Blood Tide

by Don Pendleton

  Jusuf’s pistol barked once before Dragicevic and Jusuf violently collided. They fell in a tangle of limbs, taking one of the guardsmen with them. Bolan scooped up the wreckage of the rocking chair and flung it at the standing guard. He instinctively knocked it aside with his weapon, but in that moment the muzzle of his submachine gun was off target.

  Bolan grabbed the coffee table and charged with it held before him like a shield. Wood splintered next to Bolan’s face as a burst tore through the table. Bolan charged as if he had every intention of going straight through the wall.

  The Executioner hit the guardsman like a battering ram.

  The guard was crushed between the table and the wall. For a moment his weapon was pinned against him and pointing off to one side. Bolan took a step back and swung the table like giant flyswatter. Between the wall and the slab of teak it was the guardsman’s skull that failed.

  Bolan flung the cracked table aside and ripped the submachine gun from the dead guardsman’s hand.

  Jusuf’s pistol fired on semiauto from the floor. Dragicevic’s Magnum revolver erupted deafeningly. Bolan hurled himself out the window as the other guardsman’s submachine gun joined the fray.

  The Executioner rolled to his feet, ignoring the glass shards sticking out of his arms and shoulders. He couldn’t afford a fire-fight. His number-one priority was to get out a communication and have the radioactive death fleet seized.

  Bolan ran for the trees.

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “WE’VE LOST HIM.” Hal Brognola’s jaws worked as he savaged his cold cigar and leaned over Aaron Kurtzman’s shoulder.

  “We’ve misplaced him.” Kurtzman stared woefully at his screens. He punched a key, and eleven red dots blinked into life in the six-foot close-up geographic image of the Java Sea. Eight of the dots were spread along the coast of Sumatra. Two of the dots were heading northeast toward Borneo. Another was heading south for Java. “As of forty-five minutes ago, we suspected he was on one of those eleven boats that vacated the island.”

  “What are Calvin and Pol’s status?” Brognola asked.

  “They have confirmed the island was attacked by PRC forces. Striker led the attack, and it was a complete wipeout except for one helicopter that managed to escape and fly back to Sumatra. Calvin and Pol did an intelligence recon, but there wasn’t much. The Mahdi’s people burned the village. I have them extracting by submarine within the hour and we’ll land them in Sumatra. The CIA station in Jakarta already has a helicopter en route to their location. They’ll be hot on the pad waiting for the go signal.”

  “So we have nothing.” Brognola scowled.

  “Right now, he’s a needle in a haystack. We just don’t have a lot of assets in Indonesia except for intelligence gathering operatives. The Australians have SAS units, but they’re operating up in the New Guinea highlands along the Indonesian border. Like I said, we have an attack submarine picking up Cal and Pol. Once they’ve extracted, I want to deploy the sub roughly in the middle of the Java Sea. If we can identify the dirty ships, I believe she has the speed for us to vector her in and intercept. The Navy is deploying the Pacific fleet in a screen between Indonesia and Hawaii. The Australian navy is doing the same along their northern coast.” Kurtzman raised an eyebrow at the man from Justice. “I believe we should inform the Chinese that Hong Kong is on the target list.”

  Brognola nodded. “I’ll tell the President.”

  “Meantime…” Kurtzman leaned back with a sigh. “Striker really needs to make contact.”

  THE DAILY TROPICAL DELUGE hammered the earth. The rain was as hot as sweat and fell in vertical, bulletlike lines. Bolan eyed the villa.

  His hunters were stone-cold killers, and there were more than a dozen of them, but they were not jungle fighters. If he’d had a decent rifle, he could probably have eliminated all of them in the course of a day. Instead, he had a sixty-year-old submachine gun with a single, partially spent stick of ammo. The gun was reliable but only accurate to fifty yards under ideal conditions. To use it to any effect, Bolan would have to get close, too close, and the second the gun spit fire he would announce his location and his pursuers would swarm him in a rush.

  Still, Bolan owned the jungle, and he had easily managed to lead his pursuers deep into the jungle and then double back on them.

  Bolan slipped back into the bunkhouse and found the guardsman he’d killed still lying on the floor. He stripped him of his four spare magazines and the parang thrust through his sash. Bolan stalked through the rain and fallow rubber trees toward the villa.

