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“They went that way!”
Juan sprinted after them. He could see Locsin and the remainder of his men exit the tunnel into sunlight. Locsin leapt on a tranvía that had just delivered a load of tourists and threw the driver to the pavement. He took the wheel of the tram, as his men climbed aboard, then sped off down the road.
When Juan got outside, he saw another tranvía backed into a parking spot, its driver watching the fleeing tram with a stunned look.
Before Juan could order the driver to get out, Raven yanked his arm and pulled him off. She got into the driver’s seat and, as if to ward off any questions, said, “I drove a fire truck last night. This is nothing. Get on.”
She hit the gas, and Juan had to grab one of the handholds before she drove off without him. Eddie, MacD, and Linc all barely made it aboard.
The tranvía’s top speed wasn’t impressive, but Raven did her best to keep Locsin in sight as they careened around the curves leading to Corregidor’s tail. Whenever the Locsin’s tram came into view, two hundred yards ahead, gunfire would rip into theirs, and Juan and his team would return fire. The windshield lasted about five seconds, then shattered in a hail of bullets, showering Raven with safety glass.
She averted her eyes for a moment to avoid the pellets but never took her foot off the gas.
After three more turns, Juan could see Locsin’s tranvía through the trees as it reached the old airfield at the same time as a de Havilland Twin Otter touched down on the dirt strip. The propeller-driven plane was a favorite of bush pilots for its ability to land on short, unpaved runways. Locsin must have stepped outside the tunnel to call the pilot for retrieval.
It rolled to a stop and turned just as Locsin’s tranvía pulled up to it.
“Come on, you stupid thing!” Raven yelled at the tram, vainly coaxing it to go faster.
The door to the plane popped open long enough for Locsin and his three surviving men to jump on. The trees prevented Juan from taking an effective shot. None of his bullets made it through the thicket of branches.
The Twin Otter’s engines revved to full power, and the plane tore down the runway. Raven tried to give chase, but their tram was literally left in the dust.
Juan disgustedly pulled his balaclava down, knowing they’d just lost their best chance at capturing Locsin. He looked at Eddie, Linc, and MacD, in turn, and saw the frustration on their faces.
Raven stood on the brake and faced Juan, irate that their quarry had escaped.
“Can’t you shoot it down?” she demanded. “I saw launch controls for surface-to-air missiles in your op center.”
Juan was impressed. Not many people would have been that observant.
“We can,” he said, “but we won’t. Not in broad daylight, at the entrance to one of the busiest harbors in the world. The area around Manila Bay is home to eighteen million people. Thousands of witnesses would see the Oregon fire a missile.”
“Then what can we do?”
“We can try to track the plane,” Eddie said, “although I doubt it has a transponder. And the Filipino radar isn’t sophisticated enough to follow it if they fly low, which that plane can do.”
Raven beat on the steering wheel but said nothing.
“Come on,” Juan said. “Let’s get back to the Gator before the real police show up, wanting to find out why we just shot up a national monument.”
They left the tranvía where it was on the runway and started marching back to the point where the Gator had dropped them off not far from there.
“Hey, guys,” Max said over the radio. By the way he was huffing, Juan could tell he was retracing their hike through the trees on his way back. “I’ve been listening in on your conversation. I might have an idea where they’re going.”
“From the papers you found?” Juan asked. “I didn’t know you read Japanese.”
“They weren’t in Japanese. They were in English. One of the pages says that the last known shipment of Typhoon developed during the war left on a destroyer called the USS Pearsall.”
“An American destroyer? How is that possible?”
“Because we’ve had the wrong assumption all along,” Max said. “The Typhoon drug wasn’t created by some top secret Japanese research group. It was invented by the United States Army.”
48
NEGROS ISLAND
By the time Beth finished her next meal, it was nighttime in the communist rebel headquarters. She could make out a few stars through the open roof, even though the cavern was illuminated from below by enough lights for a small town.
