"Bo-leen."
Turning his head, Bolan found that Kam Chek was directly behind him, in the same spot he'd held since they set out. But now there was another man beside Kam Chek. Bolan had seen him with the members of the Horn that morning. He was a short, stocky, dark-haired Asian who, for some reason, had shed his white jacket and silk shirt and had taken a whip from a guard. Bolan returned the Asian's hard stare. He read the guy as a savage.
"I must introduce you to Mr. Tuhban Mongkut," Kam Chek announced. He bowed his head slightly as he looked at the Asian. "He will be your companion for the duration of the trip. See that you accommodate Mr. Mongkut, s'il vous plaît. See that you show him the proper respect. He is a man of power and high place."
I'll bet he is, Bolan thought. Mongkut's muscled torso, slick with sweat and coated with dust, looked like the forged plating of Roman armor. In his eyes was the look of a man eager to inflict pain, a man who had caused others great suffering through his own physical strength, a man who was proud of the fear he could instill in the hearts of weaker or defeated men. Bolan looked away from Mongkut, suddenly aware that he had a formidable adversary in this Asian of "power and high place."
The hours dragged by.
Several prisoners began to stumble from the line. When they dropped, they quickly climbed to their feet again as whips tore into their faces and arms.
By midafternoon, Bolan guessed that they had covered a little more than twenty miles. Raw spots had formed on both his arches from rubbing against the insides of his boots. The blisters were a minor discomfort compared to the burning ache that wrapped him from head to foot. Blisters would soon become the least of his worries, he suspected.
The prisoners had not eaten since shortly before setting out. Their pace began to drag noticeably.
As some of the prisoners began to succumb to exhaustion, Kam Chek, incensed, ran up and down the line. Screaming insults, he flayed the prisoners, and the guards followed his example.
Then, Bolan saw the inevitable happen.
One prisoner in the middle of the column cried out, then tumbled away from the right outside row. Another prisoner dropped to the trail a moment later.
Kam Chek shrieked for the column to halt.
Bolan and Grimaldi looked at each other, both showing anger despite their weariness.
And the horror began.
The transport trucks and the jeep squealed to a halt on worn brake shoes. Torquemandan opened the door of the truck he was riding in, and climbed out onto the step.
"What is it?" Torquemandan yelled back at Kam Chek.
"We have a loafer! A weakling!" Kam Chek shouted.
Torquemandan looked at the two fallen men with disgust. "Well, get rid of them. Hurry up."
Two guards with flamethrowers stepped forward.
The doomed prisoners lay motionless, dust settling over their outstretched bodies. One of them, an Asian, looked up at Kam Chek. There was pleading in his eyes. The other prisoner, a Caucasian, groaned, "I... can't move... can't... go on..."
"I won't stand by and watch this," Bolan snarled. He took a step forward, but froze as three guards swung AK-47s toward him and cocked the bolts on the Russian assault rifles. Turning, Bolan looked at Mongkut.
Mongkut spit on the ground, fingered his whip. He returned Bolan's hard-eyed gaze with defiance.
"No... no!" the white prisoner cried out as the guards dragged first him, then the other man, off the trail by their legs into a ditch.
Quickly, efficiently, the guards stripped the packs off the doomed men.
Kam Chek stood watching, clenched fists on his hips.
Tongues of orange fire roared out of the metal nozzles of the flamethrowers.
Screams ripped through the air. Flames lapped up the two prisoners. They thrashed in the ditch like fish out of water, their piercing shrieks of agony filling the air.
Seated in their jeep, the fat Roily Woods and the skinny Charlie Wells soon turned away from the sight of the writhing human torches and faced front. Their faces were a pasty white.
Even after the men had burned to death, Bolan thought he could still hear their lingering howls. He shut his eyes, trembling with raw fury.
As the sickening-sweet stench of roasting flesh ripened the dust-choked air, one prisoner vomited. Another man fainted. Both prisoners were pulled away from the column and shot, point-blank, through the temples.
Finally there was silence.
