Ballistic

by Don Pendleton

  Or was it the whole ministry?

  Fann Lieu had named one man, Chou Hua Tian. Granted, he was a highly placed official, but did that mean that his actions were approved by his superiors? To answer that, Maia knew she would have to speak with someone else inside the ministry, explain what had been happening, and—

  Bullets raked across the wall near Maia’s face and she ducked backward, rolled out to her right and ran along the mess hall’s southern wall, circling to find another field of fire. Ten seconds later she was peering at the compound from a new perspective, and she saw a pair of riflemen advancing toward the spot she’d lately vacated. Watching them duck and dodge, she gave them credit for coordination, but it wouldn’t help them now.

  She led the forward stalker with her weapon’s sights and caught him with a 3-round burst that opened up his ribs beneath his right arm, mangling lungs and heart. Before he dropped, she was already swinging left to catch his partner as the second man recoiled, backpedaling, but any chance he might have had to save himself was gone.

  Another burst from Maia’s weapon took the second shooter, two rounds ripping through his neck, a third exploding through the lower right-hand quadrant of his face. Bone shards inflicted as much damage as bullet fragments with a solid hit, and he was shocked into unconsciousness—perhaps already dead—before he fell.

  Another of Matt Cooper’s grenades exploded in the middle of the compound, flinging bodies through the air as if a team of acrobats were putting on a special high-tech show. Except these tumblers didn’t spring erect on landing, rather, sprawling where they fell with spastic twitches, crimson mist settling around them from their wounds.

  How many triad soldiers left? Scanning the open ground in front of her, Maia saw only five or six still up and moving, at least two of them already slowed by wounds. She took a moment to prepare herself, then rose and left her cover, moving out to meet the enemy.

  * * *

  BOLAN MOVED AMONG the dead and dying, checking faces where they still remained, sparing a mercy round for this or that one if his features varied from the mug shot fixed in Bolan’s mind. Across the compound, he saw Maia doing the same. Searching. Relieving misery where it was called for, turning over corpses if they lay facedown.

  Bolan found Jin Au-Yo just struggling back to consciousness from a grenade blast, bleeding from a dozen shrapnel wounds. The worst was on the left side of his lower abdomen, where blood had soaked his trousers and a loop of bowel extruded. He was hurting, on his way toward dying, but he wasn’t finished yet.

  The man’s eyes swam into focus, locking onto Bolan’s face as Maia Lee stepped up beside him. “You!” he said, twisting his bloodied lips into a kind of smile.

  Bolan took a chance, told him, “You’re dying. Nothing to be done about it now, this far from any medics.”

  “So...you think...you win?” Jin challenged him.

  “I can’t say that,” Bolan replied. “But we’ll be leaving in a minute. Was it worth it?”

  Jin grimaced, then spoke a phrase in Chinese.

  “How’s that?” Bolan asked.

  Maia translated it. “The goddamned Saudis.”

  “You can even up the score,” Bolan said. “Tell us where to find them, while there’s still time left.”

  “Why...should...I?”

  “Pay them back for all your triad brothers,” Bolan said. “For what you’re feeling now.”

  Jin closed his eyes, considered it so long that Bolan might have taken him for dead, except that blood still burbled from his wounds. His heart was beating, but the pulse was slowing, fading out. Bolan was ready to accept that he’d lost consciousness when Jin’s eyes opened and his head turned, squinting toward the smoky west end of the camp.

  “My quarters, are they standing?”

  Bolan glanced back toward the prefab house. He hadn’t blasted it, since it appeared to be unoccupied.

  “Still there,” he said.

  “Inside...the table...GPS receiver.”

  “Tracking what?” Bolan asked.

  “A device...inside the...missile,” Jin replied, his voice fading fast.

  Bolan looked up at Maia, saw her turn away and jog off toward the dying man’s home away from home.

  “See...the...chart,” Jin gasped, blood trickling from his lips.

