Strike Force Bravo (22 page)

His skull felt like it was going to explode.

So Uni did the only thing he could think to do.

He ran….

 

It was pouring outside.

In just a minute's time, the fields of the dead around the woodshop had turned to mud.

Uni was in full panic. He knocked over a squad of police going out the door, slipping near the deceased man's Jaguar, unintentionally sliding across the hood of the taxi, then finding himself riding a torrent of mud and dirty water down the hill into one of Ghost Town's largest cemeteries. He began falling, slipping, sliding out of control, colliding with brittle gravestones and old wooden crosses. He could hear people screaming, ordering him to stop. He heard sizzling noises, a series of pops—even through the sheets of rain, the police were shooting at him! He smashed into the side of an earthen tomb, tumbling right over it and losing both his Guccis in the process.

He slid across one road and through the gates of yet another graveyard. He saw nothing but wooden crosses everywhere—a nightmare for a Muslim if there ever was one. He continued his flight, trying to dodge as many graves as he could but crashing into many as well.

It seemed to take forever, but he finally slid to the bottom of the hill, landing in a clump in a drainage culvert. He hit his head on impact and for a few moments was only aware of the dirty water running over him. Somehow he lifted himself up, expecting to see an army of police charging down the hill after him. But all he saw was the gravestones and crucifixes.

No one was chasing him. Perhaps no one had been at all. He lay back down in the stream and let the water flow over him again.

Even if this kills me,
he thought,
at least here I'll get some sleep.

Night fell.

The rain stopped.

Manila's nightlife began heating up. Downtown certainly, but most especially in the War Zone. The neighborhood of iniquity was crowded early, strange for a weeknight. But there was a buzz all over the city, like something big was about to happen. Those who knew how to recognize such things could smell it in the air.

The Impatient Parrot was busy early, too. The bar out front was three deep at the rail. The
poon-tang
rooms upstairs had a three-hour wait. The mud fights out back were already playing to overflowing crowds.

The brothel's owner, the man named Marcos, had woken at his usual time: 4:00
P.M
. He'd finished dinner by five and was walking the floor by six. He spoke quietly with a handful of underworld associates, discussing various deals that would be going down in and around his establishment this night. Business done, he was about to enjoy his first drink of the evening when he was informed that he had a long-distance phone call, which he took in his private office.

It was Palm Tree.

The conversation was stern and one-sided. Marcos did all the listening. The Stingers were being assembled, packed, and moved tonight, Palm Tree told him. But a crucial component was suddenly missing: Kazeel's
shuka
hadn't been seen since that morning. Moving the missiles was one thing; activating the
sharfa
was another. That could not be done without the dim-witted Uni, as only he held the last secret of the dearly departed Kazeel. The plan all along was to move Uni around like a chess piece, attracting attention in his mobster suit, so anyone on their trail would sniff him out first—and buy them the time they needed. But completely losing track of the
shuka
was never in the cards, and now his disappearance had the entire operation in jeopardy.

Like Ramosa, Marcos was being handsomely paid by Palm Tree's government, he was reminded. If this mission was not completed, then not only would the whole affair be an expensive, embarrassing failure, but anyone connected with it would have to be eliminated, Marcos and Ramosa included. If things did not change for the better quickly, they would both find themselves on a hit list to be carried out by the well-known and ruthless intelligence service of Palm Tree's home government.

Marcos was highly troubled hearing all this. He knew Palm Tree did not issue threats lightly. But as they were conversing, Marcos was scanning his crowded establishment on a bank of video monitoring screens next to his desk. And like a gift from God he saw someone sitting deep in the shadows of the mud fight room. Bald, with many cuts and abrasions on his head and neck, trying to stay in the background, but watching the mud fight with a certain amount of glee. It was Uni, the
shuka.

And he appeared to be
very
drunk.

 

The change came for Uni after he woke up in the ditch.

Bleeding, battered, chilled again to the bone, he'd looked up the hill, back toward Ghost Town. The last rays of the sunset were creating weird patterns of shadows and light in the graveyards, especially streaming through the crucifixes. The silhouette of a huge cross fell upon him as he raised himself from the stream. It would have been too poetic for this to be a conversion, but the vision, plus his nap, definitely gave him a different perspective on things.

He no longer wanted anything to do with Stingers, or Ramosa, or yachts or minibars. He wanted to remove himself from history, from any involvement in the Second Time of Falling Sparrows, from the ways of Allah. He wanted himself rid of Kazeel's ghost. In fact, Uni was interested in doing just one thing: resuming his search for the Impatient Parrot.

