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Mission To Burma
Don Pendleton


A CIA asset carrying highly classified information disappears when her plane is shot down over Burma. Two paramilitary rescue teams are sent to track her but are compromised, captured or killed. There's only one person left who might be able to get her–and the intel–back to safety: Mack Bolan.Moving carefully through a maze of inhospitable and dangerous mountain terrain, Bolan must avoid Chinese forces seeking to recover what was stolen from them, and the Indian military, who hope to snatch for themselves the information about China's nuclear missiles. But the Executioner's moves aren't just being monitored; they're being anticipated. Someone on his side is working against him…









“Let’s get you out of here!”


Bolan and Lily ran from the smokehouse. The men in the guard tower were pointing and screaming, but no one on the ground was paying them any attention.

The Executioner spoke into his phone. “Fatso, hit the tower, then fire at the house.”

“I have bad guys coming my way!” Nyin responded, but the grenade launcher down in Ta village thumped. The two men in the tower noticed Bolan and Lily as they reached the palisade. One began screaming, while the other raised a rifle.

The grenade launcher thumped again as Lily wriggled through the hole. Bolan grabbed her hand and ran for the tree line. Behind them gray gas and white smoke were blanketing U Than’s fortress in a fog of war. It was a war that had just begun, and tomorrow it would become a hunt. U Than was going to want payback.

It was over five hundred miles to the border of Thailand.



Mission to Burma

The Executioner







Don Pendleton







www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


Special thanks and acknowledgment to Charles Rogers for his contribution to this work.


Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

—Thomas Jefferson,

1743–1826

No matter how dangerous or deadly my foe, I will not waver in my pursuit.

—Mack Bolan


THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24




1


Flight 402, Burmese airspace

Lily Na knew she was in trouble. All intelligence agencies kept a few beautiful women on the payroll, and Lily was the most beautiful spy Taiwanese intelligence had embedded in the People’s Republic of China. But jade-green eyes, breast augmentation and the 108 acknowledged Taoist methods of seduction would not save her from the heat-seeking missiles of the PRC jet fighters flanking her flight.

Her bodyguard returned from the consulting the pilot. Jun-Sui was nicknamed “Ox Boy” for the breadth of his shoulders and his massive strength. He was a master of white-ape kung fu and a deadly shot with the silenced machine pistol in his shoulder holster. He bowed to Lily with profound respect. “The pilot believes the jet fighters are about to fire upon us. He and I both agree you should bail out now while the opportunity still presents itself.”

The short flight from Kunming Airport in China to Calcutta should have been a breeze. Then the laptop containing the PRC ballistic missile reentry vehicle guidance technology would be turned over to the CIA station office, after which Lily had planned a well-deserved yoga retreat in Costa Rica. The arrival of a pair of Chinese SU-30MKK fighters had ended her dreams of hot yoga, hot tubs and the pink sand beaches of the Nicoyan Peninsula. The former Union of Burma had nothing in its air force capable of dealing with the massive Chinese fighters invading Burmese airspace, nor would they risk their beleaguered economy by protesting to their biggest trading partner.

The People’s Republic wanted this flight, and they were going to have it. They wanted it turned around and landing across the border at Baoshon Airbase. They would settle for a smoking crater in the Kumon Highlands.

Lily inclined her head slightly at Ox Boy. “I will bail out.”

Ox Boy bowed again. Lily slipped her laptop into a padded pouch and followed him back to the galley. Terrified passengers followed their progress but stayed strapped into their seats as the pilot had directed. Ox Boy yanked open the hatch that dropped into the luggage compartment below. They climbed down, and he pulled a parachute rig out of a locker and helped Lily shrug into it. “Wait until the last possible moment to open your parachute.”

Lily slapped the buckles of her rig and tightened the straps. “When would that be?”

Ox Boy clicked open his cell phone and had a short, cryptic conversation with the pilot and then clicked it shut. “Count to twenty.”

“Very well.”

Ox Boy shoved night-vision goggles down over her eyes as Lily checked the loads in her Browning Hi-Power pistol.

“Turn on your transponder.”

Lily pulled her crucifix out from under the high collar of her dress. She gave it a hard squeeze at the apex of its arms and then tucked it back in. Once the tiny transmitter was activated, certain surveillance satellites of the United States, the United Kingdom and Taiwan would be combing Southeast Asia for its tiny but distinctive signature. The lurid red lights turned off, and the baggage compartment whirled into a hurricane as the loading door opened.

The pilot’s voice spoke over the intercom in Mandarin. “Agent Na, we have been given our last warning. We are about to be fired upon.”

“Very well, I will—”

Ox Boy slammed both hands against Lily’s back and shoved her out the door.

She gasped in shock, but training took over. She arched her body hard and thrust out bent arms and legs as the jet wash flung her about like laundry. Flight 402 shot away westward with a roar as she stabilized her free fall. She jerked involuntarily as the two SU-30MMK fighters screamed past, but a tumbling human body was virtually no target to a fighter’s air combat radar. Lily plunged through space as the jets flew on toward India at six hundred miles per hour.

The clouds flashed as if they were lit up by lightning as both fighters cut loose with their 30 mm cannons. The cloud cover in the west went from orange to white and then to red as Flight 402 broke apart and exploded beneath the automatic cannon onslaught. Lily winced against the sonic booms as the fighter jets turned and went supersonic to return to base. She had lost her drop count, but the Kumon Mountains were rushing up beneath her with disturbing speed. Lily brought her feet together, kicked off her high heels and faced facts.

Regal, voluptuous and green-eyed as she was, her problem was that from the get-go she had been designed to be insertable, deniable and expendable. Any extraction assets in the civil-war-ridden mountain and river valleys of Burma would have to be the same. The upper tier of the jungle canopy of the Kumon Mountains rushed toward Lily’s silk-stockinged feet and she wondered what, if any, kind of man might be sent to save her.




2


Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Mack Bolan stared at the 8 x 10 glossy of Lily Na. She was Taiwanese National Security Bureau and undoubtedly straight out of “Mystical 110,” or 110 Yangteh Boulevard on Yang Ming Mountain outside Taipei. It was the address of NSB headquarters, a place where no visitors were allowed, and people who did visit usually came in late at night and often never left. Miss Na was undoubtedly one of the NSB’s secret weapons, probably from the Chinese Mainland Maneuvers Committee.

Bolan looked up at Hal Brognola. “Rescue missions aren’t normally my kind of thing, Hal.”

“Yeah, but what about the woman?” Brognola countered. “I know for a fact she’s your kind of thing.”

Bolan returned his gaze to Na’s picture. She was undeniably erotic. “Still not my kind of mission.”

“Yeah, I know.” The big Fed gnawed on his unlit cigar. “But the stakes are high on this one.”

Bolan knew the stakes were about as high as they got in the world of international espionage. The United States and Taiwan very badly wanted the ballistic-missile-defense information. It was information the Chinese government wanted back even more, so much that they’d downed an entire jet full of innocent people over Burmese airspace. They were working on the forty-eighth hour of her disappearance, but her personal transponder was still signaling.

“You know the government has people and agencies who train for exactly this kind of spook-extraction bullshit,” Bolan argued.

“Yeah, I know.” Brognola sighed. “They’ve already tried and failed.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Yeah, actually the CIA was Johnny-on-the-spot on this one. Within twenty-four hours, they sent in two paramilitary rescue teams. One was compromised and stopped at the border before ever setting a boot in country. The second was smaller, a couple of advisers who parachuted in and met up with mobilized local assets. It’s been twelve hours since we’ve heard from them. We have to assume they’ve been captured or killed.”

Two teams in twenty-four hours was not good. “I think you have to assume they were compromised.”

“That’s right. That’s why the President wants to send in someone who’s outside of normal channels.”

Bolan had to admit he was about as far from normal channels as one could get, short of hiring extraterrestrials. “You know, I don’t speak Burmese, Hal. I don’t think I even know any of the swear words.”

“It’s a former British colony,” Brognola said. “Everyone there speaks a little English.”

