“North!” Vaclav screamed. “He went north!”
“What’s his objective!” Bolan thundered.
“Hong Kong!” Vaclav shrieked. The Bosnian shuddered at the enormity of his betrayal. “Hong Kong!”
Bolan slapped the side of the turret. “Fung!”
Fung made a disappointed noise and cut the engine. Vaclav collapsed and wept in the shadow of the tank.
“Who’s with him?” Bolan demanded. “Jusuf? Hoja?”
“Yes,” Vaclav said.
“How many men?”
“A dozen, perhaps…more.”
Ming walked up and sheathed his sword. He surveyed the damage to his tank. His eyes gleamed as he took in the blackened and dented steel. Like his dragon-carved broadswords, the Ontos was part of his weapons collection. He had seen it bloodied in battle, and he was well pleased.
Bolan kept his attention on Vaclav. “Where are the rest of your men?”
“I was commanded to get the other two boats launched within the hour and repel any attack. Some of the men may have run for the trees, but…” He looked around at the sea of bodies that stretched from the pier to the manor.
Bolan nodded. “Where are the rest of my men?”
“Your…men?” Vaclav flinched and couldn’t meet Bolan’s eyes.
“Yes. My men. Chosen men. They’re not here. Where are they?”
Vaclav began shaking so badly his teeth rattled.
“Where!”
“I had no part!” Vaclav screamed.
Bolan leaped down from the tank and heaved Vaclav to his feet. “I’m going to ask you one last time.”
Vaclav pointed toward the back of the manor. Bolan marched him through the rubble. Behind the manor the trees had been strewed with camouflage netting. Beneath the canopy pieces of timber had been driven into the ground to form crude crosses.
“Jusuf…Jusuf considered them…” Vaclav was blubbering. “Unreliable…after some helped you on the other island.”
Bolan’s face was stone cold. Tears rolled down Isah’s and Pedoy’s faces. The chosen men had been crucified.
Several were still alive.
“Cut them down.” Isah and Pedoy went to their comrades.
Bolan thumbed his mike. “JG, set her down. Cal, I’ve got men who need immediate medical attention.”
Ming surveyed the scene and dispatched a dozen of his men to help. Mei had approached and stared at the atrocity in horror. Bolan gazed long and hard at the men who had died in agony because of their loyalty to him. He put his bitterness aside and turned his attention to the matter at hand.
“Ming, the Madhi’s on his way to Hong Kong.”
“So I understand.” Ming glanced back to where Flawless Victory lay beached. “I fear I shall not be able to overtake him.”
23
“Bear, I have situation.”
“What kind of situation?”
“The Mahdi got away with one of the boats. Best intel is that he and over a dozen of his men are on a one-way ticket to Hong Kong.”
Kurtzman stared at his screens. “This…is not good.”
“What’s our current relationship with the PRC on this one?”
“Hal just got out of a meeting with the President. The Chinese are still denying that they’re missing any nuclear material.”
“It’s not missing, Bear. It’s coming home to roost.”
“Yeah, well…” Kurtzman punched up a six-foot map of the China Sea. “How far out do you figure the Mahdi is?”
“He couldn’t have left more than an hour ago.”
“Well, that’s the good news.” Kurtzman hit keys, and his map exploded into a view of the Java Sea and Sumatra. “Even with his diesels at full throttle, he can’t have gotten far. The Corpus Christi is on her way to you at full speed. She’ll reach you in an hour, and I’m betting under emergency war power she can overtake the motor yacht in two or three.”
“And do what?”
The question lay between them.
Bolan’s voice was cold reality. “All she can do is torpedo her or hit her with a missile.”
“That’s better than irradiating half of Hong Kong,” Kurtzman said.
“You explain that to the people on the coast of Sumatra.”
“I read you.” Kurtzman leaned back in his chair. “Well, I can tell Hal to advise the President to bring in the Chinese.”
“No, not yet. It’s the same situation. They’ll send in a sub or fighter planes and blow up the yacht. They’ll consider the political fallout preferable to letting Hong Kong get slagged.”
“We could advise them to let the yacht reach open ocean before hitting it,” Kurtzman said.
