Lethal Payload. Don Pendleton

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      “Let Pieter Ryssemus go, now, and I will let you live.”

      There was a lengthy pause before the answer came back in very thick English. “Preacher man gonna die, GI. Throw down your gun. My boy come pick it up, and maybe we talk.”

      Bolan drew the 9 mm Centennial hammerless revolver from his ankle holster and tucked it into the back of his belt. He pulled his pant leg back over the empty holster and stood. He tossed the assault rifle through the door. It fell with a clatter.

      “All right,” the voice beckoned.

      Bolan stepped into the doorway.

      The hut was a meeting place. The vast majority of the floor was woven grass matting where people sat and received instruction. A small, elevated platform near the back with a pair of cushions marked where the pandekar and the mullah held court.

      A section of the matting was pulled away, revealing a hatch in the floor that led to a cellar. A Javanese man stood in the stairway leading down. He wore a red turban, and was bare chested and heavily muscled. He held an AK-74 rifle with the buttstock folded and the bayonet fixed. Bolan assessed the situation. The man was an amateur, but he was armed with an automatic rifle and the range was five meters.

      The man stared at Bolan’s weapon where it lay and then at the empty holster on Bolan’s thigh. “Pistol, asshole.”

      Bolan kept his hands open and down by his hips. “I gave it to Famke.”

      The man sneered and stepped out of the stairwell. “Where are your Australian SAS friends?”

      Bolan had immense respect for the Australian SAS, but they were on the Indian Ocean side of Java and had chosen the wrong island. When Bolan’s intel told him where the bad guys were, he hadn’t had time to wait.

      “I’m alone,” Bolan said.

      The man shook his head in disgust. “American cowboy asshole.”

      Bolan remained silent.

      The man gave Bolan’s weapon system an appreciative look and kicked it into a far corner of the room.

      In a split second Bolan’s hand was behind his back. He twisted and shoved the snub-nosed Smith & Wesson forward in a fencer’s lunge. The kidnapper raised his rifle, but Bolan was already in motion. He aimed and squeezed the trigger.

      The gunman’s head snapped back as if he had taken a hard jab to the jaw. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the matting.

      “Diwangkara!” a voice shouted from the cellar. The voice rose in urgency. “Diwangkara!”

      “Diwangkara’s dead,” Bolan said as he crossed the matting and reclaimed his rifle. He crouched by the hatchway. “And so are you, unless Pieter Ryssemus walks up those stairs now.”

      “Preacherman injured,” was the reply.

      “So carry him.” Bolan put a fresh magazine into the carbine and racked the action. “Like your life depended on it.”

      Bolan took a fragmentation grenade from his belt and pulled the pin. He retained the grenade with his fingers clamped on the cotter lever. He tossed the pin down the stairs and listened to it clink on the steps. He took a moment to let that sink in downstairs. “Dutch Intelligence and the Australians want the missionaries.” Bolan let that sink in for a moment, as well. “You come up right now and bring Pieter Ryssemus with you, alive, or you’ll join Diwangkara.”

      Waiting for the response, Bolan monitored the noises outside. Adamsite was a persistent gas, and its effects lasted for hours, but the island was several kilometers in diameter, and he by no means had control of it.

      “I come up,” the man in the cellar said.

      “Do it slow.”

      The timbers of the stairs creaked.

      Pieter Ryssemus appeared in the hatchway. Bolan stayed stone-faced as the missionary staggered up the steps. He was a tall man, but his upper body listed in an ugly fashion from a broken collarbone. He was missing several fingers, and his body was covered with burns, bruises and wounds. The missionary had been tortured, not by professional interrogators or even amateurs wanting information. He had been tortured by those who had given in to their hatred. They had tortured the old man for the pleasure it had given them.

      There was a Swedish Carl Gustav submachine gun pressed to the old man’s temple. The kidnapper stood behind the Dutchman, using his prisoner as a shield. He held Ryssemus’s injured arm cruelly twisted behind his back. Most of the terrorist was hidden behind the missionary’s body. His eyes glared over the top of his weapon, and he wore a red turban like the rest of his sect. Tattoos crawled up the corded muscles of his forearms. Ryssemus flinched as the gun muzzle was rammed even harder into his skull. The terrorist smiled and revealed missing teeth.

      “Drop your gun, GI.”

      The laser sight on Bolan’s carbine clicked on with pressure from his hand, and a red dot appeared just below the kidnapper’s turban.

      “Drop yours,” Bolan replied.

      The man’s hand whitened on the grip of the submachine gun. “Drop your gun!” he screamed.

      Bolan frowned and lowered his rifle slightly.

      The terrorist grinned. He did not notice the red laser dot came to rest on his gun hand. “Now, GI, you—”

      Brass sprayed as the action of Bolan’s carbine clicked. The Swedish submachine gun fell from the shredded remnants of the terrorist’s hand. Ryssemus fell from his grip as the kidnapper’s eyes widened in horror at the sight of his wound.

      The expression became his death mask as Bolan put a 3-round burst through his chest.

      The kidnapper tumbled down the stairwell. Pieter Ryssemus collapsed on the floor. Bolan moved swiftly down the stairs. The terrorist lay sprawled in the lower chamber. Bloodstains on the floor and the fetid air of human suffering attested to what the lower room had been used for. Bolan found the pin from his grenade and replaced it. He scanned the room swiftly and took several maps, documents and a cell phone. He knelt beside the dead man and peered at his arm intently. Among the writhing tribal tattoos was a distinctive shield. An Asiatic dragon coiled across the background. Superimposed over the dragon was a very western looking cartoon owl. Above the owl was a tiny, stylized parachute canopy.

      The dead man was also wearing dog tags.

      Bolan memorized the tattoo. He snapped the dog tags from around the man’s neck and took the knife that was sheathed in his sash.

      The soldier went back up the stairs. The old man groaned. “Famke?”

      “She’s safe. She’s waiting for us.” Bolan surveyed the missionary grimly. He was in bad shape. “Sir, can you walk?”

      “I prayed to God for salvation, and you came.” He clasped Bolan with his good arm and struggled to rise. Bolan had to do most of the work to get Ryssemus on his feet, but the old man steadied himself and nodded. “But God also helps those who help themselves, and I will walk from this place.” The ghost of a smile passed over Pieter Ryssemus’s СКАЧАТЬ