Bolan dropped his man with a single bullet to the chest

If it was blood they wanted, the Executioner was ready to provide it. He would teach his enemies a lesson about taking victory for granted. Even if they killed him, survivors of the skirmish would remember, and perhaps take something with them from the carnage when they fled.

He hadn’t meant for this to happen, but the choice was made. His foes had called the play, but they would not control the game.

Bolan lined up his weapon on the trail and listened to the hunters, careless in their haste. That racket was another costly error. The only question, now, was whether any of the trackers would survive to learn from their mistakes.

Or whether Bolan would survive to see another day.

MACK BOLAN®
The Executioner

#259 Nightfire

#260 Dayhunt

#261 Dawnkill

#262 Trigger Point

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

#328 Triangle of Terror

#329 Hostile Crossing

#330 Dual Action

#331 Assault Force

#332 Slaughter House

#333 Aftershock

#334 Jungle Justice

The Executioner®

Jungle Justice

Don Pendleton

There is no forgiveness in nature.

—Ugo Betti, 1892–1953

Crime on Goat Island

Nature takes care of her own, but we sometimes can’t afford to wait. This time, I’m helping to level the scales.

—Mack Bolan

For the Linkup, fighting for justice one step at a time.

Contents

Prologue

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

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

Prologue

Sundarbans Wildlife Park, India

“I’m still not clear exactly why we need an army escort in a game preserve,” Phillip Langley said.

His guide, a thirty-something diplomat named Rajit Singh, concealed any frustration that he may have felt concerning Langley’s poor retention. Smiling, he replied, “All wildlife is protected in the Sundarbans, and most particularly tigers, sir. Of course, the law is one thing, and reality is something else entirely, as I’m sure you know.”

Joyce Langley spoke up from the seat beside her husband, swaying with the rocking motion of their boat as it moved ever deeper into the world’s largest mangrove swamp. “You mean that poachers hunt the tigers, even here?” she asked.

“Most certainly, memsahib,” the guide replied. “And here most cunningly of all.”

Stomach uneasy, Phillip Langley asked, “When do we go ashore?”

“Not long, sir,” Singh assured him. “Fifteen minutes, maybe less.”

The heat was even more oppressive here than in Calcutta, where Langley and his wife had spent the previous night in what passed for a four-star hotel, after meeting their guide at the local seat of government. Langley’s role as special U.S. envoy and a member of the President’s task force on preservation of endangered species had assured Langley the best room in the house—which wasn’t saying much.

At least, he reassured himself, it was a far cry from the teeming, reeking slums they’d seen while driving from the airport to their rendezvous with Rajit Singh. Langley was clueless as to how people survived in squalor so profound and hopeless. Given half a chance, he would’ve filmed Calcutta in 3-D, bottled its smell and shared the grim experience with everyone who ranted about poverty in the United States.

Compared to the worst of Calcutta, the South Bronx and Cabrini Green looked like a juicy slice of Beverly Hills, 90210. Langley wasn’t sure that any of the people he’d seen lying in the streets and gutters had been dead, but on the other hand, living in such conditions made the prospect of a coronary sound like sweet relief.

Now, here they were, sweating beneath a broiling sun, the humidity close to one hundred percent, and his industrial-strength bug repellent was barely holding the king-sized mosquitoes at bay. They’d seen some birds that Langley didn’t recognize, and several crocodiles that eyed him as if he was a prospective snack.

Even with the rocking of the boat, Langley had almost soured on the plan to go ashore. Ideally, he’d have ordered Singh to turn the boat around and take them back to the Port Canning railhead, but how would that look in his final report?

Stiff upper lip, he thought, wiping the perspiration from it with his sleeve.

“I understand most of the tigers in the Sundarbans are man-eaters,” his wife was saying, using all of her considerable charm on Rajit Singh.

“You are correct, memsahib,” the guide replied. “That is another reason for the military guard, you know. Because prey in the game preserve is scarce, and humans run so slowly, most of the three hundred Bengal tigers here have eaten men. We record an average twenty-six maulings per year, most of them fishermen and woodcutters.”

“And still, you work to save the tigers?”

“But of course. It is the law.” Raising an arm to point, Singh told them, “There, ahead, you see the dock where we will land.”

Langley could see the dock, all right, but he felt less secure than ever about stepping from the boat. Twenty-six tiger kills in a year meant one every two weeks. When had the last one been, he wondered. Was it time to log a fresh statistic on the butcher’s bill?

The boat was veering toward the dock on his left. Langley knew he was running out of time. “About these tigers, Mr. Singh,” he said. “What happens if we meet one on our tour? I mean, if we meet a hungry one.”

Singh smiled at that, just short of mocking him. “Fear not, sir. We have the pistols without bullets—oh, what do you call them?”

“Starter pistols?”

“Yes! We have the starter pistols and electric prods. Is very safe.”

“But we have rifles, too,” Langley reminded him, eyeing their uniformed escort.

“Rifles are only for the poachers and the bandits, sir.” Singh’s tone was solemn now. “We shoot a tiger only as the very last resort, sir, in a most extreme emergency. And even then, I fear my job is forfeit.”

“Still,” Langley insisted, “in a real emergency—”

“Have no fear, sir.” The guide had found his smile. “I have not lost a Western diplomat so far.”

“So far?”

“Joking! We have the laugh together, yes?”

Hilarious, Langley thought, as he forced a smile. Joyce poked him in the ribs, a subtle elbow shot, and he managed to say, “That’s quite a wit you’ve got there, Mr. Singh.”

The guide beamed at him. “Everyone is telling me the same, sir. If I was not in the government employ, I should be a comedian.”

“Something to think about,” Langley replied. In case a tiger eats my ass.

The boat nosed in against the dock, where some native youths stood waiting to secure the lines. More soldiers also stood by, rifles slung or tucked beneath their arms, guarding a pair of Land Rovers.

“There are no highways in the Sundarbans,” Singh told them, when they stood once more on semisolid ground, “and few passable roads. To really see the game preserve, a person must walk or travel on the waterways, but I believe you would prefer to ride.”

You got that right, Langley thought. If I have to be among man-eating tigers, lock me in a sturdy SUV.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Joyce said.

“Sadly, the Rovers have no air-conditioning,” Singh said, “but we shall roll the windows down. Only a few tigers jump through the windows of a moving vehicle.” He let them soak that in, then said, “I joke again!”

“Better and better,” Langley said. “About those gangs you mentioned—”

“Mostly poachers,” Singh replied. “Mostly a group led by the pig Naraka. My apologies, memsahib.”

“Naraka?” Langley asked.

“A bad man. Very bad. But have no fear, sir. I believe we shall not meet with him today.”

1

Calcutta

Calcutta was a shock to any first-time Western visitor.

It was the second-most populous city in an overcrowded nation where more than thirteen million people shared barely eight hundred square miles.

Over the past two centuries, the city had been purged by floods, famine, riots and war. The British influence remained—English predominated on street signs and in public conversation—but the constitution also recognized fifteen other tongues. Great religions rubbed shoulders in the crowded streets, but the ancient image of death goddess Kali was never far removed, her six arms reaching out for skulls and human sacrifice.

