False Front

Latham twisted the key in the Cherokee’s ignition and the engine roared to life. After a quick glance in his rearview mirror, he pulled back onto the pothole-pocked asphalt the people of Mindanao called a highway. He drove slowly; he had plenty of time. Matt Cooper wouldn’t find his feet on solid ground for a good ten minutes or so.

Topping a rise, Latham saw another break in the trees, twenty yards off the road. A glance upward told him Cooper was maneuvering toward that spot to land. Latham lost sight of the clearing as the road dipped down but when he reached a point he guessed was directly across from it he pulled off the road and killed the engine again.

Latham glanced once more into the rearview mirror, this time to lift the weathered straw hat off his head. The leather sweat band came up off his scalp and he felt a quick rush of cool breeze roll over his closely cropped hair. It was a nice relief from the sultry Filipino heat and he almost dropped the hat onto the seat beside him. But the sun would beat down on his face and neck if he did, and besides, he was from Texas. The only time he’d ever felt right without a hat was when he wore a helmet. Football in high school. Then U.S. Army until a year or so ago.

Settling the hat back onto his head with a sigh, Latham reached into the back seat and grabbed a rusty two-dollar machete. He got out of the Jeep, crossed the road into the semi-thick vines of the coastal secondary jungle and lifted the long blade over his head.

A thin trickle of sweat ran down his cheek as he began slicing a path toward the clearing. The jungle canopy blocked his view of the sky, but he knew Cooper had to be nearing the site. It was the only open landing zone in the immediate area.

By the time he had cut himself into the clearing, Cooper was clearly visible in the sky. Latham was surprised to see that the chute beneath which the big man drifted was smaller than he would have expected for such a jump. In addition to the usual parachute gear, Cooper wore a huge backpack. Other equipment carriers were belted around his waist and strapped to his shoulders. Almost as quickly as his brain registered these details Latham was able to answer his earlier question as to why the man was so far off course. No, it wasn’t due to a lack of expertise as he had originally guessed. In fact it appeared that Cooper might be even beyond expert. At least the man knew how to keep his head in the face of danger. His main chute hadn’t opened and he was landing with the small reserve canopy. That was what had thrown him off course. He was loaded down like a pack mule and, considering the tricky winds through which he’d just come, the fact that he’d even survived with the small reserve chute gave him master-jumper status as far as Latham was concerned.

The Texan stepped out of the trees into the clearing and let the machete hang at the end of his arm. He suspected Cooper could see him by now. Even if he couldn’t, the big American would know someone was down here waiting for him by the sunlight shining off the large silver belt buckle that held up Latham’s shorts. As he continued to wait, the Texan chuckled silently at himself.

After retiring from the Army, the last ten years of which he’d been assigned to Delta Force, Charlie Latham had come to the Philippines to further pursue his life-long love affair with the Filipino martial arts. But he had brought a part of Texas with him and the unusual combination of clothing he wore was a pretty good indication of his bifurcated personality. The straw Stetson screamed Texas!, as did the Western belt and buckle. But the Philippines were just too hot for denim jeans and boots, so the rest of his attire consisted of a tank top, khaki cargo shorts and sandals. It was an unusual, eclectic image he projected, he knew, but he didn’t care. He was an unusual man—a mixture of nineteenth-century gunfighter and twenty-first-century soldier with a little bit of Eastern mystic thrown in. He saw no reason his clothes shouldn’t reflect that mix.

Latham’s mind jerked back to the present as Cooper landed expertly on his feet, rolled to his side, then popped back up to a standing position. In his mind, he gave the man an A-plus on landing to go with the high grade he’d already earned in canopy steering. The Texan could see now that, beneath all the equipment, Cooper wore some kind of skintight blacksuit that had to be hotter than his aunt Betty’s salsa. He grinned to himself as he walked forward.

He hoped the man had brought along some cooler rags. Finding anything to fit a guy his size in this land where a man who weighed 130 pounds and stood over 5’ 4” in height was considered a giant wasn’t going to be easy.

Cooper was already gathering up the chute by the time Latham reached him. He shifted the machete to his left hand and extended his right. Before he could speak, the big man turned his way and said, “You’re Charlie Latham?”

