Four of the biggest Filipinos Bolan had ever seen emerged from opposite doorways in matching white track suits armed with gold-plated Sterling submachine guns with gold-plated bayonets. They put Bolan’s team in their crosshairs.
De Jong pulled a gold-plated Walther PPK from his smoking jacket and the laser sight printed a red dot on Bolan’s chest where the red hole was about to be. Belle produced a Browning Hi-Power pistol that was cold blue steel and looked to have seen some use. De Jong sighed. “We seem to be having some sort of misunderstanding, Mr. Xhindi.”
“You misunderstand me completely, Mr. De Jong,” Bolan agreed.
De Jong almost looked hopeful. “Oh?”
“I trust you completely.”
“I am very glad to hear that.”
Bolan read his target and chose his words carefully. “You know they call you a playboy, a dilettante, a criminal rock star.”
De Jong smiled. “Now that is some serious sunshine you are pumping up my ass, Xhindi, not that I don’t like it, but—”
“But like you said,” Bolan continued. “You fulfilled your part of the deal to the letter. That is how you survive in this business, except no one survives in this business. That’s how men like you and I last, until we decide to go legit.”
“True.” De Jong frowned in his semi-drunkenness. “So what are you saying?”
“If I didn’t give me up, and you didn’t give me up, who did?”
The gangster’s jaw dropped. “That’s messed up.” He frowned again. “What’s his profit?”
“None,” Bolan replied. “So the question is, what would be his motivation?”
De Jong surged to his feet. “Stinking rat!”
Bolan sighed. “I’m just an Albanian boy trying to make his way in the world, ten thousand kilometers from Tirana and home. I’m easy to give up, but if your associate has been gotten to, and if he’s giving people up? You are part of the chain, De Jong, and once a rat starts squealing, they just squeal louder, and louder and louder.”
De Jong purpled. The concubines cringed. Belle-Belen’s eyes positively gleamed. Her pistol never wavered.
Bolan lit a cigarette. “May I ask you a terrible question?”
“Yeah!” De Jong slopped champagne as he angrily refilled his glass. “You go right ahead!”
“Who is he?”
De Jong stared at Bolan long and hard.
“This cannot go unanswered.” Bolan locked eyes. “Rats require extermination. I think I must kill this man. Best if I do it with your permission, Mr. De Jong. Better still if we are together in this. I have never been to Indonesia.”
De Jong slammed back his flute of champagne. “Well, I have! You want this bastard? I’ll…” De Jong trailed off as Bolan’s attention was drawn to the glass ceiling. “What?”
“You expecting company?”
“I wasn’t expecting you.”
The glass walls and ceilings began to shake and the sound of rotors thundered overhead. Bolan drew his Beretta and rose. His team and Belle-Belen followed suit. Bolan scanned the skies, searching for the chopper. “We’re about to get hit.” Looking around the open, gold-and-glass penthouse, he knew it would be easier than shooting fish in an aquarium. “Kill the lights, and we need bigger guns.”
De Jong jerked his head at one of his gigantic guards. “Pepe! Turn off the lights! Go into my bedroom and get the—”
Glass shattered overhead as a machine gun stitched Pepe from crotch to collar. Shards fell like miniature guillotines and the fey young man screamed as he was slashed from above. A Bell 204 helicopter took a tight orbit overhead and a man in chicken straps hung halfway out the door behind an M-60 machine gun.
Bolan ignored the piece of glass that cut his arm and began squeezing off three round bursts from his Beretta. Rind burned a magazine from his machine pistol into the chopper and Koa fired his .45 as fast as he could pull the trigger. Belle very coolly aimed and fired each shot as though she was at a target range while the three remaining bodyguards sprayed their weapons skyward. Sparks ricocheted off the fuselage and the helicopter banked away into the glow of the skyline.
Bolan spun around as a second chopper thundered overhead. It was a much smaller OH-6. A man leaned out each door firing rifles on full auto. Bolan printed a three-round burst into the starboard assassin, who fell out of the chopper and crashed through the glass roof of De Jong’s master bathroom. Something clattered to the glass-strewed floor. Bolan hurled himself over a couch and roared. “Grenade!”