Above all, there was poverty. Calcutta’s slums dwarfed those of Bangkok, Jakarta, Rangoon or Kuala Lumpur. Millions roamed and slept on filthy streets, dressed in rags and infected with loathsome diseases, living hand-to-mouth as thieves or beggars. Others sold themselves, either for sex or literally, piece by piece, to blood and organ vendors representing wealthy clients. What did a cornea or kidney matter, when the final stakes were life or death?

Mack Bolan had passed through Asian slums before, in half a dozen troubled nations, but Calcutta’s were the worst he had seen. The odors permeated flesh and fabric, defying the purgative powers of soap and shampoo. There was a kind of soul-rot in this place that crept inside the human heart and burrowed deep.

Bolan had flown in early from the States to learn the ground before he met his contact and began the mission proper. Lack of preparation was a fatal flaw in the Executioner’s trade, where each decision had a direct impact on his longevity. He’d managed to survive this far, against long odds, by paying close attention to details.

And he didn’t intend to change that pattern now.

Calcutta had its stylish neighborhoods, department stores and monuments, but none of that concerned him. Bolan’s path lay on the wild side, in the darkness where “respectable” Calcuttans seldom strayed, a part of their immediate surroundings they struggled daily to ignore.

Bolan’s hotel was an outpost on the DMZ between tourist-brochure Calcutta and a blighted district where the “other half” sometimes didn’t survive the night. His first foray across the line, made on the afternoon of his arrival, was a visit to a certain shop on the wrong end of Benjamin Disraeli Street. Ostensibly, the owner was a pawnbroker who earned his living from the misfortune of others, but his secret back room was an arsenal of modern military hardware, open to selected customers by invitation only.

Bolan’s invitation was a roundabout arrangement, courtesy of Hal Brognola at Justice and a colleague with the CIA in Langley, Virginia. A word to the wise, and Bolan was in, sharing the wealth he’d lifted from a Baltimore crack dealer two weeks earlier to purchase certain basics of the soldier’s trade.

His purchases included a Steyr AUG assault rifle, chambered for the same 5.56 mm rounds used in the native INSAS models, but more compact and reliable in adverse conditions. For his side arm, he’d chosen a Glock 17, again taking a weapon chambered for the common 9 mm round used by Indian police and military personnel, but with a reputation for superior performance under rough handling. Spare magazines for both weapons, a shoulder harness for the Glock, plus ammunition and a brand-new K-Bar fighting knife had rounded off his purchase.

He had stashed the AUG and various accessories at his hotel, but wore the Glock when he went out to learn the city’s secrets. Bolan knew, before he set foot on the sidewalk, that a lifetime could be spent trying to understand Calcutta, yet the deepest, darkest secrets would evade him. That was fine, as long as he picked up enough to help him stay alive to complete his mission.

Police patrols, for instance. Bolan marked them, noted where the prowl cars went and where they didn’t, which blocks were ignored and left to fester with no uniforms in sight. He was convinced that several of the sleeping men he passed along his way were dead, in fact, but Bolan didn’t stop to prove the point.

None of his business. He had other work to do.

His contact had arranged a meeting at a curry restaurant, a quarter mile from Bolan’s small hotel. He had studied three approaches to the place, which occupied a busy corner in a kind of low-rent no-man’s land. He could approach his target from the north or south, along Clarke Street, or from the east, by passing through a squalid alleyway perversely labeled London Mews. He recognized the alley as a prime spot for an ambush, but the crowded north-south street was just as bad, if someone cared enough to infiltrate the crowd of passersby or fire from the apartments stacked above street-level shops.

The one thing Bolan absolutely didn’t plan to do that night was to dine on curry in an unfamiliar restaurant. He had a cast-iron stomach, long inured to gagalicious Green Beret cuisine, but still he didn’t want to take the chance. Instead, he ate a midday meal at his hotel and made it last, bolstered by shrink-wrapped snacks and bottled water in the early evening, as daylight waned.

Bolan put on his stern game face and hit the streets with an hour to spare, ample time to reach his destination, scout the neighborhood one last time and be ready when his contact finally arrived. The image of a passport photograph was burned into his memory, a common face, but one he would not forget until the mission was behind him and he had no further need of it.

The sat phone in his pocket was a hot line to the States, with Hal Brognola’s several numbers and Stony Man Farm on speed dial, but none of them would help him here. Bolan was off the screen this evening, well and truly on his own.

ABHAYA TAKERI WAS EARLY for his rendezvous with the American. Unlike the stranger he had come to meet, he had no photographs to work from, not even a physical description of the man who’d traveled halfway around the world to meet him in Calcutta. But he had the magic word.

Saffron.

Someone had thought about it and decided it would be the perfect password for a meeting in a restaurant. Why not? They didn’t pay Takeri to decide such things, only to speak the words that he was given and perform on cue in other ways.

This night, and for the next few days, he would be serving the American as travel guide, interpreter, and general font of knowledge on the ins and outs of life in West Bengal. Beyond that—if he had to fight, for instance—they would have to renegotiate.

Takeri hoped that it would be a simple job, but he already had his doubts. His briefing had included details that suggested travel far afield. He didn’t mind leaving the city—he was a former country boy himself—but there were dangers in the hinterland that made Calcutta’s numbing misery pale by comparison.

He knew tourists imagined India as quaint and scenic, with men in turbans and pith helmets riding elephants around plantations, in the shadow of the Taj Mahal. Landmarks aside, their vision of Takeri’s homeland came primarily from 1940s Hollywood, doubly distorted through a camera’s lens and a kaleidoscope of wishful thinking, harking back to times that never were. The West had lost control of India in 1947, and that stranglehold was never the idyllic life portrayed in films or novels. The common Western view of India was no more accurate than the portrait of American slavery painted in Gone With the Wind.

Before his grandfather’s great-grandfather was born, Takeri’s homeland was invaded, subjugated and exploited for the benefit of merchants and their lackeys, living half a world away. The native culture was suppressed, where it conflicted with the flow of tribute back to London, brutality and wholesale slaughter brought to bear when “insurrectionists” fought back. The history of India was written in her people’s blood, spilled by conquerors who left their imprint on the land, the language, everything he saw and touched from day to day.

Takeri’s nationalism didn’t mark him as a die-hard enemy of the West, however. He recognized that there were troubles enough in his homeland, without blaming anyone outside India’s borders. Gandhi himself had never managed to quell the sectarian bloodshed between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims that continued to the present day. That three-way war had claimed Indira Gandhi’s life and countless others, since the British tyrants had withdrawn in 1947. It endured still, in clashes over Kashmir, with the Pakistanis, and echoed in the living tragedy of Bangladesh. Too many children still labored in virtual slavery, while untouchables were scorned and persecuted, women slain in honor killings by their jealous husbands or else immolated when their spouses died.

Change for the better was a slow and agonizing process. Abhaya Takeri shared the frustration of his countrymen who wanted better lives without surrendering the best parts of their native culture. He believed such things were possible. And that, in part, was what had opened him to contract offers from the CIA.

