Ballistic Read online

  In short, his soldiers wouldn’t fail him. To a man, he knew that they would rather die in battle with the enemy than under Jin’s own hand. That some of them might die this day, he took for granted. But his enemies would die, as well.

  Die screaming for his entertainment, as he sent them off to hell.

  South China Sea

  ABOARD THE FREIGHTER Tiger Shark, Captain Fahri Navis smoked and waited for the signal. They were close now, had to be. There’d been no message canceling the rendezvous at sea, using the prearranged code word volcano.

  If he called off the meeting without proper orders from headquarters, Navis knew there would be an eruption, all right, and he would be the one feeling its heat. The last thing that he ever felt in life, no doubt, and he could well imagine praying for the end to be a swift one.

  But the order hadn’t come, and so his venerable cargo ship plowed on eastward, theoretically bound for Sand Cay in the Spratly Islands, prior to visiting Manila. If, for any reason, Navis wasn’t signaled for the rendezvous before his lookout saw the westernmost of the Spratlys, his backup orders were specific and concise: dump the cargo at sea, off Fiery Cross Reef, and let the tardy buyers salvage it as best they could.

  Both sides, presumably, had ratified that option, for all that it mattered to Navis. He took orders only from his master in Johor Bahru, and silence on the radio told him nothing had changed. The Tiger Shark would continue on its way, and he would see what happened next.

  Five minutes later, as the captain lit another cigarette, his radioman chirped out, “Incoming message, sir!”

  Navis said nothing in reply, stood waiting, trying to appear cool and relaxed. A moment later, the communications officer announced, “It is the Flying Fish.”

  So far, all was in order, Navis mused.

  “Confirm contact,” he ordered.

  “Aye, Captain. Confirming.”

  Navis waited for the confirmation to be sent and then demanded, “The coordinates?”

  “Receiving, sir. Eight degrees, thirty-two minutes, fourteen seconds north...by one hundred and eleven degrees, fifty-four minutes, nine seconds east.”

  Navis found the spot on his nautical chart, confirming safe distance from land, then repeated the coordinates to his helmsman, who instantly acknowledged and changed course. They had about two miles to travel, call it five minutes at the Tiger Shark’s normal cruising speed of ten knots. Anticipation brought the faintest tremor to his hands, and Navis hid them in the pockets of his khaki trousers.

  He would wait until they met the Flying Fish before he ordered preparation for the transfer. It was always possible—though unlikely—that security had somehow been breached, a trap laid for his ship and its cargo. In that event, Navis had more explicit orders from Johor Bahru.

  Destroy the Tiger Shark. Send it to the bottom with its cargo.

  As for the crew, it would be each man for himself.

  Six minutes after ordering their change of course, Navis heard confirmation of a sighting from his lookout at the Tiger Shark’s bow. Raising his binoculars, he spied the Flying Fish, a vessel slightly larger than his own, and marked the cargo crane amidships that would make the transfer from his hold to the receiving vessel. No cash would change hands at this point, payment for the cargo being prearranged between the men in charge.

  No conversation was exchanged by radio as they approached the Flying Fish. Both captains knew why they were meeting, and it was no one else’s business. Navis hoped the transfer would go smoothly, so he could return to Johor Bahru with a good report, collect his pay and put the business out of mind. If he heard no more of the cargo in his hold for the remainder of his life, he thought that it would be too soon.

  Jakarta

  “THE MISSILES SHOULD HAVE BEEN transferred by now,” Maia told Bolan, scowling at her watch. “We may already be too late.”

  “It’s not too late until they pull the trigger,” he replied. “And even if that happens, we’re not done.”

  “My people are ambiguous about revenge,” Maia observed. “We practice it, of course, yet all our ancient proverbs counsel otherwise. You’ve heard it said that he who seeks revenge should dig two graves?”

  “One for the enemy, one for himself,” Bolan finished the thought.

  “Confucius,” Maia said. “Another says, ‘A man need never revenge himself, the body of his enemy will be brought to his own door.’”

