Mission To Burma

5

“We got trackers, boss.” Nyin came up puffing from the trail behind them.

Bolan took a pull from his canteen and offered it to Nyin. “How far back?”

“About three kilometers.” Nyin took a long drink and pointed back. “You should be able to see them in a minute or two when they top that rise.”

Bolan took out his binoculars and waited, giving Lily some time to breathe. Men came over the ridge just as Nyin had said. The men were small, bare chested but wearing sarongs and turbans. The men’s arms, thighs and chests were heavily tattooed. Each man carried an M-16 rifle and thrust through his sash was a short, heavy ax with a triangular blade. The hilts were tufted with masses of red-and-black hair. “Naga?”

“That’s right, Hot rod, and those good old boy. From way upcountry.” Nyin patted the hilt of his sword. “This dha, it made for war. Those axes dao, they made for taking head. You saw tails on handle?”

“I saw them.”

“Dao made for tourists? Tails made of goat hair, very long, very pretty, like tail of horse or hair of pretty girl. Hair on those axes short. Most likely human. Those men expert hunter. Expert tracker. Never tire.” Nyin’s perennial smile stayed on his face, but he shook his head. “We in trouble.”

“Can you talk to them?”

Nyin chewed his lower lip. “Don’t know. Have to get close to find out. Not sure I want to get that close. Could be unhealthy. Wrong tribe? Even adopted, I still traditional enemy.”

“What about bribing them?”

“Don’t know. I tell you this. No Naga around here friend of U Than. U Than clean out local hills for agriculture, if you know what I mean. Make lowlander do work for him. U Than not wanting any hillbilly around.”

That was interesting. “You’re saying U Than didn’t hire them?”

“Nyin saying any man U Than send up into Naga country to hire them not come back.” The Burmese eyed Bolan shrewdly. “Nyin saying that maybe whoever hire them can outbid you.”

Nyin was probably right. He had some very thick wads of bills in his money belt, but Bolan was pretty sure the People’s Republic of China could outbid him at the moment. “Then we’ll have to discourage them.”

“That something Nyin would like to see.”

“Well, you’re going to.” Bolan handed Nyin his laser range-finding binoculars. “You’re ranging me.”

“Ah!” Nyin took the optics reverently.

Bolan handed Lily his canteen. “Nyin and I are going to do some discouragement duty. Why don’t you rest here for a bit? Nyin, leave her the phone I gave you, just in case.”

Nyin handed over the phone and then rummaged through his mess bag. He pulled out the little brown medicine bottle. “Reapply.”

Lily didn’t argue. She took the canteen, phone and the medicine bottle and sat down with obvious relief. Bolan and Nyin went back down the game trail. Coming down from the escarpment, a ledge broke the rows of hardwoods marching up the hillsides. “There. They should be there in about five minutes if they keep the pace.”

Nyin grunted in agreement.

Along the trail, it was about two and half kilometers to the cliff, but from hillside to hillside it was around five hundred meters. Far out of range for most assault rifles without an optic sight. Bolan dropped into a rifleman’s squat. Nyin brought the laser range-finding binoculars to his eyes and pressed the laser designator button. Invisible to the human eye, the binoculars sent out a beam and measured precisely where it stopped. “Five hundred twenty-five meters.”

The scout rifle was not a sniper weapon. Rather it was made for rapid sharp-shooting at close to medium ranges. Nevertheless, the Austrian engineering of the rifle was precise in the extreme. It was as accurate as the man shooting it and could reach out and touch Fort Mudge if the man behind it was good enough. Bolan wrapped his rifle sling tight around his left arm and dropped his elbow to his knee, wedging himself into a solid firing platform.

Nyin spoke quietly. “I see them. They come.”

Bolan kept his eyes on the open cliff. “Give me a count.”