He recognized the irony of his complaints against the West, while he collected U.S. dollars for his service to the lords of Washington. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, from troubled dreams, seething with anger at himself and at the nation that had forced him toward a measure of betrayal. In the end, though, when it mattered most, Takeri managed to persuade himself that he was working for a greater good, on behalf of India and all her people.

This time, for example, if his briefing had been accurate, he would assist in cleaning out a nest of bandit scum who had disgraced West Bengal for over a decade. Poaching was only part of it, an outlawed trade that spawned corruption, theft and murder stretching from Calcutta to the Sundarbans.

How many lives had Balahadra Naraka claimed so far? Two hundred? Three hundred or more? Takeri wasn’t sure, and further doubted that precise statistics were important. Various officials in West Bengal had been negligent or worse in dealing with the problem, throwing up their hands and pleading helplessness in the face of Naraka’s savagery. Their failure was a national disgrace, one Abhaya Takeri hoped to remedy.

While waiting for his meet with the American, he’d made inquiries here and there, around Calcutta. Certain merchants knew when contraband was moving, knew the sellers and buyers, their middlemen, the details necessary to unravel a conspiracy. With coaxing, he had managed to unlock their lips, extract their secrets bit by bit. More remained to be exposed, but for the moment, he was satisfied.

If only he could shake the sense of being followed.

There was nothing he could point to with assurance, no familiar face glimpsed time and time again behind him, in a crowd. But still, Takeri knew someone was watching him. He had a special sense about such matters, which had saved his life on more than one occasion. As he approached the curry restaurant, Takeri was alert to any shadows, spotting none.

He could abort the meeting, leave some message with the restaurant’s proprietor for the American to try another place, another time, but that would start them on the wrong foot, make the stranger feel Takeri was incompetent. Perhaps, he told himself, the feeling was just that—a feeling without substance. If he couldn’t see his enemies, Takeri knew there was at least a chance that they did not exist.

He dawdled through the last four blocks, still early for the meeting, killing time at shop windows and shrugging off the beggars who infested Clarke Street. None was quite so forward as to touch Takeri, but they crowded him, pleading for money or anything else he could spare. Takeri ignored them, brushing past them as if they didn’t exist, and felt the worse for it with every step he took.

He felt the beggars studied him and mocked him while he window-shopped and several times reversed directions, hoping by that method to detect a stranger following. Takeri wondered if the poor and starving thought him mad, then finally decided that it made no difference. Their opinion didn’t matter. It was nothing, written on the wind.

A short block from the restaurant, he was almost persuaded that his fears were all in vain. He’d been mistaken. There was no one after him at all. Why should there be?

And then, two men emerged from London Mews, moving to block his path. They were not beggars, and the hands they offered to him were not held palm-up and empty.

Both were clutching knives.

Takeri stopped, began to turn and glimpsed two other men he had somehow missed, closing behind him now. Long blades sprouted from their dark fists.

Cursing himself for carelessness, Takeri realized he was about to die.

2

The Executioner had started to relax at the first glimpse of his contact. The man was taking his time and double-checking to be sure he wasn’t followed. That was something Bolan could appreciate, a conscientious guide to help him through the next few days.

He wouldn’t jump the gun, Bolan decided, wouldn’t try to brace his contact on the sidewalk, when they’d already agreed to meet inside the restaurant. It was a small thing, but he didn’t want to start off breaking rules, changing established orders. It created a bad precedent, and Bolan didn’t want to go there.

He was patient, giving his connection time to reach the restaurant and go inside, when Bolan saw two men emerge from London Mews, the stinking alley paved with trash. Both moved to intercept his contact, and the young man saw them, blinking once before he thought about retreat—and found himself cut off behind by two more men.

It wasn’t Bolan’s fault, but self-recrimination still flashed through his mind. He hadn’t seen the followers, because they got lost in the teeming sidewalk crowd, but he could easily have checked the alley one more time, or even waited there himself to watch his contact pass.

Now the young man was ringed by hostile faces, and the four men who’d surrounded him were armed with knives.

Damn it!

Their first maneuver barely caused an eddy in the flow of foot traffic, then someone saw the blades and started shouting in a high-pitched voice. Bolan didn’t speak the shouter’s language, but he got the drift.

He knew only one way to trump four blades, and that was with a gun. It wasn’t how he’d meant to hook up with his contact, but the circumstances had been forced upon him by third parties. Bolan could do nothing but react, as swiftly and effectively as possible.

He palmed the Glock, holding it against his thigh as he proceeded, none too gently, through the sidewalk crowd. After retreating to a distance safe from random slashes, most of the immediate bystanders had decided they should watch the unexpected scene play out, rather than running for a cop or for their lives. The police might have been summoned, even so—Calcutta had its share of cell phones, just like any other city on the planet—and whatever Bolan meant to do, he knew he’d have to do it soon.

His first concern was no careless shooting in the crowd. His weapon didn’t have the penetration power of a Magnum, but a hot 9 mm load might still go through one man and strike another, if he wasn’t careful. Even warning shots were dangerous—they had to come down somewhere—and the very sound of gunfire might provoke a stampede that would force him away from his contact, instead of allowing him access.

Rather than firepower, therefore, Bolan first relied on muscle power, charging through the crowd and bulling human obstacles aside. Some snapped at him, presumably cursing, but he paid no heed. His contact was about to be filleted, and Bolan meant to stop it if he could.

If he wasn’t too late.

The four blade men were circling when he reached them by bursting through the final row of onlookers. One of the goons, directly opposite, saw Bolan coming in a rush and tried to warn his comrades, but the nearest didn’t get the word in time. The slicer’s first inkling of trouble was the tight grip of a strong hand on his shoulder, spinning him, before the Glock’s butt smashed into his face.

Some of the gawkers saw the pistol and withdrew from the epicenter of the action, but they still made no attempt to flee en masse. They seemed addicted to the show and would stay to see its end unless he started firing, forcing them to run for cover.

The attackers, still in fighting form, were torn between two targets and mindful of the gun in Bolan’s hand. They couldn’t read him yet, beyond a safe guess that he wasn’t a policeman, but they had no time to think about the riddle. Bolan, for his part, already wondered if the street attack had anything to do with him, but there was no way he could find out at that moment.

Fight now, instinct told him, and ask questions later. If you’re still alive.

The thug farthest from Bolan lunged at the Executioner’s contact with his knife. The young man turned rapidly to meet the thrust and blocked it with one hand, while the other lashed out toward his adversary’s face. It was a fair blow, staggering the hoodlum, but it failed to drop him, and a second lightning jab was required to put him on the ground.

That still left two, and one of them apparently decided it was safe to charge Bolan, pitting a six-inch blade against his pistol. The soldier could’ve double-tapped his enemy with ease, but there were too many civilians ranged behind the target for a guaranteed clean shot. Instead, he braced himself, prepared to meet his would-be killer hand to hand.

