Rogue Elements

Bolan rose.

The third man leveled his weapon.

The Executioner hurled his blade. A curved khanjar dagger was no sticker, but about half a pound of steel and buffalo horn hit the assassin in the face and his shots went high and wide. The killer staggered as Sifuentes drilled a burst into his chest. Bolan ripped a grenade off the assassin’s belt as he fell, and pulled the pin. The remaining man in the hall fired burst after burst through the doorway, but he had no angle. He screamed in fear as Bolan pulled a bank shot and bounced the grenade off the far wall in the hall and sent it out of sight. The bomb whip-cracked. The killer in the hall’s scream was nearly lost in the explosion’s echoes as he fell.

Bolan scooped up a Mini-Uzi and wiped blood off the action. “Any movement out back?”

Sifuentes took a quick peek out the kitchen window. “Just one guy in puddles and piles.”

Executioner took a quick look down the hall. The last assassin had taken a Russian F1 hand grenade at kissing distance and turned the walls into modern art. Lodgers on the first and second floors were screaming. “Hey, you remember your plan about waiting down on the beach?”

Sifuentes nodded. “Yeah?”

“Call Viking. Tell them that’s where we’ll be.” Bolan quickly searched the fallen. “We’re going out the kitchen window and down the drainpipe.”

“Cool.”

“Don’t slip on the soap.”

Chapter Two (#u11f59329-cc40-5af7-bf13-a805005f1517)

The Arabian Sea

The Huey descended toward the ship that was their new, temporary home. Both Bolan and Sifuentes had been surprised when the civilian-marked chopper had flown right up to the pier at dawn and someone had texted the former Ranger, instructing them to get on board, and fast. Bolan took in the ship. The Alice O’Kieffe was a small blue ’70s vintage coastal freighter. She had been converted into an arsenal ship. The majority of ports of call on the planet did not allow armed civilian ships to sail into port. The major shipping security companies like the Rampart Group and Viking got around that by keeping ships offshore and at strategic points in the shipping lanes where men and weapons could be loaded and off-loaded in international waters. The ship had a makeshift helicopter deck. Four shirtless, muscular, tattooed men were currently playing a game of two-on-two basketball. The central painted H made for a decent basketball key. The players stopped and squinted upward as the helicopter came in out of the brassy midmorning sun. Bolan raised an appreciative eyebrow at the sight of the copper-colored woman in a camo bikini sunning herself on top of a lifeboat out of sight of the rest of the crew.

Sifuentes smirked. “Dude, I know you have like, superpowers and stuff.”

“And stuff,” Bolan acknowledged.

“But B.B.? Don’t even think about it. Abe thinks she’s a lesbian. Mono thinks she might have a dick. Either way, she doesn’t mix with her coworkers, and if she did, Abe has first dibs.”

Bolan filed away that minefield of information.

The chopper touched down on the helideck and ship’s crewmen came out to unload the crates Bolan and Sifuentes had been sitting on. By their banter the soldier made them for Malaysians. A man who could have been Sifuentes’s little brother but with even more tattoos and a ’70s-porn-worthy mustache ran up as the rotors stopped. “Sifu! Haven’t seen you since Mombasa!”

“Mono!” The two Latino soldiers engaged in some sort of elaborate hand-jive. Another Latino sporting the startling combination of a beard and a mullet joined the pair, and a conversation in rapid-fire Spanish commenced. A black man with a shaved head eyeballed Bolan, then a large Polynesian man rumbled forward. “Hey! Sifu! Who’s the skinny little white lizard?”

Bolan topped Sifuentes by a head and had a lean but well-muscled physique. Then again, the big Polynesian topped Bolan by a head and looked to be a rock-solid two hundred and fifty pounds. Bolan smiled and stuck out his hand. “You must be Abe.”

Abe stared at the hand and then at Bolan like he had to be kidding.

Bolan shrugged. All eyes turned as the bikini-clad woman walked barefoot onto the helideck. She was Latina and built like a bantamweight female MMA fighter except that she clearly had some surgical augmentation filling out her bikini top. It was hard to gauge the face beneath the big mirrored sunglasses, but her lips were sensual and a short-going-to-bushy-shag haircut framed it all. The mirrored shades looked Bolan up and down. “Che, Sifu. Who’s your friend?”

“This guy?” Sifuentes enthused. “Let me tell you! This guy, he—”

“I haven’t seen blue eyes in a while.” The woman took a long look into Bolan’s arctic blue eyes. “Haven’t seen eyes like that ever.”

The woman turned and put a wiggle in her walk for Bolan as she went to the helicopter gangway. “See you around, Blue.”

The soldier felt the trouble with a capital T coming, but he smiled at the sight anyway. Big Abe’s face went from scowling water buffalo to snarling demon tiki. “Listen, white boy, you gonna—”

“That’s white man, to you.”

The helideck went silent. Abe reared to his full height in outrage. “Fucking Viking, we get all the shit details! Rampart?” Big Abe stabbed a massive finger at Bolan accusingly as he began venting his grievances. “They don’t want no brown people! They want white boys with beards like you!”

Bolan stroked his chin and prepared himself to fight a Samoan who was twice his size and ten years younger. “I don’t have a beard. I applied to Rampart Group, and they told me I was too old and I could take a Viking Associate’s slot if I still wanted a job. And that is white man to you, poi-boy. Don’t make me tell you a third time.”

The Latino contingent stared in shock.

Big Abe roared as his hands clenched into fists. “Poi is Hawaiian!”

Bolan was confident he could take Big Abe in hand-to-hand combat. He had severe doubts about being able to beat him in a stand-up fight. “You saying you never pounded taro when you were a kid, uso?” Bolan countered.

“Hmm!” Abe grunted at the Samoan word for “brother,” and Bolan knew he had scored. A slow, rueful smile crossed the big Samoan’s face. “I mighta. Once or twice. You been to my islands?”

“Does American Samoa count? I worked with a few brothers from there back in the day.”

The tension on the helideck eased considerably.

Big Abe shrugged his massive shoulders. “Where I was born, where I signed up. Where I call home. So I guess it counts. You?”

Bolan told the truth. “Massachusetts.”

“Never worked with no Bay Staters.”

Bolan smiled. “Check out the big brain on Abe.”

“We had to memorize all the states, capitals and nicknames in school.” Big Abe looked out over the Arabian Sea. “Truth? Don’t know who is farther from home, brudda.”

Bolan consulted his mental map. “You, by about three thousand miles.”

Big Abe laughed. “Check out the big brain on Blue!”

“So are we going to fight? If we are, can I have a meal and a nap first?” Bolan heaved a sigh. “It’s been a long-ass seventy-two.”

“Well, the day we do fight, I want your best. So yeah, go down to the galley. Tell Namzi you want the fried rice with julienned Spam and two fried eggs on top. I swear to God that little Indonesian shit makes magic. Plus he’s from Java, so the coffee is good.”

Bolan shoved out his hand again. “Will do.”

The Polynesian engulfed Bolan’s hand in his own but forwent the bone-crusher. “Welcome to Viking Associates, Blue. Welcome to shit detail.”

* * *

Bolan stretched out on his bunk. He put one khanjar dagger beneath his pillow and left the other in his backpack. He took out his phone and punched in the number for Stony Man Farm, in Virginia. His signal bounced off an NSA satellite, then was routed through a series of cutouts, before landing at the Farm. The firewalls and cybersecurity protocols chewed on Bolan’s communication and decided it was kosher. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman answered.

“You in?”

“I’m in.”