Blood Tide

by Don Pendleton

  But fighting one-handed against a martial-arts master of Chien Tien’s caliber was simple suicide.

  Bolan stepped forward. Chien guessed his intention, but Bolan whipped the bayonet around in a baseball pitcher’s windup anyway. Chien instantly raised his arms to block his face and chest. His left leg lifted, his knee and calf protecting his abdomen and groin. Chien would accept a flesh wound to one of his limbs from the flying blade and then finish his opponent. Bolan closed and threw. At three feet, there was no time for the knife to revolve.

  Bolan hurled the knife by the handle straight at the ground.

  The six-inch blade sank like a lawn dart through the top of Chien’s sandaled foot.

  For an instant Chien wavered in his stance. He blinked in shock at the bayonet impaling his foot to the hilt. In that eye blink, Bolan’s fist streaked between Chien’s crossed hands and crashed into his throat.

  Chien’s trachea crunched beneath Bolan’s knuckles.

  Chien grabbed Bolan’s arm before he could retract it. The agent’s fingers dug into his opponent’s arm, but he no longer had the strength to apply his paralyzing mantis-claw technique. Blood flecked his lips as he gagged and gobbled to breathe. Chien held Bolan’s arm more like a lifeline to this world as his face purpled. Bolan ripped his arm free, cocking his hand back and stiffening his fingers to form a blunt ax for the killing blow.

  There was no need. Chien fell forward. His face went blue as the broken bits of his voice box strangled him.

  Bolan sagged against a palm tree.

  His kidneys burned from the impact of the throw he had taken. His right arm hung at his side. He could barely feel it, but bruising rose up beneath his flesh where Chien’s fingers had sunk in. Bolan pulled off Chien’s head wrap and made himself a sling. Blood dripped from his cheek as he knelt in front of the satellite link. He didn’t have much time.

  He didn’t have the access codes to the link’s scrambler either. The keypad was arranged differently than most western com links, and Bolan did not recognize the tiny Chinese characters printed on them. There was no microphone that Bolan could see. Chien had already connected the link to the antenna. Bolan flicked on the power, and a tiny screen glowed into life. He played with the keyboard a moment, and Chinese characters began appearing in vertical lines on the screen. He didn’t know how to tell it what frequencies he wanted or how to put in the recognition codes for Stony Man Farm. Through experimentation, he found the dot and the dash button and the command that would transmit. Bolan began laboriously typing one-handed. He reread his message once and hit the button to transmit.

  Bolan was sending a message in unscrambled Morse code across a nonsecure satellite link.

  He began playing with the toggle, swinging it in tiny, growing circles as he kept resending the message. At the top of the palm tree Bolan could hear the motor of the tiny satellite dish as it rotated. A satellite link was like a flashlight beam. You had to shine it on the satellite you wanted to use to get your message out. Bolan had no way of knowing the coordinates of any U.S. or allied communications satellites, so all he could do was keep sending the message in wider and wider arcs.

  Bolan spent ten minutes transmitting and then reburied the link in the sand. He looked over at Chien’s body and considered burying it as well, but he was bruised and bloodied and Chien’s disappearance would be suspicious. After a moment, Bolan unburied the transmitter once more and buried the two pistols for later retrieval instead. He groaned as he took Chien’s weight across his shoulders and began walking back to the village.

  19

  Women screamed as Chien’s body slumped from Bolan’s shoulders. The dead man fell to the sand of the village square. Jusuf pushed his way through the murmuring throng. He took one look at the dead man and drew his pistol. He flicked off the safety as the muzzle came level with Bolan’s chest.

  Bolan’s lip curled in disgust. “He was a spy.”

  The best lies were always interwoven with truth. Jusuf’s finger stayed on the trigger, but the Indonesian would have known that Chien was a double agent and would want to know how Bolan knew. “What do you mean?”

