Bolan leaped forward and began to run across the open ground toward the burning hulks on the road. Flames lit up the night in garish relief and illuminated the Tatmadaw soldiers trying to reorganize themselves. He saw one man push himself up off the ground and he triggered his pistol.
The 240-grain boattail slug slammed into the man with devastating force. Blood splashed out of the man's chest, and the Myanmar soldier was thrown to the side by the impact. Around Bolan the KNLA fighters began triggering their assault rifles.
It was a slaughter.
The ambush squad moved through the assault area with merciless skill, moping up the wounded and remaining army soldiers. Bolan surveyed the scene, a grim figure surrounded by the burned corpses of his enemy. Smoke and flame swirled around him as Grimaldi lowered the Little Bird into position.
Smith Dun, his Red Sox jersey still surprisingly pristine after the violent action, shook Bolan's hand and the big American slipped him an encryption-capable cell phone.
"I'll use this to coordinate with you. Don't use it for other communications until we're finished with our business in Yangon," he instructed.
The guerrilla nodded and slipped the folding phone away in a cargo pouch beneath his oversized shirt.
"I will see you in the capital in two days," the Myanmar insurgent said.
Bolan nodded and then turned and climbed aboard the waiting OH-6.
"Let's go," he told Grimaldi. "I've got a train to catch."
The Little Bird smoothly powered up out of the clearing, leaving the burning wreckage and scrambling rebel force behind them.
11
Time seemed to be collapsing around Stephen Caine. The clock glowed, showing 3:12 a.m.
Lying next to the clock was a dog-eared copy of Lawrence Block's Such Men Are Dangerous. Caine read the book like a monk worried a bible.
The promise went through his mind over and over. It was like a bit of song or a scrap of rhythm he couldn't excise from his head.
...protect my country from enemies both foreign and domestic...
He lay on his futon mattress and listened to the storm gathering outside on the horizon. His eyes watched the ceiling fan turning overhead and the Black Crows played on his CD deck, the volume turned down low.
The bedsheets were bunched up with his restless turning and the Xanax wasn't working. Under his pillow he could feel the hard L-shape of the Beretta 92-F. His naked flesh was sticky from his fear sweat, and his eyes were gummy from crying.
...protect my country from enemies both foreign and domestic...
A peal of thunder cracked outside, and a burst of rain struck the kitchen window like ball bearings. Caine sat up and his temples throbbed. The futon was low on the floor beside a cheap wooden nightstand. The nightstand didn't go with the futon, of course, but nothing in his studio loft went with anything else. Charisa had gotten everything that matched when she'd left. She'd even gotten Emma.
The scene was fresh in his mind. The airport at the end of his last visitation, the last visitation he was likely to get since Charisa and that asshole lawyer she was screwing were moving to Seattle and taking seven-year-old Emma with them.
Emma looking up at him, her eyes the same beautiful, rich shade of brown as her mother's. Wide and innocent and trusting, not unlike how her mother's had been in the beginning of the marriage. Emma still trusted him, still loved him. She wasn't aware yet of how much his capacity to screw up even the simplest of things had turned her little world on its ear.
Then he walked her to the security checkpoint and handed his last connection to reality over to his ex-wife and the smiling asshole who was her boyfriend.
Caine listened to the rain fall. The Santa Anas had come and gone, and now the rains were falling. He wished he could see the ocean. He looked over at the nightstand. The government letter forwarded to him from his father sat there under four or five empty beer bottles. He opened the drawer on the nightstand and pushed a little Glock 26 compact model pistol out of the way and picked up his bottle of Oxycotin. He'd gotten the painkillers from Stephanie.
He took two pills and washed them down with a swallow of warm beer from one of the bottles. Naked, he stood and looked around the studio apartment, feeling lethargic and down, but numbed.
