Grave Mercy

“Shame to see her go,” he said, leaning on one of the trees holding Bolan’s hammock.

“She has things to do. Better things than looking after me,” Bolan replied with a chuckle.

Spaulding smirked. “I don’t know. Looked like leaving was harder for her than pulling a tooth.”

“Wasn’t easy for me, either,” Bolan said. Glass clinked, and he turned to see Spaulding hold up a pair of beer bottles.

“I’m not sure if these will go well with your painkillers.”

Bolan smiled. “I try to limit the chemicals that go into me. Alcohol, too, but…”

“When it’s time to relax, you got the beer.”

The two men chuckled. A convulsive twitch of muscle over one of Bolan’s healing ribs sent a spark of pain rushing through him. Still, it was a worthwhile exchange. With a twist, Bolan rolled out of the hammock. The stitch in his side started to fade as he accepted the beer bottle.

“Finally moving now that Honey’s not around?”

Bolan shot a glance at Spaulding. “What, you’re going to be my nursemaid now?”

Spaulding shook his head. “No way, man. But she must have threatened you to keep you lying down.”

“Combination of threats and pain.”

“When do you think you’ll be out to join us in the butter?” Spaulding asked.

Bolan had to remember he was at a surf camp to decipher that the bronzed young man was inquiring about when Bolan would take a few spins on a surfboard. “Once I don’t feel like I’m being kicked in the chest when I laugh. And by then, I should be on my way out of here.”

“It’d be a shame.”

Bolan frowned. “Trouble finds me easily. It’d be a shame if it landed here.”

Spaulding began chuckling again. “This place is as far from trouble as you can get. That’s why Honey dropped you off here.”

“I hope so,” Bolan answered.

CHAPTER THREE

The crystal clear waters of the Caribbean ocean felt good.

Though Mack Bolan continued to feel the lingering ache of his broken ribs, he was still capable of kicking his feet as they dangled off of the back of the surfboard. He was propelling himself through crests and furrows in the water, aiming the tip of the fiberglass “plank” at oncoming swells.

The soldier had surfed a few times between missions. The sport was one that was easy to pick up, but one of those things that took a lifetime to master. Bolan’s excellent conditioning and agility put him above the rank of rookie. The twenty-first-century board he was on was even more accommodating to his aching form as it was lightweight, but designed to support more than the weight of slight-limbed youths. Bolan could easily lift this plank, and it was shaped so that it could keep him afloat with any balanced weight on top.

The exercise provided by his efforts at balance on the fiberglass hull was at once gentle on his tender ribs yet invigorating to his shoulders and abdominal muscles. Arms and legs, constantly flexing to make the most of his momentum when the wave caught him up and hurled him on, were eating up the exertion, re-strengthening their too-long-inert spring-steel tautness.

As Spaulding soared past, hurtling along a “left”—a wave that’s tube extended from right to left—he gave Bolan a thumb’s up before he ducked down, letting the cresting wave form a pipe over his head. The soldier had seen the man tilting, pushing against the rising concave of the wave, seeming to defy gravity as he ground along the wall of water. Once inside the pipe, Spaulding was in a world that had to be experienced to be appreciated, a tunnel of serenity where a man or woman could disappear for a slice of time that seemed to last longer on the inside than outside, embraced by the ocean’s enormous power without any of the punishment of its potential death grip.

Spaulding glided along the Jamaican shore, where there were no flesh-rending reefs, no bone-shattering rocks. Here was a place where the youngest students—known in the sporting community as “groms”—and veteran surfers could frolic. It was where this particular, injured soldier could rehabilitate without risk of exacerbating his injuries.

Bolan had finally picked up one of Spaulding’s spare boards when Martin Rudd had shown him the physical rejuvenation qualities of surfing. Rudd had been a winter extreme sports photographer, a man who had skied and snowboarded down untamed mountainsides, skirting trees and boulders in search of a new day’s shot of adrenaline mixed with the majestic glory of snowcapped mountains splayed out in front of him. That ended when Rudd, skiing through a gap of boulders, snagged the tip of one ski on a jutting rock and spiral-fractured his right femur. Left with one thighbone an inch shorter than the other, Rudd had expected never to take to a slope again.

Now, the forty-something “extreme” sportsman had found renewed strength and freedom on the pounding surf, enough to get him back onto mountainsides, if not doing stunts, then at least able to keep up and photograph the new wave of somersaulting snow devils. Rudd still suffered from a permanent limp, but it was from the disparate lengths of his legs, not because of the pain of a now fused and healed femur. The truncated leg had been allowed to heal, regaining much of its lost might and vigor.

