Omega Cult

SPLINTER SECT

North Korean terrorists unleash a devastating sarin-gas attack on Los Angeles: payback for US opposition to their homeland’s nuclear expansion. With casualties mounting and fear of future strikes on the rise, Mack Bolan follows the trail of violence to the zealous billionaire funding the deadly campaign. Taking him out—and saving thousands from an arsenal of suitcase bombs and biochemical weapons—will mean penetrating North Korea’s treacherous border. But the Executioner’s bloody pilgrimage won’t end until he sends this scum straight into the afterlife.

The house and grounds went dark, but Bolan knew exactly where his first three targets were.

Sweeping the muzzle of his scattergun across the patio, he triggered three quick twelve-gauge rounds, each blast spewing nine pellets of double-O buckshot, each pellet equivalent to a .33-caliber bullet.

His targets never knew what hit them, blown away and tumbling on the flagstone patio, awash in blood. Somewhere inside the house, a male voice shouted, challenging the sudden dark.

Light from the burning, melting generator shed showed Bolan where he had to go—rushing across the lawn through roiling smoke, past burning patches where napalm has set the grass on fire—and Chan stayed with him, matching stride for stride.

Whatever hell awaited them, they would be meeting it head-on.

Omega Cult

Don Pendleton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Staff Sergeant Robert James Miller Nari District, Afghanistan; January 25, 2008

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.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Dedication

Legend

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

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Los Angeles, California

Jang Il-woo, age twenty-three, boarded the Metro Express Line 442 at the Hawthorne/Lennox Station, at seven-thirty on Tuesday morning, bound for downtown LA. No one aboard the train noticed the slender Korean expatriate dressed in a cheap business suit, horn-rimmed glasses and black wingtips. Just another of the city’s countless worker drones, bound for an office job downtown and none too happy that he still had four full days to work that week.

As the train filled, passing through twenty-seven stations on its way to the Staples Center multi-purpose sports arena and the looming skyscrapers beyond, Jang kept eye contact with his fellow passengers to a minimum, staring out the window beside him, counting down the final minutes of his life. The briefcase sat between his feet, its deadly secret hidden from the others traveling their last few miles toward doom.

Jang had no fear of death. He had resolved it through his prayers and other actions of devotion to the cause that ruled his life and had determined when that life on Earth should end. It comforted him to imagine what would follow his demise, the great leap forward for his homeland and the world at large.

A resident of the United States for nearly two years now, complete with green card, Jang had never actually planned to settle in the West. His course had been set more than a year before he applied for his US Permanent Resident Card and was accepted on the basis of his fabricated academic record, indicating he held a master’s degree in business management and mass communication from Seoul’s Chung-Ang University. His application also claimed a standing job offer from Choeusu Productions in Los Angeles, a public relations firm operating from a phone bank and post-office box in West Hollywood and had no living officers or formal personnel.

Within the anthill of Los Angeles, Jang was invisible.