Ripple Effect

“There’s Kemayoran, formerly the local airport,” Dixon said. “They’ve turned it into some kind of outlandish shopping mall, but there are parking lots.”

Closer, the warrior knew, from memorizing street maps in advance. “Okay. Let’s try that first.”

“Suits me. You know the way?”

“I’ve got it,” Bolan said. “But just the same, correct me if you see I’m heading off toward Borneo or something.”

“Right.” It was the first time he had seen Tom Dixon smile. “About just now…in case you couldn’t tell, I’ve never killed a man before.”

Bolan could have replied, “First time for everything,” but that would be both flippant and a lie. Most people never killed another human being. Soldiers, cops and criminals were those most likely to take lives, but even then it was a relatively rare event. Millions of soldiers served their tours of duty in peacetime and never fired a shot in anger. Most cops never pulled the trigger on a suspect, making those who did so more than once immediately suspect in the eyes of their superiors. Even most criminals had never killed, restricting their activities to theft, white-collar crimes or petty drug offenses.

Without planning it, Tom Dixon had been drafted into a fraternity whose members shared a single trait: the rare experience of canceling another human being’s ticket to the great arcade of life. Some members of that clique enjoyed it; others never quite forgave themselves. The rest, who spilled blood in the line of duty forced upon them by their times, their conscience or their personality, learned how to live with it.

Bolan couldn’t predict which kind of killer Dixon might turn out to be. In fact, he didn’t care, as long as Dixon managed to perform his duties adequately for the next few hours or days.

Once Bolan left, he could break down and weep, become a raving psychopath or simply go back to his paper-pushing job. It wouldn’t matter to the Executioner.

This day, this job was all that mattered.

But they had blown their cover big time. Everything beyond that point would be a catch-up game.

And Bolan feared that they were running out of time.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jakarta’s Kemayoran district, formerly the site of a major airport, lies in the city’s eastern quadrant, two miles distant from the cooling breezes of the Java Sea. It swelters from the wicked combination of a tropic climate and an overdose of asphalt topped by concrete towers rising toward the humid sky. Pedestrians sweat through their clothes while traveling a block, and those blessed with the miracle of air-conditioning are prone to let it run full blast.

Finding the former airport was no problem. It appeared on Bolan’s maps, and Dixon knew the mall by reputation, while denying that he’d ever shopped there. Bolan cruised the spacious parking lot until he spotted a Toyota the same year and model as his bullet-punctured ride, then parked as close as possible.

It was that hazy time of dusk, between late afternoon and early evening, when floodlights set on timers hadn’t flared to life and mall employees tasked to watch security monitors were thinking more about the night ahead than what was happening on any given one of twenty smallish screens. Bolan was grateful for the hour, but he wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

“You’re watching, right?” he asked Dixon.

“Affirmative.”

Reaching into a bag behind the driver’s seat, Bolan withdrew a foot-long strip of metal and a large screwdriver, both of which he tucked beneath his floppy shirt. He left the car with Dixon, his companion staking out a point midway between the two Toyotas and pretending that he had to tie his shoe while Bolan went ahead.

Another moment placed him in the parking slot beside the target vehicle. He took a final searching look around, then slipped his shim into the narrow gap between the driver’s window and its frame. He found the catch in something like ten seconds, slipped it and was in the driver’s seat a heartbeat later, thankful that the car had no alarm installed.

The screwdriver came next, applied with brutal force to wrench the round ignition keyhole mechanism from the steering column. Once that obstacle had been removed, Bolan’s screwdriver doubled as the missing key itself; a simple twist was all that he needed to revive the sleeping engine.

Bolan left it running as he found a switch beside his seat, opened the trunk and exited. Dixon kept watch while Bolan palmed another tool, removed the rental’s license plates, then claimed his various belongings from the now abandoned car: his small toolkit, a slightly larger bag for clothes and shaving gear, a heavy duffel bag that clanked and rattled when he picked it up or set it down.

The latter earned a blink from Dixon, but he didn’t ask. Instead, he settled in the shotgun seat as if the car belonged to him and always had.

Two points for cool.

The second-worst part of stealing any car was exiting the crime scene proper without being spotted. Once they reached a public street, they would become invisible. A second stop, to switch the license plates, would make the switch complete. From that point onward, only a direct comparison of vehicle registration numbers would prove that the plates on their car were mismatched.

A quiet place to park, no witnesses, nothing to make a round-eye draw attention while he touched up small details about his vehicle. Bolan was looking for the perfect spot when Dixon asked, “What will you do with Talmadge?”

“That depends on him,” Bolan replied. It wasn’t quite a lie.

“Because I had a briefing on the Justice ruling, back in 1990-something, authorizing federal agents to arrest suspected terrorists on foreign soil, without a warrant from the local courts. We’re clear on that.”

Bolan suppressed a smile as he replied, “You think the Indonesians might consider that kidnapping? Did they get the memo? Does an order signed in Washington trump local law out here?”

“It does in my book,” Dixon answered. “We’re at war.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score,” Bolan told him, “but it didn’t start on 9/11, and it won’t end if and when we bag Osama. As for orders out of Justice, please refrain from telling any local cops or soldiers that you got your go-ahead from the attorney general of the United States. You’ll only make them laugh before they put a bullet in your head.”

“So, what you’re saying is—”

“We’re not in Kansas anymore. This isn’t U.S. soil and never has been. People here salute a different flag, and they’re not bound by anything the President or members of his cabinet may say. We’re fugitives right now, and most of what we do from this point on will be illegal.”

“In the strictest sense, of course, but—”

“In the only sense that matters,” Bolan interrupted him. “We’ve killed nine men. The penalty for murder here is death by hanging or by firing squad. You get a choice, but no appeal. Maybe you think the embassy will intervene if you’re arrested.”

“No,” Dixon said, sounding more subdued. “They made a special point of clarifying that.”

“We’re clear, then,” Bolan said. “You have to watch your step. Forget about what some attorney general said ten years ago, and focus on surviving, here and now.”

“I hear you.”

“Good.”

He found a residential lane where streetlights were in short supply and parked the car. Five minutes later, they were on the move again, wearing the license plates from Bolan’s rental.

It was still a problem, but at least he’d bought some time. Their new car would be flagged as stolen when its owner finished shopping at the mall, but with so many Japanese compacts thronging Jakarta’s streets, its tags would be the main identifier. Those were gone, and by the time some clerk at Bolan’s rental agency decided to report the other car missing, he hoped his work in the vicinity would be completed.

“Next stop,” he said to Dixon, “Talmadge’s apartment.”

“It’s across town,” Dixon told him. “On the west side, off Tomang Raja, near the Banjir Canal.”

“Okay.” A careful U-turn got them headed back in the direction they had come from.

“But I’m still not clear,” Dixon said, “on what you—what we—intend to do with Talmadge.”

“We intend to question him, ideally,” Bolan said.

“And if the circumstances aren’t ideal?”

“Our bottom-line assignment is to stop him doing any further favors for his latest batch of clients. Period.”

“Kill him, you mean.”

“It’s possible,” Bolan allowed.