Whatever Gods May Be Part 28

Jamie watched him walk away, wishing he didn't require so much energy. She shook her head to cast off the weight of his animosity, to ease the discomfort that had been part of every waking moment for seven months and now escalated too quickly into pain-a sign that she, too, needed rest.

Rotating her shoulder blades, she forestalled a fatigue she could almost taste. Not yet. As mission commander, first she must make sure these twenty-seven souls were secure. It would take a while.

She exhaled. Well, Corporal Gwynmorgan, not dead yet. The odds were still against them, but a bit less so. After this night, just a bit less so.

Nearly an hour pa.s.sed before Jamie finally had a chance to whisper to North Carolina, "How's she doing?" A few meters away, half under mosquito netting, Lynn Hillinger cautiously experimented with a hammock.

North Carolina nodded. "Okay, LT. Holding her own. She's pretty strong for a civvie."

"Good. You keep her that way, Doc. We've got a long way to go." Jamie gave the corpsman a slow nod, reminder of her special a.s.signment, the most important job of all: Get the senator back safe to our people.

North Carolina answered Jamie's nod by straightening almost to attention. "Yes, ma'am!"

* 229 *

"And what about you, North Carolina?" Jamie asked.

"I'm good. Feels fi- ine to be able to really move around again." North Carolina inspected Jamie in that way only corpsmen get away with. "C'mon, LT ma'am, I got some chow for you over here. And I set up your hammock right next to me and the senator."

"Yeah? Thanks, North Carolina."

Jamie glanced over at Lynn, now perched precariously in the center of the hammock, clutching its edges. Amazed that Lynn would allow her hammock to be placed so close to a torturer's, Jamie approached hesitantly, ready to retreat if Lynn's eyes, Lynn's demeanor revealed repugnance or discomfiture or even just too much politeness.

"Don't tell me you've never been in a hammock before." Lynn looked up, gauzy under the mosquito netting, and shook her head. "Uh-uh, not this kind. Sort of wiggly, aren't they?" Hmm, that seems okay. Jamie slipped under the netting of a neighboring hammock and sat in it. "It's more stable than you think.

Try lying back like this-"

Lynn complied, lumping into the middle of the hammock.

"That's it. Now straighten out and shift your legs slightly left- good-and shift your shoulders slightly right. See how you're angled just a little off-center and can lie pretty much flat?" Lynn beamed enthusiastically. "I think I've got it!" Whereupon she spun horizontally-"Oh!"-right out of the hammock. Jamie whirled to slide underneath her just in time to catch her before she hit the ground.

"Generally," Jamie deadpanned, "we do that feet first." She wondered if the woman wrapped in her arms could sense her pounding pulse, her desire to not let go.

"Yeah," Lynn said, an appreciative grin creasing fine-chiseled features only inches from Jamie's face. "I can certainly see why." Lynn's look, Lynn's words, Lynn's touch felt like forgiveness.

* 230 *

Chapter tWenty-seven.

a real ChanCe n.o.body slept much or for long.

They were all uneasy-worried that they'd been tracked, worried that every pa.s.sing minute brought the enemy closer. Jamie urged them to rest, reminded them that the Chinese officer's scanner showed nothing, that they heard no helos. "We wait 'til the heat and humidity crank up enough," Jamie said. "We need the habagat, people.

So sit tight."

As the cave filled with stifled foreboding, Sherman lost it. "What if there's no rain today at all?" Angry and too loud, he was only marginally in control himself. "We should go now, dammit!" Jamie looked at him, incredulous at first, then with concern. He wasn't an insubordinate kind of guy, not even to a coyote one-lite, and certainly not to any kind of major. But he'd disobeyed orders when he punched the Chinese officer, and now his loss of control threatened the group's cohesion.

"Sit the f.u.c.k down, Sherman," Donato said, "and shut the f.u.c.k up."

Sherman complied, staring forlornly at the cave floor.

"On me, Lieutenant," Jamie murmured to him after a few minutes, then turned away from the others toward the darker recesses of the cave, where the bats lived. Sherman followed, his eyes hopping skittishly over the rough rock that arced above them.

"How many missions did you complete in the Palawan before you were captured, Mr. Sherman?"

He stood several inches taller and was at least forty pounds heavier than Jamie, who belligerently shoved her face upward into his. He * 231 *

leaned back, away from her, but his defiant jaw jutted, his eyes dared her, his huge hands formed fists.

Jamie stepped even closer, glaring up at him an inch from his nose.

"I asked you a question, Lieutenant!"

For a long moment, he glared back.

Jamie didn't move, and finally he stepped away. His shoulders curled and his eyes fell. "I-I haven't completed any missions here. Got grabbed the first time out."

