His instinct soon proved to be correct.
He saw shadows ahead slide behind several of his men, saw the flash of steel as it reflected the shafts of moonlight that broke through the jungle canopy. He heard the brief cries of fear and pain. Autofire shattered the silence as his men panicked and raked the brush with long bursts from their AK-47s. Then he saw muzzle-flashes spearing the darkness on both sides of his troops. One by one, his men reeled to the side of the trail as the lethal fire pinched them in from the flanks. Their death screams hung in the air around Kam Chek, echoing their agony.
Kam Chek realized he could not stay where he was. He would be massacred next.
He turned, angling off the trail into the deep jungle. He cursed Torquemandan, more determined than ever now to skewer the cowardly ferang for sending him and his men to their deaths.
Then, before Kam Chek's eyes, the night exploded.
An orange stream of fire blazed from the darkness, scorched straight toward his face.
"No-o-o-o!" Kam Chek shrieked. The dragon's tongue of flames washed over him.
* * *
Mack Bolan stepped out of the darkness. His tall figure was a dark gray silhouette in the moonlight. Then he was illuminated by a fiery glow, his face so battered it resembled a grim mask as he cautiously approached the human torch that was Kam Chek.
The Executioner watched Kam Chek burn. The stench of frying flesh was almost overpowering. Justice was being meted out in this most horrible of deaths. The images of the men Kam Chek had butch- . ered without a qualm were seared into Bolan's mind. Kam Chek was getting exactly what he deserved.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bolan saw the men of his strike force move cautiously from the brush. They had won this victory over their longtime tormentor. They, too, watched in silence as Kam Chek thrashed on the ground, trying to smother the flames that engulfed him. They savored the moment.
Shrieking like a banshee, Kam Chek slapped at his face and head. Then he noticed the onlookers. He bolted to his feet, attempted to run away from the men he had punished so unmercifully for so long, as if their witnessing his agony was the final disgrace.
Bolan swept up the samurai sword, which had fallen to the trail. Fisting the sword in a two-handed grip, he took three long strides toward the burning demon. With a mighty swipe of the blade, fueled by disgust, rage and black vengeance, the Executioner severed Kam Chek's head from his shoulders. The head thudded to the ground, rolled several feet, then came to rest in front of Bolan, a ball of fire. The rest of Kam Chek's body convulsed in death throes, then toppled to the ground, ramrod stiff, crushing a clump of jungle plants.
Bolan let the sword fall from his hands.
Bruno Polanski stepped from the brush beside the blazing lump of flesh. The nozzle of the flamethrower gleamed silver, catching flickers of the fire.
The head and body of Kam Chek shriveled up, were reduced in minutes to ashes and blackened bone fragments.
Grim-faced, the Executioner turned away, and silently led the shadowy procession of avengers through the jungle toward the village.
22
In the village, Torquemandan heard the terrible shrieks of a man in agony. Under other circumstances, he would have relished the sound of that scream. But a chill went down his spine. He recognized the voice, even as it cried out in pain. Kam Chek. Something had happened to Kam Chek. And he feared the worst.
Bolan would be coming for him next. It was time for him to leave Khang and the others to whatever fate they might suffer. He did not care if they lived or died.
Concerned only with returning to his palace and salvaging what was left from the ruins of his empire, Torquemandan made sure that Khang's back was turned to him, that the other members of the Devil's Horn, in their moment of terror, were ignoring him now. As the warlord and the white suits looked out into the street, Torquemandan slipped through the back doorway of the hut. His heart thumping in his ears, he darted into the gloom between the areca palms. Almost at once he angled away from the village, moving along the western fringes behind the huts. Each minute seemed to crawl by as his every thought turned to flight. His sights set on the only remaining troop carrier, he ran in a crouch toward the vehicle. When he reached his objective, he quietly opened the transport truck's door, started to climb into the cab.
Then he felt cold iron pressing against his spine. He froze.
"Were you going somewhere, Mon Général? Perhaps back to the palace?" The voice was Khang's. There was anger in that voice, the sound of a man betrayed, a man who was quite prepared to commit murder.