  “Makeen!”

  Bolan froze as Jusuf’s voice called out.

  “Makeen! I knew you would double back. You must send out a signal. Did you know we are on an island?”

  A flare shot into the rain and detonated in a burst of red light. Jusuf was calling back his dogs.

  Bolan’s blood ran cold as Jusuf stepped out onto the back patio with Ali held before him like a shield. Ali’s arms were bound behind his back, and Jusuf held him by the hair. Rain flicked from the points of Jusuf’s blade as he tapped the flat of it rhythmically against his calf. “Come, Makeen! Come out, or the traitor dies!”

  Bolan gazed at Jusuf’s head through his gun’s open, fixed iron sights and considered his options. The weapon only fired on full-auto, but a skillful operator who was light on the trigger could snatch off a single shot. There was really only one choice. He would have to get closer. Bolan became one with the mud. He belly-crawled, moving an inch at a time through the foliage.

  “Come, Makeen!” Jusuf shouted. “The game is over! Come out!”

  Bolan suspected Jusuf’s idea of fun and games had only begun.

  “Makeen!” Ali shouted. “Do not—”

  Jusuf drove a brutal knee into Ali’s kidney. Ali grimaced and nearly buckled.

  “Makeen?” Jusuf raised his saber and placed it against Ali’s back. Rain dripped from the Indonesian’s jaw as he grinned like a wolf. “Then let his blood be on your hands.”

  Ali screamed as Jusuf shoved the blade into his back. The young man fell to his knees, and Jusuf pulled him back up by his hair. Jusuf pushed the blade upward and then twisted his wrist. Ali screamed and screamed as Jusuf shoved the blade through him with surgical precision. The twin tips erupted from the front of Ali’s shirt beneath his breastbone.

  Bolan kept creeping forward.

  Jusuf had expertly twisted the blade through Ali’s body, giving him a wound that would take hours, possibly even days to kill him. Ali howled in torment.

  “Come, Makeen.” The blade turned ever so slightly, eliciting more sounds of agony out of Ali. “How can you let the young man suffer so?

  It was the sniper’s draw, done only with a saber. Jusuf was waiting for Bolan to expose himself by charging to save Ali or shooting to put him out of his misery.

  With every twist of the blade, Ali screamed like the damned in hell.

  Jusuf shook his head in mock sadness and let go of Ali’s hair. “You lack mercy, Makeen,” he called out.

  The young man shrieked like an animal as he slid off the blade and collapsed on the tiles. His screams were reduced to horrible groans.

  Jusuf held up his saber and watched as the rain washed the blood from his blade. “Were you afraid of hitting your young friend?” The Indonesian stood, arms spread and waiting for Bolan’s bullets. “Here I am.”

  Ali screamed anew as Jusuf kicked him in the wound in his back. Bolan’s face was a battle mask. For all his sadism, Jusuf was a true believer. He was willing to die so that Bolan would be exposed and prevented from getting out word.

  “You disappoint me, Makeen.” Jusuf lowered the saber. “Let us appeal to your romantic side.”

  Sujatmi Fass stepped out into the rain. She led Marcie Mei onto the patio like a dog, but rather than a leash, one of Suja’s iron combat tongs held Mei by the throat. The barbed pincers pricked her flesh and blood ran down her collarbones. Mei stumbled after Fass, choking and weeping with
her arms bound. Raul and Dragicevic came after her. The Bosnian grinned through his mashed lips as he pointed his massive revolver at her back.

  Half a dozen gunmen stepped out of the villa, not bothering to hide anymore. Three of them were Bolan’s own riflemen, including Isah and Pedoy. They were grim-faced as they scanned the jungle. “Makeen!” Pedoy stepped forward with his AK-47 in his good hand and screamed in his broken English. “You lie! You betray us! Makeen!”

  Fass released Mei and Jusuf took her by the hair. “Let us end this, Makeen. Come out, and she and Ali die easy. If not…” He placed the tips of the saber against Mei’s back.

  “Remember the mission!” Mei screamed. “Don’t you—”

  Her body locked in a rigid arch as Jusuf pushed the tips of his saber an inch into her flesh. She suppressed her scream through sheer will.

  Raul laughed unpleasantly. Bolan could hear the hunting party coming in the distance behind him.

