Bolan stared out stone-faced across the waves. “My family lived in Kosovo. I was a soldier, a member of the Special Purpose Corps. When the trouble started, all Muslims in the corps were detained. During my detainment, my fellow soldiers, Orthodox Serbs, raped and killed my wife. I escaped, and I killed them. Then I took my family away to relatives, near the coast. Catholic Croats, armed by the Germans, bombed the village with fighters and then their soldiers put it to the torch. I lost my sister and my daughter there. My son was of age, so I took up my rifle and my sword, and he and I returned to Kosovo. We fought for the Kosovo Liberation Army, until my son was killed by U.S.—” Bolan’s face twisted as he spit the word “—peacekeepers.”
The Mahdi put a consoling hand on Bolan’s shoulder. His other hand stretched out to encompass the South Pacific. “What has brought you here, among us?”
“After my son was killed, I fell from grace. I continued to kill Serbs, but only because I could think of nothing else to do. One day we raided the house of a very wealthy man who lived in the mountains. It was a bitter fight. He had many men, but after the fight I found gold in his cellars, heaps of it, like the treasure of Ali Baba. During the war, he and his soldiers had specialized in attacking refugee caravans and camps in the mountains. They were easy prey, poorly defended, and carried their wealth on their backs. It was the gold stolen by the Serbs in their ethnic cleansing.”
Bolan sighed again, as if speaking of such things somehow lifted some of the burden of carrying them. “I was the son of a shepherd, but the army taught me coastal warfare. I knew how to sail a boat. I was weary, and I decided I had had enough. I took as much of the gold as I could carry and crossed the border into Macedonia. I made my way to Greece and bought a boat. I sought the solace of the sea. I sailed for a long time, across many oceans. Drinking, whoring, fallen. When I came to the Philippines, I met a Muslim girl in Mindanao, a pious girl. The daughter of a farmer. I returned to Allah’s embrace, and we were married. I went to the capital to make arrangements to sell my boat, and use the money to start a business, to buy more land for the farm.”
Bolan’s set his face in stone.
The Mahdi gently squeezed his shoulder in encouragement.
Bolan’s cheeks flexed. He willed the sting of tears to his eyes with the memories of his own fallen loved ones. “I received word the village had been attacked. The government thought there were Muslim terrorists operating in the area. They attacked the village with the aid of American Special Forces advisers. The village was wiped out. The farm was burned.” Bolan grimaced. “They left no one alive. Since then, once more, I have…drifted.”
“Sujatmi said that you grieved for someone.” The Mahdi’s voice was clear but tears sparkled on his cheeks. “But I had no idea you had suffered so much.”
The best lies were woven with truth. Bolan had stepped onto the Executioner’s path with the loss of his family, and the ensuing war had cost him enough suffering and loss to crush a hundred lesser men.
“The world is empty. You feel alone.” The Mahdi sighed understandingly. “As if you have no place.”
“Indeed, Imam,” Bolan agreed.
“Perhaps you have a place here.”
Jusuf hissed in a disapproving breath.
The Mahdi ignored his lieutenant. “Among us.”
Bolan gazed back out across the sea.
The Mahdi shrugged his thin shoulders with regret. “Alas, you have seen us. You have seen me. We cannot allow you to leave us alive. You must join us, or join Allah as a martyr.”
The last Bolan had heard, martyrs gave their lives willingly to the cause. He took a long breath and let it out slowly. “I know what I must do,” he said.
“Good, Makeen.” The Mahdi smiled upon Bolan like a proud angel. “Good.”
A boombox a mile down the beach howled out the Fajr, the dawn Call to Prayer. The Mahdi turned toward Mecca. “Let us pray together.”
Bolan knelt beside the Mahdi.
He could feel Jusuf’s eyes burning into his back.
12
BOLAN JUMPED into the surf. He stretched and surveyed his new home. A row of sun-bleached huts on stilts straggled along the water, with fishing canoes tied to the poles. Fishing nets hung between them. The real village was inside the trees. Within the tree line, Bolan could see camouflage netting strung like giant green spiderwebs beneath the jungle canopy. Numerous huts squatted in the shade in haphazard fashion, and chickens and goats roamed freely. Four speedboats had been pulled up beneath the netting and laid up in dry dock. Men with rifles lounged about smoking, while others worked at repairing things and working around the village under the trees.