  “But when?” Bolan asked. “Me, I’d rather do the job myself and get it over with.”

  In truth, while he had killed men for revenge—the mobsters who had pushed his father to the razor’s edge of murder-suicide, some others who had slain or tortured Bolan’s friends over the years—he seldom pulled the trigger as an act of vengeance on his own behalf. Removing human predators from circulation was, to him, a form of execution. Those he killed had judged themselves, condemned themselves, by virtue of their actions, by the evil in their hearts and minds. Bolan was simply helping victims yet undamaged.

  Taking out the trash.

  His mission, this time, was to intercept the stolen Chinese missiles before either one was fired in anger. Failing that, however, he would do his best to punish those responsible for whatever atrocity ensued. And make damned certain that they never had another chance to spill innocent blood.

  “I wish we had a home address for Jin Au-Yo,” said Maia. “Unfortunately—”

  “Never mind,” he tried to reassure her. “We’ll find something when we start to rattle cages with the targets that we do have.”

  “Even so,” she answered, “finding him is one thing. Getting him to talk...”

  “We’ll manage. Trust me.”

  She made no reply to that, and Bolan let it go. Their first stop on a driving tour of Jakarta, spotting targets in advance of any action, was in Karet Kuningan, the fastest-growing district in Jakarta’s “Golden Triangle.” Its street scenes featured embassies and shopping malls, exclusive office buildings and luxury residential towers. Its centerpiece, the Plaza Setiabudi complex, offered corporate and legal offices side by side with stylish restaurants and cozy cafés, travel agencies, a fitness center and a multiscreen theater where hits from Hollywood and Bollywood competed for box-office gold. The neighborhood also harbored multiple cybercafés, which Maia described as popular fronts for casinos, banned under Indonesian law derived from the Koran.

  Specifically, she steered him to a joint called Jaring Dunia, which translated to Web World. The logo in its window was a spiderweb, in which a smiley-faced tarantula was working on a laptop.

  “Cute,” Bolan said.

  “In the back room,” Maia said, “they play mahjong, pai gow, sic bo, also pachinko, slot machines and blackjack, take your pick. The Flying Ax Triad owns many of these operations outright, and collects a license fee or house percentage from the so-called independent operators. In a month, we estimate their income to be around two million renminbi. Say three hundred thirteen thousand U.S. dollars.”

  Close to four million per year. “Is that the total for Jakarta, or for Indonesia overall?” he asked.

  “Jakarta only,” she replied. “The same or slightly less for Bandung, Denpasar, Bekasi and Bandar Lampung. Half that much for other major cities nationwide, depending on their population.”

  “We do it right, a visit ought to shake them up,” he said.

  Bolan had no personal ax to grind where gambling was concerned, on moral grounds or any other. He was a libertarian in most respects, believing people should be free to do whatever pleased them on their own, or with other consenting adults, as long as no third party’s rights were violated in the process. But experience had taught him that the predators he hunted earned the bulk of their infernal revenue from human weakness and addiction—to drugs, liquor, gambling, pornography, whatever—and until that corrupting influence was eradi
cated absolutely, there was no such thing as a victimless crime.

  Mob money—call it triad, Mafia, Yakuza, pick your poison—was always tainted, one hundred percent of the time. You couldn’t launder it enough to lose the stains of blood and misery it carried as it passed from hand to filthy hand.

  And hitting human monsters where it hurt them most, most of the time meant striking at their wallets. Meant shutting down the flow of cash that let them buy protection while they lived the high life, courtesy of ordinary men and women whose weaknesses kept the underworld afloat.

  “Looks like as good a place to start as any,” Bolan said. “Shall we?”

  Pondok Indah, South Jakarta

  AT LAST, GOOD NEWS. The call had been relayed to Jin Au-Yo through Johor Bahru, from the Mengantuk Naga at sea. Transfer of the missiles was completed, and the buyers had professed their satisfaction with the merchandise. Transfer of the agreed-upon final payment would now proceed, via computer, from a bank in the United Arab Emirates to yet another in Hong Kong. What happened after that was none of Jin’s concern.