The golden silk inches above Bolan’s face pulsed as shrapnel tore through it like an invisible scythe. People screamed but Bolan couldn’t tell who. The soldier rolled to one knee and fired his 93-R into the tail boom of the helicopter until it was empty. He took three steps and slid as if to beat the ball to first base as a line of machine gun fire crossed the room. Bolan came to a stop beside Pepe’s ruptured corpse and relieved him of his gold-plated submachine gun. The soldier rose. He knew he was standing in a pool of light by a huge golden lamp. The pilot of the OH-6 saw him leveling his gleaming weapon and made the mistake of trying to bank rather than power forward at full speed.
Bolan burned all thirty rounds into the little helicopter’s cockpit.
Several firearms in the penthouse joined the chorus.
The little egg-shaped helicopter did a 360 spin and came to a violent landing in De Jong’s penthouse swimming pool, the rotors snapping on the cement.
A feminine voice dropped an octave as it screamed in victorious Swedish.
Bolan found a spare magazine on Pepe’s corpse and reloaded. “Koa!” Bolan shouted.
“Yo!”
“Rind!”
“Yeah!”
“Belle!”
“Oh, yeah, baby!”
“De Jong!”
Jagon De Jong came running out of his bedroom with a gold-plated Minimi light machine gun. “Bastards!”
“Your people?”
One giant waddled after his master.
“I got one!”
Bolan intercepted the gangster and ripped the gun out of his hands. “Gimme that.”
De Jong seemed somewhat relieved to give up his weapon. “Okay…”
Bolan noticed the push button on the grip. “You have a gold-plated, laser-sighted light machine gun?”
De Jong shrugged and took up Bolan’s abandoned submachine gun. “Well, yeah.”
Bolan snapped out the left bipod strut for a forward grip and took a knee to turn himself into a human anti-aircraft gun. “Nice.”
“Thanks!”
Bolan checked his new team. Koa had acquired a gleaming submachine gun. So had Belle-Belen. Rind held a Glock machine pistol in either hand and scanned the skies. Having read the agent’s file, Bolan knew that while Rind had used his service pistol before, this was his first genuine battle. “How you doing, Rind?”
Rind grinned and waggled his Glocks at the smoking, bubbling aircraft in the swimming pool. “You said I could put them on full auto if I needed to shoot down a helicopter!”
“That I did.” Bolan lifted his chin at rotor noise. “Three o’clock! Here he comes!”
The helicopter’s lights blinked as it banked in.
Agent Rind’s Glocks began spewing fire. Tracers streamed, seeking out the FBI agent’s life. Everyone else began firing. Bolan waited to see the whites of his enemy’s eyes. The helicopter ignored the incoming fire and swooped in a hard arc with three men firing out the side doors. A fourth man pushed the tube of a rocket launcher between his compatriots.
Bolan ignored rifles and rockets as he painted the engine cowling just below the rotor shaft with the laser sight and burned his one-hundred-round belt of ammo into the chopper’s heart. The helicopter lurched. The assassin’s rocket hissed off-target from its tube an
d sent a geyser up from De Jong’s pool. Two men tumbled out of the doors, missed the pool as well as the roof entirely, and fell screaming to the late-night streets of Ermita below.
Bolan grimaced as he lowered his smoking, empty, golden weapon and watched the chopper boomerang across the sky. Dropping a chopper in one of the most densely populated cities in the world would be a collateral damage disaster. He was infinitely relieved as it scythed into the adjoining skyscraper’s rooftop and broke apart rather than exploded.
Bolan rose and scanned the skies. No more helicopters were coming. Police, fire and the Filipino military would be. De Jong stopped short of pointing his submachine gun at Bolan.
“You seem very military for an Albanian slaver man.”
Bolan looked the Filipino gangster straight in the eye and spoke the truth. “I have fought in Serbia and Croatia. Bosnia was the worst.”
