Murder Island by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2015-12-25T05:00:00+00:00

13

Mundaw chose that moment to come into the room. He closed the doors behind him. Bolan glanced at the man, sizing him up. If it came to it, he could take Mundaw, but not easily.

“Hunt?” he asked, looking back at Rainsford.

“Oh, don’t play coy, man. You’re not stupid, and subtlety is not an art I practice with regularity. You know damn well I knocked your little plane from the sky, as I did Cloud’s.” Rainsford smirked. “I am a hunter, Mr. Cooper. And you will be my quarry.”

Bolan knew Rainsford meant every word. The man was completely mad, and Bolan and Cloud were at his mercy. It was like something from a bad black-and-white serial matinee.

“Does that mean there’s no phone?”

“Ah, humor,” Rainsford said. “A man who can keep his wit in the face of such revelations is a strong man indeed.”

“Definitely no phone,” Bolan said.

“Of course there’s a phone. You’re not going to get near it, however.” Rainsford went to a weapons rack on the wall. “But you know that. You do not strike me as a foolish man. If you were, you might already have tried to take me hostage or to disable Mundaw. Instead, you are stalling, drawing me out, studying me the way a tiger studies hunters from the brush, gauging the best time to leap.” Rainsford took a sheathed sword down from the rack and turned to show it to Bolan. “Am I right?”

“You’re insane.”

Rainsford chuckled and drew the blade from its wooden scabbard with a flourish, causing the rattan bands that decorated it to rattle softly. “It’s a jimpul, a blade used for head-hunting. Twenty-one inches of sharp steel with a bone handle carved, I’m told, from an unlucky Japanese soldier’s femur some seventy odd years ago.” He held up the blade and peered down its length. “I believe Mundaw’s grandfather was responsible for both the supply and carving of said femur, but my memory isn’t what it once was.”

Bolan said nothing, but his palm itched for the feel of his Ka-Bar’s hilt. As if reading his mind, Rainsford smiled. He swept the jimpul out, and the old, pitted blade hissed as it cut the air.

“It’s a beautiful thing. It has its purpose, and its purpose is plain.” His smile widened, and his eyes became vague and unfocused. “There are many reasons to take a head, in Dayak society—or rather, there were, before they put such practices behind them. One of those reasons was the belief that a man could take the strength of his victims and add it to his own. The strength of a man, the raw stuff of life, is contained in his head. The soul is connected to the head, and in taking the one, you gain the other.” Rainsford brought the blade up and let the flat of it rest against his own cheek. “How old would you say I am?”

Bolan cleared his throat. “Fifty,” he said.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, as my dear mother used to say,” Rainsford said.

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