with a double attack. Both short swords snapped over his head, then descended at forty-five-degree angles from opposite directions toward the sides of Bolan’s neck.
The Executioner brought his machete up on one side, the baston on the other. The ping of steel against steel and the thud of steel against wood sounded simultaneously as he blocked both barongs. Taking a half step into the man in the vest, Bolan jammed the end of his stick between the eyes. By the time the villager hit the ground, his eyes had fluttered closed.
Glancing to his side, the Executioner saw that Latham had engaged his man and now blocked the wavy blade of a kris. Perhaps the most common of all the edged weapons of the Philippines, the twisting, snakelike double-edged blade could produce devastating wounds either cutting or thrusting. It was the latter tactic the villager chose now, and as Bolan moved on toward the front of the house he watched the Rio Hondan shove the serpentine weapon straight forward from his shoulder.
Latham stepped to the side and deftly guided the thrust past his body with his machete. His homemade baston came around in an arc to strike the villager on the temple.
The Executioner had just reached the front of the house when a Rio Hondan wearing what had originally been a white T-shirt stepped into his path from hiding. Countless washings in the brown waters of Mindanao streams had turned the shirt a dingy beige and the neck had been stretched out so far one side fell over his shoulder. The man carried a bolo knife in his right hand and he now brought it around in a sidearm assault.
Bolan blocked with the baston, stepped in and slapped the flat side of the machete against the man’s cheek. A loud pop broke the night but did little more than stun the villager. The soldier knew that the force of the blow had been distributed over too large an area to do serious injury and had hoped the pain would provide compliance. Unfortunately it seemed only to infuriate the man further and he brought the bolo back to strike again.
The Executioner brought his baston down and around, arcing it upward into his adversary’s ribs. He pulled the machete back again, altered his grip slightly, then struck again with the thinner backside of the blade.
The blow caught the man on the side of the neck, shocking the artery running up to his brain and cutting off the oxygen. The villager fell like a steer under a slaughterhouse hammer.
For a split second the front yard, the roadway and the area around the stilt houses seemed deserted. Then what might have been the hordes of Genghis Khan seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Bolan sprinted across the yard toward the road, downing another man wearing a headband with his baston, one more with the blunt edge of the machete. A huge panabas—a cross between a sword and ax—flashed through the air toward his head. The weapon was too heavy to block with either baston or machete, so the Executioner brought them both up together. An almost paralyzing electric shock ran from his weapons down his forearms as the panabas made contact. It stopped in midair, the attacker feeling the shock even more than the Executioner. He showed his surprise with the whites of his widened eyes.
Bolan recovered first. Lifting his stick up over his head, he brought it down hard onto the man’s collarbone. A sickening snap met his ears as wood splintered bone. The panabas, and the man who had wielded it, tumbled forward to the ground.
The Executioner saw Latham trading blows with an unusually large Filipino armed with a pair of golok swords. Used for centuries by the Moros for jungle warfare, the man who now flailed with them had been trained well. He had taken the offensive, swinging hard and fast with both blades, giving the appearance of twin airplane propellers flashing through the air. Latham blocked, then blocked again. Then again and again and again. But he was a half beat behind the man, which kept him on the defense, unable to launch a counterattack.
Bolan knew that blocking only was the road to an early death. Latham was good. But no matter how good a man was, sooner or later, he missed a block.
Stepping in to the side, the Executioner brought the blunt edge of the machete around in an arc against the back of the big Filipino’s neck. The Rio Hondan dropped to his knees, then fell forward onto his face, unconscious. Latham’s chest heaved in and out with exertion, but he had the strength to bring his machete up to his forehead in a smiling salute to the Executioner.
Bolan turned back to the road and another villager stepped in to face him. For a split second the man looked as if he held a Fourth of July sparkler in each hand. Then, as the flashing steel took better shape, the Executioner again recognized a matched pair of bright stainless steel balisongs. The villager appeared even more skilled in their use than the punk in Zamboanga from whom Bolan had appropriated the Buick.
Spreading and closing the wings of the butterfly knives, then spreading and closing them again, the Rio Hondan made the twin blades dance a graceful ballet through the air. And as they danced they also sang, clicking, clacking and whirring in the night and sending shafts of moonlight reflecting off their surfaces in a colorful prism of death. But the balisong expert made one fatal mistake. He took too much time showing off.
The Executioner stepped in and swung the baston overhead like a tennis racket, cracking it down first on the man’s right wrist, then on his left. Both balisongs dropped to the ground. The man’s lower lip dropped open almost that far in surprise. Bolan’s third strike with the baston left the man lying on top of his fallen knives.
In the middle of the asphalt roadway now, the soldier was halted by three men. Each carried a klewang and each held the straight, single-edge blade with the widened point up and ready. But they had seen the unconscious men in the Executioner’s wake and it had curbed some of their enthusiasm for battle. Each hesitated to be the next to hit the ground.
Bolan took advantage of their indecisiveness to initiate his own attack. Faking an overhand strike with the baston, he waited until the man’s klewang came up to block, then cut the feint short, drawing it slightly back toward him before jabbing the blunt end into the man’s face. The Executioner heard the crack of bone as the villager’s nose broke. A half second later he brought the blunt edge of the machete straight up between the man’s legs.
The villager had grunted with the broken nose. Now he screeched from the groin strike. As he bent in agony, the Executioner struck downward with the butt end of the stick, which extended below his fist. The short stub of wood cracked into the back of the man’s skull. A punyo—the Filipinos called the technique—worked just as well on them as for them, ending the attacker’s sounds of torment and sending him to sleep on the asphalt of the highway.
Turning his attention to the side, Bolan noticed that Latham had stepped up even with him to engage one of the two remaining attackers. As the Executioner feinted again with his baston, he saw the Texan crack his man across the jaw with the backside of his machete. Although it didn’t break the skin, the long, thin striking area left an ugly red stripe across the top of the crumbled bone.
The third man had watched the men on both sides of him fall to the strangers and the sight brought out a desperate panic. With a shriek of terror, he abandoned all training he might have had and began to swing his klewang wildly back and forth.
Bolan had only to time the swings, then step in as the blade went past him. In one smooth motion he trapped the sword with his machete and, with the other hand, brought the baston down at a forty-five-degree angle against the frightened man’s temple.
Although he could still hear townsmen running toward him in the darkness, there was no immediate threat. The Executioner took advantage of the break in the action to sprint across the asphalt to the sandy shore beneath the stilt houses. Behind him, he could hear Latham’s feet beating the sand as he followed. “I’m…with you,” the Texan panted.
The Executioner took the steps of Subing’s house three