Latham nodded as he shook the hand. “And you’re Matt Cooper.” The handshake was firm and confident without being overly hard. Latham was glad of that. He got the feeling that had this guy wanted to, he could have snapped off several of his fingers.

Bolan released his hand and frowned, his eyes scanning the area around and behind the Texan. “Where’s the CIA man?” he asked.

Latham shrugged. “You got me. He hadn’t shown up at your original landing site by the time I saw where you were heading and left.”

Bolan nodded. “Something may have delayed him. We’ll check the spot on the way back.”

“Sounds good to me,” Latham said. He reached to the ground and lifted two of the heavy equipment bags the parachutist had shrugged out of when he’d hit the ground. “Ready to do it?” he asked. “Sounds like it should be fairly easy.”

Bolan hoisted the rest of his gear. “Yeah,” he said. “To be honest, it sounds too easy.” He let the Texan take the lead and followed the man along a recently cut path through the trees. Walking single file as they were wasn’t conducive to conversation and both men lapsed into silence as they dodged branches and vines. Left to his own thoughts, the Executioner found himself questioning certain aspects of the mission once more.

He still hadn’t gotten over the fact that there were parts of the CIA intelligence reports that didn’t make a lot of sense. One of them was how easily Candy Subing could be located. If the man slipped in and out of Zamboanga all the time as the CIA believed, why hadn’t the Filipino search force already grabbed him? Better yet, why hadn’t they put a tail on him and followed him back to where the missionaries were being held? The CIA even had an address for Subing’s uncle. So what, exactly, had this CIA man—Reverte was his name—been doing over the past few weeks? For that matter, where was the man now?

Reaching the Jeep Cherokee parked on the side of the road cut Bolan’s thoughts off again as he and Latham tossed the equipment bags into the back. The Executioner shook his head. His mission sounded easy on the surface—capture Candido Subing, interrogate the man concerning both the hostages and the “big strike” the Tigers had planned in the U.S., free the hostages and take whatever action was called for in regard to the American strike.

Bolan found that he was grinding his teeth together as he contemplated the situation. If everything was all that cut and dried, somebody would have already done it.

With the Cherokee’s tailgate still open, Bolan unzipped one of the ballistic nylon bags and pulled out a short-sleeved blue chambray shirt, a pair of khaki cargo pants and a plain white T-shirt. The blacksuit he had worn for the jump came off and the khakis went on. The Executioner felt a hard rectangular lump in one of the hip pockets, a micro-cassette recorder brought along for one simple reason—he didn’t speak or understand any of the languages in the Philippines except English. Tagalog—sometimes referred to as Pilipino—was the major tongue, but there were close to a hundred other languages and dialects used throughout the islands. According to what he’d been told, Latham was fluent in Tagalog and could get by in a couple of the tribal tongues. Reverte was reported to have the same skills. But the Executioner could foresee an eventuality in which something he suspected was important might be said with neither one of them present. If that happened, it would benefit him to be able to record it and have the words translated later.

The white T-shirt came down over Bolan’s head, then he unclipped the TOPS Loner combat-utility knife that had been fastened upside down on his blacksuit. Slipping the thick four-and-one-half-inch blade into a Concealex inside-the-waistband sheath, he fastened it to his belt at the small of his back. In his peripheral vision the Executioner saw Latham’s eyes widen slightly as he slid on the shoulder rig that carried his sound suppressed 9 mm pistol.

The Texan squinted under the sun. “Beretta 92?” he asked.

Bolan adjusted the gun in its holster. “It’s a 93-R.”

“Ah, yeah,” Latham said. “I see the front grip tucked under there now. Three-round-burst selector, right?”

The Executioner nodded, snapping the belt retainers on both sides into place. Under his right armpit the shoulder rig carried a double magazine pouch, also of the form-fitted plastic known as Concealex.

Latham’s eyes got even wider and his mouth dropped open slightly when the Executioner pulled the mammoth .44 Desert Eagle magnum from the same bag. It was already at home in an inside-the-waistband holster of the same space-age plastic.

“Far as I know,” Latham said, “we’re going after a man, not an elephant.”

Bolan chuckled as he stuck the big pistol into his pants and looped the retaining snap around his belt. “You remember the legend of the Model 1911 .45 auto, don’t you?” he asked the Texan.

