Pacific Creed

by Don Pendleton

  “I’ve had a long week. What are Rind’s pals up to?”

  “There are four of them. But the imaging couldn’t establish much else. They’ve gone to ground, squatting in an unfinished housing development in the suburbs. I’m betting whoever owns it is involved, and their car hasn’t moved.”

  Agent Rind had laid his machine pistols on the table on either side of his laptop. He placed his hands across them in loving meaning. “Tell me we’re going to mess with these guys tonight.”

  Bolan smiled. “We’re going to mess with them today, approximately a shower and shave away from now.”

  De Jong pumped his fists. “Yeah!”

  Koa was flipping through the laminated bungalow menu. “‘Traditional Hawaiian delights as well as Pan-Asian cuisine are available in the clubhouse as well as delivered to your door twenty-four hours a day.’”

  De Jong stabbed his finger at Bolan delightedly. “You deserve a snack!”

  Bolan nodded. He did. “De Jong, I leave it to your educated palate. Bear, I need access, egress and ownership on that housing development.” Bolan reclined his chair. “Rind, I know I’m pushing FBI courtesy but I need some guns, and I need at least one that’s silenced.”

  Rind chewed his lip. “Requisitioning guns is going to be hard, and it’ll probably take some time.”

  De Jong’s hand shot up like a little kid in school who has the answer. “I can get you guns! I can! I know a guy! Right in town!”

  Rind sighed and stood. “I’m going to have to leave the room now.”

  De Jong threw up his hands as his new man-crush went out onto the patio. “What’s his problem? I gave him guns. Gold-plated guns! You gave him machine pistols!”

  “Rind is an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this is U.S. soil, and you’re about to go acquire illegal weapons.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  “Koa, you mind going with him?”

  Koa rose. “Let’s roll.”

  “Order the food first.” Bolan reclined the chair and spoke to the room at large. “I’m going to close my eyes. Wake me when the food shows up. Order a shitload of coffee.”

  Kelani Gated Community Development

  Bolan didn’t like it. The bad guys were hiding out in the construction site of a gated community. Half-built condos, the skeleton frames of buildings, loaded pallets and construction vehicles made for a maze of hiding places and ambush points. The good news was that De Jong had come through yet again. The Filipino gangster had some serious connections, and now Bolan held a Daewoo K-7 suppressed submachine gun. Bolan approved of Korean kit. The weapon’s built-in suppressor was one of the better ones, drastically suppressing the sound of the gun firing and distorting the sound, too. The short notice of the acquisition meant no tactical lights, lasers or optics but the shortness of the timetable meant this was a daylight operation anyway. Bolan crouched on the hillside just above the development. His fire teams consisted of Koa and Belle, Rind and De Jong.

  When De Jong had racked his weapon and shouted, “Whoo! You and me, baby! Like Bonnie and Clyde!” at Belle, Bolan had broken up that fire-and-maneuver team right there. The good news was De Jong hadn’t seemed to mind so much. The Filipino gangster was still so excited about his Hawaii Five-0 weekend with Rind that there was a good chance he might actually do what the special agent told him to in a firefight. Belle was a drug-addicted sex worker, but in her favor, if she wasn’t jonesing for a fix she was cold as ice in a firefight. Hu and Melika had the RFID and one of the rentals and were back in the city streets.

  Whoever the bad guys were, they hadn’t taken the bait and gone to any of the places Rind and De Jong had laid out. That showed a level of professionalism Bolan didn’t care for. They were waiting to acquire direct contact. Bolan intended to give it to them. He spoke into his phone. “Peg, Melika, you ready?”

  “Copy that,” Hu responded.

  Bolan’s biggest concern was that the enemy had sent in more teams. Hu and Melika had covered themselves with glory in their first firefight in Pakuz, but neither was a soldier nor a field agent. A car chase and a gun battle in the streets of Honolulu could end very badly for them. But both women had volunteered, and the opportunity to grab some of the enemy’s RFID tracking heavy-hitters was too good to pass up.

