Blood clouded the sea where he’d been hit

Bolan intended to sink the rowboat. Holding the two-handed sword like a spear he bent his legs and pushed off hard against the ocean floor. He erupted upward and arrowed for the bottom of the rowboat.

As Bolan closed in, he rammed the sword upward with all of his strength. The blade punched through the thin wood. Bolan inverted himself, putting both feet against the bottom for leverage, and wrenched the blade sideways. The aged planking cracked and split.

Yaqoob was leaning over the side and stabbing at Bolan with his own blade. The Executioner roared with effort and ripped the ancient Damascus steel free. The effort drove Bolan down into the depths as the spade harpooned for him. Bolan heard the crack as the keel snapped under human weight.

Daylight drew a ragged incandescent line across the perforated bottom of the rowboat as its spine broke.

MACK BOLAN
The Executioner

#251 Kill Radius

#252 Death Line

#253 Risk Factor

#254 Chill Effect

#255 War Bird

#256 Point of Impact

#257 Precision Play

#258 Target Lock

#259 Nightfire

#260 Dayhunt

#261 Dawnkill

#262 Trigger Point

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

The Executioner®

Blood Tide

Don Pendleton

The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one.

—T.E. Lawrence, 1888–1935

No man has the right to harm innocent people, even in the name of his god. I will continue the fight against murderous fanatics until I meet my maker.

—Mack Bolan

MACK BOLAN
THE LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

1

Malay Archipelago

The killers were coming. Their outrigger canoes slid through the water beneath the starless, storm-warning-black South Pacific sky, knifing through whitecaps toward the yacht.

Mack Bolan touched his throat mike. “Contact.”

“Striker!” Barbara Price’s voice was urgent in Bolan’s earpiece. The mission controller back in Virginia was clearly unhappy. “Twenty-two minutes until satellite window! We do not have visual! Repeat! We do not have you!”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bolan said.

The enemy showed up clearly in tones of green and gray in the Executioner’s night-vision goggles. They were half naked, wearing turbans and sarongs and festooned with weapons.

“They have us.”

“Striker, be advised strategic withdrawal recommended.”

The premonsoon winds moaned through the rigging of Bolan’s yacht. The craft lay anchored thirty yards from the beach. The tiny atoll was little more than a crescent of palm trees jutting a few feet above sea level. The canoes aimed for the mouth of the lagoon to cut off the yacht from the open ocean. The paddlers did not need night-vision equipment to acquire their target. The yacht’s dim deck lights marked it as a pool of radiance in the velvet dark of the shallow harbor.

Bolan checked the loads in his weapon system as the jaws of the trap closed. He was a sitting duck.

And that was just the way the Executioner wanted it.

“Noted, Control. Standby,” he whispered.

The killers would be in boarding range in less than a minute.

Across the galley Bolan’s wife checked her weapon.

Marcie “The Mouse” Mei was barely five feet tall, and the mass of highly modified, blackened steel and plastic she was toting appeared impossibly large in her tiny hands. She manipulated the weapon’s controls with practiced ease. If an Olympic gymnast and a pixie had spawned a warchild in the Philippines, Marcie Mei would be it. Only her snub nose and generous mouth showed beneath her night-vision goggles.

The CIA field agent’s big smile flashed at Bolan in the dark of the hold. “Platoon strength,” she said as she flicked off the safeties on her weapon system. “Closing fast.”

“Roger that.” Bolan spoke low. “Scott?”

Escotto Clellande nodded from the other side of the cabin. In comparison, the M-4 carbine looked like a toy in the hulking ex-Philippine special operation commando’s hands. “Yeah, I make it about forty hostiles. Heavily armed.” Scott grunted to himself with relief. “No support weapons visible.”

Bolan was silently relieved, as well. The yacht was not a normal pleasure craft by any stretch of the imagination, but RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers were the ocean-borne artillery of choice in the South Pacific. A few broadsides of antiarmor rockets with shaped-charge warheads would burn the old girl down to the waterline.

Scott grimaced as the killers closed in. “Whole lotta cutlery, though.”

Bolan nodded. Pirates the world over had an anachronistic love of edged weapons.

Piracy in the South Pacific had recently taken a very ugly turn. Boats had been found adrift from the Sulu to the Andaman Sea. Everything from private yachts to cargo vessels had been taken. The ships were stripped of their cargo and any valuables, and the passengers, whether professional seamen or sport fisherman out for a trophy, were ritually butchered to the last man, woman and child. The stripped hulks were left to drift like floating slaughter yards.

Mack Bolan was sailing the South Pacific in a million-dollar yacht off the Philippines. To all appearances he was a rich westerner with a native wife, asking in every port of call for private coves and beautiful, secluded spots off the beaten path.

The atoll where they lay anchored had no name. It was picture-postcard beautiful, well off the beaten path, very secluded, and Bolan, Mei and the yacht made for a very tempting target.

Someone had just taken the bait.

Clellande was posing as their hired crewman and cook. He was an able sailor, and Bolan would have wanted him along for his culinary skills alone, not withstanding his skills as a Special Forces operator.

The pair was on loan from the CIA station in Manila. Clellande peered at the incoming enemy. “They’re slowing down.”

“Jesus…” Mei’s ever-present smile went down in wattage. “They’re slinging their rifles.”

“And out comes the cutlery.” Bolan watched as a platoon of pirates drew razor-sharp kris daggers, parangs, and bolo knives. Elaborate curved, razor-sharp steel of every description flashed and glittered in the Executioner’s night vision.

The men in the canoes were bent on slaughter.

Bolan clicked the seven-inch, saw-toothed blade of his bayonet onto the muzzle of his carbine. “Control, high-level of probability that targets are prime.”

“Affirmative, Striker. Choppers are in the air. ETA twenty minutes.”

Bolan signaled his team. “I think these are some of the boys we’re looking for. Be ready.”

Mei and Clelland fixed bayonets.

Bolan’s strategy was simple. He had lifted it from British WWII naval tactics. In the battle for the Atlantic, German submarines had initially ruled the waves. The U-boats sank allied shipping with impunity, but U-boats were small and could carry only two dozen torpedoes, and those were reserved for enemy warships and large transports. To engage smaller merchant vessels, the German submarines would surface and use their deck guns. The British had invented the Q-boat in response. They had adapted merchant ships, mounting them with powerful six-inch cannons hidden amidships. When German submarines surfaced, the British sailors had flung open the Q-boat’s trapdoors and blown the exposed U-boats to hell in a floating ambush.

Disguise equaled surprise, and surprise was the most precious weapon in any operator’s arsenal. The yacht didn’t have a pair of six-inch British naval guns hidden beneath the mast, but she did have some very nasty surprises, courtesy of Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz.

Bolan reached down and punched a few keys on the portable computer perched on the galley counter. “Arming countermeasures.” Tiny green LED lights on the black box next to the laptop turned red. Wires snaked from the box throughout the yacht.

The pirates closed to within ten yards.

Bolan lifted his nose and sniffed the air. Mei cocked her head. “You smell that?” she asked.

Bolan did. It was the sweet stench of hashish, and it didn’t bode anything good. He pressed a key on the laptop and hit Enter. “Here we go.”

The hull shook as the two dozen hidden smoke dischargers fired simultaneously in a 360-degree arc around the yacht. They were the same kind of smoke dischargers that tanks and armored vehicles used to screen themselves from enemy fire. Only those on the yacht weren’t loaded with canisters of smoke-emitting hydrogen carbon powder.

They were loaded with military strength CS tear gas.

Bolan and the agents clicked their respirators into place beneath their night-vision goggles as they were instantly shrouded in blossoming clouds of CS.

The pirates shouted in a ragged chorus of surprise and anger. Wooden canoes thudded against the hull of the yacht. A war cry sounded a few feet away from Bolan’s porthole. “Allah Akhbar!”

The killers hurled their voices to the heavens in response to the call.

Bolan hit another key and closed his eyes.

The second ring of dischargers fired.

Twenty-four Magnum ultra-flash stun grenades detonated like a ring of exploding suns around the ship. Each grenade lit off in a two million candlepower flash into the tear-gas streaming eyes of the pirates. At the same instant each grenade blasted out an eardrum-shattering 185 decibels of sound.

“Back to back, stay close,” Bolan ordered Bolan. “I want one or two alive, but don’t risk yourself to do it.”

The Executioner raced up the tiny stairwell and threw open the hatch. Mei followed as Clellande exploded up from the forward hatch.

