Sudden Threat Page 3

  Matt stood and walked carefully, scanning with his goggles in both directions as he stepped lightly over hot chunks of metal scattered about. He had seen airplane crashes before, and they were never remotely comprehensible. Could anyone ever imagine the terror or horror of plummeting in a plane into the ground? In a way, he hoped that someone could tonight; it would mean they were still alive. On the thought, he touched his rucksack, which he knew contained his first-aid kit.

  He stepped over a full propeller, knelt next to it, and touched the blade. It was warm, but not hot. The friction of the crash and the jet-fuel spillage had created fire and heat, but not everything burned.

  All I’m asking for is one person to be alive, Matt thought to himself. Just one.

  He moved toward the blackened hull of the aircraft, which was surprisingly intact, but split wide open, like a lobster tail. He entered the fuselage from the rear and immediately saw a body. The heat and smell pushed him back outside. For the first time he noticed the crackle of the fire still burning rubberized pieces of material.

  Matt saw the man’s hands first. It was an odd visual display as the body was actually outside the aircraft, tethered by a deployed parachute.

  The flashlight that Matt shined on the scene revealed a charred static line tracing from the door of the aircraft onto the rock ledge. From there Matt saw the metal ring at the apex of the parachute and some charred silk. His eyes followed the suspension lines to the risers, which were surprisingly intact.

  The hand was splayed upward toward the riser as if reaching to pull a slip. Matt moved the flashlight beam farther down the body and could see a U.S. Army combat uniform.

  Shit. He sighed.

  He moved quickly next to the man and saw the name tag: Peterson. Matt checked for pulse and airway, but got negative reports on both accounts. He visually inspected Peterson and saw that he had been rigged to jump and that the airplane must have crashed as he was trying to exit.

  Matt saw the arrowhead patch of the U.S. Army Special Forces on the man’s shoulder sleeve with airborne and Special Forces tabs above. No one told me Americans were in this thing, he said to himself. What the hell is going on?

  Returning to the moment, Matt shook his head. The seconds between life and death were so arbitrary. Why did Peterson not make it, while apparently everyone else did? His search of the surrounding area had yielded two pilots and a loadmaster. As tragic as their deaths were, Matt knew they were Filipino, which mattered, but somehow did not have the same impact on him that kneeling there looking at Peterson did.

  “Who are you, Peterson?” he whispered. And why wasn’t I told about you?

  Again, he checked for pulse and any sign of life, shining the flashlight into Peterson’s wide eyes. The pupils were nonresponsive, so Matt used his thumb and forefinger to slide the eyelids shut. He saw that Peterson had not been burned badly; really, just the heat from the fire had burned his parachute. The man must have died from blunt-force trauma during the crash or as he was flung from the rear cargo door.

  Matt looked up and saw that the starboard wing had been sheared off and was probably a kilometer or so back in the debris field. He stood and made another lap around the airplane and into the split fuselage. He moved the bodies of the two pilots and the crew chief onto the rock ledge near Peterson’s body. He pulled a GPS locator beacon and put it in the mouth of one of the men, then shut his jaw tightly. Human scavengers would be picking the place clean in less than twenty-four hours, and the last place they would look was in the throat of a dead man. Filipinos were not known for their gold fillings.

  Regardless, he would send a report back to the station chief in Manila and get word to the Armed Forces of the Philippines that they had three men located in the jungle.

  He could only carry one.

  He carefully removed the parachute harness from Peterson and checked him one last time for signs of life.

  Again, he was denied. Climbing his way out would require two hands, and so he took three twelve-foot ropes from his rucksack and slid them under Peterson’s upper back, lower back, and buttocks, leaving enough rope on either side for his purposes. Next he laid himself face up on Peterson, wrapped Peterson’s arms around his chest, then tied the ropes around their bodies. He rolled to all fours with Peterson on his back and then pulled his hands down and tied them with the trail ends of the lower rope. When he stood, he felt the full weight of his rucksack, which he had secured to his chest, and Peterson on his back. But his arms were free to move and pull his way out of the wreckage. To the casual observer it would appear that Matt was conducting a tandem jump or giving Peterson a piggyback ride.