  And yet, he was concerned. Not for the triad’s money, since Hong Kong’s legal system—based on British common law—and the strict security of its financial institutions remained sacrosanct, despite transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. By that time, Beijing’s masters had long recognized the wisdom of lucrative commercial contacts with the West and luring capital from foreign lands to Chinese soil. Of course, the ruling party’s bosses got their taste, as had the British overlords from 1839 until the tail end of the last century.

  What else could any businessman expect?

  No, Jin’s concern focused on the opponents who had liquidated Khoo Kay Sundaram along with many of his men. Opponents who, Jin now had reason to believe, were in Jakarta, armed and stalking him. They might not know that he had passed the stolen Chinese missiles on to others who had commissioned their theft. And in fact, the stalkers might not care. They would require names for the buyers, and would seek them first from Jin Au-Yo, unless they found another source.

  To stop them, end the threat once and for all, Jin had already mobilized his private army in Jakarta and its suburbs, searching for the hunters who were seeking him. It was a race against the clock, now, and the vanguard of the Flying Ax Triad believed that he would win.

  Why not? He’d always won before. The proof was that he lived to fight another day.

  Karet Kuningan, Central Jakarta

  WEB WORLD SERVED customers around the clock, like any serious cybercafé or casino. Window-shopping at boutiques and travel agencies across the street, Bolan and Maia had a chance to watch the flow of customers who came and went over the course of half an hour. Maybe ten percent checked in to buy computer time, the rest passing a beefy skinhead at the register to enter a back room. During the thirty minutes they’d been watching, half the web-surfers had come and gone, but no one had emerged from the back room.

  “A lot of gamblers here,” Bolan said.

  “It’s a mania with many Asians,” Maia told him. “I believe you have the same in the United States.”

  “You’re right,” he answered, thinking of the sights he’d seen in Vegas and Atlantic City. Seniors wearing leather work gloves as they worked the slots nonstop, until push-button models made them switch to thimbles. Blisters were a bitch. Tales circulated far and wide about crap-shooters who collapsed unnoticed from a stroke or heart attack, responding cops and EMTs compelled to push other gamblers aside before they could check vital signs or start CPR.

  “Ready to spoil the party?” Maia asked him.

  “Always ready,” Bolan said, feeling the loaded SIG-Sauer’s two pounds and change beneath his left arm, in its fast-draw rig. Spare magazines under his right armpit gave Bolan forty-six shots with the pistol, but he hoped things wouldn’t go that far.

  Maia, for her part, wasn’t taking any chances. She’d put on a light raincoat, in deference to the Jakarta drizzle, and it helped conceal her silenced Pindad PM2. She also had her own SIG holstered, just in case the whole thing went to hell and thirty Parabellum manglers weren’t enough to settle it.

  “You had a good idea about the money,” she acknowledged, as they spotted traffic and crossed the street with only minor bleats from hostile drivers’ horns.

  “We’ll put ourselves on Jin’s radar, just showing up and asking where he is,” Bolan replied. “Tapping his till should drive the message home.”

  “Money is what he understands,” Maia agreed, as if that settled everything.

  But Bolan reckoned their opponent understood some other things, as well. Survival of the fittest, for example, in a world where “dog eat dog” was sometimes taken literally. Unless born to triad royalty, he’d have clawed his way up from the gutter, spilling blood along the way to prove himself and more to hold the post he’d finally attained. He might have plans for rising higher, gaining more authority, and dull wits wouldn’t get it done.

  Expect the worst. That way, you’d always be prepared, and any disappointment was a sweet surprise.

  They made it to the east side of the street and entered Web World, breezing past the email junkies, toward the steely-eyed cashier. He saw them coming, didn’t like it, and was reaching underneath the counter when they let him see their guns.

  “Speak English?” Bolan asked him.

  He got a brief nod back in reply.

