Blood Tide Read online

  Bolan spoke the truth. “I think you’re beautiful.”

  The angry mask broke as she made a choking noise. “You do not—”

  Bolan put a finger against her lips and spoke the truth once more. “I’ve killed more men than you can imagine. Good men, innocents and loved ones have died because of my actions.” Bolan gazed up into her eyes. He was not a judge. He was not a jury. He was an Executioner. It was the path he had chosen. He would not turn away from his War Everlasting until it claimed his life, but neither could he deny the sea of blood that was the collateral damage he had left in his wake. Nor could he deny the likelihood that Sujatmi Fass would drown in that same sea before this task was done. It was a burden as heavy as a mountain. He would carry it to his grave and would be forced to bear it before him when he met his maker on the Judgment Day. “Suja, you—”

  Bolan tasted the salt of her tears as she pressed her lips against his to silence him. Both of them bore terrible scars. Their pasts were full of debts unpaid, their futures dark with bloodstained blades and the roar of gunfire. Only that moment had meaning.

  They made love with a new and terrible urgency.

  13

  “Fire.”

  Pedoy let out a scream. “Allah Akhbar!”

  The Type 68 rifle burst into life. Spent brass shell casings sprayed the right side of the firing line as the North Korean weapon burned its 30-round magazine in three seconds. The bolt racked open on an empty chamber. Pedoy stood shaking and blinking. He smiled at Bolan hopefully. Then he flinched and slammed his gaze down at his toes as Jusuf glared at him.

  Bolan peered downrange.

  The distance was twenty-five yards. The rusted-out jerrican serving as the target sat unscarred by bullet holes. Bolan returned his gaze to Pedoy and then to his rifle. Pedoy’s bayonet was fixed. His folding stock was not. He had not bothered to use his sights, but the ladder was set fully forward at eight hundred yards. Pedoy had held the rifle like a giant handgun. His firing technique had consisted of screaming, closing his eyes and holding the trigger down on full-auto.

  Bolan took Pedoy’s rifle with a sigh. “Ali, translate for me.”

  The Philippines had been a blade culture since time out of mind. Pedoy looked crestfallen as Bolan removed the bayonet and handed it back to him. “This is your bayonet.” Bolan pointed toward Jusuf while Ali translated his words into Tagalog. “You do not fix bayonets until your commanding officer tells you to.”

  Jusuf grunted at the wisdom of the statement as Pedoy sadly sheathed the blade.

  “This is your shoulder stock. Your shoulder stock is your friend.” Bolan pulled the folding metal stock down and locked it into place. “It goes against your shoulder.”

  “These are your sights.” He took the ladder sight and set it for the one hundred yard minimum. “You look through the rear, but concentrate on the front.”

  Pedoy nodded as Ali dropped knowledge on him in his native tongue.

  “This is your selector.” Bolan took a loaded 30-round magazine from Pedoy’s belt and clicked it into the rifle. “This is safe.” He held up the rifle and nothing happened as he squeezed the trigger. He slid the selector down with a metallic clack. “Semiautomatic, one shot per each pull of the trigger.”

  Bolan brought the rifle to his shoulder and aimed at a coconut tree a hundred yards away. “You never pull your trigger. You squeeze it.”

  Ali spoke and the Executioner squeezed the trigger three times. Three coconuts burst apart in white sprays of meat and milk.

  The men on the firing line sighed happily at the carnage.

  Bolan considered killing them.

  Jusuf was watching him like a hawk with one hand resting on the butt of the pistol holstered at his hip. Bolan was fairly certain he could put a burst into Jusuf’s skull before the Indonesian could react. But killing the other twelve men would be tight. Their rifles were unloaded, but all of them had bladed weapons and the range was spitting distance. On top of that, he did not know where the Mahdi was or the nature of his master plan. Bolan flicked his selector lever to full-auto.

  “Automatic fire.” Bolan squeezed the trigger. The jerrican tumbled as a 5-round burst tore through it. Bolan fired short bursts, walking the besieged fuel container along the ground. A bullet kicked the can up in the air, and Bolan’s final round swatted it into a violent spin that sent it whistling into the trees.