The youngster wasn’t bad, slashing at Bolan with a move that could’ve split his face or throat, but in the end he wound up cleaving only air. Bolan had ducked and sidestepped, lashed a kick into his young opponent’s groin, and watched the fight bleed out of him as he collapsed onto all fours. It was a simple thing, from there, to whip the Glock across his skull and leave him stretched out on the pavement.

One blade left, and Bolan’s contact had it more or less in hand, grappling with his opponent chest-to-chest, arms raised well overhead, the knife’s long blade reflecting glints of neon from surrounding signs. With all hands occupied, the two combatants waltzed and waddled, lurching back and forth across the sidewalk, ringed by spectators.

Bolan was moving in to break the standoff, when a gunshot cracked somewhere behind him and the young knife-wielder’s head exploded, spattering his adversary with a spray of blood and tissue. Bolan’s contact violently recoiled, shoving the corpse away from him, and thereby saved himself from the next shot.

“Get down!” Bolan cried, rushing even as he spoke to grab one of his contact’s arms and drag him into London Mews. The young man struggled, fought him, until Bolan shoved him hard against a filthy wall.

“We don’t have time for this!” he snapped. “No saffron on the menu, get it? Someone wants you dead. We need to get the hell away from here.”

His contact registered the password, blinked at Bolan in surprise, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I understand. This way!”

The next gunshot was well off target, fired from somewhere on the street into the alley’s mouth. It ricocheted off dirty bricks and burrowed into garbage, while the Executioner followed his contact through London Mews. A clutch of beggars tried to intercept them, then fell supine at the sight of Bolan’s gun.

They burst from the alley into another crowded street. Calcutta had no other kind, it seemed, and Bolan had mixed feelings for the crush of soiled humanity. Bodies provided cover, but they also clogged his field of fire. Pedestrians might shield him from his unknown enemies—or there might be assassins in the crowd, ready to slip a blade between his ribs.

Without a vehicle or ready options, Bolan trailed his contact south along a street he soon identified as Churchill Boulevard. The street was lined with panhandlers and prostitutes, with a snake charmer performing on the corner just ahead. As they approached the intersection, yet another thug appeared in front of Bolan’s guide, this one clutching a stubby pistol in both hands.

Before Bolan could aim and fire, his contact stooped beside the snake charmer, plucked up a startled cobra from the old man’s wicker basket, spun and pitched it straight into the shooter’s face. Their adversary squealed and dropped his weapon, flailing at the reptile draped around his shoulders.

Bolan left him to it, racing past and following his contact through a hard right turn into another carbon-copy street. They found a recessed doorway, ducked into its shadow, Bolan’s contact peering out to check the street behind them.

“That was pretty slick,” Bolan said, “with the snake. I didn’t catch your name in the excitement.”

“Abhaya Takeri,” the young man replied. “And yours?”

“Matt Cooper,” Bolan said. Today, at least.

“I don’t believe we should remain here any longer, Mr. Cooper.”

“Where—”

Before Bolan could put his question into words, a bullet struck the wall beside Takeri’s head and ricocheted into the street. A woman screamed, perhaps wounded, beyond his line of sight. Takeri turned at once, pushed through the door behind them, Bolan following into a tattoo parlor.

There were two chairs in the shop, both occupied by customers. The tattoo artists looked like twins, emaciated stick figures with matted hair and Fu Manchu mustaches going gray. Between the cloying incense, the whine of tattoo needles and demonic artwork mounted on the walls around him, Bolan felt as if he’d stepped into the third circle of Hell.

One of the artists said something he couldn’t understand. Takeri answered curtly and proceeded through the tiny shop toward a back room. They rattled through a screen of dangling beads, hooked left to where the back door stood propped open with a wooden crate and shouldered through into an alley barely wide enough to let them pass in single file.

Bolan had no idea who would construct an alley so narrow, or why, but it appeared to be a dumping trough for litter thrown from windows overhead. Thankfully, most of the discarded refuse had been dry—paper and cardboard, empty cans and bottles, scraps of wood and plaster board—instead of offal and the like. They clambered over knee-high dunes of rubbish, slogging north along the claustrophobic passageway, Takeri hissing steadily for Bolan to keep up.

“I’m right behind you,” Bolan said, then ducked as bullets started flying through the alley, gouging furrows in the brick to either side.

He crouched and swiveled, bruised a hip in those close quarters, lining up his Glock on a dark figure at the far end of the alley. Bolan saw the shooter’s muzzle-flash and fought the urge to flinch from it, squeezing his pistol’s trigger twice in rapid fire.

The echo of his shots was thunderous inside the alley, punctuated by the sound of cartridges rebounding from brick walls. He saw his human target stumble, turn, collapsing on his face. When the shooter did not immediately rise again, Bolan dismissed him, moving on.

Takeri reached the next street, plunged across it without looking left or right, while horse-drawn carts and rickshaws bustled past him. Bolan dodged a battered taxi cab and followed, gaining on Takeri as his contact reached the sidewalk opposite, then ducked into another darkened doorway.

Stairs this time, with people lounging on them, possibly asleep. Takeri hurdled each new obstacle, cursing when one reached out to snag his cuff, kicking to free himself. Another hand found Bolan, tried to grasp his ankle, but it lacked the strength to hold him. Moments later, they were pushing through another door and out onto the building’s roof.

“Where to?” Bolan asked, as he paused to catch his breath.

“With luck, they may not find us here,” Takeri answered.

Any hope of that was dashed a moment later, with the sound of angry voices and a gunshot from the stairwell. Bolan spun to face the doorway, leveling his pistol, but Takeri stepped in front of him.

“Better to run while we still can,” Takeri said.

“Run where?”

“Across the rooftops, there.”

Takeri pointed, already in motion as he sprinted toward a nearby parapet and launched himself through space to land on the rooftop of a building to the south. Bolan went after him, immediately thankful for the narrow alleyways that seemed to be Calcutta’s fashion. He was tiring, and a broader leap, followed by three or four more of the same, might well have winded him.

They crossed four rooftops, running hard, before Takeri found another open door and led the way down darkened stairs—unoccupied, this time—to reach the street. Bolan had not looked back to see if they were being followed, but he took it as a given. They would have to stand and fight soon, even if Takeri’s preference was an all-night run.

Bolan was on the verge of saying so when they emerged onto the crowded sidewalk and his contact hailed a passing cab. The driver stopped at once, and they piled into his back seat, almost as if the ride had been prearranged.

Bolan glanced through the cab’s rear window and saw no one in pursuit. Relaxing for the first time in what felt like hours, he sat back and stowed his pistol in its armpit holster.

“So,” he asked Takeri, “what was that about?”

“I can’t be sure,” the younger man replied. “Do you have lodgings in Calcutta?”

Bolan nodded. “Why?”

“Because we need a place to talk, and I no longer trust the streets.”

3

Fort McHenry, Baltimore

It had been Bolan’s turn to choose the meeting place, and he’d made his selection on a whim. It had to be within an hour’s drive of Washington, but within those parameters anything went.

He’d chosen Fort McHenry for its history— “Star Spangled Banner,” and all that—as well as its proximity to certain high-crime streets that might prove useful if the call from Hal Brognola concerned another job.

And what else would it be?

