False Front

“Charlie, you got the keys to the Cherokee?”

He felt the Texan move in to his side. A second later Latham’s hand dropped the keys into the breast pocket of the black-and-white checkered shirt.

“A wise businessman once told me that the best deals are the ones where both parties walk away happy,” the Executioner said, still holding the .44 between the gang leader’s eyebrows. “So. Are you happy?”

The man in the checkered shirt nodded slowly. The barrel of the Desert Eagle moved up to the man’s hairline, down to the bridge of his nose, then up again.

“Good,” Bolan said. “I’m happy, too.” Quickly he stepped away from the leader and turned to the rest of the young men, waving them toward the wall as he and Latham backed out of the alley.

After transferring their possessions from the Cherokee, they were driving away from downtown Zamboanga with Bolan behind the wheel of the Buick Century Custom.

THE NIGHT HAD DARKENED even more by the time they returned to spot where they’d been attacked on the road. The Chevy and Ford still stood where they’d been left, the dead drivers appearing to be engaged in an across-the-road conversation. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds and Bolan drove on headlights alone.

Bolan let up on the accelerator, slowing the Buick as they entered the outskirts of Rio Hondo. Latham sat silently next to him as they drove past a long row of stilt houses built out from the shore over the water. According to intel, there were forty-six of the dwellings crammed so close together that they almost appeared to be one long structure. Candido Subing’s uncle—Mario Subing—lived in one of the rickety shanties near the center. While neither Stony Man Farm nor the CIA believed Mario was directly involved with the Tigers himself, the old man was perfectly willing to harbor his nephew. His was the twenty-first stilt house from the edge of town. Bolan counted the dilapidated dwellings as they passed.

Uncle Mario’s place looked no different than any of the other raised dwellings as it blurred into the rest of the long row in the Buick’s rearview mirror. The Executioner knew he’d have to count again when he returned later that night.

The rumor of the “big-time strike” in the U.S. floated through Bolan’s mind again. And again, he couldn’t see how such a small organization could pull off such an expensive enterprise. If there was such an operation in motion, the Tigers had to be linked up with some other group.

A half dozen elderly men in front of what appeared to be a café were the only ones who seemed to take notice of the Buick as they drove through the village. Bolan kept his eyes on the mosque to his left, finally turning off the asphalt highway and cutting back inland on a gravel road. Mentally he mapped the layout of the village for future reference, noting that behind the houses across the road from the stilt dwellings lay jungle and the most direct foot path between the mosque and Mario Subing’s place would be to cut through the thick leaves and vines. The jungle would also provide even better cover than the darkness for much of their approach. There might even be a spot inside the trees where they could set up surveillance.

The Executioner passed a small brown man and woman holding hands as they walked away from the mosque. They stared at the Buick, an unfamiliar car in the small settlement. That was the primary drawback to his plan—the car. Even if the Rio Hondans didn’t look inside the Buick and see the light-skinned men they were bound to take notice of any unknown vehicles that entered the village. The best plan was to find a parking place as close to the jungle as possible, then get out of the car and into the trees before they were spotted.

The Buick crunched over the gravel toward the towering sphere atop the mosque. If they were spotted, they’d do their best to pass themselves off as lost tourists. But that story was so thin it could have been anorexic. Latham had informed him that all of the tourist manuals and western government travel advisories discouraged visitors from visiting Rio Hondo during the day and just flat-out told them they’d be out of their minds to be in such an area after the sun went down. There was just too much crime. Visitors were encouraged to stick close to their lodgings from dusk until dawn.

Charlie Latham had to be thinking along the same lines because as the Executioner drove on he pulled the straw cowboy hat from his head and dropped it on the floor at his feet. Not knowing whether the mosque would be open when they arrived, they had nevertheless been aware of the fact that wearing shorts in the area would definitely be frowned on by Islamic leaders. So they had stopped along the road soon after acquiring the Buick and Latham now wore a faded pair of denim jeans he’d pulled out of the rear of the Cherokee. A well-worn pair of Nike running shoes had replaced his flipping and flopping sandals.

