Don Pendleton - Pressure Point

When asked about possible routes to the top of the hill, the IMA guards directed Bolan to a series of switch-backs leading from a rear entrance to the storage facility. The crisscrossed paths twisted their way around tall patches of wild grass, brambly thickets and scattered stands of gnarled trees. As Bolan and Bahn made their way up the incline, they could see, off to their right, the distant mountains of central Borneo. The peaks, some of them nearly ten thousand feet high, were barely visible through the smoky haze, which by now had stretched itself across the entire length of the valley rain forest.

Soon they came upon a firebreak, a thirty-yard-wide band of land hacked clear of brush and vegetation. It ran perpendicular to the switchbacks and stretched in both directions for as far as Bolan could see.

“We take a left here, right?” he said, trying to recall the directions the guards had given them.

Bahn nodded. “Yeah, we follow this for about two hundred yards, then there’s supposed to be another trail that leads up to the peak.”

The firebreak was on a slope but the ground was soft, making it easy to walk. There were no signs of boot prints, fresh or otherwise. The break was within plain sight of the storage facility, and there was no way anyone could have used it without being spotted.

“Assuming Jahf-Al’s here in Indonesia,” Bahn said, changing the subject, “what do you think his agenda is? Other than hiding out, I mean.”

Bolan shrugged. “The UIF already has a toehold here. If he can tap into the Muslim unrest, Indonesia’s got the makings of a great power base.”

“True,” Bahn said, “but the Lashkar Jihad’s already pretty much cornered the market on the extremist action. I know they’ve cut some kind of deal with the UIF, but I don’t think stepping aside and letting Jahf-Al run things was part of it. He and Pohtoh aren’t exactly buddy-buddy from what I understand.”

“That’s the way I hear it, too,” Bolan said.

Moamar Pohtoh was the Muslim firebrand who’d risen to head of the Lashkar Jihad after his predecessor, Halim Alwyi, had been gunned down in a Sulawesi shootout over a year ago. It was Pohtoh who’d widened the group’s agenda while at the same time consolidating power by killing off a number of Alwyi’s top-ranking subordinates. Pohtoh was no stranger to Jahf-Al, either, and there was supposedly bad blood between the two men dating back to the late 1990s, when they’d trained together at an al-Qaeda terrorist camp in the Afghanistan mountains of Tora Bora. Pohtoh, who hailed from the slums of Jakarta, was purportedly as suspicious of Jahf-Al’s bourgeois Cairo upbringing as he was of the Egyptian’s motivation for creating the United Islamic Front. The Indonesian strongman had gone on record as little as six months ago claiming that Jahf-Al was less interested in the cause of Islam than that of amassing power and trying to rival the infamy of Osama bin Laden. Given the antipathy between the two men, many had been surprised when it had come out that the Lashkar Jihad was accepting input from the UIF.

“Must be a strange bedfellows thing,” Bolan guessed. “They probably figured they had more to gain by focusing on common ground instead of haggling over their differences.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened,” Bahn conceded.

By now they’d followed the firebreak nearly a hundred yards. Suddenly Bolan stopped and held out a hand, signaling for Bahn to do the same. She heard it, too: a rustling in the brush to their right. In unison, they both dropped to a crouch and raised their assault rifles, aiming into the foliage. The sound continued, growing louder and moving closer. Finally they could begin to make out the shadowy outline of three figures moving through the brush toward them.

“I’ve got the one in front,” Bahn whispered, nestling her finger against the trigger. “I say we don’t give them the first shot.”

Bolan shifted his aim toward the rear figures, then stopped and whispered back, “Hold your fire.”

“Look, maybe you’ve got a vest on under that suit of yours, but I don’t,” Bahn told him. “I’m not going to just wait here like some sitting duck for them to—”

“They’re monkeys,” Bolan stated.

“Call them what you like, I—”

“Orangutans,” Bolan said. “They’re orangutans.”

“What?” Bahn said, not willing to let down her guard.

But as she took a closer look into the brush, she realized Bolan was right. Three orangutans, all immature males, loped downhill a few more yards, then peered out through the branches. Bahn lowered her rifle and slowly stood, shaking her head.

“Makes sense,” she said. “I saw a preserve marked out on the map. Somewhere down there in the rain forest.”

The orangutans continued to stare at Bolan and Bahn but made no move to show themselves any further.

“Scram!” Bahn snapped at them. “We’re busy here!”

“Let’s just leave them alone,” Bolan said. He turned his back to the creatures and resumed hiking along the firebreak. Bahn picked up a stone and threw it into the brush to the right of the creatures. When the orangutans refused to budge, she shrugged and quickly caught up with Bolan.

“Smug little bastards,” she grumbled.

“They probably knew they could take you out if they wanted to,” Bolan taunted.

Bahn scowled at him.

A few minutes later they reached the trail rising up from the firebreak. It was narrow, and they made their way single file, Bolan leading the way. Small trees rose up on either side of them, strangler figs trailing long, woody vines from their lower branches. The large tree Bolan had seen from the ground loomed ahead. They followed the trail toward it and were soon in sight of the fistlike rock formation. For the first time, they also began to see boot prints on the path before them. Whoever had made them had come upon the trail by way of the brush. The tracks led upward.

“Looks like three different sets,” Bolan commented.

“Well, unless those orangutans were wearing boots, my money’s on the ambushers,” Bahn said.

Bolan nodded. “Let’s find out.”

Assault rifles raised into firing position, they continued up the last few dozen yards of trail and soon found themselves at the base of the rock formation.

“Well, looks like you were right about them being jumped,” Bahn told Bolan, staring at the grisly tableau before them.

The three-man KOPASSUS surveillance team lay dead in the grass, facedown, blood caked to their scalps where they’d been shot. Lying on its side a few yards away from the bodies was a transceiver similar to the one Bolan had seen Latek use on the bus.

Bahn crouched over one of the victims and inspected his wounds.

“Small caliber,” she said. “I’d guess 9 mm.”

“Handguns with sound suppressors,” Bolan said.

“Which would explain why I didn’t hear anything,” Bahn said, speculating as to what had happened. “They popped these guys, then they sent the truck on its way and fed that sergeant that crap about it being too smoky to see anything.”

“I want to check something else,” Bolan said, stepping over one of the bodies. He inspected the rock formation, then set his rifle aside and climbed up to the top. He looked around briefly, then climbed back down.

“No problem seeing the storage facility,” he reported, “but the road’s nowhere in sight.”

“Meaning what?”

Bolan pointed at the slain commandos. “I think these guys were killed outright,” he said. “No interrogations.”

“Okay, I follow that much,” Bahn said. “Where are you going with this?”

“Just hear me out,” Bolan said. “All right. We’ve got these guys being killed right around the time the truck leaves the facility, right?”