Latham nodded at the Executioner. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Spanish-American War. Our troops kept shooting the Filipino Moros on Mindanao with their little bitty .38 Colts and the Moros kept coming anyway, cutting us to shreds with bolos, barongs, krises—any blade they could get their hands on. Which led to the development of the bigger, harder-hitting .45 ACP.”

Bolan zipped up his bag, slammed the tailgate door and walked around the Cherokee toward the passenger’s side. “Right,” he said as he got into the vehicle. “And what island are we on?”

“Mindanao,” Latham said.

“And who are we looking for?”

“A Moro-Islamic terrorist named Candido Subing.” Latham slid behind the wheel.

Bolan tapped the big .44 beneath his shirt. “Well, this thing hits even harder than a .45,” he said.

Latham nodded, then reached across the Executioner and opened the glove compartment. “Thanks for reminding me.” He pulled out a cocked-and-locked Browning Hi-Power with a stainless-steel frame, blued slide and what looked like black plastic and rubber grips. As he lifted the weapon and brought it across to his belt, Bolan noticed a small ramp at the top of the grip just behind the trigger guard. And as the gun moved through the air, a tiny red dot raced across the dashboard in front of the barrel.

“That 9 mm or .40?” Bolan asked as Latham jammed the weapon into his shorts.

“It’s a .40 S&W,” Latham replied, grinning. “Remember the Moros.”

Latham reached into the glove compartment again and pulled out a black nylon double magazine carrier, which he stuffed into one of his pockets. Bolan settled back in his seat as his contact pulled the Cherokee onto the road. He didn’t need to ask about the red dot he’d seen dancing in front of the Browning. A laser site. And the ramp in the grip and lack of any exterior wiring on the pistol, meant the laser was one of Crimson Trace’s new models for the Hi-Power. The laser beam shot out the front of the ramp when a button—activated by taking a normal grip on the weapon—was depressed. Wherever the red dot fell, the bullet followed as soon as the trigger was pulled.

Latham drove back to the spot where they had originally planned to meet. But there was still no sign of the CIA man. He turned to Bolan, but before he could speak the big man said, “Let’s go on. We’ll either hook up with him later or we won’t.”

The Texan nodded. “Undercover work never was my specialty,” he said. “But I’ve done some. And if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that you can get delayed. You’re always working on someone else’s timetable.”

“Maybe he’ll have some decent intel when he shows up,” Bolan said.

The two men fell into silence again as the Cherokee bounced over the bumps and cavities in the asphalt. Ahead, the outskirts of Zamboanga appeared and clusters of stilt houses—running from the shoreline well out over the sea above the water—began to sprout.

Latham was the first to speak again. “Hawk told me you weren’t the most talkative guy around,” he said as he twisted the wheel and turned the vehicle onto San Jose Road.

“I talk when I’ve got something to say,” Bolan told him.

“That’s not what I meant,” Latham said as rural Mindanao continued to become more suburban. “What I meant was, Hawk advised me not to ask you a lot of questions about yourself.” He glanced at the Executioner then turned his eyes back to the road. “Like, what your real name is or where you’re from or who you work for.”

Bolan turned sideways in his seat. For a long moment he didn’t answer. The connection between him and Latham had come through T. J. Hawkins of Phoenix Force—one of the counterterrorist teams working out of Stony Man Farm. Hawkins and Latham had been friends as kids growing up in Texas and by chance had become reacquainted when both had been assigned to Delta Force. Hawkins eventually resigned and later joined Phoenix Force. Latham had retired, too, becoming an American ex-patriot on Mindanao to study the martial arts.

Finally the Executioner said, “Did T.J. tell you who he worked for when he called?”

“Nope,” said the man behind the wheel. “Sure didn’t.”

“But you asked?”

“Sure did.”

“Well, I can’t tell you, either,” the Executioner said as he turned back toward the windshield. “Thanks for picking me up. I appreciate it. And while T.J. tells me you were as good as him when you were both with Delta Force—and I could use some backup while I’m here—I’ll understand if you want to bail out. No hard feelings.” He paused a second, then added, “I’m not sure I’d trust someone I just met on a deal like this.”

