Ripple Effect

More damage to the rental, there, and Bolan knew he’d have to ditch it soon, or else risk drawing more attention from police. Before he thought about new wheels, however, there was still the matter of escaping from their present trap.

They weren’t clear yet. He was prepared to bet his life on that.

To prove his point, a navy-blue sedan bearing two or three men raced head-on toward Bolan’s vehicle, when he had barely cleared the gate of the municipal garage. The grim-faced driver seemed intent on ramming him, but Bolan called his bluff.

Another terse “Hang on!” to Dixon, and he held down the accelerator, holding steady on the steering wheel. Most hit men, in his experience, lacked the fanatic’s common urge toward martyrdom. In short, they shied away from suicide whenever possible—but there were always rare exceptions to the rule.

With thirty yards between them, Bolan wondered if the other driver had the grim resolve to take him out at any cost. A head-on collision at their current rate of speed meant almost certain death, regardless of the built-in air bags or the safety harness that he hadn’t taken time to buckle as they fled. No vehicle created for the world’s civilian markets could save its occupants if they were doing sixty miles per hour and they hit another car doing the same. That made the terminal velocity 120 miles per hour.

And the operative word was terminal.

“Jesus!” Dixon blurted out. “What are you—?”

“Doing,” or whatever else he meant to say, was swallowed by an incoherent squeal of panic, just before the chase car’s driver swerved to save himself, jumping the curb and scattering pedestrians as it decelerated brutally, tires smoking on the pavement.

Bolan took advantage of the lag, however brief, before his enemy could turn and follow him. Accelerating toward the nearest busy cross street, he decided slowing for the turn would be a costly waste of time, more likely to produce an accident than to avert one. It was all-or-nothing time, and Bolan’s life was riding on the line.

“Hang—”

“On, I know,” Dixon finished for him, clutching at the plastic handgrip mounted just above his door. “Just do it.”

Bolan did it, swerving into northbound traffic with a chorus of protesting horns and overheated brakes behind him. He was looking for police cars now, as much as shooters, hoping that it wouldn’t turn into a three-way race.

The press of traffic slowed him, but he still made fairly decent speed. Jakarta’s drivers didn’t dawdle unless they were stuck in traffic jams, and some of them were dare-devils in their own right. He watched for hunters, heading either way, and warned Dixon to do the same.

“I’m on it,” the agent replied, his voice sounding more normal than it had a moment earlier. “Sorry about all that back there.”

“It may not be your fault,” Bolan said, knowing even as he spoke that Dixon probably had missed some sign that he was being followed to the meet, and likely well before.

But, then again, it could’ve been his fault. They’d likely never know unless the trackers overtook and captured them.

How many in the hunting party? Bolan couldn’t say. He’d dealt with three men on the run, a fourth in the garage, with two more seen on foot and two or three in the chase car. Beyond that, he’d be guessing, which was usually a waste of time and energy.

If Bolan couldn’t count his enemies, he would assume they had him covered, both outnumbered and outgunned. He’d act accordingly, and put a damper on whatever latent cockiness he might’ve felt after a hell-for-leather getaway that left him and his contact more or less unscathed.

They weren’t clear yet.

And if he needed any proof of that, his rearview mirror gave it to him, framing a blurred image of the navy-blue chase car.

“Incoming,” Bolan told his passenger. “Get buckled up.”

Bolan followed his own advice, knowing the safety harness wouldn’t save him from a bullet, any more than it would help him walk away from sixty-mile-per-hour crashes into other speeding vehicles. Still, it was something, and he needed any small edge he could get right now.

To stay alive and find out what the hell was going on.

KERSEN WULANDARI CLUTCHED his Skorpion machine pistol so tightly that his fingernails and knuckles blanched, the weapon’s wooden grip printing its checkered pattern on his palm. He didn’t feel it, kept his index finger off the trigger only with an effort, craning forward in his seat and staring at the target up ahead.

“Get after them!” he snarled. “Don’t let them get away this time!”

His driver didn’t answer, fully focused on the street and the traffic that surrounded them. They were already well above the posted speed limit and still accelerating, but the other cars around them made a straight run at their prey impossible.

