Deadly Command. Don Pendleton

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      Three armed figures stood at the head of the stairs

      They were debating something that was also holding them back from approaching the office. The Executioner figured they had found the dead guy downstairs.

      To Bolan’s right was the door that led to the parking garage—it was the only way open to his escape.

      Aware the three men might push caution behind them and head for the office, Bolan acted. He eased the door wide enough to let him through, raised the Beretta and powered into the corridor. He fired off two 3-round bursts in the general direction of the group and heard the startled shouts. Return shots, fired in haste, gouged the wall, sending plaster dust across the corridor. Bolan kept moving, committed to his action. He reached the door and shouldered it open. A final shot from his pursuers thudded into the door frame inches from Bolan’s head. He slammed the door shut, knowing his freedom would be extremely short lived.

      The thunder of boots approaching the door and the voices shouting back and forth warned him his time was running out fast. They had his scent. The hounds had taken up the chase and Bolan was the prize. The only thing they should have taken notice of was this prize had the choice of fighting back.

      Deadly Command

      The Executioner^®

      Don Pendleton

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.

      —Ulysses S. Grant

       1822–1885

      Those who supply the guns that kill innocent citizens can no longer keep their hands clean. I will hunt them down and end their game—hit them where it hurts, and hit them fast.

      —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

      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

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Epilogue

      1

      Miami, Florida

      The background intel that set Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, on his current mission had been encapsulated in frustration and not without a little impotent rage. Bolan had sensed the futility of the feelings behind the words transmitted via the interview that followed the triple funeral of slain police officers. He might not have even caught the televised segment if he had not been taking some downtime, following the completion of a mission he had undertaken at the behest of Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm in Virginia. Bolan’s chosen R & R had him chilling out in an expensive hotel on Florida’s sunshine coast. It wasn’t usual for Bolan to indulge in such opulent surroundings but his state of mind had allowed him a few days of rest, something he needed at that precise moment in time. After three days of allowing himself to relax, Bolan knew his downtime was not going to last for much longer and when he turned on that evening’s newscast, the soldier realized just how true that was.

      In a standoff with warring street gangs in Miami, five police officers had been fired on—three were dead, one was in a coma and the fifth still in critical condition. Two civilians caught in the cross fire were also dead. Eyewitness accounts had been corroborated in their descriptions of the weaponry used by the gangs. They had been using sophisticated arms, autorifles and the kind of ordnance not usually seen on the streets. A recovered weapon was shown. It was military ordnance, not available to the general public, and not even in use by the police.

      The reporter, speaking to a Miami-Dade police officer, questioned why such weapons were on the streets. The cop, barely able to express himself calmly, said that the weapons were being supplied by organized crime groups, and that this was not the first time it had happened. The police had their suspicions as to who was behind the supply chain but had been unable to pursue any clear lines of evidence due to lack of solid proof.

      The interview ended with a short piece on the funeral gathering, including shots of the four-year-old daughter of one of the slain officers placing a single rose on her father’s casket. The look of bewilderment and the shine of tears on the girl’s face caught Bolan off guard and he could relate to the held-back anger in the manner and tone of the cop who had been interviewed.

      Bolan knew the man. He had worked with him on a mission that had taken the Executioner from Miami to an island off the Cuban mainland.

      Gary Loomis was a good cop, a dedicated officer with the Miami-Dade force. Bolan remembered him clearly, and seeing the man’s barely checked grief over the slain officers reminded the soldier of the daily risks police officers took when they placed themselves in the line of fire.

      Later that night Bolan found himself recalling the young daughter of one of the dead police officers placing that single rose on her father’s casket. It drifted back to him as he slept. It had been a long time since the soldier had been revisited by a disturbing vision—but the image of the child plagued him until he woke the following