“That was sixty years ago.” Bolan considered what he knew about the Union of Myanmar, known by most Westerners as Burma. The government was an utterly corrupt military junta that ruled with an iron fist. Human rights were nearly nonexistent. Human trafficking was some of the worst in Asia. Like most of Southeast Asia, the country was a patchwork of mountains and river valleys with dozens of oppressed ethnic minorities. Some of the minorities were large enough and well enough armed that the rule of the government only extended as far as their artillery could reach outside the big cities. Burma was also ground zero of Asia’s Golden Triangle of opium production. The warlords ruled their areas like medieval fiefs, alternately fighting with and doing business with government and rebel alike. “You do realize I’m over six feet tall, white and have blue eyes?”

“Actually I’ve noticed that about you,” Brognola admitted.

“So I can’t exactly blend in. If the first villager who sees me doesn’t turn me into the government as a spy, then they’re going to sell me to the drug lords as a DEA agent.”

“The President and I were both hoping you might do that lurking-in-the-dark thing you do so well.” Brognola brightened. “Besides, we have a local asset to assist you.”

“Hal, the Chinese found out Miss Na and the data were on the plane and shot it down. You had one CIA paramilitary team stopped at the border, and a CIA lead team of local auxiliaries has disappeared. There’s a leak someplace, and you’re going to have to forgive me if I’m not trusting local CIA or Taiwanese assets.”

“I wouldn’t trust them, either.” Brognola smiled. “So he’s neither.”

“Care to explain that?”

“Sure, like you said, there’s a leak somewhere. I’d like to think it’s Taiwan, but we can’t be sure. The President wants you because you’re outside normal channels. That made sense to me, so I went outside normal channels to get you some local backup.”

“Where’d you go?”

“I called David McCarter.”

McCarter was the team leader of Stony Man Farm’s elite international strike force. He was also a former member of the British SAS.

Bolan smiled. “He contacted British intelligence.”

“Well, like I said, they used to own the place, so I figured they must have a few people keeping their hands in. MI-6 was kind enough to get in contact with this guy.” Hal handed over a file. In it was the picture of a bald, buck-toothed little man with a belly like Buddha jammed into a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. He was grinning into the camera. “His name is Fat Sho Nyin. His call sign with British intelligence is ‘Fatso.’ Don’t let his looks fool you. He was a sergeant in the Burmese Airborne Unit.”

“So what’s his story?”

“He was operating in the northern mountains, in the Sagaing Division about a decade ago. He fell in love with a Naga tribeswoman. The local opium lord came in and wiped out her village. She and Nyin’s illegitimate child were killed. Nyin’s commander had a business arrangement with the drug lord and did nothing. The Naga are headhunters. The practice was banned in 1991, but rumor is some of the good old boys up in the hills still stick to the old ways. Rumor is Nyin got together a few of his woman’s relatives, got tattooed and inducted into the tribe, and they went and got a little payback. Most U.S. heroin comes from Afghanistan and Mexico, but a lot of the heroin in England is still coming in from the Golden Triangle. Nyin’s been one of the guys on the ground for MI-6’s antinarcotic Southeast Asia sector for a decade. Mostly, he works against the drug trade, but apparently he’s given them military intelligence from time to time, as well as helping break up a few slavery rings. He’d be your liaison among the locals.” Brognola cleared his throat. “If you go…”

“Anything else you need to tell me?”

“Well, now that you mention it, NSA has picked up some chatter.”

“What kind of chatter?”

“They believe the Indian government is aware of the situation and possibly even taking action.”

Bolan considered that. “India is a strategic ally of ours. Particularly against China. You’d think we’d be allies on this one.”

“So you’d think. But knowledge of China’s latest generation strategic nuclear missiles is vital to India. They lost a border war with them in the 1960s and still have ‘incidents’ with China every year. India might not wait for us to secure the information and share it. They’ll want to get hold of it first, and then probably trade the U.S. and Taiwan something for it economically. Chatter is India may have already deployed assets, and you shouldn’t necessarily expect them to be helpful or even friendly.”

Bolan sat back in his chair. “Great.”

“Listen, Mack, you don’t have to—”

“I’ll have to HALO in.”

Brognola blinked. “You’ll do it?”

“Yeah.” Bolan nodded. “I’ll do it.”

Kumon Mountains

BOLAN LOPED through the trees. It had taken eighteen hours for him to get geared up and to the Diego Garcia Airbase in the Indian Ocean. It took the B-2 Stealth “Spirit” bomber another six to get over northern Burma. Burmese air defense had no radars that could detect the bat-winged bomber, and even if they lucked out it was unlikely they could scramble anything in time to catch it. The problem with a Stealth bomber was it was not designed as a passenger plane. Bolan had ridden in a pressurized, coffin-size pod that had been adapted to fit into one of the rotary launcher assemblies the bombers used to launch cruise missiles. The pod had been just big enough to hold Bolan and his equipment. The belly of the Spirit of Texas had opened, and the transport pod had ejected and fallen free at thirty thousand feet. Bolan had opened the pod at twenty-seven thousand and deployed his chute. He had flown thirty miles into the Kumon Mountains and landed in the designated clearing on his map.

Fatso was nowhere to be found.

Bolan looked at his wrist. Strapped to it was a PDA with a phone feature, but basically Bolan almost had a supercomputer on his wrist. He was using the GPS to navigate his way toward the transponder. He tapped an icon and spoke into his satellite link. “Base, this is Striker. What have we got on infrared imaging?”

Barbara Price came back instantly. The Farm’s mission controller was watching Bolan’s progress on no less than three U.S. satellites. The Chinese data was that big. “Striker, this is Base. I have a possible heat source a hundred yards due east of your position.”

“Copy that. Give me feed.”

“Copy that, Striker.”

A red blob appeared on Bolan’s screen marking his target. A green blob represented him, along with a superimposed grid giving him distance.

Bolan slung his rifle. There had been no point to trying to blend in as Burmese, so Bolan had cherry picked his equipment. He carried a highly modified Steyr Scout Rifle. A suppressor tube covered most of the already short, fluted barrel, and it was loaded with subsonic ammunition. The bolt-action rifle had a 10-round magazine. Its optical sight was set forward of the action to give long-eye relief, allowing the operator to keep both eyes open and take in the full field of view, as well as look through the sight while using night-vision gear. The action was glass-on-oil smooth and the trigger tuned to a glass-rod break. It was a sharpshooter’s weapon rather than a sniper’s rifle, the weapon of a skirmisher rather than an assassin. Bolan’s rifle also happened to have an M-203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the fore-stock for serious social occasions such as needing to break contact, and he carried a bandolier of grenades slung across one shoulder. His Beretta 93-R machine pistol was strapped to his thigh, but that was not the weapon he went for.

Bolan drew his tomahawk in one hand and his Cold Steel Outdoorsman knife in the other as he ran wide around his adversary. Bolan was going to have to lurk rather than infiltrate and considered both implements much more as tools than weapons. However, a bullet was never sure, and a man could still flail with his throat cut.

There was no surer way of silencing a sentry than sinking a tomahawk into the back of his head.

Bolan squelched his electronic devices and moved in for the kill. Most people thought of Southeast Asia as one vast, green mass of impenetrable vegetation, but much of it, Burma in particular, was much more rolling low mountains of hardwood forest.

Bolan could see his prey in his night-vision goggles. A man was crouched on a little promontory holding a rifle. Bolan noted the short, curved blade of a dha sword thrust through his belt. The man knelt in a stand of trees that made a sheltering cathedral on the little knoll and looked down on the valley below. It was a perfect hunter’s point. Bolan’s boots made no noise in the soft soil as he approached. The man jerked in alarm as the Executioner whipped the bottom edge of his tomahawk under his chin and yanked him backward. The man froze as the point of Bolan’s blade pressed against his liver. “Nyin?”

“Shit, Hot rod! Don’t sneak up on a brother like that!”

Bolan withdrew his steel, and the man sagged and turned. Fat Sho Nyin wiped his sweating bald head and exposed his buck teeth in a shaky smile of relief. He took in the goggle-eyed, weapon-laden and camouflaged warrior looming over him and shook his head. “God damn! Uncle Sam ain’t playing around!”

“No, he’s not,” Bolan agreed. He sheathed his weapons and held out his hand. “MI-6 has a lot of good things to say about you. My name is Cooper.”

Fatso clapped his palm happily into Bolan’s hand. “Bullshit GI! But you go ahead and call me Fatso. I will call you Cooper.”

Bolan shrugged. “Make it Coop.”

“Coop.” Nyin savored the familiar diminutive. “Sorry I was not at extraction sight. Some assholes came by.”

“What kind of assholes?”