If this wasn’t juramentado central, Bolan knew he was getting close.
The problem was he had no idea where he was. He had spent the past week belowdecks, only allowed up briefly five times each day to pray with the crew. They had been sailing for a week and had picked up six more passengers, all of them Southeast Asians of one nationality or another who appeared to have converted to the cause.
“You will stay here for a time.” Sujatmi Fass walked up with the beach with him. Bolan’s week belowdecks hadn’t been without reward. The tawny Indonesian had visited him nightly.
The Executioner looked around the bustling jungle camp. “What am I to do?”
“What is it that you can do?” Jusuf challenged, appearing suddenly.
Bolan shrugged. “Show me your armory.”
Jusuf shook his head once. “No.”
“Show him,” Fass urged. “The Mahdi’s word was to bring him here so that he could serve.”
“Very well.” Jusuf stalked through the trees past the bamboo and palm leaf huts to a squat, solid cabin made of logs. He took a key from a leather string around his neck and opened the padlock securing the door. A single bulb connected to the generator outside blinked on. “Here.”
Bolan looked around at the armory. Rifles of every description were piled, racked or leaning against the wall in various states of disrepair.
“Yaqoob was our armorer.” Jusuf shot Bolan an arch look. “You killed him.”
Bolan picked up an Austrian AUG rifle and stared down the cracked optical sight and the powder fouling on the ejection port. Yaqoob had been shirking his duties. Bolan reracked the weapon and went to a pyramid of crates in the corner. The top crate was open, and Bolan pulled out an AK-47 type rifle with a folding stock. Much of its finish was missing, and swathes of hardened cosmoline caked the weapon. The action moved as if it was full of sand when Bolan worked the bolt. He held the weapon up to the light. He couldn’t read the AK clone’s markings, but he knew the weapon by the slight differences in its receiver and folding stock. “North Korean Type 68,” he said.
Fass smirked at Jusuf.
Jusuf frowned.
Bolan ignored the interchange. The rest of the rifles in the open crate were wrapped in wax paper, and a simple feel told him the cosmoline grease had been exposed to the tropical climate and had hardened to rocklike consistency around the rifles they were supposed to protect, trapping them like flies in amber. Bolan sighed. It was going to be a long night. He hunted through the clutter and found a pile of field-cleaning kits in a canvas bag. He took out the oil bottles and shook each one to see if they had congealed. He dropped the usable cleaning gear in a pile and stepped back outside. A small crowd of men had gathered around the armory to see the white man who had appeared in their camp.
Ali Mohammed Apilado stood among them. He had fresh bruises on his face, arms and ribs. He stood like the rest, arms folded across his chest, staring at Bolan with a mixture of mild hostility and interest.
Jusuf jerked his head at the armory. “And so?”
“I’m going to need two liters of gasoline and as many rags as you can find.”
Jusuf nodded. “Ah.”
“I need machine oil, though palm oil will do if we don’t have it. I’m going to need an assistant. One who speaks enough English so that he can understand my dire
ctions.” Bolan looked around at the cluster of young men. “Anyone here speak good English?”
Ali raised his hand and stepped forward.
“No.” Jusuf shook his head.
Ali froze in his tracks.
“Ali is on…” Jusuf searched for a word. “Probation, and even if he is accepted back, he must still be punished.”
Bolan shrugged. “Punished for what?”
“Failure.”
Ali’s shoulders hunched at the word.
“I understand.” Bolan nodded. “But tell me something, Jusuf.”
Jusuf’s eyes slitted. “Tell you what, Makeen?”
Bolan grinned. “Do you consider stripping, cleaning and reassembling seventy rifles a privilege, or a punishment?”
Ali’s shoulders sank.
One corner of Jusuf’s mouth quirked upward against his will. Fass seemed amused.