The gravel road led into a parking lot where several other vehicles already stood. Lights could be seen through the mosque windows. Bolan pulled the Buick quickly between two other cars, hoping they might serve as at least partial camouflage. Word that an unknown car was in Rio Hondo would travel fast enough. He didn’t see any sense in hurrying it up any faster than he had to.

The Executioner cut the engine and killed the headlights. He estimated them to be roughly half a mile from the stilt houses.

Through an open door leading into the mosque Bolan could see several men kneeling in prayer. As he and Latham quietly exited the car, he saw the men rise to their feet and begin talking with one another. That meant that they’d be leaving in a few more minutes, returning to the parking lot to get into their vehicles and go home for the night.

Which, in turn, meant Bolan and Latham needed to hit the jungle even faster than he’d thought.

Bolan opened the car door and closed it quietly behind him, Latham doing the same on his side. Crouching slightly, the two men jogged away from the mosque. The Executioner’s eyes swept left and right, but he saw no one looking back at him. As soon as they reached the trees they ducked inside, then turned to peer back out through the foliage.

The men who had been at their prayers were now leaving. Some of them took off on foot, others walked toward the parking lot. Two of the men stopped at the Buick, looking it up and down. Thought he was too far away to hear their words, the Executioner saw their lips moving and their arms waving up and down in animated conversation. He knew the news was about to spread throughout the village; how fast it went from house to house depended upon just how unique the sight of an unknown vehicle happened to be. But there was no reason to worry about that now. He would deal with whatever consequences the Buick brought when, and if, he encountered them.

Bolan motioned to Latham to follow, then took off through the jungle. The Texan had kept two rusty-but-shaving-sharp machetes in the Cherokee, which they now used to cut their way through the heavy growth toward the sea. Fifteen yards into the trees, they suddenly found themselves intersecting with a well-traveled footpath and halted in their tracks.

For a moment the Executioner considered taking the path, for it no doubt led in the direction he was headed. But the fact that it was obviously often used warned him away. He didn’t want to encounter any innocent Rio Hondans who might, regardless of their good intentions, tell the rest of the town that there were Yankees hiding in the leaves and vines.

Backing up, Bolan and Latham continued to cut their own route toward the highway.

The moon was still hidden in the sky when they finally reached the houses across the road from the stilt shacks. Peering through the leaves, Bolan could see the backsides of the crudely built sheds, chicken coops and shabby homes. Dropping their machetes, they darted from the jungle into the darkness, crouching as they made their way from building to building, stopping to check for curious eyes each time they reached new concealment.

It took twenty minutes to reach the rear of a splintering outdoor toilet the Executioner estimated to be halfway down the row of stilt houses across the road. Peering around the edge of the foul-smelling outhouse, he stared between two houses in front of him. The clouds had moved and by the dim light of a quarter moon he could just make out the shadowy stilt structures on the other side of the highway.

The Executioner stared at the ramshackle structures. He had decided that the best course of action was to wait on Subing, then tail him back to the hostages when he left his uncle’s house. Of course there was no guarantee the terrorist leader would even show up this night and there was every chance in the world that as daybreak neared he and Latham would have to sneak back to their vehicle and find a place to hide out until tomorrow night. If that happened, he would give the plan one more night. And if Subing still failed to appear, he would interrogate the man’s uncle.

It wasn’t an idea the Executioner relished, Mario Subing was reported to be an old man. But when he weighed one man against the lives of the hostages and all of the other innocents the Liberty Tigers would kill if allowed to go unchecked, a little fright put into the heart of an octogenarian didn’t seem all that cruel.

Turning to Latham, he kept his voice low. “Stay here. There’s no sense in both of us going.”

“I don’t mind—”

The Executioner shook his head. “I know you don’t mind going. There’s just no sense in both of us taking the chance of being seen. Two men hiding in the dark are twice as likely to be spotted as one.”

