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THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quote

Legend

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Las Cruces, New Mexico

“It’s hot,” Rob Walker said.

“You say that every day. New Mexico,” Greg Kilhane replied. “It’s always hot.”

“Hotter today than usual.” Walker used a handkerchief to blot his sweaty face.

Kilhane, who never seemed to sweat, drew on his cigarette and shook his head. “Go back inside, then. I can handle this alone.”

The two of them were standing on the patio so Kilhane could smoke. No smoking in the safe house under the established guidelines. Nearly dusk, and it was still too hot for Walker’s liking, but he’d come out anyway and left their third man with their subject.

“Don’t mind me,” said Walker. “Just keep poisoning yourself.”

Bitching was part of witness duty with the U.S. Marshals Service. Guarding rats was tedious, dead time, when they could just as well have been out serving warrants, busting fugitives, transporting prisoners from jail to court or court to prison. Anything was better, more exciting, than babysitting squealers in the Witness Security Program.

“Only two more days,” Kilhane said.

Until their witnesses testified, that was. Which meant they’d all be flying out the day after tomorrow, headed back to New York City and the high life, handing off their pigeon to the Special Operations Group for coverage until he testified against whomever he’d decided to betray in exchange for a new name, new life, new whatever.

Walker didn’t know the details of the case, except that it was “big,” according to the supervisory deputy who’d handed them the assignment. “Big as in bad guys with billions,” he’d said, a real wisecracker.

That raised the threat level and meant they had two AR-15 rifles and a shotgun at the safe house, in addition to their standard-issue .40-caliber Glocks. There were vests in the house, one for each marshal and a spare for the rat, but Walker hadn’t tried his on and wouldn’t bother with it till they headed for the airport, day after tomorrow.

Easy duty, sure, but boring. And hot today, as usual, even at sundown.

“Done yet?” he asked Kilhane.

“Are you the nicotine police?”

“Forget it.”

Kilhane stubbed his butt into a three-foot-tall ceramic ashtray filled with sand, and sighed smoke. “Yeah, I’m done. Let’s make sure Marshal Marshall hasn’t lost the subject.”

Walker laughed at that, the way he always did, on reflex. Ethan Marshall was their third team member, “Marshal Marshall” to the others like Kilhane, who couldn’t let it go. Sometimes Walker wondered if he’d gotten out of high school, after all. Still hanging out with jocks and trading silly puns, except the stakes were higher. If he dropped the ball on this job, it could cost him his life.

* * *

“THEY’RE GOING BACK INSIDE,” Killer Combs said. “Over.”

A second later Spike O’Connor’s voice came back to him, the walkie-talkie giving it a tinny echo. “Copy that. Let’s do it.”

“Roger that,” Combs responded.

His mama hadn’t named him Killer. She had called him Cleveland, of all things, and that had drawn the schoolyard bullies like a magnet pulls iron filings from the dirt, until Combs taught them that he didn’t swallow any shit. “Killer” came from buddies in United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, two tours of duty in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Combs might’ve still been in the Corps, maybe a master sergeant by now, if slotting Afghans and Iraqis hadn’t turned him on so much. If only he’d restrained himself a bit that day, outside of Lashkar Gah.

To hell with it, he thought, and moved out toward their target. It felt strange, working inside the States and with a dozen guys involved, but who was he to question clients with that kind of cash to throw around? They wanted certainty, an ironclad guarantee that no one in the house would ever bother them again, with cell phone snaps to prove the job was done.

Quirky, but what the hell.

“You heard the man,” he told Cohen and Hitchener. “Let’s roll.”

* * *

“WHERE’S WALKER?” KILHANE asked Ethan Marshall.

“In the crapper.”

“Jeez. How long has he been in there, anyway?”

Marshall considered that, checking the TV against his watch, the six o’clock news winding down into sports and weather. “Twenty minutes, give or take,” he said.

That put a frown on Kilhane’s face. “I’m gonna check on him and—”

The second part of his sentence was cut off as the doorbell rang. Walker emerged from the bathroom.

“Who’s that?” Walker asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Marshall countered. “Jehovah’s Witnesses? Or maybe Girl Scouts pushing cookies.” He rose from the sofa and unholstered his Glock.

“Check it,” Kilhane said to Walker. And to Marshall, “Back him up. I’m going for the subject.”

“Right,” Walker replied, the three of them all business now.

“Up and at it,” Kilhane ordered. “This is not a drill.”