And this time he found it, just after the evening's shower drenched him again, washing his clothes in the process. Clearheaded or with a clear conscience, he found the War Zone, turned this corner, then that corner, and
boom!
there it was, that psychedelic neon sign that to Uni meant “the place where girls fought in the mud.” Why here? Because it was here that he'd last felt really safe—before the Crazy Americans broke in and started all this new trouble.

Getting into the brothel wet was no problem.
Everyone
was wet in Manila tonight. He'd made his way through the crowd, using money stolen from the Buddha man to buy a glass not of champagne but of whiskey—the taste he'd acquired in the limo the night before. He found a seat in the rear of the back room and settled down to forget everything else.

He watched many mud fights, staring over the smaller people in front, laughing as they leered, drinking whiskey like it was milk. He could live here, he decided. Just drink whiskey, sit in the back, and watch girls wrestle in the mud.

That was
his
Paradise. He would have to eat, though, eventually—that might be a problem. Did this place even serve food? he wondered.

It was as if the devil himself had heard Uni, for at that moment he saw two more girls making their way across the back room. One of them was holding a huge frying pan with something smoking and crackling inside.

The girls stepped over and around the businessmen who were close to the mud pit, eyeing Uni while trying to keep the huge pan level. He was hungry—back when things were normal he used to eat as many as six meals a day. The girls indicated that they were indeed heading his way—they were moving in a dreamlike fashion, almost as if they were in slow motion. Maybe as a newcomer he was entitled to a free dinner here? Uni didn't know, but the combination of the whiskey and his long ordeal in the past 24 hours had his stomach aching for food.

The two girls finally reached him. They were even prettier than the two rolling around in the mud—and that was a milestone for Uni, brought on, he was sure, by the alcohol, because he'd never graded women before in his life, simply because they'd never interested him. But these two girls were raven-haired beauties, wearing short white dresses and smiles a mile wide, almost like angels. And the frying pan was not only hot; it was absolutely sizzling. He sat up straight, hoping this might be lamb curry and cabbage, his favorite dish. The two girls never stopped smiling.

Uni drunkenly pointed to himself with both thumbs, as if to ask: “For me?”

Both girls nodded. “It sure is,” one replied. “Big-time, Joe.”

With that, she lifted the large red-hot skillet and with a form rivaling a MLB player gave it a mighty swing and hit Uni square in the face.

 

Airplanes…

Buzzing around inside Uni's head, like a swarm of bees. They were so noisy. And painful. And they were
stinging him all over….

He woke with a scream only he could hear. His mouth was full of mucus; blood was dripping from his ears. He tried to open his eyes, but the lids would barely move. Everything from his toes to his collarbone felt broken. But most especially, his head was immersed in pain. His face, shattered….

He was lying nose-down on a very oily floor. Through those bleary eyes he could see tiny pools of blood,
his
blood, mixing with a rainbow of gasoline and hydraulic fluid. His ears never stopping buzzing—but these weren't bees in his head. These were the sounds of
real
airplanes, taking off nearby.

Where am I?
he thought. Certainly not the back room of the Impatient Parrot. There was no mud.

No…it was…
Manila Airport.
The two words just popped into his head. The noise. The smell. He recognized them.

He managed to open his eyes just a little more. His vision was still blurry—but considering all the whiskey he'd consumed, and the mighty whack to his head from the frying pan, he was lucky he could see at all.

He was in an aircraft hangar, big, old, and dreary. Four ceiling-mounted halogen lamps provided the only illumination. Two huge letters that meant nothing to Uni adorned one wall:
UN.
The place reeked of cigarette smoke and spilled coffee.

Twenty feet from where he lay Uni saw three packing crates. He knew right away they were the work of the graveyard carpenter. They looked like three monstrous caskets. The stack of Stinger missile tubes was just behind the crates; the launchers were piled next to them. Two huge cardboard boxes containing the red and yellow Buddhas were close by, too, along with an enormous plastic bag filled with foam packing peanuts, four big rolls of bubble wrap, and a spool of duct tape the size of a truck tire.

He heard footsteps now. Two boots appeared next to his bloody nose. Uni moved his head a little and saw Marcos, the brothel owner, standing over him.

He'd been waiting for Uni to wake up. Now Marcos snapped his fingers and two armed Filipino men arrived. They were wearing blue jumpsuits with those two letters—
UN
—on the sleeves. They were among the thirteen gunmen in the hangar dressed this way. These two roughly lifted Uni to his feet, dragged him across the floor, and threw him against the far wall, hurling an overflowing trash barrel at him for good measure.

