Bolan let his last LAW loose and crawled to the Minigun on its tripod. He scanned the dancing flames, holding fire until he had something real to shoot at. The flames twitched and twisted, tossing strange, gnarled shadows at one another, letting some fall on the ground and ooze out toward him as the flames grew taller.
At the far end of the compound, he spotted something, but the distorted light wouldn't let him focus on it long enough to make out what it was. A second later a spray of fire whistled across the compound toward him. It happened in a split second, but he could see it so clearly and his instincts were so perfectly attuned that he rolled away from the long, jagged burst even before he realized it had been fired.
Someone in the darkness had seen him, and that someone had a machine gun, an M-60 from the sound of it. Only four buildings remained intact. He had left the arsenal by design, and there had been no need to take out the mess hut. The remaining two looked almost transparent. The roaring holocaust heated the air and it surged and swelled like a translucent curtain. Things shimmered as if they were sculpted of Jell-O instead of wood and metal. The men who dashed back and forth behind the wall of flame themselves looked as if they had melted, strangely curled and fluid, like candles left out in the sun.
Bolan rolled back to the Minigun and swung it toward the knot of men against the far fence. He couldn't see them, but he knew they were there. The fire from the far end had stopped, and Bolan opened up with the Mini.
He played it across the compound, chewing at the wreckage and ripping everything in its path to pieces. Hunks of burning lumber flew into the air. Charred timbers suddenly exploded in showers of sparks, then toppled over.
Short bursts of return fire, mostly from automatic rifles and a couple of handguns, started to chip away at the ground on either side. The fence behind him rattled, and he heard several wires sing as they parted like snapped piano strings. They were getting the range, and he couldn't see them.
The Mini was almost as much a liability as an asset. It was too awkward to move, and he sure as hell wasn't going to try to carry it in some headlong charge across the open ground. He ripped one more sustained burst across the flames, letting off the trigger only long enough to spare the arsenal, then dodged away from the gate into the diminishing dark.
Along the fence, the flames still cast little more than stray patches of orange light, and Bolan was following it when a to slab of shadow suddenly detached itself from the night and screamed toward him. It took a second to realize it was a jeep. The steady fire from a rear-mounted M-60 sieved through the fence right behind him as he ran, then arced its way off into the jungle night.
Swinging the M-16 around, he held it in his left hand and fired back as he ran. The chattering of the M-60 grew intermittent, as if the gunner couldn't keep his hand steady and his finger on the trigger.
The jeep's headlights speared out at him all of a sudden. He felt for a moment like a butterfly pinned on a mat.
Bolan spun about and dropped to one knee. With the M-16 on his hip, he sliced across the front of the charging jeep. Both headlamps blew, each pulsing once briefly and brightly, then dying in a shower of glass and sparking filament. The jeep's radiator had been punctured, and watery steams geysered through a dozen holes. A small cloud ballooned up around the hood, but the jeep kept coming.
Bolan raised his sights for another slice, this time just over the hood, and the windshield went in a shower of glass slivers. He saw the machinegunner reach for his throat as he tumbled back over the tail and disappeared. The jeep started to weave, and Bolan realised he hadn't seen a driver.
A big front tire narrowly missed him as he dove to one side. Turning as the jeep rushed by, he caught a glimpse of the driver, crouched down behind the wheel, steering by feel and memory. The face looked oddly familiar, but it was in profile and half-hidden by steam.
The driver straightened up for a moment, wrestling with the wheel. The jeep stewed to the left, narrowly avoiding the fence. Bolan whipped his rifle in a tight arc. It burped a half-dozen rounds before the magazine ran out. The left rear tire blew, and the jeep zigzagged as the driver desperately fought the drag.
Getting to his knees, Bolan rammed a new clip home as the driver leapt from the jeep, letting it career on its own.