  “We’ll find them,” Bolan answered, hoping that the man wasn’t feeding him a phony exit line as payback for his suffering. There seemed to be no point in lying, but the Executioner had long since given up on trying to read minds.

  “Make them...feel this,” Jin said, expelling one last ragged breath before he died.

  And Bolan told the corpse, “I’ll do my best.”

  He rose as Maia returned, her submachine gun slung over one shoulder, carrying a GPS receiver and a folded map. “He wanted to keep track of them,” she said, handing the map to Bolan. “Why would he do that?”

  “No way to tell,” Bolan replied. “If he was having second thoughts about the deal, they came too late.”

  “As we may be,” she said.

  “Not yet,” said Bolan. “If they’re still at these coordinates, we’ve got a shot.”

  “Why not alert your fleet?” she asked.

  “The point of this is keeping them outside harm’s way,” Bolan replied.

  “So, what now?”

  “Now, we go back to Jakarta,” he said. “And find ourselves a set of wings.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Soekarno–Hatta International Airport

  Island Airways was a one-plane charter operation that combined small freight deliveries with tourist sightseeing excursions. Normally, its office didn’t open before nine o’clock, but Bolan’s call had caught the owner sitting down to breakfast, and the price that he had offered for a lift from Java eastward to the neighborhood of Flores had been too good to resist.

  A thousand miles and change, one-way, with no requirement that the pilot wait around and bring them back again. Toss in the acquisition of a Zodiac inflatable raft or its equivalent and would a payday equal to the best month Island Airways ever had be satisfactory?

  Damn straight it would.

  The aircraft was a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter floatplane, with seating for one pilot and ten passengers. The plane was old but well maintained, its prop powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp engine, pioneered in the 1920s and used worldwide since then in smaller private planes, as well as certain military transport craft. Its 945-mile range dictated a refueling stop at Bali’s Ngurah Rai International before continuing to their target, another hundred miles due east, near Flores Island.

  On arrival at the charter airline’s hangar, bypassing airport security and customs, Bolan gave the smiling pilot/owner cash up front, then checked out the inflatable raft he’d picked up for them on short notice. There was nothing obviously wrong with it, and Bolan let the flyboy—Carmit Dhani—glimpse his holstered pistol as he asked whether Dhani would trust his own life to it on the open sea. A quick, earnest affirmative let Bolan know that Dhani understood his life was riding on the little rubber boat’s seaworthiness.

  They had no other gear to load, aside from duffel bags heavy with ammunition. Dhani recognized those, too, and didn’t bother asking why they wanted to be dropped off in the middle of the Lesser Sundas with no way of getting back. Instead, he counted rupiahs and weighed the cash against whatever debts he had outstanding, probably grateful that he would be flying back alone.

  Whatever happened to his customers once they had left the plane at sea was their problem, not his.

  The tower kept them waiting twenty minutes after they were battened down and ready, Bolan tapping years of self-control to keep from getting antsy in his seat. He had done everything he could to get them back in a timely fashion and arrange the flight. Beyond
that, it was in the hands of fate.

  He’d also placed a quick call to Brognola, via sat phone from the road, to brief him on their progress. The big Fed, like Maia, had suggested that they pass Jin’s GPS coordinates to the Pacific Fleet for any further action, but he’d understood Bolan’s objection and wound up agreeing with his soldier on the ground. If Jin was wrong, or if his chart was some kind of elaborate backup hoax, the Navy would be wasting time and fuel. Conversely, if the lone surviving Brave Wind missile was located more or less where Tan believed it was, approaching it would put the fleet at risk.

  Of course, they could lie back and hit it with a Tomahawk—or several—but there would be no confirmation of a kill until they got around to sorting through the wreckage, likely after some prolonged negotiations with the Indonesian government. Meanwhile, if their strike didn’t destroy the HF3...

  Then they were back to square one, right? Nothing to show for it.

  So it was Bolan’s show, at least for now. Until he won big on the nameless island.

  Or he lost it all.