Wulandari couldn’t fault his driver for not crashing into their opponents’ vehicle outside of the garage. He had no wish to die for what he had been paid to do, the present job, although that risk was always present in Wulandari’s line of work. The trick, he knew, was making sure that other people died, while he survived to joke about their final, agonizing moments with his friends over a round of drinks.

Unfortunately, these damned Westerners weren’t the kind of targets he was used to. They were quick, courageous, deadly. He’d already lost at least three men pursuing them, and now Wulandari didn’t know what had become of those who’d chased the targets into the garage. The building’s steel-and-concrete structure interfered with messages after they ran inside, and there’d been nothing more since the Americans escaped.

All dead?

Wulandari didn’t know, nor, at that moment, did he care.

The men he’d chosen for this day’s assignment had proved adequate on other jobs. All ten were killers, tested under fire in gang wars with the triads and the Yakuza. They hadn’t failed him yet, but once was all it took to make a corpse out of a street soldier.

Three corpses. Maybe six, for all Wulandari knew.

And three more shooters still at large, somewhere, presumably attempting to make contact with the targets.

Scooping up a walkie-talkie in his free hand, Wulandari keyed the button for transmission, snapping at the air, “Car Two! Where are you? Answer!”

Agonizing second later, came the answer. “Passing the art gallery, westbound. Over.”

That had to mean Jakarta’s Fine Art Gallery, below Merak Expressway. They were headed in the right direction, anyway.

“We’re near the Puppet Theater,” Wulandari told his second chase car. “Target fifty meters up ahead. Hurry, before you lose us!”

“Coming!” the tinny voice said before the radio went dead.

Wulandari should’ve felt relieved, with help rushing along behind to join him, but his anger and frustration banished any positive emotion. Even as the fury raged inside him, he was fully conscious of his cardinal mistake.

Don’t get involved.

Killing and kidnapping for money was a business, he understood, and businessmen who let personal feelings cloud their judgment soon went out of business, losing everything they had.

In this case, that could mean Wulandari’s life.

He didn’t plan to die that afternoon, but neither had the men he’d lost so far. Wulandari guessed that all of them had counted on another night of drinking, sex and restful sleep after a job well done. For three of them, at least, those plans were rudely swept aside and cast onto the rubbish heap.

Wulandari didn’t care to join them.

“Speed up, damn you!” he grated, striking at his driver’s shoulder with the hand that clutched his radio. The wheelman grunted, flinched, his jerky move reflected in their auto’s swerving progress.

“Hold steady!” Wulandari barked, but he recognized his own irrationality, refraining from another blow.

The car surged forward, somehow finding still more power underneath the hood. They brushed against a slower vehicle, passing too closely on Wulandari’s side, but he dared not complain. His driver was obeying orders, narrowing the gap that separated them from their appointed targets.

Wulandari found the power button for his window, held it down until the tinted glass was fully lowered and a rush of wind filled up the car. He propped his elbow on the windowsill, bracing the Skorpion, but hot wind made his eyes tear, blurred his target as he tried to aim.

He couldn’t tell the driver to slow down, but if he couldn’t see…

Wulandari reached into his shirt pocket, heard fabric rip as he retrieved his sunglasses and slipped them on. It was a little better when he again poked his head outside the speeding car. Not perfect, but at least he had a chance to aim.

And have his head ripped off or shattered, if his driver brushed against another vehicle.

“Be careful now!” he shouted, words torn from his lips by rushing wind.

Sighting as best he could, Wulandari pulled the trigger, spraying five or six rounds from the Skorpion’s 20-round box magazine. A march of bullet holes across the gray Toyota’s trunk rewarded him, before his weapon’s muzzle rose and sent the last two rounds hurtling downrange, wasted.

“Closer!” Wulandari shouted, reaching with his left hand to extend the Skorpion’s wire shoulder stock.

His driver muttered something unintelligible in the roar of wind, but he produced another surge of speed. Wulandari smiled, lips drawn back over crooked teeth, and steeled himself to try again.

“THAT’S TOO DAMNED CLOSE,” Dixon said, his shoulders hunched against the prospect of a bullet drilling through his seat.

“Tell me about it,” the grim man at the wheel replied.

Dixon had drawn his Glock but knew he couldn’t make a decent shot under the circumstances, swiveled in his seat and leaning out the window where he’d have to fire left-handed. He was in this stranger’s hands, with killers rolling up behind them, spraying the Toyota with machine-gun fire.