Bolan brought his own weapon to bear and squeezed. A single shot cracked from the M-16, then the rifle went suddenly dumb in his hands. It had jammed. He reached for the release, but the charging driver opened up. The big guy hit the deck, rolling toward the fence as he struggled to yank the AutoMag free of its holster.
The big .44-caliber automatic was slippery in his sweatdrenched hands, but he managed a single shot, forcing his opponent to dive. The unchauffeured jeep slammed into the fence, its momentum carrying it partway up the wire before it tipped over on its side, tires spinning uselessly.
Somewhere behind him, Bolan heard two sharp bursts of fire. They sang past his ear and slammed into the jeep. The fuel tank ruptured, and Bolan pressed himself flat as he saw the first spark hit a stream of gasoline. It caught and licked back up until the tank blew with a thunderous roar.
The driver lost his balance and his weapon at the same time, and Bolan charged, hitting him dead center with a vicious cross-body block. The man fell backward, and Bolan pinned him to the ground, planting a knee on each of his arms.
A slug from somewhere in the dark caught him high on the shoulder, knocking him to the ground as the driver twisted free. Scrambling around on all fours, he was looking for his rifle.
Running feet thudded heavily on the ground, and Bolan turned toward the sound. Four of them, all armed with automatic rifles, charged across the compound in a tight knot.
Bolan's fist closed over the AutoMag as a light speared out of the night from beyond the fence. With a sudden roar, a jeep thundered toward the compound gate.
It hit dead center and kept on coming. The four charging meres froze in their tracks. They watched the assault of the jeep as if paralyzed.
The dual gates bulged in the middle as the driver floored it. In slow motion, the fence seemd to crumple as the gates reached their limit. The double chain snapped with a sound like pistol shots, and the roaring jeep tossed the double gates aside.
The meres, as if controlled by a single brain, swung their rifles around to ace the new challenge.
Call seemed to happen in slow motion, and the tableau seemed frozen for a moment. Bolan could see it ad clearly etched against the wall of orange light chewing at the ruined camp.
Backlit by the holocaust, the meres had been reduced to black silhouettes. The only one moving was the driver of the jeep. As Carlos jumped down, rifle in hand, time cracked open again, and things moved furiously, as if to make up for lost time and get the universe back on track.
The meres moved as Carlos leapt. The other driver, also released from his paralysis, scooped his rifle off the ground. Carlos opened up, sweeping a viscious figure 8 through the knot of meres.
They scattered, but Bolan couldn't tell whether they'd been hit or chosen to dive out of the line of fire.
Charging ahead, his wounded arm flapping uselessly at his side, Bolan barreled into the other driver, knocking him backward again and sending his rifle cartwheeling away. Bolan lost his grip on the AutoMag, and the driver landed a sharp jab on the gunshot wound. A flash of bright light momentarily blinded Bolan as the arm went numb and he dropped to his knees.
The driver regained his footing and charged, knocking Bolan onto his back and pinning him.
Bolan reached out with his one good arm, but the driver slapped it aside and locked his fingers around Bolan's throat. The flames climbed higher, and the driver turned. For the first time, Bolan recognised Don McRae.
He pushed with all his weight, closing off Bolan's air. The light began to fade, and Bolan felt tired. He realized he was on the verge of blacking out, but all the strength seemed to have been drained from his body. He was aware of the pressure on his throat and of McRae's grinning face. H
is fingers clawed at the man's hands, but he was ineffective.
Over and over, McRae's lips moved, but Bolan heard nothing but a ringing in his ears. Then he realized that McRae was shouting, "Die, you bastard!" With every shout, he slammed his weight forward a little harder.
Galvanized by the demanding need to do something, Bolan groped for the Beretta. His fingers closed over a handle, and he pulled it free. It felt unfamiliar, and hazily Bolan realised it wasn't the Beretta as he brought it up and shoved with his last ounce of energy. It slipped between bones all the way to the hilt, and McRae twitched. His hands seemed to be the first to realize he'd been hurt, and they relaxed their grip. His arms were still rigid for a moment, then they, too, went slack, and Bolan choked down lungfuls of air.
