Ballistic

by Don Pendleton

  “It’s not enough,” Maia said, as they neared the elevators. “Banten Province covers more than three thousand square miles, much of it rain forest.”

  “So,” Bolan replied, “we keep on looking for a guide.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Java Sea

  The Thunderbolt steamed eastward, passing north of Bali and continuing along its course into the Southeast Islands, better known since early European exploration as the Lesser Sundas. Yet another part of Indonesia, the Lesser and Greater Sundas together represented the visible part of a volcanic arc that ran for seven hundred miles or more from Bali to East Timor. Some of the smaller islets, first discovered in the present century with aid from satellite photography, were still unnamed and, to the best of any living human’s knowledge, unexplored.

  Nasir al-Jarrah stood on the freighter’s foredeck, enjoying the tang of salt spray on his face, so different from the arid winds of his Saudi homeland. He thought about the scattered remnants of his family sometimes, but overall had no more longing for his birthplace than he did for the war-blighted hill country of Pakistan.

  He heard footsteps behind him, didn’t turn as Usmar Malik joined him at the forward railing.

  “So?” al-Jarrah asked.

  “We have received their answer,” Malik said.

  “And the United States does not negotiate with terrorists,” al-Jarrah stated.

  “As you predicted.”

  It hardly took a psychic to anticipate what Washington would say. The hard line was the only line—at least, in public, though it hadn’t stopped the U.S. State Department from arming Iran in exchange for the return of captive embassy personnel. Of course, in those days, Tehran had been at war with Baghdad, battling another tyrant of America’s creation who had run amok. It had served Washington’s purposes to kill two birds with one stone.

  As long as both birds were Muslim.

  The Sword of Allah had no such influence over world affairs. It had no country, hence no oil or other natural resources ripe for picking. While its leaders were forever hunted, it couldn’t be bombed, invaded or embargoed. With no government to shun, no populace to starve through sanctions, it was more or less invincible.

  And it could strike at will, from anywhere on earth.

  “What now, sir?” Malik asked.

  “Now we proceed as planned,” al-Jarrah said. “The island is...how far, again?”

  “The captain said two hours when I spoke to him,” Malik replied, checking his watch. “Ten minutes less now.”

  Al-Jarrah had the utmost confidence that they would be successful. While the navies of the world searched seas and oceans for their prey, he would be safe onshore, prepared to launch the second Brave Wind missile at the proper moment.

  At the perfect target.

  First he had to set the trap, then came the bait, all in good time.

  “Your people in Jakarta are prepared?” he asked.

  “Ready and waiting,” the Indonesian answered. “As instructed.”

  “And there have been no slips yet?”

  “If there had been, the Great Satan’s navy would be waiting for us.”

  Of course. And since there were no warships yet on the horizon, or revealed by any of the Thunderbolt’s radar devices, al-Jarrah believed that they were safe. At least for now. After the trap was set and sprung, however, it would be a different story. Then, he thought, the choices would come down to swift escape or martyrdom.

  And Nasir al-Jarrah wasn’t prepared to be a martyr. No. Al-Jarrah knew that he must postpone martyrdom until his work was done on earth. Until he’d slain as many of the Great Satan’s followers as was humanly possible.

  Only then would he rest. Meanwhile...

  “You have the speedboats standing by?” he asked Malik.

  “Ready when you are.”

  Bogor, West Java

  BOLAN WAS READY to expand his war. Since Jin Au-Yo had fled Jakarta proper, and the last-known source for his potential whereabouts was dead, the Executioner prepared to look farther afield. Greater Jakarta was a sprawling realm with nine administrative divisions, claiming some twenty-eight million inhabitants at the last census. Bogor, with nearly a million residents, lay forty miles south of Jakarta on the Jagorawi Toll Road. Nearly all of the city’s Chinese lived in their insular community surrounding the Gunung Gadung cemetery, reserved for Chinese only.

  “Jin will have his people there,” Maia told Bolan, “if he hasn’t drawn them all away to guard him in Banten.”

