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<h1 class="center" id="c2">Prologue</h1>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="indent">Jolo, Sulu Archipelago</div>
<div class="indent">The Philippines</div>
<div class="indent">The Battle of Bud Bagsak</div>
<div class="indent">July 15, 1913</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<h2 class="center sigil_not_in_toc">Day Four</h2>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div>It was like being wide awake and being caught in the middle of a nightmare.</div>
<div class="indent">How many hours had it been?</div>
<div class="indent">He wished he knew. It was as if time itself had stopped.</div>
<div class="indent">The sweat poured out of Jim Bishop so copiously that it felt like a steady stream of water being poured over his face. His eyes burned and he had to keep blinking to try and clear his vision, but it was no use. The cloying moisture clung to his eyelids. His lips tasted the constant saltiness. It was their third trip up the mountain that day, and once again, their advance stalled as the crater came alive once more. One moment it was all green bushes, thick shrubbery, and clusters of trees and temporal placidity, and the next instant it gave way to a surging wave of brown men dressed in red loincloths and accompanying red headbands, their veins bulging out in bas-relief along limbs bound tight by constricting ligatures and vines. The Moros, or the <i>pulajans</i> as the Filipino Scouts called them, seemed to rise up from behind every bush, every tree, virtually from the dark earth itself. The surge of humanity descended from the lip of the crater, brandishing their razor-sharp <i>talibongs</i>. The rhythmic chant, “<i>Tac-tac, tac-tac, tac-tac</i>,” sounded in unison like an advancing drumbeat.</div>
<div class="indent">Tac-tac, tac-tac, tac-tac—Tagalog for Cut-cut, cut-cut, cut-cut.</div>
<div class="indent">And that’s what they did.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim stopped and raised the muzzle of his Winchester 1897 shotgun, racking the slide back and then forward to chamber a round.</div>
<div class="indent">The man next to him, a young lieutenant who’d just arrived in the country two weeks ago, turned and darted to his right toward the cover of a cluster of trees perhaps ten yards away. From the corner of his eye Jim saw the young officer’s foot snare the elongated vine trigger.</div>
<div class="indent">“Sir,” Jim yelled, taking his eye off the enemy for a split second. “Don’t move!”</div>
<div class="indent">But his warning was a millisecond too late.</div>
<div class="indent">The vine trigger snapped and released a twisted branch in a horizontal arc, sending a row of sharpened spikes into the lieutenant’s body with a sickening thump.</div>
<div class="indent">The officer cried out, but the sound was reduced to a pathetic gurgle as he went limp, bouncing off the branch and flopping down onto his back. A trio of gaping holes, already filling with blood, was stitched across the front of his brown uniform shirt. His legs convulsed, like he was still on his feet, still trying to move away, but with each movement more blood and slithering intestines seeped out of his wounds.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim ran to the man, but could tell he was dying.</div>
<div class="indent">He wanted to offer some comfort, some assurance that it would be all right, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie. A few seconds later, he saw that it didn’t matter anyway. Vacuous eyes, still wide open from the shock, stared directly upward, unflinching under the unbearably bright sun as it shone down.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>Dead</i>, Jim thought.</div>
<div class="indent">There was no time for sentiment or mendacious words</div>
<div class="indent">The ominous mantra continued unabated: “Tac-tac, tac-tac, tac-tac . . .”</div>
<div class="indent">The Moros were almost upon them. The sons of bitches were savages, fighting with bows and arrows and spears and traps. They had some guns, but not a lot, and those huge talibong knifes could chop you apart with one solid swing. They gave no quarter, nor did they expect any. Worst yet, they kept the families with them like human shields—old men, women, children. It was sickening.</div>
<div class="indent">Shots rang out to Jim’s left.</div>
<div class="indent">From his kneeling position by the dead lieutenant, he raised the shotgun, aimed at the nearest advancing <i>pulajan</i>, and pulled the trigger. The double-aught buck load ripped into the Moro’s side, tearing a large swath of skin and a hunk of meat away. The Moro stumbled for two steps as his mouth twisted into a scowl, the talibong still raised above his head.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>Damn, these Moros are tough</i>, Jim thought as he worked the slide and chambered another round. The oblong blade caught a glint of sunlight for a moment before descending in an oblique arc.</div>
