"Y-yeah, sure, Mr. Torquemandan, whatever you say."
Brennan held out his hands. Torquemandan looked at the ropes around the New York druglord's hands, then raked a gaze over his soiled clothes, his battered, bloodied face. Torquemandan's nostrils twitched as if some stench was assaulting his nose, then coughed. Finally, he jerked a nod at Kam Chek.
Kam Chek grunted, slid his samurai sword from its scabbard. Wheeling in front of Brennan, Kam Chek bared his teeth in a feral snarl, raised the sword above his head and brought it down before Brennan in the blink of an eye. Brennan shut his eyes, screaming in terror, certain his head was about to be split open. Then Ronny the Top Dog Brennan opened his eyes, saw the shredded ends of rope dangling from his wrists. The space between Brennan's hands had been less than a half-inch. Kam Chek had driven the sword through the ropes without drawing a drop of blood. His mouth agape, Brennan stared at his hands, astonished, then relieved.
Kam Chek burst out in laughter, then stopped laughing just as abruptly.
Torquemandan smiled at Bolan. "So, this is Mack Bolan. The feared Executioner. Sergeant Mercy, I believe they called you in Vietnam... hmm. And who is this?" he asked, looking at Grimaldi.
Grimaldi stood in silence.
"That's his fu-pilot, Mr. Torquemandan," Brennan answered, rubbing his wrists. "His name's Grimaldi, big hotshot fly-boy. Thinks he's the Red Baron or somethin'. Until you guys blew the wing off his pet project. Some kind of warbird, a Lear jet, I think. Yeah, they busted me up in New York, all right, thought they were real tough. Look at 'em now, huh. Heroes. Big, tough guys, yeah."
Torquemandan drew a breath. In a patronizing voice, he told the New York drug czar, "Mr. Brennan, you are excused. There is a servant there on the patio. He will show you to your room. Get cleaned up and I shall speak with you later."
Brennan appeared to shrink at Torquemandan's words of dismissal. Like a whelp, Bolan thought, that's just been beaten by its master. Without protest, Brennan departed.
Torquemandan turned his attention to Bolan but remained silent for a moment as if considering what he should do with the Executioner and Grimaldi.
Bolan read the madness in Torquemandan's eyes. He had seen that look many times before. The look of a ravager, a cannibal who has built an empire, a house of cards on the flesh and blood of other people. Such a guy cherished what he had, kept a tight grip on his life — which he believed was more valuable and worthy than other men's lives — but suspected, feared, that in the end he would be less worthy than the poorest of men.
Yeah, Bolan knew the look, all right. How many Mafia thieves and butchers had he sent into the void wearing that plastic face? When a man lived like shit, Bolan had observed over and over again, in the end that was all he would be. Shit. Gloss over the manipulations with an infinite bank account, shield the house of cards with material wealth, cover the fakery and arrogance with the peacock feathers of one who has degraded others to enrich himself. Without backbone, without the will to do the right thing, Bolan knew, power or material success, all meant nothing. In fact, they meant less than nothing. In the meantime, though, a proud, ball-less peacock like Torquemandan would keep on savaging the good and the decent and the innocent. He would keep piling cards on top of his roof. One of these days, though, Bolan thought, such a man would draw the joker. The joker in the deck with the death's head and the maggot-dripping sickle.
Torquemandan clasped his hands behind his back. "Tales of your exploits, Mack Bolan, reach far and wide. I have followed your, uh, crusade through my contacts in the CIA. In fact, I have always hoped that someday our paths would cross. Particularly after the unfortunate affair with John Engels."
Bolan remembered well the renegade CIA operative who had run a drugs-and-arms pipeline from his stronghold in the wastelands of New Mexico. Bolan had dealt Engels the grim joker. If he had suspected that Torquemandan was the mastermind behind the Engels pipeline, Bolan would have gotten to Thailand sooner. A lot sooner.
"You are a man of great strength and courage, Bolan," Torquemandan continued. "I wish I had more like you under my employ. Perhaps, in time, you will come to change your allegiance?"
"I doubt it."