* * *

COLIN HUME WAS dressed up in a brown UPS uniform, the van they’d stolen for the evening behind him, idling at the curb. His parcel was a cardboard box large enough to hold a Bizon submachine gun with fifty-three 9 mm Parabellum packed into its helical magazine, ready to rip. Hume had cut out the back of the box, and now he slid his right hand inside to clutch the Bizon’s pistol grip. A clipboard balanced up on top helped his cover.

He was on the verge of trying the doorbell again when a voice from inside asked, “Who is it?”

Hume smiled at the peephole in the door, its blocking shadow proof that someone was already eyeing him. “Parcel delivery,” he answered, adding a mush-mouth garble for a name.

“What’s that?” the man behind the door demanded.

Hume spat out another mess of jumbled syllables, his index finger on the Bizon’s trigger, that part of the weapon borrowed from larger rifles designed by its creator, the great Viktor Kalashnikov.

Some men were giants in their field. Others, like Colin Hume, stood on their shoulders for a better shot at whoever was marked for death today.

“Hang on,” the guy behind the door said now, clearly disgruntled, maybe wondering if he should get his ears checked. Hume kept smiling as a dead bolt clacked, and then the door began to open.

Easy does it...

Hume waited until he had a clear view of the doorman, checked him with a glance to see if he was wearing Kevlar underneath his wilted dress shirt, then fired a six-round burst into the stranger’s chest. The Parabellum rounds slammed the guy backward as he spouted crimson from a tidy group of holes above his heart, and Hume pushed through the doorway into a small sitting room.

The second marshal waited for him there, as Hume had expected, wielding his Glock but firing just a beat too slow, still not quite believing that he’d seen his partner killed before his eyes.

Hume dropped to one knee, ditched the smoking box and gave the second guard two short precision bursts. The first one opened up his belly before the second caught him doubling over, tattooing his startled face.

Two down, but there were three guards on the target. Hume went looking for the third. The back door opened with a bang, three of his team members moving in to help him sweep the place. Two more were close behind Hume, bulling through the front door he’d left open, which left six outside in various positions, covering the action from a distance, watching for police.

O’Connor, the leader of the operation, began barking orders, and the men fanned out to check the other rooms. Each of them had the floor plan memorized: kitchen and a smallish dining room to the right, four bedrooms, one en suite, and a separate bathroom all off to Hume’s left, down a hallway. In front of him, glass sliding doors faced the desert and a backyard somebody had stripped of grass, replacing it with rocks and cacti.

As Hume started for the hallway, Mueller and Ornelas jogged past him, not wanting to let him hog the fun. He didn’t hurry, knowing that the third watchdog would come to them after he’d heard the racket in the living room.

Safe house, my ass, Hume thought, smiling.

Even if number three were on the phone right now, making a panic call, the reinforcements wouldn’t come in time to save him or the target he was guarding. They were out of time, beyond salvation now.

As if on cue, the third marshal showed himself, clearing the hallway in a rush, an AR-15 at his shoulder. He was clearly stunned to encounter the six men still in the living room, and hesitated long enough for all of them to open up at once, making him dance as bullets riddled him from neck to knees.

“Rest in pieces,” Killer Combs advised the dead guy, as Hume moved past him down the hallway. He focused on the shared bathroom, the room nearest to him.

He kicked the door in, checked behind the shower curtain, then turned toward the window. Funny that it didn’t have a screen to keep the bugs out. Moving closer, Hume peered through the frame and saw the screen in the flower bed below, twisted from being hammered out, dented from someone stepping on it as he cleared the window.

Hume retreated, found the others scanning bedrooms and returning empty-handed. “Spike!” he called. “We lost him.”

“What?”

“See for yourself.”

O’Connor checked the window and immediately turned the air blue with profanity. When that storm passed, he turned to Hume and asked, “How could we miss him leaving?”

“Don’t ask me. I was with you. Sordi and Gounden had the east side covered.”

“Shit!”

“What now?” asked Mueller, from the bathroom doorway.

“Now we split,” O’Connor answered. “Now I call the man and tell him we screwed up.”

“He won’t like that,” Hume said.

“No shit.” O’Connor scowled and hurried past him, out the door.

1

Over the Sierra Nevadas, California

“This is crazy,” Jack Grimaldi said. “It’s snowing like there’s no tomorrow. If I didn’t have the instruments—”

Mack Bolan interrupted him. “There won’t be a tomorrow for the target, if we wait. The window’s small and closing fast.”

“What window?” Jack asked. “Can you see anything down there?”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ve been over the terrain.”

“From photos, sure. What good is that when you can’t see the ground?”

