Typhoon Fury

44

At the sound of a vehicle in the distance, Juan held up his hand to stop his team. Eddie, Linc, MacD, Raven, and Max all froze in their tracks. When it was clear that the vehicle was approaching, Juan motioned for them to take cover. They all dropped to the ground, shielded from the road by the island’s thick woods.

Getting from the Gator onto Corregidor had gone as expected. No one had been at the unused airfield to see them come ashore. They’d been making their way through the underbrush to avoid being spotted along the road. All of them were equipped with M4 assault rifles, except for MacD, who had his crossbow. They wore green and sand colored camouflaged fatigues and helmets similar to those worn by the Philippine National Police Special Action Force. On their chests and backs were Velcro panels that would reveal the words PNP-SAF and POLICE when torn away. Around their necks were balaclavas that could be pulled up over their faces to conceal their identities, just like the police would wear on a drug raid.

Juan didn’t know if Locsin was inside the tunnel, but the plan was to capture Locsin’s men alive and then march them the quarter mile to the south dock, where the Oregon’s more spacious lifeboat would pick them up. By the time the actual Philippine police made it out to the island, they’d be long gone and would be able to conduct the interrogation in private to find out Beth’s location.

The tranvía tram passed by without slowing, likely heading to the Japanese Garden of Peace, which they’d already passed. Juan gestured for them to get back up and keep moving.

They stopped again when they reached the base of Malinta Hill. Juan crouched with the rest of them and they watched another tranvía drop off a load of tourists, snapping photos, before they were escorted into the main tunnel for a guided visit of the attraction.

Juan then led his team along the south side of Malinta Hill. He could see the Oregon anchored in the distance. Linda, who was in command of the ship, would send the lifeboat as soon as she got word from Juan that he had Locsin in custody.

They reached the Navy Tunnels south entrance, where the excavation was in progress, and Juan positioned his team behind the trees and undergrowth in three sets of two — Juan with Max directly in front of the tunnel, Eddie with Raven to the right, where the dirt pile lay, and MacD with Linc to the left, where the dusty road led down the hill — so they had it covered from all angles. The Bobcat had to be inside the tunnel.

“Ready to see who’s in there?” Juan asked Max.

“Absolutely.” Max handed him a bulky set of glasses and put on a pair himself. Then he removed a remotely operated tracked vehicle the size of a paperback novel from his backpack, an ROV of Max’s own design that he called the Crawler. He set it on the ground and flipped a switch. A tiny camera mounted on the top of the Crawler came to life and swiveled around. The view from the camera showed up on an offset screen in Juan’s glasses. Max’s grinning face filled the image.

“High definition isn’t your friend,” Juan said with a smile.

“Hey, I earned these wrinkles. Besides, most of them are your fault. One for every Plan C you concoct.”

“Then let’s stick with Plan A for today. Wouldn’t want to break the camera next time.”

Max chuffed good-naturedly but said nothing as he extended an antenna and set it on the ground. Then he checked that the audio feed was working, and Juan heard Max’s voice echoing in his earpiece. Satisfied that everything was ready, he used the handheld controller to set the Crawler in motion. It silently glided away, only the occasional crackle of leaves betraying its location. Juan was impressed at how Max had eliminated the motor’s whine.

“What’s the range on that?” Juan asked.

“Since we have a direct line of sight into the tunnel, I’d say it could get two hundred feet inside before we lose the signal, depending on how many turns it has to make.”

The Crawler reached the entrance and went inside, hugging the concrete wall as Max drove it over the smooth tunnel floor. For a moment, the screen went dark as the sensor adjusted to the change in light. Then Juan could make out a string of lights going down the tunnel, bare bulbs hung from the arched ceiling. Piles of debris and pockmarks in the walls were reminders of the intense World War II battle to retake the fortress.

When the Crawler had gone another twenty feet, Juan heard the sound of machinery and voices, but he still couldn’t see anything but empty tunnel. The sound of a motor grew louder. The Bobcat came around the corner fifty feet away, its bucket trailing dirt that overflowed its sides.

Max maneuvered the Crawler into a small notch in the wall and let the Bobcat pass by. Seconds later, the Bobcat emerged from the tunnel and dumped another load on the pile before disappearing back inside.

“This is perfect,” Max said. “We’ve got our own escort.”

As the Bobcat passed, Max switched the Crawler into high gear, and it shot forward, racing after the Bobcat, until it was underneath the loader.

“Nice work,” Juan said.

“Gotta earn my keep somehow.”

The Bobcat made a left turn to go back the way it had come. Max deftly guided the Crawler to match course. A few seconds after that, Juan could make out people at the end of the tunnel. All of them, dressed in hard hats and colored vests like any normal construction crew, were digging or operating machinery, except for one man who stood off to the side directing their efforts. When Juan saw him, it confirmed that this was no ordinary archaeological dig.

“Is that Locsin?” Max asked.

“That’s him,” Juan said. “If he risked coming here himself, they must be close to breaking through.”

The Bobcat stopped next to a man operating a hydraulic rock hammer that was pounding away at the collapsed heap of concrete blocking the way. Some of the men tossed what they had already loosened into the bucket of the Bobcat while the rest unloaded beams from a trailer to shore up the dirt walls of the tunnel that they’d already dug out.

“We’ll lose cover once the Bobcat comes back out,” Juan said.

“I’ll move the Crawler under the trailer,” Max said.

“You read my mind.”

Max waited until all the men had moved away from the Bobcat and raced the Crawler across the open space to the underside of the trailer, the rock hammer masking the sound of the high-speed motor. Max switched it back to low gear and moved the Crawler around until it had a good view of the worksite while remaining in the shadows.

“If they get through, will you be able to move over that debris?” Juan asked.

“No, it’s too jagged, but it won’t matter,” Max replied. “I’m getting a really low signal from the Crawler. If it goes in any farther, we’ll lose it.”

“Then all we can do is watch and wait. But, either way, we’re taking them when they come out.” Juan radioed the rest of the team to report what he and Max had seen so they could prep for the upcoming ambush. They’d wait until Locsin and all his men were clear of the tunnel.

Juan and Max settled in and watched their tiny monitors like they were catching a game on TV, the most boring one they’d ever seen. There wasn’t even a good beer commercial to liven things up. The monotony, however, didn’t last long.

Twenty minutes and two more Bobcat runs later, the man operating the rock hammer shut it down and yelled to Locsin. He pointed at a black hole in the debris.

Locsin climbed up and shined a flashlight through the opening. When he looked back at his men, he was smiling. They had broken through.