False Front

The blow caught the man on the side of the neck, shocking the artery running up to his brain and cutting off the oxygen. The villager fell like a steer under a slaughterhouse hammer.

For a split second the front yard, the roadway and the area around the stilt houses seemed deserted. Then what might have been the hordes of Genghis Khan seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Bolan sprinted across the yard toward the road, downing another man wearing a headband with his baston, one more with the blunt edge of the machete. A huge panabas—a cross between a sword and ax—flashed through the air toward his head. The weapon was too heavy to block with either baston or machete, so the Executioner brought them both up together. An almost paralyzing electric shock ran from his weapons down his forearms as the panabas made contact. It stopped in midair, the attacker feeling the shock even more than the Executioner. He showed his surprise with the whites of his widened eyes.

Bolan recovered first. Lifting his stick up over his head, he brought it down hard onto the man’s collarbone. A sickening snap met his ears as wood splintered bone. The panabas, and the man who had wielded it, tumbled forward to the ground.

The Executioner saw Latham trading blows with an unusually large Filipino armed with a pair of golok swords. Used for centuries by the Moros for jungle warfare, the man who now flailed with them had been trained well. He had taken the offensive, swinging hard and fast with both blades, giving the appearance of twin airplane propellers flashing through the air. Latham blocked, then blocked again. Then again and again and again. But he was a half beat behind the man, which kept him on the defense, unable to launch a counterattack.

Bolan knew that blocking only was the road to an early death. Latham was good. But no matter how good a man was, sooner or later, he missed a block.

Stepping in to the side, the Executioner brought the blunt edge of the machete around in an arc against the back of the big Filipino’s neck. The Rio Hondan dropped to his knees, then fell forward onto his face, unconscious. Latham’s chest heaved in and out with exertion, but he had the strength to bring his machete up to his forehead in a smiling salute to the Executioner.

Bolan turned back to the road and another villager stepped in to face him. For a split second the man looked as if he held a Fourth of July sparkler in each hand. Then, as the flashing steel took better shape, the Executioner again recognized a matched pair of bright stainless steel balisongs. The villager appeared even more skilled in their use than the punk in Zamboanga from whom Bolan had appropriated the Buick.

Spreading and closing the wings of the butterfly knives, then spreading and closing them again, the Rio Hondan made the twin blades dance a graceful ballet through the air. And as they danced they also sang, clicking, clacking and whirring in the night and sending shafts of moonlight reflecting off their surfaces in a colorful prism of death. But the balisong expert made one fatal mistake. He took too much time showing off.

The Executioner stepped in and swung the baston overhead like a tennis racket, cracking it down first on the man’s right wrist, then on his left. Both balisongs dropped to the ground. The man’s lower lip dropped open almost that far in surprise. Bolan’s third strike with the baston left the man lying on top of his fallen knives.

In the middle of the asphalt roadway now, the soldier was halted by three men. Each carried a klewang and each held the straight, single-edge blade with the widened point up and ready. But they had seen the unconscious men in the Executioner’s wake and it had curbed some of their enthusiasm for battle. Each hesitated to be the next to hit the ground.

Bolan took advantage of their indecisiveness to initiate his own attack. Faking an overhand strike with the baston, he waited until the man’s klewang came up to block, then cut the feint short, drawing it slightly back toward him before jabbing the blunt end into the man’s face. The Executioner heard the crack of bone as the villager’s nose broke. A half second later he brought the blunt edge of the machete straight up between the man’s legs.

The villager had grunted with the broken nose. Now he screeched from the groin strike. As he bent in agony, the Executioner struck downward with the butt end of the stick, which extended below his fist. The short stub of wood cracked into the back of the man’s skull. A punyo—the Filipinos called the technique—worked just as well on them as for them, ending the attacker’s sounds of torment and sending him to sleep on the asphalt of the highway.

Turning his attention to the side, Bolan noticed that Latham had stepped up even with him to engage one of the two remaining attackers. As the Executioner feinted again with his baston, he saw the Texan crack his man across the jaw with the backside of his machete. Although it didn’t break the skin, the long, thin striking area left an ugly red stripe across the top of the crumbled bone.

The third man had watched the men on both sides of him fall to the strangers and the sight brought out a desperate panic. With a shriek of terror, he abandoned all training he might have had and began to swing his klewang wildly back and forth.

Bolan had only to time the swings, then step in as the blade went past him. In one smooth motion he trapped the sword with his machete and, with the other hand, brought the baston down at a forty-five-degree angle against the frightened man’s temple.

Although he could still hear townsmen running toward him in the darkness, there was no immediate threat. The Executioner took advantage of the break in the action to sprint across the asphalt to the sandy shore beneath the stilt houses. Behind him, he could hear Latham’s feet beating the sand as he followed. “I’m…with you,” the Texan panted.