Granted, Brognola was a friend of long standing who phoned his regards on holidays, birthdays and such. He couldn’t send cards, because Mack Bolan had no fixed address. But a weekday phone call requesting a face-to-face ASAP could only mean work.

And work meant death, no matter how they tried to dress it up in frills.

The fort had been restored with loving care. Tourists could stroll along the parapets where early defenders had cringed from the rocket’s red glare, clutching muskets and sabers, most praying they wouldn’t be called on to use them.

That had been during the country’s second war with Britain, going on two hundred years ago, and Bolan’s homeland still hadn’t achieved a lasting peace. Its history was scarred by conflict stretching from the shot heard ’round the world to Kabul and Baghdad. The freedoms cherished there were sacrosanct to Bolan, but their price was high.

He wondered, sometimes, what the politicians thought they had achieved, besides securing their own reelection, but it never troubled him for long. The republic had survived good presidents and bad, congressmen who helped the poor and robbed them blind, judges who did their level best and others who were on the take from every scumbag they could find. America endured, sometimes despite its leaders, rather than because of them.

In Bolan’s world it was a different story. He’d quit taking orders when he shed his Army uniform and launched a new war of his own, against the syndicated criminals responsible for nearly wiping out his family. That war had taught him things he’d never learned in Special Forces training, and Bolan had taken those lessons to heart.

These days, he was unique among all other warriors he had ever known or studied. The nearest facsimile came from ancient Japan, when masterless samurai called ronin traveled at will through a feudal landscape, choosing their battles and renting their swords to the highest bidder.

Bolan wasn’t a mercenary, though. He’d cast his lot with Hal Brognola at the Department of Justice, and Brognola’s covert-action teams at Stony Man Farm, in the wild Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. But he didn’t belong to them. Bolan was free to turn down any job that didn’t suit him, though he rarely exercised that privilege. In most cases he found that Brognola’s concern, his sense of urgency, matched Bolan’s own.

That didn’t mean he’d want the job the big Fed brought to him this morning, at Fort McHenry. Every time they met, a part of Bolan’s mind was ready to decline the mission, picking it apart in search of elements that made it hopeless or unworthy of his time. It was a rare day when he found those elements—not half a dozen times in all the years he’d worked with Hal—but it could happen.

As his compact with Brognola left him free to pick and choose, so it allowed Bolan to chart selected missions of his own, without Brognola’s go-ahead. Brognola nearly always backed him to the limit, but they both knew that it wasn’t guaranteed, and if the man from Washington said no, it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for either of them.

Not yet, anyway.

Moving among the tourists, eavesdropping on fragmentary conversations, Bolan marveled at their ignorance of history. One woman thought Fort McHenry had been shelled by “Communists” during the Civil War. Her male companion solemnly corrected her, insisting the aggressors had been French. Most of the others didn’t seem to care what might’ve happened there, so long ago, as long as they could spend a morning in the sunshine, briefly free from care.

And maybe that, thought Bolan, was the reason many of his nation’s battles had been fought.

History books extolled the U.S. combat soldier’s dedication to abstractions—Justice, Freedom and Democracy were those most prominently listed. Bolan, for his part, had never met a soldier who spent any barracks time at all debating politics, when there was talk of women, sports or food to be enjoyed. And in the orchestrated panic that was battle, he had never heard a fighting man of either side die with a patriotic slogan on his lips. They asked for wives or lovers, parents, siblings—anyone at all, in fact, except the leaders who had put them on the battlefield.

Armies defended or invaded nations. Soldiers fought to stay alive and help their buddies. Only “statesmen” waged war for ideals, and most of them had never fired a shot in anger, or been fired on in return.

Bolan had once maintained a journal, filled with thoughts about his private wars, the Universe, his place within the scheme of things and mankind’s destiny. He’d discontinued it some years ago, more from a lack of idle time than any shift in feeling, and he didn’t miss it now.

Who’d ever read or care about his private thoughts, in any case? Officially, he was a dead man, had been since his pyrotechnic finish had been staged by Hal Brognola in NewYork. From there, he’d been reborn—new face, new life, new war.

Except, in truth, his war had never really changed.

His enemies were predators in human form, who victimized the weak and relatively innocent. Like some unworthy patriots and holy men, they dressed their crimes in disguises of infinite variety. They were left- and right-wing, conservative and liberal, Muslim and Christian, Jew and gentile, male and female, young and old. They came in every color of the human rainbow, but they always wanted the same thing.

Whatever they could steal.

Bolan stood in their way, sometimes alone, sometimes with comrades who were dedicated to the fight for its own sake. And while he knew he couldn’t win them all, he’d done all right so far.

He found the spot he’d designated for his meeting with Brognola, leaned against the rough stone of the parapet and settled in to wait. The man from Justice thrived on punctuality, but Bolan was ten minutes early. He had time to kill.

He couldn’t see or hear the ghosts who walked those grounds, but Bolan never doubted they were present, bound by pain and sacrifice to the last battleground they’d known in life. And something told him that they didn’t really mind.

BROGNOLA STEPPED UP to the wall at Bolan’s side, and said “Been waiting long?”

“Not too long,” Bolan answered. “Shall we walk?”

“Suits me,” Brognola said.

He studied Bolan, as he always did, striving for subtlety. It wasn’t good to stare, but he supposed that shooting furtive glances from the corner of his eye would make him seem ridiculous, like something from a Peter Sellers comedy.

“How are you?” he inquired at last.

“Getting along,” Bolan replied.

Okay. No small talk, then.

“I’ve got a project that I thought might suit you, if you’re interested,” Brognola told him, cutting to the chase.

“Let’s hear it.”

“What do you know about India?”

Bolan considered it, then said, “Huge population. Sacred cows. Border disputes with Pakistan and China. Trouble with the Sikhs.”

“Endangered species?” he suggested, prodding.

Bolan shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“What about tigers?”

“Big and dangerous. Just ask Siegfried and Roy.”

“I’m thinking more of tigers in the wild.”

“Not many left, if memory serves,” Bolan said.

“They’re making a comeback of sorts on Indian game preserves,” Brognola told him, “but there’s still a thriving trade in pelts and organs.”

“Organs?”

“Right. Go figure. In the Eastern culture, certain organs are believed to help male potency.”

“I thought that was rhinoceros horn,” Bolan said.

“Same thing,” Brognola admitted. “Different strokes for different folks.”

“So, poachers,” Bolan said.

“Big-time. Not only tigers, but elephants, too. Apparently, it’s a major crime wave.”

“Too bad,” the Executioner replied. “But still—”

“I know, it’s not our usual.”

“Not even close.”

“Does the name Balahadra Naraka ring any bells?” Brognola asked.

“Vaguely. Can’t place it, though.”

“He’s a legend of sorts from what I gather,” the big Fed explained. “Started out as a small-time poacher, then he caught a prison sentence and escaped, killing some guards as he went. That was ten or twelve years ago, and the government’s been hunting him ever since. He’s the Indian equivalent of Jesse James or John Dillinger. Naraka has a gang, hooked up with dealers in Calcutta and buyers all over the world. Reports vary, but it seems he’s killed at least a hundred game wardens and soldiers. Some reports claim two hundred or more.”