A dozen pirates blinked, wept and groped their way across the deck of the yacht. Others struggled to clamber aboard in their temporarily deafened and half-blind condition. Thousands of sparks drifted through the thick fog of tear gas, blinking and whirling like drunken fireflies in the stun grenade’s disorienting secondary pyrotechnic effect.

A bare-chested, tattooed pirate stumbled toward Bolan with a bolo knife in each hand. The Executioner squeezed the trigger of his carbine and sent a burst into the killer’s chest. The pirate staggered back a step and let out a blood-curdling scream of rage. He lunged forward blindly, his blades crisscrossing before him in a frantic attempt to fillet his unseen opponent.

Bolan punched a second burst through the killer’s turban and dropped him half headless to the deck. Mei’s and Clellande’s weapons snarled on full-auto on Bolan’s flanks. The range was point-blank, and they wielded their weapons like buzz saws. The pirates stumbled and tottered but did not go down.

More pirates climbed aboard. They lurched through the gas and the dark, guided to their opponents only by the strobing muzzle-flash of Bolan’s and his team’s weapons. Bolan put ten rounds into one of the killers, and only the eleventh shot that transversed the assassin’s spinal cord finally put him down.

“These guys are hopped up out of their minds!” Bolan shouted into his respirator’s microphone. “Go for a head shot!”

A screaming pirate to Bolan’s left dropped his knife and unslung his AK-47. Mei’s M-4 spit fire and hammered the pirate’s head into ruin.

A streamer of fire streaked into the air.

“Flare!” Bolan roared. The team snarled and squinted as a unit. Their light amplifying night vision went whiteout as the incandescent illumination round turned night into day. Bolan ripped away his night-vision goggles, and the respirator came with it. He swung his carbine aft. A second flare trailed up into the night from a canoe full of killers. Bolan aimed the M-203 grenade launcher beneath his carbine and squeezed the trigger. The personal defense round sent a thirty-six pellet swarm of buckshot like a wall of lead sweeping through the canoe.

The damage was done. Bolan and his team had lost the cover of darkness. The Executioner felt the sting in his eyes and the burn of the gas streak down his throat. He had been exposed to CS and worse before and fought on, but now the playing field had been leveled.

It would come down to a question of will.

Bolan inflicted his will. The carbine went hot in his hands as he swept it from target to target. He staggered as a bullet struck the ceramic trauma plate of his armor. Bolan spun and put a 3-round burst through the shooter’s eye socket. The Executioner’s own eyes streamed, and he struggled to breathe as the gas entered his lungs.

Bolan’s carbine slammed open on an empty chamber.

A pirate who couldn’t have been more than sixteen screamed and charged waving an escrima stick. Bolan squinted against the chemical burn engulfing his eyes and decided the young man was POW material. He aimed his empty carbine and thumbed the pressure switch on the forestock. The X26 Taser mounted on his weapon chuffed twice, and the two barbed probes streaked into the young pirate’s chest trailing their conductive wires.

Bolan pressed the switch a second time and held it down. The stun gun crackled as Bolan pumped the five watt shaped pulse into his target at eighteen pulses per second. The force should have dropped the young fighter into the fetal position on the deck.

It did not.

The pirate let out a scream and ripped the bloody, sparking probes from his chest. He gasped and fell shuddering to his knees as he inhaled CS.

Bolan realized he would have to take his prisoner old school style. He rammed the aluminum buttplate of his carbine between the young man’s eyes and dropped him limp to the deck.

Marcie Mei gasped raggedly behind Bolan. “Striker!”

Bolan ducked as a pirate flew past him. The killer’s heavy parang passed inches from Bolan’s temple and sliced splinters from the boom of the mainsail. The blade rang off Bolan’s bayonet as he parried the second blow. The Executioner rammed his shoulder into the pirate’s chest, pinning the killer’s sword arm and shoulder-blocking him against the mast. Bolan shoved his bayonet beneath the pirate’s chin, ramming the razor-sharp steel up. The pirate slid to a sitting position against the mast.

Bolan let his spent carbine fall and slapped leather for the pistols strapped to his thighs.

A pirate came at Bolan wielding a machete overhead like a samurai sword. The Desert Eagle rolled like thunder in Bolan’s hand. The pirate folded as the .50-caliber bullet smashed him down the hatchway.

Clellande’s grenade launcher belched yellow flame as he blasted a 40 mm buckshot round into a canoe off the bow. He moved along the grab rail, his carbine spraying the canoes astern.

Two pirates levered themselves up from the water, pulling themselves up into the push pit with daggers in their teeth. Bolan extended the Beretta 93-R machine pistol in his left hand in a fencer’s lunge. The Beretta snarled as he touched off two 3-round bursts. The first pirate fell back from the stern with his turban unspooling in ribbons of cloth and brain behind him. The second hung tangled in the rail with his throat blasted open.

Bolan spun, the big .50 and the 9 mm rolling in his hands like a gunslinger. The Desert Eagle hammered a howling pirate into the jib, and the machine pistol painted the white canvas with the arterial spray of his target’s life.

The pirates were not acting like pirates. They weren’t cutting their losses and running. They were coming on like feudal Japanese samurai bent on death before dishonor. In the light of the flare, Bolan could make out the fins of sharks churning the dark waters of the lagoon as they feasted upon the dozens of fallen.

Mei knelt before the hatch, half-gagging from the gas as she rammed a fresh magazine into her carbine with streaming, swollen eyes. She held her trigger on full-auto as she swept the pirates off the port side of the deck. Clellande’s weapon snarled in continuous fire as he put thirty rounds into a canoe full of steel-wielding cutthroats.

A pirate erupted out of the water at the bow and heaved himself up into the forward pulpit. Metal flashed and red fiber fluttered from the end as he threw a piece of glittering steel. Bolan and Clelland swung around, their weapons hammering the pirate in ruptured ruins to the black water below.

Bolan dropped to one knee. He struggled to bark out an order through the gas sizzling in his chest. “Hold your fire!”

Mei and Clellande knelt with their weapons ready.

“Scott! Anything off the bow?”

The man hacked and coughed. “Nothing moving! All targets down!”

“Marcie! Port?”

“No…hostiles all down,” she replied, struggling for air.

Bolan scanned to starboard and astern. Nothing moved. He rose to take in the bigger picture as the second flare drifted low toward the water. The wind was dispersing the gas. The yacht was littered with bodies from stem to stern. Head shots at point-blank range were not pretty business. Neither was buckshot raking canoes out of 40 mm tubes. The canoes drifted dead in the water. None of the occupants moved.

Bolan reloaded his pistols. “Marcie, secure the prisoner and get him below before he chokes to death. Scott, let’s clean up the deck and call for extraction. We keep two bodies for forensics, the rest go over the side.”

“Affirmative, Striker, I…” the big man stumbled slightly.

Bolan moved toward the bow. “Scott?”

“Nothing, just a scratch.” Clellande plucked a tuft of red fiber at the collar of his armored vest. “What the hell?”

Clellande went rigid as blood geysered between his fingers. “Jesus!”

Bolan lunged. “Leave it in!”

Clellande was already going into shock, and his first instinct was to get the intruding metal out of his neck. The shard fell to the deck with a clatter as Clellande fell facefirst onto the roof of the cabin.

“I need immediate medevac!” Bolan roared into his radio. “The big man is down!”

“Affirmative, Striker!” Price came back. “Choppers inbound.”

Boland rolled Clellande over. Blood was pouring out of him like a river that had jumped its banks. The soldier applied pressure to the wound. He grimaced as his fingers sank through the gruesome, multiple channels the blade had dug into him. “Marcie! Field dressing!”

“Scott!” Mei raced to help.

Bolan grimly applied pressure while she ripped open a field dressing. Bolan pressed the dressing into the wound, and it instantly bled through. He pressed down as Mei ripped open another. The dressing bled through again. “Give me another!”

“Scott!” Mei screamed as she ripped open another dressing. “Scott!”

Bolan sat back on his heels. Escotto Clellande was gone.

The Executioner stared at the deadly gleaming weapon on the deck. It was a strangely shaped piece of razor-sharp steel. It resembled a hawthorn leaf save that it was six inches long, slitted and had a tail of red fiber to stabilize it in flight.

It was about the ugliest implement the Executioner had ever seen.

He pressed his thumb into his throat mike. “Control, be advised the big man is KIA. Tell command we have a prisoner.” He shook his head bitterly. “We are ready for extraction.”

