Serpent's Lair

Bolan knew he could have been worse off, but even so, this wasn’t a good situation. He desperately wanted to get hold of a larger weapon, like an M-16, something that had the necessary punch to knock out large groups of enemies.

As it was, he was left with his best weapon. His mind.

Honey stopped abruptly, and Bolan dropped to one knee, checking on their pursuers. They were still about fifty yards behind in the forest, barely visible. He glanced at the girl. She was staring at the top of a hill up ahead.

“More bad guys?” she whispered.

Bolan took in the scene. A man was jammed into a tree, and three men with knives stood around him. His shirt was a gory mess, and his face a crimson mask of dried blood. The trio was laughing as it was doing its ghastly butcher’s work. Bolan frowned.

“They might be with that man who grabbed you back in the clearing,” Bolan noted.

Honey looked at him. “You think?”

The Executioner almost smirked. “If I can get the jump on them, I might be able to pick up some spare firepower.”

“That would be a good thing,” Honey said. The prospect of violence played across her face with a displeasure that Bolan knew all too well. It mirrored his own feelings. Violence was the last resort, but in Bolan’s world, he was already called in when that point had been looted, pillaged and burned to the ground.

“Stay close behind me,” Bolan whispered. He dropped his branch and swung around, making his way up the side of the rise. He looked back and saw that no one had spotted the outlines of the two black-clad people as they climbed toward the quartet near the killing tree.

As they closed in, the coppery smell of blood threatened to make Honey gag. She held it down, though. Bolan was inured to such scents.

He drew his Walther from its holster and leveled the front sight at the man nearest the victim pinned on the tree. The tortured man looked up, his dark eyes glassy, his face blood-spattered, but he didn’t give away the Executioner’s presence.

A single shot puffed out from the Walther. It smashed into the back of the first torturer’s head and blew open the skull. Chunks of brain matter and blood rained in a halo around the knife-wielding maniac before his body tumbled to the ground.

The other two men spun. One was in the middle of lighting his cigarette, a machete tucked under one armpit. The other man glanced at the weapons they had rested against the side of a log, stocks in the dirt, barrels pointing into the sky.

Bolan swung the Walther at the gunman who was looking at the guns. A bullet crossed the distance between them before he could dive and scoop up a sawed-off shotgun resting against the fallen tree trunk. It struck the gunman just above his clavicle, and tore out a messy chunk of throat. Blood exploded from the shotgunner’s mouth and he collapsed against the line of weapons, his body covering them.

Bolan turned his attention to the machete-wielding cigarette smoker. He’d abandoned his efforts to light his smoke and brought his blade out from under his armpit in a single, fluid movement. The tip of the blade connected with the end of the Walther’s sound suppressor after a rapid lunge and redirected the next 9 mm slug into the sky.

The Executioner let the Walther swing to the wayside and freed his left hand from its support position in his shooting grip. He speared the machete-wielding torturer in the stomach with a swift punch, then slammed the steel frame of the Walther hard against the sadist’s cheek. Skin split and bone cracked under the powerful impact, and the man fell backward, stunned.

Bolan swept his leg around and hooked the man’s ankle. Another hard left hand snapped into the killer’s chest with a hollow thump, and the man tumbled, crashing to the forest floor. The machete man snarled and kicked Bolan hard in the knee before the Executioner could aim his Walther at the downed man. A 9mm bullet dug up dirt and leaves next to the blademan’s head before Bolan fell to the ground next to his foe.

The man swung his machete around, but Bolan caught his wrist, squeezing hard to grind the forearm bones and wrist cartilage together. The Japanese man screamed and let go of the blade. Bolan lurched to one knee and rapped the killer hard across the jaw with the butt of his pistol. Bone crunched on impact, and the blademan went still.

The Executioner panted, the brief battle accentuating the amount of energy he’d burned in the past half hour without rest. The relentless pace was draining his reserves of strength. He glanced over Honey. “Check their shoe sizes against yours.”

Honey gawked at him. “You’re shitting me, right?”

“You need to protect your feet, so just put some shoes on.”

Honey glared at Bolan, then bent to get the shoes.

He got up, took an M-16-like rifle and walked over to the man on the tree.

“Can you speak English?” Bolan asked in his halting Japanese.

“Hai, a little,” the wounded man said. His voice came out as a hoarse croak, and his eyes were heavily lidded.

“What’s going on here?” Bolan asked. “Who were these men?”

