too.” Bolan nodded at his handiwork. “Silk, twice the tensile strength of steel.” He stuffed the rest of the shredded dress into his knapsack. There might be more uses for it yet. Bolan held out his hand. “Let’s get you up.” He pulled the woman up. She took a few gingerly steps and then rose up on her toes several times like a ballerina.
“I can walk.”
“Good.” Bolan checked his GPS. They hadn’t established much distance from U Than’s place, and he suspected all too soon Lily was going to have to run.
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