<div class="indent">The shotgun discharged again and this time the pulagam went down, enveloped in a crimson mist.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim felt the flecks of blood and body tissue dapple his face as the world suddenly went silent for several seconds.</div>
<div class="indent">Another one came at him.</div>
<div class="indent">A shotgun boomed off to his left.</div>
<div class="indent">Larry Rush was next to Jim now, the trail of smoke trickling upward from his shotgun muzzle as the advancing Moro’s head exploded like a muskmelon struck by an axe handle. The man did an awkward, headless pirouette as he went down. Rush chambered another round and moved next to Jim.</div>
<div class="indent">“The lieutenant dead?” Rush asked. He was shouting, but his voice still sounded far away.</div>
<div class="indent">Far away . . .</div>
<div class="indent">If only they could all be far away.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim grunted a response as he sighted in on another rushing Moro and fired.</div>
<div class="indent">Three more advanced from the left. Rush swiveled and blasted one, but the second one did a stutter-step, leaned back, and hurled a long bamboo spear. It sailed toward them. The next instant Rush dropped his weapon and grabbed his thigh as the pointed tip of the spear tore through the inner part of his pant leg. He toppled over, his eyes rolling back into his head.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim turned and fired. The rounds took down the assailant, but two more were closing in on them. He fired once more. One of the oncoming Moros took the hit in the side, but kept advancing, taking three slack steps before collapsing. Jim racked the slide back and then forward, chambering what he knew was his last remaining round, and fired again. The blast hit the closest man. He jerked forward, then curled into a fetal position as he fell to the ground.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>No more ammo</i>, Jim thought, gripping the Winchester’s hot barrel and stock. Despite the overheated metal searing his skin, he managed to bring the rifle up just in time to block the descent of another Moro’s two-foot-long talibong. The solid blade chunked into the wooden slide, splintering it. Jim twisted the rifle free and simultaneously rammed the base of the stock into the Filipino’s face. The man’s jaw jerked out of alignment and he paused just long enough for Jim to kick him in the groin as hard as he could. The Moro grimaced but drew back the large knife, ready to take another deadly swing.</div>
<div class="indent">A split-second burst of fire and smoke whipped between them, and the Moro’s head snapped to the side as a shot rang out. Rush had managed to pull out his long-barreled Colt .45 revolver and fire it. Jim dropped the Winchester and drew his own revolver. Cocking back the hammer, he fired at the next group of advancing Moros. A burst of red blossomed on one man’s upper torso, just under his clavicle, but that didn’t stop him. A diagonal constricting loop of twine bisected the man’s chest, limiting the bleeding and enabling him to keep moving. Jim adjusted his aim, lining up the rear, M-shaped sight on the revolver with the single bar of the tip of the barrel.</div>
<div class="indent">“Keep them damn sights flat across the top,” his drill sergeant had yelled at him in basic training.</div>
<div class="indent">He squeezed the trigger. His next round pierced his adversary’s right eye.</div>
<div class="indent">He fired four more times with undetermined results. The short, sweaty bodies kept coming, like a brown tidal wave capped with red. Jim turned to reach for Rush’s gun but saw his was empty, too.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>The lieutenant</i>, Jim thought. He sidestepped to the right and knelt beside the fallen officer. His fingers scrambled to undo the dead man’s flap holster before feeling a textured grip. He pulled the weapon out and saw it was one of those new 1911 semiautomatic pistols, something only a few of the officers had. They were supposedly sitting in crates in New York Harbor or someplace, their distribution to the troops in the Philippines delayed by yet another layer of bureaucratic inefficiency. It was rumored that a few, a very few, of the officers had managed to sneak a special shipment in, and that was apparently true. The magazine purportedly held seven rounds, but Jim had never fired one.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>No time like the present to learn</i>, he thought as he brought the pistol up, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.</div>
<div class="indent">Nothing.</div>
<div class="indent">In desperation he cocked back the hammer and tried again.</div>
<div class="indent">The next trio of Moros was almost on top of them.</div>
<div class="indent">The hammer clacked down and still the weapon didn’t fire.</div>
<div class="indent">Was it a dud?</div>