The passenger door opened and Davis hopped up into the cab. The Colt .45 in his steady hand was an inch from Torquemandan's face.
"Get in, Mon Général," Khang ordered, jabbing the muzzle of his Tokarev against Torquemandan's spine. "We will all go together. We will all benefit from this terrible tragedy, oui?"
Torquemandan hesitated and looked at Davis. The fucking punk! he thought. He actually has the balls to smile at me!
Torquemandan considered spinning around, knocking the gun out of Khang's hand, then making a desperate lunge at Davis. But he would be dead, he knew, before Khang hit the ground.
As Torquemandan's mind raced in a desperate search for a way out of his predicament, autofire suddenly ripped the night. Shadows stormed into the north end of the village. Then Torquemandan saw figures in white suits spill from the doorway of the largest hut in the village.
The suits were no longer white.
They were stained red with blood.
"Move! Now!" Khang snapped, and shoved Torquemandan into the cab.
* * *
Crouching behind the corner of a hut, Bolan hosed down three of Khang's mercenaries with a burst from his Uzi. From across the street, Grimaldi fired on the enemy, his M-16 stuttering out lethal rounds, clipping four of the savages as they attempted to flee the killzone.
Then Bolan and Grimaldi saw the reason for the hasty, pell-mell retreat of their opponents.
The troop carrier lurched into gear, its engine rumbling to life as it rolled down the trail. The armored carrier bucked into second gear, angling away from Bolan's line of lethal tracking fire. The driver was safe for the moment, but not for long, Bolan thought. He wanted to keep those rats from escaping any way he could. He triggered the Uzi in a sweeping ground-level burst that blew out the front and back tires on the driver's side, popping rubber into limp tread. But it was not enough. The truck lumbered through a series of ruts, careening toward a line of trees, but then the driver straightened out the rig, throwing the front end off its collision course at the last possible second.
The troop carrier disappeared down the trail.
Bolan cursed.
"Mack!"
Alerted by Grimaldi's anxious voice, Bolan saw three mercenaries racing for a hut in the very center of the village. He read desperation in the enemy's breakneck speed to reach that hut. The hostages. The enemy's trump card.
Bolan broke from cover as the men of his strike force poured into the street from all points on the compass. Several of the remaining mercenaries pleaded with the freed prisoners to spare their lives. Their plea was denied. They were shot where they stood, their hands above their heads.
Flinging aside the Uzi and drawing the AutoMag, Bolan closed on the targeted hut. He bounded up the bamboo stoop as the last mercenary through the doorway whirled to face him. Bolan cannoned a .44 round that tunneled a gaping hole in that barbarian's chest, flinging him back through the doorway.
Screams of pure terror ripped from inside the hut. Women's and children's screams.
Bolan acted with blinding speed. Surging through the doorway, he locked deathsights on the two mercenaries who were making a final bid to save themselves, again at the expense of innocent lives.
Through the wavering sheen of torchlight, Bolan saw the frightened tearstained faces of the hostages. Their brown, half-naked bodies packed together, they were kneeling in the middle of the hut, as if praying for del
iverance.
Bolan answered those prayers, squeezed Big Thunder's trigger twice.
Two deafening peals.
Two heads exploding in black eruptions of bone, blood and brains.
Two corpses blasting through the flimsy grass walls, catapulting into the darkness beyond.
Bolan checked the villagers. No one appeared injured, just shaken badly by the time bomb of death that had detonated before them. A second later, as the killing shots gave way to total silence, Bolan read the relief, the gratitude in the eyes of the Thai people.
During his campaigns in the killing fields of Southeast Asia, Bolan had learned a smattering of Vietnamese, Lao, Burmese and Thai.
In Thai, Bolan told the hostages that their suffering was over. Kam Chek and his soldiers were dead. They had nothing to fear anymore, and could get on with their lives.
Bolan moved back out into the street, where Grimaldi quickly informed him that there was no sign of Torquemandan or Khang in the village. Some of the savages were still at large.