“Jesus…”
Bolan patted the blinged-out, modified and smoking light machine gun he held. “I’m keeping this.”
De Jong nodded. “It looks good on you.”
Chapter 8
On approach to
Soekarno-Hatta International Airport
Bolan’s team flew into Jakarta, Indonesia, in the De Jong family private jet. It wasn’t gold-plated, but the Phenom 300 executive jet was a plush ride and Bolan absolutely approved of the stewardess’s skill with a pistol. Belle sat in the server’s seat and smiled at Bolan in open speculation while she caressed her Frenchies. Koa leaned over. The Hawaiian warrior held up his watch and spoke low. “Time is getting thin, Cooper.”
Bolan knew it. His West Pacific team was on a highly successful rolling war but the home team was in Hawaii, and if the boys weren’t back soon the girls might have hell to pay. “I know.”
“We are out on a limb, and we’re putting good people out on a limb.”
“I know.” Bolan sighed. “You’re one of them.”
“Yeah, I know you know, but what the hell? How did they find out we were in Manila?”
“They didn’t. When I took the Anggun someone decided to take matters into their own hands and clean up any loose ends.”
“You think there’s another cleaning squad heading for Hawaii?”
“Probably already there,” Bolan admitted. “Listen, I need you for twenty-four hours in Indonesia, Koa. After that? You go ahead and break for your people and your Islands. I’ll understand and catch up when and if I can.”
Koa absorbed what that statement meant. “You’re an asshole.”
“Got you gold-plated guns.”
“Yeah.” Koa considered the Sterling in his lap. “You’re still an asshole.”
“I get that a lot.”
“You say that a lot, and I believe you. So what?”
“Tell me you have my six for twenty-four in Jakarta.”
Koa gave Bolan the Hawaiian stone stare. “You fascinate me.”
Rind leaned his head in between the seats. “I’m excited about this plan, and I’m thankful to be a part of it. Let’s do it!”
“I’ll take that as a yes from both of you.” Bolan looked up the tiny aisle. De Jong was snoring away in his seat. His remaining track-suited security walrus, Marwin, sawed logs next to him. Belle eyed the Bolan trio steadily. Bolan winked at her and Belle’s smile lit up the cabin. Bolan grinned. “Where’d you learn to shoot?”
Belle’s voice was a smoky alto that had almost no discernible accent. “Every good Swedish boy does his year of compulsory service in the military. I was in the military police, and I rated expert with pistol and submachine gun.” She caressed her golden Sterling. “It’s not a Carl Gustav, but I like it.”
“You’re a bodyguard?”
“I make adult films. I date very rich men and do bodyguard work. Sometimes I can combine two if not all three. As a bodyguard, I am the last thing a kidnapper expects. Me with a gun? That is the last thing they see.”
Rind grinned. “I like her!”
“Most do,” Belle agreed.
“What do you know about our Indonesian gangster?” Bolan asked.
“Not much.” Belle gave Bolan the glad eye. “What I do know is you’re not an Albanian slaver.”
Bolan eyed the snoring Filipino gangsters in the front of the cabin. Belle hadn’t seemed to have bothered to pass this knowledge on to De Jong, so he didn’t bother denying it.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve dated Albanian gangsters.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, but I was living in Germany then. I was a redhead, and my name was Louise.”
Bolan smiled.
De Jong snorted awake, peered back blearily, grinned, and then rested his head on Marwin’s massive shoulder and went back to whistling and wheezing.
Bolan smiled at the scientifically constructed feminine pulchritude in front of him. “You’re a sweet girl.”
Belle smirked. “Sweet, hell.”
“You want out?”
“Out? Of this mission?”
“No.” Bolan lifted his chin at De Jong. “I mean out.”
Belle’s eyes went to slits. “What do you mean?”
“You know how to keep a beautiful girl in line?”