Nyin’s smile dimmed in wattage. “U Than assholes.”

Bolan knew all about U Than. He was an opium warlord, and they were deep in his territory, which was where Lily’s transponder signal was transmitting from. The good news was that U Than was in league with the heroin syndicates in Thailand rather than the triads in China. Of course, ten or twenty million Chinese yuan notes could change that allegiance, but at least he wasn’t going to immediately go goose-stepping to Beijing and hand over Lily without some profitable negotiation first. U Than’s problem was that while he ruled his area, he was surrounded by three ethnic groups that considered him their traditional enemy. He had a private army of his own and some backing by some high-ranking army officers, but his neighbors and even his serfs were highly warlike and given to rebellion at the least sign of weakness or provocation. He guarded his poppy fields to the death, but if he was sending men up into the highlands at night that meant U Than was all stirred up about something.

Bolan had a good idea what.

“Have you seen the woman?”

“No, but I saw crash site. It was no ‘catastrophic mechanical failure.’ That plane shot down. I know cannon hits when I see them.”

“Any survivors?”

Nyin shook his head. “No one survive that. You want to see?”

“No, the woman is our priority, and according to intel she jumped right before the fighters opened up.”

“What woman look like?”

Bolan tapped an icon on his screen and called up a photo of Lily Na. “This.”

“God damn!” Nyin shook his head in wonder. “That worth going to war over!”

Bolan changed the screen back to the GPS tracking Lily’s transponder signal and then spoke over his link. “Base, this is Striker. Have established contact with Fat Man. Proceeding to signal source.”

“Copy that, Striker.”

Bolan turned to Nyin. “You ready to go to war?”

Nyin grinned and brandished an ancient-looking .30 carbine. “Always!”

“Then follow me.” Bolan set out at a ground-eating jog, and despite his laughing-Buddha-like physique Nyin kept up easily. Bolan watched as the signal got closer and closer on his screen. They had to stop twice as armed men passed by on the trails through the heavy woods.

“Dangerous place,” Nyin muttered after a group of men passed by. The men weren’t wearing uniforms and wore a hodgepodge of Western and traditional highland clothing. They also carried a collection of weapons from the latest assault rifles to World War II relics. All carried one or more blades. They were sweeping the forest trails and keeping a wary eye on the forest itself. Traditionally it was where danger came from. They were right to be wary. This night Mack Bolan crouched among the giant ferns, and the forest had never been more dangerous.

Bolan and Nyin moved out and quickly came to a river. They dropped low by its banks and observed. A village huddled on either side of the river. The lights in the village were all out. On a low hill above the village sat what could only be described as a fortress. The main house was low, sprawling and made of heavy wooden beams and roofed with tile. A number of similarly constructed smaller outbuildings squatted around it like satellites. A bamboo palisade topped with razor wire surrounded the entire complex, and a twenty-foot-tall guard tower that had a good vantage on the village below completed security.

Bolan was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he asked anyway. “What is this place?”

Nyin pointed toward the collection of huts huddling together by the river. “That is Ta village.” He peered unhappily at the fortress on the hill. “That is house of U Than.” Nyin chewed on his lip pensively. He seemed to know the answer, but asked anyway, as well. “You have located girl?”

Bolan nodded as he stared at his screen and noted the distance between himself and the transponder signal. He looked up at the house of U Than. “She’s in there.”




3


The village was in lockdown. U Than’s place was lit up like a Christmas tree, but the village was dark and nothing moved. The only activity was a pair of armed men who stood on the little bamboo pier smoking cigarettes, clearly bored with guard duty.

Bolan and Nyin made their approach through the tiny, muddy lanes between the huts. Most of the huts were up on low stilts, and beneath them pigs grunted in their pens and an occasional chicken squawked. In the distance, a water buffalo lowed in its enclosure. Bolan and Nyin moved past canoes up on racks and fishing nets hanging to dry from posts.

At five yards Bolan drew his blades.

He lunged as one of the sentries turned to spit betel juice into the river. The man went limp as the tomahawk head crunched into the top of his skull. The second sentry’s cigarette sagged in his mouth in shock. Before he could do anything other than stare, Nyin’s dha flashed from its sheath with alacrity that would have given a Japanese samurai pause. The sentry’s head came a few tendons short from flying off his neck. Bolan thought rumors about Nyin doing some headhunting with the Naga tribes might not be entirely scurrilous. Bone splintered as Bolan retrieved his tomahawk. Nyin took a moment to relieve the dead gangsters of their money, betel and cigarettes, and then he and Bolan slid the two corpses into the river and washed the blood from their blades. Nyin shoved a leaf-wrapped quid of betel into his mouth and offered the pouch to Bolan.

The soldier shook his head. “I’m trying to give it up.”

Nyin grinned and resheathed his blade. “Well, we have conquered Ta village.”

So they had. “Fort U Than may be a little harder.”

“Maybe,” Nyin agreed.

Bolan climbed to the top of the open, A-frame canoe shelter and turned his binoculars on U Than’s domicile. Nyin perched next to him and pulled out his own binoculars. Bolan scanned the grounds and stopped as he came to the wide porch leading to the main house. Most Burmese barely cracked five feet tall, and most of the guards’ assault rifles seemed almost as large as they were. The four men up on the porch were all pushing six feet, were heavily tattooed and had the physiques of gladiators. “Those men on the porch. U Than’s personal bodyguard?”

“Mmm,” Nyin grunted. “Thai kickboxers. Leg breakers. Bad men.”

U Than seemed to be recruiting from the heavyweight division. An even larger man came out on the porch. His head was shaved, and his ears were cauliflowered masses hanging from his head. The man’s eyebrows appeared to be mostly scar tissue. He appeared to be several inches taller than Bolan and perhaps half again as heavy. Thrust in his sash was a Colt .45, and the hilt of a dha twice as large as Nyin’s stuck up over his left shoulder. “Who’s the gorilla?”

“That is Maung. Very bad man.”

Maung gave off the unmistakable air of command. “U Than’s number two?”

“Yes.”

Bolan sighed. “Rescue missions…”

Nyin cocked his head. “What?”

“Nothing.” Bolan put away his binoculars and slid off the roof of the canoe shed. “Let’s do this.”

“How?” Nyin hopped down. “Place locked up tight.”

Bolan glanced at the dark, dappled waters of the river. It flowed down around the hill, and U Than had some canoes and speedboats tied up on a bamboo pier of his own. “Can you swim?”

“No.” Nyin stared at the river in horror. “And there are crocodiles.”

Bolan glanced behind him at the village canoes. The men in the guard tower would undoubtedly see them long before they got to the pier. “I guess we do it the hard way.”

“You will want a diversion.”

Bolan smiled. “Yeah, I’m gonna want a diversion. You know what to do with an M-203?”

Nyin was a small man with teeth that belonged in the mouth of a horse rather than a human, and he showed them. “As private, I was grenadier in my squad.”

“Good.” Bolan handed Nyin his rifle and pulled three grenades from his bandolier. “This one is offensive, high explosive, big boom. When I give you the signal, I’m going to want you to lob it into the compound. That’s when I’ll use flexible charge to cut through the palisade. The second one is tear gas, which will keep everyone occupied and intrigued while I make my insertion into the big house. Number three is white phosphorus. When I send you the signal, I want you to light up U Than’s cottage like a torch.”

Nyin’s smile threatened to give away their position. “I light ’em up good!”

“I’ll be coming out fast. Plan A is that I steal a speedboat and pick you up. Failing that, I want you to put a Willy Pete into U Than’s boat dock, and I’ll meet you back on the promontory where we first met. If it goes to hell, just get out. You have a cell phone?”

“Yes. Unfortunately battery is low.”

Bolan pulled a phone from his web gear. “Take mine.” Bolan tapped the motherboard strapped to his forearm. “I can call you with this. Give me thirty minutes to get to the far side of the palisade.”

Nyin put a hand on Bolan’s shoulder. “It is not a bad plan. I am honored to fight with you.”

Bolan clapped him on the shoulder. “You just keep your head up, your ass down and your eyes open. Like I said, I’ll be coming back fast.”

“I will await your signal.”