“None at all,” said Bolan, “unless you, or one of a half dozen pilots skilled enough to drop me on the spot, is in the cockpit. And you’re the best among them.”

“Half a dozen?” Jack looked skeptical. “I would’ve made it three or four.”

“Well, there you go then.”

“All right, dammit. Flattery will get you anywhere. Almost.”

The aircraft was a Cessna 207 Stationair, thirty-two feet long with a thirty-six foot wingspan. Its cruising speed was 136 miles per hour in decent weather, with a maximum range of 795 miles.

Today was far from decent weather, any way you broke it down.

They’d flown out of Modesto City–County Airport, traveling due east. The storm had been barely a whisper in Modesto, but it was kicking ass in the Sierras.

Bolan’s chosen landing zone would be bad enough on a clear day, great fangs of granite jutting ten thousand feet or higher, bare and brutal stone on top, flanks covered with majestic pine trees and red fir. A drop directly onto any one of those could easily impale him, or he might get tangled in the rigging of his parachute and hang himself.

In theory, the jump was possible. In practice it was rated very difficult. But in a howling blizzard—for a novice jumper, anyway—it would be tantamount to suicide.

Bolan was not a novice jumper. He had more than his share of combat drops behind him, and had mastered new techniques as they developed, both in uniform and after he’d left military service, following his heart and gut into an endless private war. Today he’d be doing a modified HALO jump, a form of military free fall. The good news: the Cessna’s altitude meant there’d be little danger of hypoxia—oxygen starvation—or potentially fatal edema in Bolan’s brain or lungs. The bad news: with the blizzard in full cry, he could be whipped around like a mosquito in a blender, lucky if the winds only propelled him miles off course, instead of shredding his ripstop nylon canopy and leaving him to plummet like a stone.

All that to reach the craggy ground below, where the real danger would begin.

“We could go back and get a snowcat,” said Grimaldi. “Go in that way. Any small town up here should have one.”

Bolan shook his head. “That means an hour’s turnaround back to Modesto, grab the four-wheel drive, and what? Pick out the nearest town—”

“I’d land at Groveland,” Jack replied. “They’ve got an airport, they’re closer to the mountains—”

“And a snowcat maxes out at fifteen, maybe eighteen miles per hour if the visibility is good enough to risk that. That would mean five hours over mountain roads without the blizzard. The weather we’ve got now, it could be a day and a half on the road, and I could end up driving over a cliff.”

“Still safer than the jump,” Grimaldi countered.

“I can handle it. Just get me there.”

Frowning, Grimaldi said, “Your wish is my command. Five minutes, give or take.”

Bolan got up and started toward the Cessna’s starboard double doors, head ducked, crouching in his snow-white insulated jumpsuit. He secured his helmet, ski mask and goggles, and double-checked the main chute on his back and the emergency chute on his chest. He was laden with combat gear to keep himself alive once he was on the ground.

Assuming he reached the ground.

One of the side doors opened easily, caught in a rush of frigid air. The other required more of an effort, the wind pressing it closed, but Bolan got it done.

Outside and down below was a world of swirling white.

Bolan watched and waited for the signal from Grimaldi in the cockpit, answered with a thumbs-up, and leaped into the storm.

The Cessna’s slipstream carried Bolan backward, his arms and legs splayed in the proper position for exit from an aircraft, then the plane was gone and gale force winds attacked him like a sentient enemy. His goggles frosted over almost instantly, which wasn’t terribly important at the moment, when he couldn’t see six feet in front of him regardless, but he’d have to deal with that soon.

The insulated jumpsuit kept him relatively warm, but it wasn’t airtight, and the shrieking wind found ways inside: around the collar, through the eyeholes of his mask, around the open ends of Bolan’s gloves. The freezing air burned initially, then numbed whatever flesh it found, threatening frostbite.

From thirteen thousand feet, Bolan had about two minutes until he’d hit the ground below. Ninety seconds before he reached four thousand feet and had to deploy his main chute. If dropped any lower without pulling the ripcord, the reserve chute would deploy automatically in time to save his life.

In theory.

At the moment, though, Bolan was spinning like a dreidel in a cyclone, blinded by the snow and frost on his goggles, hoping he could catch a glimpse of the altimeter attached to his left glove. Without it, he’d have to rely on counting seconds in his head. A miscalculation, and he’d be handing his life over to the emergency chute’s activation device, hoping it would prevent him from plummeting to certain death in the Sierras.

Bolan brought his right hand to his face with difficulty, scraping at the ice that blurred his goggles. For a second they were clear enough for him to raise his other hand and glance at the altimeter. Eleven thousand feet, which meant he had to count another seventy seconds before deploying his parachute.