McRae fell to his side with a great moaning sigh. Bolan tried to pull himself free, but he didn't have the strength. Vaguely aware of McRae's weight still pressing down on him, he watched from a great distance as the world began to spin. The orange light danced on the handle of the knife, the flames glittering on the pure-white ivory inlay.
Bolan thought it somehow fitting that McRae should be gravely wounded with his own knife, the same knife he'd used to torture the captives and to kill Thomas Colgan.
Then the world turned into a dark swirl, and he felt hands tugging at him just before he blacked out.
22
Bolan eased out of the car and let the door close softly behind him. The alley was pitch-black, and the air was thick with humidity and rich Chinese spices. Ongpin at night was like a piece of China moved two thousand miles and grafted on to a tropical island. As they had every place they'd settled, the Chinese had chosen to isolate themselves, keeping their culture intact, along with its wariness of foreigners.
Ongpin reflected that isolation, but unlike the last time Bolan had visited, the quarter seemed alive. Noise drifted through the open windows and the bright cracks under every door. As he moved down the alley, Bolan heard the melancholy wail of a biwa, its plaintive tune sounding surprisingly like the blues.
Mingling with the music, a different kind of sound drifted into the alley voices in urgent conversation.
Bolan glided cautiously, keeping to the wall.
He had three more blocks to go, slipping along back fences silently, his ears alert for every jarring note. Somewhere ahead, in a nondescript building, Charles Harding and Juan Rizal Cordero polished their plans to unleash a terror on Manila the likes of which it had never known.
Looking back on it, trying to piece it all together, Bolan realized that he had been a blind man in the desert. Walt Wilson had known more than he'd revealed, but not much. Frank Henson, his hooks only barely into Colgan, had a lead, but that must have been Harding's doing. It had been a way to keep tabs on Bolan. And with McRae on the scene, it was as good as having a beeper on him.
Harding had stayed offstage, disappearing into the darkness of the wings as surely as the Phantom of the Opera. He had come and gone, leaving nothing behind but blood and ragged bits of flesh. And for what?
To control a country that hadn't been up off its knees in three hundred years. Harding had been obsessed, and he had exploited others who were similarly obsessed though less clever. Men like McRae, who didn't care about anything as long as the pay was good, he bought.
Bolan wanted to get Harding like he hadn't wanted anyone in a long, long time. Seeing a city at night, spread out under the stars as defenceless as a sleeping child, vulnerable as a naked woman, really brings it home just how easy it is to make it wake up screaming.
That was the key to understanding men like Harding and Cordero. They knew how easy it was. They knew, and they loved it. And Mack Bolan loved the idea of taking them down, disassembing them as totally as a child takes apart a house of blocks.
But first he had to find them. There had been enough life left in Don McRae to make him want to trade information for keeping it, but he hadn't been sure where they were hiding. He knew three addresses, and his wallet had yielded a fourth.
Manila was a rabbit warren, a system of tunnels in plain sight. Under a dictator, people learn how to live two lives, to build a city within a city. Under Ferdinand Marcos, the people of the Philippines had done it, and under Corazon Aquino they had seen no reason to tear it down.
The three blocks passed in waves of light and dark, sounds swelling and fading away like waves drifting under a pier. And the first address lay before him. A ramshackle building, three stories of ordinary stone, every window dark, lay beyond a wooden palisade more ornamental than defensive in function.
Bolan scaled the fence easily, then moved close to the building through a neat garden of well-maintained shrubbery. A half flight of wooden stairs led to the back door. Bolan took the steps carefully, alert for the least indication that someone knew he was there. With his ear to the door, he strained but heard nothing.
A second-story window, the only one without bars, lay just out of reach to the left of the stairway.