Bolan moved back through the village lanes. He could hear people murmuring within the huts, but no one opened a shutter or peered down. The Ta villagers had long ago learned not to be too curious about what went on in their valley late at night. Bolan jogged back into the rain forest and took a game trail that circled wide around U Than’s castle. Once again, he had to pull a fade into the towering hardwoods as a patrol of gangsters came by. The good news was they were patrolling the wrong way. Bolan moved around to the back of the compound. He cut a length of flexible charge from his knapsack and a hoop just big enough to crawl through. He exposed the adhesive strip, pushed in a detonator pin and pressed the hoop into the bamboo. Bolan threaded a suppressor tube onto the muzzle of his machine pistol and text-messaged Nyin.

“Do it.”

The M-203 thumped down in the village.

Bolan put his finger on the detonator button and counted down the seconds. The compound lit up in an orange flash as the offensive grenade detonated. Bolan pressed his own detonator, and the crack of the flexible charge was lost in the thunder. Armed men spilled out of the main house like a kicked-over anthill. The tear-gas grenade landed, and its multiple skip-chaser bomblets broke apart and began spewing out gray gas. The two men in the watchtower were shouting and pointing frantically. The men below began flailing and clawing at their eyes as what they thought was smoke from the explosion turned out to be war-strength CN tear gas.

Bolan pushed in the panel of bamboo he’d cut with his charge and crawled into the compound. Everyone was running toward the commotion while Bolan moved toward the back of the main house. The back of the fortress was more prosaic than the front and marked by pig enclosures, outdoor barbecue pits large enough to roast entire hogs and heat woks large enough for a grown man to go sledding in. Bolan moved through laundry lines hung with Western clothes, as well as native sarongs and tunics. He dropped between two stone washbasins as the back door flew open and a pair of men with submachine guns checked the back perimeter. Bolan waited a moment to be sure no one was behind them, then rose up with the 93-R in both hands. The machine pistol barely whispered as he put a 3-round burst into each man’s chest. Bolan moved up the low stone steps past the two dead men and entered U Than’s compound.

The back porch opened onto the kitchen. A pair of women wearing turbans were huddled in a corner clutching each other as gunfire rattled from the front of the compound. They stared in slack-jawed horror at the grease-painted, camouflaged giant who had appeared in their midst. Bolan put a finger to his lips, and the two women nodded in vigorous assent. One of the women had a bruise under her eye, and Bolan suspected U Than and the boys weren’t too respectful of the hired help. They cringed as Bolan loomed over them and tried to press themselves back through the wall as he dropped to a knee in front of them. Their fear turned to awe as Bolan displayed Lily’s photo on the PDA on his wrist. He reached into a pocket of web gear and produced two thick folds of Burmese currency. He held the money up and shrugged. “Where?” he asked quietly.

Both women pointed back the way Bolan had come.

Bolan cleared the screen on his PDA and brought up the sketching function. He took out the stylus and drew a quick sketch with a circle for the palisade and squares for the main house and the outbuildings. Bolan shrugged again.

Both women pointed at the smaller square directly behind the main house.

Bolan handed them the money and retraced his steps. His target was the largest of the outbuildings. It was a heavy-beamed A-frame with bamboo for walls, and the smell of smoked meat and fish radiated out from it. The Burmese people were overwhelmingly Theravada Buddhists, but most were also confirmed carnivores. Bolan’s destination was the meat-smoking and slaughterhouse. There was a light on within it.

Bolan crept to the door. It wasn’t particularly well fitted, and through the seams he could see it was barred from the inside. He could also hear voices within. Bolan cut a two-inch length of flexible charge and pressed it into the doorjamb. The charge hissed as he pressed the detonator, and the shaped charged burned through the bar. The soldier put his boot into the door, and it flung open on its leather hinges.

Two men started up in shock from playing with a laptop and reached for their automatic rifles. Bolan nailed both men in the chest with a triburst each, and they dropped to the dirt floor. Lily Na hung two feet from the floor in a bamboo tiger cage. Only sweat and humidity kept the shredded remnants of her black cocktail dress clinging to a divinely curved body. She had a black eye, but she perked the eyebrow over her good one in interest as she took in the commando before her and managed a smirk. “Hey, sailor.”

Bolan shook his head at her situation. “This U Than asshole comes straight out of a comic book.”

“He has issues.” Lily shrugged. “No doubt.”

“Miss Na, my name is Cooper. I’m here to rescue you.” Bolan took in the tiger cage. It was made of bamboo, but the shafts were as thick as his arm and the knots of hemp that bound it together were like fists. A heavy iron padlock bound the door shut. He had only a foot of flexible charge left, and trying to saw or hack his way through any part of it would take too much time. Bolan handed Lily his pistol and pulled his lock-pick case from a pouch in his web gear. He chose a pair of tensile steel picks, put his tactical light between his teeth and began working the lock.

Lily spoke low. “Men are coming.”

Bolan ignored her and repeated the breaking-and-entering mantra. “Forget everything else, work the lock.”

“They are almost here,” she urged.

Bolan worked the lock.

“They are upon us.”

Bolan didn’t speak Burmese, but he understood the snarl of command coming from the open door. Lily spoke in a whisper. “Maung is here with two of his men. They are telling me to drop my gun and you to freeze.”

“Do it,” Bolan ordered.

Maung shouted in broken English. “You! Drop gun!”

“But—”

“Do it!”

The Beretta fell through the floor of the cage. Bolan sighed inwardly as the weapon dropped into the blood-catching cistern set in the floor. A voice shouted the same angry words in Burmese twice. Lily flinched. “He says turn—”

“You! Turn round!” Maung snarled.

Bolan turned slowly.

Maung was flanked by a pair of U Than’s kickboxers. All three carried licensed copies of Uzi submachine guns. Bolan dropped the lock picks. Maung motioned at the tactical light between the Executioner’s teeth. He very slowly removed it.

Maung smiled to reveal his gold teeth in triumph.

Bolan spun the bezel in the buttcap with his thumb, and the flashlight went to full-strength-strobe mode. Most tactical lights had an output of eighty to one hundred lumens. Bolan’s Farm-modified light sprayed out at a thousand and blinked at over twenty times per second. It would burn up his battery in moments, but light strobing at that intensity was known to induce seizures in epileptics, and during tests even trained soldiers and martial artists lost their spatial orientation and were reduced to staggering like blind drunks.

The man to Maung’s right took a step forward and fell to his hands and knees. The man to Maung’s left teetered and stumbled against the doorjamb. Maung stood like a man leaning into a high wind and sprayed off a blind burst with his weapon. Lily yelped and cringed as bullets tore splinters from her bamboo cage.

Bolan strode forward strobing continuously. The massive amping up of the light’s candlepower wasn’t the only modification. The body of the flashlight was titanium, and the rim surrounding the lens sported teeth like the jaws of a bear trap for impact fighting. Bolan drove the still strobing light between Maung’s eyes like an ice pick.

Maung’s septum disintegrated beneath the blow. The shock of it dropped him to the floor as limp as a fish. Bolan drove his boot up between the legs of the man leaning against the door, and he fell vomiting next to his kneeling comrade. His comrade’s jaw shattered beneath Bolan’s heel. The big American drew his tomahawk and began chopping furiously at the hemp bindings of the cage. It was like chopping wood, but the strands slowly came apart. Bolan grabbed the bars of the cage and ripped the door off its hinges.

Lily hopped down and grabbed her laptop.

Bolan scooped up a fallen weapon and checked the loads. “That’s it?”

Lily closed the laptop and picked up a fallen Uzi. “Yes, they did not know what they had. They were using it to peruse pornography.”

“Let’s get you out of here.” Bolan and Lily ran from the smokehouse.

The soldier snatched a sarong and a man’s shirt from the clothesline in passing as they ran for the hole burned in the wall. The men in the guard tower were pointing and screaming, but no one on the ground and in the gas was paying them any attention.

Bolan spoke into his phone. “Fatso, hit the tower, then fire the house.”

“I have bad guys coming my way!” Nyin responded, but the grenade launcher down in Ta village thumped. The two men up in the tower noticed Bolan and Lily as they reached the palisade. One began shouting, while the other raised a rifle.

The grenade launcher thumped again as Lily wriggled through the hole. The Willy Pete hit the front of the house, and the men on the porch screamed as white-hot smoke and streamers of burning metal erupted in all directions. Bolan slid outside. Men continued to stream out the gate, and at the pier engines were roaring into life as armed men piled into the boats for an amphibious assault on the grenadier in the village.

