The nurses that came in were often patronizing. They were taught that anyone in a coma was in a deep unreachable place. None of them would ever say anything to Pig but he knew they thought his constant patter with Flame was a wasted effort.

  “Charging your iPod, bro. But if you don’t show some initiative I’ll bring in my tunes. Some Kreator or Overkill would get your redneck ass out of bed.”

  Well, fuck that, Pig knew Flame was way down there somewhere. He might not be able to understand what Pig was saying but he damn sure knew Pig was there. Same for the iPod. It was Flame’s own and programmed with that country music shit he liked to listen to. Flame was a Florida panhandle cracker and would always be. There was some Abba on there too and Pig looked forward to busting his balls over that when Flame woke up.

  But the prospects for that were looking grim. They’d be lifting him out of the coma in a few days. He’d have to start breathing again on his own by then. That was the big hurdle. His heart was strong so that was looking good. That’s where the sunshine ended. In the next day or so, the docs would start assessing him for brain damage. The neurosurgeons told Pig that they had no real guesses as to what Flame would be like when he regained consciousness. They were doctors, not oddsmakers.

  Pig did some of his own reading on the internet and wished he hadn’t. The area where Flame took the blow to the head controlled a variety of motor functions. He could wake up with some minor short term memory loss or be a pants-shitting vegetable the rest of his life and a whole menu of complications and challenges lay between. The chances of him returning to active duty as a SEAL were shrinking to zero. No matter what, Pig would be by his side just as he knew Flame would be for him if things broke the other way.

  A nurse came in to change the bedding and welcomed Pig’s help. He’d been a daily fixture here and all the staff knew him and gave him space when he was here.

  “Does he have family?” the nurse asked. Actually she was an HM, Hospital Corpsman, and did some of the work of a nurse but wouldn’t be considered a professional in civilian medicine. She was Asian but he tag read RASCHER M. A navy brat out of Korea if Pig had to guess.

  “They’ve only been notified that he’s wounded and under care. It’s classified,” Pig shrugged.

  “So you’re taking up the slack?”

  “He’d do it for me.”

  “Were you there when…?” she started and then realized her error. This guy always arrived in civilian dress and had a decidedly un-regulation goatee. She was the one who shaved the head of the man in the bed to prep for surgery. The patient had hair down to his collar. These guys were Navy but not a part of the service she was supposed to know anything about.

  “I was there but I can’t say where.” Pig smiled to smooth over the gaffe.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He liked how she got flustered. “His family will be able to visit when he comes around and he’s in the step-down unit.”

  “They’re taking him off the respirator tomorrow morning,” she said and pulled the sheet taut on her side while Pig gently rolled Flame off the bed surface. “Then the feeding tube the next day as a trial.”

  “Trial?”

  “They need to know if he remembers how to swallow before he can take food orally.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t have any kind of degree.”

  “But you’ve seen head traumas through here before, right? You don’t need to feed me a line. I’m a big boy.”

  “He’s strong,” she said arranging his IV lines to be clear of his arms. “I know he’s just lying here but I can tell a fighter when I see one. His cardio vitals are strong. He’s got a good chance.”

  “Active duty?”

  “You want the truth or something to make you feel better?”

  That was an answer right there.

  “Thanks,” Pig said and watched her leave the room.

  “How about some baseball?” Pig said and snapped the TV on. “You have the Rays. I’ll take the White Sox.”

  Pig sat down in a chair by his fallen comrade and provided some off-color color commentary until visiting hours were over. When the game was over he replaced the earbuds in Flame’s ears and hit shuffle for hours and hours of that hillbilly shit. Then it was back to his quarters at the base where he found Chili in BDUs and working out front to heft the gear of their full jungle load-outs into the bed of a Humvee.

  “Call-out,” Chili said, sliding a padded rifle case into the truck.

  “Not reassignment?” Pig said.

  “Hell, no,” Chili huffed and tossed a pair of fifty pound rucks into the HV.

