Defense Breach. Don Pendleton

      

      An instant before the man moved, Bolan anticipated his action

      The Executioner instinctively jerked his head to one side as the man’s fist jabbed the air, passing a hair’s width from his face. With the breeze from the missed blow caressing his cheek, Bolan took a quick step forward, driving a handful of stiff fingers into his attacker’s throat. The man coughed and clutched at his neck with both hands, stumbling back a few feet. His legs buckled and he fell to one knee, fighting to suck in air.

      Before the man’s partner could react, Bolan unleashed a rapid flurry of short punches to his face. The man attempted to strike back, but he was falling away from the volley, his momentum pulling him in the wrong direction. His return jabs landed harmlessly on Bolan’s muscular forearms.

      The warrior stepped back to place a little distance between them. His victim staggered, breathing raggedly. As he spat a thick glob of bloody phlegm toward Bolan, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade. He didn’t know it, but he was about to learn a lesson in arms proliferation—escalation always leads to greater violence.

      Defense Breach

      The Executioner®

      Don Pendleton

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

      —Sir Winston Churchill,

       1874–1965

      The odds might be against me and my enemies outnumber me, but that will never stop me from executing my plan of attack.

      —Mack Bolan

      Special thanks and acknowledgment to

       Peter Spring for his contribution to this work.

      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

      1

      Mack Bolan pressed the motor’s throttle, and his snowmobile sped over the snow-crusted prairie. Cold air sneaking around the lenses of his goggles caused his eyes to water. He leaned into the sleek machine’s composite frame as frozen terrain raced by inches below his boots.

      Sound carried a long way across the open plains of Manitoba where, at this time of year, the crystal clear air was as frigid as arctic ice. But he wasn’t worried about noise from his CIA-developed snowmobile announcing its approach. Canada’s immense wilderness immediately swallowed the barely audible hum produced by the vehicle’s power pack. The energy unit was an engineering marvel—small enough to fit under the snowmobile’s seat while still providing the needed muscle to leap from zero to sixty miles per hour in under ten seconds.

      If his presence was discovered ahead of time, Bolan thought it would be via the radar technology Akira Tokaido had briefed him about back at Stony Man Farm. Displaying a determined stealth born in the jungles of SoutheastAsia and tempered on hellfire trails around the world, the man some knew as the Executioner all but flew over the packed snow at breakneck speed, a fleeting blur against a monochrome landscape.

      Bolan was dressed entirely in white, from the lined face mask with attached skull cap covering his black hair, to the white Corcoran Jump Boots stitched onto nonskid soles embedded with diamond dust to ensure gripping stability on ice. His formfitting parka and snow pants were fabricated from an extremely thin and pliable synthetic blend. The resulting tight cross weave produced a silky fabric that would keep him comfortable at temperatures down to minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Equally important, Bolan’s attire provided warmth without a trace of bulkiness or binding that might restrict life-preserving arm and leg movements. As if to test his clothing’s response, he locked his elbows and straightened his muscular torso, stretching his spine for a few moments before settling back down behind the snowmobile’s white fuselage.

      Over the eye cutouts in his face mask, Bolan wore nonreflective polycarbonate goggles set in white frames with large wraparound sides. He knew it was essential to avoid the condition alpine skiers referred to as snow blindness. In his line of work, a case of snow blindness during a mission was as much a fatal condition as inoperable lung cancer.

      A quick glance at the dashboard clock’s LED told him he was on schedule to reach his destination before dark in spite of the fact that the winter sun, hurried by the season’s extended nights, had already passed its zenith and continued to march steadily toward the western horizon. As he maintained a course due north, the crouched shadow keeping pace on the snow beside him seemed to grow taller by the minute, serving as a steady reminder of the daylight’s unremitting flight.

      Based on the intel provided to him, it was important that Bolan reach the cabin before nightfall. As it was, he knew he might already be too late to stop the transfer of a top secret computer code to a terrorist group in the Middle East. According to Hal Brognola, director of the Justice Department’s Sensitive Operations Group, the code would enable them to successfully attack a United States aircraft carrier, killing thousands of Navy personnel. Determined to prevent that, Bolan pushed on.

      When he was approximately one hour south of his objective, he again recalled the conversation with Hal Brognola two days earlier in the shade of the Washington Monument that had brought him three hundred miles into Canada for his reconnaissance mission.

      At that meeting, Brognola’s breath had punctuated his words with little white clouds as he spoke. “As commander in chief, the President has a sacred obligation