Mission To Burma

Bolan and Nyin moved out and quickly came to a river. They dropped low by its banks and observed. A village huddled on either side of the river. The lights in the village were all out. On a low hill above the village sat what could only be described as a fortress. The main house was low, sprawling and made of heavy wooden beams and roofed with tile. A number of similarly constructed smaller outbuildings squatted around it like satellites. A bamboo palisade topped with razor wire surrounded the entire complex, and a twenty-foot-tall guard tower that had a good vantage on the village below completed security.

Bolan was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he asked anyway. “What is this place?”

Nyin pointed toward the collection of huts huddling together by the river. “That is Ta village.” He peered unhappily at the fortress on the hill. “That is house of U Than.” Nyin chewed on his lip pensively. He seemed to know the answer, but asked anyway, as well. “You have located girl?”

Bolan nodded as he stared at his screen and noted the distance between himself and the transponder signal. He looked up at the house of U Than. “She’s in there.”

3

The village was in lockdown. U Than’s place was lit up like a Christmas tree, but the village was dark and nothing moved. The only activity was a pair of armed men who stood on the little bamboo pier smoking cigarettes, clearly bored with guard duty.

Bolan and Nyin made their approach through the tiny, muddy lanes between the huts. Most of the huts were up on low stilts, and beneath them pigs grunted in their pens and an occasional chicken squawked. In the distance, a water buffalo lowed in its enclosure. Bolan and Nyin moved past canoes up on racks and fishing nets hanging to dry from posts.

At five yards Bolan drew his blades.

He lunged as one of the sentries turned to spit betel juice into the river. The man went limp as the tomahawk head crunched into the top of his skull. The second sentry’s cigarette sagged in his mouth in shock. Before he could do anything other than stare, Nyin’s dha flashed from its sheath with alacrity that would have given a Japanese samurai pause. The sentry’s head came a few tendons short from flying off his neck. Bolan thought rumors about Nyin doing some headhunting with the Naga tribes might not be entirely scurrilous. Bone splintered as Bolan retrieved his tomahawk. Nyin took a moment to relieve the dead gangsters of their money, betel and cigarettes, and then he and Bolan slid the two corpses into the river and washed the blood from their blades. Nyin shoved a leaf-wrapped quid of betel into his mouth and offered the pouch to Bolan.

The soldier shook his head. “I’m trying to give it up.”

Nyin grinned and resheathed his blade. “Well, we have conquered Ta village.”

So they had. “Fort U Than may be a little harder.”

“Maybe,” Nyin agreed.

Bolan climbed to the top of the open, A-frame canoe shelter and turned his binoculars on U Than’s domicile. Nyin perched next to him and pulled out his own binoculars. Bolan scanned the grounds and stopped as he came to the wide porch leading to the main house. Most Burmese barely cracked five feet tall, and most of the guards’ assault rifles seemed almost as large as they were. The four men up on the porch were all pushing six feet, were heavily tattooed and had the physiques of gladiators. “Those men on the porch. U Than’s personal bodyguard?”

“Mmm,” Nyin grunted. “Thai kickboxers. Leg breakers. Bad men.”

U Than seemed to be recruiting from the heavyweight division. An even larger man came out on the porch. His head was shaved, and his ears were cauliflowered masses hanging from his head. The man’s eyebrows appeared to be mostly scar tissue. He appeared to be several inches taller than Bolan and perhaps half again as heavy. Thrust in his sash was a Colt .45, and the hilt of a dha twice as large as Nyin’s stuck up over his left shoulder. “Who’s the gorilla?”

“That is Maung. Very bad man.”

Maung gave off the unmistakable air of command. “U Than’s number two?”

“Yes.”

Bolan sighed. “Rescue missions…”

Nyin cocked his head. “What?”

“Nothing.” Bolan put away his binoculars and slid off the roof of the canoe shed. “Let’s do this.”

“How?” Nyin hopped down. “Place locked up tight.”

Bolan glanced at the dark, dappled waters of the river. It flowed down around the hill, and U Than had some canoes and speedboats tied up on a bamboo pier of his own. “Can you swim?”

“No.” Nyin stared at the river in horror. “And there are crocodiles.”

Bolan glanced behind him at the village canoes. The men in the guard tower would undoubtedly see them long before they got to the pier. “I guess we do it the hard way.”

“You will want a diversion.”

Bolan smiled. “Yeah, I’m gonna want a diversion. You know what to do with an M-203?”

Nyin was a small man with teeth that belonged in the mouth of a horse rather than a human, and he showed them. “As private, I was grenadier in my squad.”

“Good.” Bolan handed Nyin his rifle and pulled three grenades from his bandolier. “This one is offensive, high explosive, big boom. When I give you the signal, I’m going to want you to lob it into the compound. That’s when I’ll use flexible charge to cut through the palisade. The second one is tear gas, which will keep everyone occupied and intrigued while I make my insertion into the big house. Number three is white phosphorus. When I send you the signal, I want you to light up U Than’s cottage like a torch.”

Nyin’s smile threatened to give away their position. “I light ’em up good!”

