Don Pendleton - Lethal Payload

Bolan nodded. Missionary life was hard. They often went where disease, poverty and human suffering were at their absolute worst. The Executioner had only to look in the old man’s eyes to know he was about as tough as they came.

The soldier clicked on his radio. “This is Striker. I have the package. I am extracting.”

Ryssemus raised a hopeful eyebrow. “Helicopters are coming?”

“I have a canoe.”

The old man blinked.

Bolan smiled. “Come on. We have a submarine to catch.”

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

“Well, you’re the hero of the hour.” Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman said, “That was about as slick a rescue op as has ever been done. One for the textbooks.” Kurtzman made a show of cringing in disgust and waving his hands. “An Adamsite gun, ugh! Gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. The Cowboy is a sick man.”

Bolan stared into the distance, distracted.

Kurtzman grinned hopefully. “I hear a certain supermodel was suitably grateful.”

Bolan frowned slightly but not at Kurtzman.

The computer expert sighed. “What’s bothering you?”

The soldier glanced at the sketch he had made. “What’d you make of the tattoo and the dog tags?”

“A little, why?”

“That guy was in command.”

Kurtzman cocked his head. “What about Regog and Al-Juwanyi?”

“It was their show,” Bolan agreed. “But the guy in the cellar was in command, at least tactically, and he wasn’t part of the ceremony. He was wearing a red turban. He was Javanese. He may have been Muslim, and he was definitely more than just another member of the pandekar’s sect.

“Really?” Kurtzman’s interest was piqued. “How so?”

“I don’t know.” Bolan shook his head slowly. “His vibe. He didn’t act like some fanatic on guard duty who was missing out on the show of a lifetime. He was way too cool. If he was part of the congregation, he should have come up out of the cellar in berserker mode, foaming at the mouth with two feet of steel in each hand. Instead, he starts making like an FBI negotiator. I don’t think the riflemen he sent out were part of the party, either. I wish I’d had time to check them out.”

Bolan sat back in his chair. “What’d you get on the sketch I gave you and the dog tags?”

The Bear held up the tags. “These were simple enough. We’ve got his name, Pak Widjihartani, and his serial number, which implies to me that he at least made sergeant.”

“You think he’s Indonesian army?”

Kurtzman put down the tags. “I would, except that at the top of the tags are the letters LE.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow.

The computer expert grinned. “Légion Étrangère.”

Bolan raised his other eyebrow. “You think our boy is French foreign legion?”

“I’m betting he was. I’m running what I can on his dog tags now, but I don’t think I can get much without actually trying to break into Legion records, and I’d like to try and go the legitimate route first. We do not want to officially piss off the French foreign legion.” Kurtzman let out a long breath. “But I doubt very much your pal was acting in any official Legion capacity when you met him.”

Bolan was forced to agree, but something about the scenario still bothered him. “How about the tattoo?”

“I don’t know.” Kurtzman grunted noncommittally. “Some kind of insignia? I couldn’t find anything exactly like it in any open military databases, but soldiers have been giving themselves unofficial unit or specific mission patches and insignia since the French and Indian wars. If this is a legion insignia, I bet it’s an unofficial one, and not tolerated on formal uniform dress. I suspect it’s a custom job. Probably has to do with his company’s special role or a mission.” Kurtzman sighed again. “Assuming of course that he didn’t have it done when he was in the Indonesian army and then joined the legion later. A fair number of legionnaires are veterans of other services. I’m running a check to see if his name or the insignia pops up on any Indonesian or Asian military database we have, but so far we haven’t turned up anything. Of course, people who join the legion are allowed to change their names, and often do, so the one on the tag may not be the one his daddy gave him.”

“Any other good news?”

“Yeah.” Kurtzman grinned lopsidedly. “It’s a tattoo. He could have made the damn thing up when he was drunk.”

“Bear,” Bolan said, sighing wearily, “what would you make of it?”

“All right. Best guess.” He peered at the sketch again. “The dragon could mean anything, though if I had to bet, it probably has something to do with service in Asia. The owl might mean some kind of night operations. It’s a specialization in the legion. The parachute’s a no-brainer. Your boy was airborne, and in the French foreign legion, the paratroops are the elite.”

Kurtzman wasn’t telling Bolan much he didn’t already know, but he was confirming his suspicions. The computer wizard stared at the sketch again. “These guys could be mercs. It’s not unknown for guys to get out of the foreign legion and go to work for someone else. ‘Legionnaire’ certainly has some prestige attached to it. Maybe the mullah felt that he needed some extra muscle with the United States and Australia hunting him.”

Bolan had considered that. “He already had an island full of muscle with the pandekar and his boys. Both men were also very religious. Al-Juwanyi is Taliban and Regog is part of the al Qaeda cell network in Indonesia. Neither organization is known for hiring outsiders. These guys are definitely part of the puzzle.”

“Okay, but making them fit isn’t going to be fun.”

Bolan was all too aware of that. He trusted his instincts, but there were no facts to back them up or leads to take them anywhere. “What about the cell phone and the documents I collected on the island?”

Kurtzman clicked a few keys on his keyboard. The monitor showed Carmen Delahunt rapidly pounding the keyboard at her workstation. She looked up and blew a lock of red hair away from her eyes. “What’s up, Aaron?”

“Striker is here, and he’s hoping for some answers. Got any?”

She punched up information. “The cell phone’s memory had some numbers in it. Several were to Jakarta, and not surprisingly, they were to phones that were stolen. One led to Bali, and again, dead-ended to a stolen phone. One anomaly was a number that led to French Guiana, which, as you can guess, dead-ended.”

“The French foreign legion has its Jungle Warfare School in French Guiana,” Bolan said. “Bear, I want a country study, now.”

Kurtzman began tapping keys, and a map of South America popped up on his screen. Information began scrolling. They read an encyclopedia-like description of the French colony.

Bolan stared hard at the map inset on the screen. “What kind of transnational issues are we looking at?”

“Very few. They’re always asking for increasing autonomy from France, but in public votes only a small percentage of the population supports seceding from France, and they’re not a violent faction. Their neighbor, Suriname, claims a strip of their territory between the River Litani and the River Marouini, but it’s never come to a military struggle. There is limited illicit marijuana growing along the coast, but that’s mostly for local consumption. Interpol considers them to be a minor drug transshipment point to Europe at best. Unemployment is a problem, but not monumental.”

“What’s the Muslim population?”

Kurtzman could see where Bolan was going. “Miniscule, not enough to register in official population charts. French Guiana is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. The Muslim community are immigrants, and most likely to be businessmen or university-educated professionals working for French companies.” The computer expert’s brow furrowed in thought, and he hit more keys. His map tracked westward and information scrolled. “Suriname, however, does have a significant Muslim population.”