  Looking up at the cliff he needed to scale, Matt silently wished it were a tandem jump.

  Matt heard a noise below the crash site, perhaps one and a half kilometers away. He had been at the site for an hour and knew it was time to move. He would go to high ground, as he would surely run into opposition if he initially went lower.

  With Peterson on his back, he stepped into the first of many foot ledges in the rock wall that angled away from the crash site. While Peterson’s weight was almost unbearable, Matt determined that it was the least he could do.

  “Never leave a fallen comrade,” he whispered to himself. And while he wasn’t an Army officer, such as his brother Zachary, whom Matt had last seen while undergoing Langley’s immersion training and a near face-lift in preparation for his current assignment, he thought that was a pretty good credo to live by. And he knew damned well that if it was Matt Garrett at the end of that parachute harness and Peterson had found him, Matt would expect the same thing.

  Never leave a fallen comrade.

  On that thought, he pulled and scraped his way out of the crash site until two hours later he had to stop.

  The sun was beginning to crest the ridge in the east, and he had reached some sort of plateau by climbing almost straight up. He had a hole in the forest canopy through which a helicopter would be able to lower a jungle penetrator. He determined he would stop there, make contact, then figure out his next move.

  He sat down awkwardly with Peterson on his back and untied the ropes. Peterson had gone to full rigor and looked strange sitting there, dead, as if he were driving an invisible car, his arms and legs outstretched.

  Matt pulled his satellite Blackberry from his backpack and sent the following message:

  One U.S. KIA. Peterson, Ronald W.; current grid location; airplane crashed at grid location of beacon 12, 3 AFP personnel dead at location; status on other U.S. personnel? Why not told?

  He wolfed down a combat ration and a power bar, downed two bottles of water, and changed out of his sweaty T-shirt.

  Sitting on the grassy mountaintop, his anger began to surface again. First, we are pulled from Pakistan. Next, I’m moved from China. Then, I find a lead in Davao City, but have to leave. Every time I’m close, I’m moved. Now, I’ve got a dead Special Forces soldier.

  What is going on? He inhaled heavily and blew out the air. “No use in whining,” he whispered.

  He looked east, then stared down at his GPS, which displayed a map. Once he had satellite triangulation, the visual display showed that Matt was on a volcanic ridge just southwest of Cateel, a fishing village on the windward side of Mindanao.

  He repacked his rucksack, checked his rifle and pistol, and stood. He could see the ocean and was momentarily struck by the beauty of the sun nosing its way out of the blue sea.

  Which is why he felt the turbulent wash of the bullet before he was aware of its echo. A few more shots zipped in his direction.

  Peterson’s body took two shots to the chest while Matt’s backpack took one. Matt spun and sighted his rifle. The shooter had been careless to miss, because now Matt could see two men trying to scale the cliff he had just climbed. In full daylight, Matt was awestruck at what he had done with Peterson on his back as he leveled his SIG SAUER on the lower man and pulled the trigger. The man tumbled backward … a long way.

  Matt t
hen shot the lead man, who had been on all fours trying to scale the cliff. After confirming the second shot, Matt studied the lead man through his sight. He was black-haired and young, and very dead. He wore a red bandanna and had ammunition strapped across his chest like Rambo. A few sparse hairs were growing along the chin, and his skin seemed smooth, almost oily. Had to be Abu Sayyaf or New People’s Army.

  Matt made a decision that he could probably defend his current position better than anywhere he could go, so he made only a minor adjustment in his location by moving two hundred meters to the south, where he found a series of boulders in which he could set up camp. The canopy was still open in the area and he had good visibility. It took him two trips, but he finally got his equipment and Peterson’s body into the rock formation.

  He opened his rucksack, pulled out his Blackberry, and stared at the blank screen.

  There was a bullet hole between the T and Y buttons, as if someone had been aiming at the device.

  He pressed a few buttons to no avail. He pulled his cell phone out of his cargo pocket and saw that there was no reception. No surprises in the middle of this uncharted rain forest.