  “We just need one,” Bolan said, “who can tell us where he’s gone to ground.”

  “I know some of their operations in the area,” Maia replied. “Still, it would be better if I had access to information from the ministry.”

  “Go on and try it, if you want to,” Bolan said. And added, “But they may try homing in on your cell phone.”

  Maia seemed to think about it, phone in hand, flipping it open, then, as quickly, shutting it.

  “We need the information,” she said, as if talking to herself, “but I’m afraid of interference.”

  Or an order to stand down, Bolan surmised. Would she resist that order, if and when it came? And if Beijing commanded her to stop him, would she?

  He heard the phone click open one more time, then hum softly as Maia turned it on.

  “I have two messages,” she said. “From Fann Lieu? Why would he be calling me? How would he know...?”

  “Who’s that?” Bolan asked.

  “Someone that I trained with at the University of International Relations,” she replied. “Preparing for assignment to the ministry.”

  “You work with him? Or her?”

  “It’s him. And no,” Maia replied. “Not even in the same department. Other than a quick hello in passing through the halls, I haven’t seen him in a year or more.”

  “And now he’s calling you out of the blue. Today.”

  “Twice in as many hours,” Maia said. “No message other than a phone number with a request to call him back.”

  “You know that’s fishy,” Bolan said.

  “Suspicious, certainly,” Maia agreed.

  “You want to call him back and see what’s happening?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Maia said. “Let’s tend to first things, first.”

  South China Sea

  FANN LIEU HAD GIVEN UP on sleeping. Even though his Airbus A330 was fairly quiet, most of the three-hundred-odd souls aboard either sleeping, reading or watching in-flight television, the nonstop vibration from its twin Pratt & Whitney PW4000 jet engines mimicked and aggravated the tremors quaking Fann’s own body.

  You’re frightened. Admit it, he chided himself. And why not?

  His first field assignment, absolutely unexpected, would drop him in the middle of a foreign battleground where men were dying by the hour. Unarmed and unprepared, Fann was expected to find Maia Lee and persuade her to stop whatever it was she’d been doing—with some unknown American, no less—to cause so much havoc.

  Fann didn’t like his chances of succeeding, thought that it would be a victory of sorts simply to get back home alive. Or would it? Unprepared or otherwise, the Deputy Assistant Minister for State Security had given him a job to do. And if he failed, there would be consequences.

  Fann had been provided with a cell phone number and had called it twice, leaving his name and number, asking Maia to call back as soon as possible, but there’d been no response so far. Which told him nothing. Fann thought it stood to reason that she’d have her phone turned off, to keep from being tracked by GPS. Beyond that, he supposed she could have lost it, which would make contacting her impossible.

  And Maia might be dead.

  If she’d gone rogue, as Chou Hua Tian believed, and was involved in crimes of v
iolence, that choice on her part might have been a fatal one. Fann had been warned against contacting Indonesian law enforcement, which made checking morgues for Maia’s corpse a risky proposition. And he didn’t fancy looking at a lot of bodies anyway.

  It felt too much like tempting fate.

  His basic plan was simple. After landing in Jakarta, Fann would find a hotel room, continue leaving messages for Maia on her cell phone, asking her to meet him at the Ancol Dreamland theme park on Jakarta’s waterfront. After that, he’d make his way to the park and make himself available for contact while the place was open. Maia would reach out to him...or she wouldn’t.

  And if she didn’t? Then what?

  Chou Hua Tian had given Fann no deadline for completion of his task. For all Fann knew, he might be left to sit around Jakarta for a week, a month, the rest of his career. Perhaps returning empty-handed to Beijing was unacceptable.

  Another reason not to sleep at thirty thousand feet above the sea, hurtling through space at five hundred miles per hour. In theory, Fann knew he was nearly as safe as he would be at home, on his own swaybacked sofa.

  So, why did he feel like a man on his way to the gallows?

  Bogor, West Java

  “THIS IS IT,” Maia Lee said. “The fourth storefront.”