2

Manila Station, Philippines

Aaron Kurtzman’s face stared unhappily at Bolan from the computer monitor connected to the satellite link. He forced a smile. “You did real good, Striker. In the two months we figure these guys have been operating, no one who’s laid eyes on them has lived to tell about it. You took out a platoon of them and brought in a boatload of useful evidence.”

Bolan frowned. A good man had gone down. “Yeah.”

“You took a prisoner,” Kurtzman said. “That’s the biggest break we’ve had since the Farm got involved in this.”

Bolan considered the fight on the yacht and his young opponent. “I need more wattage.”

“What?”

“I juiced that kid for two and a half seconds before he ripped out the probes, Bear.” Bolan glanced at the weapon system on the table. “And that was after at least a full fifteen seconds of exposure to military strength CS.”

Kurtzman blinked. “Really?”

“I had to brain him like an ox to bring him down.” Bolan shrugged at the X26 slaved to the side of his carbine. “I need more wattage.”

“I find that hard to believe, Striker. The X26 is the latest in EMD technology. With the old M26, each of its eighteen pulses per second had to break through the resistance of the subject’s clothing and skin. Every jolt had to push its way in.” Kurtzman warmed up as the talk turned technical. “Now, the X26? It’s a brilliant piece of engineering. Rather than every pulse having to batter its way into the subject, it uses part of its charge to maintain the electrical opening. Holding the door open, so to speak. That lets nearly every single one of its pulses hit at full strength. It’s been tested on SWAT officers, Special Forces operators and trained martial artists. They all go down. You sure you had a good connection?”

“The kid was sixteen, half-naked, took both probes in the chest and he was still salty,” Bolan replied.

“Well, blood tests on the prisoner tested positive for some very powerful hashish, but even if he was high on PCP, the—”

“He was high on God, Bear.”

Kurtzman’s brow furrowed thoughtfully.

“Take two professional wrestlers,” Bolan suggested. “Lock them in a cell, and toss in the key. One’s high on drugs. One’s high on God. You tell me. Who’s walking out?”

Kurtzman answered immediately. The team from Stony Man Farm had dealt with fanatics before. “I’m betting on the guy with God on his side.”

“Right.” Bolan looked at Kurtzman pointedly. “And punky and his pals were high on both.”

Kurtzman conceded with a sigh. “I’ll tell the Cowboy you want more wattage.”

“Thank you.” Bolan considered his young opponent. “What information do we have on the prisoner?”

“We caught some luck there. Most of the bodies were unidentifiable, but your POW’s fingerprints were on file with the Philippine National Police. The young man’s name is Ali Mohammed Apilado, formerly Arturo Florio Apilado.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow. “He converted?”

“That’s right. Arturo was born on the southern island of Mindanao, but his parents were Christians. They were migrant field workers who moved to the city to get factory work in the textile mills. From the ages of twelve to fifteen, Arturo was involved in petty crime on the street. He was arrested for theft and assault and spent a year in jail. While he was inside, he converted to Islam and changed his name. When he was released, he disappeared without a trace. No one had seen him until he turned up on your yacht last night collecting for the Red Cross.”

“Interesting.”

Kurtzman snorted. “How so?”

An idea began forming in Bolan’s mind. Religious fanatics born and raised were bad enough. Converted fanatics were worse. The born again of all religions hurled themselves into their new purpose with utter devotion, whatever that purpose might be.

Including slaughtering innocents with suicidal abandon.

Bolan nodded as his thoughts continued. The flip side of that coin was that the converted, unlike those raised in their religions, were often just as susceptible to deprogramming.

The Bear watched the wheels turn behind Bolan’s eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“Where’s Arturo now?”

“Philippine Military Intelligence has him about two blocks from your position. They play rough, Striker. I don’t envy him. I suspect the beatings started this morning and haven’t stopped.”

“The kid’s tough.”

Kurtzman’s eyes narrowed. “Somehow I see the good cop-bad cop routine shaping up nicely.”

“Yeah, but I’m still a blue-eyed devil, and I need more than a successful interrogation.”

“What are you saying, Striker?”

“I’m saying someone needs to have a ‘Come to Jesus’ with that boy.”

Kurtzman snorted. “You mean a ‘Come to Mohammed,’ but I can have the CIA fly in a psychological warfare team from Langley and—”

Bolan cut in. “Send me Pol.”

Orani

THE SUN WAS SETTING behind Bolan and Marcie Mei. The restaurant was made up of four bamboo poles with a thatched roof. The kitchen consisted of three converted fuel drums that were sending barbecue smoke to the sky. The dining area was the beach. The couple sat outside at a table with the tide lapping at their bare feet and the legs of their table and chairs. They drank beer and ate spareribs smothered in ginger-plum sauce as the lights of Manila began winking on like stars across Manila Bay.

Bolan took a long pull on his San Miguel. Marcie gnawed on the bones of her meal as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. Her irrepressible smile flashed around the rib. “High metabolism.”

Bolan smiled. Marcie’s tiny frame was clad in a sarong and a bikini top. Plum sauce smeared her chin. She looked good enough to eat, bones and all.

Mei read Bolan’s look and her smile threatened to reach her ears.

Bolan took another swig, acknowledging that the chemistry was occurring, but kept his mind on business. “What have you found out on your end?”

For once, Mei actually stopped smiling. “Nothing good. You noticed that when those guys thought they had us with our pants down they laid their guns aside and went with the cleavers?”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

Mei wiped her hands and stared at them reflectively. “I’m Catholic, myself, but I’ve had to impersonate a Muslim many times in the field. I’ve read the Koran. I know it pretty well.”

“And?”

“The Prophet Mohammed makes many exhortations to his followers. One goes, ‘Oh, True Believers, wage war against such of the infidels as are near you.’”

Bolan nodded. “I’ve heard it.”

“I’m sure, but that one was heard a lot in the preceding centuries here in the Philippines. Usually right alongside this one. ‘When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them.’”

Bolan sighed. It sounded a lot like what was happening in the Asian shipping lanes, and he’d been thinking along the same lines, himself. “You’re talking about the juramentado.”

Mei nodded.

Bolan had done some research of his own. By some accounts ‘running juramentado’ had begun on the Philippine Island of Jolo during Spanish occupation in the 1800s. It was a religious rite among the Philippine Muslims, bound with the act of waging jihad, or Holy War, against the Christian invaders. Young Moro men would seek permission from the Sultan to run juramentado and swear oaths upon the Koran. They would then whip themselves into religious frenzy and attack Christians, singly or in groups, with bladed weapons. They fought with absolute disregard for death, killing until they, themselves, were killed. They believed with total conviction that their bravery and sacrifice would win them great renown and reward in the afterlife, with the added benefit that every Christian they killed followed them to Paradise as their personal slave.

The Moros had used the act of running juramentado against the Spanish colonizers, the American occupiers and the Japanese invaders throughout the region.

“You think these guys fit the bill?” Bolan asked.

“If they weren’t running juramentado, they were sure as hell running a damn close copy. The white turbans are a historical match, and they’d all shaved their bodies and cut their hair short. That was supposed to make them appear more pleasing to God.” Mei held up a file. “What’s most interesting was the physical prep work.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was hard to notice while we were fighting and breathing our own CS, but each of the pirates was wearing a tight waist-supporting band, like a weightlifter’s belt, and had woven hemp cords tied around their elbows and knees. The CIA forensics team believes the waistband would obviously help someone who’d been wounded in the torso to keep fighting. The arm and leg bindings they’re not so sure about, call it acupressure or something. Every one of them had also tightly bound their genitals with cords. That raised some eyebrows, but you and I saw the effect the other night. If we didn’t blow out their hearts or blow off their heads, those guys kept coming. You add hash and fanatical conviction…” Mei trailed off grimly.

“Any other religious corroboration?”

“They were all wearing religious charms that supposedly ward off the blows of the enemy.”

Bolan leaned back in his chair and let the water trickle around his feet. “So they’re textbook juramentado.”

“Well, technically speaking, you run juramentado, it’s an activity, not a person. In the Moro dialect, what they actually call themselves is mag-sabils.”

Bolan almost didn’t want to know. “Which means?”

“Those Who Endure the Pangs of Death.”

“Swell.” Bolan finished his beer. “I can buy a revivalist juramentado movement here in the Sulu Archipelago. It’s where the pastime was founded, but we’ve had similar attacks from New Guinea to the west coast of Thailand.”

“That is disturbing,” Mei agreed.

“What about your contacts in Philippine Intelligence?”

