Ballistic

by Don Pendleton

  The shooter eyed him for another moment, then said, “Thanks,” and turned away. Left Malik where he lay, a living feast for insects or the island’s giant lizards, if they found him soon enough.

  Maybe the fighter planes would come.

  Maybe they’d strafe and bomb the stranger who had killed him.

  Maybe Malik’s heart would stop before the lizards came.

  He closed his eyes and offered up a hopeless prayer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Bolan believed the dying man, in part because he’d seemed sincere, and equally because Bolan had seen another runner leave the camp seconds ahead of his last target, headed in the same direction. South, across the island’s girth, to reach the farthest shore.

  Call it three-quarters of a mile from where they’d started, over moderately rough terrain. The clinging undergrowth would slow passage—might even trip and maim a careless runner—but the man Bolan was tracking would have checked it out beforehand, blazed or memorized a trail between the Brave Wind launch site and the bay or cove where the escape craft would be stashed.

  Bolan supposed that he and Maia had to have missed them by a whisker, coming in from the southwest. A few yards farther east, they might have seen the waiting boats, detoured and disabled them as a precautionary measure. It was too late now, of course. Another of those little ironies and glitches that could turn a battle’s outcome one way or another in a flash.

  Bolan still didn’t know his final target’s name, nor did he care. His mission was successful on its face, whether he caught the guy or not, but the soldier didn’t like loose ends. Unfinished business had a way of coming back to bite him when his mind was elsewhere. Why put off till tomorrow killing someone he could deal with here and now?

  The runner had a fair head start, and Bolan couldn’t say what kind of shape the other man was in, but once he found the game trail—recently improved with a machete, it appeared—Bolan began to pick up speed. Still wary of a trap, knowing the guy might know he was pursued and try to spring an ambush, the soldier jogged ahead, his long legs eating up the yards.

  And thought of Maia, still back at the camp, maybe alone by now with only corpses left for company. There’d been no time to look for her, communicate where he was going, what he had in mind. Experience had told him that the fleeing men were likely to be leaders of the pack, escaping while their lackeys stood and died to cover them, and Bolan hadn’t planned to let them flee and plot again some other day.

  If he had anything to say about the outcome of this fight, it ended here, for good.

  And someone else would plan the next hit for the Sword of Allah, sure. That was the way it worked in real life, where ideas could only be frustrated and diverted for the moment, never killed. Each time the U.S. made a move or issued a pronouncement on the Middle East, it spawned more enemies.

  War everlasting, to the death of one and all.

  But this one plotter, somewhere up ahead of him and running for his life, wouldn’t be sitting at the table when the next mass-murder plan was sketched out and debated. Not if Bolan found him first.

  Another half mile, no great distance, and the runner should be visible. Unless he’d reached the boats already and secured one, speeding on his way. Then what?

  Go after him, what else?

  Leave Maia where she was and come back for her, if and when he could. And if he couldn’t, for whatever reason, she still had the Zodiac.

  A chance, at least.

  Bolan wished her all the luck that he could spare, and ran on through the forest, following the man he meant to kill.

  Jakarta

  “HE’S DEAD? You’re certain?” Chou Hua Tian asked the young man who stood nervously before him.

  “Yes, sir,” the triad soldier said. “There is no doubt. We have word from inside the Indonesian National Police.”

  Chou swore bitterly. “Who is in charge, then?”

  “That should be Jin Au-Yo, sir.”

  “Should be?”

  With a helpless shrug, the gangster answered, “He is also dead.”

  Chou felt his anger simmering, preparing to boil over. “So, is anyone alive?”

  “No one with clear authority, sir. Perhaps you should contact our master of the mountain.”

  “Wu Guchan is in Beijing,” Chou said, stating the obvious. “How can he help me in Jakarta?”

  Yet another shrug, this time without a verbal answer.

  “Very well, get out!” Chou commanded, turning from the young thug as he left.

  Five hours on the ground now, in Jakarta, and he had accomplished nothing. Jin Au-Yo had run off to another province and been killed, his second-in-command was lying in Jakarta’s morgue, and it appeared that there was no one left to help Chou except himself.