Bolan had first followed Rudd into the butter five days before, but the soldier had one pang of regret though he was no longer subjected to searing pain like a knife in his lungs after doing wind sprints on the sand. The injuries that had kept him here for this brief span of heaven were no longer a hindrance. He easily hoisted young groms onto his shoulders as they begged to see the world from eight feet in the air. Staying here for more than another day or two, healing, was no longer an option.

The Executioner hopped to a crouched position, his feet and hands on the board as he settled his balance, the sleek shell maintaining its forward momentum as it rushed into the coming swell. As he steered the board by gripping its smooth sides, he got the right angle and rose to his full height. His mass pushed the board against the opposing force of the coming wave, and in a heartbeat, he was lifted effortlessly onto the crest. The power of the ocean beneath him was akin to an Asian elephant he’d ridden in Thailand when battling a Chinese heroin ring. Like that powerful pachyderm, the wave didn’t notice Bolan’s added mass, continuing on its course without pause. In the Thai jungles, he had been able to steer the beast through a den of vicious Chinese gunmen, the mighty elephant carrying him like a living tank through the battle.

The ocean, however, dwarfed that seemingly endless might, accepting no commands from knee prods against its neck. Where Bolan had been only barely able to direct his pachyderm on its charge of destruction, the Caribbean Sea accepted no commands, took no orders. Instead the soldier had to aim the surfboard, his sharp eyes and instincts feeling for furrows and paths of least resistance as the wave rose behind him.

It was exhilarating and humbling in the same primal instant. Bolan had the freedom of a winged god, yet was at the mercy of cosmic gravitational vortices that hurled the Earth and the moon around the sun at millions of miles per hour. Balanced precariously, he skimmed over the surface of the ocean as swift as an arrow, mere pivots of his hips enabling him to adjust his course, compensating for gravity and the swelling sea beneath him. It wasn’t true flight, just like his parachuting or his free falls, it was “falling with style” to quote one movie. Still, with the wind in his face and the sea at his back, he hurled along, arms spread to take in the sun and the breeze, drinking in the wonders of the Earth before the wave’s push and gravity’s pull overwhelmed the delicate balance.

He finally ditched into four-foot-deep water, the incompressible fluid cushioning his torso and head as he dived in, pulling up before he dug his face into the sediment at the bottom. Behind him, the neoprene leash around his ankle connecting him to his board yanked the fiberglass hull into his ankle and shin. His lower legs no longer sparked sharp jolts of pain from the glancing impacts as the board cracked on them. Bolan’s bruises had developed into “surf bumps” days ago.

With a shrug of his long arms and strong shoulders, he propelled himself to the surface. The right shoulder’s cut had long since closed, and the skin fused shut without fear of opening up again after its two-week reprieve. One stroke had brought him up to suck in air, and he twisted to grab his board, scrabbling on top of it. A deep intake of air no longer was an exercise in masochism. There was still pain, but it was a dull, throbbing pulse, telling Bolan that the flexing bones of his ribs were almost good enough for him to return to duty without fear of physical failure.

A day, two at the most, and the Executioner would launch himself back into action.

Spaulding had been right, Bolan mused as he kicked out to meet more swells. It would have been criminal to have lived in this stretch of Earth where land, sea and sky intersected to form the surest proof that the universe didn’t solely exist to punish humanity. Joy and mercy were rare sights in the spheres where the Executioner traveled, and he could easily have fallen into the fallacious trap that reality held only cruelty and suffering. Even a minute basking under this sun, smelling this forest, listening to the hushed whispers of this surf, had washed away the caked layers of cynicism that had threatened to darken his heart of hearts.

Life was good here.

Bolan couldn’t feel disheartened by the duties that pulled him away from this affirming environment. The tranquil peace, broken only by the laughter of children and the crash of waves was a reminder of the things that he fought for.

This gentle realm was the spur for the Executioner’s War Everlasting. The violence that Bolan brought to bear against the savagery of criminals, terrorists and other violent predators was a firebreak. He was the wall between civilization and the corrupters who looked for an easy way to feed whatever their greedy hearts desired. A week among kids and beach bums had renewed his touch with humanity. It returned faces to what could have too easily become an abstract concept of innocence, and enabled him to return to the shadows around the world, stalking those who’d bolster themselves with pain and suffering.