  Bolan laid out the facts, lying by omission rather than fabrication. “I killed Yaqoob, and I knew Chien neither liked nor trusted me. I saw Chien walk into the woods alone. I decided he and I needed to speak and settle our differences. I followed him, leaving my sword behind.” Bolan spit in disgust. “I found him squatting before a transmitter. I confronted him. He attacked me.” Bolan lifted his chin unrepentantly. “I slew him.”

  Jusuf ran his hawklike gaze over Bolan, taking in the grotesque bruising on his right arm and his flayed cheek. He judged them against Chien’s wounded arm and hand. He eyed the long slash across Chien’s chest, the bloody hole in his foot and the distorted, broken lump of his throat.

  “You had a knife.”

  “So did he.”

  Jusuf jerked his head dismissively. “You did not have my permission to kill him.”

  “He was a spy.”

  “You did not know that.”

  “He attacked me.” Bolan shrugged. “If I have committed a crime, let the Mahdi judge me.”

  Jusuf took a step forward. He lifted the muzzle of the Browning Hi-Power to point in Bolan’s face. “I have the right to dispense the Mahdi’s justice.”

  “Then let me fetch my sword.” Bolan locked eyes with the Indonesian. “And let it be trial by combat.”

  Jusuf flicked the Browning’s safety back on and holstered it. His hand went to the double-pointed saber sheathed at his hip. Bolan had no illusions. On his best day with both arms, Jusuf was the better swordsman. Bolan’s luck, speed and some very dirty tricks had gotten him past several warriors he would have stood no chance against in a fair fight.

  But there was no such thing as a fair fight.

  Bolan looked to Mei where she squatted with the women. Her hand was beneath her sash. Ali stood to one side with his hand on his kris, tense but determined. Several of Bolan’s riflemen shifted from one foot to the other, clearly conflicted about what was going on. No one in the throng looked happy.

  The fact was Bolan was popular in the camp.

  Jusuf looked Bolan up and down and jerked his head in dismissal. “Go to your hut. Rest. Suja returns tonight, and I think you will need it. We will speak of this again.”

  “Very well.” Bolan did need a rest. The numbness in his arm had initially given way to tingling. Now a bone-deep ache was spreading through his arm.

  Jusuf turned to Raul. “You and Tak watch his hut. I want him to stay in it while I investigate. Fetch him anything that he requires.”

  Bolan walked off followed by Raul and Tak. Mei walked past him carrying his sword. He gave her a wink as she passed, but she wasn’t smiling. It took all of Bolan’s remaining strength to climb the ladder and flop to the floor. He stared at the woven frond ceiling of his hut. He had managed to hurl a message out into space and had nearly been crippled doing it.

  The ladder creaked as Mei eventually clambered up. She looked at Bolan’s arm in horror and unstoppered a brown bottle. Bolan clenched his teeth as she began rubbing medicated wine into the grotesque bruising. He put his mind elsewhere and told her the story of what had happened.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “When you get the chance, go into the woods and retrieve the two pistols.”

  “Okay, and then?” she asked.

  Bolan looked back up at the roof. God only knew who—if anyone—had received the message. “We wait and see who comes calling.”

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  AARON KURTZMAN NEARLY choked on his coffee. If he’d had the use of his legs, he would have leaped out of his wheelchair. A number of computer screens sat on his desk. One of them was relaying a message. It was from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Australia was a staunch ally, and ASIS often worked closely with U.S. intelligence. One of their satellites had received a message. They had relayed the message to the U.S. National S
ecurity Agency. Certain codes in the message had sent up red flags that the message should be sent to the Justice Department where Hal Brognola recognized the significance.

  The message had been sent over an unsecure channel. Kurtzman stared at the screen. Beneath a series of letters and numbers, terse sentences of translated code scrolled down his screen:

  pirates have stolen chinese reactor rods-break

  pirates manufacturing dirty bombs-break

  pirated ships probable delivery system-break

  probable primary targets ports honolulu sydney san

  francisco hong kong-break

  Aaron Kurtzman’s stomach sank. “You were right, Striker has been reacquired, Hal,” he said.