He had to know whether anyone hid inside, but he couldn't get in through the door without calling attention to himself. The buildings lay in an unbroken row marching off in either direction, and Bolan backed down the stairs. Over the fence, he moved three doors down to a small shop, it's back wall slashed by rickety wooden stairs. He made it over a rusty wire fence and onto the stairs, then held his breath when someone stirred inside an open window.
Soundlessly he took the next flight and crawled over the wooden parapet. Moving back the way he'd come, over the rooftops, he found a skylight in the center of Harding's building. The skylight was locked, but he could slip the lock aside by shoving a knife blade down at an angle. It slid through the rubber melding, but he had to rap the knife handle sharply with the heel of his hand before the latch clicked open.
The skylight came free with a squeak. Inside, it was as dark as the bottom of a well, and Bolan leaned in, squeezing his eyes shut to accustom them to the darkness. When he opened them again, he could see blocks of shade, but there was no way to tell whether any of them were substantial enough to hold his weight.
With a shrug, he grabbed hold of the skylight ledge and dropped down, wincing as the pain shot through his wounded arm. He almost let go for a second, but bit his lip until the pain passed.
After he stilled to ready himself, he let go with both hands and landed lightly on the balls of his feet.
Groping through the dark, he found a wall. Following it to the right, he bumped his knee on something, then found the molding of a door frame. He pressed an ear to the door for a moment, but whatever lay beyond was silent.
He found the knob and tested it. It rattled once, then turned easily. Gently he pulled the door toward him. The darkness was so thick that he couldn't gauge what size area lay behind the door, and he felt as though he were in a cocoon, his senses smothered by layers of cotton wool.
Bolan stopped again to listen. His own breathing echoed distantly in his ears, but he heard no other sound. It was an impossible situation. He'd have to risk using a light. The chance that it would be spotted was no greater than the risk that he'd be heard when he stumbled over a piece of furniture or kicked a wastebasket. He reached into his pocket for the flashlight, then pulled his Desert Eagle.
Pointing both in the same direction, the weapon in his good hand and the flashlight in the other, he thumbed the light on. It seemed blinding after the utter blackness, and he blinked away the glare for a few seconds.
The room was a simple bedroom, the neatly made bed and a nightstand the only furniture. He moved back and trained the light into the room he'd just come from. It appeared to be a small office, one wall full of bookshelves, the other occupied by a wooden desk with a corkboard pinned to the wall just above it. Like the bedroom, it was plain and utilitarian.
He turned back and crossed the bedroom to another door. With his hand on the doorknob, he switched off the light and listened to the darkness one more time. Opening the door, he held his breath before clicking the light back
on. This time he found himself staring down a narrow hallway. The plain wooden floor was clean but needed waxing. Its surface was dull, even scarred in a few places from heavy traffic over a long period of time.
He stepped into the hall, pulling the door closed but not latching it. He was almost at one end of the hall.
At the opposite end, a stairwell led to the floor below.
He moved lightly toward it, squeezing the butt of the Desert Eagle in his left hand. He could feel the texture of the grip against his palm, a strange kind of comfort.
Bolan made his way carefully down the stairs, pausing every few steps to listen. The place might as well have been a tomb, for all the sound he heard.
He'd seen model homes that had more life in them.
And with every step, he felt more and more certain that he was bringing things to a head. Harding was within reach now, even if he still kept to the shadows. It was gut feeling, intuition. Information was the least of it.
Bolan had a kind of sixth sense, a radar, that never failed him.
In the dark he could hear the steady beep, beep, beep as the beam swept past a target. The little green blip swelled and died, swelled and died, a light on a dim screen that corresponded exactly to something real and substantial. Harding was that little green light now, and Bolan was closing in.
The next floor was as vacant as the first.
But the little light kept flashing.
Mack Bolan opened the heavy door, not expecting to find anything of interest but hoping he was wrong. He had gone over the first three floors, working his way down from the top. He felt like a novice cat burglar on a milk run. His technique was perfect, his haul nonexistent. With every empty room, his frustration had grown sharper.
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