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“At least,” Brognola said.
“So why the sudden urgency?” Bolan asked.
“Ah. Because our songbird down at Gitmo didn’t only drop a name.”
“Go on.”
“According to Khaled, al Qaeda has our boy on tap this time, to ‘teach Satan a lesson he will not forget.’ Khaled has no specifics on the nature of that lesson, but we didn’t like the sound of it.”
“That’s understandable,” Bolan allowed.
“So, there you are. We’ve got one kick-ass warrior, seemingly devoid of anything resembling conscience, working for a group that wants to take us off the map. We’d like to stop them—him, specifically—and do it in a way that doesn’t make the Pentagon look like a nuthouse with the inmates in control. You in?”
Bolan frowned, feeling the deadweight of the CD in his pocket. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I’m in.”
A QUARTER OF AN HOUR LATER, back at the Wakulla Inn, Bolan reviewed the CD on his laptop. It began with all the ordinary paperwork for the induction of a U.S. Army private, with the details of its subject’s early life.
Eugene Adam Talmadge had indeed been born in 1967—April 23, to be precise—in Boulder, Colorado. His high-school grades were average, except in sports, where he excelled. A college football scholarship had been on offer, but he’d turned it down to wear a uniform, and then a green beret.
Bolan was somewhat puzzled by that choice, coming in 1985, when there was no threat of a military draft and no war currently in progress to attract daredevil types. Maybe Talmadge decided that he was unsuited to a college campus, even with the free ride offered by its sports department. Maybe he was hoping to accomplish something on his own, not have it handed to him on a silver platter just because he was a jock. Trouble at home? Something so personal it didn’t make the files?
Bolan would never know.
Talmadge had been a standout boot in basic training, and had taken to the Special Forces school at Benning like a duck to water, acing every course except the foreign-language training, where he struggled for a passing score in Spanish. When it came to weapons training and explosives, unarmed combat and survival, though, Talmadge had everything the service could desire, and then some.
Talmadge had killed his first two men in Panama, a couple of Manuel Noriega’s gorillas who weren’t smart enough to lay down their arms in the face of superior force. There was no intimation of a trigger-happy soldier in that case, no hint of any impropriety.
In combat, people died.
In Desert Storm, Talmadge had earned a reputation for himself. On the advance from Kuwait, through Iraq, he’d personally taken out at least two dozen members of Saddam’s elite Republican Guard, earning a Silver Star and a Purple Heart in the process. The citation that accompanied his Silver Star praised Talmadge for his bravery and focus under fire, resulting in the rescue of two wounded comrades and elimination of a hostile rifle squad. Details were classified, suggesting that the mission also had a covert side.
His flesh wounds didn’t keep him out of action long. Talmadge had shipped out for Somalia in winter 1992, as part of Washington’s attempt to regulate that nation’s rival warlords and bring order out of chaos. That attempt had failed, but Talmadge scored nine more verified kills during four months in-country. His part in the rescue of a downed Black Hawk crew earned him a DSC—Distinguished Service Cross—and yet another Purple Heart.
He did all right, Bolan thought, moving onward through the soldier’s life on paper.
The sutures were barely removed from Talmadge’s Somalian wounds when new orders dispatched him to Bosnia-Herzegovina, land of ethnic cleansing and religious hatred spanning centuries. More warlords, more atrocities, more combat pay. Talmadge hadn’t been wounded in that conflict, but he had logged seven kills the record keepers knew about. No decorations that time for a job well done.
The Army’s standard paperwork included his record for the next year and a half, until the bitter end. Bolan discovered that the incident in 1995 had happened at Fort Benning. A lieutenant, name deleted, was the so-called victim, with a list of fractures and internal damage ranging from his skull down to his knees. The witnesses included two civilians and a corporal, name deleted, who was almost certainly the female Brognola had mentioned in his summary.
And as Brognola had explained, the transcripts of the court-martial were missing, classified for reasons unexplained. The logic of that void was inescapable: the facts were secret. Ergo, there could be no explanation why they had been classified, or else the secret would’ve been revealed.
Catch-22.
Bolan took Brognola’s appraisal of the case as valid, recognized the anger and frustration Talmadge had to have felt at being railroaded. Any remarks he may have offered to the court-martial were classified along with all the rest, leaving the slate blank. Only the verdict now remained, its stinging condemnation of a former hero sure to follow him for the remainder of his life.
