Death List

CRITICAL IMITATION

A notorious assassin is captured before receiving the ultimate hit list from a major crime family. To protect the targets, Stony Man Farm sends Mack Bolan to infiltrate the family’s compound and secure the list. This time, Bolan has an extra weapon in his arsenal: he’s a dead ringer for the assassin. His impersonation is successful...until the escaped killer arrives on the scene. Suddenly, the race is on for Bolan to reach the targets before the assassin or his mercenaries can murder them—or Bolan himself. Yet despite the stolen identity, there will be no mistaking the Executioner’s signature blaze of hellfire and justice.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quotes

The Mack Bolan Legend

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

Epilogue

Copyright

Bullets thudded into the crippled SUV.

“I smell gas,” Pierce said. “Do you smell gas?”

“Try not to think about it, and give me cover fire,” Bolan ordered. “I’ve got work to do.”

The little mobster began laying down a withering 00 Buck fusillade with his 12-gauge. Bolan lined up the iron sights on the AK-47, then drew a breath, and let out half of it.

He pressed the trigger.

One of the Toretto hardmen gasped as blood and brains suddenly coated the side of his face. Next to him, the shooter Bolan had targeted had a crater where his forehead had been. The Executioner took advantage of the startled gunman’s moment of paralysis to punch a round through his throat.

The deaths spurred the shooters to redouble their efforts. They poured whatever they had left into the SUV. Something beneath the truck sparked. A flame caught. Soon the underside of the truck glowed yellow with fire.

“Time to move, Pierce!”

Death List

Don Pendleton

Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.

—Aesop

One man can stand against evil. One man can face the worst that life has to offer and, through his example, inspire others. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated.

—Mack Bolan

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 started 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 command 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.

1

Whiting, IL

As Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, reached out to shake the Mafia thug’s hand, the man’s white silk tie bloomed crimson. The soldier dropped to the plush carpet almost before his mind processed why he was doing so, and found himself staring into the dead eyes of the Mafia button man.

Automatic gunfire ripped through the Italian restaurant, which was owned by the Corino crime family, one of Chicago’s most notorious Mafia organizations. That meant that a good portion of the patrons reacted not by screaming for help but by drawing concealed weapons.

Bolan grimaced. He didn’t like what he was about to do, but there was no choice. He rolled himself up and over the corpse, placing the body between him and the south doorway. It was this entrance that was the source of the sudden attack. The Corino family was being hit. It was just the bad fortune of the hitters that Mack Bolan had been caught in the middle.

The Corinos had arranged for “Bolan” to meet them here because it was their home territory. This was supposed to have been a standard meet-and-greet. There being no honor among thieves, the meet was the first of several hurdles Bolan would have to overcome as the Corinos vetted him to make sure he was who he claimed to be.

Of course, he wasn’t.

Bolan drew a pair of Beretta 92-F pistols from the dual shoulder holsters he wore. The weapons had mother-of-pearl grips, which he detested. The pistols, and the custom shoulder harness that bore them, were the personal property of one Vincent Harmon.