Blood Tide

The pirates were not acting like pirates. They weren’t cutting their losses and running. They were coming on like feudal Japanese samurai bent on death before dishonor. In the light of the flare, Bolan could make out the fins of sharks churning the dark waters of the lagoon as they feasted upon the dozens of fallen.

Mei knelt before the hatch, half-gagging from the gas as she rammed a fresh magazine into her carbine with streaming, swollen eyes. She held her trigger on full-auto as she swept the pirates off the port side of the deck. Clellande’s weapon snarled in continuous fire as he put thirty rounds into a canoe full of steel-wielding cutthroats.

A pirate erupted out of the water at the bow and heaved himself up into the forward pulpit. Metal flashed and red fiber fluttered from the end as he threw a piece of glittering steel. Bolan and Clelland swung around, their weapons hammering the pirate in ruptured ruins to the black water below.

Bolan dropped to one knee. He struggled to bark out an order through the gas sizzling in his chest. “Hold your fire!”

Mei and Clellande knelt with their weapons ready.

“Scott! Anything off the bow?”

The man hacked and coughed. “Nothing moving! All targets down!”

“Marcie! Port?”

“No…hostiles all down,” she replied, struggling for air.

Bolan scanned to starboard and astern. Nothing moved. He rose to take in the bigger picture as the second flare drifted low toward the water. The wind was dispersing the gas. The yacht was littered with bodies from stem to stern. Head shots at point-blank range were not pretty business. Neither was buckshot raking canoes out of 40 mm tubes. The canoes drifted dead in the water. None of the occupants moved.

Bolan reloaded his pistols. “Marcie, secure the prisoner and get him below before he chokes to death. Scott, let’s clean up the deck and call for extraction. We keep two bodies for forensics, the rest go over the side.”

“Affirmative, Striker, I…” the big man stumbled slightly.

Bolan moved toward the bow. “Scott?”

“Nothing, just a scratch.” Clellande plucked a tuft of red fiber at the collar of his armored vest. “What the hell?”

Clellande went rigid as blood geysered between his fingers. “Jesus!”

Bolan lunged. “Leave it in!”

Clellande was already going into shock, and his first instinct was to get the intruding metal out of his neck. The shard fell to the deck with a clatter as Clellande fell facefirst onto the roof of the cabin.

“I need immediate medevac!” Bolan roared into his radio. “The big man is down!”

“Affirmative, Striker!” Price came back. “Choppers inbound.”

Boland rolled Clellande over. Blood was pouring out of him like a river that had jumped its banks. The soldier applied pressure to the wound. He grimaced as his fingers sank through the gruesome, multiple channels the blade had dug into him. “Marcie! Field dressing!”

“Scott!” Mei raced to help.

Bolan grimly applied pressure while she ripped open a field dressing. Bolan pressed the dressing into the wound, and it instantly bled through. He pressed down as Mei ripped open another. The dressing bled through again. “Give me another!”

“Scott!” Mei screamed as she ripped open another dressing. “Scott!”

Bolan sat back on his heels. Escotto Clellande was gone.

The Executioner stared at the deadly gleaming weapon on the deck. It was a strangely shaped piece of razor-sharp steel. It resembled a hawthorn leaf save that it was six inches long, slitted and had a tail of red fiber to stabilize it in flight.

It was about the ugliest implement the Executioner had ever seen.

He pressed his thumb into his throat mike. “Control, be advised the big man is KIA. Tell command we have a prisoner.” He shook his head bitterly. “We are ready for extraction.”

2

Manila Station, Philippines

Aaron Kurtzman’s face stared unhappily at Bolan from the computer monitor connected to the satellite link. He forced a smile. “You did real good, Striker. In the two months we figure these guys have been operating, no one who’s laid eyes on them has lived to tell about it. You took out a platoon of them and brought in a boatload of useful evidence.”

Bolan frowned. A good man had gone down. “Yeah.”

“You took a prisoner,” Kurtzman said. “That’s the biggest break we’ve had since the Farm got involved in this.”

Bolan considered the fight on the yacht and his young opponent. “I need more wattage.”

“What?”

“I juiced that kid for two and a half seconds before he ripped out the probes, Bear.” Bolan glanced at the weapon system on the table. “And that was after at least a full fifteen seconds of exposure to military strength CS.”

Kurtzman blinked. “Really?”

“I had to brain him like an ox to bring him down.” Bolan shrugged at the X26 slaved to the side of his carbine. “I need more wattage.”

“I find that hard to believe, Striker. The X26 is the latest in EMD technology. With the old M26, each of its eighteen pulses per second had to break through the resistance of the subject’s clothing and skin. Every jolt had to push its way in.” Kurtzman warmed up as the talk turned technical. “Now, the X26? It’s a brilliant piece of engineering. Rather than every pulse having to batter its way into the subject, it uses part of its charge to maintain the electrical opening. Holding the door open, so to speak. That lets nearly every single one of its pulses hit at full strength. It’s been tested on SWAT officers, Special Forces operators and trained martial artists. They all go down. You sure you had a good connection?”

“The kid was sixteen, half-naked, took both probes in the chest and he was still salty,” Bolan replied.

“Well, blood tests on the prisoner tested positive for some very powerful hashish, but even if he was high on PCP, the—”

“He was high on God, Bear.”

Kurtzman’s brow furrowed thoughtfully.

“Take two professional wrestlers,” Bolan suggested. “Lock them in a cell, and toss in the key. One’s high on drugs. One’s high on God. You tell me. Who’s walking out?”

Kurtzman answered immediately. The team from Stony Man Farm had dealt with fanatics before. “I’m betting on the guy with God on his side.”

“Right.” Bolan looked at Kurtzman pointedly. “And punky and his pals were high on both.”

Kurtzman conceded with a sigh. “I’ll tell the Cowboy you want more wattage.”

“Thank you.” Bolan considered his young opponent. “What information do we have on the prisoner?”

“We caught some luck there. Most of the bodies were unidentifiable, but your POW’s fingerprints were on file with the Philippine National Police. The young man’s name is Ali Mohammed Apilado, formerly Arturo Florio Apilado.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow. “He converted?”

“That’s right. Arturo was born on the southern island of Mindanao, but his parents were Christians. They were migrant field workers who moved to the city to get factory work in the textile mills. From the ages of twelve to fifteen, Arturo was involved in petty crime on the street. He was arrested for theft and assault and spent a year in jail. While he was inside, he converted to Islam and changed his name. When he was released, he disappeared without a trace. No one had seen him until he turned up on your yacht last night collecting for the Red Cross.”