  Matt thought quickly. Had his handler received his last text? Assuming Peterson was not alone, there had to be some American GIs that survived … unless they were on the other plane. But that didn’t make sense. Peterson would not have been alone, and they would have at least split six and six, so that means at least five were still alive.

  I’ll bury Peterson with a GPS, Matt thought, then try to find the remainder of the team.

  “Besides, they’ll probably need my help,” he said aloud.

  After snatching Peterson’s ID tags from the beaded chain lying against the dead man’s chest, he placed some rocks on top of Peterson. They would be too heavy for an animal to move. Then he placed a GPS in the dirt about ten meters from the rock formation. He pulled out his compass, shot an azimuth to the south, and determined he would follow the ridgeline of the mountain he had scaled.

  As the sun rose, Matt picked his way carefully along the rocky ledge.

  CHAPTER 4

  Same Night, East China Sea

  With the knowledge that Matt Garrett was on the island of Mindanao, former Japanese Naicho agent Taiku Takishi, had shut off his satellite phone and begun his portion of the plan. He held on tightly to a metal rail as the Taiwanese-built and Japanese-operated Kuang Hua VI attack ship cut through the dark sea with purpose. Its gray hull burst from the swirling fog and tracked against the racing thunderheads above—a ghost ship emerging from another time and suddenly finding its way.

  A storm was approaching from the north. The worst kind. The wind kicked the ocean into white-peaked swells, testing some of the small crew. Takishi’s worried face reflected weakly off the cabin window as the GPS navigation device flashed that they had passed their mark. He had just completed a twenty-four-hour flight schedule and was weak from travel. Now this.

  He cast a skittish glance at Admiral Saigo Kinoga, thinking, We’ve come too far.

  “Admiral?” Takishi muttered, watching the radar device.

  Kinoga ignored him. Takishi knew that the admiral had commissioned the craft just two years ago. It was the newest of the Japanese attack boats. Her two Mitsubishi diesel engines and gas turbines turned the two screws, getting her about thirty-five knots in the rough seas. She churned through a massive swell, pitched to the top, and rode the crest downward, only to bore through another wall of water.

  Takishi doubted that Kinoga appreciated a politician such as him riding shotgun on his mission. In a way, Takishi admired the admiral, who had been a young officer in the Imperial Navy before Takishi was born. Takishi saw his own face reflecting off the windscreen in the dim cabin light; he tried to hide his fear, forcing a passive countenance.

  Kinoga shut the engine. The boat yawed, listing hard. Takishi stumbled in the cockpit and saw Kinoga smile.

  “What do we have for defensive measures, Admiral?”

  Kinoga took measure of Takishi briefly and said, “Four Hsiung-Feng II missiles for ship-to-ship combat. If successful, they will not be necessary.”

  The Chinese Maritime coastal defenses were aware that a ship was about to enter its twelve-mile offshore territorial boundary. Seaman Ling, the young radar analyst, had waited, believing the intruder to be a wayward fishing vessel. He had seen, on other nights, fishing ships enter, then leave the twelve-mile limit in the East China Sea.

  Ling was bored and not exceptionally interested in his day job. When not performing compulsory service as a radar analyst in the People’s Liberation Army, he wrote code, hacked computers, and sold online Viagra. Now that was exciting. Watching the sonar blip appear every ten seconds was worse than watching the paint dry on the rocks he and his peers were forced to beautify on the weekends near the front gate of the base. He yawned as he watched the radar image inch its way across the red line superimposed on his screen. Still he hesitated, watching the light flash on and off, creeping forward. He fully expected the fishermen to turn away after realizing their mistake. Taiwan wasn’t his concern, even if the political and military leaders of his country had declared the confederate island nation Chinese public enemy number one. They were capitalist, and so was he. So who gives a shit, Ling thought. They would never attack the mainland.

  “Another boat,” Ling said to his section chief, who was peering over his shoulder.

  “Stealing our fish again.” The section chief sighed, hardly taking notice.