Nyin was quiet for a moment. “Three…two…one…”

The lead man came out across the cliff at a steady jog. Bolan’s rifle was suppressed, and to keep it quiet the bullets it fired were heavy and subsonic. The Executioner put his crosshairs on the lead Naga’s chest and then gave him three degrees of lead. Bolan took up slack on the trigger as he tracked the running man.

The rifle bucked back against the big American’s shoulder. Bolan instantly worked his bolt. In the split second it took him to chamber a fresh round, the man ran another two meters and then suddenly his head broke apart like a melon. His rifle and ax flew in two directions as his arms flapped like a ruptured pigeon. His forward momentum dropped him into an ugly sprawl onto the escarpment.

The other three Naga instantly disappeared into the trees.

Nyin whistled softly and lowered his binoculars. “I am in awe of you.”

Bolan picked up his spent brass shell and shrugged. “I was aiming for his chest.”

Nevertheless, Bolan suspected the message had been delivered. He retrieved his binoculars from Nyin and flipped on camera mode. “Get Lily moving. I’ll catch up.”

CAPTAIN DAI STARED at the headless corpse from a prudent distance. He was having a hard time believing that one man was a sniper, grenadier and an infiltrator. “Where are the Naga?”

Hwa-Che sighed. “Hiding.”

Dai searched the heavens for strength. The blue skies of Yunnan Province seemed a million miles away, and the gods of his fathers seemed to have abandoned him in this place. Naga were a warrior people, but they hardly ever engaged in open war. Headhunting was more like a lifelong, lethal game of tag, and Naga could hide for days while waiting for their prey to pass by. Or their angry employers to go away. “Tell them double pay. In gold.”

Sergeant Hwa-Che raised his voice to parade-ground decibels and shouted the words in Naga. The three remaining trackers seemed to sprout out of the forest eagerly holding out their hands. Hwa-Che grimaced in distaste and crossed the Naga’s palms with Chinese golden panda coins.

Dai turned back to his team. “Private Su!”

Private Su did not look up from scanning the opposite hillside with the powered telescope of his JS sniper rifle. “If the American is still there, he is very well hidden.”

Dai nodded. “Old Man! Give us cover and check the body for booby traps!”

Corporal “Old Man” Cao was the team’s grandfather. He was pushing field retirement and was a long veteran of China’s misbehaviors on the Vietnamese border. He did his best work with a knife and was an inveterate lurker. He was a head taller than everyone else in the team, blade thin, and assiduously cultivated his wispy mustache and beard. Cao pulled a pair of smoke grenades and hurled them out onto the escarpment. Thick white smoke began occluding the cliff and a good bit of the hillside. Cao ran out and disappeared into the smoke. He quickly came back grinning and holding up a ghoulish prize. “No traps, Captain. But I found this.” Cao handed Dai a bloody bullet. “Do you see? American .308. But heavy. Round nose rather than pointed. The American fired through a silencer. That is why we did not hear the shot.”

“And you think the enemy having a silenced sniper rifle is good news?”

“No, Captain.” Cao continued smiling. “But in a sniper battle, Private Su will outrange him by three hundred meters. Perhaps four.”

Private Su smiled without looking up from his optic. “I believe the corporal is correct, and further I do not believe the American has a real sniper rifle. It would not be appropriate to his mission. I just think he is a very good shot.”

Dai looked back and forth between his two grinning men. “And if the American is clever enough to have brought along a few full-powered shells?”

“Full-power ammunition will destroy his silencer, and lose him the one real advantage he has,” Cao concluded smugly. “Any offensive action he takes now will be a terrible choice of alternatives, all fraught with danger.”

Special forces operators were the same the world over. Even in the most regimented armies they knew they were better than everybody else, and discipline within the ranks became somewhat lax. Officers throughout China’s two-million-man army could expect blind obedience out of their soldiers. In the special forces, respect had to be earned, and rise in rank came on ability and merit far more often than party and family connections or bribery. Dai did not reprimand his men for speaking out of turn. Private Su was one of the best shots to ever come out army sniper school, and Old Man Cao was a decorated veteran whose tactical opinion was worth its weight in gold.

