Robert Doherty - The Citadel

An hour was not much time. Fatima made a couple of calls as she gathered her gear and left the room. She knew she would not be coming back to it.

Weapons, especially M-16s, were not hard for her to get her hands on. The Abu Sayif had numerous stores of weapons. She had called to find out the closest location for these specific guns.

The drop site she'd been given was in a storage unit. Fatima unlocked the combination padlock and pulled up the door. Two crates and one small box lay just inside, in front of other boxes containing various equipment. The Abu Sayif was efficient. She didn't know who had put the guns in there, and she was sure that whoever had didn't know she was taking them out. The storage unit was a good cutout between operatives and support personnel. The Filipino government took a hard line with the Abu Sayif, especially right in Manila.

Fatima uncrated the ten M-16s and the ammunition. The M-16s were brand new, probably stolen from a government warehouse or even bought right out of government soldiers' hands.

Fatima worked on one of the M-16s, secreting a small transmitter inside the hollow of the pistol grip; a place no one would have any reason to look. Then she broke each gun open, removed the firing pins and then reassembled them. She tied the guns together, then wrapped plastic bags around them, waterproofing both them and the ammo. The package was bulky, but she managed to stuff it into a large rucksack.

Fatima relocked the door to the bin. She just barely had time to make it to the designated meet site. She put the rucksack on the passenger seat of her old Chevy and began driving through the streets of Manila.

By the time she arrived at the old American naval base in Subic, she was shifting into her action mode. There was some activity, but nothing nearly as it used to be when the Americans ran their fleet out of it. She drove past the empty guard shack and toward the piers.

When she got close to the designated pier, she parked the car and looked around. There was indeed an old, rusting tug moored at the designated pier. But all its lights were off and it looked deserted. To her left there was an old ammunition bunker, built like a small fort, with a gate entry wide enough to take a truck. The steel gates were wide-open, and she could see a light inside with flickers of shadows, which indicated people moving.

Taking the rucksack full of weapons, she left the truck. Fatima felt almost naked walking across the street toward the ammo bunker, and she had a feeling she was being watched. She noted that there were no other vehicles about. As she entered the brick archway, she sensed someone behind and spun around. Two dark figures stood there, blocking her way out.

"Come in!" someone who spoke English said, his voice echoing in the courtyard. Fatima turned and walked forward. The small courtyard was surrounded by the bunker's walls, two stories high on all sides, with brick arches opening to the ammunition mezzanines. She couldn't see who had called out. The voice could have come from one of dozens of arched openings on any side, from any floor.

Fatima walked directly to the middle and put the rucksack down. She folded her arms over her chest and waited. The two men who had followed her were now standing inside the entrance, also waiting.

A shuffling sound drew her attention, and Fatima turned to her right. Two other men were walking out of the shadows from the north wall.

"You have the guns?" one of the men asked, again in English, which most Filipinos knew. As he cleared the shadows, Fatima finally got a good look at his face. Japanese. There was no mistaking the facial features. But too young to have been alive during World War II.

"I have them."

The man gestured, and the man at his side came forward and opened the rucksack, checking the weapons and ammunition.

"Where is Shibimi?" Fatima asked.

The man was breaking down one of the weapons, his hands moving expertly over the metal pieces despite the lack of light.

"It is functional," the man called out to his leader in Japanese. Fatima realized they didn't know she understood their language.

"Where is Shibimi?" Fatima repeated.

"He will be here shortly," the leader said in English. " Kill her," he called out in Japanese to his men.

The man with the M-16s near Fatima was sliding a magazine into one of the weapons. Fatima considered it a fundamentally unsound business practice to be killed by her own merchandise. She turn-kicked toward the man with the M-16, only to see him sidestep the strike, grab her leg and twist, dumping her on her back. The Japanese put the stock of the M-16 into his shoulder and aimed down at her. He pulled the trigger, and nothing happened.

In his moment of confusion, Fatima drew her silenced pistol and fired twice, both rounds hitting him in the head and knocking him backward. A second man came running forward, a silenced submachine gun at the ready, and then abruptly halted as sparks flew off the concrete floor near him. Fatima could feel the presence of bullets flying by, although she heard no sound of firing. She rolled and looked up, spotting the muzzle flash of a weapon being fired high up on the south wall. The Japanese who had been about to shoot her jumped right, out of the way of the unexpected firing, grabbing the duffel bag with the other weapons and getting behind the cover of one of the large crates.

Fatima didn't stop to savor her reprieve. She scuttled on her back, the concrete ripping through her shirt, managing to get behind a large pile of boxes. At least she was concealed from the Japanese, she realized. Whoever the gunman on the wall was had a perfect shot at her, but he'd had a perfect shot at her earlier and hadn't taken advantage of it, so she felt she had to take the chance.

The second Japanese man let loose a sustained burst of fire up at the wall, but the man was firing blindly, not sure where his target was. The gun battle was eerie, played out in almost total silence, only the flaming strobe of the muzzle flashes and the sparks of rounds ricocheting giving any hint as to what was happening.

Fatima peered around the crates, keeping low. The Japanese leader had joined the gunman. While the leader provided cover, the other ran with the duffel bag toward the archway where the other two waited. And was cut down in mid-stride by a burst of automatic fire from the unseen gunman. The leader took that as a hint to escape and sprinted for the exit, grabbing the duffel bag as he went by the body. And then he was gone. Fatima twisted toward the entrance where the last two Japanese had been, but there was no sign of them now, and she assumed they were most likely leaving with their leader.

She turned toward the wall behind her, pistol at the ready, and waited, but spotted no movement. "Who is there?" she finally called out in English. Her words echoed off the wall with no reply.

Silence reigned, and Fatima did nothing to break it. She gave the surviving Japanese and unknown gunman plenty of time to escape, then stood. She didn't hear any sirens. Time to be going. First, though, she went to the closest body. She checked for tattoos, and as she had suspected, found the mark of the Black Tentacle on it. She then cautiously made her way to the entryway and slipped through, ran to her Chevy and jumped in.

As she drove away, she opened up the GPS tracker and turned it on. She drove slowly and carefully, in no rush, wanting the Japanese to think they had escaped her. The unknown gunman bothered her, a wild card, and she had no clue who had played it.

Fatima glanced at her cell phone, considering whether it was time to call in more firepower. That's when she noticed that the bug had stopped moving. It was about two miles ahead of her, still inside the sprawling Subic Bay compound. She cut her lights and drove closer, coming to a halt when she rolled to a stop close to the flashing green dot on her GPS screen.