A look of genuine surprise shot across Latham’s face as they passed a large athletic field set well off the road. “Hawk’s word about you is good enough for me,” he said. “I’m in for the duration—or until you kick me out. To tell the truth, things get a little boring around here after a while. I mean, how long can you bang rattan sticks against each other and stab your training partner with rubber training knives before you’d kind of like to get out and do something else for a while? “He paused, took in a deep breath and let it out again. “Don’t get me wrong. I love what I’m doing. Kali, Arnis, Escrima—the Philippines have the most practical martial arts in the world, you ask me, and the best of the best is right here on Mindanao. But other than that, once you’ve been to Fort Pilar and seen the Yakan Weaving Village, there’s not a whole lot left to do.”

When Bolan didn’t respond, Latham went on.

“Okay, look,” the Texan said, lifting his hat off his head and wiping a hand across his scalp. “Hawk was the best friend I had when I was a kid. I could tell you stories about trouble we got into that would curl your ears.” He stopped, glanced at the Executioner, then amended the statement. “Well, maybe not your ears but most people’s. And Hawk was the best trooper to ever come out of Delta Force, too—don’t listen to him when he tells you I was just as good. I wasn’t. Anyway, one thing you could always count on out of Hawk was getting the truth. Bottom line—if he says you’re okay and I should work with you and not ask questions, that’s good enough for me.”

The Cherokee passed Don Basillio Navarro Street, then turned south on Alvarez. A few minutes later it turned east and entered the city proper. Barely slowing the vehicle, Latham guided them in and out of residential and business areas, past houses, restaurants and bars. The streets were alive with activity. Children played happily in front of houses and older, more sullen youths, gathered on street corners to glower as they passed.

Bolan was reminded that Mindanao’s cities, as well as its hinterland, were hotbeds of crime. Robberies, rapes and murders of both tourists and natives were common, and kidnapping for ransom—especially of Americans—was almost the national sport.

Pablo Lorenzo Street took them to Valderoza and they drove past Fort Pilar, which Latham had mentioned earlier. Bolan recalled that the fort had been founded by the Spaniards in the early seventeenth century, and conquered at various times by the Dutch, Moros, British and even the Japanese during World War II. Finally claimed by the Filipinos themselves, the fort now housed a marine museum and an ethnographic gallery that concentrated on the Badjao—or sea gypsies—who spent most of their lives on houseboats along the Sulu Archipelago.

Just past the fort they turned away from the city. According to the CIA, Subing’s home was in Rio Hondo, a small village—almost a suburb—to the east.

The Jeep topped a rise in the road and in the distance they could see the spiral towers of a village mosque. The Texan snorted humorously and shook his head. “Rio Hondo,” he said. “Sounds like a John Wayne movie, doesn’t it?”

Bolan smiled as they drove toward the village. He had taken a liking to Charlie Latham and appreciated the man’s unique way of viewing life. Latham was a straightforward type and, according to Hawkins, one heck of a fighter both with, and without, weapons. The Executioner hadn’t seen any firsthand proof of it yet but he suspected he’d find out up close and personal before this mission ended. Until then Hawkins’s word—which had given Latham confidence in Bolan—also meant the Executioner could trust the Texan when the going got tough.

The road rose and fell as they neared Rio Hondo and with each rise Bolan caught glimpses of the shoreline and water beyond. Several shallow-draft sailboats—vintas—moved gently back and forth along the coast. In them he could see tiny brown figures casting fishing nets over the sides. He was so occupied when he suddenly heard Latham say, “Uh-oh,” in a calm voice.

The Executioner turned his attention back to the road. They had just rounded a curve and Latham was slamming on the brakes, barely coming to a halt before hitting an ancient, rusting Chevrolet parked in the lane in front of them. Blocking the oncoming lane—and preventing them from passing—stood an equally old Ford Fairlane with a huge dent in the front fender. Two men stood between the vehicles, their arms waving wildly as they shouted at each other. To the average tourist it would have appeared that they had just been involved in an accident and were attempting to assign the blame.

But Bolan was neither tourist nor average. And neither was Latham.

“Kidnappers,” Latham said quickly as he pulled the Browning from his waistband. “Fake car accident. Standard ploy.”

Bolan didn’t need to be told. The Desert Eagle had come out of its holster the moment he’d seen the two cars. Now, as the two arguing men turned to face the Cherokee, he held the big .44 Magnum pistol just out of sight below the dashboard.