Under the circumstances, Bolan was a bit surprised that Talmadge hadn’t sought revenge against the Army. Then again, when he considered what Talmadge had done throughout the intervening years—what he was doing now—perhaps he had. Brognola might be wrong about the former Green Beret’s coldhearted profit motive. Talmadge fought for pay, of course—he had to eat, like anybody else—but in his work for Middle Eastern terrorists, he had been striking out against the West.
And striking back at Uncle Sam.
Bolan was no armchair psychologist, but it didn’t require a Ph.D. to recognize that Talmadge had his pick of causes and employers in a world where violence was the norm. He could’ve spent more time in sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia if his only goal was money in the bank.
Instead, by working for Hamas, al Qaeda and the like, Talmadge had actually chosen sides, but with a difference. He wasn’t some deluded college convert to Islamic fundamentalist extremism, or a celebrity who craved publicity at any cost. He was a soldier, and he’d made a choice.
Bolan thought he understood Gene Talmadge now, and he could even sympathize with him. Up to a point. But sympathy ran out when Talmadge cast his lot with terrorists and criminals. There was—at least to Bolan’s mind—a world of difference between a mercenary soldier drifting aimlessly, involved in brushfire wars without regard to ideology, and one who set himself on a collision course with the United States and civilized society.
Whatever wrongs Talmadge had suffered at the hands of his superiors, he’d given up the moral high ground when he hired on with al Qaeda and its allies to perpetuate a bloodbath fueled by hatred and fanaticism. Bolan knew that something had to be done, and he seemed the best qualified to do the job.
Brognola’s latest information placed the target in Jakarta, where al Qaeda was supposed to have a thriving outpost. Bolan’s contact on the ground would be an agent from Homeland Security, who had been keeping track of Talmadge and his playmates since the news from Gitmo started making waves.
Whether the Special Forces renegade would still be there when Bolan reached the scene was anybody’s guess, but every journey had a starting point.
CHAPTER TWO
Jakarta, Indonesia
The city smelled of spice and death. Street vendors hawked their wares from pushcarts, many of them mobile kitchens offering the best of Far Eastern cuisine at bargain prices, while the nearby waterfront and fish market contributed aromas from the Java Sea.
Mack Bolan almost felt at home among the thousands of pedestrians and cyclists who thronged the narrow streets fronting Kelapa Harbor. It refreshed old memories of other times in Southeast Asia, when he’d gambled with the Reaper and the game had gone his way.
But Bolan always wondered if his luck would hold next time.
This time.
But while he felt at home, in some respects, Bolan was also well aware that he stood out among the locals, obviously alien. He made an easy target in the crowd, and might not see the hunters coming if they played their cards right. It was really their home, after all, and he was just a visitor with the wrong eyes, wrong hair, wrong skin.
Just like the man he was supposed to meet.
Two strangers in a strange land, who had never met each other previously, but whose movements were directed by a higher power. In Bolan’s case, that power was a man named Hal Brognola, operating out of Washington, D.C. His contact also marched to drums from Washington, but had no clue that Bolan and the team he served existed.
All that was about to change, together with the contact’s life, his whole conception of the world.
And Bolan’s?
He would have to wait and see.
Unlike his contact, Bolan had been forearmed with a photograph to help him spot his fellow round-eye at Kelapa Harbor. If their meeting was aborted for whatever reason, they were supposed to try again that afternoon, at the Jakarta Ragunan Zoo. A hookup near the tiger pit.
For his part, Bolan hoped to get it right the first time, but he always liked to have a fallback option, just in case.
He’d come prepared, to the extent that climate and propriety allowed. With temperatures in the nineties, he could hardly wear an overcoat to cover automatic weapons, so he’d opted for a large, loose-fitting shirt, with slacks and running shoes. Beneath the shirt, he had replaced his usual Beretta with a Glock 19, a compact version of the classic semiautomatic pistol that retained its firepower—two rounds better than the Beretta Model 92—while eliminating the external hammer and safety. Two extra magazines weighted his trouser pockets, with a folding knife that resembled a Japanese tanto.
Bolan had purchased those weapons, and some others that he couldn’t sport in public, from a local dealer recommended by Brognola, who acquired the name and address from an unnamed source. That suited Bolan, since the source wouldn’t know his name, either, or the reason why Brognola needed guns in Indonesia, several thousand miles beyond his legal jurisdiction.
Bolan didn’t know if his contact was armed, or if he had been trained to any serious degree in self-defense. The U.S. war on terror, winding down its first decade with no clear end in sight, had thrown together many strange bed-fellows with a mix of capabilities, knowledge and skills that was almost surreal. Homeland Security, for instance, was neither restricted to the continental U.S.A. nor limited in operations to securing airports, borders and the like. Its agents might be anywhere.
