Devil's Horn

by Don Pendleton

  Silence. Torquemandan searched their faces. Some of them, he knew, didn't have the stomach for the march. There would be torture. There would be killing. There would be horrible suffering, and the guards would degrade the prisoners in ways that very few human minds could conceive of. Many at that table would avoid witnessing the march, would fly on ahead to Bangkok. Some would ride in the transport trucks alongside the prisoner column, sitting in the shade of the cabs, sipping ice water, perhaps reading a book or a magazine, or simply mentally tabulating the profits they would reap from this year's harvest.

  And then there would be Mongkut. Yes, Mongkut. He would walk. Perhaps this year, Torquemandan hoped, Mongkut would not last through the entire two-hundred-mile march. Perhaps Mongkut would quit, fall out, hop on a truck. Perhaps Mongkut would simply drop dead. This year's march was going to be very interesting, Torquemandan decided.

  Suddenly, the double doors behind Torquemandan burst inward. The generals' stares shot past Torquemandan, who whipped sideways toward the doorway, glowering in sudden anger.

  The intruder was the Khmer Rouge General Chaika Kan Khang. The short, lean, dark-haired, dark-eyed Khang came to an abrupt stop before Torquemandan. The silver and gold medallions on Khang's military blouse gleamed, rattled, as he snapped to attention. A hideous scar ran down the side of his face from temple to jaw. Torquemandan had never got used to the camp commandant's scar. He had heard that Khang received it in the ugliest knife and sword fight that Bangkok, indeed all of Southeast Asia, had ever witnessed. It was rumored that Khang had killed thirteen men during that battle, which had started in a crowded whorehouse, then spilled out into the streets. Thirteen men, Torquemandan thought, thirteen was an unlucky number. But no, thirteen men represented the Devil's Horn. Reassured, he forced the grim feeling aside, concentrating instead on his anger over Khang's sudden intrusion.

  "What is it, Khang, that you have to barge in here and interrupt a very important meeting?"

  "Sir, I have some disturbing news."

  Khang had a high-pitched, nasal voice, snapped his words out in a way that irritated Torquemandan. Torquemandan saw Khang glance past him toward the table, as if the Khmer Rouge warlord was silently suggesting that they should talk in private.

  "Speak up, man. What is it?"

  "We have been attacked."

  Torquemandan's heart fluttered. Worried voices were grumbling behind him. "What? When?" he asked.

  "Our outpost was hit by an unknown attacker, ten minutes ago. Some kind of jet fighter, sir. A black warbird with a white eagle. There were only three survivors from the outpost. It seems our men hit the wingtip of the jet, forcing it to land. Kamdang set out after the invaders with those who had survived the first hit, but they were ambushed and killed.

  "The situation demands our immediate response, sir. Kam Chek has assembled a large force and is ready to move out in a chopper and armored truck. The outpost is only three kilometers west, and..."

  "Yes, yes, Khang. Take as many men as you need. But, if at all possible, I want the invaders, whoever they are, brought in alive. Do you understand?"

  Khang jerked a curt nod. "Perfectly, sir. I know exactly what must be done. I will call up our reserve from the north. That will triple our force. They will be here within the hour. You will have the invaders very soon after."

  "Very well, Khang. Take care of it. Dismissed."

  Khang bowed, wheeled, left the conference room.

  What the hell was going on? Torquemandan wondered.

  It was a question he was suddenly hearing from those at his table, too.

  Torquemandan rubbed his chin, lost in thought, feeling a stab of fear. He thought he heard some of his associates groan, Bolan.

  Then he looked at the anxious expressions on the faces of the Devil's Horn.

  He did not like to see fear on the faces of men who were supposed to be his allies. Ice pricked his guts suddenly, his heart beat faster in a chest that felt as if it was wrapped in a plaster cast. Goddammit, they're infecting me with their weakness! he thought.

  For once, Torquemandan didn't know what to say to them.

  10

  Bolan, Grimaldi and Brennan moved away from the outlying ring of trees on the jungle's edge. Their clothes were torn, the flesh beneath scratched; their faces were slick with sweat. M-16 in hand, Grimaldi led the way across the savanna, angling west, skirting the marshy edge of a mangrove swamp. Brennan trudged along between his captors, his roped hands holding the large satchel of projectiles for the LAW 80 and MM-1. The druglord grunted beneath his burden, frequently cursing Grimaldi and Bolan as he hefted the heavy sack up closer to his shoulder.