  Bolan’s phone was on conference and his teams were getting every word. His two fire-and-maneuver teams were in the trees at the bottom of the hill, in position to put the access road in a cross fire once the enemy rolled through the chain-link gate. The plan was for the bad guys to come rolling out in their vehicle—following the RFID signal—and for the team to stop them cold and take prisoners. It was possible that when they had gone to ground at the development, they’d brought in reinforcements, and when the fight started they would boil out of the incomplete condo complex like ants. Bolan took a long breath and let it out. He was 99 percent sure it would come down to a firefight, but he’d done everything he could to give his team every advantage. There was nothing left he could do except fight the fight.

  “Team One?”

  “Team One ready,” Koa responded.

  “Team Two?”

  “Locked and loaded,” Rind replied.

  “Unless you are fired upon, wait on me.”

  Bolan’s two fire units responded in the affirmative.

  It was go time. “Bear,” Bolan ordered, “cease jamming.”

  Kurtzman’s voice came back from Virginia. “Copy that. Radio jamming terminated. Confirm, RFID is still active. Repeat, RFID is still active.”

  “Copy that.” Bolan commenced waiting. He knew somewhere in the jungle of construction below some very intense conversations were going on both in person and over lines of communication Bolan didn’t have access to.

  Yet.

  “Bear?”

  “Scanning. Nothing coming out over any radio frequencies. Trying to track cell phones is pretty much useless without an inside line. We’re scanning the local carriers, but we are trying to crunch data on tens of thousands of signals in the middle of the day, and if these guys are talking on sat phones we have nothing.”

  “I know, keep trying.”

  Bolan waited. Twice Rind had to tell De Jong to shut up. Koa and Belle were silent and frosty.

  Kurtzman spoke. “Movement. One vehicle.”

  A granite-gray Chrysler 300 with tinted windows rolled into view from the maze of half-finished housing. “Copy that,” Bolan confirmed. “Eyes on. Teams One and Two, wait for my signal. Here we go.”

  Bolan’s units came back in the affirmative.

  The Chrysler rolled up to the gate and stopped. A man in a suit and sunglasses got out of the rear passenger-side door and unlocked the padlock on the gate. He was tall but had brassy skin behind his shades. Bolan could tell the man was wearing something in a shoulder holster.

  “All units. Hold fire, hold positions,” Bolan ordered. “I want that gate locked behind them. The only way they rabbit is straight through us with reinforcements hindered.”

  “Copy that.”

  The Chrysler pulled through and paused as the man closed and relocked the gate behind them. He jumped back into the 300 and the tires spit gravel as the driver stepped on it as though he had an RFID to catch. Bolan strolled onto the unfinished road. The driver slammed on his brakes at the sight of the soldier. “Now!” Bolan ordered.

  The men in the Chrysler had their tinted windows rolled up. They heard no suppressed gunshots, nor would they have seen any muzzle-flashes even if they were looking for them. All they saw was a man with a weapon stepping out of the trees into the road fifty meters in front of them. Even more anomalously, all four of their tires magically burst at the same time and the Chrysler’s rims sank into gravel as the driver stood on his brakes. The driver gunned his V-8 and managed to shred his deflated rubber an
d dig himself through the thin layer of gravel and deep into the dirt.

  The 300 was going nowhere.

  “Now!” Bolan ordered.

  Bolan’s team stepped out of the shrubbery, each with an automatic weapon pointed at their assigned passenger window.

  Bolan advanced. He aimed his muzzle at where he guessed the driver’s headrest would be and jerked his head in an unmistakable “out” motion. The 300 lay in the gravel like a ship run aground. The engine kept running. Bolan could discern no movement through the darkened windows. “Belle?”

  Belle ripped a warning burst into the trunk.

  At the same time Bolan continued advancing and walked ten rounds of subsonic hollowpoints across the hood. He popped a wiper blade out of its socket and stopped just short of putting one through the windshield. Bolan once again raised his weapon to the unseen driver’s head level and gave him a last jerk of the head to get out.

  Nothing moved.

  “They know we want them alive,” Rind advised.

  Bolan was a step ahead. “Copy that. Reinforcements are inbound. Plan B!” The soldier stepped forward and raised his weapon. If the son of a bitch behind the wheel was too dumb to duck, it was on him. Bolan put ten rounds high through the windshield. The glass spider-webbed like an ice sheet. Bolan strode toward the beer-can-size hole he had punched in the glass. He ripped the pin out of one of the four tear gas grenades De Jong had procured and shoved it through the jagged hole.