Bolan spoke into his motherboard. “Fatso, I’m not going to be able to reach the boats. Extract, and I’ll meet you at the promontory.”

“Yes, Coop!” Nyin responded. “I am extracting!”

Bolan grabbed Lily’s hand and ran for the tree line. Behind them gray gas and white smoke was blanketing U Than’s fortress in a fog of war. It was a war that had just begun, and tomorrow it would become a hunt. U Than was going to want some payback.

It was more than five hundred miles to the border of Thailand.




4


Ta village

Captain Tam-Sam Dai passed out small bribes and iron-palmed slaps liberally among the villagers. None seemed to be able to give him any useful information, and he doubted hard interrogation would yield anything more. U Than had kept the village locked down for two days after salvaging everything of value from the crashed jet and capturing the woman. The villagers had heard the fighting the previous night and had quite prudently locked their shutters and doors and huddled in their huts with the lights off.

Dai was a member of the PRC’s Special Operations Forces, specifically their highly secretive Special Purpose Force, or infiltration unit. The PRC kept special forces units whose members could pass as citizens of every nation they had a common border with, as well as many they did not. Dai was a member of China’s ethnic Shan minority. His skin was copper colored, and though incredibly broad shouldered he stood barely five feet tall. He spoke perfect Burmese and could easily pass himself as a native hill man of Burma, Thailand or Laos.

Chinese military satellites had been intensely scrutinizing the area of the crash site. Dai and his team had been dropped in immediately but found the wreckage and the bodies stripped of all valuables. The satellites had detected the battle last night and vectored Dai and his men in. Dai had captured a villager, given him an envelope with a very thick stack of Chinese one-hundred yuan notes to take to U Than, along with the message that he would like to meet with him.

The meeting had gone well. Several million yuan had soothed U Than’s troubled soul. Promise of aid in rebuilding had further convinced the warlord that he should conduct business with the Chinese triads rather than the syndicates in Thailand. All very profitable. Captain Dai’s superiors in Beijing had already commended him on it; however, the loyalties of U Than were not the main issue here.

Dai glanced up as Sergeant Hwa-Che came trotting down from the burned-out mansion and gave his report. He, too, was Shan but he gave his report in Mandarin so that U Than and his people would not know what was said. “Captain, we have discovered residue of high explosive in the tower top and in the crater in the compound. The house was clearly burned down with white phosphorous. The hole in the palisade was cut with flexible charge. I believe the grenade barrage was done from Ta village and acted as a diversion while the Na woman and the computer were extracted.” The sergeant spit betel and frowned mightily. “It is clearly the work of U.S. Special Forces.”

Captain Dai had already surmised that. He frowned at Hwa-Che. He knew the sergeant’s ways well. “What is bothering you?”

Hwa-Che slid his eye over to the pier where U Than and several of his men were gathered by the boats. “I have spoken with Maung.”

Dai was an adept at snake-hand kung fu, but even he had to admit the hulking man gave him pause. “And what says the mighty Maung?”

“He says there was only one American.”

Dai scowled. “One?”

“Yes, and have you noticed Maung’s face, Captain?”

It was hard not to. Maung was incredibly ugly to begin with, but now both of his eyes were a raccoon’s mask of bruising and his shattered nose looked like a flattened squid. “Yes, I have noticed.”

“He said the American did it. Maung and two of the Thai bullyboys had the drop on the American, yet he defeated them with a flashlight and his bare hands and then took the woman. One has a broken jaw and the other sits on a sack of ice and pees blood.”

Dai’s scowl deepened. “I find that hard to believe.”

“I have also spoken with our Naga trackers. There are only one pair of boot prints leading to and away from the compound, and leading away the bare feet of a single woman.”

“What about here in the village?”

Hwa-Che shrugged. “All the footprints in Ta village are bare feet or native sandals. On the other hand, the Naga say the boot prints in the compound are large, definitely Caucasian, and undoubtedly belonging to a man such as Maung has described.”

Dai settled on his plan. “Have the Naga begin tracking immediately. Gather the men and any of U Than’s who seem likely, and tell U Than he will be well rewarded for any assistance he gives us.”

“What is the plan, Captain?”

“One or two Americans, operating alone, could play hide-and-seek with us for months up here in the mountains, but that is not their mission. They must try to break out of Burma.”

Hwa-Che brightened as he saw it. “The woman!”

“Yes, the woman is the key. She is not American Special Forces. She is Taiwanese intelligence. Whoring, spying and assassination are her game. She will slow her rescuers.”

One look at the woman had convinced U Than there was a hefty ransom somewhere, and he had kept his men from abusing the woman. Captain Dai had told U Than over the phone as he came in that China wanted the woman intact. That was not out of any sense of propriety. Lily Na would be horribly punished, but Chinese interrogators would start the punishment, and they did not feel like swimming in dirty water. Dai’s men had all seen her picture and been briefed on the mission. They were already gambling numbers for who would take her first. Dai did not discourage such talk. Their only orders concerning her were to bring her back alive and ready for interrogation. As captain, he would of course get first dibs.

Dai peered up into the thickly wooded hills. “We will run them down.”



FOR A WOMAN who had spent two days lost in the mountains and twenty-four hours as the guest of an opium lord hanging in a cage, Bolan thought Lily looked fantastic. She had cut the flowered batik-print sarong Bolan had stolen for her to above the knees for action and knotted the men’s dress shirt under her ribs. She carried her Uzi with familiar ease.

But her feet were bruised, abraded and swollen. She had been barefoot for forty-eight hours in the mountains, and their night run from U Than’s compound hadn’t done her any favors. By the end of another day of hiking, her feet would be broken open, bleeding and going septic in the Southeast Asian soil and Bolan would be carrying her.

Lily sat against a tree and wiggled her swollen toes. “So what is our plan for extraction?”

“That’s a good question,” Bolan replied. “Burma is shaped like a diamond, and we’re in the north. We’ve got six hundred miles of Chinese border to the east, and then about the same to the west with India.”

Her jade eyes narrowed slightly. “India is in play?”

“It looks that way, and they may not be our friends on this one. I have forged documents for both of us and money. There are two airports in the north, Seniku and Bhamo. Both are about equidistant to us. We could clean ourselves up and pretend to be tourists, or just try bribing our way onto a plane. Then again we have to assume Chinese and Indian intelligence will be watching all the airports, and you and I are going to stand out in a crowd. For that matter, Burma just had a plane shot down over her airspace and we have to assume security is on high alert nationwide. We have to assume Chinese intelligence will be informing key operatives and informants to be on the lookout for us.”

Lily’s lips quirked slightly. “So, the Thai border.”

“Yeah,” Bolan agreed. “If we can get close enough to it, the U.S. and several of her allies have the assets to send in an extraction team for us, or if worse comes to worst we can just walk across it. We could also head southeast for the coast and arrange a submarine extraction. That’s about the same distance.”

The woman looked at her feet. “Five hundred miles either way, and almost all of it mountains.”

“Like I said, you and I stick out. It’s best if we stay off the roads and out of the towns. We can try stealing a car or truck and let Nyin drive, or do the same with a boat down one of the major rivers, but military checkpoints are frequent.”

“So we walk.”

“Yeah, it looks like we’ll have to hoof it most of the way and let Nyin go into the villages and towns along the way for supplies.”

Lily nodded, steeling herself for what lay ahead. “Then he had better go shoe shopping for me, and fast.”

Nyin gazed at her feet for a moment and then squatted on his heels before her. He began rummaging through the old canvas gas-mask bag he carried. He pulled out a little brown bottle and smiled triumphantly. Bolan smiled, as well. “Chinese medicated wine?”

Nyin almost lost his smile. “Burmese stone-fist liniment.”

Lily sagged against the trunk of the tree with a blissful sigh as Nyin went to work rubbing the liniment into her feet.

“How are you otherwise?” Bolan asked.

“I am all right.”

Bolan eyed the woman critically. “They didn’t hurt you?”

Her jade-green eyes went as cold as stone. “Nothing was done to me that has not been done before.” She sighed again as Nyin went to work on her toes. “And nothing so pleasant as this.” She gave Bolan a small smile. “I will pull my own weight.”