  Kurtzman shook his head as he read the rest of the message. The situation went from bad to really, really bad.

  location nuclear materials unknown-break

  status of weapons unknown-break

  enemy timetable unknown-break

  location mahdi unknown-break

  prc agents in mahdi organization-break

  prc agents dead-break

  this transmitter one shot deal-break

  my current location unknown-break

  He clicked a key, and a six-foot flat screen on the wall brought up a geopolitical map of planet Earth. The ASIS satellite knew the exact location of the transmission. Kurtzman typed in the coordinates. The vast archipelago of the Indonesian islands came into brilliant prominence.

  Kurtzman sipped coffee and smiled as the location of Bolan’s transmitter appeared as a red dot in the Java Sea. “There he is,” he said to Brognola.

  Brognola’s brow furrowed as he scanned Bolan’s transmission site. There was no such thing as an unknown island anymore. Satellites had mapped the totality of the Earth’s surface in minute detail, and Kurtzman’s geopolitical software rivaled the Pentagon’s. However, Indonesia consisted of more than seventeen thousand islands, and just because an island was known didn’t mean anything was known about it.

  Kurtzman scowled at the totality of information on the giant screen.

  Geographically, the tiny island was simply a dot with a longitude, latitude and a landmass. Politically, it was simply a number and belonged to Indonesia.

  There was no other information.

  Brognola hit the intercom. “Barbara, get Calvin and Pol on a plane to Celebes. Have full warloads waiting for them. We need to make contact with Striker. Bear will give you a set of coordinates. I need the NSA to have satellites watching that island 24/7.”

  “I’m on it,” Barbara Price replied.

  Kurtzman turned to Brognola. “Hal, he transmitted from the Java Sea but across an unsecure channel. We have no idea who else might have picked up the message besides the Australians.”

  Brognola nodded. “I need to speak with the President. We have a situation.”

  Sanya, Hainan Island, China

  CAPTAIN HSING-KUNG KAI stood in the colonel’s office and stared at the printout in his hand. “You are sure, Colonel?”

  Colonel Wan Lai Sin scowled at the captain. Sin was a grizzled pit bull of a man who had made his reputation as a special operations officer before the People’s Liberation Army officially had special operations. That reputation had come from tiny, ugly battles that had never made the news or the pages of a history book and had taken place on both the Indian and Vietnamese borders.

  Sin was old school, a lurker in the jungle, operating for weeks at a time subsisting on only what he could carry or kill until the time came to strike. Sin was the knife in the dark. The captain was the new school of special-operations commando. Captain Kai was powerfully built and high tech in his methods. He was a door kicker, armed and armored with the very latest technologies. His missions could be counted in hours and minutes. He would strike with overwhelming force and with the resources and technology of the entire PLA backing him up.

  Sin sighed. “We know someone sent out a message on Tien’s satellite link. The message implies that agents Chien Tien and Yaqoob Mu are dead.”

  “And the reactor rods?” Captain Kai was appalled. “Can this be confirmed?”

  Colonel Sin shook his head wearily. “That is not confirmed. We did indeed lose a load of reactor rods destined for Pakistan, however, we believed they lay at the bottom of the sea. The navy has sent a submarine with combat divers aboard to make a thorough investigation, but it will take some days for them to reach the Andaman Sea.”

  Kai stood at attention. “What are your orders, Colonel?”

  “The transmission was sent from a small island in the Java Sea. We do not believe it was sent by Tien or Mu. We must assume our agents are dead. By its nature, the message implies that there is at least one foreign intelligence agent on the island and he knows of our…dilemma. The reactor rods must be located and reclaimed. A strike team has been assembled, and it is converging on Jakarta as we speak. You, Captain Kai, will lead the strike force against the island. You will capture the leaders of the Muslims on the island. You will find the foreign agent and find out everything he knows. Find the location of this Mahdi and our nuclear materials so that other strike teams on standby can secure them. You and your men are authorized to use any and all methods of interrogation and coercion as well as lethal force against every inhabitant of the island to ensure the success of our mission.”