“They haven’t found much. Whatever this movement is, it’s highly secretive. It’s hard to get operatives into the Muslim movements. Trust me, I’ve done it, and it isn’t easy. Most of the power and wealth in the Philippines is concentrated in the hands of the Catholic majority in the big cities of the north. The Muslims tend to be rural, and most live in the southern islands.

Philippine Military Intelligence was built on the U.S. model, but the Philippine military was still based on patronage and loyalty to individual generals, and most of its assets were in the north. The military was clannish, and interservice cooperation was dismal, at best. For the most part, intelligence gathering consisted almost entirely of bribing informants or sending special operations commandos to shoot up suspicious villages and torture suspects. Neither tactic was ideal against fanatic terror cells.

Bolan stared out across the bay. “I need to get inside.”

Mei rested her chin in her hands. “That, Blue-eyes, is something I’d like to see.”

Bolan had to admit to himself it would be a challenge. “So we have nothing else on this end?”

“Like I said, Philippine Intelligence thinks there might be a movement in the southern islands, but there are always movements in the southern islands. That’s were al Qaeda, the separatists, and every other violent group in the Philippines does their recruiting.”

“Someone has to know something.”

Mei gazed out over the water reluctantly.

Bolan read her look. “You have an idea.”

“I know a guy who makes it his business to know things. He owes me a favor.” She frowned. “But this may be stretching the mark to the breaking point.”

“Maybe we should go have a talk with this guy.”

“This guy’s a real wild card.” Mei’s frown deepened. “I don’t know if you want to get in bed with him.”

Bolan shrugged. “I usually don’t get in bed with anyone on the first date.”

Mei burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

Mei waggled her eyebrows. “You’ll know when you meet him.”

“I don’t get it.” Bolan finished his beer. “And I’m not sure I want to.”

3

Macao

Bolan stepped off the hydrofoil that had taken them from Hong Kong to the estuary of the Pearl River and onto the waterfront. At first glance, Macao looked like every other economically emerging city in Asia. Construction was everywhere. High-rise apartments and office buildings relentlessly clawed their way into the skyline. The streets were jammed with traffic, and hellish pollution surrounded them in the three dimensions of the air, the water and the streets. Casinos jammed the waterfront, and tourists crowded the casinos to overflowing.

Rickshaw men pounced on disembarkees from the hydrofoil, each working for a casino and affiliated hotel. Marcie Mei ignored them as she curled her thumb and forefinger against her teeth and let out a whistle that could have hailed a cab all the way from Manhattan.

A small man with massive calves and the shoulders of an ox looked up from his lunch. He took up the yoke of his rickshaw and trotted over to the pier. He and Mei spoke in rapid-fire Cantonese for a moment, and the woman gestured at Bolan. “Du, this is Cooper. Cooper, this is Du. There’s hardly anything I don’t owe Du, including my life.”

Du grinned up at Bolan through gold teeth and stuck out a callused hand that seemed too big for his body. His English had strange inflections. He spoke his English more like a Brazilian than Chinese. “How you doin’, hot rod?”

Bolan shook Du’s hand. The rickshaw man squeezed, testing Bolan’s strength. The calluses spread across his knuckles as well as his palms. Bolan suspected he hadn’t developed them from pulling carts. The Executioner smiled and squeezed back. “Nice to meet you, Du.”

Du grinned. He and Bolan silently agreed not crush each other’s hands and relaxed their grips. Du grabbed what little baggage there was and threw it in back as Bolan and Mei climbed aboard. He took up the yoke and swiftly pulled his passengers away from the waterfront and into the sprawl. He chattered back over his shoulder, pointing out the sights.

He jerked his head off toward a tower of glass. “The Hilton?”

Mei sank back against Bolan. “Head for Rua da Felicidade.”

Bolan perked an eyebrow. “The Street of Happiness?”

Mei nodded.

“Awww…man!” Du shook his head as he trotted past cars, bikes and scooters, and swerved around an ox. “Tell me you’re not going to Ming’s.”

“Directly,” Mei confirmed. “We’re expected.”

Du hunched his shoulders fatalistically and turned away from the glass and light of the downtown sprawl.

Macao was unique among Chinese cities in that it had once been a Portuguese possession. Once they pulled onto the Rua da Felicidade, they might as well have been in prewar China. Mediterranean architecture abutted ancient style Chinese houses and shops. The Rua da Felicidade had once been Macao’s red light district. Now the street was lined with shops and street vendors and food stalls. The bright colors of silk were everywhere as were the smells of spices and roasting meat. For all of China’s gustatory glory as one of the world’s great cuisines, the art of barbecue was almost unknown there. Except in Macao. The Portuguese had brought their grills with them, and to this very day smoke filled the air. They passed a bamboo cage filled with a half dozen small, tapir-like animals. A metal trough lined with live coals and multiple spits glowed red hot and ready next to them. Bolan suspected few of the beasts would survive the lunch-time rush.

Bolan crooked two fingers and thrust out a note as the rickshaw passed a stall. Marcie’s eyebrows shot in surprised approval as Bolan took two sheets of au jok khon wrapped in paper. The barbecued strips were a sweet, salty, cholesterol blowing form of pork-jerky sheathed in crispy fat.

Du pulled past the shops and took them deeper into the maze.

Bolan thought about their contact. He had consulted Kurtzman via satellite and was surprised Kurtzman had come up goose eggs. Neither the Farm, US, nor British Intelligence had anything on the man. He was an enigma.

Ming Jinrong was a part of the Chinese underworld.

Mei had been very closemouthed about the man. He was a valuable resource, and she was taking pains to protect him.

Bolan decided to try again. “What can you tell me about Jinrong?”

“I’ve had some dealings with him. He was Red League in Shanghai, but his…proclivities kept getting him in trouble, and he had to flee. He’s been in Macao for twenty years,” she said.

Bolan considered the tidbit of information. He had fought the Chinese triads before. The Red League was a secret society that had begun as a patriotic anti-Manchu organization of martial artists and merchants dedicated to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty centuries ago. Like most of the other secret societies in China, as the ages passed, they had become runners of opium, heroin and prostitutes. They had taken their place as the heads of Chinese gambling, extortion, assassination and political manipulation.

The Communist revolution had only driven them further underground and made their business dealings even more Byzantine.

“So what does he do now?”

“He’s kind of on the outs, but one of his strengths is that he’s unconventional. Since he got pushed out of normal Chinese crime, he’s specialized in peddling information. He’s also interested in high tech. At this point, I believe the old men of the Red League council consider him a useful embarrassment.”

“What does that mean?”

Mei locked eyes with Bolan. “It means he’s not what you’re expecting to meet, and when you meet him you be respectful.”

“I’m always respectful.” Bolan shrugged. “Until it’s time not to be.”

“Yeah, you just let me do the talking, and if you have to say something, mention the Eight Trigrams Double Broadsword.”

Bolan nodded. “Got it.”

Du pulled them down one side street and then another, each more narrow than the last, until he brought them to a halt before the wooden gate of a Portuguese villa that looked at least three hundred years old. The tile and stucco were faded and cracked, but the stonework was still incredible. It was a picture of lost colonial glory. Men with rifles peered down from the ornamental minarets at the wall corners.

Du set down his yoke and rapped the brass, lion-head knocker on the gate.

A pair of men with AK-47s opened the gate and let them in. Bolan, Mei and Du walked into the courtyard. A Spanish-style fountain with a potted flowering lemon tree in its middle dominated the tiled courtyard. Peacocks strutted freely, pecking among the rose beds.

Bolan locked eyes with their hosts.

The man was huge. He sat artfully draped across a cerulean chair, enthroned beneath a pink silk awning. Ming Jinrong looked like a six-foot-six, 270-pound Chinese version of Oscar Wilde. Right down to the wine-colored crushed velvet suit and the lily he held across his breast. A jaw like a steam shovel and a massive brow belied his soft eyes, cheeks and lips. His hair fell away from his face in languorous black curls.

Ming Jinrong danced the razor’s edge between effeminate and Frankensteinian.

“Marcie.” A half smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he spoke in an Oxford-accented baritone. “Such a pleasure to see you once again, and you have brought me an American.” He looked Bolan up and down through thick lashes and met the Executioner’s gaze without blinking. “And such blue eyes…”

He raised an eyebrow at the third member of their party. “Oh, and I see you’ve brought little Du.”

Du’s knuckles creaked into fists.

“Tell me.” Ming cocked his leonine head at Mei. “Did you ever become proficient with the Southern Butterfly knives I gave you?”

“I’m sorry, Ming. The weapons you gave me hang in a place of honor in my home.” Mei grinned impishly. “But I’m an island girl, and the kris is my life.”