Bolan had to give it to her. The woman from Taipei was tough. “Fair enough.” He dropped to one knee beside her and picked up the remnants of her silk cocktail dress. He cut four two-inch-wide, bandagelike strips from around the hem. Nyin finished his medicated massage, and Bolan took the strips and cross-wound them from Lily’s toes to her calves and tied them off. The woman eyed her shimmering new footwear. “You know, there are people in Mongolia who still wear these instead of socks.”

“Siberia, too.” Bolan nodded at his handiwork. “Silk, twice the tensile strength of steel.” He stuffed the rest of the shredded dress into his knapsack. There might be more uses for it yet. Bolan held out his hand. “Let’s get you up.” He pulled the woman up. She took a few gingerly steps and then rose up on her toes several times like a ballerina.

“I can walk.”

“Good.” Bolan checked his GPS. They hadn’t established much distance from U Than’s place, and he suspected all too soon Lily was going to have to run.




5


“We got trackers, boss.” Nyin came up puffing from the trail behind them.

Bolan took a pull from his canteen and offered it to Nyin. “How far back?”

“About three kilometers.” Nyin took a long drink and pointed back. “You should be able to see them in a minute or two when they top that rise.”

Bolan took out his binoculars and waited, giving Lily some time to breathe. Men came over the ridge just as Nyin had said. The men were small, bare chested but wearing sarongs and turbans. The men’s arms, thighs and chests were heavily tattooed. Each man carried an M-16 rifle and thrust through his sash was a short, heavy ax with a triangular blade. The hilts were tufted with masses of red-and-black hair. “Naga?”

“That’s right, Hot rod, and those good old boy. From way upcountry.” Nyin patted the hilt of his sword. “This dha, it made for war. Those axes dao, they made for taking head. You saw tails on handle?”

“I saw them.”

“Dao made for tourists? Tails made of goat hair, very long, very pretty, like tail of horse or hair of pretty girl. Hair on those axes short. Most likely human. Those men expert hunter. Expert tracker. Never tire.” Nyin’s perennial smile stayed on his face, but he shook his head. “We in trouble.”

“Can you talk to them?”

Nyin chewed his lower lip. “Don’t know. Have to get close to find out. Not sure I want to get that close. Could be unhealthy. Wrong tribe? Even adopted, I still traditional enemy.”

“What about bribing them?”

“Don’t know. I tell you this. No Naga around here friend of U Than. U Than clean out local hills for agriculture, if you know what I mean. Make lowlander do work for him. U Than not wanting any hillbilly around.”

That was interesting. “You’re saying U Than didn’t hire them?”

“Nyin saying any man U Than send up into Naga country to hire them not come back.” The Burmese eyed Bolan shrewdly. “Nyin saying that maybe whoever hire them can outbid you.”

Nyin was probably right. He had some very thick wads of bills in his money belt, but Bolan was pretty sure the People’s Republic of China could outbid him at the moment. “Then we’ll have to discourage them.”

“That something Nyin would like to see.”

“Well, you’re going to.” Bolan handed Nyin his laser range-finding binoculars. “You’re ranging me.”

“Ah!” Nyin took the optics reverently.

Bolan handed Lily his canteen. “Nyin and I are going to do some discouragement duty. Why don’t you rest here for a bit? Nyin, leave her the phone I gave you, just in case.”

Nyin handed over the phone and then rummaged through his mess bag. He pulled out the little brown medicine bottle. “Reapply.”

Lily didn’t argue. She took the canteen, phone and the medicine bottle and sat down with obvious relief. Bolan and Nyin went back down the game trail. Coming down from the escarpment, a ledge broke the rows of hardwoods marching up the hillsides. “There. They should be there in about five minutes if they keep the pace.”

Nyin grunted in agreement.

Along the trail, it was about two and half kilometers to the cliff, but from hillside to hillside it was around five hundred meters. Far out of range for most assault rifles without an optic sight. Bolan dropped into a rifleman’s squat. Nyin brought the laser range-finding binoculars to his eyes and pressed the laser designator button. Invisible to the human eye, the binoculars sent out a beam and measured precisely where it stopped. “Five hundred twenty-five meters.”

The scout rifle was not a sniper weapon. Rather it was made for rapid sharp-shooting at close to medium ranges. Nevertheless, the Austrian engineering of the rifle was precise in the extreme. It was as accurate as the man shooting it and could reach out and touch Fort Mudge if the man behind it was good enough. Bolan wrapped his rifle sling tight around his left arm and dropped his elbow to his knee, wedging himself into a solid firing platform.

Nyin spoke quietly. “I see them. They come.”

Bolan kept his eyes on the open cliff. “Give me a count.”

Nyin was quiet for a moment. “Three…two…one…”

The lead man came out across the cliff at a steady jog. Bolan’s rifle was suppressed, and to keep it quiet the bullets it fired were heavy and subsonic. The Executioner put his crosshairs on the lead Naga’s chest and then gave him three degrees of lead. Bolan took up slack on the trigger as he tracked the running man.

The rifle bucked back against the big American’s shoulder. Bolan instantly worked his bolt. In the split second it took him to chamber a fresh round, the man ran another two meters and then suddenly his head broke apart like a melon. His rifle and ax flew in two directions as his arms flapped like a ruptured pigeon. His forward momentum dropped him into an ugly sprawl onto the escarpment.

The other three Naga instantly disappeared into the trees.

Nyin whistled softly and lowered his binoculars. “I am in awe of you.”

Bolan picked up his spent brass shell and shrugged. “I was aiming for his chest.”

Nevertheless, Bolan suspected the message had been delivered. He retrieved his binoculars from Nyin and flipped on camera mode. “Get Lily moving. I’ll catch up.”



CAPTAIN DAI STARED at the headless corpse from a prudent distance. He was having a hard time believing that one man was a sniper, grenadier and an infiltrator. “Where are the Naga?”

Hwa-Che sighed. “Hiding.”

Dai searched the heavens for strength. The blue skies of Yunnan Province seemed a million miles away, and the gods of his fathers seemed to have abandoned him in this place. Naga were a warrior people, but they hardly ever engaged in open war. Headhunting was more like a lifelong, lethal game of tag, and Naga could hide for days while waiting for their prey to pass by. Or their angry employers to go away. “Tell them double pay. In gold.”

Sergeant Hwa-Che raised his voice to parade-ground decibels and shouted the words in Naga. The three remaining trackers seemed to sprout out of the forest eagerly holding out their hands. Hwa-Che grimaced in distaste and crossed the Naga’s palms with Chinese golden panda coins.

Dai turned back to his team. “Private Su!”

Private Su did not look up from scanning the opposite hillside with the powered telescope of his JS sniper rifle. “If the American is still there, he is very well hidden.”

Dai nodded. “Old Man! Give us cover and check the body for booby traps!”

Corporal “Old Man” Cao was the team’s grandfather. He was pushing field retirement and was a long veteran of China’s misbehaviors on the Vietnamese border. He did his best work with a knife and was an inveterate lurker. He was a head taller than everyone else in the team, blade thin, and assiduously cultivated his wispy mustache and beard. Cao pulled a pair of smoke grenades and hurled them out onto the escarpment. Thick white smoke began occluding the cliff and a good bit of the hillside. Cao ran out and disappeared into the smoke. He quickly came back grinning and holding up a ghoulish prize. “No traps, Captain. But I found this.” Cao handed Dai a bloody bullet. “Do you see? American .308. But heavy. Round nose rather than pointed. The American fired through a silencer. That is why we did not hear the shot.”

“And you think the enemy having a silenced sniper rifle is good news?”

“No, Captain.” Cao continued smiling. “But in a sniper battle, Private Su will outrange him by three hundred meters. Perhaps four.”

Private Su smiled without looking up from his optic. “I believe the corporal is correct, and further I do not believe the American has a real sniper rifle. It would not be appropriate to his mission. I just think he is a very good shot.”

Dai looked back and forth between his two grinning men. “And if the American is clever enough to have brought along a few full-powered shells?”

“Full-power ammunition will destroy his silencer, and lose him the one real advantage he has,” Cao concluded smugly. “Any offensive action he takes now will be a terrible choice of alternatives, all fraught with danger.”

Special forces operators were the same the world over. Even in the most regimented armies they knew they were better than everybody else, and discipline within the ranks became somewhat lax. Officers throughout China’s two-million-man army could expect blind obedience out of their soldiers. In the special forces, respect had to be earned, and rise in rank came on ability and merit far more often than party and family connections or bribery. Dai did not reprimand his men for speaking out of turn. Private Su was one of the best shots to ever come out army sniper school, and Old Man Cao was a decorated veteran whose tactical opinion was worth its weight in gold.

