Mei snorted. “I caught the vibe.”
“The Chinese aren’t in a cooperative mood. I tried to cut a deal, but their orders are to kill anyone who discovers them. My gut feeling is Chien has a communication device somewhere on the island. Other than that, we’re waiting on the Mahdi’s next move. You got anything else?”
“One thing. While I was on the boat, there were some men being transported in the compartment next to mine. I couldn’t see them but I could hear them.”
“What were they saying?”
“Don’t know. It was in some Indonesian dialect. But they were sick. I could tell.”
Bolan’s eyebrow rose slightly. “What do you mean?”
“They were coughing. Deep rale, gurgling in the lungs, and they were moaning in pain.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, last night, about a half hour before I was rug-rolled and delivered to you, they were disembarked. I heard them being carried out.”
Bolan’s instincts began running red flags left and right. “Half an hour?”
“Yeah, and then we motored away,” Marcie said.
“You think they were dropped on a different island?”
“I’m positive, and then it took about ten minutes to come here.”
“There must be another island close by.” Bolan considered the situation. “The other Chinese agent said something about lepers before he died.”
“Lepers? What did he say?”
“Nothing.” Bolan frowned. “Just the word. Then he died.”
“Well, the guys in the next compartment were coughing, gurgling and moaning.” Mei pursed her lips. “From what I know, lepers don’t feel much pain, but wet leprosy can go into the lungs. If you can’t breathe, you’ll wheeze and moan.”
Bolan had only been to the other side of the island accompanied by an armed escort to see the Madhi. He had been told not to stray from the village without permission. “Why is the Mahdi transporting lepers?”
“Christian charity?” Mei suggested.
“Yaqoob was dying, but he thought it was important enough to mention. There has to be some kind of connection.”
“Dunno.” Mei shrugged. “You’re the international man of mystery. What do you think?”
Bolan took a deep breath. “I think I’m going to have to go for a swim.”
17
Bolan arose.
Mei sighed. “You’re going?”
“It’s time.” He glanced down at his “bride.” Mei’s transformation had been incredible. She had gone from special operations dynamo to a meek and silent mouse of a second wife. She flinched at Suja’s every gesture and obeyed her every command. In all ways both overt and subtle, she acknowledged Suja as the alpha female of the hut and of the island. Mei was an accomplished paramilitary soldier, but her primary training had been as a field agent. Blending into Southeast Asian cultures and being accepted by the locals was her stock-in-trade.
As predicted, within the week Bolan had come into the hut and found Mei grooming Suja’s hair and found himself being shooed away as they indulged girl talk.
The Mahdi had spoken to Suja, telling her that Mei was Bolan’s sister-in-law, alone and destitute. Grudgingly, Suja had accepted the woman into her hut. Marriage in the society the Mahdi had forged was a simple matter. The woman moved in and went to work cooking and cleaning and working in the gardens. Suja had magnanimously gone on an off-island errand and left Mei and Bolan alone for forty-eight hours.
It was past ten and time for Bolan to take a swim.
The first day of their honeymoon he had taken Mei to the other side of the island. They had been given permission, but Bolan knew they were being followed so they had spent the day frolicking in the surf. He had also taken a riflescope filched from the armory and surveyed the nearby island and taken a bearing on it with a stolen lensatic compass. The island was a green lump of vegetation in the reticule of the Chinese sniper scope.
Mei read Bolan’s mind.
“Five miles, possibly more.” She took an AK-47 bayonet from beneath her pillow and began darkening the chromed blade with lamp black. “Across open ocean and at night. You sure this is a good idea?”
“It’s ten o’clock now.” Bolan strapped on a watch. His own diving watch and everything else he owned save his sword had disappeared on his capture. He had convinced Jusuf to get him a watch for the purpose of timing attacks. The cheap plastic watch was marked a suspicious “water resistant,” but it did have the benefit of a luminous dial. “I’m budgeting myself three hours there and three back.”
