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  WITHOUT MERCY

  A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story

  Volume 7

  By JT Sawyer

  Copyright

  Copyright May 2017 by JT Sawyer

  No part of this book may be transmitted in any form whether electronic, recording, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction and the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, incidents, or events is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Join JT Sawyer’s Facebook page to follow his book research and to get updates on future releases. You can also receive information on survival tips by signing up for my email notices at http://www.jtsawyer.com

  “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”

  -Aristotle

  Terms Found in the Book

  Karambit- Curved fighting knife of Indonesia. It is four to six inches in length and resembles a tiger’s claw.

  Silat- Indigenous martial arts encompassing Indonesia and Malaysia. Most Silat practitioners employ the karambit as their blade of choice.

  FMA- Filipino Martial Arts. This system embraces empty-hand, stick-, and knife-fighting skills.

  K & R- this refers to the kidnapping and ransom industry.

  Prologue

  Phuket, Thailand

  If there was a geographic place on earth where paradise could be found it had to be along the turquoise waters and white beaches of Phuket. At least that’s what Lisa Miller thought as she absorbed the sights during her first international trip away from home.

  She and her three college friends, Megan, Chloe, and Tamara, had just arrived the night before after a long flight from JFK Airport. After breakfast in the lobby of their hotel, they were eager to get out to the beach on the other end of the property. This was a much-needed spring break from their studies at Loyola University in Maryland and all of them were looking forward to exploring the island as well as the cultural attractions.

  With her athletic build and long auburn hair, Lisa got her share of looks from the local waiters in the bar. They either commented on her exotic features or her friend Chloe’s blue eyes. Back home in Baltimore, she rarely stood out from the crowd, but here she felt like she possessed a hypnotic power over the young men passing through the walkway to the beach.

  “I wonder if the bartenders even know we’re under twenty-one?” said Lisa, who was sitting on a lounge chair, daubing sunscreen on her pale shoulders. “They seem to be pretty lax with the rules here.”

  “Who cares—we can let loose here, girl. Crank up your fun-meter for a change.” Megan slurped on her margarita while checking out a group of guys playing volleyball to their right.

  “When we let you set this trip up, I took confidence in knowing you had already been here once with your family and knew the sights. My fun-meter rests in your hands on this trip.”

  “Look, the online forums gave our hotel three stars and they had great package deals. Where else can you get lodging, breakfast, snorkeling lessons from an island hottie, and a boat tour?”

  “Speaking of the tour, when are we heading out? I told Tamara and Chloe I’d text them in an hour so they have time to get some coffee into their ridiculously hung-over bodies.”

  “Yeah, those two can put away the alcohol.” Megan tilted her brimmed hat up to stare at a muscular figure in his early twenties strolling by. “The boat guy said to be at the dock at ten-thirty and it’s a twenty-minute ride away from here so that leaves us two hours.”

  Lisa scrunched her eyebrows together. “I thought you said it departed from the beach here?” she said, pointing to a dock in the distance.

  “That was another tour I was looking at, but this guy I met at breakfast after you left offered me this awesome deal. And he even provided scooter rentals for all of us so we can be biker chicks in paradise.” Megan extended her arms like she was riding on a motorcycle.

  “Wow, sounds great, but are you sure this guy was legit? Did you give him your credit card info? There’s bound to be a lot of scammers here.”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “Will you relax already, you frickin’ prude. This is a vacation, so chill.” She pointed towards the breakfast bar ahead. “Besides that’s the guy right there. His name’s Evan.”

  Lisa looked at the nicely dressed figure who was drinking an orange juice. He was wearing a blue button-up shirt and khaki shorts. Though he was probably in his late twenties, he had a boyish face and appeared to be part Asian.

  Lisa frowned. “Well, OK, he’s clean-cut compared to the rest of the tour operators I’ve seen, and seeing the island on a scooter would be fun.”

  Megan stopped slurping on her drink and leaned towards Lisa, her eyes growing wide. “Why do you do that?”

  Lisa swiveled her head towards her friend. “What?”

  Megan waved a finger in Lisa’s face. “That right there—you’re doing it to me right now—giving me that cop face like you were the guy Evan I just pointed out. Like everyone has something to hide.”

  “Shut up—I am not.”

  “Don’t turn into the fun police on this trip, Lisa. We are here to have a blast and get some action after hours from one of these hunks.”

  “If I know you, you’re not gonna wait until after hours.” Lisa smirked, trying to divert the attention away from herself while she contained her irritation with Megan.

  Lisa leaned back and folded her arms. She knew that Megan was right but she couldn’t overcome her initial tendency to scrutinize people. Her father was a prison guard at Jessup Correctional Facility outside of Baltimore and he had instilled in her a sense of distrust in people. It was the prism through which she viewed the world but she found it had been interfering with her enjoyment of the trip since they left and she had worked hard to ratchet it down. Though Lisa had grown up in a home of modest means, Megan and Tamara came from more affluent backgrounds and they always managed to sneak in a jab about her and Chloe’s working-class upbringings. Being friendless when she arrived at Loyola, Lisa was drawn in by Megan’s carefree attitude and gravitated towards the social crowds that she never had access to back home.

