Among them have been my favorite and most "muscular" authors, Chris Ryan (Ultimate Weapon) and Andy McNabb, both former SAS men who walk the walk and talk the talk.
The most famous of all espionage novelists remains, of course, the ageless Frederick Forsyth, some of whose bestsellers have been made into successful movies, like The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File. Forsyth also penned The Dogs of War, Avenger and The Devil’s Alternative.
His latest, The Afghan (Bantam Press, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland, 2006) was so riveting it cost me two sleepless nights. In this exciting volume, which quickly vanished from the shelves – they better reorder – Forsyth writes of our homegrown terrorists, the Abu Sayyaf, as essential footsoldiers (excuse me, sea-pirates, too) in the Islamic terrorist struggle.
In his plot, they play a role in hijacking freighters, one of which is targeted to plough into a major American port with a full load of lethal LPG – a seagoing missile rendered almost "invisible" by a clever dodge designed by al-Qaeda and old Osama. To tell you more would be to give the storyline away and rob prospective readers of their enjoyment.
Therefore, I say no more, except to quote a few passages – which ring true-to-life incidentally – from Forsyth’s book:
"Every year, between the Malacca Strait in the west and the Celebes Sea to the east, there are over five hundred pirate attacks on merchant shipping and up to a hundred hijackings. Occasionally the crew are ransomed back to the ship owners; sometimes they are all killed and never heard of again; in those cases the cargo is stolen and sold on the black market . . ."
In the novel, the ship "scheduled" by al-Qaeda’s operatives to be seized is the Java Star, a freighter under a Norwegian skipper bound from Brunei to Fremantle, Western Australia. The captain’s course took him round the northernmost tip of Sabah and the island of Borneo, to run southeast for the Sulu archipelago.
"He intended," Forsyth narrated, "to move between the coral and jungle islands by taking the deep-water strait between Tawitawi and Jolo Islands. South of the islands it was a clear run down the Celebes Sea to the south and eventually Australia."
Boy, that fellow Forsyth had certainly researched his geography.
The ship’s departure from Brunei had been watched, and a coded phone call made regarding a fictitious "sick uncle" who would be "out of the hospital in twelve days." The novel said: "The call was taken in a creek on Jolo Island" and the man who took it learned from the code that within 12 hours the vessel would be passing his "ambush" sector.
"The twelve men he commanded in the velvety tropical night," the novelist recounted, "were cut-throats but they were well paid and would stay obedient. Criminality apart, they were also Muslim extremists. The Abu Sayyaf movement of the southern Philippines, whose last peninsula is only a few miles from Indonesia on the Sulu Sea, has the reputation of including not only religious extremists, but also killers for hire."
"The two speedboats they occupied put to sea at dawn, took position between the two islands and waited . . ."
The "Java Star" sailed innocently into their trap. The Norwegian captain had handed the tiller over to his Indonesian first officer and gone below decks.
"The first thing the Indonesian officer saw was a pair of speedboats racing up astern, one each side. Dark, barefoot, agile men leaped effortlessly from speedboat to deck and ran aft towards the superstructure and bridge where he stood . . . Then there was a knife at his throat . . ."
Everyone who recalls the hostage drama in which the murderous ASG kidnapped Martin and Gracia Burnham and a score of other hostages from the Dos Palmas resort, knows of this speedboat tactic of the Abu Sayyaf.
Indeed, a German friend once narrated to me how he had been a guest on a British-owned yacht which was almost hijacked in the same manner in the Sulu Sea. It had been full of divers bound for the coral reefs of the southern Philippines – but when the vessel got to the Sulu Sea, the same kind of speedboat bumped alongside and "agile" Taosug "pirates" had jumped on board armed to the teeth.
Unfortunately for them, the ship’s master, a former military man, had kept a machine-pistol in his cabin as one of his service souvenirs. Without hesitation, he had dived below to get it – and come out on deck his submachinegun raking the surprised intruders. My friend doesn’t recall whether any of the attackers were badly hit, but they all dived overboard – and the yacht steamed on, turning course to get away. The attackers, whether ASG or plain ordinary Taosug pirates engaged in their 300-year old profession, didn’t pursue, indicating they had been hurt and stymied in their "shanghai" attempt.
But that’s the reality in the Sulu Sea, the Celebes Sea and the Straits of Malacca.
Forsyth, renowned for his accuracy of detail in every novel, rightly tagged the ASG’s role in the network of terror.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find a copy of this novel – probably through the internet – and read it with both profit and pleasure. The writer tells it like it is.
To be sure, our soldiers are somewhat bitter about the overblown publicity regarding the alleged 741 "extrajudicial" murders and killings of so-called activists, militants, journalists, and other individuals. Why 741? They ask. Where did that figure come from?
But most of all, they’re aggrieved that when soldiers and policemen die in battle, "nobody" seems to care.
"Doesn’t the public value our lives, too?" soldiers and marines ask me. "We bleed and die, but all we get in the media is criticism – and some reports make some of us sound like butchers."
This is something, believe me, we ought to heed.
I’m not talking about just-retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan – whom La Presidenta has given a job as deputy secretary for "counter-insurgency" (not "deputy national security advisor" as indignantly denied by National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales himself).
I guess Palparan was awarded the post so he can defend himself from the New People’s Army, the Communist rebels, who have vowed to kill him, and have called him "a dead-man walking." Sanamagan. The activists, militants and leftists complain about being assassinated – but they’re not reluctant about loudly announcing whom they’re planning to assassinate themselves.
It’s not a one-way traffic. Those who live by the gun, remember the old axiom? – will die by the gun.
Germany’s Iron Kanzler Otto von Bismark said that "war is politics with bloodshed, politics is war without bloodshed." In the Philippines, alas, it is sometimes both combined.