Don Pendleton: Dangerous Tides

Once he was staring at them—a sea of yellow canisters, each with an electronic detonator affixed—he was almost taken aback by just how many the Russian had managed to capture and move. The hall was filled with them, and there was no doubt in Bolan’s mind that the explosions awaiting each were more than enough to produce a toxic cloud of incredible size. Based on the intelligence the Farm had provided, this number of canisters would be enough to poison almost the entire city.

He heard approaching footsteps and raised the Beretta.

“Beautiful, is it not?” The captain stepped into view. He was dressed in loose clothing in the local Javanese style. He held an electronic detonator in his hand.

“Place the detonator on the floor,” Bolan said, his Beretta trained on the man.

“This is a standoff,” the Russian said, laughing. “At least until I decide I wish to die. And then I will push this button and the entire city of Semarang dies with me.”

The Executioner ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Phil Elmore for his contribution to this work.

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

—James Russell Lowell

1819–1891

There are many reasons a man hoists the black flag and takes what he wants. When he does, he’s not a romantic figure or a pirate. He’s a predator and he’s going to pay for his crimes.

—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.

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

The SH-60B Seahawk helicopter churned purposefully out of the sky, dropping perilously close to the water and raising a wake in the already rough seas below. The chopper’s twin engines pushed it through the twilight at the urging of Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man pilot and long-time friend of Mack Bolan, the Executioner. Grimaldi imagined he could feel the spray of seawater on the helicopter’s belly as he skimmed the waves.

“We’re coming up on the insertion point, Sarge!” Grimaldi said into his throat mike.

Behind him, in the open bay of the Seahawk, Mack Bolan lowered a pair of anti-fog goggles over his eyes. Then he checked the fit of the Boker Orca dive knife strapped to his thigh over his wet suit. He had already verified that the watertight pack strapped to the small of his back was double-buckled and secure. It was almost time to leave his headset—and Grimaldi’s chopper—behind.

“Understood, Jack,” he acknowledged, keying his own mike. “Final checklist.”

“Gear?” Grimaldi said.

“Secure.”

“Plumett case?”

The Executioner checked the seals on the heavy black case, then slung it over his shoulder and across his back.

“On board.”

“Air supply?” Grimaldi asked.

Bolan checked the fit of the mouthpiece on the modified pony bottle he wore on his chest. The bottle was fixed to one of the shoulder straps of his backpack, cinched tightly in place with nylon webbing. The small gauge on the high-tech bottle read Full.

“Check,” Bolan said.

“DPV?” Grimaldi ticked off.

Bolan reached down and switched on the standby power of the electric, self-contained Driver Propulsion Vehicle Stony Man Farm had provided for him. The muted status LEDs were all green. The mounted GPS locator displayed his position relative to his target coordinates. The DPV was a sealed electric motor with a single-use power supply, essentially a giant propeller cylinder and rudder assembly. Twin joysticks jutted above and behind, containing triggers to adjust the throttle and steer the unit.

“Ready,” Bolan said.

“Good luck, Sarge,” Grimaldi said. “And good hunting.” The cocky pilot turned all business as he watched his instruments. “On my mark, Striker,” he said, using Bolan’s Stony Man code name. “Five…four…three…two…one…mark.”

At Grimaldi’s signal, Bolan pulled off his headset and shoved the DPV out of the chopper, the twin sticks of the machine tight in his fists. He hit the water below like a stone. The heavy device pulled him beneath the roiling waves. He paused as he descended, orienting himself and taking air from the pony bottle, watching in the darkness as the GPS unit pointed the way to his destination.

Bolan thumbed the machine’s controls and held on tightly as the almost-silent device began pulling him rapidly through the water. He adjusted course with a few taps of the right-hand trigger, managing his depth by angling the DPV and his body with it.

Above him, Grimaldi would be piloting the Seahawk back to the Perry-class frigate James Richardson. The firepower available to Bolan and to Stony Man was considerable, but no amount of heavy weaponry could do the job that now faced him. No, to succeed, Bolan would have to use stealth, mounting a soft probe into enemy-held territory in order to liberate innocent men and women.

It was an all too common scenario for the Executioner.

Bolan had covered a lot of ground in the past several hours, first by jet, then by helicopter, then on the frigate, only to take to the skies once more to be dropped into the cold sea below. It had started with a single telephone call, routed to Bolan through channels from Washington by way of Stony Man Farm. The circuits connecting them were complex, but the scrambled phone briefing from Hal Brognola—speaking to Bolan from the big Fed’s Justice Department office in D.C.—had been straightforward enough.

“A cruise ship has been hijacked,” Brognola had said without preamble.

The natural assumption in the modern age was that yet another terrorist group was claiming responsibility for yet another act of violence against helpless men, women and children. Brognola quickly explained that the problem was, if anything, even more serious.