  She took another look at Evan and then out at the blue-green waters of the sea in the distance. It’s time to enjoy myself. My God, girl, you’re in a tropical paradise, so relax for a change. Lisa forced her shoulders to hang down and then took another sip from her drink while glancing at the time on her phone. Two more hours until the excitement begins.

  ***

  At twenty minutes past eleven, the four women zipped on their gas-powered scooters through a series of narrow dirt roads north of the Phuket city limits, their flowing summer dresses undulating around them as they moved. Megan was in the lead, following the handlebar-mounted GPS device whose coordinates had been pre-loaded by Evan back at the hotel.

  There were no longer any tourist stores or surf shops along this remote section of the coast and Lisa hung at the rear, watching the homes become less frequent and the architecture change from well-maintained bungalows to dilapidated tin shacks. She wanted to stop Megan and check on the directions but knew she would just be chided again for being a worrier. Besides, Tamara and Chloe seemed to be having fun so maybe she just needed to dial down her ingrained awareness and take in the sights. Except the sights kept getting worse with each turn in the road. Lisa felt her stomach churning and knew something was off. What kind of tour operator has a boat this far out?

  Lisa sped up, hovering near the other two girls. “Hey, how about we talk Megan into going on another boat tour somewhere else?”

  Tamara smirked, her flossy brunette hair adrift
in the wind. “She already paid the guy. Plus, we’ll never hear the end of it from her if we bail.”

  “Don’t you think the neighborhood is a little creepy?” said Lisa.

  “What neighborhood?” said Chloe in a fluty voice. “We’re in the jungle.”

  “Exactly—this just seems odd to me,” said Lisa.

  “Megan’s handled everything on this trip—she’ll be pissed if we don’t go through with this,” said Tamara.

  “I’d rather deal with her temper than getting stuck out here.” Lisa accelerated, catching up to Megan, who had just rounded a curve beside some recently felled palm trees that were piled into a heap on the shoulder. Before she could say anything, Megan smiled at her and then pointed ahead to an overgrown driveway where Evan was standing, waving them over.

  “Hey, Megan, I’m not so sure about this anymore. Why don’t we turn back and go explore another part of the island?”

  Megan’s smile disappeared and her look turned to a glare. “You chicken-shit. I was afraid you might ruin things on this trip.” Megan sped through the last twenty feet and came to a screeching halt next to Evan.

  “Whoa, you are a wild one. I like that,” he said, offering her his hand as she got off the scooter. Tamara and Chloe pulled up beside him and disembarked while Lisa remained idling on her scooter a few feet away. She saw Megan flicking at something on her neck, then noticed her two friends doing the same thing, as if they had been bitten by something.

  A few seconds later, four dark-skinned men with cut-off jeans and bare chests emerged from behind Megan. All of them were carrying what looked like blowguns and had zip-ties hanging out of their back pockets.

  Lisa yelled at her friends to move but they were beginning to totter, then collapsed to the ground. She began to swivel the handlebars of the scooter and pull away but her arms felt heavy. In the adrenaline rush, she had barely noticed the stinging sensation in the side of her neck. Lisa glided her hand below her ear and removed a half-inch-long needle coated in a green substance. Her eyes were blurring and she could see a surly figure moving towards her as she crumpled onto the gravel road. Through her foggy vision, Lisa watched her friends getting their wrists restrained behind them with zip-ties, then being carried away.

  Evan began barking orders at a young man to quickly change the license plates on the scooters. He motioned to the men to haul Lisa to the boat with the others and walked alongside her as they moved along the narrow jungle trail that led to an isolated harbor.

  Evan moved closer to her, the smell of his cheap cologne making her feel like she was being enveloped in honey. Her stomach grew more nauseated and she tried to open her mouth and scream but nothing came out. Evan brushed his hand along her pale cheek and grinned. “A girl with red hair—you are quite a catch.”

  With the drugs clouding her thinking and rendering her body limp, she glanced longingly at the trail entrance that led back to the outside world, watching as it seemed to constrict before her eyes.

  Chapter 1

  Gideon Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel

  The combatives training room in the basement echoed with the sound of aluminum training blades striking their intended targets as four new recruits learned the finer points of knife-fighting from Mitch. He stood behind the row of young Gideon staff members who were executing a series of Filipino Martial Arts moves aimed at vital targets painted onto the floor-to-ceiling wooden posts.

  “Slash, thrust, slash, then retreat back,” yelled Mitch as he paced behind the row of sweaty fighters. “Get in quickly when you see an opening, deliver your strikes then get the hell out. Remaining still in real combat invites death.”