Belle’s face hardened. Bolan knew he had once again read his target well. “You rent her a beautiful apartment. Buy her beautiful clothes. Take her out to the best restaurants. Fly her around the world. Give her the keys to your most expensive cars. Take her to the casinos and cover her bets. Hell, give her gold-plated guns.” Bolan let out a long breath. “And give her all the drugs she wants.”
Belle flinched.
“But you never give her money of her own, and you keep her in debt. Every cent she makes on her own doesn’t even keep up with interest.”
Belle stared at Bolan like a cat. “You speak from experience.”
“No, but I’ve known plenty of men who treat women like that.”
“Oh?”
“Killed my fair share of them.”
Belle stared.
Bolan made his decision. “You want out?”
“You have no idea how much debt I’m carrying, much less—” a terrible look passed across the surgically sculpted face “—what kind of favors I owe.”
“I can cover it.”
“You can’t—”
“And if I can’t cover all your debts?” Bolan’s burning blue stare spoke far more than words. “Believe me, I can make your creditors see reason.”
Belle shook. “What do I have to do?”
“Choose.”
“Choose what?”
“Team Cooper for the next seventy-two hours. Say yes.”
“And if you get your head blown off?”
Koa nodded his head at Bolan. “It’s likely, but if you like Hawaii? I have friends.”
Rind lowered his voice. “You’ve heard of FBI witness relocation?”
Belle nodded slowly.
“Well, you’re not a witness. You’re a teammate, and a member of my fire team. I will pull strings.”
Tears spilled down Belle’s Nordic cheekbones. “Count me in.”
Jakarta
“We’re here.” Koa parked the rental Land Rover in front of a warehouse.
Bolan glanced up from his tablet. Belle had changed into black cargo pants, black designer combat boots and a black tank top. She had dyed her hair black in the jet’s bathroom and pulled it back into a ponytail. Marwin’s tracksuit was reversible and he had suddenly gone sumo-ninja with a black do-rag. Despite the sweltering heat De Jong had changed into black leather pants and a black leather jacket straight out of Elvis’s comeback special.
The soldier thought the gold-plated guns negated the blackout camouflage but there was nothing to
be done about it; he was carrying one himself. The battle in Manila had been successful against all odds, but none of the assassins had survived. They had very little on their adversary save redacted files and rumors.
Bolan took a final glance at his tablet. Tonight’s quarry was Ramad “the Handyman” Handi. A picture of the criminal showed a middle-aged Indonesian man in a blue guayabera with a horrific, nearly hand-shaped comb-over spreading its lank grip across his sweaty skull. He looked like the last man you would ever buy a used car from, but if you needed a crate of assault rifles, a kilo of coke or a human kidney, the Handyman was your man. Jagon De Jong was a criminal dilettante, but he had a few loveably loathsome redeeming qualities. The Handyman was a straight-up scumbag—the exact breed of evil Bolan had first declared his War Everlasting against years ago. The Handyman was rumored to be an international concern whose fingers stretched across the Pacific into some very dark and interesting corners.
Bolan took in the Handyman’s lair.
De Jong had lived in the penthouse of a gleaming spire until Bolan had dropped a helicopter into it. The Handyman lived in a converted warehouse in a very bad part of town. “You ready?” Bolan asked.
De Jong produced a butterfly knife and a small plastic bag filled with some sort of blue flake product. He dipped his knife into the bag and took a hefty snort up each nostril. “Oh, yeah!”
De Jong handed the knife and the plastic bag to Belle. Belle winced in shame and took a snort anyway. “Can I ask you a question?” De Jong asked.
“Go ahead.”
“You’re not Pashke Xhindi, are you?”
Bolan saw no reason to lie and dropped his accent. “No.”
De Jong looked genuinely hurt. “You tricked me.”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t know Handi had sent a hit squad to kill me?”
“I didn’t know his name until you told me. But I think he has an agenda bigger than just your guns and girls deal, and he needs to clean up loose ends. You’re one of them.”
“So, who are you?
“The guy who decided not to kill you when I knocked on your door.”
De Jong sniffed and wiped at his nose. “Okay.”
Pacific Creed Page 7