Pressure Point. Don Pendleton

glanced up and saw one of the gunships bank slightly as it drifted close to him, so close that he could see the pilot, an olive-skinned Indonesian. The pilot brought the chopper to within twenty feet of the precipice and then hovered in place, its rotors whirring within a few yards of Bolan’s head. The vibration of the rotor wash nearly wrested him from the cliff, and for a moment he wondered if perhaps the Lashkar Jihad had somehow managed to seize the gunship. Then, as he glanced up, he realized that the updraft of the rotor wash was diverting the toxic cloud away from him. The cloud itself was dissipating, as well.

      After a few seconds, the Black Hawk pulled away, its mission accomplished. Bolan’s eyes still burned, but the cloud had all but vanished.

      The chopper drifted up over the roadway, directing its mounted guns at the sniper positions in the mountains. The second gunship came into view and hovered directly above Bolan, the sound of its rotors echoing off the cliff walls. As the soldier watched, a rope ladder began to inch out the side door. Once the ladder was fully extended, a figure emerged and began to slowly lower himself down the rungs. The man was dressed head-to-toe in HAZMAT gear and carried an extra mask similar to the one Bolan had shed.

      The strength in Bolan’s arms was fading. When he tried putting more weight on the tree below him, the trunk began to snap, forcing him to hold tighter to the limb above. His fingers were going numb. He was running out of time.

      “Hang tight, Striker!”

      Bolan looked up. The man dangling at the bottom of the rope ladder, arm extended toward him, was his longtime colleague John Kissinger. Though officially on the Stony Man payroll as its resident weaponsmith, Kissinger was no stranger to the battlefield. He’d fought at Bolan’s side several times and had been on assignment in Islamabad with Bolan and Grimaldi when they’d received the directive to fly to Indonesia.

      “How about a lift?” he shouted to Bolan above the din of the rotors.

      “If you insist,” Bolan shouted back.

      Once Kissinger was within reach, Bolan freed one hand and quickly transferred his grip to the other man’s wrist. Kissinger responded in kind. When the tree below finally gave way, Kissinger quickly pulled his comrade toward him. With his other hand, Bolan snatched at the ladder. Once his fingers closed around one of the rungs, he swung his right leg up, groping for a foothold.

      “Almost there,” Kissinger assured him.

      Bolan finally planted his foot on the bottom rung. He let go of Kissinger and grabbed hold of the ladder with both hands. On Kissinger’s signal, the chopper began to pull away from the precipice.

      “Nice timing,” Bolan told him once he’d caught his breath.

      “Always glad to lend a hand,” Kissinger responded. “But in the future maybe you might want to leave the wall-climbing to Spider-Man.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Jack Grimaldi was already pulling the Black Hawk out of the ravine by the time Bolan followed Kissinger into the passenger compartment. He called out a quick greeting without taking his eyes off the controls, then added, “Looks like somebody tipped off the Lashkar about the surprise party, eh?”

      “Something like that,” Bolan replied, coughing slightly. His eyes were still burning. He coughed again, this time with more force. Kissinger, who’d grabbed an M-16 and positioned himself near the open doorway alongside another armed man in camou fatigues, glanced over his shoulder.

      “You okay, Striker?”

      Bolan nodded. “Yeah. I just caught a little whiff of that fog.”

      “We better get you checked out.”

      “I’ll be fine,” Bolan insisted. He was blinking harder now, however, and his eyes were reddening. Yet another cough shook through him.

      “Fine, my ass.” Kissinger turned to the man next to him. “Rocky, grab that med kit and help him out.”

      Although his nickname conjured up images of some towering brute straight out of the boxing ring, Raki Mochtar was, in fact, six inches shorter than either Bolan or Kissinger and weighed barely 150 pounds in full uniform. This was his first field assignment for Stony Man after two years of service with the Farm’s Virginia security detail. He’d had medical training during his stint with the Marines, but it was his family background that had earned him this, his long-sought chance to see action beyond the parameters of the Farm’s compound in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The grandson of Jakarta shopkeepers killed during a demonstration against Sukarno in the late l960s, Mochtar had visited Indonesia numerous times over the past twenty years and was as familiar with the country’s various languages and dialects as he was with its geography and culture. When asked to fly out and rendezvous with Bolan and the other covert ops in Samarinda, the thirty-year-old Mochtar jumped at the opportunity. And now, less than two hours later, here he was in the thick of things. He was eager to make the most of it.

      “I’ll see what’s here,” he told Bolan, unlatching a large footlocker strapped to the cabin floor, “but if you’ve been exposed, you really need to go through a full decontamination. There’s probably a setup at the storage site, so—”

      “Decon’s going to have to wait,” Bolan interrupted. “We’re in the middle of a firefight here, dammit!”

      “But I’m telling you,” Mochtar persisted, “in a case of exposure, it’s vital to make sure you’ve washed off any traces of contaminants before they have a chance to work their way into—”

      “Here,” Bolan interjected again, coughing as he reached past the younger soldier for a pair of surgical scissors and an intravenous bag filled with saline solution. “Let’s improvise, all right?”

      Bolan shouted for Grimaldi to hold the chopper steady, then slit the top of the IV bag. Holding it high over his head, he craned his neck and quickly spilled the entire contents over his face. The saline stung his eyes but brought immediate relief. He coughed again, then cast the bag aside and told Mochtar, “Now grab some kind of antiseptic and pour it over my hands.”

      Mochtar fumbled through the footlocker and uncapped a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Not wanting another reprimand, he fought back an urge to tell Bolan he ought to get out of his HAZMAT suit. Instead, he followed orders and drained the bottle as Bolan rubbed his hands in its flow.

      Once he was finished, Bolan grabbed a roll of gauze. As he wiped his hands dry, he told Mochtar, “I didn’t mean to chew you out like that.”

      “Not a problem,” Mochtar said. He reached into the footlocker once more, then handed Bolan a small oxygen canister rigged to a lower face mask. “This might help with that cough.”

      Bolan grinned at Mochtar. “You catch on fast.”

      “I’m trying,” the rookie replied. “You were right. I guess at times like this you can’t worry about going by the book.”

      Bolan pressed the mask to his face and opened the canister’s feed line. He was filling his lungs with pure oxygen when the cabin resonated with the staccato blasting of Kissinger’s M-16. Grimaldi had pulled up over the mountain and Kissinger was firing at snipers perched high above the roadway.

      The Executioner moved closer to the open doorway and glanced over Kissinger’s shoulder. He saw two snipers wearing the long white robes that were a trademark for the Lashkar Jihad, ducking for cover among the rocks. They were under fire not only from Kissinger, but also from the other Black Hawk. At the base of the mountain, clouds of black smoke snaked up from the bombed-out remains of the Bio-Tain delivery truck’s front cab, while ruptured containers in the rear hold continued to release clouds of toxic vapor. A handful of bodies were scattered about the roadway near the truck, some felled by the gas, others during the exchange of gunfire. Sergeant Latek and another KOPASSUS commando were crouched near a remaining section of guardrail, flanking Major Salim. Latek was firing into the mountains while the other attended to their fallen commander. Apparently Salim was still alive.

      Bolan