Ballistic

by Don Pendleton

  “I saw,” Bolan replied.

  “He was surprised, I think.”

  “Forget that,” Bolan told her roughly. “If your head’s not in the game right now, you won’t get out of here alive.”

  She blinked and seemed to see him clearly now. “I know,” she said. “We’re trapped.”

  “Not quite,” Bolan said. “But we will be, if we hang around here any longer.”

  Maia nodded, clutching her SMG with grim determination.

  “This way,” Bolan said, and turned to jog along the east side of the pyramid, while wasted shots rang out behind them.

  How long since they’d passed a pair of uniformed patrolmen on the midway? Five, ten minutes. Would the cops rush in to find out what was happening, or would they take their time and call for backup? Either way, the last thing Bolan needed was to meet one of them now. He and Maia had to find an exit, get lost in the crowd if possible, while either shaking off or taking down their ambushers.

  “My fault,” Maia said, as she ran along behind him. “You were right.”

  “Forget that now,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “You think so?”

  “If we don’t,” he told her, “it won’t be for lack of trying.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Huo Zhangke saw Lia Yin squeeze off her first shot, striking Maia Lee’s companion. Whether she meant to shoot the man first or her aim was poor, he couldn’t say, but Lia paid the price immediately. Their intended target raised an automatic weapon from beneath her poncho, gutting Lia with a muffled burst that meant the gun was silenced.

  Huo was grappling with his own weapon, still looking for the faceless American, when more shots sounded from his left. No silencer this time to mask the pop-pop sound of a light assault rifle. He spun to track the sound and saw another of his soldiers, Fei Haiping, reeling out of control, firing a wild round from his shotgun as he fell. By then, women were screaming up and down the midway, tourists running for their lives in all directions, and the rest of Huo’s strike team had opened fire.

  At whom?

  Huo turned back toward the pyramid where he had seen the first shots fired. While it was difficult to pick out individuals in the stampede, he glimpsed a tall figure, dressed in a poncho matching Maia’s, shoving past frightened runners with the skill of a footballer, closing on the spot where the traitor knelt with her wounded friend. Not one of Huo’s men, obviously. Who else could it be except the American soldier he’d been ordered to eliminate?

  Huo raised his pistol, steadied in both hands, and squeezed the trigger—just as one of the Dunia Fantasi employees ran between him and his target. The runner was dressed as a pharaoh of ancient Egypt, complete with a headdress depicting an asp, but his rain-soaked robe couldn’t deflect bullets. The strange figure lurched, spun and fell, while Huo’s target reached Maia and they bolted, dodging from view in the pyramid’s shadow.

  Huo cursed himself and anybody else he could think of. Biting back his fury, he barked into the headset, “After them! If they escape, we’re all as good as dead!”

  It was no idle threat, considering the urgency that Tan Sen Neo—underboss in charge since Jin Au-Yo had left Jakarta—had placed on bagging both the woman and her partner when he’d given Huo the job. During that briefing, Huo had thought it sounded like a plum assignment. Now, it seemed about to blow up in his face.

  His pistol cleared a path before Huo as he ran after his vanished targets. All around him, the remainder of his team would be converging on the shooting scene, closing the trap on their intended prey. Of course, he hadn’t stationed anyone behind the pyramid, since Fann Lieu was supposed to keep his old friend near the sphinx. Huo wasn’t psychic, and it galled him that he might be punished for a failure to predict the unpredictable.

  Better to kill the damned cockroaches and be done with it, eliminating any need to beg for mercy. All he needed was a clean shot, one chance to—

  A voice behind him shouted out for him to stop and drop his gun.

  Huo stopped but kept the pistol, judging distance and position for the voice. Before his challenger could speak again, Huo swiveled on his heels, dropped to a deep crouch as he turned and fired off half the contents of his pistol’s magazine.

  He caught the fat policeman by surprise, stitching a line of bloody holes across his khaki shirt. The cop fell, twitching on the pavement as the neurons in his dying brain misfired, then Huo Zhangke was running once again.

