Jungle Justice. Don Pendleton

for his service to the lords of Washington. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, from troubled dreams, seething with anger at himself and at the nation that had forced him toward a measure of betrayal. In the end, though, when it mattered most, Takeri managed to persuade himself that he was working for a greater good, on behalf of India and all her people.

      This time, for example, if his briefing had been accurate, he would assist in cleaning out a nest of bandit scum who had disgraced West Bengal for over a decade. Poaching was only part of it, an outlawed trade that spawned corruption, theft and murder stretching from Calcutta to the Sundarbans.

      How many lives had Balahadra Naraka claimed so far? Two hundred? Three hundred or more? Takeri wasn’t sure, and further doubted that precise statistics were important. Various officials in West Bengal had been negligent or worse in dealing with the problem, throwing up their hands and pleading helplessness in the face of Naraka’s savagery. Their failure was a national disgrace, one Abhaya Takeri hoped to remedy.

      While waiting for his meet with the American, he’d made inquiries here and there, around Calcutta. Certain merchants knew when contraband was moving, knew the sellers and buyers, their middlemen, the details necessary to unravel a conspiracy. With coaxing, he had managed to unlock their lips, extract their secrets bit by bit. More remained to be exposed, but for the moment, he was satisfied.

      If only he could shake the sense of being followed.

      There was nothing he could point to with assurance, no familiar face glimpsed time and time again behind him, in a crowd. But still, Takeri knew someone was watching him. He had a special sense about such matters, which had saved his life on more than one occasion. As he approached the curry restaurant, Takeri was alert to any shadows, spotting none.

      He could abort the meeting, leave some message with the restaurant’s proprietor for the American to try another place, another time, but that would start them on the wrong foot, make the stranger feel Takeri was incompetent. Perhaps, he told himself, the feeling was just that—a feeling without substance. If he couldn’t see his enemies, Takeri knew there was at least a chance that they did not exist.

      He dawdled through the last four blocks, still early for the meeting, killing time at shop windows and shrugging off the beggars who infested Clarke Street. None was quite so forward as to touch Takeri, but they crowded him, pleading for money or anything else he could spare. Takeri ignored them, brushing past them as if they didn’t exist, and felt the worse for it with every step he took.

      He felt the beggars studied him and mocked him while he window-shopped and several times reversed directions, hoping by that method to detect a stranger following. Takeri wondered if the poor and starving thought him mad, then finally decided that it made no difference. Their opinion didn’t matter. It was nothing, written on the wind.

      A short block from the restaurant, he was almost persuaded that his fears were all in vain. He’d been mistaken. There was no one after him at all. Why should there be?

      And then, two men emerged from London Mews, moving to block his path. They were not beggars, and the hands they offered to him were not held palm-up and empty.

      Both were clutching knives.

      Takeri stopped, began to turn and glimpsed two other men he had somehow missed, closing behind him now. Long blades sprouted from their dark fists.

      Cursing himself for carelessness, Takeri realized he was about to die.

      2

      The Executioner had started to relax at the first glimpse of his contact. The man was taking his time and double-checking to be sure he wasn’t followed. That was something Bolan could appreciate, a conscientious guide to help him through the next few days.

      He wouldn’t jump the gun, Bolan decided, wouldn’t try to brace his contact on the sidewalk, when they’d already agreed to meet inside the restaurant. It was a small thing, but he didn’t want to start off breaking rules, changing established orders. It created a bad precedent, and Bolan didn’t want to go there.

      He was patient, giving his connection time to reach the restaurant and go inside, when Bolan saw two men emerge from London Mews, the stinking alley paved with trash. Both moved to intercept his contact, and the young man saw them, blinking once before he thought about retreat—and found himself cut off behind by two more men.

      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