“Bad news,” Bolan said, “but I still don’t see—”

“Our angle?” Brognola had anticipated him. “Last week a U.S. diplomat, one Phillip Langley, paid a visit to West Bengal with his wife. Langley is—or was—a member of the President’s task force on preservation of endangered species, working in conjunction with the United Nations.”

“Was a member?” Bolan asked.

“He’s dead,” Brognola replied. “The wife, too. Some of Naraka’s people jumped their convoy on a game preserve ninety miles outside Calcutta. Killed their escorts on the spot, then snatched the Langleys and demanded ransom.”

“Washington, of course, refused to pay,” Bolan said.

“Right. So, anyway, the army got a lead on where Naraka had them stashed and tried to pull a rescue. When the smoke cleared, they had two dead hostages and one small-timer from the gang, but no sign of Naraka and the rest.”

“Which leaves the White House angry and embarrassed,” Bolan guessed.

“And shit still rolls downhill,” Brognola said. “This load just landed on my doorstep yesterday.”

“You want Naraka chastised.”

“Neutralized,” Brognola said, correcting him. “Along with anybody else who had a hand in murdering the Langleys.”

“And the local government can’t handle it?”

“They’ve spent more than a decade chasing him around in circles, getting nowhere. As I mentioned, he’s already killed at least a hundred of their officers, and still they haven’t laid a glove on him. No reason to suppose they’ll score a sudden breakthrough, just because he smoked a couple of Americans.”

“A diplomatic squeeze might do the trick,” Bolan suggested.

“Some say we’re spread too thin as it is, or throwing too much weight around already. Either way, the word’s come down to handle it outside normal channels.”

“Ah. And where would I start looking if the natives don’t know where to find their man?”

“I said they haven’t found him,” Brognola replied. “That doesn’t mean they don’t know where he is.”

“Collusion?”

“Or ineptitude. It wouldn’t be the first time, right?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Bolan agreed. “My question’s still the same. Where would I start?”

“Calcutta,” Brognola suggested. “It’s the capital of West Bengal, Naraka’s happy hunting ground, and anything he moves to foreign buyers will be passing through the city. I’ve already tapped the Company for contacts, and they’ve got a man on standby to assist you if you take the job.”

“A native?”

“Born and bred,” Brognola said. “He’s on the books with a ‘reliable’ notation.”

“Name?”

“I’ve got his file here,” Brognola said, raising his left hand to stroke his overcoat, feeling the fat manila envelope that filled his inside pocket. “And I brought along Naraka’s, with some background on the area.”

“So, is the White House miffed, or is there some real likelihood this character may pose a future threat?” Bolan asked.

“To the States?” Brognola shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not his first kidnapping, just the first involving U.S. citizens. Our analysts are split fifty-fifty, as to whether the experience will scare him off or piss him off so badly that he wants another piece of Uncle Sam.”

“It’s a distraction from his trade,” Bolan remarked.

“Which means he may start taking other risks, making mistakes. I’d hate to see him fixate on the embassy, its personnel. This guy’s been living like a hermit in the jungle since his prison break. I’m not sure he was civilized before that all went down, but he’s a Grade A wild man now.”

“A wild man with a taste for ivory and tigers,” Bolan said.

“And hostages. Let’s not forget.”

“How solid is his dossier?”

“Good question. The ambassador to India says we got everything they have in New Delhi. Beyond that, who knows?”

“Naraka could have someone running interference for him in the government,” Bolan suggested.

“It’s a possibility, all right.”

“And if I find someone like that? What, then?”

“Officially, we’d want to know about it. Off the record, use your own best judgment.”

“All right,” the warrior said, at last. “Let’s see the files.”

THE FILES HAD BEEN condensed, photos and all printed on flimsy paper for convenience and easy disposal when Bolan had finished his reading. He sat on a bench in the sunshine, outside Fort McHenry, with Brognola at his side, watching any stray tourist who wandered too close. Bolan read steadily, absorbing all the salient facts and asking questions when he needed to.

His contact, Abhaya Takeri, was a twenty-six-year-old ex-soldier who had dabbled in private security before landing a dull office job in Calcutta. That had lasted for nearly a year before he got restless, picking up covert assignments from his government, and later from the CIA. It wasn’t clear in Takeri’s case if one hand knew what the other was doing, but he’d managed to avoid any conflicts so far, after three years of service, and that said something for his tradecraft at the very least.

Takeri’s photos were a study in contrast. The first, a posed shot in his army uniform, revealed a stern young man who wouldn’t smile to save his life, proud of his threads and attitude. The other was a candid shot, taken just as Takeri left a small sidewalk café, his arm around a pretty, laughing young woman. Takeri’s smile seemed genuine, good-humored, as if he enjoyed his life. The flimsy printouts meant that Bolan couldn’t check the flip side of the photographs for dates, but he assumed the army photo had been taken first. Takeri seemed a little older in the second, definitely more at ease.

Takeri’s record in the military had been unremarkable, and most of what he’d done since entering the cloak-and-dagger world was classified. Of course the CIA didn’t mind leaking what he’d done for India, as long as it had no impact on his work for the Company. Apparently, Takeri had been used to infiltrate a labor union thought to be involved in sabotage—they weren’t, according to his last report—and to disrupt a group of Sikhs who showed displeasure with the government by blowing up department stores. Four bombers had been sent to prison in that case, while their ringleader had committed suicide.

It sounded like a good day’s work.

Takeri spoke three languages, had studied martial arts before and after military service, and he’d qualified with standard small arms in the army.

“Sounds all right,” Bolan said, handing the dossier to Brognola.

Balahadra Naraka was something else entirely. Thirty-eight years old and a career criminal by anyone’s definition, he had survived Calcutta as an orphan, living by theft and his wits on the streets, then fell in with poachers when he was a teenager. The shift to country living didn’t help. Naraka was suspected of killing his first game warden at age nineteen, but no charges were filed in that case and he’d remained at large for three more years, then took a fall for shooting tigers. The charge carried a five-year prison sentence, and he’d spent nearly a year in jail prior to trial. Upon conviction, Naraka had received the maximum and was packed off to serve his time.

It took him nearly three years to escape, but he made up for the delay in grisly style. Using a homemade shank, he gutted one guard on the cell block, took another hostage and escaped in one of the prison vehicles. Car and hostage were abandoned on the outskirts of civilization, the guard decapitated, with his head mounted as a hood ornament.

Since then, for nearly twelve years, Balahadra Naraka had been a hunted fugitive, although it barely showed from his lifestyle. Granted, he spent most of his time in tents or tiny jungle villages, but so did half the population of West Bengal. His photos—half a dozen snapped by Naraka’s own men and sent to major newspapers—always depicted him in a defiant pose, armed to the teeth, standing beside the carcasses of tigers, elephants, or men in uniform.

Brognola had been right about the bandit-poacher’s body count. Although it seemed most of his victims were officials—cops, soldiers, game wardens—no two sources ever quite agreed on how many men he’d killed. The lowest figure Bolan saw, in excerpts from assorted press clippings, was 105; the highest, lifted from a sensational tabloid, ascribed “nearly four hundred” slayings to Naraka and his gang.

