Blood Tide

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.”

“Interesting.”

Kurtzman snorted. “How so?”

An idea began forming in Bolan’s mind. Religious fanatics born and raised were bad enough. Converted fanatics were worse. The born again of all religions hurled themselves into their new purpose with utter devotion, whatever that purpose might be.

Including slaughtering innocents with suicidal abandon.

Bolan nodded as his thoughts continued. The flip side of that coin was that the converted, unlike those raised in their religions, were often just as susceptible to deprogramming.

The Bear watched the wheels turn behind Bolan’s eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“Where’s Arturo now?”

“Philippine Military Intelligence has him about two blocks from your position. They play rough, Striker. I don’t envy him. I suspect the beatings started this morning and haven’t stopped.”

“The kid’s tough.”

Kurtzman’s eyes narrowed. “Somehow I see the good cop-bad cop routine shaping up nicely.”

“Yeah, but I’m still a blue-eyed devil, and I need more than a successful interrogation.”

“What are you saying, Striker?”

“I’m saying someone needs to have a ‘Come to Jesus’ with that boy.”

Kurtzman snorted. “You mean a ‘Come to Mohammed,’ but I can have the CIA fly in a psychological warfare team from Langley and—”

Bolan cut in. “Send me Pol.”

Orani

THE SUN WAS SETTING behind Bolan and Marcie Mei. The restaurant was made up of four bamboo poles with a thatched roof. The kitchen consisted of three converted fuel drums that were sending barbecue smoke to the sky. The dining area was the beach. The couple sat outside at a table with the tide lapping at their bare feet and the legs of their table and chairs. They drank beer and ate spareribs smothered in ginger-plum sauce as the lights of Manila began winking on like stars across Manila Bay.

Bolan took a long pull on his San Miguel. Marcie gnawed on the bones of her meal as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. Her irrepressible smile flashed around the rib. “High metabolism.”

Bolan smiled. Marcie’s tiny frame was clad in a sarong and a bikini top. Plum sauce smeared her chin. She looked good enough to eat, bones and all.

Mei read Bolan’s look and her smile threatened to reach her ears.

Bolan took another swig, acknowledging that the chemistry was occurring, but kept his mind on business. “What have you found out on your end?”

For once, Mei actually stopped smiling. “Nothing good. You noticed that when those guys thought they had us with our pants down they laid their guns aside and went with the cleavers?”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

Mei wiped her hands and stared at them reflectively. “I’m Catholic, myself, but I’ve had to impersonate a Muslim many times in the field. I’ve read the Koran. I know it pretty well.”

“And?”

“The Prophet Mohammed makes many exhortations to his followers. One goes, ‘Oh, True Believers, wage war against such of the infidels as are near you.’”

Bolan nodded. “I’ve heard it.”

“I’m sure, but that one was heard a lot in the preceding centuries here in the Philippines. Usually right alongside this one. ‘When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them.’”

Bolan sighed. It sounded a lot like what was happening in the Asian shipping lanes, and he’d been thinking along the same lines, himself. “You’re talking about the juramentado.”

Mei nodded.

Bolan had done some research of his own. By some accounts ‘running juramentado’ had begun on the Philippine Island of Jolo during Spanish occupation in the 1800s. It was a religious rite among the Philippine Muslims, bound with the act of waging jihad, or Holy War, against the Christian invaders. Young Moro men would seek permission from the Sultan to run juramentado and swear oaths upon the Koran. They would then whip themselves into religious frenzy and attack Christians, singly or in groups, with bladed weapons. They fought with absolute disregard for death, killing until they, themselves, were killed. They believed with total conviction that their bravery and sacrifice would win them great renown and reward in the afterlife, with the added benefit that every Christian they killed followed them to Paradise as their personal slave.

The Moros had used the act of running juramentado against the Spanish colonizers, the American occupiers and the Japanese invaders throughout the region.

“You think these guys fit the bill?” Bolan asked.

“If they weren’t running juramentado, they were sure as hell running a damn close copy. The white turbans are a historical match, and they’d all shaved their bodies and cut their hair short. That was supposed to make them appear more pleasing to God.” Mei held up a file. “What’s most interesting was the physical prep work.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was hard to notice while we were fighting and breathing our own CS, but each of the pirates was wearing a tight waist-supporting band, like a weightlifter’s belt, and had woven hemp cords tied around their elbows and knees. The CIA forensics team believes the waistband would obviously help someone who’d been wounded in the torso to keep fighting. The arm and leg bindings they’re not so sure about, call it acupressure or something. Every one of them had also tightly bound their genitals with cords. That raised some eyebrows, but you and I saw the effect the other night. If we didn’t blow out their hearts or blow off their heads, those guys kept coming. You add hash and fanatical conviction…” Mei trailed off grimly.

