Jungle Justice

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.