The Executioner took the steps of Subing’s house three at a time, the machete in one hand, the crudely fashioned baston in the other. Each time his foot hit the rotting wood the stairs screamed in agony, threatening to collapse beneath him. Halfway up the steps he saw a small dark figure step out of the house onto the porch.

Mario Subing aimed the pistol in his hands down the steps at the Executioner.

BOTH RACHAEL PARKS and her husband, John, believed strongly in prayer. Before accepting the mission assignment to the Philippines, they’d had a special time set aside each night when they prayed together. The both also did their best to offer up short individual appeals and supplications to God throughout the day. But there had been so much work to be done as soon as they’d arrived on Mindanao that too often they collapsed into bed at night and suddenly realized they hadn’t spoken a word to the Lord all day.

“Yeah, but isn’t there a proverb that says God loves busy hands?” Rachael remembered her husband saying one night when she’d pointed out that they’d forgotten to pray.

“Yes,” she remembered saying back. “But there’s a whole bunch of scripture that says He likes to talk to us, too.” They had both laughed. Then they’d both prayed, because neither one of them were the type who fooled themselves into thinking a rapid-fire thank-you-God-for-another-day-and-enough-to-eat-amen was a real prayer.

Well, Rachael thought as she closed her eyes behind the hood, I’ve got plenty of time to make up for lost prayers now. The fact was that prayer, meditation and thinking was about all she or her husband had been able to do during the past several months.

Rachel shifted her mud-encrusted, water-soaked jeans beneath her and felt the chapped skin on the back of her thighs. Yes, for perhaps the first time in her life, she had all the time she wanted to pray. And though she had taken advantage of it, offering up prayers about her church, her husband, the other hostages, her family and herself, for some reason the words she found herself silently forming with her lips, over and over again, had nothing to do with her present situation. In fact, the words she caught herself saying most often were not even original on her part—they had been spoken by Jesus more than two thousand years earlier while he hung on the cross.

Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do.

Rachael opened her eyes beneath the hood. For weeks after their capture she had hated the terrorists who had taken them hostage. Then she had realized her hatred wasn’t hurting the men who held them captive one bit. But it was eating her alive. So she had prayed that God would remove the hatred from her soul and give her the strength to endure whatever happened. Then she had gone another step and prayed that the Lord would forgive Candido Subing and the other Tigers and that they would find salvation through Jesus Christ.

Rachael smiled as she remembered the sequence of events after the first such prayer. She’d said, “Amen” then felt obligated to add. “P.S. Lord, help me to someday mean it when I ask you I forgive them. Because right now I’d kind of like to see them rot away in Hell for all eternity.”

No, Rachael thought as she sat in the mud as she had day after day after day, her hatred hadn’t disappeared all at once. But somewhere along the line she had forgiven her captors. And now when she prayed for Candido Subing and the others she truly did mean it from the heart.

Rachael looked down and smiled. She still had things to be thankful for. Small things maybe, but gifts nonetheless. For one thing, she could tell it was daytime. The drawstring at her throat hadn’t been tightened all the way and she could see the light on her chest. Lord, I thank you for the light, she said silently, and the new prayer made her realize how many of God’s wonders she overlooked each day. God could make something good out of anything, no matter how evil its original intent might be at the hands of man. And one of the good things that had come out of their captivity was just that—she no longer took such things as the sun going up and coming down for granted.

There was some kind of rustling on the other side of the barn and Rachael’s ears perked. A quick image of Jim Worden flew through her mind. In less than a heartbeat her mind’s eye relived the horrifying death she had witnessed. She saw Jim kneeling on the ground, facing her and the others. He was smiling—he said something—she couldn’t remember what at the moment—then Candido Subing raised his sword and Jim’s head fell from his body. Seconds later his body fell forward while his head fell to the side. There was blood everywhere, but Jim was still smiling.

Rachael suddenly realized that she was crying just as she had when the horrible death had actually occurred.

Rachael bit her lip with her teeth but the tears still flowed down her cheeks. Did Jim’s brutal death serve some higher purpose that she couldn’t understand? Rachael felt herself begin to tremble. She felt as if she might be on the verge of a breakdown. First the tears. Now she was shaking. She was about to scream when she felt the hand on her shoulder.

As suddenly as it had come, the trembling stopped, her eyes dried up and she felt the love of God within her once more. The Lord had given her the sign she’d asked for through her husband. John, sitting next to her, had somehow worked a hand free and now it squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.

Rachael leaned her head to the side, resting her cheek against the back of her husband’s hand. It was God at work. God answering their prayers. God giving her a blessing.

Rachael’s cheek still rested on the hand when she heard the rickety wooden door on the other side of the barn slide open. She recognized the voice of Candido Subing shouting orders to his men. She held her breath and knew the other missionaries were doing the same. Although it had been apparent since the beginning that Subing was the leader, he was rarely here in this hiding place. But when he did show up, things happened. And while all of those things had been bad so far, Rachael knew that Subing would also be the one to tell them if they were about to be released.

