Blood Sport
( The Executioner - 46 )
Don Pendleton
Mack was back in an undercover role. Posing as a U.S. Army sergeant selling guns to terrorists, Bolan struck deep into the ranks of Europes most brutal group of Kidnappers.
A team of world-class athletes had been taken hostage. The captors — the Zwilling Horde. The aim— pirating of a deadly chemical weapon. The answer — Mack Bolan!
The Executioner was up against fearsome adversaries — the vicious Tania, who liked to scorch the flesh of friends, and the hideous Rudi, a giant hulk whose battle with Bolan added a new dimension to savagery.
But they didnt have a chance in hell. When Bolan is reduced to bare fists, only the dead are safe!
Don Pendleton
Blood Sport
Weep not that the world changes-did it keep a stable, chankeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.
William Cullen Bryant
Look abroad through Nature's range, Nature's mighty law is change. I Robert Burns Take from me the hope that I can change the future, and you will send me mad.
Israel Zangwill
For sure, the world is changing. Whether it's for good or for bad is up to you and me. You and me, pal.
Let us try for good.
Mack Bolan, The Executioner
This book is dedicated to the eleven Olympic athletes killed at Munich airport on September 5, 1972, by cowardly fanatics. We must not forget.
Joseph Romano — Weight lifter
David Berger — Weight lifter
Zeev Friedmann — Weight lifter
Yacov Springer — Weight lifting referee
Mark Slavin — Wrestler
Eliezer Halfin — Wrestler
Moshe Weinberg — Wrestling coach
Yosef Gutfreund — Wrestling referee
Andre Spitzer — Fencing coach
Amitzur Shapira — Track coach
Kehat Schorr — Marksman coach
Prologue
For sure, the world had changed beneath Mack Bolan's feet. He had been born to a triumphal world, reared in a frightened one, matured in a confused one, plied his manhood in a threatened one. What was next? A dead world? An enslaved one? Or a world again triumphant and reaching once more for the stars? Mack Bolan was no prophet, nor was he priest or politician.
He could not preordain a world of justice, freedom and abundance for all-and he was not sure that he would if he could. Bolan was a soldier, with a soldier's understanding of moving, forces. He knew that the planet earth had not been designed with Heaven in mind. It was a place for challenge and growth, a place where a force called Life raised awareness toward the stars and dreamed of rest, perhaps only because there is no "rest" in life, nor obviously had it ever been intended.
Things changed, sure. It had to be. Life was a process, not a thing in and of itself, but a force moving inexorably along a pattern of continuous action.
Process means change, yes, but change does not necessarily mean growth; it may also mean decay... or annihilation. This was Bolan's understanding and also a large part of his motivation. He lived now in a threatened world, a world almost literally torn apart by blind forces comstruggling violently toward a new order, a new stage for its actors, a new definition of "good." There were currents and crosscurrents in that struggle, tidal pools and eddies, also "rock and shoals," comz the navy called it, and Bolan knew the dangers were very real for this threatened world. He did not deal in personalities, in conventional moralities, in political nuances of right and wrong. This soldier dealt with a world in trouble, and it would not be a severe overstatement to say that he worked from a cosmic viewpoint. Some activities he perceived as beneficial, others as detrimental, to mankind as a whole. This remarkable warrior was not anti any person, group, cause or movement. He was pro World, and sought only to keep its changes forever positive and constructive, forever moving toward growth and away from decay and/or annihilation. It was, he knew, a struggle of cosmic dimensions.
One of the more troubling aspects for Bolan lay in the realization that some of those who would face him as antagonists would be as selflessly motivated by the same concerns that moved him, but with different goals in mind. Bolan had always respected the true soldier who fights for his idea of right, "enemy" or not. He took no joy from the death of such men. But he also did not shrink from the call of his duty as he perceived it. He could respect and still kill the holy warrior of whatever persuasion who sought to dominate the world as a means of saving it. He did not and could not, however, find any respect in his warrior's heart for those who indiscriminately killed and maimed innocents and terrorized populations in the name of their "holy" cause.