“Any other religious corroboration?”

“They were all wearing religious charms that supposedly ward off the blows of the enemy.”

Bolan leaned back in his chair and let the water trickle around his feet. “So they’re textbook juramentado.”

“Well, technically speaking, you run juramentado, it’s an activity, not a person. In the Moro dialect, what they actually call themselves is mag-sabils.”

Bolan almost didn’t want to know. “Which means?”

“Those Who Endure the Pangs of Death.”

“Swell.” Bolan finished his beer. “I can buy a revivalist juramentado movement here in the Sulu Archipelago. It’s where the pastime was founded, but we’ve had similar attacks from New Guinea to the west coast of Thailand.”

“That is disturbing,” Mei agreed.

“What about your contacts in Philippine Intelligence?”

“They haven’t found much. Whatever this movement is, it’s highly secretive. It’s hard to get operatives into the Muslim movements. Trust me, I’ve done it, and it isn’t easy. Most of the power and wealth in the Philippines is concentrated in the hands of the Catholic majority in the big cities of the north. The Muslims tend to be rural, and most live in the southern islands.

Philippine Military Intelligence was built on the U.S. model, but the Philippine military was still based on patronage and loyalty to individual generals, and most of its assets were in the north. The military was clannish, and interservice cooperation was dismal, at best. For the most part, intelligence gathering consisted almost entirely of bribing informants or sending special operations commandos to shoot up suspicious villages and torture suspects. Neither tactic was ideal against fanatic terror cells.

Bolan stared out across the bay. “I need to get inside.”

Mei rested her chin in her hands. “That, Blue-eyes, is something I’d like to see.”

Bolan had to admit to himself it would be a challenge. “So we have nothing else on this end?”

“Like I said, Philippine Intelligence thinks there might be a movement in the southern islands, but there are always movements in the southern islands. That’s were al Qaeda, the separatists, and every other violent group in the Philippines does their recruiting.”

“Someone has to know something.”

Mei gazed out over the water reluctantly.

Bolan read her look. “You have an idea.”

“I know a guy who makes it his business to know things. He owes me a favor.” She frowned. “But this may be stretching the mark to the breaking point.”

“Maybe we should go have a talk with this guy.”

“This guy’s a real wild card.” Mei’s frown deepened. “I don’t know if you want to get in bed with him.”

Bolan shrugged. “I usually don’t get in bed with anyone on the first date.”

Mei burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

Mei waggled her eyebrows. “You’ll know when you meet him.”

“I don’t get it.” Bolan finished his beer. “And I’m not sure I want to.”

3

Macao

Bolan stepped off the hydrofoil that had taken them from Hong Kong to the estuary of the Pearl River and onto the waterfront. At first glance, Macao looked like every other economically emerging city in Asia. Construction was everywhere. High-rise apartments and office buildings relentlessly clawed their way into the skyline. The streets were jammed with traffic, and hellish pollution surrounded them in the three dimensions of the air, the water and the streets. Casinos jammed the waterfront, and tourists crowded the casinos to overflowing.

Rickshaw men pounced on disembarkees from the hydrofoil, each working for a casino and affiliated hotel. Marcie Mei ignored them as she curled her thumb and forefinger against her teeth and let out a whistle that could have hailed a cab all the way from Manhattan.

A small man with massive calves and the shoulders of an ox looked up from his lunch. He took up the yoke of his rickshaw and trotted over to the pier. He and Mei spoke in rapid-fire Cantonese for a moment, and the woman gestured at Bolan. “Du, this is Cooper. Cooper, this is Du. There’s hardly anything I don’t owe Du, including my life.”

Du grinned up at Bolan through gold teeth and stuck out a callused hand that seemed too big for his body. His English had strange inflections. He spoke his English more like a Brazilian than Chinese. “How you doin’, hot rod?”

Bolan shook Du’s hand. The rickshaw man squeezed, testing Bolan’s strength. The calluses spread across his knuckles as well as his palms. Bolan suspected he hadn’t developed them from pulling carts. The Executioner smiled and squeezed back. “Nice to meet you, Du.”

Du grinned. He and Bolan silently agreed not crush each other’s hands and relaxed their grips. Du grabbed what little baggage there was and threw it in back as Bolan and Mei climbed aboard. He took up the yoke and swiftly pulled his passengers away from the waterfront and into the sprawl. He chattered back over his shoulder, pointing out the sights.

He jerked his head off toward a tower of glass. “The Hilton?”

Mei sank back against Bolan. “Head for Rua da Felicidade.”

Bolan perked an eyebrow. “The Street of Happiness?”

Mei nodded.