  They were rolling along Gang Sepatu half a mile an hour slower than the posted speed, Bolan checking out the target and its neighbors in this bland commercial district.

  “What’s the sign say?” he inquired.

  “Triangle Enterprises,” she read aloud.

  “Subtle,” Bolan replied. “And this is where Jin’s number two hangs out?”

  “His red pole for Bogor,” Maia confirmed. “Cai Shu.”

  Passing the storefront office, Bolan observed, “He may have gone to ground with Jin.”

  “I’ll call him and find out,” she said, taking her cell phone from a pocket. Since she didn’t have the Bogor number memorized, she also had to find her pocket notebook, thumbing through its pages to the proper leaf and reading off the coded entry.

  Bolan drove past their target, toward the street’s intersection with Jalan Cibalok, and prepared to turn north, slowly circling the block. Maia tapped out the number for Triangle Enterprises, waiting while it rang once, twice, three times...

  “Yes?” a gruff male voice asked.

  Responding in her native language, Maia told the man, “I need to speak with Cai Shu. Urgently.”

  “Who is this?” the stranger asked.

  “Not on an open line,” she answered. “Is he there, or not?”

  The stranger thought about it for a moment, then replied, “Hold on.”

  She waited for the phone to drop, then cut the link instead. “He’s there,” she said to Bolan.

  “Okay. Anything else from your old friend?”

  “Not yet. I’ll think about that later.”

  Bolan took them north on Jalan Cibalok, two blocks as it turned out, to Jalan Sawo Jajar. A left turn there aimed the Toyota eastward two more blocks, to where the road turned south and brought them back to Gang Sepatu. He began to seek a parking place and found one half a block east of Triangle Enterprises.

  “Plenty of pedestrians despite the rain,” he noted, sounding less than pleased.

  “We could go somewhere and wait for closing time,” she said.

  “Too long,” Bolan said. “That’s if they do close down, with all that’s going on.”

  Maia observed that Cai Shu’s office seemed to have no customers. Shoppers passed by, perhaps uncertain what the business was from its vague name alone. The broad front windows were no help, obscured with banners announcing New Management, giving no hint of the service or merchandise offered within.

  “They don’t invite much business,” she remarked.

  “That’s something, anyway,” Bolan said. “Whatever happens once we’re through the door, we need to keep it off the sidewalk, if we can.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  Tucking her silenced submachine gun underneath her rain slicker, she stepped out of the car.

  * * *

  TRIANGLE ENTERPRISES, right. Bolan had recognized the play on triad instantly, but also felt a deeper irony that Maia wouldn’t. His one-man war against the Mafia had started after loan sharks hooked his father back in Massachusetts and destroyed the family, pushing the old man into murder-suicide before death broke their stranglehold.

  The front name of their company had been Triangle Finance.

  Déjà vu and then some for the Executioner.

  They jogged through traffic crossing Gang Sepatu, reached the sidewalk two doors down from their target and slowed to a walk. The horns that had been blaring behind them didn’t seem to matter, being more or less a constant racket on the busy street. Nothing particular to draw attention from the soldiers of the Flying Ax inside Triangle Enterprises.

  “Careful going in,” Bolan warned Maia. “They may have civilian employees.”

  “Unlikely,” she replied. “Whoever tries to stop us is fair game.”

  Enjoying it too much? He couldn’t tell behind the sunglasses she wore, despite the drizzling rain. Maybe a problem if he had to cover her, as well as any adversaries in the shop they were approaching.

  The place had double push-through doors that let them enter side by side, showing their weapons to the staff first thing. Maia rattled off some orders in Chinese that froze a half dozen male twenty-somethings at first, then they scattered like mice, diving off in all directions toward their several desks, tugging at drawers.

  Going for guns.

  It came down to a triad turkey shoot. No human being could outrun a bullet, whether it’s a 5.56 mm NATO or a 9 mm Parabellum. They could try, hope for the best and play a ducking game, but if they couldn’t reach hardware in a hurry to defend themselves, they were history.

