Inside the Manhunt

Congressional staffer voltaire Mahasol was trying to ignore the crowd outside his window in downtown Zamboanga in the far south of the Philippines. Mainly old women and young children, they were waiting for a plane at the Edwin Andrews Air Base across the road, a free flight on the transport being one of the perks for relatives of military personnel.

Suddenly a great gout of smoke and flame blotted the crowd from his view, blowing in his window and smashing him out of his chair into the wall. "People were shouting. The whole site was covered with smoke," says Mahasol. Dazed, he walked outside. "I saw a dead woman. Then I saw an elderly woman who was calling for help. I dialed the Red Cross on my mobile phone."

The May 29 blast, which killed two people and injured 21 others, came from a backpack bomb. Philippine police believe it was orchestrated by an associate of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Filipino separatist group. "There was a lapse in intelligence gathering," says an angry Mahasol. "It should be maximized to avoid another incident like this one."

Mahasol has every right to feel frustrated. Philippine police say the techniques used to assemble and detonate the bomb came from another group of terrorists whom authorities have been hunting for nearly six years: the Bali bombers who got away. Since killing 202 people in two nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002, the fugitives are believed to have murdered and maimed scores of innocents in new bombings. Investigators in Indonesia and the Philippines say they export their skills to other countries and terror groups and recruit more disciples for suicide attacks, all the while moving across borders, marrying, fathering children and promoting their violent ideology. Says General Made Mangku Pastika, the Indonesian police officer who led the investigation into the Bali bombings: "These people are not going to stop doing this terrorism. They are not only a threat for Bali but also for Indonesia, and maybe the Philippines also."

The popular belief is that the Jemaah Islamiyah terror cell that claimed responsibility for the Bali bombs has been decapitated. Three of the key operatives — Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, the smiling bomb builder, Ali Gufron, the devout preacher, and Imam Samudra, the fanatical field commander — have been convicted and sentenced to death, and are in the final stages of the appeals process.

Their widely publicized trials, combined with the arrest of more than 30 accomplices and the success of authorities in rounding up several hundred other JI operatives, give the impression that the case is almost closed. But four men whom Indonesian police believe were key participants in the plot have never been caught: a military commander, an electronics expert, a terrorist instructor and a fundamentalist teacher.

According to General Pastika, the commander, Zulkarnaen, helped organize the meetings near Solo, in central Java, where the Bali attack was planned. In transcripts of interviews with police seen by TIME, the convicted bombers said that electronics expert Dulmatin, a Malaysian, helped wire the bombs, installing four separate failsafe detonation switches for the giant car bomb. The prisoners said JI instructor Umar Patek packed the bomb's sacks of potassium chlorate and aluminum powder, while the teacher, Noordin Mohammed Top, was involved in logistics and strategy with the al-Qaeda go-between Hambali. The four men's faces have appeared on widely distributed wanted posters and on the U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice website; $10 million is offered for Dulmatin and $1 million for Patek. But for nearly six years the fugitives have defied high-tech surveillance wizardry, million-dollar rewards and a manhunt by thousands of soldiers, spies and police across three countries in Southeast Asia.

Family Values
The lush jungle-covered hills and sapphire-blue seas of the southern Philippines look serene, but the region is a battleground where the MILF and its parent group, the Moro National Liberation Front, have long waged bloody struggles for independence. In the mid-1990s the MNLF brokered a deal with the government to share power in areas of Sulu, 900 km south of Manila. The MILF has been in sporadic peace talks over its claim for territory in the south, but a clash with government troops last year left 14 marines dead, 10 of them beheaded. Ranging across the rugged Mindanao terrain and further south is the Islamic terrorist Abu Sayyaf Group, which remains in open warfare with the government.

It was into this porous poorly regulated Muslim heartland that Dulmatin and Umar Patek and their families fled by boat from Indonesia and Malaysia in early 2003. Their escape was revealed after Dulmatin's wife, Haja Oemar "Istie" Sovie and the couple's children, were captured on Jolo Island in 2006.

In the report of her interrogation by Philippine police, seen by TIME, Istie describes her husband as a loving father who spoon-fed their young children and, even when on the run, insisted the whole family gather for meals. Istie claims that after arriving in the Philippines, Dulmatin and Patek traveled by small ferries and boats to the south, eventually settling in remote houses in Maguindanao in late 2003.

While authorities combed villages in Indonesia and Malaysia, Dulmatin and family were living quietly under aliases, living off local food and using coconuts and oil palm to produce oil and fuel. They used a small boat to travel around the often-flooded region. Hiding nearby were Patek and his local wife Rumaisah. Several times, the Dulmatin family hid in the jungle as the Philippine military launched air and artillery strikes against separatist rebels. Despite the stress of being on the run, the couple in late 2003 had their fourth child.

According to Istie, they moved often and Dulmatin spent months away, but he would always stay in touch, texting and calling her via cell phone. She told police she knew nothing of any terrorist activities. In late 2005, she was warned to flee ahead of a military operation. Taking the children, she headed southeast to Jolo, where she was arrested in 2006.