<div class="indent"><i>No</i>, he thought. <i>It’s just like a shotgun.</i> <i>There’s no round in the chamber.</i></div>
<div class="indent">Gripping the row of vertical lines on the rear of the slide, he racked it back, felt it catch, and then whip forward.</div>
<div class="indent">The Moro was raising his talibong over Rush’s supine body when this time the Colt’s round pierced the area just under the pulagam’s left armpit. The Moro fell like a marionette whose strings had been abruptly severed. Jim adjusted his aim and fired two more rounds, putting one into each of the advancing would-be killers. He dropped to one knee and frantically searched the dead lieutenant’s pouch for more magazines.</div>
<div class="indent">Suddenly the sound of distant thunder rumbled accompanied by a screaming sound. Another set of rumbles along with more whistles and a burst of explosions echoed further up the ridge, by the mouth of the crater.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>Artillery</i>, Jim thought. <i>Blackjack’s got the 40th zeroed in on them</i>.</div>
<div class="indent">He felt a surge of hope as the area along the lip of the crater, where he knew the last Moro stronghold was, erupted in more roiling clouds of dust.</div>
<div class="indent">The Moro advance suddenly halted, their heads rotating back toward the spiraling dust clouds farther up the hill, their eyes widening in horror.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim knew their families, the women, the children, the elderly, were all up there in this last cotta. They had nowhere left to run. Orders were to wipe them all out.</div>
<div class="indent">A company of Filipino Scouts, their brown uniforms drenched with sweat, streamed forward from the right flank and the left, their rifles barking fire, their bayonets fixed. They’d taken the brunt of the Moros’ attacks before and now they’d regrouped. From the look on their faces, no quarter would be given.</div>
<div class="indent">Nor none expected.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>Thank God</i>, he thought. <i>Maybe this nightmare is going to be over with now.</i></div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="center">***</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="indent"><i>Historical Note</i></div>
<div>The final siege then started at seventeen-hundred-oh-five hours. Three hours later it was over.</div>
<div class="indent">Or was it?</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
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Where Legends Lie
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<h1 class="center" id="c2">Prologue</h1>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="indent">Jolo, Sulu Archipelago</div>
<div class="indent">The Philippines</div>
<div class="indent">The Battle of Bud Bagsak</div>
<div class="indent">July 15, 1913</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<h2 class="center sigil_not_in_toc">Day Four</h2>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div>It was like being wide awake and being caught in the middle of a nightmare.</div>
<div class="indent">How many hours had it been?</div>
<div class="indent">He wished he knew. It was as if time itself had stopped.</div>
<div class="indent">The sweat poured out of Jim Bishop so copiously that it felt like a steady stream of water being poured over his face. His eyes burned and he had to keep blinking to try and clear his vision, but it was no use. The cloying moisture clung to his eyelids. His lips tasted the constant saltiness. It was their third trip up the mountain that day, and once again, their advance stalled as the crater came alive once more. One moment it was all green bushes, thick shrubbery, and clusters of trees and temporal placidity, and the next instant it gave way to a surging wave of brown men dressed in red loincloths and accompanying red headbands, their veins bulging out in bas-relief along limbs bound tight by constricting ligatures and vines. The Moros, or the <i>pulajans</i> as the Filipino Scouts called them, seemed to rise up from behind every bush, every tree, virtually from the dark earth itself. The surge of humanity descended from the lip of the crater, brandishing their razor-sharp <i>talibongs</i>. The rhythmic chant, “<i>Tac-tac, tac-tac, tac-tac</i>,” sounded in unison like an advancing drumbeat.</div>
<div class="indent">Tac-tac, tac-tac, tac-tac—Tagalog for Cut-cut, cut-cut, cut-cut.</div>
<div class="indent">And that’s what they did.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim stopped and raised the muzzle of his Winchester 1897 shotgun, racking the slide back and then forward to chamber a round.</div>
<div class="indent">The man next to him, a young lieutenant who’d just arrived in the country two weeks ago, turned and darted to his right toward the cover of a cluster of trees perhaps ten yards away. From the corner of his eye Jim saw the young officer’s foot snare the elongated vine trigger.</div>
<div class="indent">“Sir,” Jim yelled, taking his eye off the enemy for a split second. “Don’t move!”</div>
