Pacific Creed

by Don Pendleton

  SAMOAN THUNDER

  Hawaiian Nativists launch a campaign of terror throughout the islands in what appears to be a white slavery ring. With female tourists disappearing and the bodies of U.S. servicemen lining up, Mack Bolan goes in to stop the violence. But Bolan soon learns the attacks are only part of a bigger threat—and a countdown to the final strike has already begun.

  Handicapped by witnesses too afraid to talk, Bolan teams up with a Hawaiian to infiltrate the splinter group…or be killed in the attempt. To win their trust, Bolan will need every tactic in his arsenal. But surviving their trial by fire won’t be easy. The terrorists are trained warriors and they’ve already marked Bolan for death. Judgment day is coming and the Executioner is prepared to fight until the bitter end.

  The glass walls and ceilings had begun to shake and the sound of rotors thundered overhead.

  Bolan drew his Beretta and rose. His team followed suit. He scanned the skies, searching for the chopper. “We’re about to get hit.” Looking around the open, gold and glass penthouse, he knew it would be easier than shooting fish in an aquarium. “Kill the lights, and we need bigger guns.”

  De Jong jerked his head at one of his gigantic guards. “Turn off the lights! Go into my bedroom and get the—”

  Glass shattered overhead and shards fell like miniature guillotines. A Bell 204 helicopter took a tight orbit and a man in chicken straps hung halfway out the door behind an M-60 machine gun. Bolan ignored the piece of glass that cut his arm and began squeezing off three-round bursts from his Beretta. The three remaining bodyguards sprayed their weapons skyward. Sparks ricocheted off the fuselage and the helicopter banked away into the glow of the skyline.

  Bolan spun around as a second chopper roared overhead. It was a much smaller OH-6. A man leaned out each door firing rifles on full auto. Bolan printed a three-round burst into the starboard assassin who fell out of the chopper and crashed through the glass roof of De Jong’s master bathroom. Something clattered to the glass-strewn hardwood floor. Bolan hurled himself over a couch and roared, “Grenade!”

  The Executioner

  #352 Killing Trade

  #353 Black Death Reprise

  #354 Ambush Force

  #355 Outback Assault

  #356 Defense Breach

  #357 Extreme Justice

  #358 Blood Toll

  #359 Desperate Passage

  #360 Mission to Burma

  #361 Final Resort

  #362 Patriot Acts

  #363 Face of Terror

  #364 Hostile Odds

  #365 Collision Course

  #366 Pele’s Fire

  #367 Loose Cannon

  #368 Crisis Nation

  #369 Dangerous Tides

  #370 Dark Alliance

  #371 Fire Zone

  #372 Lethal Compound

  #373 Code of Honor

  #374 System Corruption

  #375 Salvador Strike

  #376 Frontier Fury

  #377 Desperate Cargo

  #378 Death Run

  #379 Deep Recon

  #380 Silent Threat

  #381 Killing Ground

  #382 Threat Factor

  #383 Raw Fury

  #384 Cartel Clash

  #385 Recovery Force

  #386 Crucial Intercept

  #387 Powder Burn

  #388 Final Coup

  #389 Deadly Command

  #390 Toxic Terrain

  #391 Enemy Agents

  #392 Shadow Hunt

  #393 Stand Down

  #394 Trial by Fire

  #395 Hazard Zone

  #396 Fatal Combat

  #397 Damage Radius

  #398 Battle Cry

  #399 Nuclear Storm

  #400 Blind Justice

  #401 Jungle Hunt

  #402 Rebel Trade

  #403 Line of Honor

  #404 Final Judgment

  #405 Lethal Diversion

  #406 Survival Mission

  #407 Throw Down

  #408 Border Offensive

  #409 Blood Vendetta

  #410 Hostile Force

  #411 Cold Fusion

  #412 Night’s Reckoning

  #413 Double Cross

  #414 Prison Code

  #415 Ivory Wave

  #416 Extraction

  #417 Rogue Assault

  #418 Viral Siege

  #419 Sleeping Dragons

  #420 Rebel Blast

  #421 Hard Targets

  #422 Nigeria Meltdown

  #423 Breakout

  #424 Amazon Impunity

  #425 Patriot Strike

  #426 Pirate Offensive

  #427 Pacific Creed

  Pacific Creed

  Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  The true monster is the man who does nothing, allowing evil to flourish. I will never stop hunting down the monsters who prey on innocent citizens, and I won’t rest until I’ve brought them to justice.