Terrific.

“There’s more company,” his wheelman said.

Turning so quickly that he sent a bolt of white-hot pain searing along the right side of his neck, Dixon picked out a second chase car gaining on the first. He knew it wasn’t just another crazy native driver, from the way it swerved through traffic, breaking all the rules to overtake the dark sedan bristling with guns.

We’re toast, he thought, but kept it to himself, as if afraid that saying it would realize his fears.

“Hang on,” Bolan said.

“Right.”

It had become their litany, damned near the only conversation passed between them since their mad race from the drab parking garage. He wondered if the man they’d struck was dead or dying, mildly startled to discover that he hoped so.

One less to come back and bite them in the ass, he thought.

But there were still enough behind them to kill him and the man he knew as Matt Cooper. All the men and guns they needed were in the two chase cars. He didn’t know if Cooper could evade them, doubted it, and doubted even more his own ability to come through any kind of urban gunfight with body and soul intact.

Dixon had trained for this, after a fashion, but he’d never really taken any of it seriously. No one in his graduating class believed that they’d be shooting anyone. They were paper pushers, marginal investigators, only dubbed field agents out of courtesy. Even the posting to Jakarta, with the various advisories upon departure, hadn’t driven home the point.

But he was thrashing in the deep end now, and no mistake about it. Under other circumstances, Dixon might’ve said he had a choice—to sink or swim—but as it was, his choices seemed to be preempted by the driver of the vehicle in which he sat, and by the killers burning up the road behind him, shooting as they came.

“You know this neighborhood?” Bolan asked.

“More or less,” Dixon replied.

“I need some kind of cul-de-sac or parking area where I can get some combat stretch, maybe to turn around.”

Dixon thought hard enough to give himself a headache, which was no great trick just then. “Okay,” he said. “You’re heading for a turnoff to the lake. Penjaringan. It’s on your right. Take that and go down toward the water. There’s a parking lot for tourists. Shouldn’t have too many cars, this hour on a week day.”

“Let’s find out,” Bolan said, as the sign rushed at them. This time, when he made the screeching turn, there was no warning to hang on. Dixon was ready for it anyway, and gripped the handle overhead as if he’d been aboard a subway train racing at top speed through the dark.

“We’ve got at least four guys behind us,” Dixon noted when his driver had the gray Toyota running straight and true again. “There could be twice that many.”

“Right.”

“You plan to take them all?”

“I’m working on it,” Bolan said. “But if you have a plan, I’m open to suggestions.”

“Nope. Not me. Just wondered how you meant to pull it off.” The sinking feeling in his gut told Dixon that he was about to die.

“When you’re outnumbered,” Bolan said, flicking another quick glance toward his rearview, “there are three things you can do. I doubt our friends back there are interested in negotiation or surrender.”

“What’s the third option?” Dixon asked.

“Fight like hell.”

“Uhhuh.”

“You’re not a pacifist, I hope?” Bolan asked.

“No.”

“All right, then. If you get a chance to use that Smith, remember what they taught you on the range.”

“Center of mass. Don’t jerk the trigger. Double tap, if feasible.”

“Sounds like the ticket,” Bolan said. “And here we are.”

They roared into a spacious parking lot with fewer than a dozen vehicles in sight, all clustered at the far end, near an area of restaurants and gift shops. Lake Penjaringan was popular for boating, fishing and assorted other water sports, but weekends were its busy time.

“I bluffed their wheelman once,” Bolan said, his eyes locked on the rearview now. “I don’t know if he’ll tumble twice, but it’s the only chance we have right now.” And then, “Hang on!”

Dixon couldn’t be sure exactly what the stranger did next, but he seemed to stamp down on the brake and the accelerator simultaneously, meanwhile spinning the wheel rapidly to his left. The net effect included squealing tires, a revving engine and a dizzying 180-degree turn that left rubber scorch marks on the sun-bleached asphalt of the parking lot.

Dixon was still recovering from the bootlegger’s turn, trying to get his stomach back in place, when Cooper floored the gas again and charged off toward their enemies.

This time, two chase cars were approaching, side by side and barreling ahead at sixty miles per hour. Dixon wondered if the drivers were prepared to lose their second game of chicken to this brash American.