“Ali.” Jusuf jerked his head. “Go to the boat shed. Draw gasoline and take a can of oil. Go to the huts of the women and tell them to give you all the rags they can find and then return here. You will work with Makeen, today, tonight, and tomorrow if necessary, until all of the weapons are burnished…” The thin man looked from Ali to Bolan with an unpleasant smile. “And I am satisfied.”
BOLAN’S FINGERS BURNED from the gasoline and ached from assembling thousands of parts. Seventy-two Type 68 rifles were stacked in tripods in front of the armory. They would have sparkled if it hadn’t been for their dull gray phosphate finish. Their bayonets were affixed, polished and sharpened. Ali’s fingers were swollen and bleeding from the scrubbing and cleaning. Both men’s eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion and gasoline fumes. They had finished with the consignment of North Korean weapons and begun cleaning and inventorying every other weapon. Those that were too rusted out or obviously damaged had been stripped and cannibalized for parts.
Ali had wanted to talk, but Bolan had kept their conversation to bolt assemblies, breechblocks and firing pins for the past twelve hours. Only during the last minutes before dawn when Bolan was certain they were alone, and he knew Ali was exhausted to the point Bolan could easily catch him in a lie did he drop his cover.
“So how did it go?”
Ali blinked in surprise and wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. “Dr. Blancanales released me on Tawi Tawi. I went to the mosque, and it was not long before I was contacted. I was blindfolded and taken out to sea. Two days later, another boat met ours in the lagoon of an island I did not know. Jusuf was on the other boat.” Ali’s shoulders twitched. It was clear he was afraid of the Indonesian.
“What happened?”
“Jusuf questioned me. I told the story of attacking your boat and how the occupants were heavily armed and how we were slaughtered.” Ali met Bolan’s gaze. “All of which was true. Then I told him of being knocked overboard, and that I do not know how to swim.”
“Then what?”
“Jusuf told me to defend myself. We fought for a moment, but I was like a child before him.” The young man rubbed the fading bruise on his jaw. “I did not even see the kick that knocked me overboard.”
Bolan nodded tiredly. “He let you sink.”
“To the bottom of the lagoon,” Ali said. “He waited until he saw no more bubbles rise to the surface and then waited some more before diving after me and pulling me up by the hair. I do not remember much of this. I remember fighting for a moment and then awaking as I threw up half the lagoon.”
Bolan considered a Dragunov sniper rifle. The battery to the optics had long since corroded, but all that meant was that the infrared sensing unit and the dim-light illuminator were nonfunctional. The optics themselves were clean, and the bore was clean. Bolan set the sniper rifle aside. “Jusuf believed your story?”
Ali shook his head ruefully as he ran a rag over an M-60 machine gun. “Jusuf said he believed that I did not know how to swim.”
Bolan nodded. Jusuf was going to be trouble. “What have you heard since you’ve been here?”
“There is a rumor that we are going to attack someone. A big target, an enemy of the Mahdi. More warriors are being recruited, and as you see there are new shipments of guns.”
A big target. Bolan suspected that Rustam Megawatti might be in for some trouble.
Ali finished reassembling a rifle. “I think perhaps—”
Bolan cut him off. “Check the action again.”
Ali worked the M-60’s bolt several times as Jusuf came striding through the trees. The thin man peered at the racked, stacked and shining weapons. One eyebrow rose a millimeter. He took in Ali’s disheveled and grease-stained appearance and nodded once. “You have worked well, Ali. Go, sleep.”
“Thank you, Jusuf.” Ali leaned the machine gun against the wall of the armory and trotted off wearily into the dawn.
Jusuf ran his eyes over the well-serviced weapons again. “You have done good work.”
Bolan pointed at the pistol holstered at Jusuf’s hip. The thin man stared at Bolan for a moment before drawing the Browning Hi-Power and handing it over. His hand drifted to the cleaver thrust through his belt. Bolan swiftly field stripped the pistol, cleaned it, oiled it and reassembled it. Jusuf took the gun, inspected it with a grunt and reholstered it.
“You seem to know many weapons,” Jusuf said.
“You know of the fighting in Kosovo?”
“I have heard of it,” the thin man admitted.
