It was nearly five in the morning and time for Abe to get four hours of sleep before checking the nine o’clock shift. During his next shift, he would sneak out and relax his mind and body, he told himself. He summoned his vice president for operations and told him to take charge while he rested. The man dutifully obeyed. Abe walked past the constantly moving assembly line, looking at the many tank chassis, marveling at the technology they were employing on these modern weapons.
He knew very little about the military. He was a pacifist, having been raised in Japan’s post — World War II era. He advocated Article Nine of the Japanese Peace Constitution. He saw no need for Japan to be strong militarily when they could effectively compete in the world through economics. But he understood the need for other nations to have strong militaries, particularly countries such as the Philippines, where insurgency impeded all government headway.
He opened the door to his cubicle of a room. As the plant manager, his accommodations were less spartan than the others’, but not luxurious by any stretch. Still, he had no television or radio. He was completely isolated from the outside world. The walls of the facility were as white as Abe’s smock. It was a sterile environment. Music from Japanese tapes poured through speakers in the work area.
Before he entered his room, he paused and looked down the pristine white hall toward the glass door and guard station that separated the living quarters from the production area. Beyond his door in the other direction was the heavily guarded entrance. Abe felt secure with the guards there. Mr. Takishi had warned him about the rising tide of Islamic insurgency and how they would try to steal everything they had. It was good, he thought, that there were Japanese soldiers protecting his plant. He agreed that trucking the tanks at night to the port city of Davao was best, also, because it was then that they would be most secure from the wandering Abu Sayyaf bands.
He closed and locked his door behind him. His room was about seven meters wide and five and a half meters deep. He had a bed, sink, shower, and toilet area; desk area with nearly thirty books; and a closet and chest-of-drawers area. It was not unlike his dorm room at the University of Tokyo. Littered about his desk were pictures of his wife and girls. His wife, Nagimi, was a beautiful woman in her late thirties. She had black hair and a huge grin that produced dimples in her cheeks. In one picture, she was kneeling, looking up at the camera and wearing an oriental robe. Sitting at his desk, he got out his notebook to make another entry in his journal.
“April 2002. I have only three days remaining until the next team arrives to plant number three. Soon, I will joyously return home to my lovely wife and children. I can’t wait. But must. I can feel the spirit of my family in my soul. Oddly, we have continued to increase production of tanks at a rapid pace. We are making nearly twenty a day now. I hope and pray that these weapons bring peace and security to the Filipino people and help the fight against the terrorists. If in some small way, I have made the world a safer place through the production of these weapons, then I will have fulfilled a duty that I always wanted to pursue. If these weapons, however, only add to the fighting and suffering in the world, then I am ashamed of my time here and will, of course, be responsible for my actions. At the very least, I have fulfilled an obligation to my prime minister, and I am happy about that. A new poem:
The path is my way/a way to peace you say/the path is my guide/my temple to pray/it moves past me/as only I can see/my motives are/to make these people free/gravel beneath and green above/it is the dove/I hope/and not the fisted glove/that comes flying toward/these people so moored/to their misery.
Three days and counting.
Abe closed the book and placed it in his desk drawer. He had religiously written similar thoughts in the journal every night since his arrival. He thought he might try to publish his collection of poems. It was an escape for him, like writing the fabled poison-pen letter that never gets sent to whom it is directed — at least it makes you feel better, he thought. He walked to the sink area and washed his face. Looking in the mirror, he noticed new wrinkles in his face. He was aging quickly. Perhaps all of the stress and worry had gotten the best of him. After brushing his teeth, he urinated and climbed in bed. He set his alarm clock for 8:30 a.m.. That would give him enough time to wake up, shave, shower, dress, and report for the 9:00 a.m. shift. After all, the commute was short.
Lying in bed, as he thought of his two girls, he wept silently. He had to be strong. Even though he was only a few days away from rejoining his beloved family, the battery in the clock seemed to be weak, dragging the second hand slower and slower each day. Sometimes, it almost seemed to stop.
Soon, he would run on the jungle path. That would make him stronger.
Chapter 10
Special Forces Major Chuck Ramsey watched Sergeant First Class Jones set up the tactical satellite radio so that he could inform Okinawa and the U.S. embassy in the Philippines that he had control of eleven of his twelve team members and one Filipino Ranger that had survived the jump.
The news was not good, but it always got worse with age. The two men quietly huddled in a thick crop of elephant grass, toying with the satellite antenna. Overhead, monkeys spoke their primordial language, screeching at one another through the green of the mahogany leaves. The blazing sun hung in its afternoon position over the western mountain ranges, its unfiltered rays blasting them with heat.
“Viper base, this is Bushmaster six, over.”
“Bushmaster six, this is Viper base. Send it, over.” The response was immediate and reassuring. He never doubted that it would not be, but his sense of isolation had grown as the realization of Peterson’s death settled over him.
“This is Bushmaster six, we are in Las Vegas. Number two went to Montana, over.” Las Vegas was the code for the rally point his team currently occupied and Montana was the unit’s code for someone missing in action. Peterson was number two on the unit manning roster. After a brief pause, Ramsey heard the voice on the other end mutter, “Christ almighty.” He quickly pressed the button on his handset to squelch the words. While the satellite communications were secured through encryption, the embassy was monitoring on the same frequency and he was unsure of the allegiance of some of the Filipinos who worked in the building.
“Wait one, Bushmaster.” Ramsey waited, assuming the battalion commander was being paged.
“Bushmaster six, Viper six,” the commander said, using his call sign. “Say again sitrep.” Commanders never trusted initial reports from radio and telephone operators so always had to hear a second iteration.
“This is Bushmaster six. I say again that we are in Las Vegas and that number two went to Montana.”
“Roger. Any other information?”
“Negative.”
“Roger. Go Yankees, out.”
“Out,” Ramsey said. “Go Yankees” was the code signaling Ramsey to continue the mission. “Go Dodgers” would have meant to abort the mission. He was sure the battalion commander was just as pained over Peterson’s loss as he was, but Ramsey knew the man to be a professional who realized that there were eleven other lives at stake. Plus, long radio conversations were routinely intercepted and got people killed. Ramsey passed the word that they had made contact with battalion and passed on the message of “Go Yankees.” His Special Forces soldiers expected nothing less.
From his perch, he could see movement some 550 meters below. Looking at the map, he deter-mined his location to be about twenty-five kilometers east of a small village named Compostela. They had jumped parallel to a major highway, which provided the most direct route from the northern port city of Surigao, through Davao, and to the southern tip of the island near a town called General Santos. With the searing sun illuminating the entire valley and the Abu Sayyaf seeming, for the moment, not to be on his tail, Ramsey could see that Minda-nao was a beautiful island. To his north were a high plains area and another range of mountains. To his west was a rain forest that rose to 2500 meters in another mountain range. He could see where several rivers converged into the southern portion of Mindanao at the site of a town called Datu Piang. Just beyond Datu Piang was another mountain range, which seemed to be the steepest of them all. From afar most of the forests were dotted green and brown. Ramsey correctly assumed the brown spots to be clear-cut areas where relentless loggers had shredded enclaves of history and time.