"Well, Mr. Sherman, I've been here for almost two years. More than fifteen months of that in combat. Don't know how many missions.

Lost count a long f.u.c.king time ago. But there's one thing I have counted with great care: n.o.body I've been responsible for has been toasted.

n.o.body. And I'm not about to start letting it happen now because you get claustrophobic. So you get your f.u.c.king Annapolis act together right the f.u.c.k now and do what I G.o.dd.a.m.n tell you when I G.o.dd.a.m.n tell you. No more, no less. If you do not, mister, you will be the first person I lose, because I will blow your f.u.c.king brains out myself." Sherman gaped at her.

"Do you read me, Lieutenant Sherman?" Jamie said, a band of heat clamping around her head. She stared at him hard. If you even breathe any of your s.h.i.t at me, I will take you out right now, you f.u.c.ker. She moved her hand to the Chinese officer's pistol strapped to her belt.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Yes ma'am the f.u.c.k what?" Jamie spit.

Sherman blinked and brought himself to attention, his eyes focused straight ahead. "Yes, ma'am, I read the lieutenant loud and clear, ma'am!"

Jamie stepped back. "Good. You're dismissed, Lieutenant Sherman."

Just as Jamie returned from the back of the cave, a light rain began.

She looked at the noonday sky to find it filling fast with ominously dark clouds. Very soon, the rain would be a downpour.

"Okay, people, gather it up," she called out. "We move in ten." By Jamie's reckoning, the cave just south of Mount Mantalingajan where months ago Marty Rhys had left supplies stood about nine hundred meters higher and seven klicks away. Getting there meant skirting three mountains, each requiring an arduous uphill climb followed by a knee-wrecking descent.

* 232 *

Their path continued to retrace the one Jamie had taken the previous autumn during Operation Repo. Soon they moved along a much narrower, far more rugged track than the previous night's more traveled trail. Barely visible to an inexperienced eye, it was entirely invisible from above without the ground-penetrating radar now hindered by wet ground.

As she led the way, Jamie had plenty to worry about. Thermal detectors would spot them unless they stayed under heavy vegetation.

In anything but rainy weather, they were easily detectable with look-down infrared and radar surveillance systems. Enemy satellites and maybe aircraft, too, might already be searching for their anomalously large group.

But splitting up was not an option. So they needed the rain.

Would it continue long enough for them to get all the way to Mount Mantalingajan? Would it become so torrential that it completely washed out the steep ravine-side paths or the exquisitely woven Tau't Batu ladders and bridges they'd be relying on? Would somebody slip and fall, maybe even tumble dozens of meters into oblivion? Had the diversion team-four immensely courageous Filipinos wearing Chinese Army uniforms-gotten away? Or would they be grabbed and coerced into revealing which way the Saint Eh Mo's escapees went? Were the supplies Marty deposited still there? Had Avery needed them? Or were they already claimed by the Tau't Batu family that occupied the cave during the habagat?

Jamie's past echoed, and she actually heard her mother's voice, tinny and distant. "From too much love of living, from hope and fear set free..." Always the same apology by poetry for the debacle du jour.

Because you could never set yourself free, could you, Alby? Is this what you'd do? Get seduced by the hope, then drown in wave after wave of fear?

Once, after a particularly degrading episode, Alby had gone to an AA meeting, and now Jamie recalled the well-known motto-one day at a time-which her mother had managed to live by for maybe a week.

One hope at a time. One fear at a time.

One step at a time. Times twenty-seven people. Better make d.a.m.n sure they're stepping fast enough.

The three people on her scout team were, thank G.o.d, experienced snipes. Trained to be ghosts who moved through the terrain leaving * 233 *

no sign that they'd been there. Trained to find their way with nothing more than a primitive map and a compa.s.s. Jamie had laid out for them the paths to the Mantalingajan cave, and at the first high point in the day's trek, she showed the ghosts the crook in the profile of the second mountain rising up ahead-a mere hint of a shadow visible for just seconds between billows of fog-and ordered them to take the lead in getting there.

During the afternoon, for a while at least, Jamie decided to fall back and push from behind, one step at a time.

She saw two weak links in her chain of escapees: Sherman, who was among the strongest physically but seemed unstable- and a d.a.m.n officer to boot, so he can do real damage; and the civilians, who were unaccustomed to the sustained physical demands of forced trekking day after day over mountains in torrential rain.

Sherman first. Jamie found him on their right flank, hanging back but staying appropriately ahead of the cover team. A good sign. He'd decided to obey her order to be especially frosty on the right flank, where they were likeliest to first encounter any approaching enemy ground force.

"How's it swinging, Lieutenant?" she asked in a low voice as he turned around to face the subtle sound of her approach.

