Don Pendleton: Orange Alert

It was a desperate plan that required perfect timing

The Land Rover lurched forward an inch and Bolan pressed harder on the brake pedal, his muscles cramping under the strain. Drops of stinging sweat trickled into his eyes as he waited patiently for his enemies. Despite the agony that screamed from within his arm and shoulder, he willed himself to push harder.

The SUV suddenly appeared, coming fast around the curve. A split second later it was in front of the grotto, its engine racing against the elevation. Bolan released the brake and fell back as his vehicle surged forward, smashing into the SUV’s passenger side.

Shrieks of twisting metal and screaming tires filled the air.

The two vehicles plunged over the edge of the cliff, falling through the air for three or four long seconds before crashing onto the rocks below. There was a brief silence before both cars exploded, sending sound waves that merged and echoed as one across the Irish countryside.

Bolan rose from his position and peered over the edge. He had won this particular battle—but the Executioner had no doubt that this war was just beginning.

MACK BOLAN ®

The Executioner

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

#328 Triangle of Terror

#329 Hostile Crossing

#330 Dual Action

#331 Assault Force

#332 Slaughter House

#333 Aftershock

#334 Jungle Justice

#335 Blood Vector

#336 Homeland Terror

#337 Tropic Blast

#338 Nuclear Reaction

#339 Deadly Contact

#340 Splinter Cell

#341 Rebel Force

#342 Double Play

#343 Border War

#344 Primal Law

#345 Orange Alert

Orange Alert

Don Pendleton

Peace is produced by war.

—Latin Proverb

I continue my fight in order to preserve peace.

—Mack 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 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.

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

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

A cloud passed in front of the moon, and the moors became so dark Steven Oxford couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face, much less the outlines of the three men who stood in the ankle-high grass with him. The wind picked up from the east, gusting across Lake Erne, carrying with it the earthy scent of peat and a chill that penetrated Oxford’s heavy black wool sweater and the long-sleeved cotton T-shirt he wore underneath. Even in July, the moors between Donegal Bay and the lakes became uncomfortably cold at night.

In a belt holster tucked into the small of his back, Oxford carried a Glock 17, the standard handgun issued to CIA operatives.

A few months earlier, during his annual requalification, Oxford had placed ten of the seventeen 9 mm rounds into a two-and-a-half-inch circle at twenty-five yards—exactly twice the quantity required. Oxford was a man who liked to keep track of those details even more than the CIA did. His office walls at Langley were covered with citations and certifications, all arranged in precise chronological order.

The cloud passed, exposing the moon’s thin crescent, enabling the outlines of the waiting men to become discernable as blobs of deeper darkness against the sepia blanket that cloaked the moors. Oxford’s three companions were also dressed in black, their features highlighted by the silvery illumination, giving the impression that their faces floated like decapitated heads in ghostly search of their lost bodies.

A freight train rumbled in the distance, one of many that traveled the railroad tracks crisscrossing the moors. Barely audible above the clack and clatter of the passing train was the howl of a dog—a mournful sound that echoed over the wasteland to be answered a few seconds later by another of its species. Had Oxford been superstitious, the wail would have sent a shiver down his spine. But neither superstition nor fear were words in the agent’s vocabulary. Despite standing on a moor in the middle of the night in an Irish county where half the population over sixty years of age swore to personal knowledge of banshees, he was confident that he and the Glock could handle whatever came their way.

He took a swift, visual inventory of his companions. Bobbie Reegan was clearly the most dangerous, driven by a hate so fiery his eyes sometimes glowed as if lit from behind. The other two were no more than common thugs, losers drawn to the Orange Order in much the same way that Oxford thought skin-heads were attracted to organizations spewing white supremacy. Political motives, if considered at all, were secondary. Blacks, Catholics, Jews, it didn’t matter whose blood they were spilling—it was the actual hate and killing that pulled them in.