“Ready?” Bolan called as his window powered down, right arm extended with his Glock clenched in his fist. “Okay, then. Give ’em hell!”

BOLAN WAS COUNTING on surprise and sheer audacity to give him an advantage over his pursuers, but it was still a gamble. Repetition of a tactic could be perilous, yet Bolan’s options were distinctly limited. He couldn’t drive around Jakarta with the shooters on his tail until his car ran out of gas, nor did he care to bail out in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare and take the battle back to urban infantry maneuvers.

Barring reinforcements, which he didn’t have, the chicken run would have to do—but with a twist this time.

The chase cars were advancing side by side, with several feet of empty space between them, giving the shotgun riders and whoever occupied the back seats room to aim and fire their weapons. Bolan’s angle of attack meant that, unless they rammed him, he would pass along the driver’s side of the vehicle on his right, while Dixon faced the front-and back-seat guns of its companion, on their left. Bad luck for Dixon, but if he had nerve enough, they just might make it work.

Bolan began to fire his Glock when they were twenty yards from impact, three rounds out of eighteen gone before he sighted on the left-hand chase car’s windshield. Two shots drilled through the driver’s side, and then he saw the black sedan begin to swerve off target.

He had a glimpse of someone in the back seat, leveling a weapon larger than a pistol, flinching from the windshield hits. Before the shooter could recover, Bolan triggered two more shots and punched him backward, out of view. A jagged muzzle-flash spit bullets through the right-hand chase car’s roof.

To Bolan’s left, Tom Dixon’s .40-caliber pistol was hammering away, while a Kalashnikov erupted, chattering defiance. Bolan heard a couple of the rifle’s slugs strike home, like hammer blows against the hired Toyota’s flanks. They apparently missed the tires and engine, but Bolan flinched when Dixon grunted, wondering if he’d taken a hit.

They roared on past the chase cars, Bolan’s eyes pinned to the rearview mirror as he asked, “Are you all right?”

Dixon was swiping at his cheek with bloody fingertips. “I think so. Caught a splinter, maybe.”

Lucky.

“Here we go again,” Bolan warned. “This time, don’t expect a break.”

“I’m ready,” Dixon said.

Swerving through the turn, Bolan saw one carload of his assailants stalled, its lifeless driver slumped behind the wheel, the shotgun rider scrambling out on foot. The other car was swinging back around to make another run, with the AK protruding from a window on the driver’s side.

The other side could make a sieve of his Toyota with the Kalashnikov, he knew, chewing him and Dixon into hamburger. The rifle was a killer at three hundred yards, three times the theoretical effective range of Bolan’s Glock, ten times its practical effective range.

He couldn’t duel the rifleman, but he could seize the moment to his own advantage.

If he dared.

Bolan stamped down on the accelerator, hurtling toward his enemies. “Be ready when I make another turn, and brace for impact,” he told Dixon.

“Impact. Jesus.”

Bolan tore across the parking lot, directly toward the second chase car, locked on a collision course. At the last moment, when it seemed explosive impact was inevitable, he swung through another tire-scorching one-eighty, starting so close to his adversaries that the swerving rear of his Toyota struck their front end like a half-ton slap across the face.

The Executioner was out and running, even as the aftershocks of impact shuddered through both vehicles. He saw Tom Dixon moving on the other side, pistol extended as he raced back toward the chase car, his face etched in a snarl.

Then Bolan started firing, pumping Parabellum rounds into his shaken enemies at point-blank range. The AK handler took one through his left eye socket, and another through his gaping mouth for safety’s sake. Up front, the shotgun rider had to have dropped his pistol, fumbling on the floor between his feet as Bolan turned and shot him once behind the ear.

Dixon took out the driver, blasting rounds into his neck and chest. Behind him, Bolan saw the last man from the other chase car hobbling toward them, lining up a shot, and called a warning to his contact.

Dixon turned, fired once and missed, then nailed it on the second try, even as Bolan helped him with a rapid double tap.

And they were done.

Around them, only corpses shared the battleground.

“We’re out of time,” Bolan told Dixon, “and we need fresh wheels. Tell me your story on the way.”

“WHAT KIND OF BACKGROUND do you need?” Dixon asked when they’d cleared the killing ground.

