âI will kill this girl immediately!â
The manâs high-pitched voice threatened to shatter the eardrums of everyone in the Learjet. âYou fill a suitcase with old magazines and think we will not open it before we release the woman?â
âWell, Moe,â Bolan said, holding the mike up to his mouth again, âit was all I could think of to do. We didnât have a million dollars to give you.â Now was the moment of truth. The woman would live or die.
âYou have not heard the last from us,â Moe screamed. âAnd the blood of this young woman is on your hands!â
The radio suddenly went silent.
Bolan saw a woman wearing a red dressâher hands and feet tied togetherâbeing shoved out of the Cessna just below them.
âParachute!â he yelled at the top of his voice as he snapped open his seat belt.
With the unopened parachute clenched in his fist, Bolan never even broke stride as he raced out the door and into the open air thousands of feet above the earth.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jerry VanCook for his contribution to this work.
What is left when honor is lost?
âPublilius Syrus: Sententiae 1st century B.C.
There is no greater dishonor than when a soldier turns traitor. I will make sure those traitors cannot win.
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.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
Susan McDonald could not have been happier.
As she stood proudly behind her shelf at the tellerâs window, she felt the hard granite press lightly against her swelling abdomen. The babyâultrasound images had already assured her husband and her that it was a boyâwas kicking lightly. Susanâs doctor had warned her that soon heâd be kicking like a professional soccer player, that heâd wake her up at night and make her jump in the middle of sentences.
The baby was almost the only thing she could think of these days. Almost. But the other thing was too ghastly to think about, and so unlikely to happen at her branch of the First Federal Bank that she easily pushed it to the back of her mind.
Frank Dutton, the loan officer in charge of this branch office, walked to the front door, where several customers waited to conduct their early-morning banking. Frank selected a key from the large ring heâd produced from his pocket, unlocked the door, then held it open as the customers filed inside.
âGood morning, Mabel. Hello, Tim. Hey, Charlie, howâs the book coming?â
Frank knew every regular customer by name, which was one of the reasons the First Federal Bankâs outpost on South Western had more customers, and did more business, than any of the other branches.
Susan looked down the row of smiling womenâs faces at the other tellersâ windows. Most were blond and all were beautiful. That was another reason the customersâat least the malesânever seemed to switch banks.
The customer Frank had called Charlie limped toward Susan, leaning on his cane. He had a white beard beneath his well-worn brown fedora, and a tie-dyed T-shirt bearing a picture of Janis Joplin riding a motorcycle covered his chest. Susan knew he was a veteran of the Vietnam War, a former cop and still taught self-defense clinics on occasion. Heâd recently taken a medical retirement from the police department because arthritis had set into almost every joint he hadâmost of which had been broken or dislocated at one time or another during his life of adventure. Now he wrote articles for magazines and was working on a book about his experiences in Southeast Asia.