to do it, or how they plan to get the money to Kumander Ali, the leader of the rebels. It's enough to be the catalyst for a revolution in a poor country if they use it effectively, or should I say if they corrupt enough people.”

Hargens took the opportunity to needle Downs. “Why Thornton? Why don't your DOS buddies negotiate with the rebels, give them the opportunity to screw up in yet another country they know nothing about?” He hit a sore point.