  He blamed all this on Maia Lee, first for surviving when she had been captured by the Malay pirates who were meant to kill her, then for teaming with the American—still unidentified—who’d helped her carve a swath of carnage from Johor to Jakarta and beyond. For all he knew, they might even succeed in tracking down the final Brave Wind missile and destroying it, but that wouldn’t help Chou. By this time, his rogue agent knew that he had planned to kill her, to prevent her from recovering the missile, and that knowledge was a time bomb ticking down to doomsday. If she reached the ministry and told her story...

  Feng Jingwei had already taken the coward’s way out. A call from Beijing had alerted Chou to the commodore’s suicide, which slammed the door on his plan B: framing the naval officer for everything from start to finish. No one in the triad or the Sword of Allah would have contradicted him, but now, without his scapegoat, it was a pathetic plan at best.

  And useless, anyway, while Maia Lee survived.

  Chou’s soldiers were standing by in their hotel suites, with the weapons furnished by the Flying Ax Triad, but Chou had no targets for them to stalk and kill. He’d kept his visit secret from the Chinese embassy on Jalan Mega Kuningan, anxious as he was to operate without official notice. Now, it seemed, his trip had been a costly, risky waste of time that might expose him after all. He’d made excuses in Beijing—a family emergency, the soldiers needed for a special training exercise to keep them fit—but it could all unravel in a heartbeat and undo him if he failed to silence Maia Lee.

  Where was she? After all the havoc she had wreaked across two countries, how could she just disappear without a trace?

  That mystery could be the death of Chou Hua Tian, unless he solved it soon.

  No-Name Island, Lesser Sundas

  NASIR AL-JARRAH WAS winded, cursing the addiction to tobacco that had left him short of breath. Was this his punishment for smoking? Would almighty God be so petty, in the face of all that al-Jarrah had done for Him?

  Gasping, he pushed on through the forest undergrowth that snagged his flesh and clothing, tearing both. The trail seemed narrower this afternoon than when he’d walked it the previous day. He supposed his fright produced that feeling, yet another thing that galled him. He was running for his life like some thief in a village marketplace, an act of cowardice that shamed him.

  A root reached out to trip him. Al-Jarrah pitched forward, flayed his palms breaking the fall and spit an angry curse. Against all odds, it made him laugh at his ridiculous position, but the terrorist swallowed the rasping cackle, recognizing that it sounded like hysteria.

  How much farther to the cove and waiting speedboat? Al-Jarrah thought he had run for half a mile, at least. Perhaps four hundred yards to go, and that was nothing. Up and down a football pitch four times, and all downhill from where he was. He would let gravity assist him, pull him toward the shoreline and his vehicle to freedom.

  Without U.S. planes and warships to prevent it, Nasir al-Jarrah believed he could escape. Traveling at top speed, the cigarette boat could carry him two hund
red miles before it ran out of fuel. Depending on his direction of travel, he could reach Flores, Sumba or Sumbawa. All three had airports where al-Jarrah could catch a flight to East Timor, Papua New Guinea or perhaps even Australia. If need be, he could fly back to Jakarta, using his reserve ID, and leave Indonesia from there.

  But first, the boat.

  A hissing lizard six or seven feet in length lunged from the bushes on his left and snapped at him. Al-Jarrah screamed and leaped over its head, as if he were an athlete running hurdles on track. He landed on his feet and picked up speed, driven by desperation to escape. A thrashing on the trail behind him told al-Jarrah that the reptile was in pursuit. He thought of stopping on the trail to kill it with his pistol, but he was uncertain whether he could manage it and feared drawing attention from his human adversaries with the noise of shots.

  Better to run and offer up a hasty prayer for assistance in his hour of need.

  The lizard snorted somewhere close behind him, driving al-Jarrah toward the cove.

  * * *

  MAIA SAW Matt Cooper leave the camp and knew she had a choice to make: remain and finish off the compound’s last few wounded men, or follow him. She glanced around, saw no one fit to rise and walk, much less put up a fight, and left them to the task of dying on their own.

