Annotation
Israel — a nation born of war and nurtured under siege — is the target for a daring raid by a Palestinian suicide squad.
More than six thousand miles away in a Florida safehouse, Mack Bolan learns of the plot from a mortally wounded agent of sabra — a covert Israeli strike force.
When the Executioner discovers an arms deal between the Mafia and the PLO, he joins the sabra commandos to crush the terrorist invaders.
* * *
Don Pendleton's Executioner
The Mack Bolan Legend
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* * *
Don Pendleton's Executioner
Mack Bolan
Death Has a Name
Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
Rudyard Kipling, The Law of the Jungle
The wolves are gathering. Let us watch and wait.
Mack Bolan
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mike McQuay for his contributions to this work.
The Mack Bolan 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 hellgrounds of Vietnam, for his skills as a crack sniper in pursuit of the enemy.
But this supreme 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. Bolan made his peace at his parents' and sister's gravesite. Then he declared war on the evil force that had snatched his loved ones. The Mafia.
In a fiery one-man assault, he confronted the Mob head-on, carrying a cleansing flame to the urban menace. And when the battle smoke cleared, a solitary figure walked away alive.
He continued his lone-wolf struggle, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Mack Bolan had broken society's every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior — to no avail.
So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against international terrorism. This time, as an official employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan wore yet another handle: Colonel John Phoenix. With government sanction now, and a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, he and his new allies — Able Team and Phoenix Force — waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB and all it stood for.
Until the inevitable occurred. Bolan's one true love, the brilliant and beautiful April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine.
Embittered and utterly saddened by this feral deed, Bolan broke the shackles of Establishment authority.
Now the big justice fighter is once more free to haunt the treacherous alleys of the shadow world.
1
The Executioner felt his hands tighten on the choir loft railing as the organ strains of the wedding march floated hollowly through the high vaulted ceiling of the old Catholic church. From his vantage point, he looked down and saw Tomasso "Big Tommy" Metrano walking slowly down the center aisle in a black tux, his daughter gliding gently beside him, the train of her long white lace gown being carried by two little girls no older than six.
The group moved toward the altar, toward the priest and shiny-faced altar boys, toward the young man with bright eyes who waited to take Carla Metrano from the arm of her infamous father.
The Executioner was the name he used, but Mack Bolan was the name he had been born with — and it was Bolan who felt the growing tightness in his chest. It was all wrong here.
Despite the Mafia button who lay unconscious beside him in the loft, his hands still clutching a Wilkinson "Terry" carbine, Bolan knew it couldn't go here. There was innocence mixed with the incense and the organ music that kept him from snuffing Big Tommy right on the spot.
He had been on Metrano's trail for months, cutting a bloody swath through the capo's loan-sharking, dope and flesh empire that stretched from Seattle all the way here to West Palm Beach, Florida. But Metrano had eluded the Executioner — and the rightful death that awaited the mafioso. He kept himself hidden from public view, his personal security all but unreachable. Except here, at his daughter's wedding.
Bolan thought about Carla Metrano, and hoped that the sins of the father wouldn't touch the child. Then he thought about his own sister, whom he'd never be able to watch getting married or having a family because of people like Tomasso Metrano. He thought about his parents and the fullness of life they never experienced. And he thought, somewhat sadly, about himself. It was the church that did it; he was so out of place it startled him. Even Metrano had a bride to give away here.
All Bolan had to give away was death.
Metrano directed his daughter toward the smiling young man and stepped aside. Bolan watched, his face a grim mask, his hands white-knuckled on the rail. He could nail the scum right here. He'd never have a chance like this again. Metrano was a Family man and this was a Family affair, bodyguards standing like icons against the walls under the stations of the cross. A couple of grenades dropped into the congregation of about a hundred could probably set organized crime back twenty years. Bolan was dressed to kill, in a black skinsuit and combat harness sprouting weapons and ammo; but he couldn't do it. Not here.
He backed up a step, ready to climb out the high window and down the rope that had got him in.
Suddenly there was a commotion below, several bodyguards moving to a spot in the congregation. Bolan crept up to the rail again and looked down. They were closing in on a woman with short black hair and a white jump suit who sat among the spectators in the center of a pew. She stood, jerking her head from one side to the other. An Uzi pistol was in her hand.
Bolan's instincts took over immediately. Big Thunder was in his hand without conscious thought, the .44 AutoMag practically crying for action.
Below, the woman vaulted a pew, knocking down an old woman and a man in a walker. She jumped again, people yelling, and touched down in a crouch in the center aisle.
Everything was in motion as she sprang to her feet, stiff-arming the Uzi in front of her. There was no doubt of her target — Big Tommy.