Facedown again, Uni found himself lying in a pile of smelly rags and discarded Styrofoam coffee cups. He managed to lift his fingers to his face and wipe the crap from his eyes. The next thing he saw was the razor blade.

Marcos was leaning over him, holding an old-fashioned straight razor just an inch from his throat.

“Why did you think you could run away from us, my friend?” he asked the
shuka
cruelly. “I thought we were all in this together?”

Uni could barely hear his words. But the message the razor was sending was very clear.

“I'll make it easy on you,” Marcos went on. “We only want one thing—the
sharfa.
Tell it to me now and I will kill you quickly. If not, I'll cut your throat out, one piece at a time. I assure you, that is a very painful way to go.”

To prove his point, Marcos slid the blade across the soft skin just below Uni's right ear and began to slice into it slowly. Uni was horrified—and very confused. He thought the brothel owner was his friend.

Another guy in a blue UN jumpsuit suddenly appeared. He was holding a Nokia cell phone.

“It's him,” was all the man said to Marcos.

Even Uni knew what that meant. Palm Tree was on the phone. Marcos withdrew his blade and grabbed the cell. Uni gasped for breath as even more blood flowed down his neck

What followed was an intense conversation between Marcos and Palm Tree on how the weapons were to be packed and shipped. Marcos did all the talking at first. He explained to Palm Tree that he had followed his previous instructions to the letter. The crates had been clearly marked 1, 2, and 3 on their inside panels. The missiles and launchers were about to be packed in all three, using layers of Buddhas to surround them. This way, the crates could pass, at least by a cursory inspection, as nothing more than a shipment of chintzy religious statues heading for the United States.

But then Palm Tree started talking, and clearly there had been a change in plans. Marcos's men were now to pack all the Buddhas into Crate 1, and all of the weapons into Crate 2. Crate 3 would be left empty. Furthermore, Crates 1 and 2 would be the only ones shipped. Crate 3 was to be dumped on a beach nearby.

Uni could tell Marcos was hearing all this for the first time. The Filipino hoodlum actually questioned Palm Tree as to why they went through all the trouble of getting the 2,000 Buddhas if they weren't going to be used as camouflage for the weapons during shipment. “I thought the
whole idea
was to move the weapons disguised as a load of statues,” Uni heard Marcos say. It was impossible to hear Palm Tree's reply, but it was short, curt, and Marcos got the point right away. Things had changed.

Palm Tree hung up and Marcos began shouting out the new orders. Just as mystified as their boss, the men in the blue UN jumpsuits got to work nevertheless. A flurry of activity ensued as the Buddhas were taken from their cardboard boxes and put into one crate, with the missiles and launchers put into another. The bubble wrap was unfurled, the bag of packing peanuts cut open. The sound of duct tape being torn and applied fill the air. The entire packing operation took less than five minutes.

Then Marcos turned back to Uni. Slamming him against the wall once more, Marcos began screaming at the
shuka,
telling him how stupid he was, how he'd been manipulated, how everyone from Palm Tree to Kazeel had used him as a dupe. Marcos even held the phone to Uni's ear and let him hear a saved message from Palm Tree ordering Marcos to eliminate Uni whether he came across with the
sharfa
or not. Either way, the
shuka
had to go.

Uni's eyes went wide. His jaw dropped open. Marcos saw this and started to laugh. But Uni was not reacting to what he'd just heard the
judus
say. The reason for his sudden amazement was that he saw something apparently no one else in the hangar could see. Straight up, past the suspended ceiling, on the dirty skylight directly above his head, a heavily armed masked man was looking right down at him.

The man had his finger to his lips, telling Uni,
Don't make a sound.

Uni's mind began to move—albeit slowly.
What should he do?
Palm Tree had all but ordered him killed. The sadistic Marcos had his razor blade back out to do the job. Yet Uni was more fearful of the ghost looking down at him than what his former friends had in store for him.

Several things happened in the next two seconds. Marcos began to draw the blade across Uni's throat again. But at the precise moment the razor touched the
shuka's
skin, there was a mighty
crash!
above them. It startled Marcos so, he dropped the straight razor, grazing Uni's ear and opening yet another cut. Suddenly four heavily armed people were rappelling from the ceiling, firing their guns wildly. All four were wearing masks and, incredibly, had American flags tied around their necks as capes.