“Sergeant, get the Naga moving. Corporal Cao, get the men across the escarpment before the smoke thins. We have hunting to do.”

BOLAN LOWERED his binoculars. It wasn’t good. Physically, it was hard to distinguish the Chinese from the Burmese auxiliaries, but since they were on a combat mission rather than infiltrating enemy territory they displayed it in the superior air they showed their flunkies, as well as their superior armament. That they weren’t even trying to hide. They had the latest PRC and Russian equipment. Two men had backpacks with very suspicious looking, large-diameter tubes sticking up out of them. Bolan counted at least one sniper among them, and he had been debating taking the shot on the man here and now when the enemy had popped smoke and begun moving. Bolan counted a twelve-man Chinese team, backed up by Maung and another fifteen of U Than’s goons, as well the three remaining trackers.

Bolan worked his way back up the hillside and began loping down the trail. He quickly caught up with Nyin and Lily. The Taiwanese intelligence agent wasn’t limping, but she was obviously in pain. “How’re you doing?”

Lily kept her eyes on the ground ahead, keeping an eye out for rocks and trotting on soft soil. It was saving her pain, but she was also leaving very clear footprints. “I was supposed to be on a beach in Costa Rica by now.” Her green eyes lifted for a moment and stared into the middle distance. “I am told the sand is pink.”

“It is. Don’t worry, we’ll get your toes in the sand and piña colada in hand yet.”

Lily smiled wanly and returned her gaze to the trail. “The thought of it is the only thing that keeps me moving.”

Nyin was puffing along, but his smile stayed painted on. “How many?”

“Call it half a platoon. Maung and U Than’s men I could probably cut up and scatter, but the Chinese team is going to give them backbone and prop it up with hard cash. They also have light support weapons and a sniper. They outrange everything we’ve got.”

“What we do?”

“I was hoping you might have an idea.”

Nyin pointed toward a range of hills to the southeast and laid out a plan as they ran. Bolan felt a headache coming on.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad plan.

But it sure as hell wasn’t good.

And unfortunately Bolan couldn’t think of a better one.

6

Lily was clearly appalled. “This is not a good plan.” She had to draw her knees to hip height with each sucking step she took through the abandoned paddy. Normally wet-rice farmers also farmed ducks and crayfish in the same fields, and between them they kept the fields fertilized and free of pests. Leeches covered Lily’s bare legs, and the biting flies fearlessly buzzed through the blighted, overgrown rice plants and weeds and drew blood at an eye blink of inattention. Bolan had no attention to spare for the parasites.

They were literally walking through a minefield. Bolan mucked through the knee-deep swamp an inch at a time, using a five-foot pointed stick for a probe.

The problem for the Burmese military was that up in the highlands, with just a little bit of warning, rebels could melt away into the forests before an attack. However, almost all the rebels were farmers, and sooner or later they returned to their villages once the soldiers left. Like a number of governments, ruling junta had figured out there were few better ways to sow apprehension and dissension among farmers than to sow their fields with land mines. After the first few men and water buffalo lost their legs, the fields were abandoned and without a crop, so were the villages. Rebel strongholds became ghost towns, and the rebels and their families became masses of starving, migrant refugees. The Burmese army’s weapon of choice was a locally produced copy of the U.S. M-14 antipersonnel mine. It carried just enough explosive to take a man’s leg off at the knee, and was nicknamed the “toe-popper” for fairly obvious reasons.

So far, Bolan had found three of them.

Ostensibly the Burmese military kept charts of the minefields so that someday they could come and reclaim the farmland. Nyin, through various means, had acquired maps charting a number of the minefields in his area of operation. However, wet-rice farming was dependent on controlled flooding, and after a year or two without anyone manning the dykes the river had assumed its natural course.

Things had shifted a bit.