<div class="indent">But his warning was a millisecond too late.</div>
<div class="indent">The vine trigger snapped and released a twisted branch in a horizontal arc, sending a row of sharpened spikes into the lieutenant’s body with a sickening thump.</div>
<div class="indent">The officer cried out, but the sound was reduced to a pathetic gurgle as he went limp, bouncing off the branch and flopping down onto his back. A trio of gaping holes, already filling with blood, was stitched across the front of his brown uniform shirt. His legs convulsed, like he was still on his feet, still trying to move away, but with each movement more blood and slithering intestines seeped out of his wounds.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim ran to the man, but could tell he was dying.</div>
<div class="indent">He wanted to offer some comfort, some assurance that it would be all right, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie. A few seconds later, he saw that it didn’t matter anyway. Vacuous eyes, still wide open from the shock, stared directly upward, unflinching under the unbearably bright sun as it shone down.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>Dead</i>, Jim thought.</div>
<div class="indent">There was no time for sentiment or mendacious words</div>
<div class="indent">The ominous mantra continued unabated: “Tac-tac, tac-tac, tac-tac . . .”</div>
<div class="indent">The Moros were almost upon them. The sons of bitches were savages, fighting with bows and arrows and spears and traps. They had some guns, but not a lot, and those huge talibong knifes could chop you apart with one solid swing. They gave no quarter, nor did they expect any. Worst yet, they kept the families with them like human shields—old men, women, children. It was sickening.</div>
<div class="indent">Shots rang out to Jim’s left.</div>
<div class="indent">From his kneeling position by the dead lieutenant, he raised the shotgun, aimed at the nearest advancing <i>pulajan</i>, and pulled the trigger. The double-aught buck load ripped into the Moro’s side, tearing a large swath of skin and a hunk of meat away. The Moro stumbled for two steps as his mouth twisted into a scowl, the talibong still raised above his head.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>Damn, these Moros are tough</i>, Jim thought as he worked the slide and chambered another round. The oblong blade caught a glint of sunlight for a moment before descending in an oblique arc.</div>
<div class="indent">The shotgun discharged again and this time the pulagam went down, enveloped in a crimson mist.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim felt the flecks of blood and body tissue dapple his face as the world suddenly went silent for several seconds.</div>
<div class="indent">Another one came at him.</div>
<div class="indent">A shotgun boomed off to his left.</div>
<div class="indent">Larry Rush was next to Jim now, the trail of smoke trickling upward from his shotgun muzzle as the advancing Moro’s head exploded like a muskmelon struck by an axe handle. The man did an awkward, headless pirouette as he went down. Rush chambered another round and moved next to Jim.</div>
<div class="indent">“The lieutenant dead?” Rush asked. He was shouting, but his voice still sounded far away.</div>
<div class="indent">Far away . . .</div>
<div class="indent">If only they could all be far away.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim grunted a response as he sighted in on another rushing Moro and fired.</div>
<div class="indent">Three more advanced from the left. Rush swiveled and blasted one, but the second one did a stutter-step, leaned back, and hurled a long bamboo spear. It sailed toward them. The next instant Rush dropped his weapon and grabbed his thigh as the pointed tip of the spear tore through the inner part of his pant leg. He toppled over, his eyes rolling back into his head.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim turned and fired. The rounds took down the assailant, but two more were closing in on them. He fired once more. One of the oncoming Moros took the hit in the side, but kept advancing, taking three slack steps before collapsing. Jim racked the slide back and then forward, chambering what he knew was his last remaining round, and fired again. The blast hit the closest man. He jerked forward, then curled into a fetal position as he fell to the ground.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>No more ammo</i>, Jim thought, gripping the Winchester’s hot barrel and stock. Despite the overheated metal searing his skin, he managed to bring the rifle up just in time to block the descent of another Moro’s two-foot-long talibong. The solid blade chunked into the wooden slide, splintering it. Jim twisted the rifle free and simultaneously rammed the base of the stock into the Filipino’s face. The man’s jaw jerked out of alignment and he paused just long enough for Jim to kick him in the groin as hard as he could. The Moro grimaced but drew back the large knife, ready to take another deadly swing.</div>