  “Who’s lead?” Pig knew better than to ask where they were going. He just wanted to know who with.

  “Priest,” Chili said and secured the tailgate of the truck in place. “He asked for us special.”

  “Oh shit,” Pig said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A BAD PLACE

  His mouth was dry.

  He worked his tongue around to make spit and got nothing.

  It felt gritty in his mouth. Even his gums felt like leather, like they were drawing back from his teeth.

  He opened his eyes but could see only muted light coming through something covering his head. He tried to move his arm to pull whatever it was from his face but his arm would not move. Both arms were trapped against his body. They were immobilized as were his legs. Even his chest was constricted. His ribs were pressed tight all around so that he couldn’t draw a lungful of air. He could only sip air slowly. His throat hurt each time he sucked in the hot, dusty air.

  He couldn’t see and he couldn’t move and it hurt to breathe. He fought down panic. The last thing he remembered was the girl’s legs. He folded them to shut her into the van. Her purse. She dropped her purse and he bent to pick it up and then…

  Nothing.

  Nando tried to speak but nothing would come out of his throat. It was raw and parched. The only sound he could make was a pathetic moan.

  “He’s coming around.” A voice from somewhere above him. A black guy. A shadow crossed behind the cloth covering his face.

  “Let’s take a look.” Another voice. White guy. It came from over his head.

  The cloth came away and Nando was looking at a pair of black boots, lace ups. Army boots. They were inches from his face. He tried to turn his head to look around. His chin scraped dirt. He was buried up to his neck. Somebody dug a fucking hole and buried all of him but his head. That’s why it hurt to breathe. That’s why he couldn’t move. He started to hyperventilate and felt a sudden cold rush. Someone was pouring a bottle of water on his head. He stuck his tongue out to catch a few drops. He blew grit and dirt from his nose.

  The boots moved away. They drew back until he could see a man standing before him. The black guy. He was talking and the unseen white guy was answering but Nando wasn’t listening to what they were saying. He was checking out his surroundings. It was early morning. The air was chilly on his face. He was on a construction site. Some housing development out in the desert. There were lots of these outside the city: developments and subdivisions that went bust when the bottom dropped out of the housing market. Nando had friends who went back to Mexico when they couldn’t find any more roofing or carpentry work. There were stacks of cinderblocks and foundation with some bare framing completed to the second floor. A rusting tractor with a scoop front end sat near a pile of lumber. Nando used to work as a day laborer back when he was a dumb wetback, back before he joined the plaza and went into pussynapping.

  Nando knew no one was coming. No one had worked here in years. The lumber on the stacks was turning gray with dry rot.

  “Can you hear me, asshole?” the black guy said. “You need me to repeat it in Español for you?”

  “What do you want?” Nando croaked. It came out as a hoarse whisper.

  “If you can’t talk you’re no damned good to me,” the black guy said and dropped to one knee to meet Nando’s eyes. He was a big man. His arms below his t-shirt were covered in tats to the wrists. The ink was crisscrossed with raised pale lines of tissue that Nando knew from his own experience were blade scars. This nigger got himself into a lot of knife fights.

  “Fuck you, mayate,” Nando managed, his voice breaking to dispel the menace he tried to put across.

  “That’s better,” the black man grinned.

  “Tell us about Pecadores Diez,” said the white guy’s voice from behind him.

  Pecadores Diez? What did these gabachos want with his plaza? They weren’t cops. They weren’t feds. Gringo lawmen didn’t bury people alive. They played by the rules. These guys sure as fuck weren’t gang. Did they know who they were fucking with?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nando croaked.

  “Pecadores Diez. Sinners Ten. A narco gang out of Sinaloa.” The white guy’s voice.

  “Yo no sé, senor,” Nando grinned.

  “You can’t lie to us, asshole,” the black man said. “You know the Pecadores. You are a Pecadores. You have their fucking gang tat on your ass.”