  Many Japanese fishermen had probed the waters as fisheries around the world declined. Chinese diplomats had sent a stern rebuke, and the Japanese government, after much debate, had put measures in place to correct the problem. Still, the boats were returning with record hauls from what seemed previously untapped waters.

  Takishi’s dual purposes came to fruition as Kinoga’s modified vessel sat silent in the wind-whipped sea. They rocked aimlessly in the churning water. His anxiety mounted as Kinoga ordered the helmsman to turn the bow to the east.

  “What makes you think we can get this close, Admiral?” Takishi asked. It sounded like an accu-sation.

  “Mind your own business, politician,” Kinoga spit. “They think we’re fishing.”

  “Fishing? I see,” Takishi said. His deal with China had increased their fishing rights along the twelve-mile border. The fishing vessels had made the People’s Liberation Navy defenses less sensitive to boundary incursions.

  “Are you worried about your Chinese friends?”

  “Do not accuse me of conflicting loyalties,” Taki-shi countered, perhaps the first inkling of his getting his sea legs.

  Takishi examined Kinoga, a very different man from himself. Kinoga was a career seaman, waiting for the day his country could erase past embarrassments. Takishi was a stockbroker turned politician, hoping to rule Japan sometime in the not-too-distant future. They were two men with different aspirations which led to the same end state that night.

  “Initiate jamming,” Kinoga said harshly into a gray microphone, his voice transmitting to his reliable crew of six. Takishi stepped back as the jammers commenced the attack by deliberately sending bursts of radiation to momentarily short-circuit the Chinese radar and interrupt commu-nications systems. It was a silent attack, and he wondered if anything had worked.

  “Fire the pods,” Kinoga said. Takishi held firmly to the dashboard of the attack ship as fire bellowed from the foredeck of the ship. The rockets burst away, burning brightly, momentarily silhouetting the ship against a bright fireball, then dove quickly into the water five hundred meters off stern. Nine others followed.

  Ling, who had his feet up on the metal table beneath the radar monitor, slammed his chair into the floor and stood, staring at the sudden appearance of ten flashing radar indicators. Taiwan, hell, he thought. Ling had a horrible image of American nuclear submarines poised off the coast, ready to launch their weapons. It would be his fault. Speechless, he grabbed his section chief and pointed at the s
creen.

  “Where did they come from?” the chief shouted.

  “They just appeared out of nowhere, sir,” Ling stammered, knowing his response sounded lame.

  “You moron, radio the strip alert. Now!”

  “Admiral, they have launched two bombers and a reconnaissance plane with the rest of the squadron to follow,” Kinoga’s Chinese linguist remarked, lifting one earphone away from his head.

  Takishi snapped his head toward the admiral.

  Kinoga had only two 20mm guns and four useless ship-to-ship missiles to protect his vessel. Even though the guns could fire three hundred rounds a minute, they would be ineffective against the high-tech Chinese aircraft.

  “Full ahead,” Kinoga said. Takishi felt the boat move slowly almost immediately after the admiral’s order.

  Takishi saw Kinoga watching the radar. The Chinese aircraft pursued his vessel as it strained for the safety of international waters and ultimately, the southwestern shores of Japan. Takishi knew that success depended entirely upon the avoidance of conflict or capture in Chinese seas.

  Takishi settled into a calming routine, part of his jujitsu training. He watched Kinoga and his crew. In his dark blue utility uniform, Kinoga looked like any other sailor. His eyes seemed closed as he watched the radar screen. He periodically looked over the bridge of the vessel and into the black night.

  “Scared, Takishi?” Kinoga prodded.

  “The only thing that scares me, Admiral, is taking unnecessary risks. What happens if they capture our ship?” Takishi muttered.

  “Then we die. Remember, or did the prime minister forget to tell you, that we are rigged with explosives.” Kinoga grinned.

  Takishi looked away, shaking his head. He began to wonder if he was in too deep, but he had made commitments to his prime minister and to others. He had no option but to continue, and there were more dangerous tasks ahead. The prime minister had guaranteed him that the emperor would crown him upon successful accomplishment of the entire plan. Thinking of this seemed to motivate him.