<div class="indent">A split-second burst of fire and smoke whipped between them, and the Moro’s head snapped to the side as a shot rang out. Rush had managed to pull out his long-barreled Colt .45 revolver and fire it. Jim dropped the Winchester and drew his own revolver. Cocking back the hammer, he fired at the next group of advancing Moros. A burst of red blossomed on one man’s upper torso, just under his clavicle, but that didn’t stop him. A diagonal constricting loop of twine bisected the man’s chest, limiting the bleeding and enabling him to keep moving. Jim adjusted his aim, lining up the rear, M-shaped sight on the revolver with the single bar of the tip of the barrel.</div>
<div class="indent">“Keep them damn sights flat across the top,” his drill sergeant had yelled at him in basic training.</div>
<div class="indent">He squeezed the trigger. His next round pierced his adversary’s right eye.</div>
<div class="indent">He fired four more times with undetermined results. The short, sweaty bodies kept coming, like a brown tidal wave capped with red. Jim turned to reach for Rush’s gun but saw his was empty, too.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>The lieutenant</i>, Jim thought. He sidestepped to the right and knelt beside the fallen officer. His fingers scrambled to undo the dead man’s flap holster before feeling a textured grip. He pulled the weapon out and saw it was one of those new 1911 semiautomatic pistols, something only a few of the officers had. They were supposedly sitting in crates in New York Harbor or someplace, their distribution to the troops in the Philippines delayed by yet another layer of bureaucratic inefficiency. It was rumored that a few, a very few, of the officers had managed to sneak a special shipment in, and that was apparently true. The magazine purportedly held seven rounds, but Jim had never fired one.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>No time like the present to learn</i>, he thought as he brought the pistol up, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.</div>
<div class="indent">Nothing.</div>
<div class="indent">In desperation he cocked back the hammer and tried again.</div>
<div class="indent">The next trio of Moros was almost on top of them.</div>
<div class="indent">The hammer clacked down and still the weapon didn’t fire.</div>
<div class="indent">Was it a dud?</div>
<div class="indent"><i>No</i>, he thought. <i>It’s just like a shotgun.</i> <i>There’s no round in the chamber.</i></div>
<div class="indent">Gripping the row of vertical lines on the rear of the slide, he racked it back, felt it catch, and then whip forward.</div>
<div class="indent">The Moro was raising his talibong over Rush’s supine body when this time the Colt’s round pierced the area just under the pulagam’s left armpit. The Moro fell like a marionette whose strings had been abruptly severed. Jim adjusted his aim and fired two more rounds, putting one into each of the advancing would-be killers. He dropped to one knee and frantically searched the dead lieutenant’s pouch for more magazines.</div>
<div class="indent">Suddenly the sound of distant thunder rumbled accompanied by a screaming sound. Another set of rumbles along with more whistles and a burst of explosions echoed further up the ridge, by the mouth of the crater.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>Artillery</i>, Jim thought. <i>Blackjack’s got the 40th zeroed in on them</i>.</div>
<div class="indent">He felt a surge of hope as the area along the lip of the crater, where he knew the last Moro stronghold was, erupted in more roiling clouds of dust.</div>
<div class="indent">The Moro advance suddenly halted, their heads rotating back toward the spiraling dust clouds farther up the hill, their eyes widening in horror.</div>
<div class="indent">Jim knew their families, the women, the children, the elderly, were all up there in this last cotta. They had nowhere left to run. Orders were to wipe them all out.</div>
<div class="indent">A company of Filipino Scouts, their brown uniforms drenched with sweat, streamed forward from the right flank and the left, their rifles barking fire, their bayonets fixed. They’d taken the brunt of the Moros’ attacks before and now they’d regrouped. From the look on their faces, no quarter would be given.</div>
<div class="indent">Nor none expected.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>Thank God</i>, he thought. <i>Maybe this nightmare is going to be over with now.</i></div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="center">***</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="indent"><i>Historical Note</i></div>
<div>The final siege then started at seventeen-hundred-oh-five hours. Three hours later it was over.</div>
<div class="indent">Or was it?</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
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