The free men of Bolan's strike force gathered around the Stony Man warriors.
Bolan looked at Tremain. He noted the weariness in the ex-CIA agent's eyes. These men had won their war, they had broken out of the bonds of their captivity. Bolan had shown them the way, and he read the appreciation, the respect on every face before him. They were ready to leave behind the hell they had endured for so many years. Ready, yeah, to pick up the pieces and begin a new life.
But for Bolan, the war was not yet over. Not by a long shot.
"Tremain," Bolan said, "Grimaldi and I are going after Torquemandan and Khang, but the battle's over for you and these men. We still don't know whether that relief force is on its way. I figure if we burn down Torquemandan's house it may just break the backs of whoever's left over. That transport truck should get you and the others to Bangkok okay. Can you take it from here?"
Tremain nodded, his eyes sparking with a look of renewed determination. He offered his hand to Bolan, and Bolan shook it.
"Any chance we might get together for a brew back in the States, Sergeant?" Bruno Polanski smiled.
"There's always that chance," Bolan answered, then quickly turned, put that group of brave soldiers behind him. "Maybe...someday," he mumbled to himself. Though it didn't seem likely. Then, for a second, he entertained the thought of seeing those men again. They were survivors, but they were more than that. They were soldiers who had fought the good fight, and the world needed more men like that. Courageous men who had endured, and whose actions would live on as an example for others to follow.
Then, with Grimaldi at his heels, Bolan began to run across the plain, heading back to the jeep.
The night was still alive with savages.
* * *
Bolan released a tongue of fire from the flamethrower. The pools of gas beneath the transport trucks loaded with heroin ignited in a roaring blaze. Karn and the other free men watched from distant safety, clustered around the supply truck, while Grimaldi emptied a jerry can into the jeep's fuel tank, getting it ready for the final huntdown.
A series of explosions lifted the burning trucks off their wheels, as hunks of metal ripped away from the fiery mass. Bolan turned away from the raging wall of fire, satisfied that the cleaning inferno would do its purifying work on the poison it was consuming. The Executioner's sweat-slick face glowed in the dancing firelight.
Bolan looked toward the group of freed men crowded around the supply truck. He started to walk toward them with some final words of encouragement and farewell. But he never got there. Suddenly, he saw Grimaldi yanked back toward the side of the jeep as a dark figure sprang up from behind the .50 caliber machine gun. There was a flash of white teeth bared in a feral snarl, then Grimaldi was fighting for his life, pinned against the side of the jeep as the whip tightened a binding hold around his neck.
For an instant, Bolan considered grabbing the flamethrower pack, then rejected the idea because of its cumbersome weight. He drew the AutoMag. As he was directly behind Grimaldi's attacker, he took several steps to the side, angling for a clear killing shot.
Then, in the radiant sheen of firelight, Bolan recognized the attacker. Mongkut.
Desperately, Grimaldi clawed at Mongkut's face, groping for his eyes.
Bolan steadied his aim with a two-handed grip. The AutoMag bucked, roaring out a 240-grain slug. The .44 thunderscreamer muzzled a true line at 1640 fps, with muzzle energy of 1455 pounds. Big Thunder's flesh shredder decapitated Mongkut, the impact flipping the corpse over Grimaldi's head.
Bolan ran to Grimaldi, and found he had delivered the headbursting shot not a second too soon. As Grimaldi struggled to stand up, Bolan helped him. Bracing himself against the side of the jeep, Grimaldi gagged for several moments before the color began returning to his face.
"Dammit, Striker," Grimaldi said, coughing, "how about a little vacation after this? All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, y'know?"
Bolan grinned, but the expression vanished as soon as it touched his lips. A little R and R sounded good, but not yet. Not until they had toppled the walls of Torquemandan's kingdom for good. Forever.
"You got it, Jack," Bolan told Grimaldi, helping him into the jeep. "Can you go one more round, guy?"
Grimaldi sucked in several deep breaths as he climbed in beside Bolan.
"Let's take it in, Striker. All the way for the knockout punch."
That was exactly what Bolan wanted to hear.
