Ballistic

by Don Pendleton

  Symbolism mattered, after all.

  A voice behind Malik surprised him. “How much longer?” Nasir al-Jarrah asked.

  Malik turned and said, “A quarter of an hour for the missile to be set in place before the truck returns. Then transport of the launcher and its reassembly. Possibly two hours.”

  “You are taking all precautions to avoid an airborne search?” al-Jarrah asked.

  “We are. Naturally, there is no defense against surveillance from a satellite in space or from high-flying planes. So far, no visible aircraft have passed the island.”

  If that news pleased al-Jarrah, his mood wasn’t reflected on his face. Malik wondered why the Saudis always seemed to look so sour.

  “They must certainly be seeking us by now,” al-Jarrah

  said.

  “Beginning where the Dutch ship sank,” Malik said. “They cannot have the Thunderbolt’s description, much less our direction of travel.”

  “They will find us, nonetheless.”

  “And you are counting on it, eh?”

  “Not until we are prepared to greet them with a rude surprise, Usmar. Make sure the beacon is not triggered prematurely.”

  “I’ve reserved that duty for myself,” Malik said. “I shall be honored to perform it.”

  And to watch Great Satan’s minions die by fire and water, screaming as their hope ran out.

  Bogor, West Java

  “WE’RE RUNNING OUT of time,” Bolan told Maia Lee. “Somebody must have called the cops by now.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” she answered. “If they think it’s triad business, they won’t want to get involved.”

  Some gamble, Bolan thought. And if police rolled up while they were still inside, their exit through the back door was obstructed by a thug who might—or might not—have a stash of frag grenades.

  What now?

  They couldn’t tell the local triad boss they only wanted information, after killing half a dozen of his soldiers. Could they?

  Was that a siren wailing in the distance, faint and far? Impossible to tell, over the bleating horns and revving engines on the street outside. Still, even if the cops weren’t coming, Bolan knew that it would be a grave mistake to linger where they were. Whether their final adversary had grenades or not, he would have access to a phone back there. He could have reinforcements on the way by now, to cut off their retreat and turn the shop into a death trap.

  “Try asking him where Jin is,” Bolan said, and shrugged when Maia blinked at him. “You never know, right?”

  Maia rattled off the question in her native language. Got a cackle from their barricaded enemy before he shouted back to her.

  “So?” Bolan asked.

  Maia smiled and said, “It’s anatomically impossible.”

  “Okay, then. Tell him that we don’t believe he has grenades, but I’m about to give him one.”

  Maia relayed the message, wincing at the answer.

  Bolan glanced at Maia. She told him, “Let’s say he’s not convinced.”

  “Time to convince him, then,” the soldier replied.

  He aimed high with his 40 mm SPG1 launcher, lofting its HE round toward a corner of the back room’s barely visible ceiling. The round detonated on impact, filling the chamber with smoke, dust and pulverized plaster. When the triad red pole finished coughing, he called out to them in breathless tones.

  “Why do they always bring their mothers into it?” Maia Lee asked.

  “One more to shake him loose,” Bolan said, as he fed another round into the launcher’s breech. “And then we need to go, regardless.”

  Maia nodded.

  He aimed lower this time, toward a bank of filing cabinets barely visible beyond the back room’s open doorway. The second blast mingled shards of metal from the cabinets and clouds of mutilated paper in the smoky atmosphere. Their adversary, coughing louder now, lurched into view and staggered toward the doorway. In his hands, something that could have been a paperweight—or a grenade.

  “Watch out!” Bolan said, as the mobster drew one arm back for the pitch.

  They fired together, Bolan’s rifle making all the noise. Bullets from both guns toppled the animated scarecrow over backward. And a third blast followed seconds later, shrapnel mostly wasted on the walls and ceiling of the shattered office space.

  “I guess he did have a grenade,” said Bolan.

  Maia muttered something.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” said Bolan. “Time to run.”

  Banten Province, West Java

  MA MINGXIA HELD the sat phone out to Jin Au-Yo and said, “A call from Bogor, sir.”

  “Who is it?” Jin asked, as he took the phone.

  “A brother. I didn’t recognize his name, but he knew all the signs.”

  Jin raised the phone and spoke. “Yes?”

  “Xue Poon, sir. I am but a lowly forty-niner.”

  “Yet you call me rather than conversing with your liaison officer,” Jin replied. “Why is that, brother?”

  “Sir, this is an extreme emergency.”

  “Explain,” Jin ordered.

  “We have been attacked in Bogor. Cai Shu is dead, with six of our brothers.”

  “When did this occur?” Jin asked.

  “Minutes ago. Our headquarters is destroyed.”

  “By whom?”

  “A man and woman.”

  “You observed this?” Jin demanded.

  Momentary silence on the line, before Xue Poon replied, “Yes, sir. Cai sent me out to get office supplies. When I returned...there was shooting. Explosions. I had come too late.”

  “And yet, you saw the pair responsible?”

  Another hesitation. “Yes, sir. As they were leaving.”

  “Did you try to stop them?”