Torquemandan flashed Bolan a crooked grin. "I see. Very well. I've been considering what to do about the two of you and have now reached a decision. It's harvest time for our poppy crop, gentlemen, and we need all the help we can get to work the fields. You will join the other prisoners in the work of the harvest, under the supervision of Khang and Kam Chek here. You will be treated like the rest, or rather, you will be treated worse than they are. In several days, you will march with the others to Bangkok, carrying the harvest to our laboratories there.
"Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to escape. Several have tried, and they all have met the most unfortunate of ends. For the rebels among our inmate population we have reserved a very special place. It is called, simply, the Black Room. See that you obey. See to it that you do not cause any trouble at all. If a man survives to leave the Black Room alive, then he has been reduced to something less than a vegetable. Useless. Mindless. He is usually shot, or impaled, shortly thereafter.
"I do not kill you right away for one very good reason, Bolan, and one reason only. Your crusade has damaged links in my pipeline, has created something of a panic in the less stout-hearted individuals within the Devil's Horn organization. I mean that you have cost me men, time and money. Harvesting the crop will be your temporary reprieve from a worse punishment. In blood, sweat and pain, you will earn me back what you have cost me by your crusade."
Torquemandan suddenly turned to Khang and snapped, "Khang, casualty report."
"We do not know yet, sir," came the reply. "My guess is between one hundred and one hundred and fifty killed and wounded."
A dangerous rage burned in Torquemandan's eyes. "Find out the numbers before sundown, Khang. When you do, take Bolan and Grimaldi. Tie them up in the square, then assemble the other prisoners. You know how it is always done. For every man that has been killed or wounded, you will administer a blow to Bolan and Grimaldi in turn. Use both whip and fist."
"Yes, sir!"
Torquemandan looked at Bolan for another stretched second. "I don't like what I see in your eyes, Bolan. I suspect you are harboring thoughts of vengeance. You won't, uh, be feeling so heroic come sundown, I assure you. Get them out of my sight!" he growled at Khang.
The guards closed on Bolan and Grimaldi, grabbed them by the shoulders and shoved them toward the steps.
Bolan clenched his teeth. He would bide his time, he vowed. At the moment, he was just another card in Torquemandan's house.
But that was going to change, he told himself.
A black storm began to build in Mack Bolan's heart.
* * *
Bolan and Grimaldi got a taste of prison life under the scourge of Kam Chek's whip right away. As soon as the captives were ushered between the rows of poppy plants, guards descended on them like vultures on carrion. Savagely, the guards ripped the shirts off the backs of the two new prisoners, their long-fingernailed, dirt-grimed fingers slicing over flesh like talons, gouging out skin from the backs of Bolan and Grimaldi.
Rage continued burning ever hotter in Bolan's guts. He looked at the six Oriental mercs, their AK-47s trained toward his chest. There was no way out, he told himself, calming his fury to cold steel in his belly. It looked bad. In Grimaldi's eyes he saw the same impotent wrath he himself was experiencing. He could feel the eyes of the other prisoners on his bared, bleeding back.
Kam Chek screamed at the prisoners to return to their work.
Whips cracked through the air.
Bolan winced as the metal-studded tip of the whip tore into his back between his shoulder blades. He turned, hate blazing in his eyes as he looked at Kam Chek.
"Ferang!" the long-haired Oriental thug shouted. "Get to work. There is no loafing here. We give you no time to stand around and feel sorry for yourself, you miserable white pig!"
&nb
sp; A warm trickle of blood rolled down Bolan's back. The sun blazed, sinking on its waning arc toward the mountains in the west. Bolan felt the sun's fire on his shoulders already — like knives digging into his skin.
A guard threw two knives between Bolan and Grimaldi.
"Ferangs!" Kam Chek barked. "You will be shown only once what to do. Listen."
Bolan and Grimaldi picked up the knives.
"What I wouldn't give to drive this through his guts!" Grimaldi whispered to Bolan.
Kam Chek's whip sizzled through the air, cracked off Grimaldi's cheek like a pistol shot. Blood welled up in the welt on Grimaldi's face, then burst like a bubble and poured down his cheek.
With an iron will hardened by years of suffering and hardship, Bolan kept a tight rein on his impulse to charge at Kam Chek and rip his throat out. Grimaldi trembled with rage, took a half step toward Kam Chek. Bolan dropped a hand over Grimaldi's shoulder. It was enough. Grimaldi got his anger under control. He was not about to commit suicide, as a half-dozen AK-47s swung his way.
