Don Pendleton: Death Run

Bolan flipped the rifle around as he spun to see the remaining kidnapper holding Anderson in front of him, a 9 mm Glock 17 pressed to Anderson’s right temple. Bolan put the hooded post of the front sight on the portion of the kidnapper’s head that was the farthest away from Anderson. Though he had no idea how well sighted in the AK was, at this short range the executioner could see the gun barrel was pointed past Anderson’s head. He gave the trigger a short squeeze, firing off just one round even though the selector was on full auto.

That round did the business. The man flew back and dropped, his torso falling against the back seat through the open door. Anderson whirled around, ready to fight some more, but there was no one left to fight. The four would-be kidnappers all lay dead at their feet.

The dead man looked Asian, possibly Filipino, judging by what was left of their faces. Laguna Seca was still relatively empty and so far no one had arrived on the scene, but Bolan could tell the gunshots had attracted attention because of the sirens he heard coming their way. He looked inside the car and pulled out a magazine. Bolan knew it would be filled with blow-in subscription cards, so he shook it until four cards fell out. He dipped each of the kidnapper’s right-hand index fingers in blood and made fingerprint imprints on the card stock. He had the cards in the vest pocket of his sport jacket before the police arrived.

Four squad cars skidded to a stop on the grass. “You’re no gas salesman, are you?” Anderson asked the soldier.

“I’m a sales representative for the manufacturer of quality racing fuels,” Bolan said, “but I had some combat training when I was in the military.”

“Whatever,” Anderson said. “I don’t care. I’m just glad you came along when you did. Thank you.”

BOTH ANDERSON AND BOLAN spent the next several hours at the Monterey Police Department describing what had happened. Since Bolan wasn’t suspected of anything besides being a good Samaritan who stopped the kidnapping of a celebrity, they allowed him to ride his motorcycle to the precinct. This enabled him to stash his weapons before he went through the metal detector at the security checkpoint in the precinct’s entrance. Bolan’s credentials as Matt Cooper were impeccable, and even though his brutal slaying of the attackers raised suspicions, his reactions were justifiable, and they’d had a beneficial result for the department. Having one of the world’s top motorcycle racers kidnapped under their noses would have been a tremendous embarrassment to the force. Bolan was allowed to leave before Anderson, who remained behind because he wanted to tell the police his theories about his brother’s murder. After the attempted kidnapping, the authorities were much more interested in what had happened to Darrick Anderson. So was the Executioner, but at the moment he had other matters to attend to.

As soon as he was back at his hotel, Bolan scanned the fingerprints he’d pulled from the corpses on his portable scanner and sent them to Stony Man Farm. He wanted to find out who he’d just killed.

Within half an hour Aaron Kurtzman was on the phone with that information. “You were right about their being Filipinos, Striker,” Kurtzman said. “These were some particularly badass Filipinos, too, known members of Jemaah Islamiah.”

“So what’s the connection between these guys and Team Free Flow?”

Kurtzman paused, obviously reading through the information he’d uncovered in the short time since Bolan had sent him the fingerprints. “It all seems to point back to Musa bin Osman.”

“Speak of the devil,” Bolan said. “I have an appointment with him in three hours.”

“There’s something else you should know,” Kurtzman said. “The men you killed also had strong ties to the BNG.”

Bolan knew the BNG—the Bahala Na Gang—was one of the most powerful Filipino street gangs. Originally formed by inmates in the notorious jails of the Philippines in the early 1940s, the BNG eventually spread its operations around the globe. Originally Bahala Na meant “God willing,” in Tagalog, but in recent generations the term had come to mean a more fatalistic “whatever.” Fatalism defined the BNG, and fatality followed it from the Philippines to North America, where the organization had evolved into an especially violent criminal syndicate. The BNG was strong in the San Francisco area.

“I didn’t have time to examine the bodies before the police arrived,” Bolan said. “I didn’t see any question marks.” Each member of the BNG tattooed a question mark symbol somewhere on his body. “So these guys are hooked up with al Qaeda now?”

“At least the four men you killed today were,” Kurtzman said. “It might be more accurate to say that Jemaah Islamiah is hooked up with the BNG. My guess is that they’re just hiring the BNG for muscle.”

“That would be my guess, too,” the Executioner said.

“But they’re good muscle,” Kurtzman replied. “Watch your back tonight, Striker.”

“How’d they get into the paddock?”

Kurtzman took a moment to answer, meaning he was once again looking through the reports he and his team had generated. “Says here that they were posing as reporters for City Rider, a San Francisco-based motorcycle magazine.”

“Has our little altercation at the track this morning attracted any attention?”

“Attention? It’s being broadcast on every major news channel nonstop. You couldn’t have attracted more attention. All the major newshounds are already on the scene. I don’t know what’s going to be harder for you—finding the plutonium or dodging those nitwits.”

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