  Bolan brought up the rear. The M-60 was strapped around his shoulder, and he toted an Uzi SMG. Twice during the past hour he had called a halt to their northward march so that they could burn the leeches off their bodies with cigarette tips. During both stops he had also further interrogated Brennan about the Devil's Horn prison camp. Unwilling, but afraid to refuse, Brennan had drawn a rough diagram of the compound and the surrounding terrain. According to the druglord, the compound and prison camp and the poppy fields that surrounded them were in a large valley just beyond the next chain of hills. Bolan had originally planned to climb that hill to scout out the enemy base. When night fell, he would have penetrated the hellhole, slain the enemy in silence, one by one, then freed the prisoners. He figured he could have pulled it off without too much sweat under other circumstances. But he hadn't counted on the heavy engagement with the Horn's outpost. Security would have been beefed up by now all around the Devil's Horn prison camp. Worse still, he was sure a full-scale hunting party had already been turned loose to track them down.

  Bolan stopped pushing through the thick grass and motioned to the others to stand still. He scanned the savanna and listened. There was a leaden silence over the forested hills and the grassy plain that Bolan didn't trust. It felt too much like the calm before the storm. The complete absence of activity reminded him of death. It was as if death had claimed for itself this chunk of the Thai peninsula.

  If the chain of hills ahead did indeed form a natural barrier around the prison camp, as Brennan claimed, then sentries could be watching them right now, Bolan knew, waiting until the three of them walked right into their arms.

  Fifty yards ahead and to the west, the plain edged off into more teak trees, some mangroves and brush. Bolan gave the go-ahead, and while Grimaldi led the way into the cover off the plain, he checked their rear and flanks. Just ahead were the hills.

  Suddenly, blinking sweat out of his eyes, his teeth gritted from exertion, Ronny Brennan chuckled. "Well, you guys'll be just in time to help reap the harvest. You jerks shouldn't feel too bad, after all, 'cause you didn't come all this way for nothing."

  "Ronny," Bolan said in a patronizing voice, knowing he was just one word away from kicking the punk's butt into the middle of next week, "do yourself a favor. Keep your lips pressed together and your eyes peeled."

  Brennan cursed. "Yeah, sure. Christ, everybody's a tough guy."

  Grimaldi started to forge the way up the hillside, carefully avoiding any obvious paths. It took a full thirty minutes for them to climb the three-hundred-foot slope; their route had been twisting and roundabout and often they had had to hack their way through the brush. Finally, they reached the top of the hill, Bolan and Grimaldi flanking Brennan. Bolan shoved the druglord down onto his stomach, then he and Grimaldi assumed the same position just behind the ridge. Both Bolan and Grimaldi pulled high-powered binoculars out of their rucksacks.

  Bolan adjusted his binocs to the five-hundred-yard distance, and swept his gaze slowly and steadily over the scene below him. Quickly he came to the grim realization that Ronny Brennan had not been exaggerating the facts about the prison camp.

  From all outward appearances, the camp was indeed a hellhole. A thirteen-foot-high wall of bamboo and barbed wire surrounded the prisoner's quarters. Bamboo sentry towers, placed strategically at the four corners of th
e compound, loomed some forty feet over the thatch-roofed huts below them. Scanning the compound, Bolan noted very little activity inside the prison walls — only the sentries in the towers smoking cigarettes as they stood guard behind machine guns mounted on tripods. The real activity was taking place in the poppy fields beyond the prison. There, about one hundred half-naked men appeared to be harvesting the poppies, scraping the bulbs of the plants with long flat knives. Bolan counted fifteen guards, stationed to form a tight ring around the slave labor. They all brandished AK-47s. Bolan read the lips of the guards as they cursed and shouted at the prisoners.

  Then the sound of a whip lashing flesh stung the air, and one of the prisoners fell under a punishing beating by an irate guard.

  Grimaldi flinched as he laid down his binoculars. "Jesus! What have we walked into, Striker?"

  Bolan knew, for damn sure. "Hell, friend, we've walked right into hell."

  "Those look like they might be Americans down there," Grimaldi said. "POWs, maybe? MIAs?"