“They come soon!” Nyin stated.

Bolan moved inch by inch through the muck and worked his probe while ignoring mosquitoes the size of ballpoint pens that probed every inch of his exposed flesh and completely ignored the insect repellent he’d applied earlier.

“Soon!” Nyin grinned. His gleaming, sweaty head and bare arms seemed impervious to local insects. “Very soon!”

Bolan was trying to concentrate on the swamp in front of him. “Nyin, best for you to be quiet now.”

Nyin ignored the sage advice. “Should be one right in front of you, Sex machine. One meter or less.”

Bolan moved his stick softly through the muck like a plow until he encountered something hard. He probed the object softly. A toe-popper was about the size of a can of chewing tobacco. This one was about the size of a half-gallon can of paint. Bolan very gently touched the top and found the little fusing tower that held the three sensor pins. It was a mine known as a Bouncing Betty. When the sensor pins were disturbed, a charge in the bottom of the mine would literally make the mine jump three to four feet in the air before a pound of C-4 high explosive detonated. The prefragmented metal liner filled with steel ball bearings was lethal within five meters and would badly shred anyone within twenty-seven meters. It also had a pin in the side that could be set with a trip wire, and Bolan spent a few moments gingerly probing for it. It gave him an idea. “Give me the spare stick.”

Nyin handed him the stick, and Bolan broke it in two and carefully stuck a piece of stick against either side of the mine so that the tips just barely protruded out of the water. Bolan moved on, painstakingly clearing another fifty feet, inch by inch. After what seemed like hours, the muck reluctantly released him as he hauled himself up the embankment. He pulled up Nyin and Lily and they flopped exhausted among the weeds. Bolan grabbed his binoculars and scanned the hillside on the other side of the field. They were clear for the moment. He rose to his feet and stared at the empty huts with their gaping, empty windows and doors. “Take Lily and keep moving. I’ll catch up.”

Nyin grunted and Lily sighed as they woodenly rose and moved through the ghost village. Bolan followed them until he found a decent hide in the shadows of a pig enclosure beneath a hut. It had a nice panoramic view of the field. He lay down in the dirt with his rifle and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The enemy deployed down the hillside in a skirmish line with the Naga following Bolan and his team’s spoor as easily as bloodhounds. The Chinese had a dilemma. They did not know whether Bolan and his team had gone all the way across the field or turned midstream and followed the river. Three men, clearly soldiers, cut themselves switches and took one of the Naga into the rice field with them. Bolan and his team had tried not to break any rice stalks or reeds, but in the end it had proved impossible. The Naga stood behind the three-man probing line and directed them like a pointer.

Bolan put his crosshairs on the two sticks and waited.

When they were within ten feet of the sticks, Bolan fired. The suppressed rifle made barely any noise at all beneath the hut and none at all discernible to those wading out in the paddy. The Naga nearly jumped out of his skin as a little geyser of water shot up in the air where the bullet hit. Bolan flicked his bolt, lowered his aim an inch and fired again.

The Bouncing Betty erupted out of the water like a beheaded jack-in-the-box and detonated with a sound like a giant door slamming. There was a puff of orange fire and a spasm of smoke. The Naga tracker and the three-man mine-clearing team rippled and twisted like wheat in a high wind as hundreds of steel ball bearings passed through their bodies. The sound of the explosion echoed against the hills. The dead men sank beneath the surface of the flooded field, leaving spreading red stains in the scummy green water.

Bolan watched as one of the men across the field consulted with another. One man was clearly the Chinese officer and the other his second in command. Bolan itched for the shot, but it was long and would let everyone know he was in the village. He waited while they talked and let himself breathe a sigh of relief as the Chinese team broke into two groups, each with one of the remaining trackers, and began moving north and south down each end of the valley. They were going to go around and waste valuable time trying to pick up Bolan’s tracks again.

