SILENT KNIGHTS
A key witness in a money-laundering case gets cold feet before testifying and flees to a monastery in the Sierra Nevadas. But the cartel behind the scheme isn’t about to let someone with that kind of information escape unharmed, and they dispatch hit men into the mountains.
Mack Bolan, tasked with protecting the witness, barely reaches the Sierras ahead of the cartel killers. With an epic winter storm raging, Bolan will need to combine his combat and survival skills to prevent the thick monastery walls from becoming a prison. He can’t control the weather, but with the monks fighting beside him, the Executioner is prepared to unleash a deadly blizzard of his own on the enemy.
Bolan waited for the signal from Grimaldi, then leaped into the storm.
The Cessna’s slipstream carried Bolan backward, his arms and legs splayed, then the plane was gone and gale-force winds attacked him like a sentient enemy. His goggles frosted over almost instantly.
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 he 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.
If he didn’t survive this jump, it could mean a massacre. A dozen lives, 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.
Dark Savior
Don Pendelton
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue.
—William Hazlitt
If the law must be bent in the service of justice, so be it. I do what’s necessary to defend innocent lives. End of story.
—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.
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Epilogue
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,