  "If they are, Jack, they're going home." He turned to Brennan. "Well, Ronny, how about it? You've been here before. Just where do your bosses get their help?"

  "I told ya, jerk. From all over. Yeah, there's American dogfaces down there, left over from Nam. With all the flak that's been goin' on about our boys being left behind in Southeast Asia, Saigon got the perfect alibi delivered right on their doorstep, courtesy of the Devil's Horn. For a few dollars more and a little cut of the opium trade, Saigon hand-delivers whatever Americans survived their camps. The rest of those people... hell, I dunno. Peasants, maybe. Kidnap victims, for sure. Diplomats or Thais who maybe ran off at the mouth, tried to rock the boat. This, pal, is their reform school."

  "Well, school's just about to be let out," Bolan said, tight-lipped. He could only begin to imagine the horror, the years of suffering those men down there had lived through — those who had been fortunate enough to live. Or was it the ones who had escaped through death who were fortunate? Being imprisoned by one's enemies, stripped of any means with which to fight back, was an experience that Bolan was all too familiar with, an experience in futility and desperation that he didn't care to know ever again.

  Returning his attention to the valley below, Bolan spotted a huge, white-walled palace, perched on a hill at the far northern edge of the valley. He felt his teeth set on edge. So near to all that squalor and suffering, the fat cats of the Horn overlooked hell from some artificial heaven, some ivory tower, keeping themselves shielded from the misery they inflicted on others. Bolan's guts twisted with rage. He wanted a piece of those guys. In the worst way.

  Brennan must have seen the expression on Bolan's face. He gestured in the direction of the distant palace. "That's where the bigtimers are, jerks. That's where the king sits on his throne — Jonathan Torquemandan."

  "Torquemandan?" Grimaldi queried.

  "Yeah, you heard me right. Like Frey Tomas de Torquemada, the famed Spanish Inquisitor."

  "I wasn't aware you knew so much about the history of torture, you creep," Grimaldi commented.

  "Hey, what the hell? You think I'm stupid, or somethin'? I know a lot of stuff. I know Torquemandan ain't the guy's real name, you know. He's a former spook, he established the Horn about the time of the fall of Saigon. I've met the guy. Spook ain't no — whattaya call it — misnomer, yeah. The guy's a ghoul. He makes like a big Inquisitor in his own right. Likes to see guys bleed, squirm. He's big on statistics, too. He can tell ya how many men died in all the big wars.

  "But he sure does like Torquemada for some reason. Hell," Brennan continued with a chuckle, "you get the feeling if there were posters of that guy at work in his torture chamber, old Johnny would snatch up every last one of them to decorate his walls. Whatever you wanna know about Torquemada, old Johnny can tell ya. He says Torquemada burned 10,220 people, that the inquisitors killed a total of 200,000 people during the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He makes it all sound like some kind of sport. Yeah, he's real big on that Spanish inquisition shit, and if you're around him for a while, you'll have to listen to it."

  "Like hell," Bolan muttered, knowing right away just what kind of cannibal he was dealing with in Torquemandan. The kind who would make turkeys out of innocents, carve the flesh off a victim's skin until there was nothing left but a raw, quivering mass, something that was unrecognizable as a human being. Yeah, Bolan had seen that more than once, too. People he'd loved and cared about. He wanted to rip the memory out of his mind with his own two hands — like the removal of a foreign object that's causing some festering sore — if only he could. And now, this bag of slime, this piece of human shit that was Ronny Brennan was sitting there talking about torture as if murder and mutilation were pastimes reserved for a privileged few to inflict on their victims.

  A sudden, though faint whapping bleat roused Bolan from the rage Brennan's recital had aroused.

  "Striker!" Grimaldi cried out.

  Bolan snapped his head sideways, his ears pinpointing the source of the noise instantly. The source of the danger.

  An American-made UH-1H was flying in from the south. From the scene of slaughter at the outpost, Bolan knew. From the direction of their march.

  They'd been found out and tracked.

  But not spotted. Yet.

  The chopper banked, arcing a wide circle over the savanna to the south. A reconnaissance maneuver, Bolan knew. Then the bird straightened out its course, soared nose down toward their hilltop position.

  A killing run, Bolan suspected.