  Bolan took another magazine and reloaded the rifle. He handed it to Pedoy and pointed at a cardboard box downrange. “Shoot it.”

  Pedoy eagerly put the rifle to his shoulder and peered down the sights.

  “Keep your eyes open. Don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it. Slowly.”

  Pedoy’s trigger finger tightened. The rifle barked. The box skidded along the ground. A black hole had appeared in its lower right-hand corner.

  The volunteer killers along the firing line clapped enthusiastically. Pedoy blushed like a schoolboy. Hitting a cardboard box at twenty-five yards with an assault rifle ranked right up with hitting a barn with a baseball bat, but it was the first hit of his life.

  Bolan nodded approvingly. “Again.”

  Pedoy pulled the trigger. Holes began appearing in the box with monotonous precision. After twenty-two hits the devastated box collapsed upon itself.

  “Everyone load a magazine. Fix your stocks. Pull your rear sight all the way back. Set your selectors on semiauto. Pick a target and start firing.”

  Bolan stepped back as the men on the firing line began to shoot. Boxes and buckets began to scud and jump as they were hit with .30-caliber slugs. Bolan knew he might very well have to kill all of these men, and he was making them better killers in the meantime.

  “Soon they will be ready.”

  Bolan turned at Jusuf’s cryptic remark. “I want them to be able to reliably hit a man-sized target at one hundred yards.”

  “As do I, Makeen.” Jusuf nodded. “There is a time for the blade of the juramentado and a time for the gun. The time of the gun approaches.” Jusuf spoke over his shoulder as he turned and walked back toward the village. “Keep them at it until noon prayers.”

  THE EXECUTIONER’S EYES flicked open. His hand closed around the grips of his pistol a second before Jusuf spoke at the bottom of the ladder to his hut. “Makeen.”

  Bolan relaxed his grip. He had presented Jusuf with a list of the weapons that were unserviceable and shown him the junk pile of discarded components. However, from four rusted-out and corroded Tokarev automatics of Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Yugoslavian manufacture, Bolan had cobbled together a cannibal pistol. The bore was not good and the springs a little sloppy, but Bolan figured he had a pistol that would reliably empty a magazine into someone before blowing up in his hand.

  He pushed the pitted and worn pistol back into the niche he had created between the reed wall facing the sea and a floor beam. Fass made a sleepy noise and rolled over as Bolan rose. He knotted a sarong around his hips and put his sword across his shoulder as he stepped out onto the tiny balcony. Jusuf stood below with the surf lapping around his ankles. A few feet back from the water the Mahdi was surrounded by a phalanx of armed guards. All of them stood in the sand smiling up at Bolan.

  Ducks in a row.

  Bolan knew he had no choice but to wait for a better opportunity.

  The Mahdi crooked his fingers at Bolan. “Come, Makeen. Come. Walk with me.”

  Bolan went down the steps, and one of the Mahdi’s guards bowed slightly and held out his hands for Bolan’s sword. He handed over his blade, and the Mahdi reached up and embraced him warmly. “I hear many good things about you.”

  Bolan returned the little man’s embrace. “Jusuf has given me a good many things to do,” he replied.

  The Mahdi put a hand on Bolan’s back and they began walking down the beach. “I understand the armory is in order, and men who could not…” The little man searched for the phrase in English and his smiled as he found it. “Hit the broad side of a barn…can now do so.”
r />   “Jusuf told me there was a time for the blade of the juramentado, and a time for the gun. I have done what I can with your men and your guns.”

  “And you have done well.” The Mahdi sighed. “Did you know I have enemies?”

  “The righteous are beset with them. Always has it been so,” Bolan said.

  “Indeed.” They walked along for a few moments in silence as the sun rose. “You have proved yourself quite useful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yet, you have not proved yourself.”

  Bolan nodded. “I fear so.”

  “Your position among us is unique. You are not one of us. You did not come to me because you were called. You appear to be a righteous man caught in an unfortunate situation.”

  Bolan nodded. “What would you have me do, Imam?”

  “I have an enemy.” They stopped walking and the Mahdi gripped Bolan’s arm. “Would you rid me of him?”