“Three hours?” Mei sheathed the blackened knife and strung it on a leather cord. “But you have no idea what the currents are like.”
“Nope.” Bolan opened a clay jar of goat grease Mei had been collecting for him and began lubing up. Channel swimmers used a combination of lanolin and vaseline, but those were in short supply on the island.
The CIA agent wrinkled her nose at the rancid smell. “The sharks are going to love you.”
“Grease my back.”
Marcie greased Bolan’s back. “Better hope there’s no dogs on that island.”
Bolan turned. “You have anything positive to say?”
“Yeah.” Mei took in Bolan’s shaggy hair and beard and his tanned body sheened with goat grease. “You look biblically sexy.”
“Thanks.” Bolan hung the sheathed bayonet and the compass around his neck. He stooped and kissed his second wife on the cheek. “Gotta go to work, hon.”
He took his bundled clothes and cobbled together pistol and crept onto the darkened porch. No one appeared to be watching. He slipped to the edge and lowered himself into the shadows beneath the hut. He crept along the water’s edge until the lights of the village were a glow in the distance and then broke into a jog. The island was small, and it didn’t take long to reach the other side. Bolan found the campfire he had made during his frolic with Mei on the beach and took a reading with the compass. He hid his bundle just inside the tree line and returned to the beach. The night was clear and brilliant with stars and a quarter moon to light the way.
Bolan stepped into the sea.
The water was lukewarm, but Bolan knew that would change as he got out into open sea. He pushed off, and his greased body slid into the water. It was a hot, still night, and the water was thankfully as smooth as a blanket. Bolan stretched out into a strong, distance-eating pace.
Bolan almost instantly went into the zone. His body went into autopilot and left his mind a detached observer. Bolan moved at a sixty strokes per minute pace you could set a watch by. Every thousand strokes Bolan would roll onto his back, breaking his pace to take a bearing with the compass. He had to allow for corrections if the current or tides pushed him off course, and he still had to show up on the other island in shape to run his reconnaissance and swim back.
Bolan rolled onto his back, kicking with his legs as he clicked open the compass. The glowing green needle hadn’t deviated a hair. He was moving in a razor straight line. His body felt good. He checked his watch. He was making good time. Bolan gazed up at the silvery river of the Milky Way. It ribboned across the sky in a line directly toward his objective. He turned onto his stomach and his body instantly resumed the pace he had predetermined for it.
A lot of distance swimmers eschewed the night. With the darkness, awareness of the vastness and the primeval fear of the things that lurked between the swimmer and the bottom of the sea were heightened.
Bolan was not a professional distance swimmer. He was a soldier.
The night was his friend. The sea was his friend as well, though a treacherous one. Night insertions by sea were not new to him. He was naked and exuding the taste and smell of roasted goat into the water, but life was a gamble, the mission necessary and Bolan had rolled the dice. If something rose from the black depths he would never see it coming, but if that predator failed to take him with the first strike, then it would find it had run into another who dwelt at the top of the
food chain. An Executioner armed with six inches of sharpened steel. Bolan had dismissed the issue the moment he had entered the water. He had no time to worry about the local ocean inhabitants. Until it happened it was a nonissue. Bolan had an objective and a pace to set.
Bolan rolled over with his ten-thousandth stroke. He checked his watch and his compass. The compass said he was still dead-on. His watch told him he had been in the water for two hours and twenty-five minutes. Bolan rolled over again and trod water. He scanned the horizon ahead. Under the starlit sky, his island objective was a vast black lump. Five hundred more strokes found Bolan with sand beneath his feet.
The Executioner came out of the surf, steel in hand, a half hour ahead of schedule.
Bolan broke into a slow jog around the island. It was much smaller than its sister across the strait, and it took him only twenty minutes to circle it. There was no pier, no boats and no signs of habitation on the coast. If people were living there, they weren’t advertising it. As Bolan circled around the far side, he found a path and could see light through the trees.
Bolan crept into the interior.