  After his fleeing prey.

  * * *

  MACK BOLAN HADN’T BEEN to Egypt for a while, but he remembered it as nothing like the Ancol Dreamland version. For a start, there’d been no rain on that occasion, when he stalked a self-proclaimed “Eternal Pharaoh” who was raising hell among diverse religious sects. No Ferris wheel or roller coaster, either. No stampede of tourists panicked by a cross fire in the midst of an amusement park.

  So much for fun and games.

  He reached the northeast corner of the pyramid and hesitated long enough to get his bearings, Maia covering his back. They’d ducked their would-be slayers for a moment, but it wouldn’t last. Based on the scattered sounds of gunfire, there were ample trackers to surround them if they dallied in one place too long, and precious little cover on the midway that wouldn’t involve putting civilians in harm’s way.

  The theme park’s one and only public exit was behind them, at the same point where they’d entered after paying for their tickets. Naturally, there were other ways to come and go from Ancol Dreamland—service entrances, emergency escape routes, access for employees only—and while he’d spotted some during their drive-around, before they’d parked and come inside, they’d be exposed to hostile fire no matter which escape route they selected.

  As they were just standing there.

  “This way,” he said to Maia, turning left and picking up his pace. When no one fired on them immediately, Bolan hoped they’d got some breathing room.

  He cast that hope aside a heartbeat later, when an automatic weapon chattered from the shadows to their right, strafing the pyramid and loosing streams of plaster dust from its facade. Bolan returned fire without breaking stride, keeping the shooter’s head down while they gained some distance, seeking cover. Up ahead, the Parthenon’s stout pillars offered shelter, and they ducked into the shadows there, putting its bulk between them and the sniper.

  One of them, at least.

  Bolan had guessed a dozen guns were firing on the midway after he and Maia had disposed of two hunters. That meant ten or eleven unaccounted for, besides the one who had driven them to ground inside the mock-up of the Parthenon. How long before they had the custom-built ruins surrounded and cut off? A minute? Two? Three, at the most?

  No time to waste, then.

  Maia beat him to it, hissing at him from behind one of the Doric columns, “We can’t stay here.”

  “No,” he granted, “but I need to buy some time.”

  He showed himself deliberately, ducking out and back to draw fire from the shooter who had cornered them. Marking the muzzle-flash, Bolan discovered that the guy—or gal, whichever—had them staked out from his place beside some kind of metal shed, most likely maintenance equipment stored for use after the park was shut down for the night. Bolan had seen no tourists over there, and thought it should be safe to use one of his 40 mm rounds. That would surprise the gunner, and give his companions cause to rethink their approach.

  This time, he ducked to his left, aimed, fired and got back under cover as the shooter sprayed the Parthenon with bullets. Seconds later, Bolan heard the HE blast, uncertain whether there had been a scream mixed in with it, not caring either way.

  “Come on!” he snapped at Maia, while the blast still echoed.

  And they ran.

  * * *

  MAIA HAD Fann Lie
u’s blood on her hands. She’d tried to wipe them on her rain-slick rubber poncho, but it didn’t seem to help, just smeared the crimson stains around. The sleeves of her blouse had been smeared while she cradled his head in the moments before Cooper arrived and snatched her away.

  Tears stung her eyes, and Maia let the rain sluice them away. It was ridiculous to weep for Fann; she’d hardly thought of him at all since their last fleeting conversation at the ministry, a year or more ago. She couldn’t miss him in the normal sense, of someone loved and lost, since she had never loved him. It was stretching matters even to consider him a friend, since he had clearly set her up for execution.

  Did he know? Did the surprise that she’d seen written on his dying face reflect amazement that he had been followed to their final meeting, or was Fann simply chagrined that he’d been shot, instead of Maia? Did it even matter now?

  He had betrayed her and had paid the price. Maia hadn’t been forced to kill him, which was something in her favor. Now, if she could just survive and punish those who’d sprung the trap, she might be satisfied.