"Watch!" Kam Chek shouted in his usual staccato manner.
One of the prisoners, a tall man whose skin hung in folds off his protruding bones, was shoved toward Bolan and Grimaldi. Quickly, with fingers that worked with a speed and dexterity that surprised Bolan, the prisoner demonstrated the technique of harvesting the poppy plants. He began cutting a series of shallow incisions across a poppy bulb with his curved knife. A white sap began to seep out of the slits, congealing on the surface of the bulb, where its white color changed to a brownish-black. Swiftly but carefully, the prisoner scraped the seepage off the bulb and into a large bucket.
"You must scrape the bulbs completely dry, ferangs!" Kam Chek rasped. "The first time that you let the sap miss the bucket, it is the whip. The second time, it is two lashes, and so on. We do not tolerate sloppiness. Prisoners who are sloppy do not last long around here. Understand?"
Bolan and Grimaldi stood in defiant silence as the prisoner who had given them the demonstration was pushed back to his place in the row.
Kam Chek's gaze narrowed. He squared his shoulders, sucked in a deep breath. "I can see," he said in a low voice, his tone edged with menace, "that I am going to have trouble with you two right away, oui. I will be watching you very carefully, ferangs. Get to work!"
With their curved knives, Bolan and Grimaldi began cutting incisions on the poppy bulbs. Bolan listened attentively as he worked. Apart from the scraping of knives, the scratching of buckets being dragged over dirt, a heavy silence prevailed. A silence that hung in the air with all the oppressive weight that had accumulated on the shoulders of these enslaved men over the years. How in the hell could this place have existed for so long? Bolan wondered. But he knew the answer right away. Somebody had been bought out to keep his mouth shut.
The rage continued to knot Bolan's guts tighter and tighter. While Ronny Brennan had been living like a king in New York City, men had been suffering and dying here in this poppy field. Hardship, grief and, ultimately, death had kept Ronny Brennan in his big penthouse suite, put the fancy expensive threads on his back, imported the finest champagne and wine from France. It was bloodsucking at its ugliest, its vilest. If Mack Bolan had ever had a reason to crush men for their cannibalism, this was it. Here, under the broiling sun of Thailand, with the blood flowing freely down his back, with the threat of constant death held over his head, with the humiliation of imprisonment and the certainty of torture ahead, this was it. Because whatever he suffered, Bolan knew that many others here had gone before him.
There were a lot of tabs that needed paying up.
An hour passed. Time, though, Bolan sensed, meant very little here. Every minute of every hour of every day would be filled with the same routine. Violent death and torture would be the only break in that routine. He found his mind becoming shrouded with gloom. There would be a way out, he told himself. The time would come. He would know when the time was right. And he would act. But first he would have to reach some of the other prisoners. He could not revolt against Kam Chek and his mercenaries alone, and hope to win.
Suddenly, Bolan heard a groan, a pitiful but piercing sound, like that of a wounded animal slumping down in its death throes. He looked up and saw a prisoner topple to the ground. The man was four feet away, between Bolan and three other prisoners in front, behind and on the other side of him. Not one of the three moved to help their fallen comrade, didn't even look at the motionless, emaciated, sun-blackened heap. What the hell is this? Bolan wondered. But he knew. Through fear of death, the brutal guards had crushed even the last crumbs of humanity out of these men. They had been reduced to something below the level of animals; they had become automatons.
Bolan dropped his knife. He bent over the fallen man, whose shriveled lips trembled open.
"W-water... p-please... w-water..."
"Easy, guy," Bolan said, biting down a curse. He could tell that this man was going to die soon, very soon. Dehydration. Heatstroke. The prisoner's skin was hot and dry to Bolan's touch, his pulse rapid. The guy was burning up. He needed shade, had to be wetted down.
Bolan looked up, about to ask one of the guards to give him a hand. Then he saw Kam Chek striding toward him, realized at last just how naive his actions must have looked to the other prisoners. But as far as Bolan was concerned, when a man stopped caring he was better off dead.
"Ferang!" Kam Chek screamed. "Get away from him! Get away!"
The whip cracked through the air behind Bolan. It bit like a snakebite into his flesh, once, twice.