  Bolan frowned. “I have trained and broken bread with your men. I know enough to know that I do not know the rituals, and I have not been initiated into the mysteries of the juramentado.”

  “I would not initiate you yet. I would not reveal our mysteries or our true purpose to you yet.” The little man took Bolan’s hands in his own. “But as Jusuf told you, there is a time for the blade of the juramentado, and a time for the gun.”

  Bolan’s set his jaw. “I will tell you this, Holy One, even if it means my death. In Kosovo we fought the Crusaders, Roman and Orthodox. I was raised Bektasi. My father was a Dervish, and yet I fought beside both Shia and Sunni. I fought beside Muslims of many nations who had come to make jihad against those who sought to cleanse the land of those of the faith. I fought beside Asians, Arabs and Persians and saw them martyr themselves in the war against the Christians. I will not raise my hand against my fellow Muslim.”

  “I would not ask such a thing.” The little man’s eyes shone, and again Bolan felt the power of his personality like a battering ram. “Jusuf warned me that you could be a danger, and yet I would not allow you to be callously slain for the same reason.”

  “You have my thanks.”

  “Yet, you are a warrior, you have made jihad. We have a purpose, and you must join us, or I fear you must pay a terrible price.”

  Bolan stood silently.

  “I see you are a man of conscience.” The Mahdi’s snowy brows rose slightly. “Yet what if I told you my enemy is an infidel?”

  “That would make things significantly easier. What is he?” Bolan put a scowl on his face. “A Christian?”

  The Mahdi smiled like a fisherman who feels a nibble. “My enemy worships four things. Graven idols, gold, opium and whores.”

  “Then he is damned.”

  “Indeed,” the Mahdi said. “And constantly he seeks to send his spies among the brethren and destroy me, but unfortunately for him, I have many more spies among those who cleave unto him. They tell me he now conspires with western powers we fight to see me fall. I have had enough. I would see him fall.”

  “Who is your enemy?”

  “Why, my enemy is Rustam Megawatti, the Pirate King of the China Sea.” The tiny man’s fingers gripped Bolan’s hands with a strength that belied his size. The eyes of the Expected One blazed into those of the Executioner. “And now is the time of the gun.”

  14

  Kouprey Island, Cambodia

  The men were nervous, and they had every right to be. Most of them had never been in a firefight in their lives, and they were going up against hardened killers. The enemy were pirates who had spent their lives savaging the sea lanes and taking what they wanted by force. Bolan’s platoon had received exactly one week of the equivalent of US Army Ranger training. Most of that had been marksmanship, weapons maintenance and the use of cover.

  Very little of that would serve them well.

  The Mahdi and Jusuf had taken Bolan’s fledgling marksmen and decided to use them as shock troops. Behind them were nearly a hundred fighters, armed with whatever firearm they could find. They would come flooding in when Bolan’s corps had broken the defenses.

  Bolan thought a much better idea would be to have the one hundred hopped-up yahoos do the charging and screaming while his men used their newfound skills to cover the assault, or better yet, make a flanking attack during the diversion. Unfortunately, Bolan had not been consulted during the grand strategy session. He and his team had simply been issued their orders.

  They were the tip of spear.

  Sneaking up on Rustam Megawatti had not been difficult. The Mahdi had spies in Megawatti’s household who knew his every movement. The Pirate King was making inroads into “legitimate” business enterprises. He was using his considerable connections and a great deal of under-the-table PRC financial backing to open up a string of casinos along the Cambodian coast. The tiny island the Cambodian government had leased to him was named after the national animal. The kouprey was a very rare, forest-dwelling cow that stood over six feet at the shoulder and weighed over a ton.

  The Mahdi’s army had unloaded outrigger canoes from the belly of a steamer and spent a day and a night under sail and oar to insert on the island’s southern tip.

  Megawatti’s French colonial manor was lit up like a Christmas tree. The sound of music and laughter wafted over the twelve-foot walls of stone. A military truckload of prostitutes had been driven into the compound earlier. The Mahdi’s spies said the manor had at least fifty armed men. The son, Isfan, was on the island, and he had brought a dozen of his bodyguards with him. Armed men walked the walls and guarded the gate. The French-style iron gate had been replaced by heavy beams reinforced with iron bands. Within the walls, a twenty-foot bamboo guard tower surveyed all approaches to the villa.