  —Mack Bolan

  THE

  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 tarted 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 com-mand 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 1

  Chinatown, Honolulu

  The soldier staggered down the wrong street in Honolulu’s red-light district. He’d deliberately left behind the walled courtyards that had been converted into malls and the fading green clapboard storefronts of the merchants dealing in traditional herbs, teas and imported goods from China. Those establishments had all closed their doors hours ago. The soldier immersed himself in the narrow alleys that lead down toward the Nuuan
u stream. These streets were crowded with pool halls, massage parlors and heavy-duty bars where people drank to get drunk and prostitutes and pushers plied their wares. He was far from the only military man indulging himself, but he was on a mission, and his mission had taken him to the bad part of town. The soldier was looking for a real party.

  He found it.

  It was unseasonably hot in Honolulu and it hadn’t rained in two days. Nonetheless when he stepped into the alley, his foot splashed in a puddle of mystery moisture. He pulled his foot out of the liquid and shook it. “Eew!”

  A mountain of a man stepped out of the shadows. He was of Hawaiian or Samoan extraction. A ferret-faced individual whose aloha T-shirt was the most Hawaiian thing about him came into formation with the giant. “Hey, haole,” the man-mountain rumbled. “You lost?”

  “I was lost.” The soldier smiled and spread his arms wide. “But now I’m found!”

  The man-mountain guffawed against his will. “You know? They say the gods favor the dumb, and this haole? He’s so dumb I almost like him.”

  Ferret-face glared daggers. “I don’t like him at all.”

  “Bro, you don’t even know me.” The soldier belched. “That’s messed up.”

  “You!” Ferret-face went livid. “You don’t ever call anyone on this island bro!”

  The soldier registered two individuals stepping into the alley behind him to block his escape. “Bruddah?” he tried.

  “You’re dead, white-boy.”

  “That’s white-man to you, poi-boy,” the soldier corrected.

  Ferret-face’s flinty eyes went cold. “This one we put in the ground. Bundle him.” In a pinwheel of sharpened steel, he snick-snick-snacked open a butterfly knife. “Get his dog tags.”

  The soldier blinked. “Bundled?”

  “Sorry, bruddah.” The man-mountain kicked off his sandals and came on with deceptive grace for his bulk. “This gonna hurt.”

  The soldier shot out a one-knuckle jab for the big man’s throat. Man-mountain’s right hand intercepted the blow like a magic trick. Massive fingers enfolded the soldier’s fist like a catcher’s mitt and squeezed. White fire shot down the soldier’s forearm as giant fingers burrowed into the nerve points in the top of his hand like cold chisels. The soldier threw a haymaker with his right hand for all he was worth.

  The giant flicked his other hand up as though he was catching flies. “Ah, bruddah, you— God!” The man-mountain groaned in shock as the slapjack—which the soldier had palmed during the exchange—broke three metacarpal bones. The giant’s grip weakened and the soldier ripped his throbbing hand free. The soldier stepped to his left, keeping the giant between him and Ferret-face’s knife. The giant’s broken left hand shot forward and he gasped in shock as the soldier flicked the sap into his injured hand again and broke a few phalanges. The man-mountain couldn’t help but retract his hand. The soldier lunged and snapped the sap like a towel just behind the giant’s ear.

  Man-mountain collapsed like an avalanche.

  Ferret-face moved in like a fencer. The soldier recognized an accomplished killer was coming to carve him up. However that was the knife-fighter’s Achilles’ heel. Most schools of blade fighting taught that your first target was the enemy’s knife hand. Ferret-face had seen what the soldier had done to the giant. The soldier feinted with his slapjack toward the butterfly knife. Ferret-face’s hand turned and ghosted away from the blow with the grace of a hula dancer.

  The soldier stepped in and snapped the concealed steel toe of his dress shoe into the knife-fighter’s lead shin.

  Ferret-face gasped as his tibia fractured. He tottered and pulled his injured leg back, waving his knife to ward the soldier off. The soldier took the opportunity to give the assassin a second snap kick under the kneecap of his good leg. Ferret-face fell like a house of cards.

  The soldier spun.

  One of the two men hung back, but the second charged toward him, shouting some kind of Hawaiian war cry and wielding a short, paddle-shaped wooden club. The soldier flung his sap into the man’s face. The war cry faltered as the man took the equivalent of a deep-sea fishing sinker between the eyes. His club sagged like a reed. The soldier’s fist followed the sap about six inches lower to the point of the jaw.

  The soldier’s assailant dropped as if he’d been shot.

  The soldier regarded the fourth man at the entrance to the alley and cracked his knuckles. The man broke and ran for the lights and people of the main drag. The soldier stood over Ferret-face. “Bundled?”

  “Fuck you!” Ferret-face screamed. He was in the fetal position clutching his right shin and his left knee. “We will hunt you down, haole! We will bundle you and—” The rant ended abruptly as the soldier flicked a steel-capped shoe into Ferret-

  face’s jaw and unhinged it. The man sagged unconscious.