  Six targets. Bolan caught the nearest of them as he dived across a cluttered desk, three rounds exploding through the young man’s rib cage in a spray of crimson, ripping through his lungs before he had a chance to scream. The dying gangster kept on going, sliding on a blood slick, sodden papers going with him as he tumbled out of sight.

  By then, Maia had tagged a second runner with her submachine gun, muffled sputtering instead of the reports from Bolan’s SS2 assault rifle. Her target lurched and stumbled, fell face-forward, and his forehead struck another desk with force enough to break his neck, if it had mattered. Which it didn’t anymore.

  Bolan kept tracking, caught his second target with one hand inside an open desk drawer, snarling curses in defiance. It was as good a way to go as any, and the next burst out of Bolan’s weapon didn’t keep him waiting. Three hot tumblers ripped into his torso at center of mass, an inch or less below his racing heart, and stopped it with a blast of hydrostatic shock. Amazement trumped defiance in the last half second of the man’s life, before he dropped from sight and out of Bolan’s thoughts.

  Maia’s next target didn’t bother going for a gun, unless he had it stashed somewhere in a back room. He was a sprinter, pretty fast, but physics taught him that he wasn’t fast enough. Whether the lesson took, with Parabellum manglers smashing through his occipital bone and into his brain, was a question forever unanswered.

  Two triad members remained, and they’d both reached weapons, but the pistols didn’t do them any good. The shooter Bolan targeted was dropping by the time he fired a wasted round into the storefront’s ceiling, puncturing one of the water-stained acoustic panels. Maia’s guy was quick enough to point and fire, but pointing wasn’t aiming, and his shot missed Maia by a yard or more, drilling the plate-glass window at her back. She greased him with a 3-round burst and followed Bolan toward a room set back some fifty paces from the entrance, searching for Cai Shu.

  When they were halfway there, a voice call
ed out to them in Chinese.

  “What’s that about?” Bolan asked.

  Maia frowned and said, “He warns us to stay out. He has grenades.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia

  The island had no name as far as Usmar Malik knew. It was located north of Flores, where a team of foreign scientists had unearthed the remains of tiny apelike proto-humans several years earlier. There were no monkey-men in evidence, however, as his crewmen carefully removed the final Brave Wind missile and its launcher from the ship.

  Malik gave Nasir al-Jarrah full credit for the brainstorm that would bring their ship-to-ship missile ashore. The Sword of Allah’s field marshal had reasoned that their enemies, quite naturally, would be searching for a ship after the test-fire on the Dutch freighter. No one would think of planting the missile on land, but its custom-made launcher would work anywhere. Its guidance system would lock on a target from a hilltop or a cave’s mouth as well as from the rolling deck of a vessel at sea.

  Malik caught himself holding his breath as the Hsiung Feng III descended in its cradle, supported by a shipboard crane. Just under twenty feet in length, it weighed more than three thousand pounds. The flatbed truck that waited to receive it had been lifted ashore in identical fashion days earlier, when work began on the landlocked launch site. The truck was old and shabby-looking, but its suspension was sound and bore the new weight with only a token groan from its springs. Its engine rumbled and the truck began to pull away, nosing inland.

  Next, Malik’s mechanics would begin dismantling the missile launcher and removing it in pieces from the ship for reassembly at the chosen launch site. It would take some time, but they were in no hurry. Hours more would pass before the great American Pacific Fleet drew close enough for one of its aircraft carriers to serve as a target.

  He wondered idly whether it would be the Third or Seventh Fleet that was dispatched to prowl through Indonesian waters. The only real difference lay in which carriers Malik and Nasir al-Jarrah would have the chance to destroy. The Third Fleet, Malik recalled, included the USS Nimitz, Abraham Lincoln, Carl Vinson and John C. Stennis. The Seventh Fleet’s flattop included the USS George Washington and Ronald Reagan. Any one of them would make a worthy target when the time came, although Malik personally hoped that it would be the Ronald Reagan.