“You trust them to do that?”
“No. No, I don’t. God only knows what they’ll do or find politically expedient. You’re right. We have to take control of this one.” Kurtzman had a sudden thought. “We deployed radiation detection gear to Sumatra for Calvin. Has he examined your yacht or the shrimp boat?”
“He just got done. The shrimp boat is at LD 50 plus. The yacht is radiating at LD 100.”
Kurtzman’s short hairs rose. LD 50 was shorthand for Lethal Dose 50, where one-half of the population exposed would be expected to die of radiation poisoning. It was the equivalent of taking five hundred rads. LD 100 was Lethal Dose 100%. No one exposed got out alive.
“Calvin said the differences are due to boat design. The yacht is a sailboat with very little room on board. If she’s pumping a thousand rads, she must be packed to the gills. The shrimper is a lot bigger and has two holds belowdecks. If they’ve surrounded the nuclear material with plastic explosive and bags of fertilizer, the crew could be partially shielded.” Bolan paused. “You have an idea?”
“Maybe.” Kurtzman hit keys and he brought up a file on radiation levels on a monitor on his desk. “I’m thinking if Megawatti’s yacht is anywhere near as poisonous as the other two maybe we should just—”
“Let them go,” Bolan said.
“Not just let them go, Striker. I mean we track them close, real close, like we have the Corpus Christi wear them like underwear with her torpedo tubes flooded and ready. But it’s over fifteen hundred miles to Hong Kong. Maybe we just let the Mahdi and his boys sicken on their own radiation and die somewhere in the middle of the South China Sea. Then the sub can tow the yacht someplace where we can secure the nuclear material for disposal or we could even tell the Chinese where it is as a goodwill gesture.”
“I don’t know.” Bolan considered the Mahdi. “I think the Mahdi would have packed this stuff pretty carefully. The yacht and the shrimp boat are lethal, but maybe he intended to tow them close to their destinations and then crew them at the last moment. He’s nuts, but I don’t think he’s stupid. And being the man he is, I’m betting if he starts to sicken on that yacht, he’s going to detonate it close to something as a last act of defiance.”
Kurtzman ran every possible permutation in his head and every outcome came up ugly. “Striker, as of my last conversation with Hal, this is your call. I’ve got the Corpus Christi on its way to you and Australian strike fighters hot on the tarmac in Darwin. How do you want to play it?”
“I’ve got a helicopter that can hold eight men. I can cobble together a team with the assets I have here.”
“Not to throw it back in your face, Striker—” Kurtzman liked where this was going less and less. “But you put together a team…and do what?”
“I don’t know.”
Kurtzman was appalled. “For God’s sake, Mack! You said yourself he has over a dozen men. He’ll see you coming. Even if you don’t lose half the team fast-roping onto the yacht, you still have to secure the detonator. If it even looks like things are going that way, he’ll blow it anyway.”
“Probably.”
“Probably!” Kurtzman took a deep breath. “You’re making this up as you go along.”
Several long seconds of silence passed. “Bear, I’m on a chopper.”
“Mack�
�”
The line went dead.
“I NEED A TEAM.” Bolan looked at Calvin James. “You got a blade?”
James slapped the Gerber Mark II combat knife sheathed at his hip. “’Course I do.”
“Get a bigger one.” Bolan turned to Blancanales. “You got your staff?”
“It’s in the back of the chopper.” He looked at Bolan suspiciously. “Why?”
Bolan ignored the question. “Ming, I have room for eight on that chopper. You want a seat?”
“Indeed.” Ming sighed. “I shall see this through with you, unto the end.”
Bolan bowed slightly. “Thank you, Sifu.”
Marcie Mei glared at Bolan defiantly. “Don’t even think about telling me I’m not going.”
“Actually,” Bolan said wearily, “I’m counting on it.”
“Oh, well…good.” Mei blinked as she was taken aback. “Because I am.”
Du sighed and rested his shotgun over his shoulder. “You know if Marcie is going, I’m going.”
“I was counting on that, too.” Bolan called out to the men helping the crucifixion victims. “Isah! Pedoy!”