Even Jakarta, on a steamy morning when the city smelled like spice and death.
Bolan had memorized a photo and description of his contact, and he had a name. Tom Dixon. He could pick the man out of a crowd, particularly on these streets, but finding him was only step one of the job at hand.
Bolan preferred to work alone, whenever possible, but there were times—like now—when he required assistance from a local or an agent with specific background, skills, intelligence. Tom Dixon was supposed to fit that bill. And if he didn’t?
Once again, Bolan would have to wait and see.
TOM DIXON DAWDLED at a newsstand, checking out the tabloids while he tried to spot a tail. The hairy monster known to locals as orang dalam had paid another visit to Johor, one paper told him, leaving twenty-inch footprints and scaring hell out of coffee plantation workers in the process. Other headlines clamored about rebels in the countryside and government attempts to crush them, while the price of oil was going up again, no end in sight.
Dixon had drawn the Indonesian posting mainly because his language skills included fluency in French, Bahasa Indonesia and Cantonese. It helped to speak the native tongue, of course, but as a white man in an Asian world, there still were times when he felt totally alone.
Like now.
He’d thought the job sounded exciting when he started. Cloak-and-dagger stuff in an exotic setting, very double-0 and all that rot. He even had a pistol, which he’d qualified to use under instruction from a grizzled combat veteran who looked as if he’d been used for target practice by the Red Chinese back in the day.
He’d rolled into Jakarta thinking it would be a piece of cake—or, at the very least, something to tell the kids about, assuming that he ever married, settled down and got around to siring children. Then the truth had slapped him like a wet towel in the face, and Dixon realized that he might never see the U.S.A. again. Might never make it to his thirtieth birthday.
That understanding hadn’t come upon him all at once, of course. First, Dixon had begun to recognize that learning different languages didn’t make him a native of the world at large. No matter how he honed his accent, he was still a white-bread boy from Mason City, Iowa, at heart. And he had much to learn about survival in a society where life was cheap and might made right.
He’d managed well enough at first, in terms of following instructions and collecting certain information his superiors required, but then he started feeling as if everyone was watching him. At first, Dixon had chalked it up to a first-timer’s paranoia, but he soon discovered that he was, in fact, under surveillance.
Fine.
It could’ve been the government, although Indonesia was a theoretical ally in Washington’s attempt to save the world from all free radicals. Or maybe it was someone else. In which case, Dixon thought, he might be well and truly screwed.
There’d been no move against him yet, but maybe they were waiting for a certain time and place in which to strike. Now, with another agent coming from the States to help him out—or do the dirty work, why kid himself?—he wondered if the other side had finally decided to eliminate him.
All his contacts with Homeland Security so far had been securely routed through the U.S. Embassy, and while he didn’t think there was a leak inside, Dixon was wise enough to know he could’ve tipped his hand a hundred different ways while chasing leads on foreign soil. He spoke the language, but he didn’t know the people well enough to tell if they were working both sides of the fence, scheming to bait a trap that would destroy him and his faceless, nameless ally from America.
How’s that for trust? he asked himself, leaving the newsstand with a last glance back along the street he’d traveled moments earlier. No one immediately hid his face or ducked into a doorway, nothing to betray a clumsy tail.
And that was the point, Dixon thought. No one said the enemy was clumsy, stupid or inept.
It was a part of the established Western mind-set, he supposed, but it was clearly wrong. In Vietnam, peasants in black pajamas, armed with weapons left behind from World War II, had fought the mighty U.S. Army to a standstill after eight long years of war with no holds barred. On 9/11, zealots armed with supermarket boxcutters had seized four high-tech airliners and scored the single most destructive hostile raid on U.S. soil in all of history.
Long story short, it didn’t pay to underestimate the enemy, especially when operating on their enemy’s native soil. Dixon had spent the past two nights without much sleep, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong, and he still had nothing to show for it.
Maybe the new guy from the States, this Mr. X, could put things right. If not, then, what?
James Bond would never take this lying down, Dixon thought.
He was smiling when he hit the fish market, then caught a whiff of what was waiting for him, and his face went blank. Dixon had walked the same ground yesterday, getting familiar with the turf, and knew exactly where to go for his anticipated rendezvous. Along the way, he stopped at different stalls, chosen at random, checking out the fish and casting sidelong glances at his backtrack.
Nothing. Zip. Nada.
Which reassured him not at all.
The pistol underneath his baggy shirt, a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson, felt heavier than usual this morning. He supposed that it was nerves, and hoped he wouldn’t freeze if he was forced to use the gun for once, instead of simply hauling it around with him.