Latham obviously didn’t like the idea of staying back, but he was smart enough to see the logic behind the Executioner’s order. He nodded in the darkness.

Bolan stole forward again, keeping low and thankful that they’d encountered none of the stray dogs he’d seen earlier. Barks and a few growls had sounded in the distance as they’d moved through the jungle but they had been the common sounds all dogs made at night, not the warning alerts wild canines sent their prey when they were on the hunt.

Reaching the side of the residence directly in front of the outhouse, the Executioner slid his back along the wall toward a window. Dim light flickered from the screenless, shutterless opening and when he reached it he dropped to his knees. Risking a quick glance over the windowsill, his eyes took in the candle flame dancing on the wooden table inside. Mosquito nets hung over moldy bare mattresses on the packed-earth floor. Six small children huddled in sleep on one of the threadbare beds. A man and a woman, looking far older than they could have possibly been if these children had come from their loins, sat listlessly at the table, staring silently off into space.

Bolan rose to his feet as soon as he’d passed the window and crept to the front corner of the house. Now the shoreline was more visible, and he saw that he was far past the center of the stilt village. Light—open candles and a few lanterns—glowed from some of the structures, glimmering off the water below. Others stilt houses stood in darkness, looking as dead as the faces of the man and woman the Executioner had just seen through the window.

Bolan started at the end and counted to twenty-one. A lantern hung from the porch of Mario Subing’s house and through the window behind it he could see what looked like the silhouette of a man.

Turning back to where he’d left Latham, the Executioner ducked past the window and hurried back to the outhouse. Silently he pointed in the direction from which he’d just come, waited until he saw Latham’s nod of acknowledgment, then crept back along the houses. A few seconds later he dropped to one knee again and looked out between the houses. Across the asphalt road he saw the same lantern. And the same silhouette still sat in the shadows at the window. But now Subing was looking outward into the darkness.

Waiting for his nephew? Maybe.

The Executioner turned back to Latham. “I’m going closer again,” he whispered. “There may be another way into the house we can’t see. Subing could slip in and out of the house and we’d never know.”

Latham shrugged. “And I suppose you want me to stay here again,” he said in a voice that made it clear he would prefer moving up with the Executioner.

“Right,” the Executioner whispered. “Cover our rear and flanks.” Without another word he turned away from the Texan and crept forward.

Another house; another side window in the same place. But this window was dark. The Executioner dropped to all fours anyway, staying below the line of sight in case anyone inside might still be awake and watching. But the deep snores that drifted through the opening told him that wasn’t the case. Passing the window, he stopped just short of the front of the house and dropped to one knee. Leaning against the splintered boards at his side, he settled in to study the stilt house across the road.

Not all of Rio Hondo was asleep yet and in the shadows and flickering lights of the mounted candles and lanterns the Executioner saw men, women and children moving back and forth between the structures that stood precariously above the water.

Three doors down from Mario’s, the Executioner watched the walkway dip, bounce and creak under the weight of several children as they played back and forth along the ramps. Their area was better lit than most of the poverty-level stilt houses with both candles and lanterns hanging from wires suspended from the roofs. Laugher and an occasional scream met the Executioner’s ears.

As soon as he was certain he’d not been seen, Bolan lowered himself into a sitting position, his back against the wall of the house. The snoring, punctuated by an occasional cough, continued to float through the window, reassuring him that the occupants had no knowledge of his presence a mere five feet or so from where they slept.

As he waited, Bolan’s mind drifted back to the men who had exited the mosque and stopped to examine the Buick. Depending on exactly who they were, how they reacted and what else they might have to do tonight, they’d either pass the car off lightly or start asking questions. Worst-case scenario would be that they smelled trouble and would begin scouring the village for whoever had parked it. And in a town this small—even in the dark—it wouldn’t take long for them to find Bolan and Latham.

The Executioner silently prayed that wouldn’t happen. He had no desire to injure innocent men who would think they were simply protecting their town from outsiders. But there was little he could do to forestall that situation at this point. If it happened, it happened. As he had always done, he would deal with any specific trouble that came up when it came up.

