False Front

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

PROLOGUE

The smell was what he noticed first, a blend of old and new. At one time there had been cattle in the building and the scent of manure still lingered. Hay had been stored in the second-floor loft but it had molded away, leaving only its stench.

The scents of rotted wood and unwashed human bodies, however, were current. Old and new, the numerous odors combined to produce a smell far more nauseating than any one could have generated by itself and, as he stepped into the barn, the foul mixture hit Candido Subing like a baseball bat between the eyes.

Subing stopped just inside the door. One odor was separate from the others and seemed to rise alone above them. And it filled the air like a hanging corpse.

Fear.

Subing had caught the man following him off guard with his sudden stop and his fellow freedom fighter slammed into his back, the hard lens of the video camera the man carried cracking into his spine. Subing sent an angry glance over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to the six hostages huddled in the corner farthest from the door of the barn. Four men and two women were seated in the mud, their backs against the wall. Their hands were bound in front of them by a rope that traveled around their waists before dropping to secure their ankles. Makeshift hoods, which had once held grain for the animals who had inhabited the barn, covered each prisoner from the top of the head to the shoulders.

Subing felt his face twist into a sneer. The people beneath the hoods were worse than mere infidels. They were Christian missionaries, sent from the Great Satan America to infiltrate the Philippines and to snatch his people from the one true god, Allah, and his prophet.

Subing waded through the muddy floor to the cowering figures. He had no need to remove the hoods to know what lay in each prisoner’s eyes. Terror in some. Acceptance of their fate in others. But at least some hope still left in most of them.

And outright defiance in one.

Subing stopped in front of the seated captives. He had seen their faces earlier in the day when the hoods had been removed. As soon as their eyes had adjusted to the unaccustomed light, one of the women and two of the men had wept. Two other missionaries—a husband and wife—had closed their eyes and he’d seen their lips move silently as they’d offered up some infidel prayer. But none had dared to meet his eyes. At least, none but one. And that man still mocked him. Subing stared at that man now, his eyes filled with hatred.

Before he killed them—and he would kill them all, regardless of whether or not the Filipino and American authorities agreed to the demands he had put forth to them—he would force them each to denounce their false savior. He continued to stare at the hood over the face of the defiant one.

He would denounce his false doctrine this very day.

Subing narrowed his eyes, savoring this moment. The man who defied him sat between the two women. Worden was his name. The Reverend James A. Worden.

Subing waved the cameraman to his position in front of the hostages and the man began to unfold the legs of his tripod. Like the other hostages, Worden had been given many opportunities to renounce his false religion and embrace Islam. But he had refused and his refusal had kept the other, weaker-willed missionaries stalwart in their own faith. Two of the men, he suspected, would have denounced Jesus Christ as their savior had it not been for Worden’s strength. The husband and wife he couldn’t be sure about. They appeared to have some personal strength of their own. But at least their refusals had come fearfully, which meant that time might eventually wear them down. Worden, on the other hand, refused to convert with apparent joy in his heart. And as Subing stared at the ragged, mud-encrusted clothes and equally filthy hood that enshrouded the recalcitrant man, he knew that beneath the cloth James A. Worden was still smiling the same smile he always had on his face when his hood came off. And that knowledge infuriated him.

Candido Subing’s hand fell to the barong sheathed in the carved wooden scabbard at his side. In his mind he saw himself draw the short sword and bring its razor-edge down across the back of James Worden’s neck. Would he finally see fear in the American’s eyes as his head left his body and rolled across the ground? Would he see pain? Horror?

He didn’t know. But he was about to find out.

Subing sloshed his black combat boots two more steps forward in the mud and halted between the hostages and the video camera. The prisoners shifted uncomfortably, sensing his presence near them. Standing guard were ten of his fellow Tigers. He moved a step closer to the group, then turned his attention toward Reynaldo Taboada. The man was a new-comer to the Tigers, but he showed potential. Catching the man’s eye, he said, “Remove the hoods.”

Taboada looked hesitant for a moment, but Subing suspected the new man was merely nervous because of his presence. Subing’s duties took him away from this operation often and he had met Taboada only a few times before. In any case, after a moment’s delay, the man walked along the line jerking the dirty feed sacks from the heads of the prisoners.

All twelve of the infidels’s eyes blinked furiously as the unaccustomed light hit them. A few more tears rolled down three of the faces as they stared at the mud in front of them. The husband and wife team leaned closer to each other and began, once more, to pray.

But the Reverend James A. Worden turned his eyes immediately upward to Subing, and the same infuriating smile the Tigers’s leader had known would be there beamed out at him.

“Jesus loves you,” Worden said from his spot in the mud. “He will forgive you for all of this. All you have to do is ask Him.”

One of the guards stepped in to bring the stock of his AK-47 down on Worden’s shoulder and a loud crunching sound echoed off the rafters. Worden winced and, for a moment, the smile disappeared. But a second later it was back and Subing felt an almost uncontrollable urge to behead the man immediately.

It took all of his self-control to turn toward the cameraman instead. He saw that the video was now ready, clasped his hands behind his back and turned full toward the lens. The cameraman nodded. Subing nodded back. He heard the click as the start button was depressed. “We have done our best,” he said into the camera. “To reach an agreement with your leaders in America. For ten months now we have spared you, and we have not asked so very much in return. We have asked only that the United States release our brother patriots they keep captive and remove all troops from the Philippine Islands and the Mideast.” He paused, turning sideways now and addressing the missionaries themselves. “Our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Your President does not care about you—he does not care if you live or die.” Pausing dramatically he said, “Or perhaps he does not believe we are serious.”