He saw the stall with squids and octopuses heaped in baskets, countless arms entangled as if someone had prepared a latex sculpture of Medusa, daubed with slime. Dixon was almost there when strong hands gripped his biceps from behind and someone aimed a solid kick behind his right knee, dropping him into a crouch.
He felt rather than saw the keen blade drawn across his throat.
BOLAN WAS THIRTY FEET from Dixon when it started going down. He’d made a positive ID on Dixon, had the password turning over in his mind, when suddenly two wiry Asians came at Dixon from behind, out of the crowd.
Each man clutched one of Dixon’s arms, one kicked his right leg from behind, to put him on his knees and, as he dropped, the man on Dixon’s right had drawn a long knife from its hidden sheath, whipping the blade across his target’s throat.
Instinct let Bolan draw the Glock 19 as Dixon’s legs were buckling. By the time that his attacker had the knife in hand, Bolan was leaning into target acquisition, with his lightweight autoloader braced in a two-handed combat grip.
He didn’t fire a doubletap, for fear of sending one round wild into the crowd. Instead, he stroked the trigger once and slammed a Parabellum hollowpoint round into the knife man’s chest. Before it had a chance to flatten, chewing through a mangled lung, he was already tracking toward his second target, hands rock steady on the Glock.
Without a sound suppressor, the shot was loud. A wailing cry went up from somewhere close at hand, joined instantly by others, but the racket didn’t mess with Bolan’s aim. He had his target zeroed, even as the second would-be killer raised his eyes from Tom Dixon to glimpse the face of death.
The second round drilled through a startled eye, scrambled the dead man’s brain and flattened up against the inside of his skull. Bolan was moving as his gunfire echoed through the fish market, stooping to clutch at Dixon with his free hand, meanwhile checking out the crowd for any further enemies.
He spotted three within two seconds, give or take, identifiable by their reaction to the shots. While normal vendors and their customers recoiled from the explosive sounds, ducking for cover where they couldn’t flee, these others jostled toward the sound, fighting their way upstream against the human tide. One of them had a pistol in his hand, and Bolan didn’t think the other two would be unarmed.
“Come on!” he snapped at Dixon, giving him a yank to put him on his feet and moving in the right direction, which was anywhere away from there. A solid shove for emphasis got Dixon jogging, ramping up into a sprint after the first few yards.
Bolan was close behind him, following and guiding all at once. They had to reach his car somehow, and hopefully without the bloodbath that would follow naturally from a full-scale shootout in the crowded market.
Dixon, running, called across his shoulder, “Christ, I hope you’re who I think you are.”
“I don’t care much for octopus,” Bolan said, giving him the first half of the pass code.
“On the other hand,” Dixon replied as he should have, “I’m fond of squid. Thank God!”
“Pray later,” Bolan said. “Run now. That way!”
They ran, and someone in the crush behind them risked a shot. It missed both fleeing targets, struck a woman off to Bolan’s left and dropped her with a spout of crimson from her neck.
Bolan ducked lower as he ran, his shoulders hunched, braced for the impact of a bullet at any second. Somewhere behind him, whistles started to blow, indicating that police had joined the chase. That meant, in turn, that he and Dixon now had twice as many enemies. If they were honest cops, they’d go for everyone with guns, likely shoot first and ask their questions later.
Bolan and his sidekick neared the eastern exit from the fish market. This time, a burst of automatic fire tore through the crowd, leaving at least four persons wounded, but again the shooter missed his primary targets.
A moment later, they ran out of fish stalls, but the street beyond was every bit as crowded as the marketplace, with bikes and cars thrown in to make progress more treacherous.
“Go right!” Bolan commanded, satisfied as Dixon made the turn and kept on running.
Bolan, for his part, glanced back in time to see an Asian shooter aiming at him with some kind of automatic weapon. As he fired, Bolan lunged forward, pushing through the crowd.
“WHERE ARE THEY?” Kersen Wulandari barked into his handheld radio. “Report!”
Instead of the immediate responses he expected, Wulandari heard more shooting from the fish market, this time a submachine gun’s ripping sound, and he could feel his stomach clenching painfully.
“Report at once!” he shouted, noting but not caring that his driver winced. It made no difference to Wulandari if pedestrians outside the car heard what he said. They wouldn’t understand it, and they’d never volunteer to testify against him.
After several seconds more, with shots, police whistles and screaming from the fish market, a breathless voice came back to Wulandari.
“Targets moving east on Laks Martadinata. Hard to see with crowd.”
“Close in!” Wulandari barked. “Stop them!”