  The soldier reached under his shirt and took out a syringe that looked more suitable for horses than people. He took a knee beside the unconscious man-mountain and examined the broken bunch of bananas he called a left hand. It was swelling as though he was holding a purple golf ball. The soldier sank the needle between the broken second and third metacarpals and had to press hard to express the contents. The syringe didn’t contain drugs but a Radio Frequency Identification Device. The antenna, battery and transmitter were linked in a line like boxcars in a flexible glass sheath about as thick around as a grain of rice and twice as long. Any X-ray of the big man’s hand would clearly show a foreign object, but the soldier was betting the giant wouldn’t go to a hospital with his injury, and among the pain, swelling and broken bones he wouldn’t notice the invader. All the soldier needed was a couple of days of tracking.

  Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, took out his cell. He touched an app and typed in his security code. “Bear, this is Striker. I’ve had contact. Very high target probability. I have an RFID embedded. Target is unconscious. Activate tracking.”

  Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman was Stony Man Farm’s resident computer wizard and head of the cyber team.

  “Acknowledged, Striker,” Kurtzman said from the clandestine base in Virginia. “Broadcasting activation signal now.” His voice warmed with success. “We have a positive RFID activation and eyes on the target. Transmitting feed.”

  A window appeared in Bolan’s phone and he saw a glowing pinprick blinking beneath an overlaid satellite grid of Chinatown. “Affirmative. I have eyes on.”

  “Battery is at full charge. Unless the target literally goes underground we should have a good ninety-six hours of telemetry, and I have Pentagon confirmation on continuous satellite windows for all four days. Tracking of target is go.”

  “Good work, Bear. Be advised I have three hostiles down.” Bolan swiftly went through the three men’s pockets. None was carrying ID. Bolan took pictures of his three unconscious assailants. “I don’t think it’s likely, but monitor local hospitals and clinics for descriptions of target A with broken left hand and concussion; target B with fractured tibia, broken knee and dislocated jaw; and target C with broken nose and possible concussion respectively. Run facial recognition software with local law-enforcement databases.”

  “On it.”

  Bolan rose. It was time to vacate the scene. “Oh. And, Bear?”

  “Yes, Striker?”

  “Look up ‘bundling.’”

  Kurtzman paused. “What? You mean like cable, internet and phone service?”

  “No. As a cultural practice.”

  Kurtzman considered this weird and wonderful question. Strange requests were part and parcel of working with Mack Bolan. The soldier was at war with the worst evil that humanity could produce, and his adversaries ran the gamut from street-level thugs to those intent on changing the balance of world power and everything in between. Processing information streams and solving problems for Mack was one of the best parts of Aar
on Kurtzman’s job, and he was proud of it. Some of the most confounding joys were questions from Mack that came straight out of left field. Others, such as this one, arrived like visitors from Mars.

  Kurtzman summoned up an answer from his own memory. “Last I heard ‘bundling’ was something Pennsylvania Dutch did when two adolescents were courting. They would be allowed to sleep in the same bed but were professionally straitjacketed in separate bedding, often with a bundling board between them. They could kiss, and if they worked at it hands could roam, but it curtailed any serious hanky-panky.”

  “Well, that’s fascinating, Bear, but I’m looking at bundling from a Hawaiian cultural perspective. One of the perps used the word twice, directed at me, and I don’t think he wanted to suck face over sleeping bags on the lanai. I don’t know if it’s slang, but I’m thinking it’s something you don’t want to be on the wrong end of.”

  “Right, bad Hawaiian bundling. On it.”

  “Do I have Koa?”

  Luke Koa was Stony Man Farm’s current and only resident Hawaiian blacksuit. He had been a Military Police officer in West Germany before the Wall had fallen, and at the frantic end of the Cold War, as the U.S.S.R. fell, he’d specialized in what could best be described as “extracurricular scouting activities” for Uncle Sam on both sides of the border. Being Hawaiian, he couldn’t blend in with the native population, so Luke Koa had highly developed sneaking, peeking and, if it was called for, taking down skills. In essence he’d been a Special Forces border patrolman, and he had an unparalleled nose for trouble and things that did not belong.

  When the current Hawaiian mission had come up, Koa had been an obvious choice as an asset. Bolan had brought up the mission parameters and Koa had volunteered. Kurtzman had kicked it up the chain.

  Kurtzman liked and respected Koa. Everyone at the Farm did, but the man was by training a soldier, a policeman and a scout, not an undercover operative, and all signs indicated he would be operating against his own people. A very violent and dangerous splinter group, but they were still his own. Nonetheless Koa was an ace card they could not afford to hold back. He’d volunteered for the job, and the powers that be had agreed. “We have permission.”