The cause is defamed and the war debased when children are murdered as deliberate pawns for power, and Bolan has no stomach for those who proxied their battles onto safe streets against a defenseless "enemy," no matter what the cause or motivation.
IRA, SLA, PLO or PDQ ( whomever and whatever, these initialized would-be warriors who dealt only in terror and intimidation of civil-populaces would find no stir of regret from the likes of a Mack Bolan should they ever rise into his gunsights; he would give them what they had bought by their own activities, and their blood would make no stains upon his soul. The world had changed, yes, and so had Mack Bolan... but not that much.
Not that much. The enemies of Man were still their own judges and their own juries-and Bolan was still their Executioner. Some things would never change.
1
Mack Bolan flattened himself against the dirty brick building and slid cautiously around the corner. The narrow garbage-strewn alley was oppressively dark. It smelled of urine and decay. Dank puddles from the morning's heavy rain still freckled the grimy cobblestones like pools of black ink.
The puddles nearest the main streets reflected shades of red neon. Each sign, in various stages of disrepair, was promising something just short of paradise.
Paradise, sure, Bolan frowned with disgust that was the place where there was no morning after. But Bolan was not concerned with paradise right now. More like its opposite.
He held his breath a moment, listening for threatening sounds. There was nothing too unusual. Just the normal night-life noises of too much drink and laughter that was too loud. Things that folks did to hide the too little happiness that goes with life in a dumpy hotel in a sleazy part of Frankfurt, Germany. Bolan waited for a flurry of headlights to pass by before sticking his head back around the corner and waving briskly for the two MP'S to follow.
Seconds later he heard the clomp of heavy combat boots as the MP'S jogged around the corner, splashing through the murky puddles, M16-AI rifles clutched in front of them. They came expectantly to Bolan, young faces alive with determination to do a good job for the mysterious Colonel Phoenix to whom they had been assigned only a couple of hours before. Both had less than two years experience in the U.S. Army. But they knew enough to recognize a real soldier when they saw one. And they saw one in this Colonel Phoenix. "Yes, sir!" was Corporal Philo Tandy reported, snapping to attention. His trim blond hair peeked out from under his white MP helmet. He was very large and very young. "What next, sir?"
"Justias we planned it, Corporal," Bolan said, standing tall before them in his skin-tight black nightsuit. The .44 AutoMag was strapped to his hip. The 9mm Beretta Brigadier, with sound suppressor screwed tightly in place, rode snugly in the snap-draw holster under Bolan's left arm.
Extra clips were tucked away within easy reach.
Should he need them.
He hoped he wouldn't. Just a quick round-up operation. In and out with nobody hurt, that was the plan. Plans, of course, like people, have a way of unraveling on their own.
It had been a tough prob
e right from the start, with no time for the usual precautions. Mack did'nt like rushing in like some comicbook soldier, a grenade in each hand and a submachine gun clenched between his teeth.
Hell, he had hardly had time to change his fatigues from the Warco wipeout in the Everglades when Hal Brognola and April Rose cornered him during a quiet dinner at Stony Man Farm.
Brognola had addressed him as Striker, and Bolan immediately knew something foul was in the wind.
At the mention of his code name, his fresh four-inch wound earned in Algeria smarted as if in alert.
Information had come directly from the Defense Intelligence Agency, but not nearly as specific as Stony Man Farm would have liked except for the timetable. Specifically, it was a now-or-never operation. April and Hal had shown him photographs and filled him in on the few details they knew. Too damn few, and Bolan had complained about it at the time.
But in this business, damn few was sometimes all you got.
So it had to be enough. And this time it was.
Certainly enough to send him packing, still chewing his porterhouse steak as Jack Grimaldi joined him to jet them both to Frankfurt. To stop a "business" meeting that must never take place.