Kam Chek stared at the human pyres for a long moment. He almost appeared mesmerized by the sight of shriveling, blackened flesh, by the crackle of the flames.
Then whips sizzled flesh, as the order was given to move on. Bolan's rage paralyzed him for a second. Thoughts of vengeance filled his mind.
Mongkut shoved Bolan in the back. "Move!"
As he walked past the burning bodies, Bolan looked Kam Chek dead in the eye. The Khmer Rouge bastard smiled back at him.
"There you see the penalty for weakness. Make sure that you are strong," Kam said.
Strong, yeah, Bolan thought.
He would show Kam Chek strong, all right.
With his own two hands he would show this monster strength. With the death grip that would crush Kam Chek's throat to bloody mush.
Behind the procession, twin spires of black smoke curled toward the sky.
19
By midmorning of the second day of the march, Kam Chek and his cutthroats had littered the trail behind the procession with bullet-riddled, burning corpses.
Bolan had counted fifteen prisoners who had so far been butchered for falling in exhaustion or despair. Kam Chek and his savages always slaughtered the prisoners without hesitation, without the least sign of remorse or doubt. Bolan knew that more prisoners would be murdered. But, at the moment, there was nothing he could do to save them. He felt utter, unshakable futility right then, and in his weary state he grimly wondered if such a feeling had ever killed a man. But the frustration, he realized, was only adding more explosive fury to the time bomb set to blow inside of him. In this case frustration was a saving grace.
Bolan chafed, though, impatient to reach the village at the midway point, which would be the site for the do-or-die breakout attempt. He doubted that he could stomach much more of Kam Chek's savagery and be forced simply to stand by and look on, shackled, helpless to strike back. His own physical strength was beginning to fail him, but the images of carnage on that trail of death stayed branded in Bolan's mind. He had watched men die cruelly, senselessly, for no other reason than to slake Kam Chek's thirst for blood. Rage kept Mack Bolan moving. Rage was his ultimate guiding force.
Earlier, Davis and the other two rats had helped to stoke the fire in Bolan's belly. The scum had executed several of their fellow prisoners with the same brutal glee with which Kam Chek and his savages carried out their butchery. Twice, Bolan had seen the traitors force other prisoners to step out of the line. Guards had kept AK-47s trained on the men selected by Davis. Under the threat of death, those prisoners were forced to execute their comrades, who had been selected by Davis's fellow rats, strangling the life out of them with rope. One of the executioners, his will broken, his physical endurance shattered, had dropped to his knees and wept bitterly. With one furious swipe of his samurai sword, Kam Chek had cut that man's head off, then he had kicked the severed head into the ditch. The packs that the dead men had hauled were removed from their bodies and tossed into one of the transport trucks.
By midafternoon, the march reached the village at the fifty-mile mark. As usual, the animals were fed first. Whenever there was an easily accessible stream or swamp, they were led there by prisoners and guards alike to drink their fill.
Finally, the prisoners were herded together in a clearing on the outer fringes of a rice paddy. Even while they were eating they were not allowed to remove their packs. Each was rationed to a bowl of rice, a piece of bread and a cup of water. They ate in silence, watching as Thai villagers carried from their huts offerings of meat, loaves of brea
d and sugarcane for Kam Chek and Kan Khang, the guards, and the white suits of the Devil's Horn.
Bolan looked at Mongkut. He had felt the Asian's stare boring into the back of his head for the past day and a half. At the moment, Mongkut had elected not to join Kam Chek, Khang and the others as they devoured the food they took from the villagers. Instead, Mongkut stood behind Bolan, watching him with eyes that didn't even appear to flicker. The man, Bolan knew, was going to be a problem when the time came.
Mongkut barked an order at two guards. He pointed at Bolan and Grimaldi, then strode off into the brush to relieve himself. The guards fired up cigarettes, seemed to ignore the prisoners as they drew on their smokes and talked to each other.