The last of the chosen men rose and came forward. Bolan gazed back toward their fallen comrades. “You two want some payback?”
Pedoy was so choked with rage and sorrow he couldn’t speak. Isah had gone cold. “If you follow the Mahdi, then we will follow you to hell, Makeen.”
“Good. Because that’s where we’re going.”
A radioactive hell was their destination. Being blown sky high was the likelihood. He thumbed his mike. “JG, get ready to take off.”
Sumatra
“There she is.” Jack Grimaldi pointed out across the water. Rustam Megawatti’s motor yacht was moving up the coast. The helicopter threw up rooster tails of spume as it thundered barely six feet above the water in pursuit.
“You know this Mahdi screwhead is going to blow the ship,” Calvin James stated cheerily.
“I am afraid I concur,” Ming agreed. “I am hoping you have some kind of plan.”
Blancanales stared hard at Bolan. “We’re not just dealing with a fanatic, Striker, but the head of the whole cult. These guys traditionally like to go out in a blaze of glory and take a lot of people with them, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.” Everyone on the chopper was aware of it.
“I know you have some kind of plan.” James flashed a rueful smile. “But I don’t think we’re going to like it.”
“No, brother, you won’t like it.” Bolan considered his plan. It was pretty much suicide. “But I’m open to suggestions.”
“Well, I don’t see how we can stop him from detonating if he wants to.” James tilted his head toward a five-foot-long molded case in the back of the cabin. “But we’ve got a Barrett .50 with armor-piercing ammo. I say you get behind that bad boy. We hold off two hundred yards behind the Mahdi, pop his diesels and leave him dead in the water. If he wants to blow himself up, let him. If he doesn’t, we have the Corpus Christi sink him from a distance. There aren’t any major cities for miles.”
Bolan pointed toward land as the helicopter swept past a fishing village.
The west coast of Sumatra was relatively unpopulated, but terraced paddies hugged the hillsides, and out on the water the sinking sun silhouetted the platforms of oil derricks. If the bomb went off, no thriving metropolis would be reduced to a radioactive ghost town. The casualties would be in the hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands, but the villagers and oil workers who made their living along the stretch of coast would suffer for decades to come.
“Yeah…all right. I read you.” James let out a long breath. “But how are you going to keep that from happening anyway?”
“This guy’s a maniac. He’s fused the Sudanese Mahdist movement with the Filipino juramentado cult.”
Blancanales raised a wary eyebrow. “And?”
Bolan loosened his sword in its sheath. “We’re just going to have to appeal to his psychosis.”
James looked heavenward. “Jee-zus Christ…”
Bolan nodded. “We bring them up on deck and we take the ship, hand to hand.”
“You’re nuts,” Mei said.
The Executioner knew the plan was insane, but he could see no alternative. “The yacht will be packed with reactor rods, explosives and the propane tanks. That means it will take only one stray bullet to set the whole thing off. I think there’s about a two percent chance we can take that yacht without blowing it up.” Bolan looked toward the coast as they passed another village. “But I want to give these people that chance. I understand if anyone here doesn’t want in, but I need everyone on this chopper. Either we’re all in, or we abort and go with Calvin’s plan. I need to know now.”
The crazy light was back in Ming’s eyes. “I am in.”
“Man…” James shook his head at Bolan. He drew a long-bladed kris with one hand and filled the other with his own fighting knife. “Why are you even asking?”
Blancanales picked up his bo staff from behind his seat without comment.
“Marcie?”
Mei’s grin was in place, but her eyes were hard. “I owe that Jusuf scumbag.”
Everyone looked at Du.
Bolan shrugged. “This isn’t your fight, but short of Ming you’re the best man with blades we’ve got.”
“I’m a Macao boy, but my sister lives in Hong Kong. I owe Marcie my life. And besides…” Du scowled out the cabin door at the coast. “My father was a fisherman. These people deserve a chance.”
Pedoy and Isah didn’t need asking. It was clear they wanted payback.
Ming removed his scarlet jacket and loosened his waistcoat. “Then we are agreed.”