He halted as he came to a village. It was encircled by a ten-foot bamboo stockade, the tips slashed at the top to make razor-sharp points. Bolan circled the village. There was only one gate in and out. He foraged around the perimeter and found no signs of gardening or agriculture, and on the coast there was no sign of any fishing going on. He concluded the village had to receive supplies from the outside, and for the majority of the inhabitants it seemed coming to the island was a one-way ticket. The freshly dug graves Bolan came upon behind the village were proof of their final destination. He came back full circle and crouched in the trees, peering at the gate.
It was a one-way ticket onto the island, save for the men with automatic rifles.
The Executioner had never heard of a leper colony that required armed guards. A very bored-looking Asian man in black pyjamas squatted against the gatepost. An assault rifle leaned next to him. The guard seemed to be devoting all of his concentration to the act of smoking a cigarette.
The state of alert on the island was not high.
Bolan moved back into the trees. He knelt by a pond he’d passed and smeared himself head to foot with mud. He returned and froze near the gate. The guard was still at his post, but he was gazing upward and talking to an Asian woman wearing a nun’s habit.
The woman held her fists clasped before her and shook them pleadingly. The guard blew smoke and shook his head. Whatever the nun wanted, the answer was no. The guard offered her a consolation cigarette. The nun clasped her hands again and the guard reluctantly gave up his entire pack.
The nun disappeared inside the compound, and a moment later the guard followed her. It became very clear to Bolan that the function of the palisade was to keep people in, not out. He crept to the fence and peered through the cracks between the bamboo. There were three long houses made of bamboo and thatch and two ex-military wall tents. Two dilapidated prefabricated sheds stood off in a corner next to a plastic latrine that looked like it had been stolen from a construction site. Off in a corner, a generator sat beneath a thatch lean-to, sputtering and occasionally hiccupping. Two smaller, traditional circular huts had been erected behind the tents.
Bolan slipped through the undefended gate and entered the compound.
He stayed in the shadows, making his way toward the long huts. They had no windows, and he could see no light coming out from between the reeds forming the walls. Bolan could hear and smell, however, and he heard the moans and gurgles of dying men and could smell human waste and death. Bolan moved quickly to the other hut. Light shone from inside, but he could make out little through the tightly woven reeds. He listened to the sounds of suffering for long moments. He heard no conversation.
Bolan slipped through the hut’s single door.
Nineteen Asian men lay shoulder to shoulder on reed mats. They were as skeletal and pale as concentration camp victims. Lesions covered their exposed skin, and the skin that wasn’t open was mottled and discolored. Some of the men dribbled blood from the nose and mouth. Bolan knelt beside the closest man and looked at him beneath the light of the bare bulb above.
The man moaned, his eyes rolling in his tortured rest as Bolan looked in his mouth. His gums were inflamed and bleeding. Open sores dotted the corners of his mouth and eyes. Bolan pulled off the cotton cap the man wore and found only a few straggling patches of hair on the man’s mottled scalp.
Bolan had seen the ravages of untreated wet leprosy before. It was horrible to behold.
This wasn’t it.
These men were ghostly and skeletal from the advanced anemia that was plummeting their red blood cell count. The lesions on their skin were not the creeping necrosis of leprosy. They were slow-motion burns. Their mottled skin was due to the massive breakdown of the small blood vessels beneath the skin. An ugly chill ran down Bolan’s spine.
Bolan rose and plastered himself beside the door as he heard footsteps outside.
The woman in the nun’s habit came into the hut bearing a bucket of water and a basket of sponges. She knelt beside the first man and began to undress him. He moaned and opened his eyes but managed a smile for the nun. She put a cigarette between his ravaged lips and lit it. The dying man coughed and drew on the cigarette with an immense sigh as the nun began cleaning his sores and wiping his own waste from his body.
The dying man turned his head slightly and his red-rimmed eyes locked with Bolan’s. The Executioner rolled his eyes as the man raised a palsied hand and pointed an accusing finger at him.