  Ngurah Rai International Airport, Tuban, Bali

  THE AIRCRAFT’S CRUISING speed of 120 miles per hour translated into a nine-hour flight from Jakarta to touchdown near Flores. The stop on Bali was required to prevent them from ditching at sea, but it added more time to the trip. Despite his own extraordinary patience, Bolan knew they were cutting it close. Aside from the air time and stopover, they were crossing the line to another time zone.

  He pictured an hourglass, sand running out and no way to stop it.

  The Executioner had convinced Brognola not to tip off the Navy just yet, but the Third Fleet was searching high and low throughout the region for any trace of their target. Every minute Bolan spent in transit could be bringing warships closer to the enemy. They’d have no difficulty taking out the terrorists after the missile launch exposed their base of operations, but by that time it would be too late.

  While the Otter took on fuel, Bolan’s mind ran through the various defenses against missiles presently available on U.S. Navy ships. The RIM-7 Sea Sparrow was a short-range missile powered by a Hercules MK-58 solid-propellant rocket motor, with semiactive radar homing, built primarily for knocking other missiles down in flight. With a top range of thirteen miles, its epic speed—2,645 miles per hour—put it on target in 1.3 seconds, with a proximity fuse eliminating any need for pinpoint accuracy. Still, it might not work.

  If the Sea Sparrow failed, there was always the Mark 36 Super Rapid Blooming Offboard Chaff system, a battery of short-range mortars that launched chaff—thin pieces of aluminum, metalized glass fiber or plastic—or infrared decoys to divert incoming antiship missiles. The last line of shipboard defense was the Phalanx close-in weapons system, a 20 x 102 mm Gatling gun whose six barrels had a selectable fire rate of 3,000 to 4,500 rounds per minute, with an effective range of 2.2 miles. The standard Phalanx ammo was an armor-piercing tungsten round with discarding sabots, but high-explosive incendiary tracer rounds were also available.

  Overall, the best solution to the Sword of Allah’s threat remained stopping the HF3 before it launched. That could be done in several ways, but only one approach kept juicy targets out of range—boots on the ground striking where they were least expected by the enemy.

  Unless they came too late, in which case it was all a wasted exercise.

  But while a chance remained, Bolan stayed the course.

  It was the only way he knew to play the game.

  Lesser Sunda Islands

  THE ZODIAC INFLATABLE raft worked fine. It took five minutes to inflate and load it, then Maia and Bolan waved off Carmit Dhani as he turned his floatplane around and powered up for takeoff, westbound.

  “I think he is glad to see the last of us,” Maia said.

  “I think he’s off to count his money,” Bolan said, before he turned on the raft’s small outboard motor and nosed the craft eastward.

  Another small island lay between them and their unnamed target, neither any larger than an ink spot on the map he carried. Bolan supposed that naming 18,306 islands got tiresome, not to mention being a waste of time, since only five percent of them were inhabited by humans. Anyhow, the mapmakers had given up somewhere around 8,800 and left the rest anonymous. First come, first served.

  Maybe they’d call his destination Missile Island, after this. Or Bloody Island.

  Maybe Death Island.

  Whatever, Bolan knew that they weren’t too late. Brognola would have tipped him off by sat phone if the second missile had been fired. Not calling Bolan back, necessarily, but letting him know that the thrust of the mission had changed.

  To what?

  A blood feud, maybe, ending only when the individuals responsible were dead.

  The afternoon was hot. Bright sun reflected from the ocean’s surface punished skin and even found its way around their polarized sunglasses. Bolan fought a light chop as he steered the Zodiac around the island they had used for cover, coming up on its companion at an oblique angle, from the southwest.

  Now, the tricky part. He couldn’t say exactly where within the next small island’s acreage, approximately one square mile, his enemies had set up camp. The latest overflight showed nothing, which told Bolan they were camouflaged, prepared for prying eyes overhead. The GPS receiver would direct them to the missile once they got ashore, but first they had to get past any guards that might be placed around the island, staring out to sea.

