Anvil of Hell

by Don Pendleton

  Annotation

  Someone is building a nuclear bomb, and Mack Bolan thinks he knows who it is.

  For years, small amounts of Uranium 235 have been disappearing from the world's top research facilities. When a computer at Stony Man Farm reveals the extent of the thefts, the President demands immediate covert action to avert a potential disaster.

  Bolan picks up the trail in Marseilles and embarks on a journey of peril and intrigue through North Africa's wasteland. But an unexpected twist leads him to a military complex in an underground cavern - and a conspiracy to blackmail the world.

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Accolades for America's greatest hero Mack Bolan

  Prologue

  Part OneChapter 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

  Part TwoChapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part ThreeChapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Mack Bolan

  Anvil of Hell

  For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight;

  He can't be wrong whose life is in the right:

  In faith and hope the world will disagree,

  But all mankind's concern is charity.

  Alexander Pope 1688-1744

  The world is full of avaricious men who would prey on the innocent and trusting. Humankind cannot allow this, I will not allow this.

  Mack Bolan

  To those struggling to throw off the yoke of oppression.

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Peter Leslie for his contribution to this work.

  Accolades for America's greatest hero Mack Bolan

  "Very, very action-oriented... Highly successful, today's holiest books for men."

  The New York Times

  "Anyone who stands against the civilized forces of truth and justice will sooner or later have to face the piercing blue eyes and cold Beretta steel of Mack Bolan, the lean, mean nightstalker, civilization's avenging angel."

  San Francisco Examiner

  "Mack Bolan is a star. The Executioner is a beacon of hope for people with a sense of American justice."

  Las Vegas Review Journal

  "In the beginning there was the Executioner — a publishing phenomenon. Mack Bolan remains a spiritual godfather to those who have followed."

  San Jose Mercury News

  Prologue

  Night in Marseilles. Rain swept down the deserted, neon-lit length of the Canebiere toward the old port, bouncing high off the sidewalks, chasing the whores back into clip joints and doorways. It was late anyway; few gamblers remained to ogle the bared thighs and painted faces. A Mercedes taxi shot a red light, fanning spray over the roadway. In a narrow, cobbled alley traversing the Arab quarter below the Saint Charles railroad station, the clatter of running footsteps drowned the gurgle of rainwater in the gutters.

  Two sets of footsteps — hunter and hunted.

  The hunter was tall, dark, muscular, his hair plastered to his skull by the downpour. He wore a shoulder rig and a harnessed hip holster beneath a light Windbreaker. In his right hand, the stainless steel of a .44 AutoMag snared a gleam of light from a distant street lamp.

  His quarry was fifty yards ahead, a short wiry man whose outline was blurred by the rain. His pale, sodden shantung suit clung to his limbs as he ran, and he glanced desperately over his shoulder each time the alley twisted and changed direction between high windowless walls.

  The hunter's black combat boots pounded the glistening stones. He was gaining. He had been gaining slowly for more than a week. Now — after a chase halfway across Europe — he was within range for the first time.

  The hunted man erupted from the mouth of the alley and hared across a brightly lit street. Brakes squealed as a car slewed across the wet pavement, narrowly missing the hunter and causing him to break his athletic stride. He vaulted over the hood of the stalled auto, ignoring the curses of the driver, and plunged down a dark lane in pursuit of his quarry.

  The man on the run was traveling in Europe under the name of Rafael Carvalho. His passport was Portuguese, but he was, in fact, a South American from Caracas, Venezuela. He was also a big-time operator in the hard drugs retail business, acting as liaison between the Mafia suppliers stateside and the Unione Corse distributors who hawked the stuff in southern France. Two weeks ago he had cold-bloodedly gunned down a high-school senior and his younger sister, ex-junkies who had agreed to testify in a Paris show trial that would convict a ring of pushers and compromise Carvalho himself.

  The father of the murdered children was a friend of the man with the AutoMag, and he had sworn to even the score.

  His present mission was simple: catch up with Carvalho and exterminate him.

  He would have no compunction. Through his evil trade, Carvalho was a murderer many times over. And the law wasn't going to touch him now. If there ain't no witnesses, there ain't no case had been the Mob maxim during the gang wars of the Prohibition era. Times hadn't changed. And this was a case in point.

  The high-school kids had been the only prosecution witnesses.

  There were no witnesses to their deaths.

  Everybody knew that Carvalho was as guilty as hell... yet there was no proof.

  But the man in black didn't require any proof. He handed out justice to those who thought they were beyond the law.

  He was Mack Bolan, the Executioner.

  He ran effortlessly now, easily, his breathing controlled, his tuned muscles relaxed. But his mind was diamond-hard with concentration.

  Carvalho had gained a few yards while Bolan had negotiated the stalled car, but he was flagging now, his lungs laboring while his out-of-shape body tried and failed to deal with the unaccustomed exertion. He was less than thirty yards ahead of his pursuer.

