“It is my hope that we as a nation can work through this.”
Trofimov was somber. “But I will not lie to you. It will be difficult. We will have to make some hard decisions about our standing in the world. We will have to come to terms with the barbarism that lurks, even now, within our armed forces. This will not sit well with many of us, but I know we are up to the challenge. For TBT News, this is Yuri Trofimov.”
Schrader switched off the miniset in disgust. “Can you believe that?”
“What happened?” Bolan asked.
“They’re reporting that a bunch of our guys attacked a village in Afghanistan,” Schrader said, “totally unprovoked. Burned the place to the ground. Shot women and children, and the news report says TBT has a videotape with our guys doing it and laughing about it.”
Bolan’s jaw clenched. Things were getting ugly. And they were about to get uglier.
Other titles available in this series:
Retribution
Initiation
Cloud of Death
Termination Point
Hellfire Strike
Code of Conflict
Vengeance
Executive Action
Killsport
Conflagration
Storm Front
War Season
Evil Alliance
Scorched Earth
Deception
Destiny’s Hour
Power of the Lance
A Dying Evil
Deep Treachery
War Load
Sworn Enemies
Dark Truth
Breakaway
Blood and Sand
Caged
Sleepers
Strike and Retrieve
Age of War
Line of Control
Breached
Retaliation
Pressure Point
Silent Running
Stolen Arrows
Zero Option
Predator Paradise
Circle of Deception
Devil’s Bargain
False Front
Lethal Tribute
Season of Slaughter
Point of Betrayal
Ballistic Force
Renegade
Survival Reflex
Path to War
Blood Dynasty
Ultimate Stakes
State of Evil
Force Lines
Contagion Option
Hellfire Code
War Drums
Ripple Effect
Devil’s Playground
The Killing Rule
Patriot Play
Appointment in Baghdad
Havana Five
The Judas Project
Plains of Fire
Colony of Evil
Hard Passage
Interception
Cold War Reprise
Mission: Apocalypse
Altered State
Killing Game
Diplomacy Directive
Betrayed
Don Pendleton’s
Mack Bolan®
Sabotage
a cognizant original v5 release october 09 2010
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
—Sun Tzu
The enemy doesn’t play by the rules. He will ruthlessly commit murder and a hundred other crimes. The enemy won’t stop, doesn’t feel pity and never feels shame. The enemy has to be engaged, and overwhelmed with superior force. That’s where I come in. That’s what I do.
—Mack Bolan
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
The graveside service was drawing to a close. Family members paid their respects in turns, filing past the casket as it sat poised on its winch straps. Even for a funeral, the mood was grim; the body language of the mourners was tense, brittle with anticipation. That much was obvious as Mack Bolan, the man known to some as the Executioner, watched through a pair of compact Zeiss binoculars. He knelt on a hill in an older part of the cemetery, surrounded by grave markers that were, in some cases, almost a century old. Partially hidden behind a gnarled weeping willow that stood, incongruously, among the oldest of the tombstones, Bolan monitored the narrow, paved access road leading through the cemetery and past the temporary awning sheltering the mourners below.
The soldier checked his watch. If intel from Brognola and Stony Man Farm panned out, it could happen any minute now.
He didn’t need to check the weapons he carried; they were as much part of him as his hands, after so many missions. The custom-tuned and suppressed Beretta 93-R pistol was holstered in its customary place under his left arm. The massive .44 Magnum Desert Eagle rode in a holster on his right hip. Across his chest, he wore an olive-drab canvas war bag on its shoulder strap, over the close-fitting combat blacksuit. His pants were tucked into well-worn combat boots. His battle gear, including a Boker Applegate combat dagger clipped in a Kydex sheath in the appendix position, was concealed under his black M-65 field jacket. On the ground near his right knee, a Pelican case waited, the customized Remington 700 rifle inside another work of art by Stony Man Farm’s armorer.
Mack Bolan knelt, watched and waited, a black-clad and silent wraith watching over the final resting place of so many Americans.
The Executioner reflected upon what had brought him to this place. The scrambled phone call from Brognola had left a taste like ashes in his mouth.
“Someone,” the man from Justice had said, calling from his office in Washington, “is killing our soldiers.”
“I’m listening.”
“We thought, at first, that it was random,” Brognola went on. “Murders occur, of course. It stands to reason that some of them would affect returning servicemen and-women. But Aaron takes a special interest in veterans, especially wounded vets, and he started flagging the news reports in a database in the Farm’s computers.”