“Sergeant, get the Naga moving. Corporal Cao, get the men across the escarpment before the smoke thins. We have hunting to do.”



BOLAN LOWERED his binoculars. It wasn’t good. Physically, it was hard to distinguish the Chinese from the Burmese auxiliaries, but since they were on a combat mission rather than infiltrating enemy territory they displayed it in the superior air they showed their flunkies, as well as their superior armament. That they weren’t even trying to hide. They had the latest PRC and Russian equipment. Two men had backpacks with very suspicious looking, large-diameter tubes sticking up out of them. Bolan counted at least one sniper among them, and he had been debating taking the shot on the man here and now when the enemy had popped smoke and begun moving. Bolan counted a twelve-man Chinese team, backed up by Maung and another fifteen of U Than’s goons, as well the three remaining trackers.

Bolan worked his way back up the hillside and began loping down the trail. He quickly caught up with Nyin and Lily. The Taiwanese intelligence agent wasn’t limping, but she was obviously in pain. “How’re you doing?”

Lily kept her eyes on the ground ahead, keeping an eye out for rocks and trotting on soft soil. It was saving her pain, but she was also leaving very clear footprints. “I was supposed to be on a beach in Costa Rica by now.” Her green eyes lifted for a moment and stared into the middle distance. “I am told the sand is pink.”

“It is. Don’t worry, we’ll get your toes in the sand and piña colada in hand yet.”

Lily smiled wanly and returned her gaze to the trail. “The thought of it is the only thing that keeps me moving.”

Nyin was puffing along, but his smile stayed painted on. “How many?”

“Call it half a platoon. Maung and U Than’s men I could probably cut up and scatter, but the Chinese team is going to give them backbone and prop it up with hard cash. They also have light support weapons and a sniper. They outrange everything we’ve got.”

“What we do?”

“I was hoping you might have an idea.”

Nyin pointed toward a range of hills to the southeast and laid out a plan as they ran. Bolan felt a headache coming on.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad plan.

But it sure as hell wasn’t good.

And unfortunately Bolan couldn’t think of a better one.




6


Lily was clearly appalled. “This is not a good plan.” She had to draw her knees to hip height with each sucking step she took through the abandoned paddy. Normally wet-rice farmers also farmed ducks and crayfish in the same fields, and between them they kept the fields fertilized and free of pests. Leeches covered Lily’s bare legs, and the biting flies fearlessly buzzed through the blighted, overgrown rice plants and weeds and drew blood at an eye blink of inattention. Bolan had no attention to spare for the parasites.

They were literally walking through a minefield. Bolan mucked through the knee-deep swamp an inch at a time, using a five-foot pointed stick for a probe.

The problem for the Burmese military was that up in the highlands, with just a little bit of warning, rebels could melt away into the forests before an attack. However, almost all the rebels were farmers, and sooner or later they returned to their villages once the soldiers left. Like a number of governments, ruling junta had figured out there were few better ways to sow apprehension and dissension among farmers than to sow their fields with land mines. After the first few men and water buffalo lost their legs, the fields were abandoned and without a crop, so were the villages. Rebel strongholds became ghost towns, and the rebels and their families became masses of starving, migrant refugees. The Burmese army’s weapon of choice was a locally produced copy of the U.S. M-14 antipersonnel mine. It carried just enough explosive to take a man’s leg off at the knee, and was nicknamed the “toe-popper” for fairly obvious reasons.

So far, Bolan had found three of them.

Ostensibly the Burmese military kept charts of the minefields so that someday they could come and reclaim the farmland. Nyin, through various means, had acquired maps charting a number of the minefields in his area of operation. However, wet-rice farming was dependent on controlled flooding, and after a year or two without anyone manning the dykes the river had assumed its natural course.

Things had shifted a bit.

“They come soon!” Nyin stated.

Bolan moved inch by inch through the muck and worked his probe while ignoring mosquitoes the size of ballpoint pens that probed every inch of his exposed flesh and completely ignored the insect repellent he’d applied earlier.

“Soon!” Nyin grinned. His gleaming, sweaty head and bare arms seemed impervious to local insects. “Very soon!”

Bolan was trying to concentrate on the swamp in front of him. “Nyin, best for you to be quiet now.”

Nyin ignored the sage advice. “Should be one right in front of you, Sex machine. One meter or less.”

Bolan moved his stick softly through the muck like a plow until he encountered something hard. He probed the object softly. A toe-popper was about the size of a can of chewing tobacco. This one was about the size of a half-gallon can of paint. Bolan very gently touched the top and found the little fusing tower that held the three sensor pins. It was a mine known as a Bouncing Betty. When the sensor pins were disturbed, a charge in the bottom of the mine would literally make the mine jump three to four feet in the air before a pound of C-4 high explosive detonated. The prefragmented metal liner filled with steel ball bearings was lethal within five meters and would badly shred anyone within twenty-seven meters. It also had a pin in the side that could be set with a trip wire, and Bolan spent a few moments gingerly probing for it. It gave him an idea. “Give me the spare stick.”

Nyin handed him the stick, and Bolan broke it in two and carefully stuck a piece of stick against either side of the mine so that the tips just barely protruded out of the water. Bolan moved on, painstakingly clearing another fifty feet, inch by inch. After what seemed like hours, the muck reluctantly released him as he hauled himself up the embankment. He pulled up Nyin and Lily and they flopped exhausted among the weeds. Bolan grabbed his binoculars and scanned the hillside on the other side of the field. They were clear for the moment. He rose to his feet and stared at the empty huts with their gaping, empty windows and doors. “Take Lily and keep moving. I’ll catch up.”

Nyin grunted and Lily sighed as they woodenly rose and moved through the ghost village. Bolan followed them until he found a decent hide in the shadows of a pig enclosure beneath a hut. It had a nice panoramic view of the field. He lay down in the dirt with his rifle and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The enemy deployed down the hillside in a skirmish line with the Naga following Bolan and his team’s spoor as easily as bloodhounds. The Chinese had a dilemma. They did not know whether Bolan and his team had gone all the way across the field or turned midstream and followed the river. Three men, clearly soldiers, cut themselves switches and took one of the Naga into the rice field with them. Bolan and his team had tried not to break any rice stalks or reeds, but in the end it had proved impossible. The Naga stood behind the three-man probing line and directed them like a pointer.

Bolan put his crosshairs on the two sticks and waited.

When they were within ten feet of the sticks, Bolan fired. The suppressed rifle made barely any noise at all beneath the hut and none at all discernible to those wading out in the paddy. The Naga nearly jumped out of his skin as a little geyser of water shot up in the air where the bullet hit. Bolan flicked his bolt, lowered his aim an inch and fired again.

The Bouncing Betty erupted out of the water like a beheaded jack-in-the-box and detonated with a sound like a giant door slamming. There was a puff of orange fire and a spasm of smoke. The Naga tracker and the three-man mine-clearing team rippled and twisted like wheat in a high wind as hundreds of steel ball bearings passed through their bodies. The sound of the explosion echoed against the hills. The dead men sank beneath the surface of the flooded field, leaving spreading red stains in the scummy green water.

Bolan watched as one of the men across the field consulted with another. One man was clearly the Chinese officer and the other his second in command. Bolan itched for the shot, but it was long and would let everyone know he was in the village. He waited while they talked and let himself breathe a sigh of relief as the Chinese team broke into two groups, each with one of the remaining trackers, and began moving north and south down each end of the valley. They were going to go around and waste valuable time trying to pick up Bolan’s tracks again.

The big American crawled backward and kept the hut between himself and the other side of the valley. He hadn’t seen the sniper, but Bolan could feel the killer scanning for him through his scope. Bolan stopped on a little landing of the stairs that led up to the stilted hut and did a little shopping. He faded back and, when he reached the trees, he broke into a run.

It was time to do some distance.



SERGEANT HWA-CHE WAS GONE. Captain Dai couldn’t believe it. The man who had taught him everything he knew and recommended him to officer candidate school was dead in a nameless, fly-ridden rice field. It was a peasant’s death. The American had led them straight into it. It was almost inconceivable. Southeast Asia was their territory, their specialty, their turf, as the Americans would say. Dai looked down to see his hand was shaking. He had unconsciously opened it into the snake-fist formation. It shook with his need to reach into the American’s chest, rip out his beating heart and show it to him.