  “Come out, Makeen!” Pedoy’s voice cracked as he shouted.

  Bolan looked very hard at the young man. Pedoy was screaming, but his face did not match his voice. His eyes searched, but they did so with a strange desperation. He was waiting, hoping for something to happen. Pedoy looked back a moment and met the eyes of Isah and the other two riflemen. They quietly drew and fixed their bayonets without the order of their commanding officer.

  Jusuf drew back his saber for the thrust. “She dies, Makeen!”

  The Executioner roared over the sound of the falling rain. “Chosen men!”

  Bolan charged.

  Pedoy whipped around and shoved his AK-47 at Jusuf’s head like a giant pistol. The rifle was awkward, and Pedoy was too slow with his injured collarbone. Jusuf leaped back a step, and his saber moved upward in a vicious slash. Pedoy’s rifle fell to the tiles in a spray of blood.

  Mei fell to the ground, and Dragicevic pointed his weapon at her head. Fass lunged. The sharpened iron teeth of the tongs dug into the Bosnian’s wrist. She yanked, pulling the gun off-line. She twisted her wrist and tore out the arteries and nerves going to Dragicevic’s gun hand. The weapon fell as Fass’s second pair of tongs closed on his throat. She snarled and yanked the tongs back. Her adversary’s esophagus came away with it.

  Raul raised his rifle to kill Fass.

  Bolan skidded to a halt and raised his gun. The range was still long, so he lowered his aim as he squeezed the trigger. The steel snarled with recoil in the Executioner’s hands. The burst shattered Raul from his pelvis to his breastbone, his rifle falling unfired to the ground as he collapsed.

  The patio was a point-blank firefight. Bolan’s riflemen had the initial surprise, and they shot down the Mahdi’s men without mercy. Steel rang as Fass and Jusuf exchanged a blinding flurry of Indonesian silat techniques. Bolan took aim at Jusuf. “Suja!” Bolan yelled. “Back off!”

  She lunged into Bolan’s line of fire.

  Her tongs shot for Jusuf’s throat in a double thrust. Jusuf parried them aside and thrust his saber into the woman’s stomach. It was no careful, surgical probe as he had done to Ali. The twin points sank into Suja up to the hilt. The six-inch razor-sharp notch they formed gathered her guts and severed them in one motion. Her body folded around the blade.

  “Suja!”

  Jusuf grinned at Bolan over the woman’s shoulder as he brutally yanked his sword from her belly and shoved her aside.

  Bolan squeezed his trigger and held it down.

  Jusuf swayed like a snake. Bolan’s bullets ripped stucco from the wall of the villa. Jusuf dived behind the fountain. The Executioner tracked him, his weapon sending up geysers of water. Jusuf rolled out of sight back into the villa.

  Bolan charged forward. The firefight was over. All of the Mahdi’s men were dead. Only Isah and a rifleman named Toy were still standing.

  “Jusuf!” Bolan roared. “Get—”

  A gray metal cylinder the size of a beer can bounced onto the patio. Bolan recognized it. The cylinder was a white-phosphorus grenade.

  “Run!” Bolan flung his feet forward into a baseball slide across the wet tile. He caught the grenade and threw it into the fountain. The grenade detonated.

  Isah and Toy grabbed Fass and Ali and dragged them toward the jungle. Mei and Pedoy supported each other as they staggered after them.

  Water would not stop burning phosphorus, but it was ninety times denser than air, and it would seriously dampen the spread of the molten metal streamers. The stone sides of the fountain would contain a great deal of the blast and funnel it straight up.

  Bolan scrambled to his hands and knees as the fountain erupted. Burning white phosphorus and superheated steam shot into the air in a gray column. Bolan sprinted for the jungle as boiling water and burning metal fell to earth.

  He knelt beside Fass.

  Mei sat beside her desperately trying to plug her wounds with her head scarf. Fass lay in the mud hemorrhaging front and back.

  “Jesus…” Mei fought a losing battle. “Her stomach, her intestines, liver, spleen, she’s been shredded inside, she’s—”

  “I know,” Bolan answered.

  Fass was dying in agony.