“Ah…the Serpent Waving Blade.” Jinrong gazed off into the distance for a moment. “Well, then, how may I assist you? You know I can deny you nothing.”

“I ask only for your expertise.” Mei held the leaf-shaped throwing weapon that had ended Scott Clellande’s life. The muzzles of automatic rifles along the walls raised slightly as the woman stepped forward with the blade.

Ming raised his eyes heavenward as if in infinite weariness at his guards. “Oh, please.”

The weapons lowered as Mei set the blade on the low table before the gangster. “What do you make of it?”

Jinrong took up the red-tasseled weapon between immaculately manicured fingers and pursed his lips at it. “Why, it’s a piau.” His eyes widened slightly as he examined the slitted blade. “Piau is a loose term for a family of throwing weapons.” He set the weapon back down on the table. “But this piau is not Chinese.”

“Can you identify it?” Mei asked.

“Where did you find it?” Ming countered.

Bolan stepped forward. “In the throat of a friend.”

“Ah.” Jinrong sighed and sniffed at his lily. “Well, I can tell you what I know, which is that this weapon is Javanese and very likely the weapon of a prisai sakti practitioner.”

“Javan?” Bolan and Mei exchanged glances. “Not Philippine? From a Muslim style of Arnis or Kali? Perhaps an esoteric one?”

“Oh, no, no, no. I have a similar weapon in my collection. As I mentioned, this form of piau is a specialty of the prisai sakti style of pentjak-silat. Prisai sakti means Holy Shield, and far from being a Muslim style, prisai sakti is affiliated with the Christian Javanese.”

Bolan decided to be blunt. “You’ve heard of the rash of piracy in the South Seas.”

Ming leaned back in his chair. “Yes, and such a distasteful way of doing business. It is bad for everybody.” He waved a dismissing hand. It was clear he wished to change the subject. “Gau, bring our guests tea.”

Bolan looked into Ming Jinrong’s eyes. The man was an aficionado. Some men obsessively devoted themselves to baseball, blondes or bullfighting. The gangster’s encyclopedic knowledge showed that his all-consuming passion was martial arts, and Bolan suspected it bordered on the fetishistic. “I’ve heard you are a master of the Eight Trigram Double Broadsword set.”

“A master?” Ming raised a condescending eyebrow at Bolan and then looked at Mei disappointedly for clearly having fed the American information.

Bolan smiled. He was a master of no martial art, but he knew men who were. “I have a friend who is proficient in Monkey Kung Fu.”

Ming tossed his hair distractedly. “What form?”

“Lost Monkey.”

Ming reluctantly showed interest as Bolan continued.

“He also has some skill in the Seven Stars Mantis broadsword technique. He once told me that double broadswords are almost impossible to learn. They restrict each other’s movements and endanger the practitioner. Only a master can wield them together effectively.”

Mei stared at Bolan in shock.

Bolan kept his eyes on the man before him and knew he’d hit pay dirt. Ming Jinrong’s eyes had lit up. Gau arrived with the tea, and Ming waved it away as he spoke rapidly, this time in Mandarin. The servant scampered away as Ming rose and removed his velvet jacket. He stood slightly stooped, as if he were embarrassed by his height and size, but he straightened to his full height as Gau returned with a silken pillow upon which he bore a pair of Chinese broadswords.

Gau took a brass-inlayed wooden sheath in each hand and presented the hilts to his master. Ming drew his weapons. The wide, curved blades made a loud rasping sound as they came free. Sharpening steels had been set within the sheaths so that the blades would be honed every time they were drawn or put away.

“This—” the man smiled at Bolan as he stepped into the courtyard with a dragon inlayed blade in either hand “—would interest your friend.”

Ming stamped his foot and began striking the empty air. He held the blades parallel, so that each strike was a double attack as he cut to one side, twisted and cut again. The blades hissed through the air as his double cuts grew wider and he began slicing vertically and on the diagonal. His feet walked an octagon pattern of deep stances and quick leaps. Sweat began to sheen his face as he forced the heavy weapons to his will. With a shout the parallel blades began pinwheeling in the mobster’s hands.

Bolan’s eyes narrowed with appreciation. He was watching a master.

The blades blurred around Ming’s body like counterrotating propellers and smeared into bright flashes. How he did it without clanging the blades or cutting himself was a mystery to Bolan. He whipped the blades so fast they made a noise like tearing cloth as they sliced the air. The grace, speed and control was astounding. The light gleaming in Ming’s unblinking eyes revealed that his consummate skill was wedded with homicidal impulse.

Ming stamped his foot and the quicksilver blades clanged together in a scissoring attack that could only be intended to behead an opponent.

He lowered his swords and bowed to Bolan.

The guards burst into applause. Bolan and Mei joined them. Bolan knew it was a privilege to observe such a performance, particularly for a westerner. Even Du clapped his hands in open appreciation.

Jinrong sheathed his swords. Gau bore them away as the master sagged back into his chair. He was pale and trembling, and sweat dripped from his temples. He waved a shaky hand at another servant who produced a pipe. The man packed the pipe with a black blob and lit the pipe for his master. The black chunk in the bowl glowed red as Ming drew on the pipe. The huge gangster stopped trembling with the first puff of blue-white smoke, and the fragrant, sweet scent of opium drifted across the courtyard.

“Once…upon a time—” Ming sighed as his breathing returned to normal “—I was something to see. But opium, young men and gambling have left me—” he heaved another sigh “—distracted.”

Mei’s eyes were shining. “Your performance was magnificent.”

“Thank you, my dear. I have always marveled at your skill at Kali, and little Du’s Tiger-Crane is feared throughout the waterfront.” He suddenly turned his eyes on Bolan. “But you, Mr. Cooper? Of what are you a master?”

“I am a master of no acknowledged style.” Bolan shrugged.

Jinrong pursed his lips and puffed on his pipe in disappointment.

“But,” Bolan said, smiling in mock shyness and looking down, “I am proficient at the Seven Triple Bursting technique.”

Ming sat up straight. His brow furrowed at the thought of a technique he did no know. “I demand a demonstration.”

Mei simply stared.

Bolan shrugged again. “I’ll need seven plates.”

Ming spoke some words, and servants scampered. He and his small army of guards looked on keenly as seven of the household servants returned each bearing a plate.

Bolan nodded. “Have them stand in a line to my left, fifty paces back.”

Ming gave orders and the servants lined up along the wall to Bolan’s left and eyed him nervously.

“Tell them to throw the plates in the air across the courtyard, as high as they can, when I say go.”

The master leaned forward with keen interest as he translated the instructions. The tension of the servants grew palpable as they obeyed.

Bolan’s hands dropped loosely to his sides.

Mack Bolan was a master of no martial art, but he was an incredibly lethal man with his bare hands. And, long ago, the Green Berets had made Bolan a master sniper. His War Everlasting had made him the most lethal living exponent of combat sharpshooting on the planet.

“Go!”

The china spun into the air like awkward porcelain dishes.

The servants didn’t have time to cower as the Beretta 93-R cleared leather. A machine pistol was a specialist’s weapon. Most respected firearms’ authorities eschewed them altogether. They were too heavy for a pistol, but much too light for a submachine gun. Their rate of fire made them almost uncontrollable on full-auto. A few gun experts grudgingly opined that they made a good weapon for the point man of an entry team, but that man would require prohibitive amounts of training to make it worthwhile.

Bolan had trained with the 93-R for hundreds of hours and fought with the weapon in his hand for more years than he cared to think about. The smooth rosewood grips had been custom fitted to his hand and the action tuned to oil-on-glass slick perfection. Bolan knew the weapon’s recoil and rapid cycling like old friends.

The Beretta 93-R had become an extension of his will.

Seven plates spun into the air. The white dot front sight of the Beretta whipped toward the farthest and lowest flying plate. Both of Bolan’s eyes were open, bringing the front sight blade and the plate into convergence. His finger caressed the trigger, and the machine pistol cycled in his hand.

Bolan’s speed had left the guards no time to react. They jumped as the pistol spit its first burst and the plate came apart. The spell broke, and they swung their automatic rifles up as Bolan’s second 3-round burst snarled from his gun.

The Executioner ignored the riflemen. He concentrated on the plates as they hit their apogee and began falling back to earth. The front sight of his pistol whipped from target to target without conscious thought. Each time the white dot eclipsed a plate, Bolan squeezed the trigger and the Italian steel snarled off a 3-round burst cycling at just over eighteen rounds per second.