  It was true. On Nando’s right cheek was a big Roman X embraced by Lady Death, a big titted chica with a skull for a face. Around it was a wreath of marijuana leaves. It cost him three hundred dollars at a tattoo place in Sonora. With a start Nando realized that he was naked in this hole. They’d stripped him before they buried him. That’s how they saw his ink. Being buried was bad. Being buried bare balls naked was worse. Nando starting thinking about ants.

  “I am Pecadores,” he blurted with false bravado. “And if you do anything to me they will kill you. Then they will find your family and kill them. If you have women they will fuck them. They will feed your children to their dogs. All will suffer for a very long time before they die.”

  “See that Bobcat?” the black man said ignoring Nando and jerking a thumb back at the little tractor with the scoop bucket. “You start making sense right now or my friend is going to fire that motherfucker up and drive that plow right through your neck.”

  Nando stared at the crusty serrated blade on the front end of the scoop. He couldn’t help but picture it working like a horizontal guillotine removing his head. From behind him the white guy poured more water over his head. Nando sputtered and coughed. His breath made ripples in the puddle forming under his chin.

  He talked. He told them about his compadres in the plaza. His amigos in Tucson and Phoenix and down in Nogales and Sonora on the other side of the line. The black man and white man asked questions. They wanted names to match descriptions they gave Nando. They described men’s builds, scars and gang ink. They knew a few nicknames but wanted full names of some of the Pecadores. Nando only knew three of the men they described. They were bad hombres, sicarios; hired killers. Nando didn’t run in their circle but he met them a couple of times at a pool party held by one of the jefes last summer.

  The black guy asked the same questions over again. They were trying to catch him in a lie. He gave the same answers and there were more questions, more details. They gave him sips of water. They exhausted his memory. He told them everything. His chin dropped into the mud warming in the rising sun. Nando thought of ants again and squinted up at his captors.

  “That’s all I know,” he said. “I got nothing else. Nada. You have to believe me.”

  In answer he heard the sound of a shovel digging into the loose dirt behind him. The black guy and the white guy worked together and dug Nando out. When his arms were free he began to help them, scooping sandy dirt and gravel until blood ran from his broken fingernails. When they’d dug to his waist the black guy threw the shovel down.

  “Vaya con dios, asshole,” the mayate said and walked past. Nando turned as best as he could. The two men turned their backs and walked toward a beat-to-shit Ford pickup parked in the shade of a half wall.

  “You're leaving me here?” Nando called after them. “Naked? No ride?”

  “Take the Bobcat,” the black man called before climbing into the cab of the truck.

  Once they drove out of sight along the unpaved construction road. Nando clawed frantically at the dirt imprisoning his legs. He crawled bare-assed from his own grave. Nando’s legs were asleep and he mewled at the pain as he rubbed his legs to restore circulation. They left a gallon jug of water behind and he drank half and poured the rest over his head. He stumbled on unsteady legs to the Bobcat. The ignition was empty and there was a ragged, rusted hole in the gas tank.

  Those lying gabacho pendejos.

  Nando found his clothes tossed behind the stack of cinder blocks. His boxers were slashed to ribbons where they’d cut them off him. His boots were nowhere to be found. Barefoot and commando, he had a good ten mile walk to a highway in the morning sun.

  They’d left him alive and he’d seen both their faces. The gringos were either stupid or they didn’t care that he could describe them to his plaza compas. He didn’t think they were stupid. It meant they weren’t afraid.

  And that scared Nando more than anything else.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FORWARD BASE PINEAPPLE

  They hop-skipped for the next twenty-four hours. San Diego to Oahu to Guam to Okinawa where they boarded an Agency plane for Basilan, one of the southern Philippine islands.

  Chili and Pig caught up on sleep while in the air and did as much PT while on the ground as the stopovers would allow. Doug Bannion (W-2), known in the teams as Priest, earned his nickname all over again by spending most of the flight time with his eyes on a Kindle. Chili peeked over his seat once to see he was reading a book in Latin.