The TV was alive with flashing images from CNN. The sound was muted and the President was on the screen, gesturing wildly from behind a podium. The country was at war. Again. The ticker at the bottom of the screen ran a blurb about hostages and then about gas prices.
Caine didn't see it. His eyes narrowed to gun slits as he watched the President's silent motions. His chest began to hurt and his stomach clenched. The muscles on his jaw worked in vivid relief as he watched the man.
"I owe you," Caine mumbled.
His gaze slid from the TV screen to the work area he had set up beside the ratty couch. Thunder cracked, just overhead now, and a bolt of lightning lit up the room like a strobe light. Caine's jaw worked as his hands formed hard fists. He felt like crying with helpless, futile rage. But maybe not futile...
"I owe you," he told the President. "I owe you for so much."
His hate was tangible, palatable even. He could taste it lying thick in the back of his throat, choking him, making it harder to breathe. He remembered the old saying—all it took for evil to prosper was for good men to do nothing.
Caine forced his breathing to slow as he looked around the apartment at the power tools, the bucket of gas, the compound that unclogged drains, the steel washers, Ping-Pong balls and electrician's tape all lying there with lethal promise amid a tangled nest of stereo wires. He felt a smirk tug at the corner of his mouth beneath his beard stubble.
He thought about the government letter announcing Justin's death in Iraq, and his smile faded back into nothing. He turned his back on the President and walked into his narrow, cramped kitchenette. He absently scratched the faded ink of the tattoo in the middle on his left deltoid. It showed a black ribbon with a red 75th printed in the middle.
He moved around the dirty kitchen counter and passed a sink full of dirty dishes stacked like tombstones. He opened the freezer and moved aside the .45-caliber M1911 pistol. He pulled out a grungy plastic ice tray the color of kiddie blocks and dropped some cubes into a dirty water glass. He poured three fingers of tequila over the ice.
He sipped the drink and watched the rain smear the tiny window at the back of the kitchenette. The rain fell hard and the Black Crows sang about heroin-addicted girls talking to angels. The tequila was oily and smooth as it slipped down. Somewhere inside of him he wanted to cry again, but the tequila and the pills kept him disconnected and Caine was glad because his father had never approved of crying.
No, he reflected, the old man believed that when you got hurt you hurt back.
* * *
In the dreams Caine was back in Somalia.
Fresh into the battalions out of the Ranger indoctrination program, not even tabbed yet as his turn to go to the Ranger School hadn't cycled up yet when they'd been deployed to Mogadishu.
In his dream he was there again and the Black Hawks had been knocked down and his company had been fighting its way clear, one bloody block at a time. Night had fallen, and everyone was shot to shit and there were thousands of militia around the ruined house and everyone there knew they were going to die.
It just kept getting worse. The gunmen, knowing American reluctance to kill civilians, had started walking toward the Rangers' defensive position using the women and children as cover. Hundreds of them pushing forward, firing their Kalashnikov AKMs from under the arms of terrified teenage girls.
At first the American soldiers had tried to shoot around the human shields, like Old West heroes, but then there were too many militiamen and they were getting too close. Caine remembered the first one, couldn't escape the memory. She was clinging to her baby and obviously scared, but still shouting at the Ranger house in defiance and with every shuffling zombie step she took she brought the deadly enemy mach
ine-gun fire closer. Behind her a militia thug fired at Caine's window with his AKM, putting rounds downrange indiscriminately. But he kept getting closer, just like the man next to him and the one next to him and on and on.
Caine felt his stomach drop like a stone as he realized what he had to do. Then he did it. His burst cut short the baby's crying and cracked the mother's chest like an ax through wood. The gunman stood there stunned as his human shield tumbled out of his arms. Caine put the next two 5.56 mm rounds low in the militiaman's gut, hoping he died slowly.
Then there was another militiaman pushing closer, and another one, and six more after that and a hundred piled up behind them. It was then that Caine found the psychological balance that, once tipped, allowed a soldier to do what he had to do to live, no matter the cost.