Plate after plate shattered. Bolan grimaced and dropped his aim as he touched off his last burst. The seventh plate shattered less than three feet from the ground. The lead servant in line shrieked as his robes were harmlessly sprayed with bits of ceramic shrapnel.

The Beretta 93-R racked open on a smoking empty chamber.

The seven plates had been shattered in as many heartbeats.

The sudden silence in the courtyard was deafening.

The guards dropped their rifles on their slings and began applauding wildly. Mei and Du joined them. There was renewed respect in Du’s eyes. Ming tossed his lily at Bolan’s feet in tribute. “Ah!” He rolled his eyes at Mei, and his smile was ecstatic. “You brought me not just an American, but—” he savored the words like fine wine as he spoke them “—a gunfighter.”

Bolan slid a loaded magazine into his pistol and pressed the slide release home on a fresh round before he holstered it. He had done fancier shooting, often on the field of battle and in the face of oncoming fire. Bolan allowed himself a small smile. Seven plates in one and a half seconds…

Ming sat up in his chair. “Gau, have some of the men light some firecrackers in the street to allay the neighbor’s suspicions.”

The gangster turned back to Bolan. “I believe I know what it is you wish of me, and I believe it would be my pleasure to render you assistance. Give me a week while I send forth my agents. In the mean time,” the gangster said, opening a huge but graceful hand in invitation, “be my guests. I insist.”

Bolan frowned. A week of downtime, and who knew how many more innocent targets would get hit. Ming caught the look and shrugged.

“During that time, it would be my honor to teach you something of the sword.” He smiled enigmatically. “I believe you may have some need of one where you will be going.”

4

Macao

“Cut! Cut! Cut!” Ming’s blade hurtled down at Bolan like a gleaming meteor. Sweat dripped from Bolan’s brow as he fought. Ming’s crushed velvet suit of the day was lime green, but he had shoved off his suspenders and fought in his sleeveless T-shirt beneath the southern Chinese sun. Bolan fought stripped to the waist as Ming attacked him, the giant mobster shouting at him all the while like an angry headmaster.

Bolan was bleeding from numerous superficial cuts that could easily have lopped off limbs had Ming wanted. Purple bruises blossomed beneath the skin of Bolan’s cheek and his arms and shoulders where Ming had struck him with the flat of the blade or hit him with the pommel. Bolan ignored his blood dripping on the hot tiles and the sweat stinging his eyes and fought on.

“Cut!” Ming roared.

Chinese martial-arts masters did not encourage their students. They beat on them, literally and figuratively, until they mastered the technique or quit.

Bolan held a two-handed sword. It was barely three feet long, and the massive, curved blade seemed much too short and far too wide. The cord-wrapped handle was one-third as long as the blade and mounted with a thick, rigid, black iron ring at the bottom. Although it was a two-handed sword, Ming forbade Bolan to touch it with his left hand. Once Bolan had picked it up he had found it amazingly well balanced and lightning fast.

“You are forcing it!” Ming shouted. “Use your wrist! Let the blade do the work! Do not chop at me! I am not a goat! This is not a butcher’s stall in the market! Cut!”

Ming’s own broadsword whirled around his wrist, flashing like lightning. “Like this! And this! And this!”

The slender saber whipped up, down and sideways in a dazzling array of cuts. Their swords rang with blow after blow as Bolan barely blocked the incoming barrage.

“Cut! Cut! Cut!” Ming said. “I see your left hand yearning to grip the blade for a two-handed blow! I see you have had training in the Japanese sword, and you desire to pull the hilt toward you for the slice! Cut! This is not a kendo dojo! Chinese swords express themselves outwardly! Let your wrist succumb to the curve! Let your weapon’s weight do your work for you!”

Bolan knew intuitively that Ming was right. The few sword fights Bolan had been in and the little formal training he had received in swordsmanship were with the Japanese katana and its smaller, straight cousin, the ninja-to. Those instincts were interfering with the morning’s lesson.

Bolan had to empty his cup before more knowledge could be poured in.

The Executioner let his wrist succumb to the curve of the blade. He stopped defending, and his blade licked out in series of blindingly fast attacks.

“Better!” Ming grinned delightedly as he parried the attacks. “Better!”

The giant gangster counterattacked. They fought back and forth, blades ringing beneath the watchful eyes of Ming’s guards. Ming no longer punished Bolan for his mistakes but let him explore the blade, now that he was using it properly. He grunted corrections, and every time Bolan made a mistake Ming stopped and made him do the move ten times correctly, and then resumed the battle.

Forty-five minutes later the noon sun hammered down on the courtyard.

“Enough!” Ming stepped back. “You will learn nothing more at this point but the mistakes of fatigue.”

Bolan didn’t argue. His arm felt like lead. He had been fatigued two hours ago. At this point he was staggering with exhaustion.

“Now that we have cured you of your samurai impulses…” Ming took Bolan’s sword and walked to a rack loaded with Chinese kung fu weaponry of every description. He picked up a length of bloodred silk ribbon and tied it to the ring in Bolan’s hilt. “Observe.”

Ming slowly swished the blade through the air, the red ribbon twirling behind it like an angry serpent. “The dadao is called the war sword. One reason is that you could issue it to a raw recruit and with little training he could take it in both hands and smite an enemy with some effectiveness. However, in the hands of an adept, the dadao becomes a thing of great subtlety.”

Bolan watched as Ming wove a web of steel with the blade. The ribbon twirled along in its wake like the prop of an Olympic rhythmic gymnast. “The ribbon can be used to distract the enemy…or worse.” Ming suddenly snapped his wrist and the end of the ribbon licked out and whipped against the vase of flowers on the table. The pottery cracked and Bolan realized the end of the ribbon was weighted. Ming let go of the sword as he swung it and caught the silk ribbon by its weighted ends. The gangster dropped low into a spinning crouch. The sword deployed at the end of the ribbon, adding three feet to Ming’s reach. It scythed around at ankle level and sank into the wood of a courtyard beam.

Ming yanked the ribbon, and sword’s hilt leaped back into his hand. “The dadao has endless possibilities.”

Ming nodded at a samurai sword in the rack, and Bolan drew it. Ming motioned for Bolan to attack.

“Now the iron ring pommel,” Ming lectured, “cannot only be used to strike an opponent, but to trap his weapon and disarm him.”

Bolan slashed, and Ming twirled his weapon like a baton. He slapped the pommel ring around the tip of Bolan’s sword and yanked it halfway down the blade. It took all of Bolan’s strength not to have the sword ripped from his grip as Ming twisted and yanked.

Ming grinned as they played tug of war for a moment with the trapped blades, testing each other’s strength. “But should your opponent prove too strong for you to take his weapon away…” Ming roared like a lion and torqued his wrists. The blade of Bolan’s trapped katana snapped in two. “You may destroy it, and then him.”

Ming sighed as he held up the weapon and ran his eyes along the edge. “The dadao is a two-handed sword, but you have discovered that a strong man may easily wield it like a saber in one. Thus, in the morning you shall practice one handed, and then again in the afternoon we shall practice with two hands. There your training on the Japanese katana may be of some assistance to you.”

He handed the blade back to Bolan.

“I thank you, Sifu.” Bolan bowed slightly and used the Chinese honorific for teacher.

“It is my pleasure.” Ming bowed too. He clapped his hands, and two beautiful women appeared in the silk robes and coiffures of medieval Chinese courtesans. “Butterfly, Jade, see to our guest’s injuries.” Ming leered. “See to his every need.”

Butterfly and Jade bowed to Bolan. Beneath their thick lashes, the women’s eyes roved over Bolan’s naked and bloody torso like horse traders presented with a strange and powerful new breed they did not recognize.

“Gau,” Ming called. Gau instantly appeared at Ming’s right hand. “Summon Du, and tell him to bring his butterfly knives.” Ming drew his broadsword once more. “I feel…invigorated.”

Bolan didn’t envy Du. He paused a moment as Jade and Butterfly gently took him by the elbow to lead him back to his chambers. “Sifu?”

“The lesson is over. You may call me Ming. All my friends do.”

Bolan bowed slightly. “May I inquire, my friend, if you have heard from any of your agents since yesterday?”

“Indeed. Three of my men have made inquiries into the matter and reported back already.” Ming clapped his hands. “Ho!”

A hulking, shaven-headed servant Bolan had not seen before came through the curtains behind Ming’s throne. He bore a large carved box and held it out for Bolan, who lifted the lid.

Three severed heads lay nested in the box. They gazed up at him, their faces frozen in the contortion of their final fear and agony.

