146 EVAN RATLIFF

cently taken over for another captain, Bruce Jones, a British sailor well known around the pubs of Subic Bay. By the time the port officers had pulled alongside the Ufuk, Jones was long gone, as were sixteen crates full of weapons. The evening before the ship was intercepted, they would discover, a small yacht called the Mou Man Tai had motored out from the Subic Bay Yacht Club, taken the weapons and Jones onboard, and sped off into the night. The guns were bound for a Manila gun dealer called Red White & Blue Arms. The Mou Man Tai was found a few days later, anchored off a remote fishing village, and traced back to Dave Smith. But nei- ther Jones nor the guns were on it. Jones, labeled in the press as the brains behind the shipment, became the subject of a manhunt.

It was an election season in the Philippines, and officials feared that the influx of guns might portend a rash of political terrorism. Some believed the weapons were destined for rebel groups operat- ing in the southern part of the country, including militants from Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group linked at the time to al-Qaeda. Mar Supnad, the local reporter who broke the story, said the news of the shipment "exploded like a bomb."

Five days after the seizure of the M/V Ufuk, Supnad got a call from a family friend named Joe Frank Zuñiga. A prominent local lawyer, Zuñiga told the reporter that he was representing Bruce Jones, who was hiding in the mountains above the coast. Jones wanted to meet with Supnad for an interview, to "tell to the world that he has nothing to do with the illegal shipment of guns."

The next day, Supnad drove to the address he'd been given by Zuñiga. It was dark when he arrived at a small house, where Jones and Zuñiga awaited him. The three drove to a nearby restaurant, emptied of customers, and talked over a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. Supnad recalled that Jones seemed distressed to the point of tears. "I am not a terrorist," he said.

Jones told Supnad his life story: He was forty-nine years old and had come to the Philippines in 1993 from Bristol, England, after an itinerant life at sea. He was married to a twenty-five-year-old