With dirt-begrimed fingers, Bolan pushed rice into his mouth. He was stiff, sore, and the blisters on his feet had burst, leaving behind burning, itching, raw flesh. He caught Tremain and Jones looking at him expectantly. No, it was too soon. It couldn't happen yet. Judging by the pace of the march so far — and he had no reason to think that it would change — he estimated they would reach the village at the midway point in the late evening the day after tomorrow. A little more time was still needed to wear down the guards, to make them long to end the march as quickly as possible, to work up their hunger to sate their lust in the halfway village. At this point, the guards still appeared alert, the piss-and-fire was a good twenty or thirty miles from being driven out of them. Yeah, Bolan knew that by then he, Grimaldi and the other prisoners would be even more beaten down by the march. But hope, vengeance and hate were their only, their very powerful, allies.
Tremain and Jones frowned as Bolan slowly shook his head.
Bolan looked down the ragged line of seated prisoners. He was searching for Brennan, not out of any concern for the druglord, but merely curious as to how the punk was holding up. Finally he spotted him, sitting slumped several yards away. Clearly, the former big shot from New York was not faring well. That haunted stare of disillusionment over Torquemandan's betrayal still lurked in Brennan's eyes. But Bolan detected something else in Brennan's expression also. Despair. The punk couldn't even touch his food. The Top Dog had given up, and Bolan didn't give him another day before he checked out for good. Bolan knew Brennan would never understand it all, not even as death was coming for him. Ronny Brennan had lived a lie. He had bought his life at the expense of the lives of others. In this instance, Bolan reflected, the punk had sold his soul to the Devil. Torquemandan. And now the Devil wanted the return on his investment of the borrowed time Brennan had bought.
Mongkut stepped from the brush. Bolan watched as the Asian snarled some angry words in his native tongue at the guards. He was chastising the guards, most likely, Bolan guessed, because they appeared to take the prisoners' captivity for granted.
Bolan hoped those guards were lax in their duties, just one more time.
As they finished eating their meager meal, some of the prisoners toppled over in exhaustion to catch a few moments' rest, even to sleep.
Bolan's own eyelids were drooping. He couldn't remember ever feeling so tired, so damn bone-beaten weary. There was a throbbing behind his ears, a fire burning in his brain. Fever? Malaria? He couldn't be sure. At least not yet.
A strange, peaceful warmth began to spread through his body, to envelop an ache that seemed centered right at the core of his being. His eyes closed. His head slumped forward...
Bolan wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep when the electricity shot across his legs. Jolting awake, he heard Mongkut cursing him. Then the whip came down again, tore open another slash across Bolan's thighs.
The column was being ordered to move out of the village.
Bolan pulled himself out of his daze, shook off the grogginess, and clambered to his feet. Long shadows were stretching down from the hills to the west.
The sun was setting.
Another day in hell was almost over.
Or was it? Mack Bolan wondered, as the guards shoved the prisoners into formation.
Near the edge of the village, Bolan saw Kam Chek, Kan Khang and Torquemandan. They were arguing.
Bolan didn't care what they were bickering about. He cared about only one thing, something that transcended the physical pain and numbing weariness he felt.
He wanted to nurse that feeling until he exploded.
Vengeance.
Mack Bolan could think only about killing his tormentors. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Except, of course, survival.
* * *
Torquemandan listened to the same song and dance from Khang and Kam Chek every year. Every year the two warlords insisted on the rest stops. They needed to replenish the troops' food and water, they argued. They desperately needed a rest, they claimed, or weariness would settle in, perhaps cause a dangerous lapse in concentration. But there was always more to it than that, Torquemandan knew.
What did they take him for anyway, he thought, a fool? It was the village women they wanted. Sex, plain and simple. In the end they always agreed that he was right, but their evasive reasoning always put him on the defensive. And when he was on the defensive in an argument his smooth tongue always failed him. And then he sank to their level, he thought, adopting the crude attitude of a barbarian, an unrefined, uncultured, bullheaded gangster.