  “No, sir. There were too many witnesses. Police were coming.”

  “You could not be bothered to avenge your red pole and your brothers?” Jin demanded.

  “Sir, I was unarmed, having left my weapon in the office.”

  “Did you follow them at least, to find out where they went next?”

  Jin could almost hear the young man gulp. “The first thing that I thought of was alerting you, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Silence! To atone for your pathetic failure and perhaps escape the punishment you well deserve, find all the soldiers that you can and search the city. These two people seek us out, so watch our places closely. If you find them, do what must be done. Fail twice, and nothing but your worthless shadow shall remain.”

  Jin broke the link before his frightened soldier could apologize again. Ma Mingxia reached out for the phone, but Jin held on to it.

  “I have more calls to make,” he said. “See to the guards. Make certain they’re on full alert. Our enemies have followed us as I predicted. Have the trap in readiness.”

  “It shall be done, sir,” Ma said, and left.

  Of course, a raid in Bogor didn’t mean the hunters would locate Jin in his forest stronghold, but he hoped they would. He craved an opportunity to pay them back in kind for all the misery they’d caused him, and to find out, in the process, who supported them behind the scenes.

  He knew that Maia Lee was from the Ministry of State Security, but what of the American? It was unheard-of for a Chinese covert agency to work in league with operatives from the States. Too many years of paranoia and hostility divided the respective services, no matter what was said in public by their leaders in Beijing and Washington.

  Jin had to solve that mystery while time remained, to save himself and all that he had worked for, killed for, through the years.

  Over Palau

  FANN LIEU TRIED Maia’s phone again, hoping for contact this time, and was shunted once again to voice mail. Rath
er than record a message, he logged off, then sent a text instead. It read: Arrive Jakarta 9:00 p.m. Meet me at Ancol Dreamland soonest.

  Wasted effort? Possibly. Fann still had no idea if Maia checked her messages, if she still had the phone he kept contacting or if she was even still alive. Another possibility, besides her death, was that she’d been arrested in commission of some crime with her supposed American accomplice. In that case, would he be summoned home as soon as Beijing got the news?

  Uncertainty gnawed at Fann’s mind and set his nerves on edge. He peered out through his window toward a string of islands far below him. The Republic of Palau was peaceful now, a major tourist destination, but he knew that in the war against Japan it had seen brutal fighting on the island of Peleliu. All long before Fann’s time, of course, but he enjoyed studying history. Learning from the mistakes of other generations—not that it made any difference to a cog in the machine who shaped no policy himself, made no decisions more exacting than a menu choice for lunch or supper.

  Fann wished he had done more training for the field, but counselors had chosen those who fitted the bill for black ops after batteries of testing that included psychological exams. If truth be told, Fann was relieved on learning that he’d been selected for an office job instead of skulking through back alleys, breaking into buildings, risking injury.

  It was coincidence and nothing more that marked him as the right man for his task. Fann thought the Deputy Assistant Minister for State Security might just as easily have sent a trained macaque, if it had known Maia in school. Too much was resting on their tenuous association, Fann believed, but who was he to question his superiors?

  He wondered whether this was how it felt to be a soldier on the eve of battle, though he’d been assured no fighting was expected of him. Fann supposed that meant that others would be standing by to capture Maia if and when she met with him, rejecting Fann’s proposal that she go home to Beijing. Who in her right mind would surrender in the circumstances, when capitulation was the same as suicide?

  Or was it all a huge mistake? Could she explain her actions and relieve the dangerous anxiety they had inspired? Fann thought it was unlikely, but he’d seen enough while deskbound at the ministry to know that black was often white, and up was often down. Nothing was precisely as it seemed to be.

  Fann had decided that he had to acquire a weapon once he landed in Jakarta. Having no idea how he would find and buy a gun, his thoughts had turned toward other implements. Surely, a range of knives would be available for sale. And if he kept his wits about him, played his cards correctly, perhaps he could do better.

  At least he should be able to defend himself. But against Maia Lee? If she was truly a traitor to China and all Fann believed in, could he raise his hand against her?

  Yes, Fann thought. Reluctantly, of course. But to preserve his life and honor, he could strike her down.

  Bogor, West Java

  “I HAVE ANOTHER message,” Maia said, eyeing the cell phone in her hand as if it were a crouching scorpion.

  “Same guy?” Bolan asked.

  “Yes. He writes that he will be in Jakarta by nine o’clock. He asks me to meet him at the Ancol Dreamland tourist park.”

  “Dreamland is right,” Bolan replied. “You show up there, they’ll put you to sleep.”

  She paused a moment, staring through her window as they passed Bogor’s botanical gardens, then said, “I want to go.”

  “Say what?”

  “To meet him. He would not have come this far from home—”

  “Unless somebody sent him,” Bolan interrupted. “It’s a trap. It has to be.”

  She nodded. “Yes. But we may still learn something from it.”

  Biting back a sigh of sheer exasperation, Bolan told her, “I’m all ears.”

  “First, I may learn if Fann Lieu has betrayed me of his own accord,” Maia explained.