  The last leg of the flight ended when they touched down in pitch dark on a freshly resurfaced landing field in the jungle. The rusting and overgrown wreck of a WWII Dakota lying off the strip. The pilot flared the props and taxied them up to a collection of Q-huts. Earthmoving machines with Navy markings were parked in a neat row in a fenced-in yard topped with rolls of razor wire. There were some Navy and Marine helos on hardstands and an ancient C-130 in Navy gray.

  “The Marines are here,” Chili said looking out the window. “The rocks along the walkways are painted white.”

  “On your feet. We’re running late,” Priest said as he undogged the hatch and charged down the landing steps. The heavy jungle air flooded the cabin hitting the chilled air inside and, within seconds, every surface was covered with condensation.

  The team pulled their gear from the cargo hold and loaded it on a waiting HV driven by a Marine who looked too young to be in the Corps. He goggled at the three strangers in casual civilian dress swiftly and silently deplaning and heaping the back of his vehicle with rucks, hardcases, long guns, ammo cartons and fortified containers of God knew what. The team was so classified that its code name was known to only a handful of people in Navy Special Warfare and the White House. But this kid, and every other swabbie and jarhead on base, knew something was up. Scuttlebutt had it that these guys were Marine Force Recon, green beanies or even Delta. The smart money was on SEALs and the smart money was never wrong.

  “I’m driving, Gomer,” Priest said and jerked the kid from behind the wheel and left him standing there as they motored off.

  Priest piloted them past a checkpoint guarded by Filipino troops in tiger-striped camos and berets pulled down low over their eyes. They rode on a newly asphalted road through a neat little village of cinder block houses with new coats of paint and shiny metal rooftops. A neon Marlboro sign glowed from the window of a gas station. Many of the businesses, mostly glorified fruit stands, sported American stars and stripes next to the Philippine flag. Uncle Sugar spread some serious cash around here. Past the village they reached a triple-fenced area with a checkpoint manned by US Marines at the end of a maze of concrete cattle chutes. A beautifully carved wooden placard spanned the gateway. It read FB Pineapple and was decorated all around with deftly crafted pineapple leaves in teak. The SEALs would later learn that it was gift from the local village in gratitude for all the baby formula, rice and cigarettes dumped on them courtesy of Navy engineers.

  The jarheads at the checkpoint were all business and manned a pair of .50 cal Ma Deuces from atop a bunker built from stacked Hesco barricades. Hescos were pop-up portable tubs made of wire mesh and heavy plastic that could be filled with dirt or sand to form a bulletproof and bomb-resistant protective wall in a matter of hours instead of days.

  “Where’s Peterson?” the gunny at the checkpoint asked Priest.

  “He wanted to walk back,” Priest said dead eyeing the Marine sergeant.

  “Yes, sir,” the gunny smiled and waved them through.

  The compound within the fortified ring of wire and gabions was a collection of steel construction barracks and command buildings constructed shortly after 9/11. The war on terror in the Philippine Islands wasn’t well publicized and that’s the way everyone liked it. There was a long bloody history between the Muslim fanatics of these islands and the US military going all the way back to the Spanish-American War and continuing as the Philippines went from American protectorate to ally over a century. They were once simply Moros. Now they went by the name Abu Sayyaf or Jemmaah Islamiyai. But names were just names in the universe of world terror where every bad guy outfit had ties to every other bad guy outfit. The current Filipino insurrectionists were originally funded by Osama Bin Laden’s brother and had strong ties to Al Qaeda.

  This was a slow-burn insurrection with seemingly random bombings and abductions. Abu Sayyaf’s influence was shrinking in the islands and their attacks becoming more infrequent and desperate. It was one of the few clear-cut victories in the global war but, in deference to the government in Manila and the Filipino people, the US military was keeping it on the down low. Not easy with politicians in Washington eager to do victory laps with any good news coming out of the war front. Overriding the egos of the elected officials was the desire to placate the Filipinos who had no interest in seeing the United States reestablishing their military presence in the islands.