Grave Mercy. Don Pendleton

his regimen of exercise for the day. Then, after toweling off, the soldier would have a chance to begin his research and equipment assembly for this night’s stalk. He’d be done in time for sunset, the Executioner’s time. Then he could hunt through the shadows, using darkness as his most powerful ally in dealing with the foes who outnumbered him, but rarely could outfight or outplan him.

      For now, the sun was out, and as a wise man had once said, there was no disinfectant like daylight. Any effort to find the parasitic hijackers and kidnappers during normal hours would prove to be inefficient.

      The Executioner admonished himself. Too often, professionals had found themselves in deadly situations, bleeding and or dying because they were “in the white,” a level of awareness that was a total lack of preparedness or consciousness of surroundings. Living that way was a sure means of finding oneself in the path of a knife or a bullet. Bolan had only survived all these missions, all these wars, because his mind was sharp, his senses peeled and his reflexes primed to go.

      Movement had tripped Bolan’s instincts, the preliminary rustle of foliage indicative of a man crashing through a forest. Peripheral vision and hearing had picked up on that, and to Bolan, they were as obvious as signal flares. He turned to spot the source of the crashing—a haggard-looking figure that emerged onto the sand.

      Bolan took in the details of the man, and with spine-stiffening realization, he saw the machete dangling in the newcomer’s hand.

      With a kick, Bolan freed his foot from the board’s leash. He speared into the surf with lightning quickness. Even as he swam to shore, powerful chest and shoulder muscles exploding with force that thrust him to land, another detail came to the forefront of his thoughts.

      The man’s eyes.

      They were blank, unfocused, even though his lips were peeled back from his teeth in an enraged rictus.

      Bolan had encountered chemically reprogrammed opponents before. They were driven by their orders, sanity ripped from their drugged minds. The poor, brainwashed zombies felt little pain and even less restraint, using every ounce of their strength at such a rate that even when they recovered from their altered mental states, their bodies were wrecks.

      Because of that wild abandon, their strength pushed beyond their normal limits.

      Even at his strongest, Bolan was hard-pressed to deal with these blank-eyed murderers.

      The Executioner dug his feet into the sand, pushing toward the man. He would make no excuses for failure.

      Not when children were in the path of a machete-wielding maniac.

      THE CREATURE THAT HAD once been Guillermo Rojas winced as the first rays of light poured in from the opened doors of the shipping container on the back of the truck. With that first touch of day, he burst through the door with savage fury and speed. He didn’t notice the harsh gravel that sliced the soles of his feet.

      What he was aware of was the extra weight in his right hand. Memories were few and far between in his chemically landscaped brain, but he recognized the object as a fearsome weapon, almost as long as a sword. He didn’t know the word for it—he had no more words for anything. He did remember the depthless joy he felt when he had sunk such a thing into human flesh, a cathartic jolt of vengeance that rolled through him.

      More thoughts coalesced in his fevered mind, clearing through his fog of madness. Pain and terror washed over him in unyielding waves, phantom memories of injuries inflicted at the hands of people—blacks, whites, men, women, adults and children. All of their faces and appearances were associated with agony and impotent horror. His only anchor was a single voice cutting through the omnipresent nightmare.

      “Kill them!” the resonating voice boomed. “Kill them and end the fire in your blood!”

      Rojas understood only two words, but they were all he really needed now. He had to lash out and destroy everyone because they were all a part of the torture he’d been subjected to. All the addled medical student knew was that humanity as a whole had turned on him, scourging his flesh and sanity. He also had a hint, a feint trace of another loss, a beautiful golden angel.

      That pushed Rojas forward, and he staggered on, hearing the lilt of music and bubbling laughter of joy. He knew the sounds of the creatures who had left him to suffer unspeakable horrors.

      What Rojas hadn’t seen were his fellow brainwashed assassins, two more men and two young women, all wielding machetes. The five of them charging toward the surf camp’s sounds. Rojas had been programmed to ignore them, his psyche masterfully twisted so as to allow Morrot’s killers to work in groups without attacking each other. Injected with amphetamines and twisted by a multimedia assault that filled them with false memories of a living hell, the people were no longer human. They were dedicated attack dogs, no longer possessing pause or reason.

      The trees and foliage between Rojas and his prey were little impediment to him. Despite branches and blades of tall grass gouging his chest and legs, he barreled through the undergrowth. The others were slower, or simply taking the path of least resistance.

      Nothing would keep him from the bloody revenge he sought.

      Not even the man who charged out of the water, naked except for surfer shorts and a black sheath on his leg.

      Rojas opened his mouth, releasing a wild screech, raising the machete to attack.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Any doubt that Mack Bolan possessed that the machete-wielding Latino was reduced to an animalistic state disappeared when he released an unholy howl that split the air, turning the heads of a half dozen kids lounging and listening to music on the sand. Running through water and in wet sand felt like trying to pull his feet out of the tendrils of a hungry octopus, but his long legs gave him enough of a stride to reach the edge of the water.

      The attacker’s maniacal eyes flitted toward the prone children who weren’t aware of their danger. Bolan knew he only had a few moments to stop him.

      “Over here!” he called, the boom of his voice pinning the drugged man’s dead, cold eyes to him.

      Another bestial hiss erupted from him and he swung his machete toward Bolan. In any confrontation between human and terrain chopper, the foot-and-a-half-long blade won every time, so Bolan didn’t bother with blocking. He sidestepped, avoiding the swing that started from above the attacker’s head and ended up slicing only air.

      Bolan considered drawing the Atomic dive knife, but he could see that his opponent was young and despite his scratches and blank gaze, it was possible that he was an American. It didn’t take much more than a gauge of his age to realize that this could be one of the kidnap victims, and as such, one of the many innocent lives that he’d sworn to protect.

      In the Executioner’s world, there was no such thing as an acceptable loss. Once the machete reached the nadir of its arc, Bolan lunged, putting both hands around his opponent’s forearm. With a hard yank, Bolan pulled the man’s face into his left shoulder, letting the uninjured joint take the brunt of the collision. Jaws snapped shut with a sickening crunch and the drugged maniac’s eyes rolled in their sockets.

      Such chemically enhanced foes were mostly immune to the pain of conventional punches, bullets and blades, but the Executioner was a master of all manner of combat. As such, he knew the weak points of the human body, and the trunk line of nerves just under the ear and behind the jaw was one such place that even in a haze of painkilling amphetamines would stop a person with one blow. The would-be killer jarred into submission, Bolan turned his attention toward disarming him.

      A shriek from behind—the spine-chilling wail of a terrified child—turned him away from his attempt to render his attacker harmless. Two more figures rushed into view, blades held over their heads. Suddenly the Executioner found himself outnumbered, and his concern for the suffering of his opponent disappeared. With both hands holding the man’s forearm still, he knifed his knee into it. With a snapped ulna and humerus, the man’s grip on the machete disappeared.

      That accomplished, Bolan released the