It was peculiar, Bolan thought, that no official source kept track of government employees murdered by a bandit on the prowl, but numbers didn’t really matter in the last analysis. Naraka was a dangerous opponent, and he’d moved from killing local lawmen to murdering U.S. diplomats.

Bolan assumed the Langley snatch had been a one-time thing, impulsive, maybe even carried out by a subordinate without Naraka’s prior knowledge. It made no difference, though, because Naraka had a lifelong pattern of internalizing and repeating bad behavior. If he’d been apprehended for his first known homicide, it might’ve made a difference. But as it was…

Naraka might be something of a folk hero to rural villagers, who welcomed charity and anyone who helped remove the threat of tigers from their dreary lives, but he still qualified as a mass murderer—perhaps the worst in India since British troops suppressed the thugee cult during the nineteenth century. If Bolan could supply the final chapter to Naraka’s long and cruel career, so much the better.

“He’s a tough one,” Bolan told Brognola. “Knows the ground like Jungle Jim. It won’t be easy to find him, and even then—”

“You’ve tackled worse,” Brognola said.

“Maybe.” Bolan handed back Naraka’s file. “Just let me check the ground.”

It was the worst of both worlds—first, a teeming city, second largest in the country, steeped in grinding poverty, then swamps and jungles rivaling the thickest, least hospitable on Earth. The Sundarbans, where Bolan would be forced to hunt Naraka if he couldn’t catch his target in Calcutta, spanned 2,560 square miles in West Bengal, with more sprawling across the border into Bangladesh. The Indian portion included a 1,550-square-mile game preserve, where three hundred tigers were protected by law, since the early 1970s.

Nor did the Sundarbans consist of any ordinary jungle. Seventy percent of the region lay under salt water, comprising the world’s largest mangrove swamp, crisscrossed by hundreds of creeks and tributaries feeding three large rivers—the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Meghna. Access to much of the region was boats only, and if tigers missed a visitor on land, the tourist still had to watch out for sharks and salt-water crocodiles. Electrified dummies had failed to discourage the cats, and every tourist party that entered the Sundarbans traveled with armed guards.

All that, before poachers and bandits were added to the mix.

“Sounds like malaria country,” Bolan said.

“I’ve got a medic on standby to update your shots,” Brognola answered.

“Thoughtful to a fault.”

“That’s me.”

“All right,” the Executioner replied. “I’m in.”

4

Calcutta

The cab dropped Bolan and Takeri two blocks north of Bolan’s hotel and they walked back through the darkness, alert for any sign of followers. Spotting none, they entered the lobby, where the night clerk shot a glance at them, suspicious, then ignored them after recognizing Bolan.

Takeri started toward the creaky elevator, but Bolan stopped him with a word and steered him toward the stairs. If anything had soured since he’d left the place that evening, Bolan didn’t want to meet new adversaries for the first time when the elevator’s door jerked open and the hostiles blazed away at point-blank range.

It proved to be a wasted effort, if security precautions could be wasted in a combat zone. No enemies were waiting for them on the third floor, none in Bolan’s room after he used his key and cleared the threshold in a rush, pistol in hand. The exercise did not make him feel foolish, even so.

Better to be alive and taking too much care than to relax and die.

When they were safely locked inside the room, lights on and curtains drawn, Bolan repeated his original question. “All right, we’re off the streets. Now fill me in on who we’re running from.”

Takeri found a seat and filled it, stretching in an effort to relax. “You understand I cannot be precisely sure. I did not recognize those men.”

“Best guess?”

“It was the first direct attempt upon my life since I left military service. I have enemies, of course, but in the circumstances I assume it was related to your mission.”

“Break it down.”

“Sorry? Oh, yes, I see. In preparation for your coming, I initiated certain contacts. Seeking information on Balahadra Naraka and his associates, attempting to identify his local contacts, vendors and the like. I exercised the utmost caution, but—”

“You tripped some wires, regardless,” Bolan finished for him.

“It is possible,” Takeri answered ruefully. “The other possibility, revenge for some work previously done, strikes me as too coincidental at the present time.”

“Agreed.”

It was a poor beginning to the mission, with his guide and contact compromised, already hunted by the enemy. Bolan had been sucked into the violence, seen by the enemy, and might have sacrificed the critical advantage of surprise.

Or, maybe not.

“You need to lay out everything you’ve done,” he told Takeri. “Everyone you’ve spoken to about Naraka, when and where. If we can figure out who’s hunting you, it tells us which direction we should go to minimize exposure.”

“Certainly.” Takeri frowned. “But, everyone?”

“In order, if you can,” Bolan replied. “We’ve got all night.”

“Do we have coffee?”

Bolan made a call to room service, then settled in to listen while they waited for the coffee to arrive.

“I started with police contacts,” Takeri said. “A Captain Gupta in Calcutta, who collaborates with agents from the Ministry of the Interior to curb the traffic in endangered species and their relics.”

“Is he straight?” Bolan asked.

“Meaning honest?”

“That’s my meaning.”

“I believe so,” Takeri said. “His promotion came through merit, based on his arrests of poachers and their contacts in the export trade. Over the past three years, he has maintained an average of three arrests per week.”

“How many were convicted?” Bolan asked.

Takeri shrugged at that. “I’ve no idea. Is it important that we know?”

“Where I come from,” Bolan replied, “it’s not unusual for crooked cops to make a lot of busywork arrests that go nowhere. They pick up prostitutes and small-time dealers, run them through the system to compile a quota of arrests and bag their commendations, while the courts dish out probation and small fines. Meanwhile, the cops draw paychecks from both sides, and business continues as usual.”

“I see,” Takeri said. “Of course we have such officers in India, as well. But I do not think that Gupta stands among them.”

“Based on what?”

“His reputation. While I’ve told you his promotion came through merit, I should first have mentioned that it had been long delayed, apparently by his refusal to participate in—what is the expression? Office politics?”

Bolan felt better. “Okay, then. What did he give you?”

“Names and addresses of dealers known or thought to traffic in the sort of merchandise Naraka normally supplies. You understand that it is not all tiger pelts and ivory?”

“I got the briefing,” Bolan said. “Weird mumbo-jumbo medicine.”

“To you and I, of course,” Takeri answered. “But to millions in the East, such items are believed to be extremely potent—as their purchasers would hope to be. The so-called medicine concocted from these outlawed items has been used throughout Asia for several thousand years.”

“And no one’s noticed that it isn’t working?” Bolan asked.

“Perhaps it does work, Mr. Cooper, for selected devotees. In the Caribbean and parts of the United States, you have practitioners of voodoo, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“In Africa and parts of South America, cults practice human sacrifice this very day.”

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Bolan replied.

“Belief,” Takeri said. “It has great power, even though skeptics deny it. When your faith healers perform on television, many people laugh, dismiss it as a fraud, and change the channel, yes? But millions more believe. And who’s to say that none is truly healed?”