Not if Mack Bolan could help it.
Bolan looked at the two anxious MP'S assigned to him and grimaced. Corporal Philo Tandy was a baby-faced hulk from Tennessee who towered over Bolan like a cement wall. He had told Colonel Phoenix that he still dreamed of parlaying a Creek Bend High School MVP football trophy into an NFL half-back career, after he had paid his dues to Uncle Sam.
Not dumb, Bolan knew, just a mite inexperienced in the ways of the world outside Creek Bend, Tennessee. Not so his partner. Corporal Isaac Cleveland was a skinny, soft-spoken black man from Miami who had taken the trouble to learn German while stationed overseas and was now studying Russian. He was apparently not the kind of man to waste an opportunity: if he stayed in the army, Bolan realized, he would probably end up a general. And considering the mess that Bolan had been sent over to straighten out, the army could use a few more officers like Isaac Cleveland.
Okay, maybe they were not the toughest or most experienced MP'S in the world, but they were the best General Wilson could come up with on such short notice. The general had huffed about security clearances for almost twenty minutes before Bolan had stopped him with a few choice words of his own.
It didn't matter to Bolan anyway. Tandy and Cleveland would do. They would have to.
"Listen close," Bolan snapped briskly, his voice all business. "This is a simple arrest. You've both done that before, right?"
"Yes, sir I", Corporal Tandy barked.
"I will go up the fire escape and block off the window. They cannot get out that way. Then you two go in the front door and arrest them. And keep your guns, aimed and ready. These guys play for keeps." Bolan checked his watch. "I want you through the door at 01.23. That's five minutes from now. Got it?"
Corporal Cleveland checked his watch. "Got it, sir".
"Okay, get moving. Remember, I want them alive. If possible."
"Yes, sir!" Corporal Tandy said.
Corporal Cleveland's eyes flickered with doubt. "Might be difficult, Colonel. What you told us about them... his..."
"If possible, Corporal," Bolan repeated. "If possible".
The two soldiers moved off into the darkness at a trot, dodging the puddles this time. They disappeared around the corner.
Bolan did not hesitate. He ascended the feeble old fire escape, its shaky vibrations rattling up his spine with each step. At the third-floor platform he squatted close to the wall. He pressed his face against the gritty brick. With fingertips spidering along the rough wall, the night warrior silently eased himself to the edge of the dirty hotel window, just far enough for him to see what was going on inside. He did not like what he saw.
Three men in U.S. Army uniforms were sitting around a cheap folding card table. The one with the sergeant's chevrons was the highranker of the three; he was tipped back on his metal folding chair so that it balanced on its two wobbly back legs. The guy's big gut bubbled over his belt in a slab of lard, and a couple of bags of flab sagged down his cheeks into jowls. He was tossing playing cards one at a time across the room into his army cap. Bolan mentally searched the file of photographs stored in his mind since the mission briefing. He soon had the handle to match the face.
"Sergeant Edsel Grendal, pure one hundred percent USDA trash, weight exceeded only by greed," was Brognola's acrid assessment. The other two "soldiers" were at least twenty years younger than Grendal's midforties. One was tall and gangly-looking, even sitting down. A PFC.
He had straight red hair with a stubborn cowlick sticking straight up at the back of his head.
Occasionally he gave it an absent pat, more out of habit than any real expectation it would lay down.
He also had a nasty rash encircling his neck as, if his skin were still too sensitive for shaving. He was shifting a good deal in his chair, blinking with nervousness.
The third man was a corporal, though he looked to be a year or so younger than the redheaded boy, unless you looked closely at the mouth: it was thin and bloodless, twisted into the kind of smug grin seen on a sadistic child setting fire to the neighbor's cat. The guy was slumped forward in his chair, staring at the paper napkin as he methodically shredded it into neat little piles on the table. The hard cruel mouth set in a weak, pasty face made the effect utterly demonic.
