False Front

“All I could make out. Keep in mind I was getting all this in bits and pieces and I’ve added a little conjecture of my own. The conversation had been going on a long time, and we just caught some part in the middle.”

The Executioner stared into the wall of green in front of him. Their situation was changing rapidly and his strategy would have to change with it. First, not only did they stand out among the natives of Mindanao, they were now being actively sought. Second, the Buick was burned. Even if the searchers had left no one to watch the car, and he and Latham could get to it without being seen, the vehicle was useless. It would be readily recognized regardless of where they went.

The Executioner took a deep breath and made a battlefield decision. They would hide out in the jungle the rest of the day, then stake out Mario Subing’s house one more night. He was now more determined than ever that if the terrorist leader didn’t show up, it would be time for another approach. But again, the only other avenue he could think of was to snatch Mario and take him some place for interrogation. He still didn’t like that idea one bit. It would no doubt involve at least some amount of pain on the old man’s part and even the thought of extricating information from an old man was repugnant to the Executioner.

“Well,” Latham whispered, cutting into the Executioner’s thought.

Bolan looked at him and saw the man staring at his forehead.

“As my mama used to say, ‘I can see the wheels a-turnin’ behind them frown wrinkles.’ When they quit, let me know what we’re going to do next, okay?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his can of chewing tobacco. This time, however, he reached in with his fingers, grabbed a pinch and stuck it under his lip.

The Executioner looked around him and saw that with a couple more machete chops he could open up a large enough area in which to lie down. His big blade flashed twice, then he dropped to his knees before rolling onto his side.

“I take it that means it’s nap time,” Latham said, cutting an area out for himself behind the Executioner. “Hope it’s a little longer this time.” He swung the machete forward side-armed, embedding it into the soft trunk of a tree and leaving it there.

Through half-closed eyelids, Bolan saw the man kneel, then lean forward on his stomach, bending his arm to use as a pillow on the side of his face. Moments later he was asleep.

AT FIRST Bolan thought he was dreaming. Then, as he suddenly snapped wide awake, he realized the voices were real. And at the same time, he realized they were the same voices he and Latham had heard from the jungle path earlier in the day.

He glanced at his watch. It had been less than two hours since they had dropped to the ground. He looked down at Latham, still sleeping peacefully. The Executioner considered wakening him, then just as quickly discarded the idea. Not only was there no sense in it, it could create a problem for what he was about to do.

Rising to a sitting position, Bolan pulled a small spiral notebook and pen from his pocket. Quickly he scribbled the words “Back soon. Stay here.” on the top page, then quietly tore it from the book. Working Latham’s machete out of the tree, he placed the note atop a bare patch of damp earth on the ground, then drove the tip of the machete through it to hold it in place.

A second later he disappeared into the trees toward the more traveled pathway.

Bolan moved quickly but quietly, his senses on full alert. He had seen the fatigue beginning to build in Charlie Latham even before their first nap the night before. But there was another reason he hadn’t brought the Texan along with him now. While Latham had proved to be smart, quick and deadly as a fighter, his jungle skills had been less than perfect. It was clear that what T.J. had said about the man was true—he had come to the Philippines for the martial arts training available, not the jungle. Latham had made far more noise than Bolan had liked during their earlier trip from the mosque to the stilt houses. It hadn’t mattered then; no one had been looking for them.

Now, it did matter. Someone was looking for them. And the Executioner wasn’t going to take the chance that a sudden cough or sneeze, or a footstep on a snapping dry branch might give them away.

The voices grew louder as Bolan neared the path. He slowed, staring at the ground before each step, taking shallow silent breaths, his ears cocked for any sign that he might have been heard. In addition to seeing and hearing, the Executioner took full advantage of his other senses, as well.

And most of all that sixth sense men such as he developed that some called instinct.

It took him close to five minutes to cover the fifty feet between where Latham slept and the jungle path. But when he reached the open area, he could still hear the voices as they made their way along the trail. Dropping down behind a cluster of tangled vegetation three feet from the path, the Executioner pulled the tiny microcassette recorder from his pants, plugged in the directional mike and extended it through the leaves as far as he dared.

The voices grew louder. But none of the words made sense to the Executioner. He lay perfectly still, the lactic acid building in his outstretched arm, pleading with his brain to let him lower it.

Through the thick undergrowth Bolan watched as four men—three armed with machetes, the third carrying a pinute bolo short sword—strolled toward him. Their ongoing conversation met his ears, including the wheezing words of a man with asthma. It was obvious the group was no longer making even a halfhearted attempt to keep their voices down, which they had made earlier in the day.

Bolan let a grin creep over his face. They had walked this pathway once and not come across the strangers. They were tired of the search now and assumed that if they hadn’t encountered anyone going toward the stilt houses, they wouldn’t encounter anyone on the way back, either.

All of which worked in the Executioner’s favor.

