Moondogs - Alexander Yates [145]
Their footfalls reverberate as they cut through an ivy-draped, ruined barracks. Efrem is dimly aware of being drawn away from the road, out of sight. “They’re on their way now,” Reynato says, “downright giddy at the thought of kidnapping an American from the very edge of Metro Manila. They knocked off two armored cars in Cebu City just to round up the cash. I won’t talk numbers, because you don’t have a leg to stand on in terms of negotiating a cut, but I’ll say that tonight could make you a rich man, by your standards. By a lot of other people’s, too.”
Efrem glances up through a moon-filled hole in the concrete roof, out over treetops on the north shore. A boat approaches, nets covering the deck, cabin and running lights doused. Men sleep head to foot in the stern. He recognizes former rebels among them. An old man with a silver beard smokes in the deckhouse. His one hand sits on his white robed chest. The moon reflects in the dark ovals of his sunglasses. Efrem misses a step, nearly pitching into a knee-deep crater in the floor.
Reynato tightens their linked elbows and quickens his pace through the rubble. “I need to know if you can handle this, Mohammed. I need you to visualize yourself helping us or visualize yourself without a weapon, handcuffed for nobody’s safety but your own. Visualize a team with shaken confidence. This team. Be as honest with me as I’ve been with you. Do you have a problem with this?”
Efrem answers without hesitating. “No, I don’t.”
“I knew you didn’t,” Reynato says, returning Glock to his belt. “I always knew you wouldn’t.”
KA-POW RETURNS to the topside shore. They collect sobbing Howard from the cave, carry him down a steep pathless slope to the shallows and wait. The fishing boat filled with Abu Sayyaf approaches, near enough now that everybody sees it. Three kilometers out, they kill the engine and coast, silent on the rising tide. Somebody onboard shines a lantern twice. Reynato raises a penlight high and does the same. Then, all in a flash, the boat turns running lights back on. Men appear along the gunwale with long bamboo poles, negotiating with coral and rocks beneath the surface. The Holy Man stands at the bow, his one hand gripping the stem as he stares coastward through dark glasses. Efrem knows he’s unrecognizable on the beach, but being this close still dices his breath.
The boat hits bottom a few meters out and men aboard lower palm-fiber ropes and climb down into the shallows. Two of them help the Holy Man over the gunwale while another carries a large sack that he’s careful to not get wet. More men come over the side until ten stand thigh-deep in the waves. They brandish bolos and antique rifles. Two wear coconut-fiber belts strung with grenades painted like rotten fruit.
Reynato clicks his tongue as they wade closer. It’s five more than they said they’d bring. In a hissed whisper he orders Efrem back up the slope to keep watch, reminding him of the cardinal rule before he goes—me first.
Efrem slips away, disappearing into the vegetation beyond the narrow beach. He races up the wooded hillside as quietly as he can and finds a suitable granite outcropping near the top. The stone is cold and wet. It feels good on his belly as he lies flat and steadies his Tingin. Reynato and the Holy Man shake and banter below. Efrem draws a bead on their clasped hands. He sights his Tingin on the Holy Man. He sights it on Reynato. He wonders if his adoptive mother would be proud of what he’s about to do. She wouldn’t, he decides. She’d have no sympathy