“I will need to send more men.” Ming smiled his enigmatic smile once more and dropped his eyes to the dadao in Bolan’s hands. “In the meantime, I suggest you practice.”

CIA Safehouse, Macao

BOLAN DRANK SOME TEA. Butterfly and Jade had taken him to his chambers and applied liniment to his bruises and ointments to his cuts. He smelled like a Chinese herbalist shop, but his bruises had subsided and the cuts had been reduced to thin pink lines.

Once they had been assured of his survival, they had been insistent on seeing to Bolan’s other needs, as well. He smiled at the memory and wondered if he’d have any strength left for the evening’s sword lesson. He’d been limp when Du had taken him by rickshaw to the safehouse. Du had been sullen, silent and covered with bruises himself. His knife technique had not been enough to save him from a beating at Ming’s hands.

Bolan checked the time and hit a key on the laptop. Kurtzman’s face appeared on the monitor via satellite link. He cocked his head at Bolan’s salve-smeared body.

“Do I want to ask?”

Bolan thought about Butterfly and Jade. “You might.”

Kurtzman read Bolan’s expression. “Man…you have all the fun.”

Bolan shrugged and drank more tea.

“Well, tell me about Ming, then. I hear he’s quite a character.”

“That’s an understatement.”

Kurtzman looked curious. “And?”

Bolan smiled proudly. “He says my swordsmanship is salvageable.”

Kurtzman blinked. “Well, that’s good news.”

“I think he’s taken a shine to me.”

Kurtzman paused. “That’s a good thing?”

“If we want his cooperation, yes. I get the impression he’s been kind of lonely since the triads pushed him out of Shanghai. He’s been wasting away in exile like fallen royalty. I got his blood moving again. He really seems to be enjoying having a student.”

“That’s all well and good, but where’s the mission payoff?”

“In China, the criminal underworld and the martial arts are deeply intertwined. Both have their code of honor. By taking me on as his student, his code obliges him to help me against my enemies. It’s his plausible excuse to himself and his superiors for getting involved in business he shouldn’t.”

“So what have you learned?”

“So far, not much. Ming apparently got a few nibbles, and his agents promptly got their heads cut off. The interesting thing was that they were spread out. One was in the Philippines, one in Malaysia and one in Java.”

“A real pan-Southeast Asian movement.” Kurtzman chewed his lower lip. “It’s not good, but if it’s a charismatic movement like you suspect—”

“Then I’ll have to find that charismatic head and cut it off,” Bolan finished.

Kurtzman scowled. “That’ll be a neat trick, especially doing it without turning him into a martyr.”

“Yeah.” Bolan considered the fanatical movements he’d fought before. “I’ll just have to do it in a way that doesn’t leave any doubts.”

“First, you’ve got to find him.”

“Speaking of which, where’s Rosario?”

“He’s in Central America. He says he and Calvin can extract and be in Manila in twenty-four hours.”

“Good enough. Tell them I’ll meet them in the Polillo Islands safehouse. That should do for our purposes.”

“What kind of purpose?”

“How’s our young friend doing in custody?”

“According to Manila station, the Philippine military police have stopped just short of rubber hoses and jumper cables, and that was only at the direct request of the station chief.”

“Good, I think in twenty-four hours he’ll be about ready to see a friendly face.”

Kurtzman grimaced. “You’re playing kind of rough with this kid, aren’t you, Striker?”

“That kid boarded a private yacht in the middle of the night, blade in hand, with the intention of beheading every man, woman and child he found, Bear.”

“Well…granted,” Kurtzman replied. “But he was under the influence of drugs, and—”

“Running juramentado is an all-volunteer activity. You sign up. Our boy was excited about the plan and thankful to be a part of it, and that was before the hash, the trance and the ball-binding.” Bolan’s voice went ice cold. “Young, dumb and brainwashed, I’ll grant you. We’ll let him live. But he’s going to make good on what he owes humanity, one way or the other.”

“Yeah.” Kurtzman shifted uncomfortably in his wheelchair. “I hear you. So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to fly back to the Philippines and take a meeting with Pol and the kid. Assuming all goes well, I’ll leave Pol to it and come back here to Macao. The last leads we generated came by setting out bait. I figure I might as well try it again while Pol goes to work.”

“The yacht trick again?”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking bigger.”

“Bigger?”

“Ming’s had a few interesting suggestions.”

Kurtzman raised a bemused eyebrow. “I bet he has.”

Bolan ignored the innuendo. “Meantime, I’ve got a job for you, Bear.”

“Oh?” Both of Kurtzman’s eyebrows rose with interest. Aaron Kurtzman was a genuine, certified genius, and when Mack Bolan said “I have a job for you, Bear,” it meant the big guy had a whopper of a challenge for him.

“Yeah, this is a Southeast Asian mission.”

“Yes…” Kurtzman waited for the rub. “And?”

“And I need a Muslim cover.”

Kurtzman stared blankly into the Webcam.

Bolan nodded in empathy. “Work on it.”

5

Polillo Islands, Philippines

“Has he snapped, yet?” Bolan walked up the steps to the beach house. The yellow Piper Super-Cub seaplane lay at anchor in the lagoon. Rosario “Politician” Blancanales’ bull-like figure stood on the veranda holding two cups of coffee in one hand. Bolan could smell it as he mounted the steps.

Stony Man Farm’s psychological warfare expert shook his head. Bolan tossed a manila folder onto the table as both he and Blancanales sank into rattan chairs.

“Not yet,” Blancanales said over his mug, “but he’s just about ready.”

Bolan nodded. “Snapping” was the point in cult deprogramming when the cultist realized he had been deceived by his cult and snapped out of his delusion. “So what’s the hold up?”

“Well, your boy wasn’t exactly wearing saffron robes and handing out flowers at the airport. He’s more than just a true believer. We’re dealing with a genuine holy warrior here, with martyrdom on his mind.”

“So what’s your strategy?”

“Same as always. Force Ali to think. Someone once said thinking is the hardest activity man is capable of, and that’s why so few men do it. People in cults have surrendered their minds. In many respects, their minds are actually turned off.” Blancanales stared intently at the seaplane as it bobbed on the water. “The first time you lay eyes on a person, you can tell if their mind is working or not. As you question them, you can tell exactly how they’ve been programmed. I agree with your initial assessment. It began in prison. Ali was fifteen when he was incarcerated. As you can imagine, a fifteen-year-old boy is in for some very rough times in prison. He hasn’t come out and said it, but I suspect the cultists inside saved him from being punked, which immediately engendered gratitude, and more importantly, trust. The minute a cult gains your trust—” Blancanales snapped his fingers “—they have you. You’re in.”

“And to snap him out of it?” Bolan asked.

“Like I said, this isn’t some rich man’s daughter signing away her trust fund at an ashram. Ali’s a hard case. He came from poverty-stricken parents and grew up on the streets. He went in for robbery and assault, and when the cult sucked him in it gave him instant family, instant support, instant purpose. That’s a tough one to beat.”

Bolan waited. “And?”

“And it’s a matter of language. It’s talking and knowing what to talk about. I’ve started moving his mind around, slowly pushing it with questions. Ali hasn’t just turned his mind off, he’s given it to someone else. He’s been taught that thinking and questioning are wrong. They’re the equivalent of doubting. Thinking is a sin. He’s been told not to think, but to implicitly trust.”

“Our boy is operating on faith.”

“Exactly. As I question him, I watch every move his mind makes. I know where it’s going to go, and when I hit on a point or question that sparks a response, I push it. I stay with it and don’t let him get around it with the lies he’s been told or circular dogma. I drive it home.”

“And then you snap him.”

“Sooner or later.” Blancanales leaned back and sipped his coffee.

“So how’s it been going?”

“Pretty rough on everyone. His first instinct was violence, so we had to restrain him. Even shackled, he made a pretty decent attempt at taking my head off with a standing mule kick. When he realized I wouldn’t let him hurt me, he went sullen and refused to talk at all. That’s par for the course. At that point, I had Calvin treat his injuries and administer him two low doses of sodium Pentothal to loosen his inhibitions. Then Calvin pulled his Black Muslim routine. Once Ali started talking to Calvin as his doctor and a fellow Muslim, Ali’s strategy turned to feigned compliance while looking to escape. That, however, was a strategic mistake on his part.” Blancanales grinned. “Because that got him talking to me.”

Bolan nodded in acknowledgment. “And that is everyone’s downfall.”

“Darn tootin’!” agreed Pol.

“So where is Ali now?”