  As the lane turned a corner, Carvalho leaped for a brick wall bounding a backyard, grasped the top and dragged himself onto the coping. For an instant, teeth bared in a wolfish snarl, his wizened features were visible as the headlights from a car in the next street swept across his face. Then his right arm came up and flame spit twice from the gun in his hand.

  The Executioner had hurled himself sideways before the twin reports echoed off the stone facades of the surrounding buildings. He shoulder-rolled a short distance and came up on his knees, the AutoMag held out in a two-handed Weaver's grip as one of Carvalho's slugs ricocheted off the cobbles and screeched away into the night.

  Blasting off two shots from the big autoloader, he sprang to his feet and ran for the wall as Carvalho dropped out of sight on the other side. There was a metallic clatter and a smothered curse as galvanized trash cans fell to the ground. Footsteps receded, ceased.

  The Executioner was over the wall. Leaping down into the yard he heard the South American fire again, three shots cracking out from behind a stack of crates by an outside washroom. A bullet splatted against the wall a foot from his head,
and he felt the wind of another fractions of an inch in front of his chin. He dropped to the ground, squeezing out a single thunderous round in reply.

  As the first gunshots roared into the night, lighted windows in the nearby houses had gone dark. Wooden shutters slammed home. Gunfire after dark in Marseilles usually signified what the French called "a settlement of accounts" between rival Arab and Corsican gangs competing for territory, and the wise man looked the other way.

  Bolan lay among potato peelings, smelling the odors of rotted fruit and spiced meats cooking. He reckoned the yard was in back of a neighborhood couscous restaurant. He could hear the jangle of Arab music faintly in the distance.

  Beyond the washroom, a paler rectangle was printed against the dark: Carvalho had opened a door in the far wall and slipped through. The big guy followed and found himself in a vacant lot behind a low-rent six-story apartment building. The dope dealer was running, dodging between the rusted wrecks of abandoned automobiles. He was heading for a fire escape zigzagging down the rear of the apartments.

  In the poor light the fleeing figure was too indistinct to make a good target for a handgun. The Executioner, too, sprinted through the rain toward the building.

  He holstered the AutoMag on his right hip as he ran and plucked another gun from his shoulder rig. This was a specially modified Beretta 93-R that was equipped with a perforated suppressor, and springs machined to cycle subsonic cartridges. It packed a punch less devastating than the huge AutoMag, but it was more accurate, over a longer range.

  Carvalho raced across a rain-slicked concrete playground and made the wall immediately below the fire escape. The lowest flight of the iron stairway was counterbalanced to remain horizontal, out of the reach of children, until weight was put on the treads. Carvalho leaped upward with outstretched hands and grabbed one of the spars. The flight swung down, and he scrambled aboard.

  The Executioner halted at the edge of the playground and flicked a rapid glance over the facade of the building. Lights still showed in several windows on the upper floors. Where was Carvalho headed? Was there a safehouse someplace in this gaunt building? Or was the guy simply panicking, bolting for the nearest refuge he could find?

  There was no way of telling. None of the intel the Executioner had gleaned suggested that Carvalho had contacts in this part of town. But it was better not to take chances: if there were confederates on one of the upper floors, he could be in big trouble himself. He dropped to one knee and raised the Beretta.

  His quarry paused on the iron grid at second-floor level that separated the two lowest flights of the stairway. He spun around, and the gun in his hand spit fire once more.

  A slug whined off the concrete, and glass in one of the automobile wrecks shattered. But the Executioner's crouched form was no more than a blur against the dark shapes littering the vacant lot. The killer's aim was way off.

  Carvalho had forgotten one important detail in his frenzy to get away: while standing there on the grid, his head and shoulders were silhouetted against the diffused light that shone through the armored glass window in the fire exit door.

  The Executioner flicked the Beretta into 3-shot mode, then steadied his right wrist with his left hand. He aimed carefully, holding his breath. In his concentration, the sound of the rain clattering on the ironwork of the escape seemed magnified.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The gun bucked in his grasp as the triple burst from its silenced barrel streaking for the target.

  Glass shattered onto the fire escape as the first 9 mm parabellum slammed into the window. The second slug tore away the left side of Carvalho's face and the third cored the upper part of his torso, penetrating the heart and killing him instantly.

  He folded forward over the rail and dropped, but one of his feet caught in the ironwork. There was an audible crack as his shin snapped, and the body hung head-downward, arms trailing, the rain-soaked jacket flopping down to cover the head. His automatic skittered across the grid and fell to the ground.

  Ramming the 93-R back into his shoulder rig, the Executioner rose and walked across to retrieve the gun. It was an old Colt Cobra revolver with live rounds in three of the six chambers. The guy must have reloaded in the yard, when there was only a single round left in the cylinder.

  He straightened, a finger hooked through the trigger guard... and froze.