  The assault was going to be ugly.

  Bolan could smell the sweet smoke as the men prepared for juramentado. They smoked, tied their testicles and worked themselves into a religious frenzy back in the trees. The Executioner’s men were stone-cold sober. Their balls were not bound. Indeed, they were hanging in the breeze on this one, and each and every one of them knew it. Bolan wished he had the Dragunov sniper rifle, but he knew it would not serve him in the current situation he was leading from the front.

  Bolan spoke low. “Hey, Pedoy.”

  Pedoy’s head jerked around.

  Bolan’s smile flashed out of the black greasepaint camouflaging his face “Now you can fix your bayonet,” he said while miming the action.

  Pedoy grinned and the men who had been on the firing line laughed low. Bolan nodded at Ali. “Tell the men to fix bayonets.”

  Ali gave the order down the line, and bayonets rasped from their sheaths and clicked into place. The order to hang sharpened steel on the end of his rifle never failed to focus a soldier’s attention. Fear and uncertainty hardened into fierce determination. Bolan’s chosen men all wore thin black cotton pyjamas and head wraps. Their faces were smeared with grease or ash.

  Sujatmi Fass crept through the trees like a phantom in black and dropped to one knee beside Bolan. “They are prepared,” she said.

  Ali knelt beside them. “Bayonets are fixed. Shoulder stocks deployed. Sights set at one hundred yards.” The young man grinned. “We shall die like real riflemen.”

  “Like chosen men.”

  “Yes.” Ali nodded happily. “Chosen men.”

  “Good,” Bolan said. “Let’s prepare.”

  Ali took out a plastic butane lighter and handed it to Bolan. They crouched back deeper in the trees, and the Executioner nodded at a man even younger than Ali. “Abu, dynamite,” he ordered.

  Abu scampered forward carrying a canvas satchel. Bolan gave the contents of the satchel a final examination. His nose wrinkled as he caught the vague acrid-chemical stench coming from the bag.

  The dynamite was sweating nitro in the tropical heat.

  Bolan shook his head grimly at his demolition assistant. “Abu, wipe down the dynamite one more time. When we attack, you stay behind me, right on my heels. Al
i, you and Section One stay back to cover the assault and then move forward once the gate is breached. Then—Damn it!”

  A man came running through the trees like a white-robed ghost brandishing a knife in each hand. Bolan was tempted to shoot him as he broke into the killing ground between the trees and the manor. “Allah Akhbar!” the man shouted.

  They had just lost the element of surprise.

  “Allah Akhbar!” The one-hundred-man roar rose behind Bolan’s corps in response. The pumped-up men were running juramentado early.

  Bolan raised his rifle and put a burst through each of the two men guarding the gate. “Sections Two, Three, Four! Follow me! Go! Go! Go!”

  The men streamed out of the jungle. Bolan and his crew were black shadows among the fanatics in white as they burst forth from hiding, desperately trying to cover the kill zone.

  The floodlight snapped on, lighting the area like a football field.

  Gunfire flashed along the wall as Megawatti’s men responded to the sea of incoming targets.

  The first men fell from a burst from an automatic rifle. Bolan’s riflemen obeyed their training. The twelve men he had held back in the tree line with Ali used their sights and began engaging the guardsmen along the wall. Bolan’s remaining thirty men charged forward firing short bursts as they came. Tracers crisscrossed the killing ground.

  The heavy machine gun in the watchtower began ripping through the human wave like a scythe. Blood sprayed Bolan as a man beside him broke apart like a piñata. The big .50-caliber bullets blew through the oncoming men like tissue paper. Bolan ran on. Abu ran behind him with the satchel of sweating dynamite clutched in both hands. They’d lost thirty men in ten seconds, and the machine gun continued to reap men like wheat.

  Bolan flung himself flat against the gate. “Abu!”

  Abu produced a five-stick bundle of dynamite. Bolan struggled with the lighter. The flame finally held and the fuse lit. He pressed the bundle into place against the center of the gate. “Tape!”

  Duct tape ripped in Abu’s hands as he taped the hissing dynamite in place.