Pacific Creed

Bolan kept his thoughts off his face as he gazed upon the battered, terrified women weeping and squinting blindly into the LED glare of the lantern. Bolan counted seven women. Most of them were blonde and in their teens and they cringed and clutched each other with their bound hands. One woman might have been in her forties, with somewhat obvious surgical enhancements to her face and body. She glared at Bolan and company in open defiance despite a black eye. Tino’s huge meat hook slammed onto Bolan’s shoulder and gave it a meaningful squeeze. “This is a pass-fail situation, brah.”

The soldier knew what was expected of him. He pointed at the older one. “Her.”

“Nice choice!” Tino laughed. “No one misses a slice from a cut loaf!”

The men in the cave laughed as though this was the height of humor.

Bolan let some ugliness come into his voice. “I just want to wipe that look off her face.”

More laughs followed. The woman continued to glare but tears spilled down her face. She yipped as Bolan seized her by the neck and propelled her across the sand toward one of the containers to the cheers of the other men.

Chapter 4

Mack Bolan slung his chosen woman into the container and slammed the door shut behind them. Tino whooped. A part of Bolan had been trying to build some kind of empathy for the Samoan street criminal. Tino’s cavalier attitude toward sexual slavery had just soured the relationship. The woman cringed as Bolan took out his phone and hit the Farm-built electronic surveillance app. She was still defiant. “Screw you, asshole!”

Bolan grinned and hit the camera app. His phone flashed as he walked around the woman and took pictures of her. At the same time, the camera application was firing off infrared lasers looking for camera lenses and the electronic countermeasures probed for bugs. Bolan’s phone flashed an extra time. That told him the phone had detected nothing. He suspected that if he was being watched, the cavalry would have hit the container hard and told him no flash photography of the fun was allowed. Bolan sent the woman’s picture to the Farm and left the audio on for Kurtzman. “What’s your name?”

“Screw you.”

“And what do your friends call you?”

She sobbed. “Becca.”

“Rebecca?”

“Why do you care?”

Bolan laughed loud and spoke low. “Because I’m going to get you out of here.”

Becca stared at Bolan with something as dangerous as hope. “You mean that?”

“You have two ways out of here. Neither of them is good.”

Becca’s collagen-enhanced lips twisted. Bolan suspected Becca might be or had been a pro. She had seen bad times and bad things. A slave-cave below the water line in Hawaii with a one-way ticket to hell was pushing her limits. A terrible, fragile smile of defiance crossed Becca’s face. “Lay it on me, Island boy.”

“I’m not from the Islands.” Bolan forked his fingers at his arctic-blue orbs. “Look in these eyes.”

Becca stared back in surprise. “You’re no choir boy.” A short, broken laugh forced itself out of Becca. “But you’re a Boy Scout, aren’t you?”

Bolan considered his past. “What if I told you I would have gone for Eagle Scout but a war got in the way?”

Becca smiled. “What’re my two choices again?”

“A and B. A is you saying ‘get me out of here now,’ so we walk out of this container and I try to kill our way out against all resistance.”

Becca’s smile died. “And what’s Option B?”

“They sell you and the other girls for guns, intel and who knows what else. They put you on a boat and sail you west to God knows where. But I can put a tracking device on you and try to rescue you before you hit slave market central. Option A? Frankly I give me and my friend about a ten percent chance of overpowering everybody with our bare hands and finding our way out of the forest with you and the rest of the girls alive. Option B? You and the girls are most likely going to get loaded into a boat. I track you and rescue you.” Bolan didn’t sugarcoat it. “And you endure whatever happens until then.”

“And which one are you recommending?”

“Would you believe B?”

“God, you’re an asshole!”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Bolan conceded. “The problem is we’re outnumbered, I don’t have a gun, and it’s a fight to the finish. No way they’ll let us get out of here alive. B gives me a chance to gear up, and it also gives me a lead on where you’re being taken, which means I can crush the slave trade at both ends.”

“And you’re going to put a tracking device on me how?”

Bolan took out his phone, opened the battery compartment and slid out the RFID the Farm was tracking him with. It was far more powerful and sophisticated than the one he had injected into the Lua man’s hand. It was the size and shape of a quarter and about as thick as a PC’s processing chip. “You can’t swallow it—it won’t stand up to digestive juices.”

Becca gave the tracking device a very dry look. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

Bolan handed Becca the device. She blinked as he stripped off his shirt and flopped on a futon. “Would you give me a back rub? I need to stay awhile.”

Becca straddled Bolan’s hips and dug her thumbs into his trapezius with skill and alacrity.

* * *

Bolan left the container. Becca whimpered and cried in a convincing show of shame and degradation.

“You’re my hero, brah!” Tino’s voice boomed. “Man, I gotta get me a piece of that—”

“She’s mine, until she’s gone,” Bolan said.

“Well, shit, brah, you don’t have to—”

The Lua master spoke gravely. “This isn’t a party, Tino. This is a grave necessity. We all know Koa’s reputation, but Makaha had to prove that he’s all in. We’re going to hurt the haoles. We’re going to hurt them in every way possible. Makaha had to prove that he’s willing to do what has to be done.”

Bolan gave Koa a defiant look. “Don’t tell Melika.”

Koa gave Bolan a faux “saddened that you would even ask” look. “That’s not going to happen.”

“It’s like killing people, Makaha!” Tino just kept digging his own grave as he leered. “It gets easier with practice, except it’s not as much fun.”

“Done that.” Bolan stared into the middle distance in memory. “It never got easier. I just got better at it.”

The Lua master, Ferret-face and the thin man reappraised Bolan. The Lua man took out two thick, rubber-banded rolls of twenties. “Take this.”

“You want to pay me?” Bolan put pure disdain on his face as he jerked his head at the container. “For that?”

The man looked genuinely hurt. “No, Makaha. This is walking-around money. From your uncle Aikane. You telling me you’re flush?”

Bolan looked away as though he was ashamed. “Nah, I spent my last bills on chicken and beer today. Koa spent all he had on plane tickets.”

The thin man’s voice went from sneering to a neutral tone that almost had a tinge of respect. “Tino will take you home. Take a day off. Take two. Forget chicken and beer. Get some real grind. Koa, get reacquainted with your home.” The thin man came dangerously close to being friendly as he wrinkled his nose at Bolan. “And show this lost home-slice what he’s been missing.”

Even Ferret-face beamed a little.