Three times was enough.
Bolan sprung, his hand snapping out in a blur of speed. He caught the whip in one hand, a move that left the guard holding it frozen in astonishment. And fear. Bolan looked that guard dead in the eye, and the guy seemed to shrivel up inside of himself.
His arm muscles ripped and rippling, Bolan tugged on the whip, drew the guard a half step toward him. The guard's jaw went slack, as if he was about to scream for mercy, for rescue before being hurled into the abyss.
Steel flashed through the air.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bolan saw the blade streaking toward him, falling, it seemed, straight from the sky. He knew he couldn't react fast enough to avoid the death blow.
"Mack! No!" Grimaldi hollered.
The sword sliced through the strained leather of the whip. Bolan toppled backward into the poppy plants. He looked up at Kam Chek, who wore an expression of demonic fury. AK-47 toting guards swarmed behind Kam Chek.
"I could just as easily have killed you, ferang. Next time, I will. You get one warning. A man falls in the field, you are to leave him where he lies. Do not touch him. Do not even look at him. The second offense is punishable by death. Get up, ferang," Kam Chek whispered menacingly.
Slowly, Bolan stood. He glimpsed the relief on Grimaldi's face, heard his sigh.
Then a strange gleam lit up Kam Chek's eyes. The long-haired Oriental mercenary smiled. "General Khang has returned. You and your friend are to accompany me. Now."
Kam Chek chuckled.
Bolan felt blood from the new welts on his back dribbling under the waistband of his pants. He looked at the fallen prisoner.
Vacant eyes stared back at him. Flies buzzed in and out of the man's open mouth.
13
Shortly after sundown, four guards marched Bolan and Grimaldi into the prison courtyard. Kam Chek had ordered that all the prisoners be assembled, and his soldiers had rounded up the inmate population and lined them up in front of their thatch-roofed huts. They were now shackled, hand and foot, in chains. They stood slouched, slumped, utterly still. They were shells of the men they had once been, so very long ago.
With the setting of the sun, deep shadows had begun stretching over the prison. Klieg lights had been turned on, bathing the bamboo, barbed wire and huts in a pale white sheen. Birds chirped and cawed from the surrounding jungle. The sky, fading slowly from gray to black, hung over the prison like some misty velvet curtain.
As he was led to the bamboo stakes, Bolan expected the worst, steeled himself for the inevitable agony of the punishment that was to be meted out. He wouldn't be spared, he knew.
Roughly, cursing Bolan and Grimaldi, the overseers roped the hands of the two men to the poles. Bolan noted the despondency that was beginning to creep into Grimaldi's eyes. He could offer his friend no words of comfort, only a look that he hoped Grimaldi would interpret as stay hard.
Grimaldi gave Bolan a shallow nod, letting Bolan know that the message was received and appreciated.
Chaika Kan Khang, dressed in a spotless green military uniform, stood beside the line of prisoners. He clasped his hands behind his back, jerked a nod at Kam Chek to begin.
"It has been determined by the Khang Imperial Revolutionary Army of All Enslaved Oriental Peoples of Southeast Asia," Kam Chek announced to Bolan and Grimaldi, "that one hundred and six of our comrades have been killed, wounded or are missing." Kam Chek glared grimly at Bolan and Grimaldi.
Bolan thought he heard someone mutter, "Bullshit," but if Kam Chek heard the remark he chose to ignore it.
"We will round off the number of blows to a nice even figure — one hundred, to be divided between the two of you." Kam Chek looked at the prisoners, seemed to search their faces for a moment. "I need volunteers. You. And you." He gestured at two men who were hanging their heads as if in shame. "Step forward."
Guards grabbed the two men he had appointed, shoved them toward Kam Chek. Bolan read the fear in the eyes of those men and saw something else, too. Pity. Bolan knew how the torture would go, and the reasons why it was to be delivered in that way; it was one of the oldest methods of breaking the spirit of an enslaved or imprisoned man. The captors forced their captives to brutalize one another — perhaps hoping to set them at each other's throats, perhaps in an effort to weed out the weak ones, the prisoners that Kam Chek considered inferior, deadweight. It was also a way to let new arrivals to this hell know that they had no friends there, that they could expect no sympathy, no mercy, no consolation or help from the others.
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