He had a fortune in raw heroin to haul, process and distribute. And here they were, demanding he let them indulge their lust. But they didn't care about that; they thought it was his problem. He was sure he knew what they were thinking: the job would get done, so why not mix pleasure with business? They didn't exactly say this, hell no, he thought. They didn't have to say it, because he was perfectly able to read it in their patronizing tones, their feeble attempts at pleading their case with him.
Torquemandan always found the orgies during the rest breaks distasteful. But maybe it was good for morale. Happy troops, he forced himself to believe, were good troops.
Still, he was going to hold his ground on the issue. If he could get them to wait to spill their lust until they reached the next village, the procession would at least be halfway to its objective. And Torquemandan could claim half a victory.
Kam Chek was displeased. He spread his hands in an imploring gesture. "It is such a small matter, Mon Général. Surely a few hours will not matter. It will give the prisoners a chance to rest, my men a much-needed rest, also."
As if this cutthroat gook, Torquemandan thought, was actually worried about the prisoners. But if Kam Chek wasn't worried about them, then he should be. The prisoners were already dropping like flies, and this was going to cause a serious manpower shortage if the crap continued. But the bloodlust of Kam Chek and his soldiers seemed nowhere close to being satisfied. He wondered if the brutal warlord was making an extra effort just for Bolan's sake. Shit, the egos that he had to keep stroked, he thought.
Torquemandan looked at the prisoners as the guards whipped them into formation. He then glanced at the faces of Woods and Wells. Both men were chomping on chicken legs. The obese Woods ate like a man who hadn't seen a square meal in six months, devouring the chicken leg so furiously that the jeep shuddered slightly under his shifting weight. The sight disgusted Torquemandan.
What was worse, he was witnessing once more just how little stomach some of the members of the organization had for the cruelty inflicted on the prisoners so far. He had already allowed three distributors to fly ahead in his private plane to the laboratory. He recalled how the three had acted back at the palace, like petulant children, as if the march was something they had no desire to know about, as if death and suffering were beneath such accomplished men of the world. How the hell did those ball-less bastards, who belonged in an ivory tower, think the scag got to Bangkok in the first place? Well, he'd relented and let them fly ahead, and he was beginning to regret that decision, and even to resent the other members of the organization present. Was Mongkut the only one of them with any balls? he wondered. Maybe it was time to find out.
Maybe, he thought, these bigshot di
stributors of his here should walk the rest of the way. Maybe then they'd stop taking him for granted, and think hard about just where their prosperity came from. Because if he wanted to, he could take everything away from them, and leave them with nothing but blood on their hands. Their own hands.
This was the most important time of the year for the organization, and Torquemandan expected everyone to chip in and do his part. Or there would be hell to pay. The members there, sitting in the relative safety of their vehicles, were going in with the prisoners, all right, all the goddamn way to the processing compound. They would just have to wait for two or three weeks if necessary, until the heroin was processed, cut and distributed. And their bank accounts had better be plenty fat, he thought. He had told them all months ago that this was going to be the biggest harvest to date. He had told them to be ready to fork over massive amounts of cold, hard cash. Mountains of the green stuff.
"Perhaps," Kan Khang said to Torquemandan, "you are correct, Mon Général. We will wait until we reach the next village. By then, all of us will surely need a rest. And, there are many more women there than in this... pigsty." He looked around contemptuously at the dozen thatch-roofed huts as an ox lumbered down the dirt street. At the far end of the village a group of half-naked children were huddled with their parents. The villagers were watching the exchange between the three men with obvious fear.
Kam Chek threw up his hands. "Ah, very well. Does that meet your approval, Mon Geénéral?"
No, it damn well didn't meet his approval, Torquemandan thought. But what the hell could he do? Kam Chek, Kan Khang and his men were nothing but Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao riffraff, cutthroats who would probably just as soon turn on the master as the slave. And the Mon Général shit was starting to get on Torquemandan's nerves a little. He would indulge them because he saw no choice. He didn't need a mutiny, after all. Besides, he liked to sample the flesh of the Thai village women himself. He wondered why his warlords didn't point out his hypocrisy. But, then, he would have sworn he saw accusation in their stares.
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