The Uzi held a 32-round magazine of 9 mm parabellums, and it looked as if the woman intended to use every shot. The weapon bumped as she fired at Metrano, who had turned around and was moving now, but it missed, catching the priest in the shoulder instead. The slug's impact spun and sent him reeling into one of the altar boys. Big Tommy's men closed around their boss, one of them falling, then another, as they hustled the mafioso back into the sanctuary.
People ran screaming in all directions around the church as guns came out of shoulder holsters in the large hall. The .44 bucked again and again in Bolan's hand as he added his fire to the woman's, picking his targets carefully amid the insane confusion.
Gunshots echoed loudly in the cavernous church, drowning out everything else. People fell, screams lost in the wall of noise. In the aisle, the woman was hit in the thigh, a crimson stain blossoming on he
r pant leg. She fell behind a pew, but came up firing. Another slug took her again, high this time, in the shoulder. Then rifle fire drove Bolan back from the rail, as some of Metrano's hardmen spotted him.
And with the odds, Bolan realized it would only be a matter of time before they pinned him down. If he didn't move quickly, both he and the woman would be trapped in the church with no hope of getting out. He turned once again to the freedom of the open window behind him, then came back around.
If he had learned one thing in Nam, it was that you never left a buddy behind. And whoever the woman was, she was on his side.
Instinctively, he grabbed the rifle from the hands of the unconscious man beside him and vaulted the loft railing. He came down hard in the center aisle, falling and rolling behind a pew, rising immediately on one knee to fire down the aisle. Two men charging were picked up off their feet and thrown to the cold marble floor.
The woman was several pews ahead of him, dripping blood, valiantly keeping up the fight. He ran to her, hurdling a body that was twisted like a doll, cold eyes staring blankly, half the face missing.
He fired several times at head level, forcing people to the floor, then knelt beside the woman, her jump suit now stained completely red.
Her eyes were fluttering as she tried to speak through the pain. She was losing blood fast. Bolan grabbed her and threw her over his left shoulder, bracing the carbine under his right arm.
He started backing out of the hall, firing high, keeping them down. He heard a dull thud and felt the woman's body jerk. He knew she had been hit again.
He retreated down the aisle, an awesome figure in killer black holding a stainless-steel cannon, and made the huge archway of the door. A clutch of onlookers huddled fearfully in the atrium leading to the outside. Ignoring them, he backed out of the main doors into the hot Florida afternoon.
There was a long flight of stone steps leading up to St. Michael's. The Executioner took them sideways, always looking back the way he had come.
Two men came charging through the doorway. Bolan fired the silver hawgleg quickly, drilling them with gut hits, then the ones who followed them, the bodies hitting the steps and rolling toward, then past him.
It was a wealthy neighborhood, stately white houses with red tile roofs sitting way back behind protective walls on the palm-tree-lined streets. Bolan hurried to the line of cars parked on the street, to the black Lincoln Continental he had rented to fit in with the crowd here.
In the distance, men were pouring out of the church, laying down fire at him from the front grounds.
He jerked the door open, sliding the unconscious woman off his shoulder and into the passenger seat, pushing her head down.
Bullets zipped around him, and safety glass shattered under the onslaught of enemy fire. They were closing on him as he climbed behind the wheel and keyed the ignition. Beside him, the woman moaned loudly, partly regaining consciousness. At the end of the block, seventy feet distant, a Cadillac limo screeched around the corner and took off in the other direction. Probably Metrano, Bolan figured, trying to get away. Bolan wanted him, but the woman was his first priority now.
"Wh-who are you?" she asked weakly, her accent thick and French.
"Never mind."
"Metrano," she said, blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. "You must… get…"
"I'm getting you to a doctor," he said, pulling away from the curb, and ducking low as bullets slammed into the Lincoln.
"No!" she rasped, nearly a scream. "I will not survive. You must… get Metrano… please."
The Executioner took one look at her and knew she spoke the truth. He floored the gas pedal, sliding into the corner, and was off after Big Tommy. He stole a glance in the rearview. A convoy of Mafia crew wagons was on his tail.
2
Metrano's limo zigzagged through the wide residential streets, heading east, gunfire winking from the back windows in the blazing sunlight. Bolan swerved with it, a tough target, as neighborhood traffic climbed the curbs, churning up the manicured lawns of the stately houses. The tanks on his tail kept coming, smashing into other cars unlucky enough to be on the streets.
"Feel strong enough to shoot?" he asked the woman beside him.
She nodded painfully, grimacing, and reached for the Magnum he held out to her.
A mob soldier was leaning way out the back window of the Caddy ahead, an M-16 in his hands. He fired as they rounded a corner, missing wildly. Bolan's rental shuddered into the corner as steel-belted radials failed to grip the pavement. The heavy limo rocked on its springs as the car straightened, and Bolan saw the hardman taking aim again.