“These are the men of the Burakku Uwibami Clan. They are a cult—” He coughed up some blood. “I appear to be dying…”

Bolan took his knife out and cut the man’s bonds. “You’re not going to die.”

The man looked him over and smiled. He slumped against Bolan, his blood spattering across the Executioner’s clothes.

“Who are you?” Bolan asked.

“My name is Chiba. I am with Koancho.”

Bolan nodded. The Japanese Public Security Investigation Agency was a top secret counterintelligence agency. Very little was known about them, but they handled investigations both inside and outside of the country. If Koancho was involved, Bolan knew, the cult clan was a possible world-class threat.

Chiba continued. “The cult…has been developing a new germ warfare weapon. If it succeeds…”

He coughed again, there was a rattling sound in his chest. “You must stop Zakoji.”

Bolan looked down the hill. He, Chiba and Honey were behind the tree and out of sight of the Yakuza and mercenaries hunting them, but it wouldn’t take long for them to come up the hill.

“Zakoji claims that his ancestor was first defeated by an executioner in black. He claimed that someday, they would meet again, and the blood of that executioner’s reincarnation would redden the ground at his feet…”

Chiba’s eyes glazed over. “That is why he was bleeding me… He thought… I was…the executioner…”

The Koancho agent’s lips stilled, his eyes staring sightlessly from a lifeless face. Stunned, Bolan closed Chiba’s eyelids and laid him on the ground.

“Why was he talking about executioners?” Honey asked.

Bolan didn’t say a word.

The flash of a laser sight suddenly crossed his shoulder.

HOGAN PAUSED, holding his receiver a little tighter.

“This is Higgins. We’ve got activity at the tree line. There seems to be more than just Cooper in these woods,” the mercenary said.

“Are they together or what?” Hogan asked.

“Seemed like there was a scuffle at the top of the ridge. I’m not sure, but maybe silenced gunfire.”

“Take out Cooper, but don’t harm the girl. If she bolts, put a bullet in her arm or leg. Nothing fatal,” Hogan ordered.

He looked at Machida, who stared on, his face unreadable. “Do you have a problem with shooting the girl?” Hogan asked.

“It does not matter. I am not on the scene to take the shot,” Machida replied.

“Nobody likes a smart-ass,” Hogan grumbled.

“I will keep that in mind.”

Hogan was about to growl when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Branches shifted slightly, but not in the direction of the breeze. He turned and swung up his spare machine pistol. “Indian country!”

The mercenaries around him understood the two-word shorthand for ambush. The Yakuza gunmen in the clearing with them needed only to see Hogan’s people dive for cover to react. Machida’s and Hogan’s forces crouched, aiming outward around the clearing.

Hogan directed the first gunfire. He blasted away with a borrowed machine pistol and swept the area of tree line that had moved out of sync. A gunman grunted and stumbled into view, but he wasn’t killed by the initial blast. The ambusher’s weapon spoke, chopping off a mercenary at the knees, then walked a blast of gunfire up into the stomach of a Yakuza gunman.

The raider’s victory was short-lived, however. Mercenary and mobster alike lit him up with their weaponry, focusing the arc of their fire on the woods around him in a blasting firestorm of activity. Hogan ducked behind the limousine as more incoming gunfire chopped its side panels apart. Machida was right at Hogan’s heels, returning fire with his two Berettas even though he couldn’t see anything.

“Cease-fire! Cease-fire!” Hogan called out.

Mercenaries and Yakuza gunmen dragged their injured and dying companions to cover behind the parked convoy of vehicles in the clearing. Moans of the wounded resonated to drown out the ringing in Hogan’s ears that resulted from the firestorm of automatic weapons cutting the air.

Hogan reloaded his weapon and looked around. He didn’t dare call out to confirm the condition of his men. Betraying the status of their remaining forces would leave them open for any attackers to move in and finish them off. He didn’t know how many were striking from the woods, but he wasn’t going down so easily.

Machida was reloading his two pistols. “It seems the old man had friends in this area,” he said softly. “And they are well-armed.”

“No kidding,” Hogan snarled. “Is there a reason for you to tell me the obvious?”

“It is a more productive use of nervous energy than screaming in fear,” the Yakuza man replied. He stuffed one Beretta into its holster, keeping the other out. His free hand dived immediately for his cell phone, and he hit the speed dial.

“What are you doing?” Hogan asked.

“I am calling for my backup. You call for yours. We’re not leaving without our intended trade,” Machida answered. “Or else.”

“Or else what?”

Machida’s silent stare was more effective than any boast. His calm face housed eyes full of black clouds of fury.

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