And what would happen after that was anybody’s guess.

If he didn’t survive this jump, it could mean a massacre. A dozen lives, and maybe two or three times more, depended on him without those people knowing it. If he arrived in time, unbroken, and could circumvent the coming siege...

A burst of wind spun Bolan counterclockwise, flipped him over on his back, then righted him again so he was facing the jagged peaks below. He kept counting through the worst of it and reached his silent deadline. Breathing through clenched teeth behind his mask, Bolan reached up to grasp the ripcord’s stainless steel D ring.

Instantly, he felt the shock of chute deployment, amplified tenfold by winds that snatched the ripstop canopy, inflated it, then fought to drag their new toy off across the raging sky. Bolan fought back, clutching the lines, knowing his strength was no match for the forces stacked against him.

When the snow cleared for a heartbeat, whipped away as if a giant’s hand had yanked a curtain back, Bolan saw frosted granite looming to his left and treetops rising up to skewer him. He’d missed a mountain peak by pure dumb luck and now he had split seconds to correct his course before a lofty pine tree speared him like a chunk of raw meat in a shish kebab.

He hauled hard on his right-hand line, rewarded with a change in course that might be helpful, if it wasn’t canceled out by the swirling wind. Bolan was going to hit tree limbs, come what may, but there was still a chance he could escape a crippling impact if his luck held.

As if ordained, the wind changed, whiting out the world below, and he was blind again.

Stout, snow-laden branches started whipping Bolan’s legs as he dropped through them. Seconds later, just as he had drawn his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms to protect his face, his parachute snagged something overhead and brought him to a jerking, armpit-chafing halt.

It didn’t take a PhD in forestry to realize that he was hung up in a tree.

Craning his neck, he couldn’t see the chute above him, only the steering and suspension lines above the slider, disappearing into snow swirl ten or twelve feet overhead. Below him, ditto: whipping snow concealed the distance to the ground.

He assessed his options. Hanging around for any length of time could test the ripstop nylon to its limits. If it had been weakened by a tear, Bolan’s weight—or any movements that he made while dangling there—could make things worse and send him plummeting to earth. Conversely, if he couldn’t free himself, he would eventually freeze here. Escaping from the parachute itself was not a problem. Each of his harness’s shoulder straps was fitted with a quick-release clip for the canopy, while other clips at the chest and groin would free him from the harness altogether. That was easy, but he couldn’t rush it; his first false move could finish him. Out here, in this weather, even a fairly short drop could be fatal if he broke his legs and became stranded in the storm.

Bolan remained immobile for a long minute, staring down between his dangling legs until an eddy in the storm gave him a fleeting glimpse of stone and snow-covered ground some ninety feet beneath his boots. A drop from that height would almost surely break his legs and crack his pelvis, maybe drive his shattered femurs up into his body cavity to spear his internal organs. The snow and any fallen pine needles below would cushion him a bit, but likely not enough to avoid crippling injury.

And in this storm, no help within a hundred miles or more, that was a death sentence.

So plummeting was off the table. He would have to climb down—slowly, cautiously—through branches wet and slick with snow and ice, fighting tremors from the cold and the onset of hypothermia.

Bolan considered dropping bits and pieces of his gear—the Steyr AUG assault rifle, at eight pounds loaded; his Beretta 93R, nearly three pounds; his field pack with survival gear, spare magazines and such, tipping the scale at thirty pounds—but balked at that. He didn’t plan on losing anything he’d carried with him when he left the Cessna, and whatever Bolan dropped into the storm from where he hung was very likely to be lost.

So he began his treacherous descent, shedding the canopy but not his harness, reaching for the thickest branch that he could see or feel, and hoping it wasn’t rotten to the core. When both gloved hands had found their grip, Bolan relaxed his arms enough from the chin-up position for his boots to dangle lower, searching for another branch that would support his weight. When they found purchase, he tested his foothold by slow degrees until he trusted it to hold his weight.

Which wasn’t quite the same as holding him.

When he released his grip above, the game would change. The gusting wind could knock him from his icy perch, or he could slip. It took the concentration and the balance of a tightrope walker for him to remain upright once both hands left the upper branch, his muscles straining as he slowly sank into a crouch.

Seven or eight feet covered, another eighty-three or so remaining. Bolan knew that as he neared the forest floor, the great tree’s branches would become both sparser and fatter, each more difficult to clasp with snow-slick gloves, making a drop more likely. Wind-whipped, cold and tiring, he resumed his painstaking and perilous descent.