After that Caine shot everybody who came in front of his sights. And he lived.
12
Mack Bolan took his passport back from the Myanmar border guard. He was conscious of the presence of the briefcase at his feet. The uniformed man passed by him down the train aisle to look at the paperwork of the other passengers. When Bolan checked the blue booklet before he put it away, he discovered the fifty-dollar bill placed there was gone.
He looked out his window at the jungle encroaching onto the track along the border station. It was humid, but the passenger train had air conditioning in the first-class compartment. Outside, a bored border guard picked his nose while his other hand cradled the pistol grip of his AKM assault rifle.
Myanmar—officially the Union of Myanmar—was the largest country by geographical area in mainland Southeast Asia. Historically it was also known as Burma by many organizations and states. The country was controlled by a violently repressive military junta that allowed little room for political organizations and had outlawed many political parties and underground student organizations.
Consequently Myanmar's foreign relations, particularly with Western nations, had been strained. The United States had placed a ban on new investments by U.S. firms, an import ban and an arms embargo on the country, as well as freezing military assets in the United States because of the military regime's ongoing human-rights abuses, the ongoing detention of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi and refusal to honor the election results of the 1990 People's Party.
Bolan saw the guard he'd been forced to bribe exit the train and stroll over to the soldier who'd been so studiously picking his nose. As the train lurched forward and began to pull away, the Executioner saw the second sentry hand the first a cell phone. As he watched the man he'd bribed talking into the phone, their eyes met through the glass and the soldier turned away.
Bolan felt a sense of apprehension that he forced himself to put behind him. His caution was normal in such a police state, and at the moment there was little he could do about anything. The train got up to speed and almost as quickly the ride became very rough.
As a result of the military government oppression, Myanmar lacked adequate infrastructure. Goods traveled primarily across the Myammar-Thai border, which was also where most illegal drugs were exported, and along the Irrawaddy River. Railroads like the one Bolan now traveled were old and rudimentary, with few upgrades since their construction in the 1800s. Highways were normally unpaved except in the major cities. Energy shortages were common throughout the country, including in the capital city of Yangon.
Perhaps because of this Myanmar was also the world's second-largest producer of opium, accounting for eight percent of the entire world production, and was a major source of narcotics, including amphetamines.
Inside the briefcase at Bolan's feet were four books by the Myanmar author Maung Hsu. Inside each of the books were hidden the account and transfer numbers to money held in the World Bank internal operations funds.
* * *
Ten minutes after crossing the border Bolan looked at the time on his wristwatch. As if on cue the door at the end of the train car opened and an Asian man in a cheap suit entered. He was short and slight of frame, even by the standards of Southeast Asia. His hair was gray at the temples and he carried a briefcase in one soft, well-manicured hand.
The scholarly-looking man made his way down the aisle toward Bolan and took a seat on the empty bench across from him. Bolan looked him over as the man leaned down and placed his briefcase on the floor directly across from the identical one beside Bolan's feet.
"I work for Aung San Suu Kyi," the man said.
Bolan nodded. "I support her struggle," he replied.
In Myanmar's 1990 parliamentary elections the National League for Democracy had won 392 out of 492 seats in a massive, overwhelming display of solidarity for freedom by the population of poor nation. The military junta had voided the election and maintained its stranglehold on power in country through the use of brute force.
Soon after the election and the subsequent crackdown, some of those elected representatives had fled arrests and formed the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma to continue the struggle for democracy. The movement had both a public face and a covert one.
"So many dignitaries and important men have come to my country to take part in the ASEAN conference," the man said. "They make sounds about the lack of progress in human rights in Myanmar, but they do nothing of substance. Meanwhile our children work as slaves, people are trafficked like cattle and the government tortures and murders."
"No one can save the people but the people," Bolan replied. "All they need is the assistance of concerned benefactors."