“All right,” Bolan said, “let’s assume that eating tiger organs makes some old man happy in the sack. I wasn’t sent to analyze folk medicine or magic. Let’s cut to the chase.”

“I am attempting to explain,” Takeri said, “that some of those with whom Naraka deals are men of faith. They’ll never give him up. I have a list of six or seven names but have not pressed them, knowing it would be a waste of time.”

“Who have you pressed?” Bolan asked.

“I made inquiries with two dealers in Calcutta whom Captain Gupta identified as covert traffickers in tiger pelts and ivory. Posing as a potential buyer, I approached them and was courteously told that while such items sometimes come on offer from the hinterlands, it is illegal to purchase or sell them. The problem, I suspect, lies in the fact that I am native to the area, while nearly all the traffic in such items flows to foreign dealers.”

“So, you struck out with the vendors,” Bolan said.

“Correct.”

“And underneath that courtesy, did either one of them smell like a murderer?”

“In my assessment, no.”

“We’re getting nowhere,” Bolan said.

“I must confess some disappointment in my progress, to that point,” Takeri admitted. “But I did not grow discouraged. If the dealers would not speak to me, I thought, perhaps I could get through to someone else.”

“Such as?”

“Illicit trade of any kind requires protection. Captain Gupta let me have another name.”

“I’m listening,” the Executioner replied.

Takeri studied the American, impressed by his intensity, his bearing and the way he had performed during their skirmish with the assassins on the street. The man who called himself Matt Cooper seemed a worthy ally, and the CIA was paying for Takeri’s services—but it was still a risky business, as had recently been demonstrated by the rude attempt upon his life.

“Girish Vyasa,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation. “He is a customs agent. As you know, cooperation from the Customs Service is essential to the foreign trade in contraband.”

“Of course,” Bolan agreed.

“Girish Vyasa is a man of certain appetites, the cost of which exceed his salary. Perhaps they also make him vulnerable to extortion. Who can say? In any case, Naraka pays him handsomely for letting certain shipments pass without detailed inspection. Others may be paying him, as well.”

“Why is Vyasa still in business if your Captain Gupta knows all this?” Bolan asked.

“It seems that Vyasa in turn is protected by men of influence in Calcutta and New Delhi. Corruption spreads. No government is perfectly immune.”

Nodding, Bolan replied, “I take it you inquired about Vyasa in more detail?”

“Certainly. And therein lies my fault, presumably. He is, as I’ve explained, protected—both officially and unofficially.”

“Someone got wise and put the hunters on your trail.”

“I must assume that is the case,” Takeri said. “If any negligence of mine has jeopardized your mission, I must now apologize.”

“We couldn’t count on cover all the way,” Bolan replied. “I would’ve liked a better lead, but we can work with this.”

Takeri frowned. “But if the hunters, as you put it, are aware of our intentions—”

“Scratch that,” Bolan interrupted. “We’ll assume they’re onto you for asking questions, but they won’t know why, or who you’re working for. They don’t know me at all, beyond a glimpse tonight, and there’s no way they have a handle on my plans.”

“Because?”

“I haven’t made plans, yet.”

Takeri’s frown deepened. “I draw no reassurance from that statement, Mr. Cooper.”

Bolan shrugged. “Don’t sweat it. Coming in, I had no fix on the best way to reach Naraka. Now I’m warming up to it.”

“You have a plan, in fact?”

“It’s coming to me. First, I need to have a word with this Vyasa character.”

“I say again, he is protected.”

“Not from me.”

The cutting edge of Bolan’s tone sent an unexpected chill rippling along Takeri’s spine.

“You would approach him directly?”

“That’s right.”

“And if he’s being watched? Guarded?”

“We’ll have to take that chance.”

Takeri’s frown deepened. “When you say ‘we’—”

“You’ll need to show me where Vyasa lives and point him out. Aside from that, I’ll need details of what your Captain Gupta has on him, what links him to Naraka. Dates, facts, figures. Anything at all to crack him open, make him feel cooperative.”

“I see.” From where Takeri sat, it was a grim vision indeed. “But once again I ask, if he is guarded?”

“We’ll see how it goes,” Bolan replied. “You did okay tonight against those cutters.”

“Still, if you had not arrived just when you did, the outcome may have been a disappointment.”

“We’ll avoid that in the future if we can.”

“If I am permitted to inquire, what are you, Mr. Cooper? Surely not an analyst.”

“I wouldn’t say that. No.”

“What, then?”

“A trouble-shooter,” the American replied. “We’ll let it go at that, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

“About those details on Vyasa—”

“Captain Gupta did not favor me with all specifics of the case, you understand.”

“Just give me what you have.”

“On several occasions—five or six, I think he said—Vyasa has been seen with export dealers linked to the Naraka group. In normal circumstances, these are men Vyasa should have been investigating, possibly arresting, but he seemed to be on cordial terms with all of them. At two meetings, police observed the passage of an envelope into Vyasa’s hands.”

“Containing money?” Bolan asked.

Takeri shrugged. “Sadly, they did not stop him to inquire. There is a mystery of sorts in that respect. His bank accounts—those known to the authorities, at least—show no unusual or unexplained deposits, yet Vyasa lives beyond his means.”

“So, he’s been hiding cash somewhere.”

“Presumably.”

“Maybe we’ll shake some of it loose from him and use it on the next phase of our journey.”

“Which would be?”

“I thought you understood. I’m here to find Naraka.”

“But he almost never leaves the Sundarbans.”

“I guess that’s where we’ll find him, then,” Bolan stated.

Again, the deadly we, Takeri thought. “I should advise you, Mr. Cooper, that my personal experience in fieldwork of this sort is…limited.”

“You spent time in the military, I believe?”

Takeri masked his first rush of surprise. “That’s true.”

“And you’re my guide for the duration, yes?”

“Correct.” Takeri felt the noose settle around his neck.

“No problem, then.”

No problem. The phrase was said as if the words would not only allay Takeri’s fear but turn him into something he was not. A hunting guide, perhaps. A jungle warrior. True, he had been trained for living off the land and fighting in the wilderness, but all of that seemed long ago and far away.

“I will endeavor not to fail you, Mr. Cooper,” he replied.

“It’s Matt. And failure’s not an option.”

“This is all to do with the Americans, I take it? Those Naraka kidnapped?”

“Those he killed. That’s right.”

“If he had not involved your people—”

“Then I likely wouldn’t be here. But he did, I am and we’re together in this thing for better or worse, if you think you can handle it.”

Takeri knew he should resist the challenge, not rise to the bait, but at the moment it seemed irresistible. “I can. I will.”

“Good man. Now, what say you go on and bring me up to speed about Vyasa. I’d like to drop in for a visit tonight, and before we do that I need chapter and verse.”

Takeri had a sense that everything was happening too rapidly, that he was being swept away, but what choice did he have? His working contract with the CIA demanded full cooperation, and he’d gone so far already in the matter that his life was placed in jeopardy. Those who had tried to kill him would already have his home staked out. At least, with the American, he had a better fighting chance.

But the Sundarbans!

“All right,” Takeri said at last.

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