  “Okay,” the Executioner commanded. “Show us where the action is.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  South China Sea

  The stolen Hsiung Feng III missiles didn’t remain aboard the Flying Fish for long. A second rendezvous occurred as soon as the freighter’s captain lost visual contact with the Tiger Shark. The new arrival was a larger vessel, overhauled before this voyage and rechristened as the Thunderbolt.

  Nasir al-Jarrah watched from the Thunderbolt’s flying bridge as the missiles were off-loaded and secured belowdecks. The Saudi had forgotten how to smile long years ago, but would have said, if asked, that he was happy at that moment. Soon vengeance would be within his grasp for all that he had lost—his wives, children, his homeland—and he would be pleased to strike a telling blow against the infidels he hated, in the Sword of Allah’s name.

  Beside Nasir al-Jarrah stood the Sword of Allah’s field marshal for Indonesia, Usmar Malik. It was he who had conceived the present operation and coordinated its fulfillment, working through the mercenary triads and Malaysian pirates to present al-Jarrah and the movement with the greatest weapons they had thus far managed to secure. And more than simple weaponry: a chance to punish the Great Satan for its stubborn opposition to the Prophet’s word.

  “Our time is coming,” Malik said.

  “And none too soon,” al-Jarrah answered.

  For the task at hand, the Thunderbolt had been refitted, transformed from a simple cargo ship into a vessel altogether different and deadly. While no outward sign of its conversion was apparent at a glance, a hatch with double doors had been cut into the freighter’s forward deck. Below that hatch, on a hydraulic lift, a launcher had been built with parts accumulated from the same Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology that had designed and fabricated the Brave Wind missiles. In Taiwan, a CIST foreman and his crew were richer now, the missing parts recorded as defective and discarded on the company’s books. Upon Nasir al-Jarrah’s order, the deck hatch would open, the launcher would rise, and a missile would fly to its target, as straight as an arrow from God’s own bow.

  Soon, now.

  “Have you decided on a target for the test-fire?” Malik inquired.

  “It hardly matters,” al-Jarrah replied. “Something of substance, flying an infidel’s flag. Once we have demonstrated our ability and willingness to strike, I trust even the devils at the Pentagon to honor our demands.”


  Malik was clearly skeptical. “They boast that they will not negotiate with so-called terrorists,” he said.

  “And there will be no sniveling negotiation,” al-Jarrah reminded him. “Unless the nonbelievers bow to our demands in full, we take one of their precious aircraft carriers. They will not be advised of where or when the blow shall fall, but it will come. The Nimitz class, I think. Constructed at a cost of $4.5 billion, with eighty-five aircraft and nearly seven thousand personnel on board. More than double the Twin Towers losses, Usmar. Think of it! One blow will rock America to its foundation.”

  “And then what?” Malik asked quietly.

  Al-Jarrah shrugged. “And then, the war goes on. Of course, we don’t expect them to surrender or abandon Israel. Only God’s might unleashed directly could effect those ends. We are mere mortal soldiers, but we can make history. And while they reel from one blow, we shall plan and wait to strike another. There is truly no rest for the wicked while the righteous still have strength and will to fight.”

  “God’s will be done,” Malik intoned.

  “His will is always done,” al-Jarrah said. “Our generation may not live to see it, but the victory shall come.”

  Al-Jarrah imagined men stripped to the waist belowdecks, gleaming with perspiration as they placed one Brave Wind missile in the launcher, checking and rechecking all its systems, making ready for the moment when it flew.

  The Chinese, he supposed, would be as furious as the Great Satan. And what of it? He cared no more for a nation schooled in atheism and the heresy of Buddhism than for the Christian wasteland of America. If they became embroiled in battle, one against the other, it could only aid the Sword of Allah’s cause by crippling both.

  His will be done indeed.

  Karet Kuningan, Central Jakarta

  WEB WORLD’S CASHIER GLARED daggers at the Executioner but did as he was told. Once off the high stool he’d been seated on, he was a runt of five foot one or two, but broad across the chest and shoulders like a power lifter. Bolan stayed beyond the reach of his long, almost simian arms and trailed the guy through a rattling beaded curtain to a door farther along a narrow hallway.