Bolan mounted the surfboard, dangling a leg on either side of it as if he were riding a fiberglass horse. He ran his fingers through his wet black hair, cool blue eyes scanning the horizon where the sky drooped to meet the Caribbean Sea.

It was beautiful, another glorious sight in a world full of them. Though Bolan would soon have to leave, he kept a realistic appreciation of the seascape. He had been on every continent in the world, and had visited most of the major island chains, summoned to engagements against murderers and conquerors on every one. This was far from his first visit to Jamaica and given the piracy, drug smuggling and other pursuits of the criminal mind, the Executioner would once more come back to the island nation that held this small cradle of placid joy.

His fighting energies had been built back up, and they were trying to rush Bolan’s injured parts to heal so that they could turn themselves toward productive ventures in the Executioner’s endless crusade to protect all that was good and civilized in the world. He was thinking about the hints and whispers of trouble that hummed in the daily news, clues that would be far more blatant if Bolan had access to the threat matrix gathered at Stony Man Farm, a plug-in roster of unrest and violence that were symptoms of diseases to which he had to bring his cleansing flame.

The most blatant bit of news was the discovery of a yacht found adrift, no crew on board, and no signs of violence. Several young college students, here on spring break, had disappeared without a trace. It was nothing new in Jamaican waters as the fabled “pirates of the Caribbean” had evolved over the centuries, trading in their flintlocks for M-16s and their rowboats for Zodiac rafts with high-horsepower engines on the back. There were other small news passages about a couple of fishing boats that had gone missing. However, since the crews weren’t made up of beautiful, young American tourists, the news agencies didn’t care about them. It had been two fishing trawlers, their combined crews at thirty, also gone as if snatched by the ghosts of the sea.

One part of Bolan wanted to kick his surfboard out past the breakers and carve some more waves, but the Executioner was already mentally organizing a map approximated from the missing fishermen and tourists’ last-known locations. He’d call to confirm his estimations, either pulling in favors from local law enforcement, or in a last resort, taking his inquiries electronically to the Farm to get the cyberteam’s assistance. The only other snarl in his plans to take war to the mystery kidnappers was that most of his gear had gone back to the States with Jack Grimaldi while Bolan recovered from his wounds. All he had with him right now was an Atomic Aquatics titanium dive knife in a sheath strapped to his right calf. The closest thing to firepower that he possessed were two 9-mm Beretta pistols in a lockbox, hidden from view of both children and gun thieves looking to make some money on the black market. Normally, Bolan would have tried to keep the discreet little Beretta PX4 Compact concealed, but shirtless and without a belt for his drawstring-waisted surfer shorts, he had no options.

Luckily for Bolan, among surfers, dive knives in calf sheaths were about as common as cell phone holsters in New York City.

It still wasn’t the kind of arsenal that the Executioner would need to blitz a piracy operation, but Bolan could take his first steps, making do with weapons acquired from his enemies. Low supplies did little to slow a Bolan blitz, such as when he was living hand to mouth with barely enough money to buy gunpowder to make his own ammunition.

Another wave broke over his thighs, Bolan and the board bobbing in the water. A few more waves wouldn’t hurt, and in fact, they’d complete his regimen of exercise for the day. Then, after toweling off, the soldier would have a chance to begin his research and equipment assembly for this night’s stalk. He’d be done in time for sunset, the Executioner’s time. Then he could hunt through the shadows, using darkness as his most powerful ally in dealing with the foes who outnumbered him, but rarely could outfight or outplan him.

For now, the sun was out, and as a wise man had once said, there was no disinfectant like daylight. Any effort to find the parasitic hijackers and kidnappers during normal hours would prove to be inefficient.

The Executioner admonished himself. Too often, professionals had found themselves in deadly situations, bleeding and or dying because they were “in the white,” a level of awareness that was a total lack of preparedness or consciousness of surroundings. Living that way was a sure means of finding oneself in the path of a knife or a bullet. Bolan had only survived all these missions, all these wars, because his mind was sharp, his senses peeled and his reflexes primed to go.

Movement had tripped Bolan’s instincts, the preliminary rustle of foliage indicative of a man crashing through a forest. Peripheral vision and hearing had picked up on that, and to Bolan, they were as obvious as signal flares. He turned to spot the source of the crashing—a haggard-looking figure that emerged onto the sand.

Bolan took in the details of the man, and with spine-stiffening realization, he saw the machete dangling in the newcomer’s hand.