Bolan kept the mike pointed at the pathway as the men walked past. He continued to hold it in place until he could no longer hear their voices. Slowly he rose from his hiding spot, then stopped.

Should he follow the men on down the path back to the mosque? To get close enough on the path to record their words, he would have to take the chance of them spotting him. And if they did, they were likely to attack. The machetes and bolo had not been carried just for show.

No, the Executioner wouldn’t follow. He had no intention of getting into a position where he had to kill innocent men simply trying to protect their village from strangers they probably assumed were as bad as terrorists, if not terrorists themselves. Besides, the chance that he’d record some important bit of information he hadn’t already gotten on tape was small.

Bolan started back toward where he’d left Latham. He’d either gotten useful information or he hadn’t. The risk of trying for more outweighed the potential return.

He had taken only a few steps through the undergrowth when he stopped in his tracks. Another sound—foreign and loudly conspicuous to the jungle—suddenly boomed through the branches and vines. Moving faster now, the Executioner hurried back toward Latham. The men on the path were out of hearing range for the noises he made as he ran. But he wasn’t as sure about the long, booming, near ear-splitting cough-growls that broke the peace of the wilds.

The Executioner knew what the sounds were. And if the men searching for them heard it, they would recognize them, too.

Breaking out of the trees into the small clearing he and Latham had created a few hours earlier, Bolan saw the Texan on the ground. Latham had rolled from his stomach to his back in sleep, and now deafening snores thundered from his nose and mouth. Dropping to one knee next to the man, the Executioner grabbed his shoulder and shook him awake.

Latham returned to consciousness and his hand fell to the Browning in his belt.

Bolan held one finger to his lips and shook his head.

Latham caught on and relaxed.

The soldier let a good five minutes go by, listening, waiting to see if the search party had heard the Texan’s snoring. Finally satisfied that they had not, he rose and pulled Latham to his feet.

“What’s wrong?” the Texan whispered. He looked around, spotted the note stuck in the ground with the machete, then reached down and tore it from the blade.

“Old news,” the Executioner whispered. “I’m back.”

“Where’d you go?” Latham asked, yawning.

“The guys on the path came back. I went out to see if I could pick up more information.”

Coming fully awake now, Latham’s forehead wrinkled. “But you don’t speak the language.”

Bolan reached into his pocket and pulled out the recorder. “No,” he said, “but you do.”

“Aha,” Latham said, throwing his head back slightly. Then he frowned and said, “But what was the problem when you woke me up? How come we had to freeze for so long? They hear you or something?”

The Executioner suppressed a grin. “Or something,” he said.

“WELL, NOBODY ELSE ever accused me of snoring,” Latham said defensively as he and Bolan cut yet another new route through the jungle toward the stilt houses along the sea.

Bolan didn’t bother to answer. Night was falling quickly as it did in the jungle and the Executioner wanted to be within sight of the houses across the road from Mario Subing’s before their surroundings turned ink-black. As to Latham’s snoring, he had found it slightly amusing that this man—an accomplished fighter by anyone’s standard and a good enough woodsman if not the best—had grown immediately sensitive when he’d been told he not only snored but did so in a way that threatened to rip leaves off their vines.

The Executioner came to the edge of the jungle and peered through the foliage. Ahead, he could see the rear of one of the inland shanties across the road from the stilt houses. He held up a hand, both to halt Latham and to signal for silence, then sat among the thick green growth to wait on darkness.

Latham dropped to a squatting position next to him.

Bolan rested his hand on his outstretched leg and felt the tiny microcassette recorder inside his front pocket. Latham had listened to the recording as they’d waited for the hot afternoon to become evening. But they had gained precious little information they hadn’t already had. The Texan had, however, said that one thing was clear: it wasn’t just the fact that they’d been seen driving into town that had alerted the villagers to potential trouble. They’d been tipped off by someone ahead of time that two men might be coming to the village and that they were trouble.

That, in itself, was worth the chance the Executioner had taken with the recorder. It also jibed with his suspicion that the men they had fought on the road the day before hadn’t been random kidnappers. Someone knew he was on Mindanao, and that someone had alerted the Tigers.

Leaning back against the trunk of a tree, Bolan closed his eyes. He had also learned another valuable bit of intel by hiding near the path as the local men had passed—how they were armed. Although they would mistakenly view the Executioner as their enemy, he wasn’t. And he had no wish to kill or even injure them. But if he had to deal with them somehow, he had been relived to see that their primary weapons appeared to be blades rather than firearms.

Latham, having dropped to the ground across from him, now crossed his legs on the ground. “You think they know who we are?” he asked Bolan in a low voice. “The locals, I mean.”

“Probably not exactly who we are,” Bolan whispered. “But if they were tipped off, then somebody knows that somebody new—from America—is looking for the hostages.” He glanced overhead, squinting through the treetops into the quickly diminishing sunlight. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “At least I’m sure they don’t know exactly who I am.” He looked over at the other man now. “Exactly how well are you known on the island?”