  Her teeth clenched as she looked up at Bolan. “Jusuf…never trusted you. He contacted Dragicevic days ago, and he had never heard of you. When we left the island, Jusuf had his men take Marcie. Ali tried to protect her, and he was taken, too.” Blood spilled over Fass’s lips, and her body locked in a ripple of pain. “I guarded her. She told me what the Mahdi planned. I believe the West must be punished, but to strike their cities…” She grimaced horribly. “I will not be a part of killing children. I went to your riflemen. They said they would follow you if you asked it.”

  “You did well, Suja.” Bolan held her face. “Where will Jusuf go?”

  “There is an island, a few miles south of here. That is where the Mahdi is. That is where he will take the boats.”

  “The boats?”

  “Hoja was here on the island with crewmen. You will find the boats…gone.”

  “Jesus…” Mei wept uncontrollably as they watched Sujatmi die.

  “Get a gun.” Bolan’s voice was as cold as the grave. “They’re coming.”

  Shouts came from the edge of the plantation as the hunting party charged through the trees. Mei ran back to the patio, picking her way past bits of phosphorus and picked up a rifle.

  Bolan slammed a fresh magazine into his gun. “Reload, make ready. Set for semiautomatic,” he said to his men.

  Isah and Toy reloaded their rifles.

  “Isah, use the tree to the left. Toy, go right.”

  The men flanked Bolan to either side and knelt behind cover. Mei took a position a few feet from Bolan by a stump.

  The Mahdi’s men burst from the trees, spraying weapons and waving blades as they came.

  “Fire!” Bolan commanded.

  Isah’s, Toy’s and Marcie’s rifles cracked on rapid semiauto, rapidly moving from target to target. Bolan’s submachine gun hammered off burst after burst. The range was short and the enemy coming straight in. In seconds, the twelve fanatics were dead or dying.

  Bolan reloaded and rose. The rain fell hissing onto bits of the still burning phosphorus, popping yellow sparks as the burning metal and the rainwater violently reacted. Bolan methodically began searching the bodies.

  In Dragicevic’s pocket he turned up a cell phone. Bolan flicked the phone open and frowned. The little digital screen showed zero bars of signal strength. He pocketed the phone and kept searching.

  Raul had a handheld radio.

  Bolan flipped up the antenna. It was probably used for communicating with the boats and the other island. However, if NSA had the area under surveillance, there was a good chance they might pick it up. Bolan tuned to the Farm frequency. “This is Striker. Repeat, this is Striker, over.”

  Nothing but static came back.

  Bolan switched to a different frequency he had memorized. “This is Striker calling Flawless Victory. Repeat, Striker calling Flawles
s Victory, come back.”

  Static popped across the line.

  Mei came to the patio. Her arms were covered with blood up to the elbows. “Ali’s in a bad way. In this wet and heat, he’s going to go septic in a matter of hours.”

  Ming Jinrong’s mellifluous voice spoke loud and clear through the radio receiver. “This is Flawless Victory. Tell me, my friend, where are you?”

  22

  Flawless Victory

  “My thanks, Sifu.” Bolan covered his right fist with his open left hand and bowed his head slightly in the Shaolin kung fu salute.

  Ming beamed. He was clothed head to foot in bloodred velvet trimmed with white lace. “The pleasure is mine, Mr. Cooper.”

  “My personal doctor is seeing to your young friend, Ali. He has been stabilized and shall live. Your friend Pedoy’s hand was badly injured, but he will regain full use of his arm. Marcie’s wounds were unpleasant yet superficial and have been tended. How else may I be of assistance?”

  “I need your help.”

  Ming sighed. “You know you have but to ask.”

  Bolan had made his decision. “Here’s the situation. A Muslim extremist group has stolen nuclear reactor rods. They’ve packed them into stolen ships with high explosive and turned them into floating dirty bombs. I know they have at least three ready.” Bolan looked steadily into Ming’s eyes. “Hong Kong is one of their targets.”

  “The Pearl of the Orient.” A light came into Ming’s eyes. “I shall not allow it.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Bolan pointed off the bow. “There’s an island south of here. That’s where the Mahdi and the bomb-boats should be. I want to launch an immediate assault.”

  “Then you will pleased with certain modifications that have been made.”

  Bolan eyed the big man warily. “Modifications?”

  “Fung!” Ming clapped his hands. Fung and three crewmen pulled the bolts from the collapsible container box on the prow, and the sides clanged down. Bolan gazed at the Ontos tank destroyer.