Hostile Odds
The illicit activities of an organized crime family draw Mack Bolan to California, where he uncovers a deadly power struggle. It seems a branch of this family tree extends to a small town in Oregon where the Mob's influence runs deep. Following the bloody trail, Bolan takes his war across the state line.Profits from prostitution, drugs and numbers rackets tied to several local businesses are being funneled to a radical ecoterrorist group more than willing to strike out against anything–and anyone–standing in its way. A war is brewing and the small town is under siege. Faced with mounting casualties, the Executioner will have to use his own methods to clean up the environment.
Читать Hostile Odds онлайн беплатно
The Executioner burst into the back room and immediately crouched
The instinctual move saved Bolanâs life as the escapee burst from behind a desk and triggered two rounds that whizzed overhead close enough for him to hear their passage. He recognized the shooter instantly.
Bolan leveled his weapon and squeezed the trigger. The 9 mm slugs struck center mass, entering the body with an upward trajectory, and punched through lung and heart tissue before exiting out the upper back. The impact sent the man reeling into a filing cabinet with enough force to dent the thin, light gray metal drawers.
The sounds of battle died and Bolan rose slowly amid the smoke of gunfire and the smell of death. The air of violence and spent energies clung to the Executioner like a cloak. The battle had taken less than a minute but the threat had been quelled.
All that remained was to topple the head of the underworld. And it was a task Mack Bolan relished.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to
Jon Guenther for his contribution to this work.
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.
âNapoleon Hill
1883â1970
My war grew out of opposing those who oppress the weak and exploit the innocent. In that respect, it is a war the enemy has declared on itself.
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.
Contents
Prologue
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
Prologue
Klamath Falls, Oregon
The two F-15E Eagle fighter jets streaked into the air with the thunderclap of sonic speed, their aluminum skins glinting silvery-blue with the twilight of dusk. Suddenly they lost altitude and crashed several hundred yards outside the perimeter fence of Kingsley Airfield.
The tower crew could only discern what looked like engine flameouts, and then the explosions of impact a heartbeat later, each red-orange fireball fed by twenty thousand liters of jet fuel. As one controller began to scream out the call signs of the two trainer fighters, the tower chief contacted the command duty officer at the USAF headquarters building. The CDO ordered an immediate lockdown of the base and surrounding area even as the tower dispatched emergency services to the crash site.
The tower crew would later testify they hadnât seen anything out of the ordinary, even swore the flashes of light just prior to the accident could only have been reflections of the engine flameouts. What they didnât knowâcouldnât possibly have known at that time and what the government wouldnât tell themâwere that those flashes marked the points where surface-to-air rockets had struck the pair of trainer fighters.
Rockets fired from portable launchers in proximity to the airfield.
âWhich meant is wasnât an accident at all,â the chief investigator told the CDO and Colonel Harlan Winnetka, the wing commander, a week later.
âAny ideas who the hell might be responsible for these attacks?â Winnetka asked.
âI canât be certain of anything right now, sir,â the investigator replied. âTo be perfectly honest, there isnât enough evidence to draw a definitive conclusion. The only thing we know for sure is that these craft were brought down by shoulder-fired weapons. The perpetrators were diligent to cover their tracks in the confusion, because we were too busy working this initially as an accident, maybe a midair collision. After all, these were trainers with students at the stick. We thought one of the students lost control and ran into the other, bringing down both birds in the process.â