  There were two of them: a tall, thin man with a bushy black mustache, who wore a dark raincoat that hung loosely on his frame, and a short, rat-faced man in Levi's and a leather jacket. They must have walked around the corner of the building while his attention was centered on the gun. Each man sported a snap-brim fedora black with moisture, and each held a standard-issue Browning automatic.

  "Police," the one with the mustache growled, flashing a plastic-wrapped card with red, white and blue stripes slanted across one corner. "Brigade des Moeurs."

  "Vice?" the Executioner echoed.

  "Shut your mouth," Rat face cut in. "You're Mack Bolan, an American citizen." It was more a statement than a question.

  Bolan said nothing. He looked beyond them to the roadway outside the apartment block entrance. A Mercedes taxi with the for-hire sign extinguished stood beneath a streetlight, its engine idling. Plumes of exhaust curled up into the rain from the muffler tail pipe. A husky man cradling a short-barreled submachine gun lounged by the open door, one elbow resting on the roof. Another man in plainclothes sat at the wheel.

  Bolan weighed the chances. A kick, a swift blow, a sudden break for the vacant lot?

  With his own guns holstered and Carvalho's revolver still dangling from one finger? No way.

  "You're to come with us," Mustache ordered gruffly.

  "On what charge?"

  "Did I mention a charge?" The cop jerked his head at his companion. "Take the hardware, Serge."

  Rat face twitched the Colt from Bolan's grasp and relieved him of the AutoMag and the Beretta. "You customarily carry these when you take a stroll at night?" he asked.

  "Sure. Especially in Marseilles," Bolan growled. "What's this all about?"

  "I told you to shut up," Mustache said. "Into the car now. Move."

  "What about him?" Bolan nodded toward the body of Carvalho, which was still suspended from the fire escape.

  "Forget it," Rat face replied. "We have no orders relating to bodies. That's for homicide. Our brief is to bring you in."

  Bolan shrugged. As Mustache seized his arm, he began walking toward the Mercedes. There was nothing else he could do.

  He sat on the rear seat, between the two cops. The man with the SMG, who was beside the driver, twisted around to face the Executioner, the barrel of the weapon supported on the seat back. The Mercedes hissed through the wet, deserted streets, passed a housing development, sped downhill toward the docks and then climbed to a raised six-lane expressway.

  Over the red shingled roofs of ancient houses, Bolan saw light gleaming on black water, the yellow glare of sodium lamps where crane men working the night shift unloaded a freighter. When it became clear that they were heading north, out of town, he said mildly, "You guys sure patrol a long way from your precinct house."

  "No talking."

  Twenty minutes later, past the fringe of limestone mountains circling the city, they emerged from a tunnel and drove toward the Etang de Berre, the huge lagoon at the mouth of the Rhone that curls around Marseilles. Low clouds blanketing the sky ahead reflected a blaze of light from factories, refineries, a power station strung along the waterside. The control tower of Marignane Airport rose in the distance like a grain silo, above fields of brilliance where high-power lights illuminated the parking lots and taxiways surrounding the terminal.

  The Mercedes took the next exit off the expressway to reach an approach road leading to the airport. Bolan remained nonplussed. If these were real cops, why had they ignored the dead man hanging from the fire escape? They had barely looked at him.

  If they weren't, if this was some underworld variation of th
e old take-him-for-a-ride routine, what were they waiting for?

  On the outskirts of the field, neon letters behind a grove of trees spelled out the word Sofitel.

  The cop at the wheel turned the Mercedes into a driveway and parked at the end of a line of cars. Beyond them was the floodlit facade of a two-story luxury motel.

  "Out," the cop with the mustache ordered. "And no tricks."

  Rat face opened the door. He got out to stand beside the guy with the SMG, and covered the Executioner as they all proceeded past the motel's entrance hall and around the back of the building.

  Thin strips of light escaped from behind the shutters that covered some of the first-floor windows. In one room that had the draperies drawn back, a woman holding a champagne glass stood smiling at her companions. Somewhere inside the motel Ella Fitzgerald was singing "I Didn't Know What Time It Was."

  Bolan and his captors passed a floodlit pool, then rounded one end of a wing projecting from the main block and stopped outside a curtained French door that opened onto the garden. The rain had stopped, and a cool breeze blew through the wet grass.

  Rat face rapped a code knock on the French door: three quick taps, two widely spaced, then two more quick ones.

  The door opened.

  Silhouetted against the discreet glow of a floor lamp in a tastefully furnished bedroom, Bolan saw a bulky man in a rumpled brown suit, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth.

  "Striker! I thought you'd never come!" Hal Brognola exclaimed.

  Part One

  Identification

  Chapter One

  Brognola was a Fed who had the President's ear. When the Executioner had been actively involved in a covert antiterrorist campaign that operated from Stony Man Farm, in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, Brognola had been the sole liaison linking him with the Oval Office.