The armor-piercing slug sizzled past Bolan’s face
It singed his cheek with its hot tailwind as Bolan threw himself behind the exit housing. Though the metal door and plaster walls concealed him from the sniper, they wouldn’t stop the Barrett’s rounds from finding flesh and bone.
The shooter quickly demonstrated, slamming his next shot right through the structure three feet above roof level, where a crouching man’s head might be found. Bolan was lower, lying prone, but his would-be killer still had six shots left before he’d be forced to reload—virtually guaranteeing at least one stunning hit.
It was time to move—no mistake.
But left or right? It was a gamble, either way, and Bolan knew that he was running out of time.
He hedged his bets, triggered a shot around the right-hand corner—the shooter’s left—then rolled out the other way as two suppressed rounds ripped into the wall that had shielded him. One blew away a fist-size chunk of plaster, while the second came through, dead-on, where Bolan had been a heartbeat earlier.
And by that time, the Executioner was clear, wide-open for the man who meant to kill him, scuttling across the sun-baked roof on stinging hands and knees, seeking a kill-shot of his own.
Enemy Agents
The Executioner®
Don Pendleton
For Staff Sergeant Jared C. Monti
September 20, 1975–June 21, 2006
Gowardesh Valley, Afghanistan
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929–1968
Some soldiers hate their enemies without understanding them. I hate what my enemies stand for because I understand them.
—Mack Bolan
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
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Prologue
Lake County, California
“I don’t like all these trees,” Jeff Deacon said. “They make me nervous.”
Ed Johnson, one of his protectors, frowned at him and said, “I thought you were some kind of big outdoorsman. Camping, hunting, all of that.”
“I am,” Deacon replied. “But down where I come from, it’s mostly desert. You can see for miles and know if anybody’s watching you.”
“Still worried?” asked Dan Smith, the other bodyguard. “You know we’ve got you covered seven ways from Sunday.”
“Right. The two of you,” Deacon said, making no attempt to cover his disdain for what the Feds deemed adequate protection.
“You’re about to hurt my feelings, Jeff,” Smith said. “And you know that we’ve got reinforcements standing by in Sacramento.”
“Fifty miles away. Does me a lot of good, if something happens,” Deacon groused. “That’s nearly half an hour by air, if you’ve got people suited up and waiting in the chopper when you hit the panic button.”
“You just need to relax,” Johnson, the taller of the two deputy U.S. marshals said. “Nobody followed us up here. We’ve used this place before without a hitch. It’s off the grid.”
But Deacon couldn’t just relax. His spit-and-polish watch-dogs didn’t have a clue to what it meant when you were really off the grid. They’d been to school, learned weapons and karate and a lot of codes for talking on the radio, but what in hell did either of them really know about the threat he faced?
In two days Jeff Deacon was supposed to testify before a federal grand jury in San Francisco, and damn near anything could happen before then.
Was it too late to change his mind? Hell, yes.
At this point it wouldn’t matter if he recanted all his statements to the Feds and crawled back to his former comrades on his hands and knees, begging for mercy. There was no forgiveness in the real world. He’d be lucky if they only shot him, without making an example of him for the rest.
Deacon had witnessed one such lesson, and it still cropped up in nightmares that he couldn’t shake. The thought of dying that way made him want to snatch a pistol from his bodyguards and finish it right then.
And if he lived to testify, even survived the long trial that was sure to follow…then, what? Even with a new name, maybe some plastic surgery, how long could he survive as a “protected” witness?
Deacon knew the score on that game. While they needed you, before a jury voted “guilty” on whichever scumbag they were trying to convict, the Feds were your best friends. But afterward, even when they’d delivered on the promise of a new life, last week’s courtroom VIP was cut adrift, the coverage reduced to spot checks at erratic intervals, or maybe phone calls on his birthday.
Deacon imagined such a call. Hey, Jeff…er, I mean Englebert! That’s it! How’s every little thing out there in Numbnuts, Alabama? Are you loving it?
But Deacon hated it already.
“It’s