"Down!" Bolan yelled, gently but firmly pushing the woman to the seat as glass rained on them, the safety glass of the front window shattering, making vision impossible.
Bolan grabbed the rifle from the seat, using the butt to pound out the rest of the windshield. Stifling Florida air rushed in, making him squint. "Do it now," he said quietly. "Take out the son of a bitch."
The woman's face hardened. She held Big Thunder two-handed as she had the Uzi and fired methodically, the weapon kicking with each round. The man with the automatic slumped, his M-16 tumbling from his hands to dance wildly along the pavement. He lay draped through the window for a few seconds, then he was pushed out, his already dead body bouncing twice before coming to rest on a storm drain.
There was a sound in the distance, sirens. Great. More complications. The Executioner was in no better hands with the police than with the Mafia. He operated totally outside the law, hunted by his prey and by those he sought to protect. Alone, he dispensed justice the way he had been taught in the jungle, the only way he knew.
He had come back from Nam, so many years ago, to try to destroy the evil cancer of organized crime that had eaten away his family, and had perceived it to be no different from the jungles he had crawled out of. The strong and the vicious preyed on the weak, the defenseless. But when he tried to fight in this modern jungle using the techniques he had learned in the Asian hellground, he had been met with resistance and mistrust from those who stood to benefit most from his crusade.
So he fought a lonely war for the survival of civilization amid hatred and terrorism, hunted by the government he sought to protect, persecuted by the people he risked his life for.
Bolan's hand tightened on the steering wheel.
The woman coughed beside him, blood bubbling from her lips. Then the gun left weakened fingers, dropping into her lap. She slumped to the side, toward Bolan, and his right hand left the wheel to push her against her door.
"What's going on? Who are you?" he asked, skidding through another corner. The limo ahead was heading toward the bridge across the inner ocean, racing toward Palm Beach proper.
She looked at him, eyes glazing, already dead things. "Sabra," she said, more blood coming with the words. "My plan… my plan"
And she was gone, all the life blasted out of her. Her head slumped on her chest, white jump suit saturated now.
Bolan was alone again.
The limo made the long stretch of drawbridge, bouncing onto it, tail end throwing sparks where metal scraped concrete. Bolan caught the rearview. Eight or ten cars were still pursuing him, the flashing lights of police cruisers weaving in and out of Mafia traffic. Big Tommy was heading home, and the Executioner had to get him before he got there.
Bolan positioned the carbine on the dash, its barrel resting on the frame of the open windshield. He triggered the weapon and scored a hit on the trunk lock. The lid flew open on the car ahead, stacks of brightly wrapped wedding presents tumbling onto the pavement.
A car slid into view abreast of him, a dark man on the passenger side leveling a sawed-off 12-gauge through the window. Bolan jerked the wheel to the left, banging into the other car, once, again. The driver lost control, jumping the curb and crashing through the guardrail on the side of the bridge. The car plunged sixty feet into Lake Worth, its horn blaring like an air-raid siren.
This
was crazy, totally out of control. Bolan wanted to fire again, but civilian traffic and pedestrians were all over the streets, people screaming and running, in the line of fire.
They'd blame him for this one, too.
The limo crossed the bridge, fishtailing a wide right as a hubcap popped loose and flew through the air like a Frisbee. Bolan cut the corner sharper, tighter, the woman's body swaying back and forth.
Behind, cops had managed to pull over several of his pursuers, but not enough. More cops joined the chase on the Palm Beach side of the bridge.
Bolan was closing on Metrano's car as they sped south on Row. Flooring the gas pedal, he caught them as they passed the Breakers Hotel, its exclusive golf course stretching pale green all the way to the white beach of the Atlantic Ocean.
He dropped the Wilkinson and grabbed Big Thunder from the seat. The limo's windows were tinted black. He'd have to pick his shot, figuring Big Tommy to be in the back seat. Just then the front window powered down, the cars inches apart, scenery blurring past.
A riot gun nosed out of the passenger window just as Bolan dropped the hammer on the AutoMag. Empty. He ducked, the shotgun loud in his ears as it tore up the inside of the Lincoln. Still down, he veered into the limo, both vehicles climbing the curb and careering into the golf course.
Metrano's car took off across the wide open fairway, Bolan following. Golf carts darted about in confusion, rats in a maze, as the other cars pursued the first two onto the course, firing away in open country.
Bullets slammed into the Lincoln, and Bolan swerved to make it tougher. He caught a glimpse of the dead woman, his mind racing to fit her into the picture.
The Caddy crested the seventh green, taking out the flag, and jumped the sand trap as it tried to make it back to the street. All Bolan could do was stay close and hope he got a hole in one with the carbine before Metrano made it the three miles to Regents Park and his fortresslike home.
Death Has a Name Page 1