aren’t supposed to be sampling the merchandise,” Bolan mentioned.
“It’s not like the Koreans are going to know anything’s missing. Most of these girls are professionals, so it’s not like the clients are going to expect virgins,” the guard responded.
Bolan shrugged. “Yeah. Well, when the North Korean military brass end up with the clap, you can explain that to Kim Jong-il.”
The chatty guard stepped closer to the doorway. “What?”
Bolan sighed. “Didn’t know that the captain had the gift that keeps on giving?”
The Vietnamese guard looked to his friend and exploded rapidly in his native tongue. “Oh dammit! That greasy Greek gave us the clap!”
The second one’s face paled. “You’re kidding!”
“This guy said the captain has…” The sentry paused and looked back toward Bolan. “Wait…I haven’t seen you bef—”
Bolan reached out and slammed his left hand tightly around the guard’s throat, cutting off whatever else he had to say. The forearm knife dropped into his other hand and launched like a dart. The Executioner’s throw was true, the sharp spike of steel imbedding deeply into the second man’s chest, a gush of blood squirting in a long, lazy, crimson arch.
The wounded guard gurgled, trying to gain his breath, but several inches of steel had pierced his lung, making speech difficult as the organ flooded with blood.
Bolan’s captive enemy struggled to break his grasp, forgetting about his guns. Panic had overtaken the smuggler, and if he had his wits about him, he would have reached for any of his weapons, or even one of Bolan’s pistols, and ended his torment—and the Executioner’s intrusion—with a pull of the trigger. However, fingers like steel savagely crushed his windpipe and jugular, making the Vietnamese resort to primitively hammer against Bolan’s forearm. Given the big man’s musculature, it was akin to trying to punch through a thick oak tree branch.
The Executioner pulled the Beretta and shot his captive’s partner through the forehead, finishing the man’s suffering before his lung completely filled with blood and he drowned. Then he pushed the suppressor between his adversary’s lips and grated in the man’s native language, “You make a sound, you die, even slower than your friend.”
He eased the pressure on his captive’s throat, and the man nodded.
“How many are in the hold?” Bolan asked, pulling the gun back so his hostage could speak.
“We started out with one hundred, but four died already,” the guard said.
Bolan pushed the Vietnamese’s head hard against the unyielding bulkhead. The result was that the pirate’s almond-shaped eyes crossed. “How did they die?”
“Two were already sick…another cut her wrists…and the last one…Captain Tinopoulos beat her to death.”
Bolan’s jaw locked as he put a stopper on his fury. He needed more answers. “How healthy are the rest?”
“They’re still in good shape,” the sentry said. “But some are seasick. At least, they’re throwing up, and they have a fever. We had them belowdecks for two days before we set out.”
Bolan knew it wasn’t seasickness. If these young victims were being sent to Korea, then that meant they were discards from the Thai sex slavery trade. Many of them were probably suffering from heroin or opium withdrawal. The Thai flesh peddlers often used drugs as a very short leash to keep their slaves under control. “Take me to them.”
The guard nodded. “My name is Pham…”
Bolan squeezed his throat more tightly. “I’m not interested.”
Pham coughed and sputtered, “Sorry.” Finally, Bolan released the pressure.
“Shut up,” Bolan said. “You’re not going to get any sympathy from me by telling me your name.”
Pham’s lips pulled tight. “But—”
“You joined in on raping these girls…”
“They’re just pros—”
Bolan’s fingers tightened and Pham’s eyes widened in horror as his feet left the deck. The pressure on his throat was enormous, not only from the crush of the Executioner’s grasp, but the weight of his own squirming body. Pham’s fingers dug into Bolan’s forearm, trying to pry it away to relieve the force of his own mass on his windpipe. “They never chose this life. Not that someone like you would care.”
Bolan let go and Pham crashed to the floor. The guard reached for his weapons, but somewhere along the line, probably in one of those moments when the air was being squeezed out of him, the tall, grim avenger had disarmed him. He crawled on all fours when Bolan stepped on his ankle, pinning him between two hundred plus pounds of muscle and sinew and crushing steel grating. Pham grit his teeth to keep from crying out. Bolan’s hand laced into the Vietnamese’s hair and yanked him up to a kneeling position. “I can find the hold myself. I don’t need a tour guide.”
Pham whimpered. “All right…all right…”
Bolan let go and Pham crawled to his feet. He walked with a limp, but by now, his spirit had been broken. Pham had no will to escape.
“Give me the knife and drag your dead friend into this cabin,” Bolan ordered.
Pham obeyed without a hint of protest. He pried the blade out of the corpse and handed it, pommel first, to Bolan. The soldier put the blade back in its quick-draw forearm sheath.
The Executioner wasn’t a cruel man, but he was practical. A display of just how much pain he could inflict was often enough to prevent an enemy from pushing his luck. It also had given the big warrior the opportunity to vent his rage somewhat.
Bolan had encountered sex slavers before across his career, from Las Vegas to Bangkok, and all points in between. He’d begun his crusade when his teenage sister had been pressed into prostitution by an organized crime group, and the fallout had resulted in his family exploding from within. Those who profited from adults were already scum, but it took a special kind of evil to engage in selling and destroying the innocence of adolescents and children. Bolan still thought of Cindy as a kid, even though she was in her late teens when she’d been forced into “the life,” so this was one crime that the Executioner felt very close to. Though the world was too big for the Executioner to focus on any one brand of evil, he had been lucky enough to get a tip from an ally in Thailand about a large shipment of slaves being shipped to another nation. Bolan figured that he’d deal himself in for this hand. It wouldn’t take long out of his War Everlasting, and he didn’t have any urgent, upcoming missions right now.
It was time the underworld learned once more that trading in human lives was a fatal mistake.
Pham limped along, sufficiently cowed. Since Bolan had demonstrated facility at understanding two of the languages the young man spoke, he doubted Pham would try to warn his friends in another language. Instead, he went silent, sullenly walking what he expected to be his final mile. Bolan wouldn’t have any compunctions if the young smuggler stopped a bullet, but someone would have to live to spread the word to the underworld that an executioner still stalked
