Blood Tide by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

14

Kouprey Island, Cambodia

The men were nervous, and they had every right to be. Most of them had never been in a firefight in their lives, and they were going up against hardened killers. The enemy were pirates who had spent their lives savaging the sea lanes and taking what they wanted by force. Bolan’s platoon had received exactly one week of the equivalent of US Army Ranger training. Most of that had been marksmanship, weapons maintenance and the use of cover.

Very little of that would serve them well.

The Mahdi and Jusuf had taken Bolan’s fledgling marksmen and decided to use them as shock troops. Behind them were nearly a hundred fighters, armed with whatever firearm they could find. They would come flooding in when Bolan’s corps had broken the defenses.

Bolan thought a much better idea would be to have the one hundred hopped-up yahoos do the charging and screaming while his men used their newfound skills to cover the assault, or better yet, make a flanking attack during the diversion. Unfortunately, Bolan had not been consulted during the grand strategy session. He and his team had simply been issued their orders.

They were the tip of spear.

Sneaking up on Rustam Megawatti had not been difficult. The Mahdi had spies in Megawatti’s household who knew his every movement. The Pirate King was making inroads into “legitimate” business enterprises. He was using his considerable connections and a great deal of under-the-table PRC financial backing to open up a string of casinos along the Cambodian coast. The tiny island the Cambodian government had leased to him was named after the national animal. The kouprey was a very rare, forest-dwelling cow that stood over six feet at the shoulder and weighed over a ton.

The Mahdi’s army had unloaded outrigger canoes from the belly of a steamer and spent a day and a night under sail and oar to insert on the island’s southern tip.

Megawatti’s French colonial manor was lit up like a Christmas tree. The sound of music and laughter wafted over the twelve-foot walls of stone. A military truckload of prostitutes had been driven into the compound earlier. The Mahdi’s spies said the manor had at least fifty armed men. The son, Isfan, was on the island, and he had brought a dozen of his bodyguards with him. Armed men walked the walls and guarded the gate. The French-style iron gate had been replaced by heavy beams reinforced with iron bands. Within the walls, a twenty-foot bamboo guard tower surveyed all approaches to the villa.

The assault was going to be ugly.

Bolan could smell the sweet smoke as the men prepared for juramentado. They smoked, tied their testicles and worked themselves into a religious frenzy back in the trees. The Executioner’s men were stone-cold sober. Their balls were not bound. Indeed, they were hanging in the breeze on this one, and each and every one of them knew it. Bolan wished he had the Dragunov sniper rifle, but he knew it would not serve him in the current situation he was leading from the front.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.