“Understood.” Bolan nodded, unseen by the big Fed on the other end. “Aaron” was Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, head of the Farm’s cybernetics team and a wizard with computers of all types. If it existed in the ether, if it could be located within a network somewhere on the planet, Kurtzman could find it. The computer expert was confined to a wheelchair, the result of an ill-fated attack on the Farm some years before.
“What began to emerge,” Brognola said, “was a disturbing pattern. Aaron’s computers pulled up report after report of murders across the country—involving a returning veteran of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. Six men, three women. In two of these cases, the reports included similar crime-scene evidence, including cryptic notes about ‘peace’ and ‘love’ and ‘ending barbarous imperialism.’ When we dug further, we found that it wasn’t just those two. These notes were found at all nine crime scenes.”
“So you’ve found a serial killer, or killers, who target war vets.”
“No,” Brognola said. “That’s just it. It’s meant to look like that, but Aaron delved deeper.” He paused. When he continued, h
is voice was tight with anger. “Each of the funerals for the murdered men and women were…protested.”
“Protested?” Bolan asked. “What the hell for?”
“It’s becoming increasingly common,” Brognola said. “There have been a few different groups, mostly crackpots and malcontents, trying to turn funerals for our service people into media circuses. The reasoning behind it never makes much sense. And of course these bastards don’t care how much pain they cause the families, who are already suffering. But this is different.”
“Different how?” Bolan asked.
“Each of the funerals connected to this ‘serial killer’ was protested by the same group, an outfit called Peace At Any Cost. The PAAC organization appeared out of nowhere last year and started staging major publicity stunts during high-profile political events, public appearances by celebrities, even other news reports. Six months ago there was a big media feeding frenzy at the home of a mother in Florida believed to have killed her toddler. When the body was found buried behind the mother’s apartment building, the reporters were ten feet thick. Sign-wavers from PAAC showed up and turned it into a referendum on the war in Iraq, or tried to. It was a mess.”
“So PAAC specializes in veterans’ funerals for the publicity.”
“So it would seem,” Brognola said, “but peel away that layer and there’s more rot underneath. Aaron went after PAAC in a big way, once he made the connection. He found a ‘secure’ bulletin board where PAAC members keep in touch with one another and coordinate their protests. I’m sure they believe it’s secret, but nothing stays hidden on the Net for long once Aaron starts digging. He’s been keeping them under observation ever since, and cross-referencing posts to their board with what we know of the murders and protests so far.”
“And?”
“In most cases,” Brognola explained, “there’s at least a slight delay between when the murders hit the media and when PAAC found out about them and made plans to protest the funerals. But twice, they screwed up. In two of those cases, PAAC referenced the murders before they hit the news.”
“But that could be as simple as a source within the police. Or the media. Or even the coroner’s office.”
“True,” Brognola said. “Any of that is possible. Except in the case of a single post about the murder of Hospital Corpsman Third Class Charles Stevens, recently returned from Afghanistan. The post was made almost an hour before the coroner’s office estimates Stevens was shot in the driveway of his home.”
Bolan frowned. “So PAAC is involved in the murders themselves.”
“Them, and whomever’s behind them,” Brognola said. “It’s expensive to be as high profile as PAAC has become. Yes, controversy plays a role in that, but they also do a lot of advertising. Full-page ads in national papers, billboard campaigns, that kind of thing. The money has to come from somewhere, and a group this young couldn’t have pockets that deep. Aaron kept at it and followed the cybermoney trails back to the well. It’s a shell game of holding companies, fictional identities and supposedly anonymous donors acting in concert, but the money all tracks back to the same place.”
“Who?”
“His name is Yuri Trofimov,” Brognola said. “Naturalized citizen of the United States, as of almost ten years back. He was born in Russia and is now a considerably rich man.”
“I’ve heard that name before,” Bolan said.
“Yes, you have,” Brognola said. “That’s because Trofimov owns the Trofimov Business Trust. It’s a major conglomerate that first got big manufacturing and importing cheap goods from its factories in China and Russia for consumption here in the United States. Consumer electronics, for the most part—you can’t walk into a big-box store in the U.S. without seeing TBT’s imports on the shelves—but also automotive parts. Trofimov owns a considerable share of Kirillov Motors, which as of last year’s sales figures is the latest thing in low-priced, high-volume compact cars. Kirillov also manufactures, busily and discreetly, subcontracted parts for the aerospace industry, including some contracts for the DOD. Before it started making cars, Kirillov built parts for Russian MiGs, among other things.”
“That’s not where I’ve heard of him.”
“No,” Brognola said. “Trofimov is also the public face of TBT News, the twenty-four-hour cable news channel he started three years ago. In that time, it has become one of the most watched of the networks in a very competitive, cutthroat industry.”