  Kai saluted smartly. “I hear and obey your orders, Colonel.”

  “You will then clean up the island. You will leave no loose ends.” Colonel Sin raised an eyebrow. “You understand?”

  “I understand your orders, Colonel, and I obey them without question.”

  20

  “Hey sailor, want a date?”

  Bolan stopped but didn’t look around as the sound of Calvin James’s voice came from a shrub at the edge of the forest. “How long have you been on the island?”

  “About twenty-four hours,” the shrubbery said. “It took about seventeen to acquire you. Once you finally came out of the hut this morning, I’ve been lurking for a contact opportunity.”

  “Sorry.” Bolan sat down and took his arm out of its sling and began massaging it. To an outside observer, he appeared to be muttering to himself. “I was under house arrest there for a little while.”

  “House arrest?” James snorted in amusement. “Man, I saw Marcie come out twelve hours ago and then that lanky action tag in. I figured you were busy.”

  “I was.”

  “Really? What’s Marcie’s status?”

  “We’re married.”

  “Oh yeah?” James sounded amused. “What’s the story on the tall one?”

  “We’re married, too.”

  “Damn.”

  “But Suja’s part of the problem, not the solution.”

  “Suja…” Calvin savored the name. “Man, I wish I had your problems.”

  The former Navy SEAL medic’s voice dropped concernedly. “Your arm looks like dog meat. Anything busted?”

  “I don’t think so, but one of the Chinese agents pulled some kind of iron claw action on it.” Bolan shoved his mottled and swollen limb gingerly back into the sling. “I’ve been rubbing some home-brew bruise liniment on it, but it is messed up.”

  “Can’t move it? Aches like tetanus?” James listed symptoms. “Feels like it belongs to someone else?”

  “For starters.”

  “Here.” The sound of Velcro tore. “I’m going to give you anti-inflammatories and some mild painkillers. Keep using the liniment. I’m also going to give you two syringes of localized hard stuff mixed with B-12 and cortisone. If you decide you have to use that arm, shoot up. It’ll move, but you’ll regret it later.”

  Bolan felt a package being shoved against his hip. He ripped it open and swallowed a handful of pills dry. “Thanks, Cal. Where’s Pol?”

  “About two hundred yards east.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re on the western edge of the Java Sea, big man.”

  “What’s our status?”


  “Find the Mahdi. Find the reactor rods. If we can’t stop the floating dirty bombs, we vector in forces that can. As to how we do that, I was hoping you’d have some suggestions.”

  “Jusuf is the key. He’s one of the Mahdi’s top dogs.”

  “The skinny guy? Hawk-faced and walks around like he owns the place?”

  “That’s the one,” said Bolan. “We get a line on him, we get a line on the whole deal.”

  “Just looking at him, I don’t think snatching him is going to be easy.”

  “It won’t,” Bolan said, “and Pol isn’t going to be able to snap him with the sweetness-and-light routine.”

  “So I’m going to have to break him.” James was quiet a moment. Interrogation was one of his least favorite activities.

  “Yeah, but fanatics love to talk. Chien Tien was a trained PRC agent, and he couldn’t help gloating and giving away their possible targets. I think you’re clever enough to get something useful out of Jusuf before it comes down to jumper cables and pliers.”

  “He looks like a bona fide asshole, but I’ll give it a try. We have one of the Cowboy’s modified Tasers. If you can get Jusuf near the woods, I’ll juice him and—” James suddenly started talking to someone else. “Roger that. Contact established.”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “I got Pol on the line. Satellite recon says we have choppers heading straight toward the island, four of them moving fast and low. They ain’t ours.”

  “I think someone else might’ve received my message.”

  Bolan took a syringe out of the medical package and stabbed it into the inside of his elbow. He pushed the plunger and felt the medical magic take place. The cocktail spread through his arm, masking the pain of crushed nerves, broken blood vessels and bruised bones.