Philippine Hardpunch by Jim Case Read Free Book Online Page B

temple and down across the right eye, across
     his nose from side to side, to curl his mouth up into a permanent, leering sneer.
    He had taken to ordering trusted lieutenants to have their men secure women for him—girls like this one, and he never much
     cared how they came to be here—and if anyone suspected who was behind the disappearances, they lacked the courage to come
     forward and make accusations.
    He heard the choppers outside revving up and the commotion of men grouping as his orders were carried out, his force mobilized.
    He stood there in the doorway for an extra moment, to watch the girl.
    Her eyes flickered wide open. She looked around, dazed, her unintelligent peasant face relaxed in the first handful of seconds
     during which she did not comprehend where she was.
    Then she remembered.
    Her senses came back enough in the next second for her to realize that she was tied to the bed.
    She saw the leering eyes of the man watching her.
    “Don’t go anywhere, my dear.” Javier smiled at her. “I will be back before you know it. Then we shall resume our little, er,
     game. You will enjoy that, won’t you, my pet?”
    His victim clamped her eyes shut and began screaming, struggling frantically. Helpless.
    “I thought you would.” He snickered.
    He stepped out of the plushly appointed mobile home which had been transported here at great effort and expense; his home-away-from-home
     for the period of unrest he expected to grip the width and breadth of the Philippines once he gave the final command to his
     aligned forces to put Operation Thunderstrike into action.
    He locked the door and strode off toward the floodlit landing area of his temporary base in the mountains.
    The four gunships rattled the dawn with their revving.
    The barbed-wire-perimetered base crackled with orderly activity, his well-trained, well-armed soldiers double-timing in formation
     from their Quonset hut barracks to the copters, where they proceeded to disperse, boarding the gunships to capacity.
    Javier reached the closest of the gunships.
    It was indeed a great source of pride to him that the power he wielded was a deadly, fearsome thing, backed up by men such
     as those he had brought here with him.
    A far cry from the dogs of disarray commanded by that peasant scum, Locsin, who dared to bestow upon himself a military rank.
    Thinking of the NPA leader and his men, he paused before boarding the helicopter to spit upon the ground the foul taste he
     got in his mouth when he thought of Locsin and his peasant filth.
    He wondered what could have gone wrong for a commando unit to strike Locsin’s base. He vowed to show scant tolerance if this
     attack proved to be the result of some private deal of Locsin’s own that had nothing to do with what Javier had planned.
    He looked forward to the day, and he did not think it would be far off, when he would rid himself permanently of “Colonel”
     Locsin and his entire ill-trained “army.”
    He boarded the helicopter, a fully armed Huey that would have been more than a little familiar to anyone who had served in
     Vietnam during America’s involvement there.
    This chopper, like the other three, wore a full complement of 40mm cannons and turret-mounted miniguns.
    Javier moved to the cockpit, his men making way for him, where he settled into the vacated copilot’s armored seat. He strapped
     himself in, reached for a helmet, and nodded curtly to the pilot.
    The gunships lifted as one, maintaining several rotor-widths distance from each other. They lifted like giant bloated insects
     from the flattened parcel of jungle, banking into a combat formation with Javier’s chopper in the lead.
    As the base faded away behind and below, Javier experienced an increase in his pulse beat and he knew it was because he and
     his men were flying into action at last.
    For too long there had been waiting, waiting, organizing, and more waiting for the Big Moment; he had tried to submerge the
     tension with the