Bolan picked up an old submachine gun and began removing its barrel. “The Serbs seized most of the arms factories in Yugoslavia and were given much equipment by the Russians. Germany gave surplus ex-East German equipment to the Croats. We Muslims?” Bolan frowned through the barrel and its pitted rifling. “We had to beg, borrow and steal whatever we could find. One of my jobs was to keep my unit’s weapons shooting.”
“You and Ali have worked well together.”
“He is a hard worker.” Bolan took out the bolt assembly. It was serviceable. “He wants to prove himself.”
“You have spoken, then?”
Bolan nodded. “We have been cleaning and repairing guns for fourteen long hours.”
“He has told you his story?” Jusuf asked.
Bolan replaced the pitted barrel with one he had cannibalized from another weapon. “He has,” he said.
“And you believe him?”
Bolan looked up from his work and feigned amusement. “I believe that he does not know how to swim.”
Jusuf’s thin smile ghosted across his face. “Sleep, Makeen. You and Ali may finish the work after you have rested. Then we shall talk again.”
Bolan racked the submachine gun back into battery and put it aside. He stretched and walked down to the water’s edge where the fishing huts rose up out of the tide on their stilts. He clambered up a bamboo ladder and threw himself down on a reed matt next to Fess and listened to the tide. She rolled over and wrinkled her nose at him. “You stink of gasoline and guns.”
“There was much that needed doing.”
She sat up and poured water from a gourd into an old GI canvas basin. She took his hands one at a time and began washing them. Bolan lay back as she cleaned the grease and powder fouling from beneath his fingernails. She frowned in bemused disgust. “You are filthy. I should throw you over the rail and let the sea do this.”
Bolan smiled as she straddled his hips, lathered his face and began shaving him. He took in the view as she leaned over him and ran the razor over his jaw. The woman noticed where his eyes lingered. The razor paused. “You like them,” she said.
Bolan reached for her breasts even as the blade pressed against his throat. “Very much,” he said.
The look of amused disgust returned to her face. “Most men do.” The razor continued smoothly on its path.
Bolan’s hands moved to her face. Her Eurasian features gave her a slight hardness in the lines of her jaw and cheekbones. Even in repose, her face seemed to radiate a submerged, angry challenge.
She was beautiful, he thought.
“My pimp thought they would make me more profitable,” she said. She rinsed the razor and went to work on Bolan’s chin. “I was born in Bandung. My father was an expatriate Dutch, as you guessed. I loved him very much, but he had two unfortunate habits, one was opium and the other was gambling. It was not a favorable combination. He sold me when his debts became insurmountable. I was taken to Jakarta. My features made me exotic and popular there, but I soon grew too tall for those who prefer little girls. My pimp decided I would make more money as a dancer and in…film.” She looked down at her enhancements coldly. “So this was done to me.”
It was an old story and far too common. Many fathers in Southeast Asia sold unwanted daughters even without the excuse of drug or gambling debts. Bolan cupped her chin in his hand. “How did you escape?”
“One morning I was hanging out the brothel’s wash when I heard a voice. A man was speaking in the square. He called out to all. The weak and the strong, the rich and poor, to all come to him. His voice drew me. He said to come to Allah. To rise up and make war against all infidels that were near you. He looked into my eyes when he said it, and something within me moved.”
She stared into the middle distance. Her eyes were seeing her past instead of Bolan. “I was twelve when my father sold me, and since that time my spirit had been broken and I had become addicted to drugs. Yet when the Mahdi spoke, something within me moved. I arose. I returned to the brothel. I came upon my pimp and killed him. I fled to the Madhi and showed him the blood on my hands. I confessed all that I was, all that I had done and begged him for sanctuary. He gave me sanctuary and sent forth his followers to slay the gang my pimp belonged to. I have followed him ever since.”
Her eyes blinked into ice-cold focus on Bolan. “There is no perversion you can imagine that I have not done or had done to me. My hands are red with the blood of infidels.” Her barely submerged anger blazed to the surface. Her features hardened into a mask of defiance, daring him to despise her. “What do you think of me now?”
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