Rebels of Mindanao by Tom Anthony

dollars to really disappear, or reappear wherever I want, anywhere.”
    â€œWell, I like it here; and I can’t take any money. I’m a government employee.”
    â€œYou won’t like it here if Mindanao becomes a war zone. But if we take this guy out, I can keep the cash, and you will surely be promoted.”
    â€œBut how will you do it? You’re just another Yankee who doesn’tspeak our language too well, you can’t hide, and if the CIA is lost in the woods, you will be too.”
    â€œNo. I won’t be. I know my way around in the
bundok
a lot better than you think I do. And Hargens and Downs know it. They know that when the time comes I’ll make the decisions they would like to make, but can’t in their positions. I’ll make the right things happen this time, for sure. I think that with a team of men from your tribe, if we organize them and give them the right tools, we can keep the Turk from delivering the money to Kumander Ali. That way we all win, big.”
    â€œWe’ll see. I hope to be able to convince Uncle Pedro. Maybe he could get his brothers, the Otaza brothers. But I want to hear more about the deal you made.”
    â€œIt’s straightforward. The U.S. Embassy in Manila has tracked the infiltrator as far as his landing in Mindanao. He’s a Turk, Mahir Hakki, and he has hooked up with the local Al Qaeda cell, the Abu Sayaf, headed up by some joker called Lateef, and they’re moving around and already active in Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces.”
    â€œThey’ve been doing things like that for years. So what?”
    â€œThis time it’s different. The Turk has five million U.S. in cash. If he can get it to Kumander Ali, they can use it right now to start a revolution your Filipino brothers might not win.” Now she had the essential background and information.
    â€œHow would you end the fighting, forever? What would you do?” she asked.
    Thornton pretended to be serious, but had a slight grin. “
Mais il faut cultiver notre jardin
.”
    â€œThat doesn’t sound like German.” Elaiza’s brow wrinkled again.
    â€œNo, French. Voltaire. The last line in
Candide
. ‘Let us go work together in the garden.’”
    â€œMore riddles.”
    â€œMaybe. Here’s another. Life in Mindanao is like that mango tree.” Thornton pointed to a huge tree growing across the street from them and told her the story.
    Evenings when the moon rose early it would outline the ancient mango tree on the opposite side of the road, its branches reaching upwards at sharp and variant angles to form ominous shapes. The treemust have been only a seedling when the Japanese invaded Mindanao, perhaps one of hundreds in a commercial plantation. Now it stood alone. Some said the tree was split when it was a seedling, as a marker by the withdrawing and defeated Japanese soldiers who had hidden gold under it, so they could find the tree when they returned. There were many legends of gold stolen by the Japanese and hidden in Mindanao. But the Japanese never returned, and over the generations the split tree grew, the forks divided just above the ground, growing into two huge trunks of equal size a yard thick and standing sixty feet into the sky.
    After the yearly monsoon season, the mango tree burst forth with thousands of small, sweet mangos that struggled to ripen in the sun, but few managed to hang connected to their mother tree long enough to turn golden. Every day the tree was attacked by its only natural enemy, the young men who lived on the other side of the wall. Early in the morning on their way to work, at noon when they sneaked some
shabu
, illegal crystal meth, or when they returned in the evening and gathered to smoke, they would assemble behind the wall. When the farmer who owned the land was not there, the hoodlums would charge across the cornfield planted around the tree to throw anything heavy they could