Bolan leaned into the cockpit and tapped Grimaldi on the shoulder. “Bring us alongside at about fifty yards. Go slow. Let them get a good long look at us and then get in front of them. I want to deploy on their bow.”
For once, not even a hint of a grin was detectable on the pilot’s face. “This Pirates of the Caribbean bullshit is bullshit. You read me?”
“I read you.” Bolan’s voice was quiet, but implacable. “Just do it. Then get the hell out of range.”
Grimaldi pulled the Huey up off the yacht’s starboard side. They paced the boat for long moments. No one was visible on deck, and no motion was visible through the tinted windows. Everyone on the helicopter waited for the yacht to blow. At their proximity, the explosion would swat the chopper out of the air.
Rotor wash hit Bolan as he stepped out onto the skid. He held on to the cabin door with one hand and hung out in plain sight.
The door to the yacht’s bridge opened, and Jusuf stepped onto the deck. Bolan and Jusuf’s eyes met across the distance. Bolan slowly drew his Beretta 93-R. He took the machine pistol by the barrel and dropped it into the sea.
Jusuf smiled as Bolan drew his sword. The Indonesian drew his saber and the cleaver from his sash and stood waiting.
“JG, take us in. If we fail, vector in the Corpus Christi for the kill.”
“Goddamn it—” The Huey pulled ahead and cut across the yacht’s bow. Grimaldi brought the chopper to a three-foot hover. Bolan jumped off the skid, and hit the deck. His boarding party deployed behind him.
Isah and Pedoy dropped the magazines from their rifles and fixed bayonets.
Bolan waved Grimaldi off, and the Huey rose away from the yacht. Grimaldi dipped her nose, and the chopper thundered away out of range. All was suddenly very quiet except for the hum of the yacht’s engines.
Hoja walked out onto the deck. The boat captain’s nose was bleeding, and he had sores around his mouth. The Mahdi’s six personal guards followed him. Ten more men came out of the main cabin. Most of them showed signs of radiation burns or sickness. All of them stank of the hashish they were using to counter the symptoms. Bolan’s skin prickled. Every second they stood on the deck, he and his team were taking rads. They needed to take the yacht in ten minutes, or their exposure level would start climbing to
ward the black magic number Lethal Dose 50.
Their opponents had already passed that marker, if not LD 100, but it would take hours if not days for the radiation poisoning to kill them. At the moment they were feeling no pain and the odds were three to one.
The Mahdi and his giant Sudanese sword bearer were nowhere in sight.
Bolan spoke quietly. “Ming. I’d say it’s fifty-fifty that Jusuf has a detonator, and you’re the only one who can take him in a fair fight.”
“I understand.” Ming’s broadswords rasped horribly against the sharpening steels embedded in the sheaths as the giant swordsman drew. He pointed his blades at Jusuf in challenge. Jusuf’s ugly smile slid across his face.
Kris daggers, parangs and curving Southeast Asian steel of every description filled the hands of the Mahdists.
Calvin James whispered to Bolan. “Find the Madhi and the master switch. We’ll keep these punks busy.”
“Right, when I say—”
“Allah Akhbar!” Hoja screamed. The fat little captain moved quickly. The rest of the Mahdists rushed forward in a mob.
“Allah Akhbar!”
Mei moved to intercept Hoja. He took his parang in both hands and swung it like an ax. Mei crossed her long and short kris daggers and staggered as she blocked the blow. Hoja swung his parang again and again in frenzied chopping blows to break her guard.
Jusuf did not join the charge.
“You!” Ming roared. Jusuf only smiled as one of his men lunged screaming at Ming, thrusting with a knife in each hand. The giant gangster swept the double attack aside like Moses parting the Red Sea. His broadswords clanged together in a vicious scissoring motion that left both blades imbedded in his opponent’s temples. Bone splintered as Ming put his foot in the cultist’s chest and ripped his weapons free from the dead man’s head.
“Now, Jusuf, you and I—”
Jusuf’s cleaver flashed through the air. Ming staggered as the square, chopping blade sank into his right shoulder. Blood turned Ming’s scarlet waistcoat a wet maroon and his right-hand sword fell to the deck.
Blood Tide Page 20