Both men wore dingy brown shirts, the tails untucked over baggy, tropical fabric slacks. They smiled as they began to casually walk forward as if to ask for assistance.

Then the shirttails came up and both men pulled pistols from their belts.

The Executioner twisted the door handle, threw open the door and leaped from the Cherokee. As he did, he saw a half dozen more men with AK-47s suddenly rush out of the jungle at the side of the road. The outbreak of automatic rifle fire behind him told Bolan that even more gunmen had appeared from the jungle on the other side of the road. As he dived below a burst of 7.62 mm rounds he wondered briefly if Latham had gotten out of the car. He hadn’t heard the man’s door open amid the explosions.

Bolan returned his attention to the men on his side of the vehicle. Latham was either alive or he was dead. Either way, there was nothing the Executioner could do to help him at the moment.

Another volley of fire struck the Cherokee as Bolan hit the ground and curled his body into a shoulder roll. As he rolled he caught a flash sight of the six men in front of him, his brain registering the fact that they wore a mixture of camouflage and more traditional dress. He wondered briefly if kidnapping was really their objective. The ambush was taking on more of the aura of a well-thought-out terrorist op.

Maybe even an assassination. Did the Tigers know he was on the island?

The Executioner pushed the possibility to the back burner for the moment. Right now it made little difference who the men were or what they wanted. They meant to kill both him and Latham, and at this point the important thing was to make sure they didn’t get it done.

Bullets struck the highway’s shoulder to both of the Executioner’s sides. Huge chunks of black asphalt, heated to softness by the hot Mindanao sun, ripped open as if tiny earthquakes had erupted. Bolan’s brain raced at near-inhuman speed, analyzing, evaluating, taking in the details of the situation. He weighed the odds and calculated the percentages of every possible course of action as he rolled beneath the onslaught.

The bottom line was grim. He was outnumbered and outgunned. There were six men directly in front of him, and even if he could make it to the rear of the Cherokee some of them would still be angled for clear shots. But the rear of the vehicle was the nearest thing to cover available so it was toward that goal he would have to fight.

Bolan rolled again amid a shower of lead. The gunmen on Latham’s side of the vehicle continued their assault, their rounds exploding from that direction.

The Executioner rolled up to one knee and lifted the Desert Eagle. The enemy had both superior manpower and firepower. He and Latham had superior thinking, superior thinking that could be turned into superior strategy. And both the thinking and the strategy would have to be far superior.

The Executioner pointed the barrel of the Desert Eagle at the man closest to the rear of the Cherokee. Heavyset and bareheaded, the would-be kidnapper wore what looked like faded blue gym shorts and sandals below a camouflage BDU blouse. A tap of the trigger sent a 240-grain semijacketed hollowpoint round exploding from the .44 Magnum pistol’s barrel. It drilled through the third button in the stenciled leaf-pattern cammie shirt, snapped the man’s spine in two, then blew on out of his back taking with it a hurricane of mangled muscle tissue, blood and splintered bone. The man himself went limp, collapsing to the ground like a dropped rag doll.

The soldier swung the Desert Eagle to his left, toward the next man closest to the rear of the Cherokee.

This man sported a stringy mustache and equally wispy growth of beard. Like the gunner who had fallen before him, he, too, would still have a direct line of fire at the back of the vehicle once Bolan reached it. Which meant he had to go next.

The Executioner squeezed the trigger once more and a second .44 Magnum hollowpoint round blasted from the barrel. It caught the attacker high in the chest, the velocity throwing him backward into a complete flip in the air. He came to rest on his belly, his chin caught on the ground, his face staring back at the Executioner. But the open eyes above the thin mustache saw nothing. Nor would they ever again.

Four more kidnappers remained on his side of the Cherokee and their return fire now zeroed in on Bolan’s sides. He rolled to the ground again, angling toward the Cherokee’s rear, the rounds exploding in his ears. One bullet cut through the sleeve of his blue chambray shirt, scorching the skin on his arm as it passed. The Executioner barely noticed it as he pulled the trigger, sending another pair of rounds into the blurry mass of camouflage that whirled past his eyes. As he continued to roll he caught another flash picture.