“Awww…man!” Du shook his head as he trotted past cars, bikes and scooters, and swerved around an ox. “Tell me you’re not going to Ming’s.”

“Directly,” Mei confirmed. “We’re expected.”

Du hunched his shoulders fatalistically and turned away from the glass and light of the downtown sprawl.

Macao was unique among Chinese cities in that it had once been a Portuguese possession. Once they pulled onto the Rua da Felicidade, they might as well have been in prewar China. Mediterranean architecture abutted ancient style Chinese houses and shops. The Rua da Felicidade had once been Macao’s red light district. Now the street was lined with shops and street vendors and food stalls. The bright colors of silk were everywhere as were the smells of spices and roasting meat. For all of China’s gustatory glory as one of the world’s great cuisines, the art of barbecue was almost unknown there. Except in Macao. The Portuguese had brought their grills with them, and to this very day smoke filled the air. They passed a bamboo cage filled with a half dozen small, tapir-like animals. A metal trough lined with live coals and multiple spits glowed red hot and ready next to them. Bolan suspected few of the beasts would survive the lunch-time rush.

Bolan crooked two fingers and thrust out a note as the rickshaw passed a stall. Marcie’s eyebrows shot in surprised approval as Bolan took two sheets of au jok khon wrapped in paper. The barbecued strips were a sweet, salty, cholesterol blowing form of pork-jerky sheathed in crispy fat.

Du pulled past the shops and took them deeper into the maze.

Bolan thought about their contact. He had consulted Kurtzman via satellite and was surprised Kurtzman had come up goose eggs. Neither the Farm, US, nor British Intelligence had anything on the man. He was an enigma.

Ming Jinrong was a part of the Chinese underworld.

Mei had been very closemouthed about the man. He was a valuable resource, and she was taking pains to protect him.

Bolan decided to try again. “What can you tell me about Jinrong?”

“I’ve had some dealings with him. He was Red League in Shanghai, but his…proclivities kept getting him in trouble, and he had to flee. He’s been in Macao for twenty years,” she said.

Bolan considered the tidbit of information. He had fought the Chinese triads before. The Red League was a secret society that had begun as a patriotic anti-Manchu organization of martial artists and merchants dedicated to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty centuries ago. Like most of the other secret societies in China, as the ages passed, they had become runners of opium, heroin and prostitutes. They had taken their place as the heads of Chinese gambling, extortion, assassination and political manipulation.

The Communist revolution had only driven them further underground and made their business dealings even more Byzantine.

“So what does he do now?”

“He’s kind of on the outs, but one of his strengths is that he’s unconventional. Since he got pushed out of normal Chinese crime, he’s specialized in peddling information. He’s also interested in high tech. At this point, I believe the old men of the Red League council consider him a useful embarrassment.”

“What does that mean?”

Mei locked eyes with Bolan. “It means he’s not what you’re expecting to meet, and when you meet him you be respectful.”

“I’m always respectful.” Bolan shrugged. “Until it’s time not to be.”

“Yeah, you just let me do the talking, and if you have to say something, mention the Eight Trigrams Double Broadsword.”

Bolan nodded. “Got it.”

Du pulled them down one side street and then another, each more narrow than the last, until he brought them to a halt before the wooden gate of a Portuguese villa that looked at least three hundred years old. The tile and stucco were faded and cracked, but the stonework was still incredible. It was a picture of lost colonial glory. Men with rifles peered down from the ornamental minarets at the wall corners.

Du set down his yoke and rapped the brass, lion-head knocker on the gate.

A pair of men with AK-47s opened the gate and let them in. Bolan, Mei and Du walked into the courtyard. A Spanish-style fountain with a potted flowering lemon tree in its middle dominated the tiled courtyard. Peacocks strutted freely, pecking among the rose beds.

Bolan locked eyes with their hosts.

The man was huge. He sat artfully draped across a cerulean chair, enthroned beneath a pink silk awning. Ming Jinrong looked like a six-foot-six, 270-pound Chinese version of Oscar Wilde. Right down to the wine-colored crushed velvet suit and the lily he held across his breast. A jaw like a steam shovel and a massive brow belied his soft eyes, cheeks and lips. His hair fell away from his face in languorous black curls.

Ming Jinrong danced the razor’s edge between effeminate and Frankensteinian.

“Marcie.” A half smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he spoke in an Oxford-accented baritone. “Such a pleasure to see you once again, and you have brought me an American.” He looked Bolan up and down through thick lashes and met the Executioner’s gaze without blinking. “And such blue eyes…”

He raised an eyebrow at the third member of their party. “Oh, and I see you’ve brought little Du.”

Du’s knuckles creaked into fists.

“Tell me.” Ming cocked his leonine head at Mei. “Did you ever become proficient with the Southern Butterfly knives I gave you?”