  All four doors flew open at the same time. Clouds of tear gas and weeping, choking assassins boiled out of the vehicle in all directions.

  Koa and Rind strode up, gave their two men the wire struts of their K-7 butt stocks to the side of the neck and dropped the suspects. They grabbed them by the hair and dragged them free. Belle was a little more vicious and broke a jaw. De Jong kicked his own half-blind opponent in the testicles and stayed in the expanding gas cloud to stomp him. “Oh, yeah! How do you like it? How do you like it?” De Jong started hacking and choking. “Look what you’re making me do!”

  “De Jong!” Bolan ordered. “Extract your target!”

  De Jong wheezed and wept. “Right!” The gangster grabbed his fetal opponent by his jacket collar and dragged him out of the gas.

  Koa had his man zip-tied and dropped him next to Rind’s prisoner at the extraction point. The Hawaiian ran back to help Belle. Bolan jerked his head at Rind. “Extraction! Go!”

  Rind ran for the rental Lincoln back up the road in the trees. De Jong coughed and streamed tears as he dragged his man to the prisoner pile. “You all right?” Bolan asked.

  “Whoo-oo-oo!” De Jong wheezed.

  Kurtzman’s voice came urgently across everyone’s phone. “Movement in the development! I have another vehicle! Big one!”

  A Humvee rolled into view. Half a dozen men with automatic rifles trotted at the double alongside the vehicle. Of most concern was the man standing in the roof weapon station. Bolan saw the six barrels of a minigun behind an armored plate traversing in his direction. “Scatter! Scatter! Scatter!” Bolan bellowed at his team.

  The Humvee crashed the locked gate as if it didn’t exist. Bolan’s team bolted for the trees on either side of the road and dropped into the drainage ditches. The minigun spun into life and the little valley echoed with the ripping sound of 7.62 mm NATO rounds. The gunner walked his fire into the pile of prisoners and they stopped short of bursting like blood-filled balloons as they were stitched.

  “That was cold!” Belle observed.

  “That Humvee is U.S. military issue!” Koa shouted. “I make it Hawaiian National Guard!”

  Bolan’s team hugged ditch as the enemy minigun drew laser lines of tracers along the gravel top over their heads.

  “Infantry is coming in under the covering fire!” Koa shouted. “You got a plan?”

  “I’m in the car!” Rind shouted across the phone link. “I can ram them!”

  “You’d lose,” Bolan stated. He unzipped the ditty bag over his shoulder and reached for the last of the De Jong dynamite. By the time they’d gotten to Hawaii the three sticks of TNT were sweating candlesticks of horror that the soldier had worried a rough landing would detonate. They’d been sitting in rice for the past two days and looked deceivingly refreshed. “Belle! De Jong! Covering fire!”

  The pair popped up and each fired off a burst. De Jong missed one of the trotting gunmen. Belle walked a burst up the minigunner’s armored shield. They succeeded in attracting attention. The killers had some very expensive equipment but it was apparent they were not trained soldiers. They swung their weapons at De Jong and Belle.

  Bolan rose and flung a stick of dynamite at the Humvee as it came within range. He didn’t bother to light it. The soldier just sent it revolving at the grille of the Humvee like a tomahawk. The sweating dynamite needed no fusing as it slammed into steel. The daylight detonation was impressive. The front of the Humvee shredded away, the front axle broke and three of the men trotting alongside it went flying.

  Koa popped up and trip-hammered three bursts into the chests of the remaining three footmen. Bolan flung his second stick of dynamite. It hit the gunner’s shield and the gunner and his weapon station exploded and streamed away into shreds and twists of not much.

  The echoes of the detonations bounced off the hills. Bolan scanned the battle zone and shook his head at the dearth of living prisoners.

  Koa spoke low. “There might be someone alive in the back of the Humvee.”

  “De Jong, you’re with me. Belle, Koa, covering fire.”

  De Jong popped up. “Oh, yeah!”

  Bolan rose. “Finger off the trigger. You take the passenger side.” The soldier and his entirely too eager wingman advanced on the smoking Humvee. Bolan figured it was better than getting shot in the back by his too eager covering fire. “Rind, bring up the car. Open the sunroof and all the windows. Point her out of this valley and rejoin the team. You and Belle covering. When Rind is in place, Koa, start advancing.”