  What did it matter if a couple of them crawled away to lick their wounds and wait for nightfall to conceal them or bring scavengers to feast upon their flesh? The missile was destroyed, catastrophe averted. All that mattered now was keeping track of Cooper and getting off the island in one piece.

  He wasn’t leaving her behind; Maia knew that much as she followed him along a narrow trail that led her southward from the forest camp. The only explanation for his flight was that he’d seen someone escaping from the compound and had given chase, which meant the man or men he was pursuing had to be worth the added risk and effort. If he caught them, when he caught them, Maia would be there to help him finish it.

  Whatever happened next, she recognized that they were headed in the right direction for their own evacuation from the island, moving more or less toward where the Zodiac inflatable raft was beached and hidden. Once they caught whoever Cooper was chasing, there would be no need to backtrack. They could simply leave and make their way to Sumbawa. It would be dark before they landed, granting cover while they stashed their boat and larger weapons, keeping only pistols for the inland hike to reach the island’s airport and arrange a charter flight.

  Simple. Assuming that they got that far.

  But first, there was more bloody work to do.

  She kept expecting to catch sight of Cooper, but he eluded her. The forest, pressing close on either side, whispered and whistled at her passing with the cries of birds and monkeys, the incessant droning sound of insects. Maia strained her ears for any human sounds, but heard none that would guide her. She began to wonder if she’d missed a turnoff from the trail, but dared not stop to search for one, much less retreat. Barring an obvious diversion, she would press on toward the island’s southern coastline and the Indian Ocean beyond.

  Something was keeping pace with Maia, to her left, concealed by undergrowth and forest shadows. Maia hesitated, whispering Cooper’s name, but there was no reply. The something shifted closer to her, and she fired a nearly silent 3-round burst into the bushes there, rewarded with a kind of honking growl from an inhuman throat.

  She cursed and ran on southward, gaining speed as fear propelled her. Whether she found Cooper and his elusive prey or not, she wanted out of the jungle, into open space with blue sky overhead. It didn’t matter if her back was to the ocean then.

  At least she’d have a chance to stand and fight an enemy that she could see.

  * * *

  AL-JARRAH CLEARED the treeline and paused for a moment, slumped forward with hands on his knees, while he fought to control his breathing. His throat felt as if he had gargled acid, and his lungs ached with each panting, wheezing breath. Dark spots spun in his field of vision like a swarm of jungle gnats.

  A cool breeze off the water saved him, nearly chilled him as it played over his sweat-soaked face and clothing. For a moment, he stood shivering, then shook it off and started down the clear slope toward the cove and the speedboats waiting at the simple wooden dock. He angled toward the green boat, limping slightly, his ankle throbbing from his fall along the trail, but it was strong enough to bear his weight.

  And he was getting out of there regardless, even if he had to crawl the last few yards.

  A crashing in the shrubbery behind him startled al-Jarrah. He turned in time to see the seven-foot Komodo dragon that he’d thought he had eluded in the forest charging down the hillside with its jaws agape. The Sword of Allah’s field commander raised his pistol, fired too hastily and shot a chunk out of the monster reptile’s whipping tail. Before he could adjust his aim, its jaws clamped on his injured ankle with a crushing force.

  The lizard shook its head and hurled al-Jarrah to the ground. He nearly lost the pistol in his panic, shrieking curses at his scaly nemesis, before he reasserted self-control and sat bolt upright, sobbing from pain as he steadied the gun with both hands. Three shots ripped apart the dragon’s skull in rapid fire, the third round drilling through its snout and soft palate, ending its flight in al-Jarrah’s already mangled leg.

  Even dead, the beast wouldn’t release its grip, however. Al-Jarrah was forced to pry its jaws apart by hand, slashing his fingers on its razor teeth. More pain to make him weep as he lay bleeding on the hillside, still some thirty yards from the green boat and freedom.

  Could he make it? Was there any other choice?

