Silent Running. Don Pendleton

gear and extra ammunition. He quickly got into his gear and loaded his weapons.

      The pod had been sanitized of all U.S. military markings and could be safely left behind along with the equally sterile flight suit. By the time anyone found them, he’d have Hal Brognola back and they’d be long gone. At least, that was the mission profile, and until he knew something different, that’s what he was going with.

      He and Brognola had a history together that spanned almost his entire career, so when the President asked him via Barbara Price to try to extricate the big Fed from whatever was going on in Cancun, he hadn’t hesitated.

      Beyond their long friendship, Brognola was the leader of the nation’s most secretive, clandestine operations organization known as the Sensitive Operations Group. When the nation needed a completely off-the-screen response to a threat or simply wanted to get some payback against evil-doers, Brognola’s action teams were the President’s first choice to take care of it.

      Because of that, Brognola rarely traveled outside of the United States. And, on the rare times that he did, he was usually accorded Stony Man Farm black-suit protection. This time, though, he’d figured that since he’d be in the company of the top cops from the entire hemisphere, personal bodyguards wouldn’t be necessary.

      That the President needed to get Brognola back as soon as possible went without saying. The information he carried in his head went beyond merely being damaging to national security. If the details of SOG were found out, it would be months, if not years, before the damage could be repaired. Bolan knew that Brognola was tough, but the risks of interrogation could never be underestimated, and it all hinged on him being able to stick to his established cover job. If Hal could force his kidnappers away from concentrating on breaking into that, Bolan should have enough time to get him out before it was discovered who he really was.

      What should have been a simple hostage rescue operation was being complicated by a severe lack of intelligence. All communications with the region, even cell-phone traffic, had been cut and no one had any idea what was going on in the resort town. But if it had anything to do with what was happening in almost all of the rest of Mexico and the border states, the worst was feared.

      The little information that had made it out of Mexico via satellite phones and TV hookups indicated that the nation was caught up in a bizarre revolution. The presidential palace in Mexico City had been taken over, along with most of the state governments. The armed forces were apparently also in the hands of the revolutionaries, as well as most of the major industries and services. That this was more than a traditional Mexican change in government “Pancho Villa style” could be seen in the reports of American business facilities being stormed and destroyed. Other foreign interests were being taken over, as well, but the main concentration seemed to be against U.S. property.

      No one had any idea yet who or what was behind the sudden eruption of social unrest south of the border. It was as if the entire country had suddenly gone insane and the insanity was rapidly spreading northward into the United States. The famous border crossing at Tijuana had been stormed by tens of thousands of Mexicans and completely destroyed. The token Border Patrol and Customs police detachments had been overwhelmed and killed before reinforcements could be sent in.

      The initial county and California Highway Patrol police units that sped to the scene had fared no better. Most of them, though, had managed to escape with their lives. When their guns hadn’t been able to slow the hordes, they had wisely retreated back down the freeway hoping to put up roadblocks farther north.

      Right before Bolan had taken off, he’d received a scrambled update reporting that the invaders had fanned out into the communities around the California border, hijacking vehicles and looting businesses. Police choppers were trying to keep track of them, but it simply wasn’t doable. There were too many incidents to be tracked, much less stopped.

      Adding to the problem was that other border crossings areas in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were also being stormed and penetrated. Florida, Alabama and Louisiana were being invaded from the sea with the same success. If this wasn’t brought under control immediately, the southern half of the United States was in danger of being overrun.

      The President had called a state of national emergency and was federalizing all of the National Guard and Reserve units in the southern half of the country and sending them to secure the border. But it would be some time before any semblance of order could be restored to the thousands of miles of border and coastline. Even when that was accomplished, rounding up and deporting all the invaders would take even longer, maybe years. With more than eight million illegals living in the States already, finding and removing this new influx of invaders wasn’t going to be easy.

      Against that backdrop of pending national collapse, Bolan’s job seemed simple. Go to Cancun, find Hal Brognola and bring him back.

      THE HARRIER’S LZ had been plotted far enough away from the inhabited areas around Cancun so the jet couldn’t be heard, thus Bolan faced a two-hour hike to reach his objective. An H&K 5.56 mm assault rifle ready in his hands, he checked his GPS, snapped his night-vision goggles in place and set out into the unknown of a world suddenly gone mad.

      Bolan kept to the jungle for the first hour before coming across a dirt road that ran in the direction he was going. There was no traffic at this hour, so he used it to make better time. With his night-vision goggles in place, he had little fear of stumbling into an enemy patrol in the dark.

      The dirt road intersected with the Yucatán Highway right outside the little village of Cancun. A few hundred yards farther on, he hit the first of the shacks on the outskirts of the village and stopped.

      Twenty-odd years ago Cancun had been just another sleepy Mexican fishing village on the coast of the Yucatán and not even a very big one at that. Then the area had been “discovered” by modern financial conquistadors bent on conquering their share of the burgeoning Caribbean tourist trade.

      Since Cancun had barely even been a village, the developers hadn’t tried to do an Acapulco look-alike and build on the site’s existing Old World Mexican charm because there simply wasn’t any. Instead, they had gone for the gusto, building from scratch, U.S.-resort style. And since they hadn’t wanted to get into the hassle of buying out the villagers and relocating them, they’d built on the then-empty, eight-mile-long sand spit across the bay from the village. The old dirt road through the town had been turned into a four-lane causeway leading from the airport to the hotels on the peninsula.

      With only that one bridge between the peninsula and the mainland, whoever held the bridge controlled access to the resort. No one knew yet why the mysterious invaders had captured the strip at Cancun and the thousands of tourists vacationing there. Bolan had to admit, though, that the physical terrain was perfect for what they had pulled off. He’d studied the NRO recon satellite photos before getting on the Harrier, but he needed to make a personal recon before he decided on his move.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      From a hundred yards out, there were few signs of life in the old village of Cancun, the odd low-wattage light or candle cast a soft glow, but those were about the only lights showing. There was no civilian foot traffic and no signs of any vehicles, even parked, anywhere. Whoever the resort invaders were, they’d obviously swept through and secured this place, as well. But, the Executioner hadn’t seen any foot patrols yet, so they might have gotten overconfident, which was fine with him. He liked it when his opponents were overly impressed with their own brilliance.

      Bolan kept to the shadows as he made his way through the village. Were it not for the few faint voices he heard from some of the darkened dwellings, he would have thought the place had been emptied out. What inhabitants remained were keeping a low profile. He was moving quickly when a woman’s scream, sounding louder because of the unnatural silence, split the night. A man shouted and the woman wailed again.

      Against his better judgment, Bolan couldn’t ignore it and went to investigate.

      Following the sound, he came to a small adobe house a block off the main road. The front door was hanging wide open and a candle or lantern was burning