reached both hands into his sash and withdrew two Javanese kris. The sinuous handles of the daggers were carved into the shapes of dragons. The mob moaned expectantly as he reversed the twelve-inch undulating blades in his hands. His eyes glazed over as he aimed the quicksilver weapons at his chest. Sweat streamed down his torso in rivers. Spittle flew as he let out a horrific groan. It was matched by the captive woman’s scream of horror as he stabbed both blades into his own chest.
The crowd roared.
Roughly forty people formed a circle around the fire. Regog and Al-Juwanyi sat on raised divans. A half-dozen men sat cross-legged in the sand at their feet pounding drums and cymbals. The rest of the gathering stood swaying to the music and chanting. All carried bladed weapons, and most also clutched rifles, pistols, or submachine guns. Many in the throng were working themselves into a trance like that of the dancer. They called out wordlessly as the dancer stabbed himself again. The blades stuck between his ribs, and he yanked them forth with a howl.
No blood ran down the dancer’s sides.
A man in a trance was said to be unstoppable. Bolan had faced opponents armed with mystical powers on more than one occasion. Around the globe, martial artists and mystics used rigorous training, ritual and special breathing techniques to manipulate their personal energy and aspects of the autonomous nervous system that were on autopilot in most humans. Such people were capable of almost inhuman feats. But most mystical fighting had been rendered obsolete in a modern world of high-capacity automatic rifles and helicopter gunships. Bolan did not believe in magic, but he had long ago learned not to sneer at sorcerers.
Facing such opponents made his one-man rescue operation just a little more nightmarish.
Bolan considered the M-16 he held. If he opened up with his rifle, the mob would blindly, suicidally rush him and he would fall beneath their knives before he managed to empty his magazine, much less reload. However, Bolan had other ideas.
The dancer turned on Ryssemus. She screamed as the man raised his knives overhead like ice picks.
Bolan reached beneath his rifle and slipped his finger around the trigger of the FN 303 Less Lethal Launcher mounted under the forestock. He flicked off the safety, and his thumb pressed down. The laser sight came to life and put a red spot on the knife-wielding dancer’s chest.
It was time to see exactly how much control of his autonomous nervous system the dancer really had.
The FN 303 was a glorified paint-ball gun that fired fin-stabilized .68-caliber projectiles. They hit the target like a fist, and breaking on contact to prevent penetration injuries. They were unlikely to stop a highly trained martial artist, much less one in self-induced trance.
But Bolan’s rounds had been custom loaded to rather unique specifications.
The Executioner squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession. The sound of the compressed air launcher was lost in the roar of the chanting and the drums. The dancer stopped at the impacts but did not fall. For a second his glazed eyes narrowed as he searched the crowd for his attacker.
No one in the mob even noticed.
But the chanting faltered as the dancer’s legs suddenly wobbled and his knives fell from his hands. The music subsided as the dancer staggered. He took three rapid steps toward his master, then fell clutching his belly. Shouts of indignation replaced the music and chanting as the dancer vomited all over the pandekar.
Bolan’s projectiles were rear-loaded with Adamsite.
Adamsite had another more colloquial nickname. It was known as vomit gas.
The dancer collapsed in the pandekar’s lap, convulsing violently.
Bolan began squeezing the trigger of the launcher repeatedly as he moved the laser sight from target to target. The projectiles carried only small loads of the irritant, but as the stunned Javanese milled and tried to help one another, the effects spread like wildfire. The soldier swiftly loaded another 15-round cassette of projectiles and resumed firing. Total surprise had been achieved. The entire mob was down or in the process of falling prey to the Adamsite.
Famke Ryssemus screamed and strained against her bonds. She was seemingly surrounded by a ten-foot halo in the sand. Everyone outside the circle Bolan had drawn lay in their own personal, intestinal hell, part of the greater sea of writhing fanatics. But Bolan could not hold off an army with Adamsite. He had to get in and get out. There were others on the island, and it was only a matter of seconds before the situation would turn deadly.
Bolan pulled on his gas mask and strode out of the trees.
A screaming man staggered into Bolan’s path brandishing a razor sharp panga. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he raised the heavy knife over his head. The soldier put a .68-caliber projectile point-blank into the side of the man’s neck, and he collapsed unconscious on the sand.
Bolan moved into the circle.
He turned and scooped up a fallen knife. Ryssemus screamed and then collapsed into his arms as he cut her bonds. The soldier leaned toward her ear and shouted through his gas mask. “Close your eyes! Hold your breath!” He lifted her over his shoulder and picked his way back through the heaving throng in the sand. He cleared the gas area and yanked up his mask as he set the woman down.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She swayed on her feet. Her beautiful blue eyes were as wide as dinner plates. She looked at Bolan like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. “I…”
“Where’s your uncle?”
“My uncle?” Miss Ryssemus jolted into awareness. “They tortured him! Oh, my God! He’s still in the big hut!”
Bolan took the woman’s wrist and pulled her into the trees outside the semicircle of huts. She stared in dull horror as he drew his Beretta 93-R and shoved it into her hands. “Stay here,” Bolan said as he flicked the selector to semiauto. “Hold the gun in both hands. Point it and pull the trigger on anyone besides me or your uncle. I’ll be right back.”
Bolan shoved her down into the bushes and ran through the trees. He skirted the outer perimeter of the horseshoe-shaped village and made for the rear of the biggest hut, which was built on a raised platform of logs. The beams of the structure were solid, but the walls were made of densely woven lengths of split bamboo. Three men with rifles spilled out of the hut and ran down the steps toward the fallen mob. Bolan stayed in the shadows. He crept around the building and stopped at the edge of the veranda.
A man stood with his rifle shouldered, watching the other men run to the circle of writhing bodies. Bolan watched, as well. The men ran and knelt beside their stricken comrades. Within seconds they were doubled over, contorting with nausea.
The man on the veranda stayed put, tracking his rifle for a target. Suddenly the man turned toward Bolan. The laser sight of the Executioner’s weapon system put a red dot on the rifleman’s head. The silenced M-16 coughed once, and the gunman fell.
Bolan vaulted onto the veranda, but he stopped at the door.
Every instinct screamed danger.
From within the hut a voice spoke in Dutch, a language Bolan had some understanding of but could not easily speak. He kept his body behind the heavy teak beam framing the doorway as he spoke slowly in English.
“Let Pieter Ryssemus