  Amphibious landings were always dicey, whether it was two invaders in a rubber boat or hundreds alighting from armored personnel carriers. The approaches to islands were always exposed, which made any unwelcome visitors prime sniping targets. Beyond hostile fire, beaches could be defended in a wide variety of ways, from underwater razor wire to mines, tank traps and trenches packed with rude surprises such as explosive charges, punji stakes, whatever. Or the occupants of any given island might sit back and watch a landing party come ashore, then cut them up with automatic fire the second that they dropped their guard, believing they were home and dry.

  Too many ways to die.

  Bolan and Maia had to risk them all this afternoon, on their approach to No-Name Island.

  So it was that even when they’d beached the Zodiac, dragged it above the waterline and camouflaged it with a mass of stranded kelp, they didn’t feel secure. They’d traded one threat for another, that was all. Reaching the treeline as they followed the silent flashes from the GPS receiver toward a point inland was a bonus.

  And they were watching every step they took along the way.

  * * *

  HARIS BACHDIM slapped a mosquito that was feasting on his neck, studied the blood smear on his palm, then wiped it on his trousers. He was happy not to be a Hindu, forced to treat all forms of life as sacred, even when they fed on him and made his life a misery. Also, Bachdim didn’t think he could survive on vegetables alone.

  Patrolling in this heat was tiresome. Bachdim stopped frequently to rest and felt no guilt about it, since he knew the island to be uninhabited. As far as enemies from the outside, even if they suspected that the Chinese missile was somewhere in Indonesia, how would they select one island in particular among the many thousands in the archipelago? Although himself an Indonesian, Bachdim could name only a dozen of the major islands, maybe less.

  Of course, he had dropped out of school when the studies proved too arduous. What did he need with further education once he chose a life of dedication to jihad?

  The shoulder strap on his Kalashnikov was chafing at Bachdim’s shoulder through the fabric of his shirt. Another mosquito had already found him, its infernal buzzing in his ear grating on his last nerve. He watched the shrubbery around him for a hint of movement that would mark the presence of a krait or viper. As for noise, he knew the island’s giant predatory lizards made a plodding, thrashing sound as they moved throug
h the forest, though he hadn’t actually seen one for himself. It was enough to make his skin crawl, and he cursed Usmar Malik for sending him to search the woods, then instantly felt guilt for disrespecting his superior.

  “God forgive me,” he muttered.

  As if anyone was listening.

  More blasphemy, and Bachdim was disappointed in himself, a warrior on a holy mission so distracted by an insect and a forest filled with silent shadows that he let his standards suffer. How could he be fit for martyrdom and its celestial rewards if he was vexed by a mosquito to the point where he abandoned basic mental discipline?

  Bachdim slipped his rifle off its sling and tucked the weapon underneath his arm, its weight a physical reminder that his job was serious. He had been chosen to protect the Brave Wind missile and its operators from whatever infidels might seek to spoil the Sword of

  Allah’s plans. Determined not to fail, Bachdim scanned the forest with new eyes, half hoping that an enemy would show himself, give him the chance to spill some blood before the main event.

  But all in vain. The island was deserted, except for al-Jarrah and their assembled company, the missile crew and its small force of guards. There would be no excitement until launch time, then a mad dash for the speedboats and to freedom, if the Great Satan’s warplanes hadn’t found them yet.

  Buoyed by newfound confidence, Bachdim barely noticed the mere whisper of a scraping sound behind him, might have blamed it on a forest rodent if the sound had registered. Too late, he felt the presence of another body close behind him, as a hand was clasped across his lower face, twisting his head sharply to the left and backward, exposing his throat.

  The blade was razor-sharp. It penetrated deeply, severing his jugular and the carotid artery en route to find his brain stem, where it probed, stirred briskly and withdrew. Bachdim didn’t feel its exit from his flesh, already dead before the unseen hand released him and he toppled face-forward to the forest floor.