  Mitch thought back to his younger days training in the Filipino Martial Arts that he had first learned from a sergeant major who commanded his unit. The man was a demanding instructor who had plied his fighting skills as much on the streets of Chicago where he grew up as in the seedy bars of Manila. After a few years of training, Mitch eventually sought out several grandmasters in the Philippines and then spent as much of his leave time as he could training in the jungle camps, where he learned how to use the machete, short blade, and stick associated with the FMA systems. The training was brutal and Mitch felt an urge to go all out to prove to his teachers that he wasn’t just a curious Westerner who wanted to dabble. While the safety level was high, so was the pain level, and he eventually worked his way up to doing live blade and stick fighting with the senior instructors after several years of grueling training.

  Whichever skill he was practicing, his teachers always ended each session with a punishing bout of sparring so Mitch could see where his weaknesses lay and to demonstrate the need for mastering the basics. Unlike the mainstream martial arts back in the U.S., there was nothing flowery about stick or knife fighting, which operated on a field-tested approach borne of functionality.

  Mitch’s mind floated back to the present. When the drill ended, he admonished each person to hydrate then to pair up. With their knife hands extended and their rear hands at chest level to parry incoming strikes, each fighter stood ready across from their partner.

  “One of you will be the attacker and the other will be defending. The latter will be unarmed and you will be standing at a ninety-degree angle to your attacker while staring ahead.”

  A lithe woman on the right looked at him with raised eyebrows. Mitch could see the puzzled expressions of the other students. He motioned to a tall man nearest him to approach, and Mitch settled into a casual pose while glancing away from the man.

  “The most common knife attack is the ambush, so we must train for that first and foremost. The bladework you were just doing is to prepare you to be combat effective with your tool and show the proper strikes. But what’s the point of being proficient with a blade if you can’t access your weapon quickly under duress?”

  He tilted his head slightly towards his training partner without moving his gaze from the wall ahead. “Mikel—when you are ready, come at me with an attack of your choosing—but do so with murderous intent. Is that clear?”

  Mitch heard the man respond in a shaky voice. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blinding rush of movement as the figure bolted forward and delivered a straight thrust to Mitch’s torso. Mitch instantly pivoted back and to the right as his hands shot upward to deflect the attack. His forearms faced out and he slammed them into the attacker’s lead arm as he angled off to the right. As the man’s momentum carried him forward, Mitch shoved off and retreated two steps to his left while deftly removing the folding blade from his right pants pocket and flicking it open.

  He lowered into a defensive position with his blade hand and faced off with his opponent, who had spun around. “Under duress, your body can only do one gross motor skill at a time. In my case, I wasn’t going to deflect the incoming attack and deploy my blade. That would have resulted in both movements getting watered down and my guts spilling onto the sidewalk in a real fight.”

  Mitch took a step towards Mikel, who quickly shuffled back three steps with his mouth agape when seeing the live blade. Mitch grinned and then stood straight while closing his blade. He moved forward and patted Mikel on the shoulder. “You move differently when it’s real instead of a training knife, don’t you.” The young man nodded, letting out a sigh. Mitch waved his hand for the man to move back in line next to his former partner.

  “We all perform differently when it’s the real thing, but that’s why we are doing these drills,” he said as he watched the steel door in the corner open and Dev walk through. “The way we train is the way we will fight when our lives are on the line. That’s why you must brush up against reality as much as possible in your training; otherwise you are just ingraining untested moves that could get you killed.”

  Mitch put away his blade and grabbed a three-foot-long rattan stick from the barrel of martial arts weapons in the corner. He swung it in an x-pattern then followed up with several forward thrusts. “The same techniques of fighting with the blade apply wi
th the stick as well as with empty hands. This is all based upon the Filipino Martial Arts, which is a very pragmatic system and will nicely augment the Krav Maga training you are already versed in.”

  He lowered the stick and went through the motions of withdrawing a blue plastic pistol from his waist. “Remember, we train in all ranges and with all potential conflicts in mind. Ideally, I will have my firearm and that will end the crisis but if not, if the fight dynamics change, then I go to my blade or stick.”

  He swung the rattan in a vicious figure-eight pattern while backpedaling. Mitch tossed the stick on the ground and delivered a flurry of jabs and hooks with his fists. “Or maybe my options start running out and I have only my fists.”

  Next, he dropped to the mat and simulated putting a choke-hold on someone. “Or, heaven forbid, the fight goes to the ground, so I also have to know how to operate in that realm.” He sprung to his feet and trotted towards the door. “And the goal of all of these combatives skills is to allow me to either finish the fight or get out of harm’s way as fast as possible.”

  As Dev neared, Mitch nodded his chin upward and instructed his students to begin the knife exercise. As the training gym resounded with the sound of the determined exhales of the fighters, Dev came up beside him. She let her elbow casually touch his, lingering for a moment before she spoke.

  “I thought you were doing shooting drills today?”

  “Everyone here is above average in that area already but somewhat lacking in knife skills.”

  She nudged him with her elbow slightly. “You and edged weapons—I think sometimes you wish it was the 1800s and we all carried swords like in Japan.”

  Mitch smirked. “I wouldn’t mind. The rules of engagement would be more black and white, unlike today. Plus, you could be my Geisha.”