In the center of the table were seven or eight .45 M1911AI handguns heaped together; also about two dozen clips of ammo. The young corporal dropped a few flakes of shredded napkin onto the pile of guns and snickered. "Look, Sarge, it's snowing in Germany." Sergeant Grendal saw what the corporal was doing and sighed. Suddenly his meaty hand lashed out across the table and slapped the corporal's cheek in a hard-knuckled backhand.
"What the hell to..." the corporal cried, covering his cheek with both hands. "What'd you do that for, Sarge?" he whined.
Grendal leaned back into his chair again and tossed another card across the room. Ten of hearts.
It dropped neatly into his cap. "You're fuckin' with the merchandise, boy. This ain't no little deal like you're used to makin' with your grunt buddies. This is big business with big bucks, and I don't want no shit-kicking punk like you treating it lightly. Get my meaning, boy?" The corporal stayed sullen, still pressing his hands against a swollen cheek. Two small drops of blood trickled out of a nostril. He smeared them away with the back of his hand.
"I didn't mean nothing."
The sergeant's voice was taunting. "You never do, Billy boy. So just try to sit still and be good like Gary here. Right, Gary?"
The redheaded PFC smiled weakly. "R-right, Sarge," he stammered. Bolan felt rage throb thickly into his brain.
These "soldiers," especially the bloated Sergeant Grendal, they were prepared to deal in the death and terror of innocent victims for nothing more than a handful of paper dollars. Bolan cursed such people even more than the actual terrorists themselves, because cynical bastards of this ilk did not even have a phony political slogan to hide behind. Except "me first". And before his eyes here, they were wearing the uniform of the United States Army. Mack Bolan was aware that to some soldiers the uniform was just an outfit you had to wear, nothing more. But to the Executioner and a few damn good men he knew, the uniform meant a million things more. Symbolic, in a word. It meant you stood for something good and right and you were ready to show the world you'd do anything to protect certain important and selfevident values.
To Bolan it should always be that you could take one look at such a uniform and know that the man or woman in it had a code of honor and justice that would not ever be compromised. And the big guy had seen too many of his buddies spill their guts into the stinking swamps of Indo-China in defense of their uniform, and what it stood for to let scum like this dishonor it. That was going to cost them.
Yeah. They were gonna pay that price in full.
Bolan
checked his watch again. Fifteen seconds left. He unsnapped the Beretta and slipped it out of its holster. The solid weight felt, as usual, appropriate in his hand. Good and right. The muscles in his legs tensed like coiled snakes as he rocked onto his toes, waiting.
The loudest sound to him now was the thumping of his own heart, so anxious to act.
As he counted off the final three seconds, he felt the predictable cold spurt of adrenaline spearing through his stomach.
Three.
Two.
One.
Go! Go! Go!
Bolan sprang through the closed window, an unleashed, lashing-out body of muscle. His head was tucked down. His Beretta was tight in his right hand.
Glass exploded everywhere. Bolan had burst into the room like some avenging angel, or devil. The startled men at the table gasped in shock and horror.
The violent appearance of the warrior with the black grease smeared over his face, his shape all clad in black, was the coming of their fate.
As planned, Bolan's action had distracted them long enough to allow Cleveland and Tandy to bust open the hotel door and cover the three prisoners with their rifles.
""Don't move!" he heard Corporal Cleveland command.
Sergeant Grendal was first to recover. Aware of what grim punishment the army would have in store for him now, he obviously decided to take a chance. A desperate chance.
He slammed his chair forward to the floor and grabbed at one of the guns on the table, snapping in a magazine with his palm. It took only a couple of seconds for the two MP'S to pivot their rifles directly in the fat sergeant's direction, but by then too much else was already in motion. Taking his cue from Grendal, the pasty-faced corporal vaulted out of his chair like a damn fool and lunged at the throat of Corporal Cleveland. "Black sonuvabitch!" he shrieked.
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