  “Who cares? You said yourself, you haven’t seen him in a year or more. It’s not like you’re inseparable friends.”

  “But we were comrades,” Maia said. “If he’s been duped, then he should know it. There’s a chance that he could help us.”

  “How?” asked Bolan.

  “He may be able to identify a traitor at the ministry, or more than one.”

  “Because...?”

  “Because I was assigned to find the Brave Wind missiles and to punish those who took them. Now, someone within the ministry seeks to deter me.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Bolan agreed. As far as he knew, trusting Maia to be straight with him for the duration, there had been no other contacts from her ministry. Her supervisor hadn’t called or texted her for updates on her progress. Nothing but this sometime friend appearing out of left field. Still...

  “I think you’ve put the cart before the horse,” he said. “We need to find the missiles first, then think about who set the whole thing up behind the scenes. You getting killed at an amusement park won’t help, as far as I can see.”

  “But if I don’t get killed,” she said, half smiling now, “if you were there to watch my back, we might accomplish something.”

  “Right. Turning Jakarta’s take on Disney World into a shooting gallery.”

  “To find out who inside the Ministry of State Security is working against China’s interest,” she said.

  “You said he lands at nine?”

  “Correct.”

  “Which means he’ll likely get a room and put his things away before he heads off to the park.”

  “I would assume so,” Maia granted.

  “And there could be trouble if we try to meet his flight.”

  “It’s likely.”

  “And we don’t know where he’s staying,” Bolan added.

  “No.”

  “So, if we turn around right now,” he said, “we’ll have to spend the best part of three hours doing nothing in Jakarta, while your friend clears Immigration and gets squared away.”

  “I would agree,” Maia replied.

  “So, why not go ahead with what we started here,” he said. “If we get something at our next stop that will put us onto Jin Au-Yo, we follow up on that. If not, we’ll keep your date.”

  “Yes,” Maia said. “It’s for the best.”

  Their latest strike was on the radio already. Maia had translated for Bolan one of the reports, filled with speculation about foreign gangsters fighting one another. Maia told him someone in the lower house of

  Indonesia’s legislature had renewed demands for curbs on immigration, to prevent a further swarm of “Chinese cockroaches” from overrunning the country.

  “That’s the spirit,” Bolan said. “Go overboard first chance you get.”

  Oppressed by thoughts of human frailty and hysteria, he navigated toward their second chosen target on the outskirts of Bogor.

  Cikaret Utara, South Bogor

  THAT TARGET STOOD on Jalan Pulo Empang, two blocks south of the Sukarna gong factory. Gong-making, as explained by Bolan’s guidebook, was a dying art. He sympathized with those involved, but knew the best thing he could do for them was make sure no artistes were standing in the line of fire when he and Maia made their move.

  The Chinese agent’s second target in Bogor—the last one on her list for Banten Province—was a meth lab catering to Indonesian addicts. Bolan had a few statistics at his fingertips concerning Far East trafficking in crank, the poor man’s poison. Last year alone, police in Southeast Asia had seized more than 130 million methamphetamine tablets from dealers, freely admitting that they’d only scratched the surface of their problem. Ninety-odd percent of the drug manufactured in black-market labs slipped past authorities each year and made its way to strung-out tweakers. Indonesians called it shabu, preferring its artificial excitement over the lassitude induced by putauw—heroin.

  The
good thing about shabu, from a trafficker’s perspective, was that you could make it anywhere. Given a moderate degree of skill, the proper chemicals, a roof over your head, you could cook meth every day, all day, year-round. You didn’t need a lot of acreage, never had to pray for rain or hire a crew at harvest time. If you could work with ether, hydrochloric acid and the rest of it without blowing yourself to kingdom come, your biggest worry would be counting money day and night.

  The triads had been peddling meth for decades, with a new twist logged in recent years. Aside from feeding habits on the streets, the Chinese mobs were also trading crank-precursor chemicals to abalone poachers, shipping the endangered, legally protected shellfish off to gourmet restaurants in Hong Kong and the PRC. The going retail rate for abalone meat: $108 U.S. per pound.

  Busting one meth lab wouldn’t stop the traffic, but it was another blow against the Flying Ax Triad in Indonesia, and another opportunity to see if anyone on-site could point Bolan in the direction of their master’s hideaway. They had it narrowed down by province, but that wasn’t good enough. Not even close, when Banten Province spread over thirty-five hundred square miles, with close to eleven million inhabitants.

  Bolan still hoped they’d find a source, and soon. He didn’t like the thought of trailing Maia through the crowded avenues of Ancol Dreamland, waiting for the ax to fall, but a promise was a promise.

  One way or another, there would be more blood.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia

  The sun had dipped from sight behind the unnamed island’s densely wooded spine of crags, but work continued on the Brave Wind missile’s launcher. Nasir al-Jarrah had ordered camouflage tarpaulins spread over the site, concealing handheld lamps the workmen used from any kind of aerial surveillance. When the job was done, and only then, the crew would have hot food prepared inside a military surplus mess tent on the south edge of the clearing.