Excellent. Very alert, not too jumpy. He had, she knew, already checked in three times with all members of the widely dispersed perimeter team, an arduous effort that didn't show in his demeanor or readiness.

"Clicking fast," he responded good-naturedly, apparently able to leave what happened between them in the last cave. "Scanner's clean, for what that's worth in this weather. And n.o.body's seen or heard anything."

"Your people keeping up okay?"

The marines on the perimeter team moved singly through the thick tropical forest just far enough apart to maintain either visual or audio contact with each other and the main band on the trail. It was d.a.m.n hard work.

"Oh yeah," Sherman said. "They're all strong."

"Think they can handle it if we pick up the pace some?"

"Yes. I believe they can."

* 234 *

Jamie nodded and stealthed back onto the narrow path, this time out ahead of the main group, because she thought she remembered...

Yep, there it is.

In front of her, just coming into view through the sheets of rain, was a Tau't Batu bridge, the first they'd encountered, spanning a narrow but very deep ravine. If they used it, they'd avoid having to machete a new path around the perilously slippery top of the ravine. Crossing the bridge would save them at least two hours-the difference between making the Mantalingajan cave and getting caught out in the open, exposed to enemy surveillance.

But the bridge-a light lattice of saplings lashed together and anch.o.r.ed fast to rock now threatened by cascading water-had lost some of its anchors and looked raggedy. Ahead of her, one of the scout team ghosts had stopped to a.s.sess it. She signaled Donato, who led the main group, to halt some fifteen meters before the bridge.

The group bottlenecked behind Donato on the primitive track.

Jamie noticed that it took him a full minute to stop gawking at the ravine and make sure everyone found concealment while she checked the condition of the bridge. Christ, now I got a freaked-out major. Can't give him a chance to wilt. Everyone else'll wilt, too.

She hurried to examine the bridge's anchors and concluded the bridge would hold. Just. Okay. Let's find out. She stepped onto it, walked to the middle of its ten-meter span, and tested it with pulls and jumps.

When she glanced back to see how her performance was received, she registered Lynn first, mouth agape.

Gotta keep this moving. Jamie ordered the scout team to cross the bridge one at a time, then returned to the main group. "Major, we don't have enough rope to rig a safety line, but it's stronger than it looks," she said. "The trick is to go over one at a time." Donato stared at the bridge. Despite having seen three people cross it safely, he didn't budge or speak.

"I'll give it a try, Lieutenant," Lynn said just loudly enough to be heard by the half dozen people behind her on the path. At the sound of her voice, Donato swung around to look at her but remained mute.

Thank you, Jamie tried to say with her eyes. "All right, ma'am.

Let's get a couple of people over there ahead of you, okay? But please hydrate first, before you go."

* 235 *

Lynn nodded and reached for her canteen.

"LT ma'am." North Carolina edged around Lynn and Donato. "I should be there ahead of the senator."

Two more marines came up behind the corpsman. "We got weapons, LT," one said. "Permission to go first so we can provide cover."

"Yeah. Good idea." Jamie couldn't help smiling her relief.

"Everybody hydrate before crossing. Pa.s.s the word." The three of them crossed the Tau't Batu bridge one after the other, followed by Lynn, who gave Jamie a parting look filled with both terror and triumph. All the rest bravely followed. Jamie crossed last, then helped the cover team destroy the bridge.

"I'm so sorry," she said to the unseen Tau't Batu who would suffer from this loss. "Please forgive me. I'll try to make up for it." Soon after, they heard but couldn't see helos overhead-at least three, perhaps more. Most of the marines recognized the idiosyncratic rhythm of Chinese WZ-12 attack helicopters-the older models used by the PIA.

Everyone took cover and froze, hoping that their immobility, the rain, and an air temperature hovering at ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit would help them remain undiscovered. No one moved for nearly an hour, until the sounds of the helos subsided completely.

Several more hours and two Tau't Batu bridges later, Jamie spotted the cave just south of Palawan's highest peak. She took the ghosts with her to check it out and found it empty-no Tau't Batu yet.

But she had no time to enjoy the relief oozing through her. The rain had begun to ease and the day was ebbing fast. Jamie ordered two of the ghosts to scout the area and sent the third ghost back to hurry the two dozen others into the large cave, a cathedralesque product of eons of water eroding limestone with plenty of room for everyone.

She stayed to search for the supplies left by Rhys, scurrying into two tunnel-like crevices, reaching for memories jumbled by months of pain and disorientation and nightmares, returning each time to the main cavern with only her mounting dismay. Maybe I'm in the wrong cave.

Maybe there's nothing here, never been anything here.

She tried a third cavity. Nothing. And then a fourth. Nothing.

But as she was about to withdraw, she saw a small opening leading to another chamber. And then she remembered the short-burst splinter- * 236 *