“Start from the top,” Bolan replied, “but don’t go back to Genesis.”

“Okay. I’ve been on-site for just about a year. Before that, I did two years stateside. Nothing relevant. You may know that al Qaeda and some other groups with similar potential have had cells in Indonesia since the nineties. Not surprising, when you think about it, since the population’s mostly Muslim. Eighty-odd percent. And they’ve got reasonable access to material support from China, too.”

Bolan had known that going in. He waited through the appetizer, for the main course.

“Now, this Talmadge character’s been in and out of Indonesia for the past three years, I understand,” Dixon continued. “We hear rumors that he may’ve been involved with some of the activity in East Timor.”

Activity presumably referring to the genocidal action instigated by Indonesian rulers in 1999, when East Timor’s population voted to secede from its parent nation and enjoy self-rule. By the time UN peacekeepers restored a semblance of order and supervised East Timor’s first election in April 2002, an estimated three hundred thousand persons were dead, East Timor’s meager infrastructure lay in ruins and the mostly agricultural economy was belly-up.

“Which side?” Bolan asked.

“Hard to say. The rumors go both ways,” Dixon replied. “Since then, our boy has mostly been a gun-for-hire and part-time training officer for outfits like Hamas, al Qaeda and the Islamic Jihad. No Muslim background that we know of, but he likes those petrodollars. Has three bank accounts, one each in Switzerland, the Caymans and Sri Lanka.”

“It’s a small world, after all,” Bolan remarked.

“And getting smaller all the time, apparently,” Dixon said. “In the past eleven months, Talmadge has logged close to a half a million frequent-flyer miles. We’ve tracked him back and forth to different parts of Europe, to Australia and New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and once to Canada—B.C., specifically. He’s literally all over the map. Some of it’s visits to his banks. The rest, we’re guessing meets with his employers and some contract jobs that just coincidentally occur when he’s nearby.”

“Has anybody thought of handing him to Interpol?” Bolan asked.

“Thought about it, sure. But on what charge? His bank deposits are straightforward, nothing to suggest a laundry operation. He’s not moving contraband, as far as anyone can tell. The people we can prove he’s spoken to aren’t fugitives—at least not in the countries where they’re living at the moment. On the hits, we can’t prove anything beyond proximity.”

“And now, this Gitmo thing,” Bolan said.

“Right. He’s up to something for the AQ crowd, but what? We’ve covered his apartment in Jakarta. Bugs and taps, the whole megillah, but he doesn’t use the telephone for anything important, and his only visitors are hookers. Once a week, like clockwork, he gets laid if he’s in town. Tonight’s the night.”

“Maybe we ought to crash the party.”

“It’s a thought. Take flowers, maybe?”

“Maybe lilies. But we need another car, first thing.”

“You won’t be trading this one in, I take it,” Dixon said.

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay.” The younger man considered that, then said, “I’ve never hot-wired anything before. I mean, they didn’t teach car theft or anything like that in training.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Bolan said. “What we need right now is somewhere we can drop this one and not be noticed while we switch the plates to something suitable.”

“My first thought would be HPK,” Dixon replied. “Halim Perdana Kusuma. The airport.”

Bolan thought about it, judging distances. It meant driving three miles or so, across Jakarta, without being noticed by police. “What’s closer?” he inquired.

“There’s Kemayoran, formerly the local airport,” Dixon said. “They’ve turned it into some kind of outlandish shopping mall, but there are parking lots.”

Closer, the warrior knew, from memorizing street maps in advance. “Okay. Let’s try that first.”

“Suits me. You know the way?”

“I’ve got it,” Bolan said. “But just the same, correct me if you see I’m heading off toward Borneo or something.”

“Right.” It was the first time he had seen Tom Dixon smile. “About just now…in case you couldn’t tell, I’ve never killed a man before.”

Bolan could have replied, “First time for everything,” but that would be both flippant and a lie. Most people never killed another human being. Soldiers, cops and criminals were those most likely to take lives, but even then it was a relatively rare event. Millions of soldiers served their tours of duty in peacetime and never fired a shot in anger. Most cops never pulled the trigger on a suspect, making those who did so more than once immediately suspect in the eyes of their superiors. Even most criminals had never killed, restricting their activities to theft, white-collar crimes or petty drug offenses.