âGive me the code,â the Executioner said.
âGive me my final release. It is the only thing I ask.â
âWhat is the code?â
âGive me your word. What is on that flash drive is time sensitive. Open it in time and youâll have an intelligence coup that could save lives, perhaps as many lives as Iâve destroyed in my hubris. Take too long and the window closes.â
âHow do you know Iâll keep my word once you give me the code?â Bolan countered.
âFaith is all I have left. Give me your word and Iâll give you the code.â
Bolan looked at the former analyst. The man looked back at him. Tears made his eyes look weak and shiny in the unforgiving brightness of the lamp. His head shook with his suppressed emotion.
âPlease,â the man whispered.
The Executioner looked at the traitor. He nodded once.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nathan Meyer for his contribution to this work.
I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.
âFriedrich Nietzsche 1844â1900
The good must have clawsâfor the battle of good against evil is always fought tooth and nail.
âMack Bolan
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 hell of Vietnam.
But this soldier also wore another nameâSergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.
Mack Bolanâs 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 societyâs every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warriorâto 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 command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new alliesâAble Team and Phoenix Forceâwaged 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 âarmâs-lengthâ alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.
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 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Mack Bolan had parked in the shadows under the New Jersey freeway overpass. The low-slung black Honda Prelude had heavily tinted windows and boasted a nitrous-augmented engine. Inside the vehicle the Executioner waited, a cell phone and a silenced Beretta 93-R machine pistol on the seat beside him.
The parking lot was hidden from the major urban arterial by an abandoned factory, its windows broken and graffiti covering its walls in a dozen hues of paint. A sour wind, smelling strongly of the ocean, pushed garbage around the vacant lot.
A scrawny one-eyed dog emerged from the mouth of a secondary alley and trotted across the broken asphalt. It nosed around a refuse pile, then lifted its leg against an overturned garbage can.
Bolan shifted inside the car and the dogâs head came up, the animal wary and feral. It growled low in its throat, then lazily trotted back toward the safety of the alley it had emerged from.
Ten minutes later a silver TrailBlazer with government plates rolled out of the same alley through the chain-link fence and came to a stop beside the Prelude, nose pointed in the opposite direction.
The driverâs window on each car powered down smoothly, and Bolan nodded to the man his old friend Hal Brognola had sent to meet him. The guy was big, with a shaved head and a bristling goatee. Despite the leathers he was wearing, something about the cool appraisal the man gave Bolan screamed âCop.â
âIâm Danson,â he said in a gravelly voice. âA friend of mine told me to come see you. Said helping you would clean the slate between us. Since I owe the son of a bitch from way back, I came and brought what he asked.â
âWhat do you have?â Bolan prompted.
Danson lifted a manila envelope from the seat beside him. As he handed it through the open window, Bolan could see the word Hate had been tattooed across the scarred knuckles of the manâs big fist.
The envelope wasnât very heavy, and Bolan quickly opened the flap to check its contents.
âRobert Scone. Goes by the street name Sideways. Biker thug. Did a stretch in Attica a couple years ago for aggravated assault on his old lady, a dancer named Shayla. Did a pretty good number on her and got three years,â Danson stated.