Old Man Cao approached Dai wearily. “We are down to two trackers.”

“I am aware of that, Corporal,” Dai replied.

“However, it is confirmed. They are a party of only three. An American soldier, the Na woman and an unidentified third party, wearing native sandals. I suspect he is a native, probably a CIA intelligence asset.”

Dai had his own sources. “I find that very hard to believe, Corporal.”

Cao wiped sweat from his brow and shrugged. “Who else could it be, Captain?”

“Who would you suspect, Old Man?”

Cao draped his weapon across his shoulder. “We are the dominant outside intelligence force in Myanmar.”

“Do you believe we are up against rogue Chinese agents?”

That was unthinkable. “Well, the Thais wield great influence as a trading partner, but we have thoroughly infiltrated their intelligence agencies.”

“So tell me, Old Man, who could this thorn in our side be?”

Corporal Cao spit the words. “Yang gui zi.”

“The foreign devil” could mean anyone unfortunate enough not to have been born Chinese, but in the old days the words referred to one nation in particular. A nation that had not just been a thorn in the side of the Middle Kingdom, but had held the knife across its throat. “Yes,” Dai agreed, “the English.”

The United Kingdom was a shadow of the mighty empire it once was, and the English lion paled in comparison to the might of the Chinese dragon, but the English were stubborn and meddlesome. They still had one of the best intelligence agencies in the world and, most importantly, were a staunch ally of the United States.

Dai gazed at Cao steadily. “And?”

Cao turned his gaze northward. “And I believe any assets the English have here in the north would be local and involved in drug interdiction. I suspect the Americans have called in a favor.”

“Very good. I am promoting you to acting sergeant, promotion to be confirmed by the battalion commander upon our successful return to Beijing.” Cao beamed delightedly. Dai made an effort to scowl. “Now give me the rest of your report and wipe that stupid smile off of your face. You look like a peasant.”

Cao snapped to attention. “The trackers have relocated their trail. The shooter was the American. He took a firing position beneath one of the huts and stayed to hold us off while the other two ran.”

Dai had suspected that, but he’d had to check the entire circumference of the fields regardless. The American had known that, too, and he would be using it to put distance between them. Dai’s snake-hand formation closed into a white-knuckled fist. He would take Lily Na while his men cheered him on. The Burmese bastard that was helping her would die staked out over a fire. As for the American…Dai snarled over his shoulder, “Corporal Khoay-Peng!”

Khoay-Peng snapped to attention. “Yes, Captain!”

“Do you have your needles with you?”

“Yes, Captain!” Corporal Khoay-Peng was the team medic, and an accomplished acupuncturist in both the little-and big-needle style. With skillful application he could relieve headaches, unlock muscles in spasm and cure any number of maladies. He knew the nerve meridians and energy channels of the body like the back of his hand. Khoay-Peng was also a master of the poison-needle tradition. The same skills that could bring the sick and injured back to health could also plunge a human being into an agonizing hell where they would regurgitate any knowledge they had to make the horror end. Dai had read after-action debriefings where the victims had likened the pain to having their living nerves drawn from their body and pulled through heated sand.

“The American will require field interrogation.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Dai turned away from the swamp that had swallowed Sergeant Hwa-Che’s bones. “Big-needle style.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Dai turned to his communications specialist. “Private Po.”

Po trotted forward. “Yes, Captain.”

“Set up the secure line. I need to make a phone call.”



BOLAN CAUGHT UP again far too quickly. Lily was sitting on a tree stump while Nyin puffed on a clove cigarette and then pressed the glowing tip into the gorged bodies of the leeches covering Lily’s legs. She had more than a dozen bleeding circles on her thighs and calves. Nyin surveyed his handiwork and then rose rubbing his hands. “We heard explosion, Coop. How many you kill?”

“I got four. Pretty sure three were Chinese, one was a tracker.”

“Good!” Nyin smiled. “Very good.”

Bolan turned to Lily and held up three pairs of sandals he’d found in the village. “I went shopping for you.”

Lily began sizing them against her feet. “I see I am reduced to peasant chic.” She chose a pair that just about fit her feet while Bolan cut her dry pairs of silk sock-bandages. “Nyin, you have any more ideas?”

Nyin chewed his lip. “Yes. A little way southwest is northern Myanmar railhead at Myitkyina. We ride on top of train and can jump off any time, and Chinese don’t know where we jump off. We lose them.”

“How far?”

“We can’t go in Myitkyina. Full of soldiers. We have to skirt city and then hop train. Say…twenty-five kilometers?”

Bolan clicked on his PDA. “Base, this is Striker.”

Barbara Price instantly answered. “I have you, Striker.”

“I need satellite recon and train schedules for every freighter heading out of Myitkyina.” Bolan glanced up at the sun and calculated. It was almost fifteen and half miles exactly, and they would be losing the light in a few hours. “I’m going to be there in three hours.”

“Copy that, Striker. Will have intel for you ASAP.”

“Striker out.” Bolan powered down everything on the motherboard except for the signal the Farm was tracking. He would have to change batteries soon. He only had two spare sets and he had almost drained the first within twenty-four hours.

Lily took a deep breath. “Twenty-five kilometers, cross-country, in three hours.”

Bolan nodded. There was no way to sugarcoat it. “You’re going to have to run.”

“So I suspected.” She sighed.

“I’m going to run you till you puke and then run you until you puke again. Then I’m going to carry you, and then Nyin is. Then we’re going to switch. We have to make time. We have to catch a train. We need to leave the Chinese eating our dust.”

Lily stood. “I am ready.”




7


Tom Marchant frowned as his phone rang. He had not been expecting the call. He turned on his voice scrambler and picked up the phone. “Variance,” he answered, using his code name.

Captain Dai spoke in Mandarin. “Variance, this is Tiger Fork.”

“Go ahead, Tiger Fork.”

“We have encountered unexpected resistance. We believe Miss Na and the American commando are receiving aid from local Western assets.”

Marchant rolled his eyes but kept his tone professional. “Impossible. I would know of any CIA assets in play.”

“We believe the American knows he has been compromised somewhere along the line. We believe perhaps he is receiving aid from MI-6.”

Marchant quirked an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

“We believe he must be a local MI-6 asset. The Ministry of State Security believes it is most likely to be a man involved in drug interdiction, probably in league with or under the aegis of Interpol. Can you be of assistance?”

“I believe I can. Though it will take me a little time. What is your situation now?”

Dai paused. “We have taken casualties. We are down to two trackers.”

Marchant stared at the map of Burma on his computer. “Do you require local reinforcements?”

“We believe the mission can be accomplished with the present force level. The enemy is leaving a fairly clear trail and we are gaining. Give me an update on their current position.”

Marchant poured himself two fingers of cognac and swirled the snifter as he watched the satellite stream on his computer. “They are currently 8.4 kilometers north of Myitkyina. Five kilometers south of your position. They are currently heading straight for the city, and slowing. They are paralleling the main road. I suggest you make all effort to run them down now. If they reach the city, they will have multiple venues of escape, refuge and perhaps even allies.”

Dai clearly didn’t like receiving suggestions. “We are making every effort.”

Marchant made another suggestion. “Who is your fastest runner?”

“Despite his age, Sergeant Cao.”

“You can’t afford to put your team on the road and be spotted, but send Cao. Send him with just a pistol and knife and in native clothing. Have him run ahead into the city along the road. If you fail to overtake the American on the trail, I will vector Cao in to intercept.”

Dai’s silence was stony, but it was clear he didn’t have a better idea. “I will dispatch Sergeant Cao immediately.”

“I will contact you as soon as I have the information you requested. Variance out.” Marchant killed the connection and gazed once more upon the map of Burma. He was surprised that the Chinese were having such problems with their quarry. Burma was practically their playground. English interference was an interesting gambit, but one he had a counter for. Marchant connected to another sat phone. An English-accent voice answered. “Hullo?”

Marchant spoke in English. “Morris, you dizzy bastard! How’s it hanging?”

Hugh Morris was MI-6’s head man in Southeast Asia, and he and Marchant had worked on some very successful operations together. “Bloody hell, haven’t heard from you in a while. Don’t tell me, you need another bloody favor.”




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