No. Strike that. Exactly what he expected to hear.
* * *
Bolan guided the jeep down the trail, the same trail that was stained with the blood of all the men who had died there. So needlessly. So damn senselessly. With vengeance driving him on, Bolan was determined to catch Torquemandan and hold him accountable: for his greed, for his savagery, for the unforgivable atrocities he had committed or had had others commit for him. Any way you sliced it, Torquemandan was still a cannibal.
It took a little more than an hour of hard riding over the rugged, winding trail, but Bolan finally caught up with the armored troop carrier. With two of its wheels shot to hell, the driver of that getaway vehicle had to struggle to keep the rig on a straight and steady course.
Bolan sent the jeep surging ahead in high gear. "Get ready, Jack!"
Manning the .50 caliber machine gun, Grimaldi swung the long muzzle up and straight ahead, gently moving the maneater on its tripod mount and into target acquisition on the troop carrier.
Bolan hit the high beams. The twin lines of light widened, sweeping over the rear of the troop carrier. First, he cut the gap to within forty yards, then bearing down hard, he closed the distance another twenty feet.
Bolan and Grimaldi waited.
Then the trail wound to the left, presenting the driver's side of the APC to Grimaldi for a clear line of fire.
Grimaldi cut loose with the machine gun. Shell casings whirled around his bruised, swollen face. Smoke and flame poured out the muzzle as the maneater pounded out its furious, deadly payload.
Bolan twisted the wheel, following the bend in the trail. The jeep bounced in and out of a rut, causing Grimaldi to lose his balance for a second, and to release the machine gun's trigger reflexively.
Quickly the pilot resumed his hellish spraying of the troop carrier.
The jeep's high beams washed over the cab of the troop carrier as its front windshield exploded in a shower of glass. Slugs ricocheted like angry buzzing hornets off armor plating.
Then the troop carrier slewed off the trail. A second later, metal rended as the nose end of the armored truck bulled through a stand of teak trees. Bits of brush and battered tree bark shot away from the rampaging rig as it hit a hump in the jungle floor and flipped onto its side.
Bolan braked the jeep. He left the engine running and the lights on. They bathed the crumpled hulk in glaring white.
Grimaldi leaped out of the jeep, an M-16 in his hands.
With Big Thunder filling his fist, Bolan ran t
oward the capsized wreck. It was time to finish off the vile quarry.
The driver's door opened, sticking up into the air.
Bolan hit a combat crouch.
Khang burst through the opening, swearing, frantically squeezing off rounds with his Tokarev.
Two slugs whined off the trail, blazing wide of Bolan and Grimaldi. Khang's last desperate stand was about to come to an end and Bolan's AutoMag roared at the same time that Grimaldi's M-16 stammered out a 3-round killing charge. The combined leadpower blasted open Khang's chest, lifting him out of the doorway with muzzle punch that sent him somersaulting jerkily over the roof.
Cautiously, listening for any signs of life inside the cab, Bolan moved up on the troop carrier with Grimaldi right behind him.
"Don't shoot! Please! It's finished!"
Bolan recognized the voice. Davis. The King Rat.
"He's dead! Torquemandan's dead! It's over! I surrender!"
A second later, two trembling hands, then Davis's head, poked up through the open doorway. Fresh rage surged through Bolan at the sight of the rodent.
"Cover me, Jack," Bolan said. He slipped the AutoMag inside his belt. With Davis still frozen in his position of surrender in the doorway, Bolan hooked his hands over the metal lip above the front fender. Stifling a groan of pain as his injuries made themselves felt, Bolan hauled himself up onto the fender.
He looked past the dangling shards of glass into the cab of the APC. There was no sign of Torquemandan.
"He's on the floor," Davis blurted. "He broke his neck, I think."
Bolan stepped off the fender, straddled the doorway. Davis looked up at him, shaking with fear. The Executioner drove the heel of his boot hard, stomping on that face. There was a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage as Bolan pulped Davis's nose.
Howling in pain, both hands clutching at his face, Davis tumbled back into the cab.
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