“I’ll be coming out fast. Plan A is that I steal a speedboat and pick you up. Failing that, I want you to put a Willy Pete into U Than’s boat dock, and I’ll meet you back on the promontory where we first met. If it goes to hell, just get out. You have a cell phone?”

“Yes. Unfortunately battery is low.”

Bolan pulled a phone from his web gear. “Take mine.” Bolan tapped the motherboard strapped to his forearm. “I can call you with this. Give me thirty minutes to get to the far side of the palisade.”

Nyin put a hand on Bolan’s shoulder. “It is not a bad plan. I am honored to fight with you.”

Bolan clapped him on the shoulder. “You just keep your head up, your ass down and your eyes open. Like I said, I’ll be coming back fast.”

“I will await your signal.”

Bolan moved back through the village lanes. He could hear people murmuring within the huts, but no one opened a shutter or peered down. The Ta villagers had long ago learned not to be too curious about what went on in their valley late at night. Bolan jogged back into the rain forest and took a game trail that circled wide around U Than’s castle. Once again, he had to pull a fade into the towering hardwoods as a patrol of gangsters came by. The good news was they were patrolling the wrong way. Bolan moved around to the back of the compound. He cut a length of flexible charge from his knapsack and a hoop just big enough to crawl through. He exposed the adhesive strip, pushed in a detonator pin and pressed the hoop into the bamboo. Bolan threaded a suppressor tube onto the muzzle of his machine pistol and text-messaged Nyin.

“Do it.”

The M-203 thumped down in the village.

Bolan put his finger on the detonator button and counted down the seconds. The compound lit up in an orange flash as the offensive grenade detonated. Bolan pressed his own detonator, and the crack of the flexible charge was lost in the thunder. Armed men spilled out of the main house like a kicked-over anthill. The tear-gas grenade landed, and its multiple skip-chaser bomblets broke apart and began spewing out gray gas. The two men in the watchtower were shouting and pointing frantically. The men below began flailing and clawing at their eyes as what they thought was smoke from the explosion turned out to be war-strength CN tear gas.

Bolan pushed in the panel of bamboo he’d cut with his charge and crawled into the compound. Everyone was running toward the commotion while Bolan moved toward the back of the main house. The back of the fortress was more prosaic than the front and marked by pig enclosures, outdoor barbecue pits large enough to roast entire hogs and heat woks large enough for a grown man to go sledding in. Bolan moved through laundry lines hung with Western clothes, as well as native sarongs and tunics. He dropped between two stone washbasins as the back door flew open and a pair of men with submachine guns checked the back perimeter. Bolan waited a moment to be sure no one was behind them, then rose up with the 93-R in both hands. The machine pistol barely whispered as he put a 3-round burst into each man’s chest. Bolan moved up the low stone steps past the two dead men and entered U Than’s compound.

The back porch opened onto the kitchen. A pair of women wearing turbans were huddled in a corner clutching each other as gunfire rattled from the front of the compound. They stared in slack-jawed horror at the grease-painted, camouflaged giant who had appeared in their midst. Bolan put a finger to his lips, and the two women nodded in vigorous assent. One of the women had a bruise under her eye, and Bolan suspected U Than and the boys weren’t too respectful of the hired help. They cringed as Bolan loomed over them and tried to press themselves back through the wall as he dropped to a knee in front of them. Their fear turned to awe as Bolan displayed Lily’s photo on the PDA on his wrist. He reached into a pocket of web gear and produced two thick folds of Burmese currency. He held the money up and shrugged. “Where?” he asked quietly.

Both women pointed back the way Bolan had come.

Bolan cleared the screen on his PDA and brought up the sketching function. He took out the stylus and drew a quick sketch with a circle for the palisade and squares for the main house and the outbuildings. Bolan shrugged again.

Both women pointed at the smaller square directly behind the main house.

Bolan handed them the money and retraced his steps. His target was the largest of the outbuildings. It was a heavy-beamed A-frame with bamboo for walls, and the smell of smoked meat and fish radiated out from it. The Burmese people were overwhelmingly Theravada Buddhists, but most were also confirmed carnivores. Bolan’s destination was the meat-smoking and slaughterhouse. There was a light on within it.

Bolan crept to the door. It wasn’t particularly well fitted, and through the seams he could see it was barred from the inside. He could also hear voices within. Bolan cut a two-inch length of flexible charge and pressed it into the doorjamb. The charge hissed as he pressed the detonator, and the shaped charged burned through the bar. The soldier put his boot into the door, and it flung open on its leather hinges.

Two men started up in shock from playing with a laptop and reached for their automatic rifles. Bolan nailed both men in the chest with a triburst each, and they dropped to the dirt floor. Lily Na hung two feet from the floor in a bamboo tiger cage. Only sweat and humidity kept the shredded remnants of her black cocktail dress clinging to a divinely curved body. She had a black eye, but she perked the eyebrow over her good one in interest as she took in the commando before her and managed a smirk. “Hey, sailor.”

Bolan shook his head at her situation. “This U Than asshole comes straight out of a comic book.”