“Let me guess,” Bolan said. “Their success is due at least partly to their sensationalist reporting philosophy.”
“Exactly right,” Brognola said. “Trofimov’s network was nicknamed the ‘Terrorist Broadcast Team’ by a popular radio talk-show hawk. That’s because TBT’s stock in trade is negative stories about the United States military and United States military personnel. Every alleged atrocity, no matter how speculative, leads their newscasts. Every negative spin they can put on military expenditures, supposedly botched military operations, and everything else to do with American war and anti-terror efforts abroad, they use. There have been low rumblings of congressional inquiry and even a few murmurs in the halls of power that use the word ‘sedition,’ but the fact is, there’s nothing that can be pinned on TBT News. Once or twice their sources have been called into question, and at least once an Iraqi war veteran has filed a civil lawsuit alleging defamation and outright fabrication of the atrocities described, but nobody’s been able to prove anything. The simple fact is that TBT News is the worst thing to happen to military public relations since the controversy over Vietnam.”
“All right,” Bolan had said, his jaw clenching. “I’m in.”
“I thought you would be,” Brognola said. “Aaron’s team gave Trofimov’s computers a cavity search. There was a lot of security, as you can well imagine. They were, however, able to dig up an interesting set of cross-referenced and suspicious facts. Specifically, Trofimov’s company owns a few other companies that in turn own a very peculiar list of business interests. These interests don’t seem to actually do anything that we can determine, but they exist, they remain on the books and, more important, they consume a lot of cash. We know that Trofimov is secretly funding PAAC, and they’ve got blood on their hands, no doubt. But that’s clearly not all, and until we know what’s going on, we won’t move directly on PAAC’s members. Plus, Trofimov is slippery. We can’t trust the legal system to deal with him if Justice sets something in motion against PAAC.”
“Which is where I come in.”
“Yes,” Brognola said. “I’ll have the Farm transmit to you the briefing Barb’s put together with Aaron’s data. You’ll have a prioritized list of TBT’s suspect businesses and holding companies, with addresses and intelligence rundowns. We’ll also establish for you a running link to the PAAC discussion board, so you can monitor what they’re doing. But, Striker,” Brognola said, using Bolan’s code name, “there’s one more thing.”
“It gets even better?” Bolan said flatly.
“Did you hear of the shooting last week at a church outside Denver?”
“I did. Two people were wounded. They said it was a random crazy with an ax to grind, a former church member.”
“That was all a cover-up,” Brognola said, “to prevent a panic. I don’t necessarily agree with the tactics used, but it was Homeland Security’s call, and they stepped in before another agency could lay claim. The church service was a memorial for Sergeant Kevin Wyle, recently returned from Afghanistan. He was shot in his home by someone aiming through the bay window of his living room. The official story bears no resemblance to the actual details, and with all the people in attendance the facts are already starting to leak. Wyle’s service was disrupted by three young men wearing ski masks, who fired on the attendees with shotguns. They fled as fast as they came. The local police have no suspects.”
“Amateur hour,” Bolan concluded. “You think PAAC is working its way up from protests to terrorism?”
“Possibly,” Brognola said. “DHS
is trying desperately to keep that from public knowledge, as I said, to prevent a panic. They’ve gotten the buy-in of most of the other federal agencies that might take an interest, including elements within Justice. While they may not be able to make it work, I see their point. Tempers are already flaring over the protests of military funerals. Can you imagine what could happen if those who are already hurting are looking over their shoulders for murderers? We could see the protesters getting shot.”
“If PAAC is in on the murders in the first place,” Bolan said, “that would be simple self-defense.”
“I wouldn’t disagree,” Brognola admitted, “but you know as well as I do that innocents will get caught in the cross fire.”
“I know,” Bolan said. “We can’t let that happen. And there’s a good chance that PAAC’s rank-and-file membership don’t know about the killings. It may not be the case that the whole group is dirty.”
“I’m going to send you the time and location of the next PAAC protest,” Brognola said, “with dossiers on the group’s leaders as we understand them to be.”
“It’s a confirmed, planned protest?” Bolan asked.
“Yes,” Brognola said. “But I’m not sure what you’ll find, exactly. Sergeant Wyle’s service was discussed on the PAAC board, but the group leadership nixed the appearance, citing schedule conflicts. That’s a little too convenient for my tastes. Whether elements within PAAC are planning similar treatment with their fellow protesters in evidence, we don’t know. It’s possible, but nothing explicitly illegal has been discussed on the board.”
“I’ll need something fast,” Bolan had said. “Something that can get me across the country and maybe even out of it.”
“It’s already covered,” Brognola confirmed. “I’m sending the data to your secure satellite phone now.”
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