  The blast of Cooper’s grenade raised more screams on the midway, while its shock waves drove the tourists back, sent them in new directions as if riding waves of fear. At Cooper’s command, she followed him, running as fast as her trembling legs would carry her, clutching her submachine gun at the ready.

  She had failed to estimate the rounds she’d fired so far. A dozen, more or less? She couldn’t check the weapon’s magazine without unloading it by hand. Say half its thirty rounds were gone, then, hoping for the best. Maia had five more magazines distributed in pockets of her jeans and jacket underneath the poncho, plus her pistol’s sixteen rounds and two spare magazines for that. It ought to be enough, but who could say?

  Cooper ducked into the open doorway of a booth where rings were tossed at bottles to secure a prize. A small man cowered in one corner—the proprietor, Maia supposed—but didn’t challenge them, his wide eyes fastened on their guns and Maia’s bloody hands.

  “Saya tidak punya uang!” he cried.

  “He says he has no money,” Maia translated for Bolan, then told the cringing man in his language, “It’s not a robbery. Be quiet.”

  Running footsteps clattered toward the booth, slowing on the approach. Maia expected bullets to come ripping through the walls, but heard a voice instead, speaking Chinese.

  “Where did they go?”

  Another answered, “This way. But then I lost them.”

  Her partner was poised and waiting when the two men passed the booth, one barely glancing at its open door. He stepped into the light behind them, and his autorifle stuttered like a jackhammer.

  * * *

  THE BURST OF GUNFIRE startled Huo Zhangke, raising fresh cries of panic on the midway among tourists who were scrambling for an exit or a place to hide. It didn’t sound like one of his team’s weapons, but at least the firing lasted long enough for him to get a rough fix on its source.

  He ran against the tide of fleeing bodies, brandishing his pistol like a scepter as he cleared a path, growling instructions to his soldiers through the wireless headset. They were moving eastward now, back toward the ticket gates and sole official exit from the park. He hadn’t seen the targets for some time, but knew from chatter coming through his earpiece that a couple of his men thought they had spotted them.

  And that had happened just before the latest burst of automatic fire.

  Huo called out to them, using last names only, wishing now that he had designated numbers for his team members. “Chan? Ki? Answer! Where are you?”

  Empty air hissed back at him. In place of a response from Chan or Ki, he snapped commands off to his other hunters. “Everyone to me! East on the midway, toward the exit. Hurry!”

  Huo’s instinct led him to the place where his two silent soldiers lay, shot from behind and lying facedown in a lake of blood. From their position, he surmised they had been ambushed by a shooter hiding in the ring-toss booth, which meant they hadn’t cleared the stand before they passed it by. Their own damn fault.

  He called directions to his team, then ducked in through the booth’s back door himself. A cringing figure hunkered in the shadows there, babbling, “There is no money!”

  “Forget the stinking money!” Huo commanded. “Who was in here with you? Tell me! Quickly!”

  “Two came in,” the frightened man replied. “A man and woman. When the others came, they...left.”

  Huo thanked him in Chinese, then shot him in the face.

  As he emerged, two other members of his team arrived, blinking at Chan and Ki dead on the ground. “We’ve lost four now,” Huo cautioned them. “Remain alert and find the targets. Now!”

  The two ran on without him, Huo remaining with the bodies for another moment, while he issued more precise directions to the other members of his hunting party. He had no emotional attachment to the ones who’d fallen—well, except perhaps for Lia Yin—but he would have to answer for the dead when he reported back to Tan Sen Neo.

  If he survived, that was. And if he could report success.

  But if the targets managed to escape, Huo thought it might be better for him if he simply disappeared. It made no sense to kill the bearer of bad news, but Tan was known for venting his frustration on subordinates. If he believed that Huo Zhangke had failed him...

  Better not to fail, Huo thought, and set off running in the footsteps of his men.