  "C'mon, let's move it down into the brush!" he growled. He grabbed Brennan, yanked the druglord to his feet.

  The chopper lowered, angling over the treetops that patched the foothills.

  Bolan looked up, saw the M-60 and its gunner in the doorway of the fuselage.

  Brennan twisted violently, wrenching himself away from Bolan's grasp. The druglord ran to the crest of the hill, waving his arms wildly. "Hey! Hey! Up here! Up here!"

  Bolan cursed. Like a bolt of lightning, he dashed after Brennan. With all the pent-up anger he'd been feeling toward the punk since their first encounter, the Executioner buried a pile-driving fist into Brennan's midriff. The punk belched air, doubled over.

  Bolan heard the whine of rotor blades. It was too late. They'd been spotted.

  A staccato burst of M-60 fire opened up from the Huey's doorway. Bolan dragged Brennan off the crest of the hill, shoving him so that he rolled head-over-heels down the slope and tumbled into the cover of brush. A line of 7.62 slugs stitched the rise behind Bolan, missing him.

  The Huey angled, strafed down over the crest. Grimaldi opened up with his M-16, tattooed the hull of the Huey with 7.62 mm NATO slugs, sending the warbird screaming, nose-heavy, away from his deadly line of raking fire. It hovered at a point near the end of the ridge.

  Meanwhile Bolan jumped down behind the cover of a cluster of bushes and fallen trees. Looking up, he saw a short figure in dark green step into the Huey's doorway, holding a mike. A megaphone boomed out the angry demand of surrender.

  "Ferang! Give up! It is no use! One hundred soldiers are now on the way. They will begin climbing the hill any second from both sides. You will be surrounded. If you do not surrender immediately, you will be annihilated. This is your only warning. You have five seconds to throw down your weapons and step up to the ridge. Do not be stupid!"

  Beads of sweat broke from Grimaldi's forehead as he turned and looked at Bolan. "What now, Mack? We can't do those prisoners any good out here."

  "Or if we're dead," Brennan rasped, gasping for breath. "Do like he says, damn you! Give up. Don't be stupid."

  Bolan knew Jack was right. On the other hand, what was to stop the warlord and his mercenary army from torturing, then killing, both of them as soon as they surrendered? As for Brennan... well, that guy just wanted to save his own rotten skin. At this point, the creep had gotten them as far as he could, and Bolan could not have cared less about what happened to Brennan now
. Still, there was the mission, the destruction of the Devil's Horn, the removal of their pipeline and its poison from the face of the earth forever. There would be no recon or hard probe from here on in, Bolan knew. Hell no. So as far as he was concerned, there was only one possible alternative.

  Fight it out. Strike the enemy dead. Punch a gaping hole in that offensive ring of guns. Breakout. Retreat. Regroup. Riposte.

  Bolan looked Grimaldi dead in the eye. "I think you know the answer already, Jack."

  A grim smile cut Grimaldi's lips. He nodded.

  Brennan snarled. "You stupid asses!" He whipped his head around, looked out across the savanna. "Look at that, you fuckin' heroes!"

  Bolan was already looking. And he had the numbers sized up.

  Two armored personnel carriers with mounted machine guns and recoilless rifles on the turrets surged across the grassy plain. Sixty or seventy soldiers of the Devil's Horn mercenary army swept across the savanna, spreading out in a ragged skirmish line. Bolan spotted three more APCs and supporting infantry cutting through the wide break in the chain of hills to the east, moving into position to storm the hill from behind. AK-47s held at port arms, the mercenary army looked to Bolan as if they were waiting for word from the guy in the Huey. It was obvious to Bolan, at any rate, that the mercenaries' objective was the hill. Already the first wave of that force had reached the foothills. Bolan heard the snap of twigs, the crackle of underbrush being trampled under boots.

  The enemy would be there within minutes.

  Bolan handed Grimaldi the sack of projectiles and the MM-1. "Hit the ridge, Jack, when I tell you. If they're coming up the other side..."

  "Gotcha, big guy. Mow 'em down. I wonder if this is how Napoleon felt at Waterloo?"

  "Or maybe the friggin' Duke at the Alamo," Brennan rasped. "This ain't playtime, ya dicks! This ain't no history lesson! Christ, you guys make me sick! My ass is on the line! My..."