Blancanales lifted his chin eastward. “Calvin took him for his morning walk on the beach.”

“Is that wise?”

“A growing boy needs his exercise. Besides, this is an island.” Blancanales shrugged. “Ali can’t swim, and he’s shackled. Short of pulling a Man from Atlantis, he’s not going anywhere.”

Bolan smiled wearily through his jet lag. Blancanales was a people person. When it came to getting inside an enemy’s head, he was a genuine “hearts and minds” lubricant. If he thought the boy deserved a walk, Bolan would take his word for it.

“So, you want to meet him?”

“Sure.” Bolan scooped up his folder and followed Blancanales down the back stairs into the jungle. They walked a hundred yards inland through the trees and came to the other side of the island. Blancanales gave him a basic sitrep. “Ali speaks English, Spanish and Tagalog. To him, I’m Dr. Blancanales and a Mindanao native. He knows Calvin is an American but thinks he’s a Muslim doctor. He has no idea who you are, and I doubt he’d recognize you. He sure as hell isn’t expecting you, so you can play it any way you want. You going straight in, or are you working with a cover?”

“Cover.”

“Really? This should be interesting.”

Bolan nodded. He’d given Kurtzman a challenge, and the man had come up with something so crazy it might actually work. “Thanks for the psych profile. Any personal observations?”

“Yeah. As a matter of fact, this Ali kid? I like him.”

Bolan frowned.

Blancanales’s dark eyes stared right back at Bolan. “Listen, I know he’s an intelligence asset, but the kid’s got guts. Deep down, there’s a decent human being in there.”

Bolan nodded. His life was going to depend on it. “All right.”

Blancanales gestured through the trees. “There’s the lad now.”

Ali Mohammed Apilado sat slump-shouldered by the water’s edge. He dejectedly watched the sun rise over the Philippine Sea. He wore blaze orange prisoner-of-war garb, and Bolan could see the glint of the shackles and handcuffs that bound him. Twenty yards back, Calvin James leaned against a palm tree. A prayer rug lay near his feet. The lanky black man turned and smiled at Bolan.

“Hey, big guy.”

“Morning, Calvin. How’s the patient today?”

“He’s a bit pouty.” The ex-Navy SEAL shrugged. “I’m giving him some space. I opened the cellar door this morning and then followed him at a respectful distance. He’s just finished with his morning prayers.”

“This is the calm before the storm,” Blancanales said. “Ali’s been getting angrier and angrier. Right now he’s directing it at me. Let’s go say hi.”

Three of the most dangerous men on Earth walked across the sand toward the prisoner. Ali’s prayer rug lay rolled to one side. Blancanales strolled up and smiled in a fatherly fashion. “Buenos dias, amigo.”

Calvin James nodded. “Asalaam aleikum.”

Bolan glanced at the rising sun and smiled down at the young man and wished him good morning in Tagalog.

Ali’s bruises were fading, but his face was still lumped and misshapen from his treatment at the hands of Philippine Intelligence. He ignored Blancanales and Bolan and grunted glumly at James. “Aleiku salaam.”

“Ali?” Blancanales extended a hand toward Bolan. He had modulated his English with a perfect Philippine accent. “I would like you to meet a friend of mine.”

Ali Mohammed Apilado regarded Bolan with grave suspicion.

Bolan bowed slightly. “Asalaam aleikum.”

Ali stiffened in anger but did not respond.

Bolan played the hand that Kurtzman had drawn him. “My name is Makeen al-Boulus. Do you recognize me?”

Ali stared into Bolan’s blue eyes intently but without recognition. Blancanales and James both shot Bolan surprised looks. Bolan held the young man’s gaze and smiled benevolently. “Strange, it was one week ago this morning that you ran juramentado and tried to cut off my head.”

Ali’s jaw dropped.

Bolan knew he’d hit pay dirt. Blancanales folded his arms across his chest, nodding. James grinned his approval. Bolan reached into the manila folder and showed Ali a picture of Marcie Mei. “This is my wife. She is pregnant with my child, yet you and your brothers tried to take her head, as well.”

Ali paled.

Bolan turned a picture of Escotto Clellande like a tarot card of fate. “This was my first mate. A pious man.” The Executioner took the piau from the folder and let the razor-sharp shard of steel fall to stick point first in the sand. Its red fiber tail fluttered in the morning breeze. “He pulled this from his throat as he drowned in his own blood.”

Ali Apilado looked as if he might vomit.

“You are young and devout so much may be forgiven, but can you truly be so ignorant that you would attack the faithful?”

Rage, fear and betrayal rose unstoppably from the young man’s soul. He rolled to his hands and knees and heaved up his guts into the surf.

Bolan spit into the sand. “May God forgive you.”

The Executioner turned and walked away. Blancanales followed, while James knelt and put a consoling hand on Ali’s shoulder.

“Jesus…” Blancanales shook his head as they walked back through the jungle. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re hard core?”

Bolan shrugged as he went past the beachhouse. “Is he snapped?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I need him.”

Blancanales let out a long breath. “Striker, we need to have a talk about recidivism and the need for follow-up rehabilitation after the snap.”

“I’m going fishing with Ming and Marcie.” Bolan kept walking toward his plane. “You have a week.”

Coloane Island, Macao

“BEHOLD!” MING CLAPPED his hands, and his men yanked back the bolts holding the steel container vessel together. The top of the container had been cut off, and the four sides fell away with a tremendous clang to the foredeck of the steamer.

Bolan simply stared.

“Do you like it?” Ming clasped his huge hands together and looked at Bolan expectantly.

“I…” Bolan opened his mouth and closed it.

“I listened with great interest to your story of how you used your yacht as a pirate trap,” Ming gushed, “and the lesson of the British Q-boats in the World War II.”

“I can see that.”

Ming raised a hesitant eyebrow. “You do know how to load and fire a 106 mm recoilless rifle?”

“I do,” Bolan said.

He now had six of them.

Bolan stared at the tiny armored vehicle that squatted on deck. What Bolan was looking at was a former United States Marine Corps Ontos tank destroyer. Ontos was a Greek word that literally meant “thing.” It was an apt description. The tank was barely taller than Bolan, himself. At twelve-and-a-half-feet long and eight-and-a-half-feet wide, it was not a tank so much as a tankette. The most remarkable thing about the Ontos was the steel arm sprouting from each side of the tiny, open turret, each of which held three, externally mounted 106 mm recoilless rifles on stalks.

It looked ridiculous, but undeniably hostile.

Bolan eyed the Ontos critically. It had to be at least fifty years old. The thin steel hull was streaked and pitted with rust. A black welding line ran the circumference of the top hull. Both of its tracks were gone, and it sat chalked in place on its road wheels. However, the guns appeared to be in decent condition. “Does it run?”

“No.” Ming gestured at a tiny man in a stained coverall. “My mechanic, Fung, says the engine is hopelessly corroded.”

Bolan let out a long breath. “The guns will have to be manually traversed.”

“So says Fung,” Ming concurred.

“Where did you, uh…” Bolan shook his head. “Get it?”

“A Vietnamese associate of mine sold it to me a year ago. The Vietnamese army captured it from you Americans long ago. With the engine gone, the Vietnamese had intended on using it as a static field gun. However, moving it to any place of use proved prohibitive, so it languished for decades in a warehouse in Da Nang. I had thought to strip it of its cannons and sell them but…” Ming gazed upon the six barreled monstrosity and sighed. “But I became fond of it.”

Bolan reserved comment. Ming Jinrong was a very complicated man.

“The Viet Cong greatly feared it, you know. When all six barrels were loaded with ‘beehive’ ammunition and fired together, it was said to be able to clear a quarter mile of jungle. The Marines called it the rolling shotgun.

“The problem was that each of the six recoilless rifles were externally mounted on a stalk, which meant that once it was fired someone had to go outside the tank and reload it by hand. However, for a first salvo it was capable of incredible firepower.” Ming paused once again to admire the Ontos.

“Your Q-boat!” Ming spread his arms, encompassing the ancient, rusty steamer and the equally decrepit armored vehicle squatting on the bow. “I have named her Flawless Victory.” He gazed at Bolan expectantly again. “Do you like it?”

Bolan nodded. “I love it.”

“I am so glad.” Ming sighed.

“We have 106 mm shells?” Bolan asked hopefully.

“Oh, we have an assortment.” The gangster glowed. “I have a crew ready and shall give you twenty of my best men. You shall have to train your gun crew at sea.” Ming gazed proudly at what he had wrought. “We sail with the tide.”

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