  * * *

  HOW LONG BEFORE the park was flooded with police? Bolan had no idea, but every passing minute brought him closer to a confrontation he could not escape, unless he broke his own long-standing rule against the use of deadly force on law-enforcement officers. And knowing that he wouldn’t break that rule—that solemn vow—he understood that being caged on any charge was tantamount to death.

  The simple answer: don’t get caught.

  Which wouldn’t be so simple, after all.

  Four hunters down, and if his first guess was correct, that still left nine or ten in play, at least. They would have found his latest kills by now, extrapolating the direction he and Maia had to be traveling in order to escape from Ancol Dreamland. He’d already seen that they had no qualms about gunning down civilians, and he guessed the same would go for any cops they met along the midway. By the time that butcher’s bill was tallied up, Bolan would have a whole new troupe of ghosts to haunt his dreams.

  But he was wide-awake right now, in blitzing mode. Maia was keeping pace, her features grim, and Bolan didn’t want to think about what might be going on inside her head. As long as she could focus on the task at hand—survival—it was all that he required of her.

  More shooting as they neared the Ferris wheel. The giant ride was still revolving, its controllers either unaware of what was happening around them, or already running for their lives, to hell with paying customers stuck on the wheel for the duration. Bolan had no time to help the stranded couples, so he ducked and veered around the ride, Maia pursuing him, as more shots echoed through the park.

  He reached another game booth, ducked behind it and came out the other side, his Pindad SS2 leveled and aiming back in the direction that he’d come from. Two Chinese were closing fast, both armed with automatic weapons, firing as they glimpsed him in the glare of neon. Bolan’s aim was better, ripping one across the chest with three hot 5.56 mm NATO rounds, swinging across to nail the other as he stopped, turned, tried to dive for cover.

  All too late.

  Instead of moving on at once, Bolan ducked back around the booth, retraced his steps, and came out on the other side just as a third man reached the killing ground. This one was giving orders through a wireless headset, and it clicked with Bolan that he might be someone in authority.

  Still seeking someone who could help him locate Jin Au-Yo, he took a chance, told Maia, “Give me this one,�
�� and leaped out of hiding to surprise the runner. Striking with his rifle’s butt before the triad gunner could react, he dropped the guy, relieved him of an antique-looking automatic pistol, then reached down to haul him upright once again.

  “Speak English?” he demanded.

  Fuzzily, the captive nodded. “Yes.”

  “You tired of living?” Bolan asked him.

  Slow blink in response, before the man answered, “No.”

  “Then send your people off another way. Be quick about it, and you still might see tomorrow.”

  When the man hesitated, Maia jabbed him with the muzzle of her SMG and snarled, “Do it! No tricks, or you’re a dead koujiao.”

  Whatever that meant, it provoked a spark of anger in the triad gunner’s eyes before he started jabbering into his headset’s little microphone. When he was done, Maia nodded to Bolan, saying, “Yes. It’s done.”

  “All right, then,” Bolan told his scowling prisoner. “Let’s take a little walk.”

  * * *

  THE CHAOS HELPED. Bolan and Maia reached the public exit with their prisoner while hundreds more were trying to get out of Ancol Dreamland and police were rolling up in force, lights flashing, their discordant sirens adding to the general atmosphere of panic. If the park had been surrounded by a chain-link fence, Bolan suspected that it would have been torn down by now. A mob like this could trample you to death and never notice, but it also made fair cover for a getaway.

  The good news: people exiting the park weren’t required to pass through a revolving gate, which would’ve jammed in nothing flat and turned into a death trap. There were larger gates, patrolled by private guards on normal days and evenings, abandoned now as every able-bodied member of the staff was scouring the park for terrorists—and finding them, apparently.

  Bolan had worried that police might block the exits and screen people individually, but a fresh outbreak of gunfire scotched that plan. It came from somewhere to the northwest of where he stood with Maia and their captive, in the general direction their reluctant guest had sent the other members of his team. On hearing that, the cops abandoned any thought of barricading exits from the park and rushed off toward the sounds of battle with their weapons drawn.