Turning once more to the camera, he scowled into the lens. “If the American President does not care about his people, there is little I can do. But if he does not believe I will carry through with my promises…” He let his voice trail off, took a deep breath, then said, “Then I must prove to him that I will.”

Twisting slightly, Subing nodded to two of the guards. They moved in next to the Reverend James Worden and hauled the man to his feet, dragging his bound legs through the mud to a spot directly in front of the video camera. One of the guards kicked Worden’s legs out from under him and the missionary fell facedown into the soggy earth. The other guard knelt, grabbed the man by the back of his hair and jerked him up to his hands and knees.

Worden’s mud-splattered face looked directly into the camera. And smiled.

Again pure rage and hatred rushed through Candido Subing’s body like a disease. He yearned to kill the insolent infidel now, without further delay. But he had carefully scripted his next moves to make the most lasting impression possible on the news agencies to which copies of the video would be sent. Improvisation would be counterproductive. He wanted the American people to see what he was about to do and to know that it had been done with little, if any, emotion.

America had become a nation of cowards who coddled the weak and took pride in being victims. His killing without emotion would frighten them far more than anger.

So, biting back the indignation in his breast, Subing gave the camera his own smile. He forced himself to speak calmly, “I am giving this man—this American Reverend James A. Worden—one final chance to renounce his false belief and embrace the true faith.” As he spoke, he pulled the barong from its scabbard. Then, raising it to his eyes, he glanced at the inscription on the blade: there is no god but Allah.

“James Worden,” Subing said, looking down at the still-smiling face beneath him, “I ask you now to repeat after me.” After a short pause he said, “There is only one god.”

To Subing’s surprise, the smiling face below him said, “There is only one god.”

“And Mohammed is his prophet,” Subing said.

“And Jesus Christ is His son,” Worden said.

Anger and hatred shot once more though Subing’s veins. And this time he couldn’t hold it back. Grasping the barong with both hands, he brought it up over his head, then down toward the back of the Reverend James A. Worden’s neck.

A geyser of blood shot out from the severed arteries to the brain, spotting the camera lens with crimson dots. Worden’s body stayed frozen on all fours for a second, then collapsed into the mud.

Subing saw the cameraman frantically wipe at the lens with a rag as he stooped forward to retrieve the bloody mass of flesh and bone from the ground. Grasping it by the tufts of hair at the front hairline, he held it up to the camera. Vanished now were his hopes of showing no emotion and he screamed, “America must release our brethren! American must remove all soldiers from our islands and all Muslim nations!” With a dramatic sweep of his free hand he indicated the shocked hostages behind him. “Or I will kill each and every one of them! Allah be praised!”

As Subing had ordered him to do, the cameraman panned the faces of the missionaries, pausing long enough to register each one’s dismay and horror before moving on to the next. Then he pressed the stop button and ended the recording.

Subing realized he had been holding his breath since speaking and finally let it out with a sigh. But when he looked down at the head dangling from his fingers, the sight caused him to suck in another sudden breath and hold it.

Reverend James A. Worden might be dead, but the smile was still on his lips. And it looked wider and more peaceful than it ever had in life.

CHAPTER ONE

The plane in the distance grew smaller, gradually becoming a mere speck in the sky before vanishing from sight altogether. Mack Bolan was alone, but such was almost always the case with the man also known as the Executioner.

Bolan looked down as he free-fell through the sky. Below he could see the deep blue waters of the Sulu Sea. Farther east lay the island of Mindanao, in the Philippines. In a moment he would open his parachute, but it would still be some time before he reached land. The Executioner had chosen a HAHO—High Altitude High Opening—dive both to avoid detection and to give himself room to maneuver the treacherous winds just north of the Sulu Archipelago. If all went as planned, it would take him approximately twenty minutes to reach the arranged landing zone where two already-on-the-ground contacts would be waiting for him. One was a CIA agent who had been trying to infiltrate the Liberty Tigers for several weeks. The other was a retired Delta Force special operations soldier who was also an old friend of another counterterrorist operative who worked out of Stony Man Farm.

Wind whipped at his face as the Executioner free-fell toward the white-capped waves below. Finally he grabbed the ripcord with his right hand, jerked, and the chute shot out over his head. Bolan watched as the canopy hit the end of the lines and saw that there was a problem.

It hadn’t opened.

As he continued to plummet, Bolan stared at the flat chute that some jumpers called a “Roman Candle.” Other parachutists referred to them as “streamers.” But no matter what you called it, the bottom line was that the canopy had failed. It looked like a long, limp dishrag or the tail on a child’s homemade kite as it followed him down through the sky toward certain death.

The Executioner’s jaw set tightly as he reviewed the pre-jump equipment check in his memory. Everything had been in place. Everything in order. Everything had checked out. So why hadn’t the canopy opened properly? He didn’t know. And probably never would.

Bolan continued to fall, forcing himself to stay calm, not a particularly difficult task for a man who had lived a life such as his. Remaining composed in the face of impending destruction had become second nature to him. He had stared into the dark face of the Grim Reaper many times and each time the man with the sickle had been the one to break eye contact and back down. Bolan had too much experience under his gun belt to be upset now.