“I’m sorry, Ming. The weapons you gave me hang in a place of honor in my home.” Mei grinned impishly. “But I’m an island girl, and the kris is my life.”

“Ah…the Serpent Waving Blade.” Jinrong gazed off into the distance for a moment. “Well, then, how may I assist you? You know I can deny you nothing.”

“I ask only for your expertise.” Mei held the leaf-shaped throwing weapon that had ended Scott Clellande’s life. The muzzles of automatic rifles along the walls raised slightly as the woman stepped forward with the blade.

Ming raised his eyes heavenward as if in infinite weariness at his guards. “Oh, please.”

The weapons lowered as Mei set the blade on the low table before the gangster. “What do you make of it?”

Jinrong took up the red-tasseled weapon between immaculately manicured fingers and pursed his lips at it. “Why, it’s a piau.” His eyes widened slightly as he examined the slitted blade. “Piau is a loose term for a family of throwing weapons.” He set the weapon back down on the table. “But this piau is not Chinese.”

“Can you identify it?” Mei asked.

“Where did you find it?” Ming countered.

Bolan stepped forward. “In the throat of a friend.”

“Ah.” Jinrong sighed and sniffed at his lily. “Well, I can tell you what I know, which is that this weapon is Javanese and very likely the weapon of a prisai sakti practitioner.”

“Javan?” Bolan and Mei exchanged glances. “Not Philippine? From a Muslim style of Arnis or Kali? Perhaps an esoteric one?”

“Oh, no, no, no. I have a similar weapon in my collection. As I mentioned, this form of piau is a specialty of the prisai sakti style of pentjak-silat. Prisai sakti means Holy Shield, and far from being a Muslim style, prisai sakti is affiliated with the Christian Javanese.”

Bolan decided to be blunt. “You’ve heard of the rash of piracy in the South Seas.”

Ming leaned back in his chair. “Yes, and such a distasteful way of doing business. It is bad for everybody.” He waved a dismissing hand. It was clear he wished to change the subject. “Gau, bring our guests tea.”

Bolan looked into Ming Jinrong’s eyes. The man was an aficionado. Some men obsessively devoted themselves to baseball, blondes or bullfighting. The gangster’s encyclopedic knowledge showed that his all-consuming passion was martial arts, and Bolan suspected it bordered on the fetishistic. “I’ve heard you are a master of the Eight Trigram Double Broadsword set.”

“A master?” Ming raised a condescending eyebrow at Bolan and then looked at Mei disappointedly for clearly having fed the American information.

Bolan smiled. He was a master of no martial art, but he knew men who were. “I have a friend who is proficient in Monkey Kung Fu.”

Ming tossed his hair distractedly. “What form?”

“Lost Monkey.”

Ming reluctantly showed interest as Bolan continued.

“He also has some skill in the Seven Stars Mantis broadsword technique. He once told me that double broadswords are almost impossible to learn. They restrict each other’s movements and endanger the practitioner. Only a master can wield them together effectively.”

Mei stared at Bolan in shock.

Bolan kept his eyes on the man before him and knew he’d hit pay dirt. Ming Jinrong’s eyes had lit up. Gau arrived with the tea, and Ming waved it away as he spoke rapidly, this time in Mandarin. The servant scampered away as Ming rose and removed his velvet jacket. He stood slightly stooped, as if he were embarrassed by his height and size, but he straightened to his full height as Gau returned with a silken pillow upon which he bore a pair of Chinese broadswords.

Gau took a brass-inlayed wooden sheath in each hand and presented the hilts to his master. Ming drew his weapons. The wide, curved blades made a loud rasping sound as they came free. Sharpening steels had been set within the sheaths so that the blades would be honed every time they were drawn or put away.

“This—” the man smiled at Bolan as he stepped into the courtyard with a dragon inlayed blade in either hand “—would interest your friend.”

Ming stamped his foot and began striking the empty air. He held the blades parallel, so that each strike was a double attack as he cut to one side, twisted and cut again. The blades hissed through the air as his double cuts grew wider and he began slicing vertically and on the diagonal. His feet walked an octagon pattern of deep stances and quick leaps. Sweat began to sheen his face as he forced the heavy weapons to his will. With a shout the parallel blades began pinwheeling in the mobster’s hands.

Bolan’s eyes narrowed with appreciation. He was watching a master.

The blades blurred around Ming’s body like counterrotating propellers and smeared into bright flashes. How he did it without clanging the blades or cutting himself was a mystery to Bolan. He whipped the blades so fast they made a noise like tearing cloth as they sliced the air. The grace, speed and control was astounding. The light gleaming in Ming’s unblinking eyes revealed that his consummate skill was wedded with homicidal impulse.