Mission To Burma. Don Pendleton
after a group of men passed by. The men weren’t wearing uniforms and wore a hodgepodge of Western and traditional highland clothing. They also carried a collection of weapons from the latest assault rifles to World War II relics. All carried one or more blades. They were sweeping the forest trails and keeping a wary eye on the forest itself. Traditionally it was where danger came from. They were right to be wary. This night Mack Bolan crouched among the giant ferns, and the forest had never been more dangerous.
Bolan and Nyin moved out and quickly came to a river. They dropped low by its banks and observed. A village huddled on either side of the river. The lights in the village were all out. On a low hill above the village sat what could only be described as a fortress. The main house was low, sprawling and made of heavy wooden beams and roofed with tile. A number of similarly constructed smaller outbuildings squatted around it like satellites. A bamboo palisade topped with razor wire surrounded the entire complex, and a twenty-foot-tall guard tower that had a good vantage on the village below completed security.
Bolan was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he asked anyway. “What is this place?”
Nyin pointed toward the collection of huts huddling together by the river. “That is Ta village.” He peered unhappily at the fortress on the hill. “That is house of U Than.” Nyin chewed on his lip pensively. He seemed to know the answer, but asked anyway, as well. “You have located girl?”
Bolan nodded as he stared at his screen and noted the distance between himself and the transponder signal. He looked up at the house of U Than. “She’s in there.”
3
The village was in lockdown. U Than’s place was lit up like a Christmas tree, but the village was dark and nothing moved. The only activity was a pair of armed men who stood on the little bamboo pier smoking cigarettes, clearly bored with guard duty.
Bolan and Nyin made their approach through the tiny, muddy lanes between the huts. Most of the huts were up on low stilts, and beneath them pigs grunted in their pens and an occasional chicken squawked. In the distance, a water buffalo lowed in its enclosure. Bolan and Nyin moved past canoes up on racks and fishing nets hanging to dry from posts.
At five yards Bolan drew his blades.
He lunged as one of the sentries turned to spit betel juice into the river. The man went limp as the tomahawk head crunched into the top of his skull. The second sentry’s cigarette sagged in his mouth in shock. Before he could do anything other than stare, Nyin’s dha flashed from its sheath with alacrity that would have given a Japanese samurai pause. The sentry’s head came a few tendons short from flying off his neck. Bolan thought rumors about Nyin doing some headhunting with the Naga tribes might not be entirely scurrilous. Bone splintered as Bolan retrieved his tomahawk. Nyin took a moment to relieve the dead gangsters of their money, betel and cigarettes, and then he and Bolan slid the two corpses into the river and washed the blood from their blades. Nyin shoved a leaf-wrapped quid of betel into his mouth and offered the pouch to Bolan.
The soldier shook his head. “I’m trying to give it up.”
Nyin grinned and resheathed his blade. “Well, we have conquered Ta village.”
So they had. “Fort U Than may be a little harder.”
“Maybe,” Nyin agreed.
Bolan climbed to the top of the open, A-frame canoe shelter and turned his binoculars on U Than’s domicile. Nyin perched next to him and pulled out his own binoculars. Bolan scanned the grounds and stopped as he came to the wide porch leading to the main house. Most Burmese barely cracked five feet tall, and most of the guards’ assault rifles seemed almost as large as they were. The four men up on the porch were all pushing six feet, were heavily tattooed and had the physiques of gladiators. “Those men on the porch. U Than’s personal bodyguard?”
“Mmm,” Nyin grunted. “Thai kickboxers. Leg breakers. Bad men.”
U Than seemed to be recruiting from the heavyweight division. An even larger man came out on the porch. His head was shaved, and his ears were cauliflowered masses hanging from his head. The man’s eyebrows appeared to be mostly scar tissue. He appeared to be several inches taller than Bolan and perhaps half again as heavy. Thrust in his sash was a Colt .45, and the hilt of a dha twice as large as Nyin’s stuck up over his left shoulder. “Who’s the gorilla?”
“That is Maung. Very bad man.”
Maung gave off the unmistakable air of command. “U Than’s number two?”
“Yes.”
Bolan sighed. “Rescue missions…”
Nyin cocked his head. “What?”
“Nothing.” Bolan put away his binoculars and slid off the roof of the canoe shed. “Let’s do this.”
“How?” Nyin hopped down. “Place locked up tight.”
Bolan glanced at the dark, dappled waters of the river. It flowed down around the hill, and U Than had some canoes and speedboats tied up on a bamboo pier of his own. “Can you swim?”
“No.” Nyin stared at the river in horror. “And there are crocodiles.”
Bolan glanced behind him at the village canoes. The men in the guard tower would undoubtedly see them long before they got to the pier. “I guess we do it the hard way.”
“You will want a diversion.”
Bolan smiled. “Yeah, I’m gonna want a diversion. You know what to do with an M-203?”
Nyin was a small man with teeth that belonged in the mouth of a horse rather than a human, and he showed them. “As private, I was grenadier in my squad.”
“Good.” Bolan handed Nyin his rifle and pulled three grenades from his bandolier. “This one is offensive, high explosive, big boom. When I give you the signal, I’m going to want you to lob it into the compound. That’s when I’ll use flexible charge to cut through the palisade. The second one is tear gas, which will keep everyone occupied and intrigued while I make my insertion into the big house. Number three is white phosphorus. When I send you the signal, I want you to light up U Than’s cottage like a torch.”
Nyin’s smile threatened to give away their position. “I light ’em up good!”
“I’ll be coming out fast. Plan A is that I steal a speedboat and pick you up. Failing that, I want you to put a Willy Pete into U Than’s boat dock, and I’ll meet you back on the promontory where we first met. If it goes to hell, just get out. You have a cell phone?”
“Yes. Unfortunately battery is low.”
Bolan pulled a phone from his web gear. “Take mine.” Bolan tapped the motherboard strapped to his forearm. “I can call you with this. Give me thirty minutes to get to the far side of the palisade.”
Nyin put a hand on Bolan’s shoulder. “It is not a bad plan. I am honored to fight with you.”
Bolan clapped him on the shoulder. “You just keep your head up, your ass down and your eyes open. Like I said, I’ll be coming back fast.”
“I will await your signal.”
Bolan moved back through the village lanes. He could hear people murmuring within the huts, but no one opened a shutter or peered down. The Ta villagers had long ago learned not to be too curious about what went on in their valley late at night. Bolan jogged back into the rain forest and took a game trail that circled wide around U Than’s castle. Once again, he had to pull a fade into the towering hardwoods as a patrol of gangsters came by. The good news was they were patrolling the wrong way. Bolan moved around to the back of the compound. He cut a length of flexible charge from his knapsack and a hoop just big enough to crawl through. He exposed the adhesive strip, pushed in a detonator pin and pressed the hoop into the bamboo. Bolan threaded a suppressor tube onto the muzzle of his machine pistol and text-messaged Nyin.
“Do it.”
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