  The team copied.

  Bolan and De Jong approached the vehicle. The soldier spoke into his phone. “Bear?”

  “No movement inside the development.”

  Bolan leaned into a shattered window, leading with the muzzle of his K-7. The outside of the Humvee looked like a crushed beer can. The inside looked like stepped-on spaghetti. Dynamite was unforgiving of human flesh. De Jong wrinkled his nose at the smell of burned human insides. “So, should we get a DNA sample or something?”

  Bolan smiled against his will. “Thinking all the time, De Jong.”

  “Been hanging out with Agent Rind,” De Jong said proudly. “So, we…?”

  Bolan’s instincts spoke to him. There were still bad guys in the development. “We assault, and if you whoo-hoo one more time, I will shoot you.”

  “Man, I thought I was proving myself and stuff.”

  “And stuff,” Bolan agreed. He glanced up the road and saw the black Lincoln pull a bootlegger turn and position itself for a quick getaway. Agent Rind jumped out and reacquired De Jong. Koa shook his head as he linked back up with Belle. “Our targets are toast.”

  Bolan was starting to get a real bad feeling about this. “Bear, what do you see?”

  “No movement. The Humvee and the men came out of the center building. Looks like the clubhouse.” A satellite photo blipped onto Bolan’s screen and he saw a mostly finished two-story with an unfinished Olympic-size swimming pool behind it. “Seems to have a garage for shuttle buses and golf carts.”

  “We have blueprints?”

  “Working on it.”

  “Advancing. Teams One and Two, cover me.” Bolan moved at a low run through the broken gate. No bullets sought him out and he took cover behind the reassuringly solid bulk of a Bobcat. “Teams, advance.”

  Bolan’s fire teams moved along t
he ditches flanking the access road. Rind and De Jong broke left and found cover behind a steamroller. Koa and Belle took a pyramid of dry concrete bags to the right. The clubhouse frontage was in a decent cross fire. Bolan broke cover and the clubhouse doors flew open. Two men with rifles opened up. Bolan dove behind a pickup as his teams returned fire and one of the men fell. The second man kicked the doors shut.

  “Bear, is the garage entrance in the back or on the side?”

  “Northern side, right across from the pool. Be advised, satellite has heat signatures in the garage.”

  Bolan doubted golf carts would generate enough heat for a satellite to pick up. “Team One, to my position! Team Two, cover!”

  Koa and Belle broke from behind the concrete bags and charged to Bolan’s position. “Koa, take command on the frontage. I want you to have lanes of fire on the front of the clubhouse and the side road to the garage.”

  “You and Belle are flanking?”

  “I think the bad guys are about to make a break for it. They have vehicles in the garage and the only way out is the way we came in. Watch for the diversion from the front.”

  Koa slapped in a fresh magazine. “Got it.”

  “Belle, you’re with me. Koa, Team Two, covering fire.” Bolan flanked the clubhouse with Belle on his six. Kurtzman spoke through the phone. “Shooter on the roof! Moving toward northern edge!”

  “Copy that!” Bolan raised his K-7. “Belle! Hit the pool!”

  Belle ran and jumped into the unfinished pool across the road from the garage. The gunman appeared at the eaves of the garage roof. Bolan’s suppressed weapon chuffed and clicked and sent seven subsonic rounds through the shooter’s chest. The man’s knees collapsed from underneath him and he pulled a very ugly belly flop onto the freshly paved road, his old-style M-16 A1 rifle falling beside him. Bolan’s boots hit concrete as he leaped into the pool beside Belle.

  “I can hear the engine,” Belle reported. “Sounds like a diesel.”

  One of the garage bays opened. Two men with rifles charged out and Bolan and Belle cut them down simultaneously. An M-35 military truck rolled forward. The passenger-side glass had been removed and a man fired a machine gun out of it. The driver’s glass had been replaced by a piece of steel “hillbilly” armor with an observation slit. A man hung out the door, blasting away with a rifle. Another rifleman lay on top of the cab and bullets sparked and chipped off the lip of the pool. Belle fired her weapon dry and dropped down. “Shit!”