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is no doubt they are not Filipino."

"Very good."
    CHAPTER 2

The Philippines
    The story ran less than six hours later on the largest news station in Manila, and was picked up internationally within twenty minutes. Video of a failed American-Filipino raid that cost the lives of all the hostages, a dozen Filipino commandos, a classified number of American soldiers, and an unknown number of guerrillas.

The U.S. Defense attaché in Manila was ambushed by reporters, and because he had not been clued in on the Delta Force participation, he denied it and then looked foolish as the footage was played for him. If it had just been the several Delta and twelve Filipino commandos dead, perhaps it could have been covered up, as other incidents in the past had been: terrible training accident, helicopter went down at sea, all lost.

But there was no getting around the dead hostages. Those people had families. They'd been in the news, with the Abu Sayef continuously releasing videos of them pleading for their release. It was the number one news story in the Philippines, and it spread like wildfire in the media around the globe.

No one seemed to know or even particularly care about who had videotaped the attack and how it had gotten to the Manila news station. The focus was on the illegal participation of American forces on Philippine soil in a raid that had cost the lives of not only Americans, but two Germans, an Italian, and a French citizen.

After all that had happened in Iraq, the United States government was gun-shy about negative military publicity. Heads began to roll.
    * * *
    Vaughn and his team were back in "isolation." It was a term used in Special Operations for the time when a team was completely cut off from the outside world in a secure location. It was usually done for mission planning. Now it was being done simply to hide the six Delta Force survivors after the mission.

They were locked in a compound far behind the gate of what used to be Subic Naval Base, now being run by the Filipinos. A team from the First Special Forces Group out of Okinawa had been their ASTs—area specialist team—for their mission isolation, and that team was now acting as both their jailers and protectors. No one had come in and said anything about what would happen to the six, but they did have access to TV in their building and they knew the hammer was going to come down.

Vaughn felt isolated inside the isolation. He'd been honest about the problem with the LLDS at their first debriefing, and the other five team members had been surprised, and a bit skeptical. They had held their peace, though, due to the losses the team had sustained, especially knowing the bond between Vaughn and Jenkins.

The communications sergeant who gave Vaughn the LLDS and was responsible for making sure it was functioning had died in the raid, so he couldn't be questioned about the status of the original battery. Mission SOP was that all batteries to be carried on an operation were to be brand new. Had this one been forgotten about? Had it malfunctioned? The device had been destroyed when the missile hit it, so that couldn't be checked. It was just Vaughn's word that the battery had died.

The other five said they believed him, but Vaughn sensed an edge of uncertainty. He felt it himself. He couldn't get the image of Frank Jenkins's severed body out of his mind. He hadn't been able to sleep since they got back to Manila, and didn't think he would be able to sleep solidly for a while to come.

He knew he should call his sister, but no phone calls were allowed, and he was secretly grateful for that. The isolation would at least protect him from the emotional fallout. He also knew it could not continue indefinitely, even though a part of him wished it would.

With the debriefings done, the team was left alone to ponder their fate. Already, less than twenty-fours after the botched raid, the Undersecretary of Defense for Special Operations in the Pentagon had taken one