"Those benefactors must offer tangible proof of their support if they are to see the fruit of their efforts," the man warned.
"Support is as specified," Bolan agreed.
The man leaned forward and picked up the briefcase at Bolan's feet. He left his own behind on the floor of the rocking train. He rose and looked down at Bolan, his face inscrutable.
"In two days the students and workers of Myanmar will gather before the indifferent dignitaries and diplomats at the Mandalay hotel. These things have a way of getting out of hand."
Bolan nodded once. "That is as it should be," he replied.
The man strolled away up the center aisle and disappeared through the door leading out of the train car. Bolan settled back into his seat and relaxed.
* * *
The train rolled into the capital thirty minutes later and Bolan grabbed his carry-on and the briefcase left behind by his contact before disembarking onto the crowded station platform. The humidity instantly plastered his lightweight shirt to his skin, and he was drenched with perspiration. He stood out in the crowd, white and tall in a milling sea of shorter people and brown faces.
He listened to the staccato cacophony of the rapid-fire Asian langue being spoken around him, able to distinguish words and phrases and snatches of conversations. A line of chickens sat in wire cages against one wall next to pallets of burlap bags filled with rice and stamped with UN markings.
Bolan pushed his way through the crowd. Passing under a huge clock, he entered a short green-tiled hallway just off the main platform where grungy, numbered lockers of battered and dented stamped metal sat under the benevolent gaze of a bronze Buddha.
He pulled a key from his shirt pocket and crossed to a tall locker bearing the same identification icon. He stuck the key in the lock, turned it and opened the door. Inside was a black nylon knapsack. Bolan reached into the locker and pulled it off the hook. The bag was heavy as he slid it over his shoulder. He found the weight comforting, evidence of the precisely measured Italian manufacturing he valued so much. Beretta made fine weapons.
He turned and immediately noted the Asian man watching him. The man puffed quickly on a cigarette, which he dropped to the floor when he caught Bolan's eye. He lifted the edge of his lightweight suit coat and quickly flashed Bolan the pistol secured under his armpit. The man closed his coat and gestured with his chin toward the grimy door to the rest room across the hall from the silent Buddha.
Bolan's battle senses we
re on high alert. He didn't know who the armed man was. The Asian certainly wasn't part of his operational instructions. He had been dealt a wild card minutes after making his insertion. Still, things changed and he couldn't very well leave a threat at his back as he went about making his connection.
Bolan moved toward the door of the public rest room.
Flies buzzed in an insistent cloud around him, thirsty for his sweat. He waved an impatient hand at them as he walked past the lounging man. The man scowled at him and pushed himself off the wall. Bolan looked around as he put out a hand to push open the rest room door. He spotted no other players hanging back in a security or overwatch position. It meant little. Perhaps he had missed the backup crew in the crowd.
Things had taken a wrong turn in Yangon.
Inside the rest room several men stood at the urinal built into the wall. A pair of teenage male prostitutes stood listlessly beside the doors to the stalls. They wore copious amounts of women's perfume that did little to cut through the room's acidic stench.
Bolan placed his heavy black knapsack on the wash sink and waited, hands stuffed casually in the pockets of his trousers. If this had been an official roust, he would have been yanked into a side office by uniformed men. This was something else.
The man who had showed Bolan his pistol followed him into the rest room. He flicked a freshly lit cigarette into the urinal gutter where it extinguished with a hiss. He barked some sharp orders and held up a leather wallet in a hand with nicotine-stained fingers and dirty fingernails.
Instantly the occupants of the rest room turned and filed out. The man pinched one of the young males on the cheek as the hollow-eyed youth filed passed. The possessive intimacy of the gesture angered Bolan. He kept his face expressionless.
The armed man waved away an elderly man trying to enter the rest room and closed the door. He turned the dead-bolt lock and twisted to face Bolan. The big American looked at him. The man smiled but his eyes were the dead, gray eyes of a shark.
Collision Course Page 7