A FEW DAYS BEFORE I left the island, I went out on a night ambush with ten Filipino recon commandos. We were to stake out a jungle path that Philippine intelligence believed might be used that night by an assassination team led by a high-level Abu Sayyaf named Abu Solaiman, who had recently been put on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list for his involvement in the Burnham kidnapping.

Armed with rifles and a single night-vision scope, our team headed out on foot a few hours after nightfall. Outside the glow of the base, it was pitch dark, so I blindly followed sounds made by the commando in front of me. We trekked for about two miles, slipping into a patchwork of cassava fields, through tended coconut groves and jungle, and under a sprawling canopy of string beans before squatting for 20 minutes in what smelled like a garden of rotting cabbage. I cupped my hands over a map as our team leader, a staff sergeant from Luzon, checked, rechecked, and triple-checked it with a penlight. Around 11, we finally settled into our ambush position astride the path in thick bush, just off a stretch of the coastal road known as the Boulevard of Death, where hundreds of Philippine Army soldiers died in rebel ambushes in the 1970s.

"Now we wait for them to come to us," the staff sergeant whispered, holding up the scope.

We sat. Even though it was a clear night and there was a sliver of moon, it was impossible to see anything. There was constant buzzing around my ears, and insects were flying up my nostrils. A lone gunshot sounded a ways off, but otherwise it was like spending eight hours in a black Hefty bag full of mosquitoes.

We returned to the base just before dawn. Sabban was in the wardroom, drinking Nescafé while Seinfeld played on TV. He was an early riser, usually enjoying a morning run with an iPod loaded with love songs. As we chatted, a man, quite tall and neatly dressed in a golf shirt and khakis, walked in. He was Erich Q. Tan, a city councilman from Jolo City, the fetid capital, where the streets are lined with sewers and hit squads of young Abu Sayyaf on dirt bikes prowl for targets. In the weeks before I arrived, they'd killed four marines and several civilians.

Tan wanted Sabban to revamp Jolo City's overwhelmed sewer system. This would be by far Sabban's most expensive project to date, costing upwards of $250,000, way beyond the reach of the usual suspects. The only institution Sabban figured would cut such a check was the American JSOTF-P. After helping the councilman with a project application, he stuck in his own letter of recommendation. The process, he said, usually took months.

From the other end of the table I asked what the chances were that the project would get approved. Sabban shrugged. Tan shrugged. Neither seemed very optimistic.

"You know Richard Gere?" Sabban suddenly asked. I'd told him I'd met with the philanthropic actor once. "If I wrote him a letter, you think he'd read it?"

"Probably," I answered.

With this the city councilman smiled and clapped his hands together, suddenly rallied.

Ever the warrior, Sabban called for a pen and paper.