  If he was captured, it meant jail for a start. Most probably in one of Indonesia’s filthy prisons. And when they’d wrung him dry of information, if the torture didn’t kill him, al-Jarrah would die before a firing squad.

  No. He wouldn’t submit.

  On hands and knees, dragging his wounded leg behind him, Nasir al-Jarrah crawled toward the dock and waiting cigarette boat, trailing blood behind him all the way.

  * * *

  BOLAN CLEARED THE TREES just as a green speedboat roared off westward from a small dock where a second cigarette was moored. Raising his rifle, Bolan tracked the disappearing vessel, trying to lead it, and fired two quick shots before a promontory masked the craft from view.

  Both wasted rounds, as far as he could tell.

  He sprinted down the slope, veered left to miss the carcass of a man-sized lizard with the best part of its head blown off, a blood trail leading on from there downhill, across the wooden planking of the dock, to disappear where the green speedboat had been tied moments earlier. His boots were on the pier when Maia called out, behind him.

  “Matt! Wait!”

  He turned and shouted back at her, “Come on! No time! He’s running!”

  As to who he was, the Executioner still didn’t have a clue. Someone in a position of command behind the missile hijacking, the sinking of the hapless Eiland Koningin, and the intended massacre of everyone aboard a massive U.S. warship.

  Someone who was overdue to meet the Executioner.

  He hopped into the blue speedboat, fired up its twin high-performance engines, and was checking the fuel gauge when Maia arrived on the dock.

  “Cast off and get in, if you’re coming,” he told her.

  Maia untied the bowline and dropped in beside him, pushed back in her low seat as Bolan gunned it from the dock, cranking the throttle up until the massive engines roared behind him, raising plumes of water from their screws.

  “Who is it?” Maia asked him, shouting to be heard over the growling engines.

  “Has to be the guy in charge,” Bolan replied, “whoever that is. If he gets away, our job’s not done.”

  And they were gaining on the other speedboat, though it seemed to take forever with the gr
een vessel’s head start. In fact, the first boat should have held its lead, no problem, but it seemed to Bolan that the pilot must be having trouble. From the blood trail on the beach and dock, he reconstructed the scenario and wondered whether blood loss from the giant lizard’s bite would kill their adversary, or if it had merely slowed him.

  Whichever, they were gaining now, closing the gap as Bolan held the speedboat’s throttle open, fairly flying over blue-green water at a hundred miles per hour, still accelerating. If they struck a rock at that speed, or if any other obstacle ripped through the hull, they were as good as dead.

  Ahead of them, the green boat had begun to yaw and swerve, its pilot seemingly incapable of holding to a steady course. Bolan leaned close to Maia, asked her, “Can you drive this thing?”

  She nodded, scooting over to his seat and taking the controls as Bolan shifted forward, took his autorifle with him to a spot where he could aim across the speedboat’s low windscreen and long, sleek forward deck. Two hundred yards and closing as he found his mark, then saw the boat veer off to the left, then track across his line of fire once more and keep on going to the right.

  With no way to anticipate the boat’s erratic movements, Bolan picked a spot and zeroed in on it, holding steady as his target veered from right to left and back again. The trick was to anticipate the next move, firing off a measured burst before the cigarette was in his sights, and to put the slugs where it would be when they arrived. The Pindad rifle’s 5.56 mm NATO rounds traveled at 3,100 feet per second, so call it one-fifteenth of a second to cover the distance from muzzle to target at 150 yards out. If he could make that shot...

  Bolan saw the speedboat begin to drift leftward, squeezed off one 3-round burst and then another as it came. Downrange, the fleeing speedboat’s pilot seemed to twitch, and crimson spray painted the inside of his windscreen, just before his body slumped across the wheel and throttle.

  With a foaming roar, the green boat veered off-course again, then steadied on a straight line to the northwest. Maia had begun to turn in that direction when their target struck some underwater object—coral, a jutting boulder, they would never know for sure—and its hull disintegrated on impact. A split second later, the fuel tanks went up with a roar, spreading a lake of blazing gasoline across the ocean’s surface.