THE MAN IN THE NEW custom-tailored Italian suit caught a glimpse of himself as he opened the glass door of the restaurant. The suit looked good on him, he decided. Made him look slimmer. Not that slim was anything he put much stock in. The fact was, he had grown up as a poor hungry child and slim had been unavoidable. He considered the corpulence he had achieved during the past twenty years as a sign of his success, and he never intended to be hungry again.

The maître d’ in the black tuxedo greeted him as soon as he stepped inside. “Good evening, Mr. Mikelsson,” he said with the broad grin of a man who knew he would receive a large tip before the night ended.

“Good evening to you, Hugo,” Lars Mikelsson responded, following the maître d’.

As the man held his chair out for him, Mikelsson said, “I am expecting a few calls, Hugo. Please notify me immediately.” Silently he hoped the calls would come between courses. Better yet, not until he had finished eating altogether.

“Of course, Mr. Mikelsson,” Hugo replied, then hurried away.

Mikelsson had barely sipped the beer a waiter had automatically placed in front of him before Hugo reappeared. “Sir, your call is here.”

The fat man pushed himself laboriously up from the chair and followed Hugo through the tables to a short hallway, then into an office. Behind the desk sat the restaurant owner. He rose quickly to his feet without needing to be told, exiting the office with his employee. Mikelsson smiled to himself. The restaurant owner had been provided with a free, state-of-the-art, security system. It had been his payment for allowing the fat man to take certain calls in his office. And to ask no questions about them.

A red light was blinking on the telephone on the desk. The fat man in the new suit lifted the receiver and pressed the button next to it. “Yes?” he said into the phone.

“Nothing has changed, Mr. Mikelsson,” said the voice on the other end, which he immediately recognized. “The union didn’t accept the offer.”

A slow boil of anger started in Mikelsson’s belly. More and more, it seemed these days, his legitimate business enterprises such as the automobile and aircraft industries not only bored but irritated him. His mood wasn’t helped by the fact that he was hungry. “Then let them wait,” he said in carefully controlled words. “If they don’t care to build automobiles for what I pay them, let them stay home in their pathetic little hovels. We will see who goes bankrupt first, them or me.” Without waiting for an answer he slammed down the receiver. It rang again before Mikelsson could get up from his chair.

“Hello,” Mikelsson said, sounding irritated.

“Mikelsson.”

“Candido?”

“Yes,” the voice on the other end said in Arabic.

“I assume you are in Israel, and all is well?” Mikelsson asked bluntly in the same language.

“All is well,” Candido said. “Our martyr is ready to enter the synagogue.”

Your martyr, not mine, you fool, Mikelsson thought. “Excellent. How far away are you?”

“Three blocks. You will be able to hear it,” Subing stated.

“How long will it be?”

“One, maybe two minutes at most.”

“Then I will wait,” Mikelsson said, his pulse beginning to race. “I like hearing them.” Seconds later he heard the explosion on the other end of the line.

“Did you hear it?” Subing asked excitedly.

“Yes.”

“I will call you as soon as I return, so you will know where I am.” Subing paused and the excitement returned to his voice. “In case everything is in place in America.”

“I have told you,” Mikelsson said, “the project in the United States is not yet ready. The ship will not even arrive until tomorrow.”

“I will be ready,” Subing said. “And, again, I will call you as soon as I return home.”

The fat man hung up the phone, struggled to his feet and started out of the office, toward the buffet line. He smiled. “Yes, call me, little brown man,” he said under his breath to himself. “But I will get word of your return to the Philippines and every other move you make, before you even reach a phone.”

CHAPTER THREE

“I’d forgotten how much fun the jungle could be in the middle of the day,” Charlie Latham said sarcastically. “Guess that’s why the siesta was invented.”

