The Executioner stared into the manâs eyes
âYou arenât a Tiger. Who are you working for?â
An evil smile curled the lips of the man on the ground. âYou will never know,â he spit.
âWhat have you got planned for America?â Bolan asked. He could see that the manâs time was growing short. Heâd bleed out in a few minutes. âWhatâs Subing going to pull off in the States?â
âThatâ¦I willâ¦you,â the dying terrorist said, âbecause youâ¦will never find him in time.â He paused, then breathed out one faint and final word. âNuke.â
Charlie Latham looked at Bolan. âOh, hell.â
Whatever deceives seems to exercise a kind of magical enchantment.
âPlato,
The Republic, III, c.350 B.C.
There are two kinds of evil in this worldâthe kind thatâs planned, reveled in and enjoyed, and the kind to which men who are otherwise good fall prey during weak moments. Many have been the victim of the latter. My mission is to obliterate the former.
âMack Bolan
The smell was what he noticed first, a blend of old and new. At one time there had been cattle in the building and the scent of manure still lingered. Hay had been stored in the second-floor loft but it had molded away, leaving only its stench.
The scents of rotted wood and unwashed human bodies, however, were current. Old and new, the numerous odors combined to produce a smell far more nauseating than any one could have generated by itself and, as he stepped into the barn, the foul mixture hit Candido Subing like a baseball bat between the eyes.
Subing stopped just inside the door. One odor was separate from the others and seemed to rise alone above them. And it filled the air like a hanging corpse.
Fear.
Subing had caught the man following him off guard with his sudden stop and his fellow freedom fighter slammed into his back, the hard lens of the video camera the man carried cracking into his spine. Subing sent an angry glance over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to the six hostages huddled in the corner farthest from the door of the barn. Four men and two women were seated in the mud, their backs against the wall. Their hands were bound in front of them by a rope that traveled around their waists before dropping to secure their ankles. Makeshift hoods, which had once held grain for the animals who had inhabited the barn, covered each prisoner from the top of the head to the shoulders.
Subing felt his face twist into a sneer. The people beneath the hoods were worse than mere infidels. They were Christian missionaries, sent from the Great Satan America to infiltrate the Philippines and to snatch his people from the one true god, Allah, and his prophet.
Subing waded through the muddy floor to the cowering figures. He had no need to remove the hoods to know what lay in each prisonerâs eyes. Terror in some. Acceptance of their fate in others. But at least some hope still left in most of them.
And outright defiance in one.
Subing stopped in front of the seated captives. He had seen their faces earlier in the day when the hoods had been removed. As soon as their eyes had adjusted to the unaccustomed light, one of the women and two of the men had wept. Two other missionariesâa husband and wifeâhad closed their eyes and heâd seen their lips move silently as theyâd offered up some infidel prayer. But none had dared to meet his eyes. At least, none but one. And that man still mocked him. Subing stared at that man now, his eyes filled with hatred.
Before he killed themâand he would kill them all, regardless of whether or not the Filipino and American authorities agreed to the demands he had put forth to themâhe would force them each to denounce their false savior. He continued to stare at the hood over the face of the defiant one.
He would denounce his false doctrine this very day.
Subing narrowed his eyes, savoring this moment. The man who defied him sat between the two women. Worden was his name. The Reverend James A. Worden.