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By that time, it was clear that the dangers facing him in the Philippines were real. Friends pleaded with Aquino to stay in the U.S.; he seemed almost fatalistic in his insistence on returning, convinced that he was destined to play a crucial role in the post-Marcos transition. "I'm committed to return," he told a friend from childhood. "If fate falls that I should be killed, so be it." Aquino liked to recall Jose Rizal, a Filipino patriot who returned from exile before he was executed by a Spanish firing squad in 1896. Rizal's death sparked the Philippine war of independence.
Aquino left the U.S. on Aug. 14 and spent a week visiting several Asian capitals. Though the first part of his trip was kept secret, Aquino's arrival in Manila was widely expected. The city was festooned with yellow ribbons hung out by Aquino supporters, and an estimated 20,000 of them, including his 75-year-old mother Aurora, had gathered at the airport to greet him. So had government security forces. The airport was cordoned off by the Aviation Security Command, AVSECOM, a special unit created to guarantee the security of the nation's airports. Two weeks earlier, AVSECOM had been transferred from the control of the airport authority to the personal command of an air force brigadier general. Inside the terminal, the passenger lobby was closed. Outside, on the tarmac, a phalanx of soldiers armed with M-16 rifles waited as China Airlines Flight 811 taxied toward Gate 8. By then, Aquino's ebullience had vanished. Dressed in a white safari suit and a bulletproof vest that he had put on just before landing, Aquino waited calmly as three soldiers in khaki uniforms entered the plane. He was aware of the threat of General Fabian Ver, the armed forces chief of staff, to send him "back on the same plane he arrived on."
Instead, the three men muscled past passengers standing in the aisle and, surrounding Aquino, moved him toward the exit jetway. When reporters, who had accompanied Aquino on the journey from Taipei, tried to follow, they were halted at the door by two men in white uniforms. By then Aquino was already outside on the metal platform at the top of the stairs leading to the tarmac. He was surrounded by at least five uniformed men. Reporters tried to open the door to follow, but were rebuffed by the guards, one of whom reached back and shoved a television cameraman, forcing the rest of the group back against the jetway's opposite bulkhead and closing the door.
At that moment, a shot rang out, then two more. The reporters rushed to the windows in the plane's first-class compartment and saw Aquino lying face down on the pavement, a gaping hole in the back of his head. The khaki-clad guards who had taken him from the plane were nowhere to be seen, and the area was swarming with blue-uniformed AVSECOM troops. Next to a van, two of the troopers looked on as a third pumped at least eight bullets into the body of a man dressed in a blue Philippine Airlines maintenance worker's shirt and jeans. With other soldiers outside firing rifles into the air, the reporters dived for cover, but not before seeing Aquino's limp body being loaded into the van, which then sped off. In all, less than 30 seconds had elapsed.