The big American crawled backward and kept the hut between himself and the other side of the valley. He hadn’t seen the sniper, but Bolan could feel the killer scanning for him through his scope. Bolan stopped on a little landing of the stairs that led up to the stilted hut and did a little shopping. He faded back and, when he reached the trees, he broke into a run.

It was time to do some distance.

SERGEANT HWA-CHE WAS GONE. Captain Dai couldn’t believe it. The man who had taught him everything he knew and recommended him to officer candidate school was dead in a nameless, fly-ridden rice field. It was a peasant’s death. The American had led them straight into it. It was almost inconceivable. Southeast Asia was their territory, their specialty, their turf, as the Americans would say. Dai looked down to see his hand was shaking. He had unconsciously opened it into the snake-fist formation. It shook with his need to reach into the American’s chest, rip out his beating heart and show it to him.

Old Man Cao approached Dai wearily. “We are down to two trackers.”

“I am aware of that, Corporal,” Dai replied.

“However, it is confirmed. They are a party of only three. An American soldier, the Na woman and an unidentified third party, wearing native sandals. I suspect he is a native, probably a CIA intelligence asset.”

Dai had his own sources. “I find that very hard to believe, Corporal.”

Cao wiped sweat from his brow and shrugged. “Who else could it be, Captain?”

“Who would you suspect, Old Man?”

Cao draped his weapon across his shoulder. “We are the dominant outside intelligence force in Myanmar.”

“Do you believe we are up against rogue Chinese agents?”

That was unthinkable. “Well, the Thais wield great influence as a trading partner, but we have thoroughly infiltrated their intelligence agencies.”

“So tell me, Old Man, who could this thorn in our side be?”

Corporal Cao spit the words. “Yang gui zi.”

“The foreign devil” could mean anyone unfortunate enough not to have been born Chinese, but in the old days the words referred to one nation in particular. A nation that had not just been a thorn in the side of the Middle Kingdom, but had held the knife across its throat. “Yes,” Dai agreed, “the English.”

The United Kingdom was a shadow of the mighty empire it once was, and the English lion paled in comparison to the might of the Chinese dragon, but the English were stubborn and meddlesome. They still had one of the best intelligence agencies in the world and, most importantly, were a staunch ally of the United States.

Dai gazed at Cao steadily. “And?”

Cao turned his gaze northward. “And I believe any assets the English have here in the north would be local and involved in drug interdiction. I suspect the Americans have called in a favor.”

“Very good. I am promoting you to acting sergeant, promotion to be confirmed by the battalion commander upon our successful return to Beijing.” Cao beamed delightedly. Dai made an effort to scowl. “Now give me the rest of your report and wipe that stupid smile off of your face. You look like a peasant.”

Cao snapped to attention. “The trackers have relocated their trail. The shooter was the American. He took a firing position beneath one of the huts and stayed to hold us off while the other two ran.”

Dai had suspected that, but he’d had to check the entire circumference of the fields regardless. The American had known that, too, and he would be using it to put distance between them. Dai’s snake-hand formation closed into a white-knuckled fist. He would take Lily Na while his men cheered him on. The Burmese bastard that was helping her would die staked out over a fire. As for the American…Dai snarled over his shoulder, “Corporal Khoay-Peng!”

Khoay-Peng snapped to attention. “Yes, Captain!”

“Do you have your needles with you?”

“Yes, Captain!” Corporal Khoay-Peng was the team medic, and an accomplished acupuncturist in both the little-and big-needle style. With skillful application he could relieve headaches, unlock muscles in spasm and cure any number of maladies. He knew the nerve meridians and energy channels of the body like the back of his hand. Khoay-Peng was also a master of the poison-needle tradition. The same skills that could bring the sick and injured back to health could also plunge a human being into an agonizing hell where they would regurgitate any knowledge they had to make the horror end. Dai had read after-action debriefings where the victims had likened the pain to having their living nerves drawn from their body and pulled through heated sand.