Lethal Payload. Don Pendleton

Executioner squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession. The sound of the compressed air launcher was lost in the roar of the chanting and the drums. The dancer stopped at the impacts but did not fall. For a second his glazed eyes narrowed as he searched the crowd for his attacker.

      No one in the mob even noticed.

      But the chanting faltered as the dancer’s legs suddenly wobbled and his knives fell from his hands. The music subsided as the dancer staggered. He took three rapid steps toward his master, then fell clutching his belly. Shouts of indignation replaced the music and chanting as the dancer vomited all over the pandekar.

      Bolan’s projectiles were rear-loaded with Adamsite.

      Adamsite had another more colloquial nickname. It was known as vomit gas.

      The dancer collapsed in the pandekar’s lap, convulsing violently.

      Bolan began squeezing the trigger of the launcher repeatedly as he moved the laser sight from target to target. The projectiles carried only small loads of the irritant, but as the stunned Javanese milled and tried to help one another, the effects spread like wildfire. The soldier swiftly loaded another 15-round cassette of projectiles and resumed firing. Total surprise had been achieved. The entire mob was down or in the process of falling prey to the Adamsite.

      Famke Ryssemus screamed and strained against her bonds. She was seemingly surrounded by a ten-foot halo in the sand. Everyone outside the circle Bolan had drawn lay in their own personal, intestinal hell, part of the greater sea of writhing fanatics. But Bolan could not hold off an army with Adamsite. He had to get in and get out. There were others on the island, and it was only a matter of seconds before the situation would turn deadly.

      Bolan pulled on his gas mask and strode out of the trees.

      A screaming man staggered into Bolan’s path brandishing a razor sharp panga. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he raised the heavy knife over his head. The soldier put a .68-caliber projectile point-blank into the side of the man’s neck, and he collapsed unconscious on the sand.

      Bolan moved into the circle.

      He turned and scooped up a fallen knife. Ryssemus screamed and then collapsed into his arms as he cut her bonds. The soldier leaned toward her ear and shouted through his gas mask. “Close your eyes! Hold your breath!” He lifted her over his shoulder and picked his way back through the heaving throng in the sand. He cleared the gas area and yanked up his mask as he set the woman down.

      “Are you all right?” he asked.

      She swayed on her feet. Her beautiful blue eyes were as wide as dinner plates. She looked at Bolan like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. “I…”

      “Where’s your uncle?”

      “My uncle?” Miss Ryssemus jolted into awareness. “They tortured him! Oh, my God! He’s still in the big hut!”

      Bolan took the woman’s wrist and pulled her into the trees outside the semicircle of huts. She stared in dull horror as he drew his Beretta 93-R and shoved it into her hands. “Stay here,” Bolan said as he flicked the selector to semiauto. “Hold the gun in both hands. Point it and pull the trigger on anyone besides me or your uncle. I’ll be right back.”

      Bolan shoved her down into the bushes and ran through the trees. He skirted the outer perimeter of the horseshoe-shaped village and made for the rear of the biggest hut, which was built on a raised platform of logs. The beams of the structure were solid, but the walls were made of densely woven lengths of split bamboo. Three men with rifles spilled out of the hut and ran down the steps toward the fallen mob. Bolan stayed in the shadows. He crept around the building and stopped at the edge of the veranda.

      A man stood with his rifle shouldered, watching the other men run to the circle of writhing bodies. Bolan watched, as well. The men ran and knelt beside their stricken comrades. Within seconds they were doubled over, contorting with nausea.

      The man on the veranda stayed put, tracking his rifle for a target. Suddenly the man turned toward Bolan. The laser sight of the Executioner’s weapon system put a red dot on the rifleman’s head. The silenced M-16 coughed once, and the gunman fell.

      Bolan vaulted onto the veranda, but he stopped at the door.

      Every instinct screamed danger.

      From within the hut a voice spoke in Dutch, a language Bolan had some understanding of but could not easily speak. He kept his body behind the heavy teak beam framing the doorway as he spoke slowly in English.

      “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.”