Boots sloshed through the mud toward the five missionaries. Rachael heard a sigh and then a moan as hoods were lifted off faces. When the sack was jerked from her head she turned in time to see Reynaldo Taboada pull the hood from John. She was glad it was Reynaldo. He seemed different than the others, not as mean. He never mistreated them for the fun of it like some of the guards did and there seemed something almost sad about the man.

“Thank you,” Rachael whispered to John as soon as the terrorist had turned away.

“For what?” John asked, his face looking puzzled.

Before she could thank him for the hand on her shoulder Subing stepped forward to face his hostages. He was obviously about to speak to them; the last time he had done so had ended with the murder of Jim Worden. Rachael’s eyes scanned the area behind him for any sign of video equipment. She saw none and that gave her hope that the horror might not be repeated.

Subing cleared his throat. “I understand,” he said, “that in America there is a game in which someone says, ‘I have both some good news and some bad.’ First, I will give you the good news. America has sent new agents—CIA, I am sure—to look for you.” He cackled sardonically, then spit into the mud. “Now. For the bad news. They will not find you. And the worst news of all for some of you…” He let his voice trail off to build tension. “Is that to make their hunt more difficult, I am going to separate you into three groups.”

Rachael felt a chill go down her spine as she and her husband looked at each other, then back at Subing. Three groups. Five of them left. That would surely mean two hostages in two groups, one in the third. Surely, Subing would allow them to stay together. Even a man as misguided as he had to retain some compassion hidden deep within his soul.

The men of the Liberty Tigers trudged through the mud. Two of them grabbed Roger Ewton and dragged him toward the door. Two more lifted Kim Tate from where she sat next to Rachael, and then another two Tigers grabbed her and hauled her to her feet. Rachael suddenly realized that separating her from her husband was exactly what Subing planned to do.

“John!” Rachael screamed out, and heard him cry back, “Rachael! No!”

John tried to struggle to his feet, but a muddy boot kicked him in the face and he fell back to the ground. Rachael’s husband rose again, this time getting as high as his knees before one of the men hit him with the wooden end of his gun in the side of the head.

The rough hands grasped Rachael’s shoulders and pushed her toward the door. When she tried to turn back someone punched her in the stomach and she felt the air rush from her lungs. As she started to fall she cast a look over her shoulder and saw John trying to get up yet again, but with his ankles still bound and his hands tied to his waist it was futile.

Gasping for air, Rachael was dragged out of the barn into the bright sunlight. As soon as she caught her breath again she began to struggle. But her efforts were as ineffective as John’s had been. The terrorists pulled, pushed and carried her toward two trucks parked just outside. Rachael doubled her efforts to strike the men with her elbows and even snapped her teeth at an arm that got too close.

“John!” she cried one final time as she was lifted into one of the trucks next to Kim Tate, and then the hood was pulled back down over her eyes.

It was only then, as she sat impotently listening to the truck engine start and feeling the wheels beneath her begin to roll, that the miraculousness of the sign God had given her earlier suddenly struck her. She had just watched John try three times to get to his feet and come after her. Three times he had been unable to do so, or to defend himself against the boots and rifle butts of the terrorists because his hands were still tied to his waist. Which meant he had not worked a hand free earlier as she’d thought, and it couldn’t have been his hand comforting her by squeezing her shoulder.

But a hand had been there, warm and loving, just the same.

THE REVOLVER in the elderly man’s hand looked like an ancient Spanish Star. The rifling, Bolan suspected, had been burned out before the Executioner was born. Or perhaps the old man at the top of the steps was simply a poor shot. Whatever the reason, although he was less than ten feet away, when the man Bolan assumed was Mario Subing pulled the trigger, the shot missed.

The antique wheel gun exploded almost in the Executioner’s face. But the shot struck to his side, splintering the already rotten wood of the handrail above the steps and causing it to collapse in pieces over the staircase.

Bolan hadn’t slowed at the sight of the revolver and now ducked his head as he continued to charge up the steps. Before the wrinkled, white-haired man on the landing could pull the trigger again, he thrust his head under the gun and into the man’s chest.

The Executioner’s force drove both men back through the doorway into the one-room stilt house; they dropped to the floor in a jumble of arms and legs. But old as he might be, frail as he might look, Mario Subing still managed to hold on to the gun as Bolan came down on top of him. And even after the Executioner had clamped the fingers of one hand so tight around his wrist that the dry old bone threatened to snap, he strained to maneuver the barrel back around at the big American.

Bolan didn’t want to break Mario Subing’s arm and he didn’t want the old man to break it himself as he struggled. Relaxing his grip, he reached out with his other hand and caught the double-action revolver. Sliding his fingers behind the hammer, he clamped it to the frame to keep it from being cocked then ripped it from the aged fingers.

Mario Subing shrieked out a long stream of what the Executioner had to guess were choice Tagalog expletives.

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