The nun turned. Her eyes went wide as she saw the naked, knife-armed mudman beside the door. Her mouth opened, and Bolan raised the lamp-blackened blade in his hand. The nun closed her mouth and continued to regard Bolan in horror.
“Sister.” Bolan spoke low. “Do you speak English? Answer quietly.”
“Yes. I was educated at Catholic school in Manila.”
“Who are you?”
“Sister Hildegard.”
“What are you doing here?”
“You’re an American?”
“What are you doing here?” Bolan repeated.
Sister Hildegard looked around the hut. The men were asleep. The man she was tending to had sagged back into unconsciousness, and she took the cigarette from his mouth. “Sister Mary-Margaret and I were kidnapped from our mission in Mindanao.”
“When?”
“About two weeks ago. We were put to work caring for the men in this camp.”
“You realize these men aren’t lepers.”
“I don’t know much about it. I had barely begun my medical training, but Sister Mary-Margaret said the same thing. She said these men are sick with something but—”
“Sister, these men are dying of acute radiation sickness.”
Sister Hildegard’s jaw fell open.
“Is there any work going on here on this island? Is there another camp where men are laboring?”
“No, the victims and supplies are dropped off by boat.”
“How many guards are there?”
“Four.”
“Where’s the one who gave you cigarettes?”
“Felipe was getting off duty. He is kind, but the next on duty will be Yam. He, he is…” Sister Hildegard shuddered and cast her eyes down as she flushed with shame and despair.
It wasn’t hard to imagine what a bored fanatic might do with a nun late in the night. Bolan grimaced. He was being forced to make a hard choice. “Listen, I can’t rescue you right now.”
Sister Hildegard gazed up at Bolan despairingly.
Bolan shook his head. “I’m undercover. I swam here from the island across the strait, and I can’t carry you back with me. I don’t have a radio, but I promise you, I will tell people you’re here. For the moment, you never saw me. Don’t even tell Sister Mary-Margaret. Do you understand?”
The nun looked heartbroken, but she nodded. “I understand.”
&nbs
p; “I will—”
Bolan moved against the wall again as a voice called from outside.
“Little Bird!” The man laughed unpleasantly. “Little Bird, are you there?”
A short, broad-shouldered man in khaki shorts and a black tunic came into the hospital hut. He held a dagger in his hand and leered down at the kneeling nun. “Forget the dying, little one. I want you to bathe me.”
Sister Hildegard cast down her eyes in shame as she reached for the bucket and sponge. Yam grinned as he unbuckled his shorts. “You don’t need those, Little Bird. Just use your—”
“Hey, Yam.”
Yam started, half turning but lunging instinctively with his knife.
The Executioner shoved the blackened bayonet into Yam’s gaping mouth.
Bolan let Yam fall facedown to the floor.
Sister Hildegard gasped, about to scream.
Bolan’s hand clamped over her mouth. His blue eyes bored into hers and commanded her attention. “Wait one minute. Then start screaming. When Felipe and the other guard come, tell them Yam came in complaining about abdominal pain. Say he suddenly started throwing up blood. Do you understand, Sister? Nod if you do.”
Sister Hildegard’s eyes were still wide above Bolan’s hand, but she nodded. Bolan released her. “One minute.”
The Executioner moved toward the door. He glanced around the camp and then slipped back behind the hut. A few minutes later Sister Hildegard began screaming hysterically. The dying men in the hut began moaning and shouting weakly in response.
Felipe and two other men with automatic rifles burst from one of the tents. Felipe shouted at one of the men, who stopped, his rifle at the ready, scanning the compound. Felipe and the other man ran into the long hut. Rapid conversations in Tagalog followed.
The Executioner watched the tent intently. If there was a radio inside, this would be a golden opportunity. A portly woman in a nun’s habit came out of one of the little huts. Felipe stepped out and shouted at her to come. The guard outside went back into the tent.
Blood Tide Page 14