The Executioner glanced over his shoulder at the man behind him. They had been back on the jungle pathway for no more than five minutes but already sweat shot from every pore in their bodies to soak their clothes. Latham had produced a bandanna from somewhere on his person and tied it around his forehead as a sweatband. His straw cowboy hat now balanced atop the cloth high on his head, wobbling back and forth and threatening to topple off each time he took a swing with his machete.

The Executioner turned back, lashing out with his machete at a low-hanging vine before taking another step forward. He glanced at his watch to see that it was nearly 1300 hours.

They had fled into the jungle the night before to avoid being spotted by the residents of Rio Hondo. Once the Executioner felt they had gone deep enough that no one would follow their tracks, they had stopped to catch a few minutes’ sleep among the foliage. It was the first time the Executioner had closed his eyes since arriving on Mindanao and it wasn’t enough rest to bring him back into top form. But it was all he’d had, so it would have to do until another opportunity presented itself.

Upon awakening, he and Latham had found that the temperature has risen steadily. It now had to be somewhere between ninety and one hundred degrees with a humidity index that almost matched. They had returned to their parallel path, happy that only an occasional vine or limb had encroached upon them during the night. They walked quietly, swinging their machetes only when absolutely necessary, their ears cocked for anyone who might come down the regular shortcut from the mosque to the sea.

Considering the men who had so carefully looked over the Buick, Bolan suspected the men of the village were looking for whoever had left the car in the parking lot by now. At the very least, they would be curious.

The Executioner had just brought his arm back to slice through a thick green vine when he suddenly froze in place. Behind him, he heard Latham’s foot fall a final time. Bolan had no need to hold up a hand for silence—Latham sensed the need for it just as he had.

For a moment the only sounds around them were the buzzing of insects and the sudden flutter of bird wings between them and the older path. The Executioner glanced overhead through a hole in the jungle canopy to see a rare Philippine eagle—known as the haribon—sail out of sight. More birds took wing as the noise continued to drift through the foliage between them and the native’s shortcut.

As the sounds grew louder they became recognizable as voices, though the words could not be understood. The voices were low, muffled. They were the voices of men trying not to be heard, but not trying quite hard enough.

Bolan turned toward Latham.

The Texan silently mouthed the word Tagalog but shook his head, telling the Executioner he couldn’t make out the conversation, either.

Bolan stared through the foliage as the voices continued, growing increasingly louder. They sounded as if they hadn’t quite come parallel with the new path the two Americans had cut the day before. As they waited, the sound of feet trampling the underbrush began to accompany the voices. Then, as they apparently came abreast of Bolan and Latham, the words became more clear.

The Executioner turned back to Latham, but the Texan was holding up a hand for silence. He had twisted sideways, his other hand at the side of his face farthest from the native pathway. His index finger was stuck in his ear to block out all sound on that side. As the Executioner watched, the Texan nodded, frowning.

The words coming through the trees were discernable now and Bolan wished he could understand the language. What he did note, however, was one very distinct voice. One of the men spoke with a high, wheezing delivery as if he suffered from asthma or had some similar problem with his lungs.

Almost as soon as the voices had grown loud enough to hear, they began to decrease again. The men were moving past them now, slowly leaving audible range as they walked on toward the stilt houses and the sea. Their footsteps faded out first, then the words were gone again, too.

Latham looked at the Executioner. “They’re looking for us, all right,” he said. “Seems everybody in town wonders about the car.”

“Could you tell how many there were?” Bolan asked.

Latham shrugged. “Three. Maybe four. One guy has trouble breathing.”

“So I noticed,” the Executioner said. “What else did you pick up?”

“Somebody—I don’t think it was one of them—saw us drive into town yesterday.” Latham had been holding his machete over his head, preparing to swing it when the first sounds of the search party had reached their ears. Now, realizing he still had the big blade frozen in the air he lowered it to his side with a short chuckle.

“That all?”

“All I could make out. Keep in mind I was getting all this in bits and pieces and I’ve added a little conjecture of my own. The conversation had been going on a long time, and we just caught some part in the middle.”