Don Pendleton - Grave Mercy

Bolan nodded. As an afterthought, he picked up a pair of empty water bottles and cut open a vein on two of the bodies. He hoped the blood samples would reveal what types of toxins were used to turn humans into weapons.

“Who were they?” Rudd asked.

“Someone’s pawns,” the soldier replied. “Most likely, they were kidnapped tourists, harmless people sparked to insanity by some biochemist.”

“Who’d do such a thing? And who’d let them loose here, where there’s just kids?”

“If there’s a clue in the blood, I’ll use it. I’m going after them,” Bolan stated grimly.

“Alone?” Rudd asked.

“Alone. With an army. It won’t matter. I’m going to find the people behind this,” the Executioner said.

Mack Bolan ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and the innocent…

—Robert Green Ingersoll 1833–1899

I have witnessed the innocent being ground into the earth by heartless monsters. Enough! They will be avenged.

—Mack Bolan

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Mack Bolan, running at full speed, speared his foot into the door of the laboratory and was stopped cold. Usually the Executioner’s 220-pound frame and the forty pounds of gear he wore were more than sufficient to easily splinter a door. Bolan grimaced under the impact as he rebounded from the heavy panel. It took a few steps for the soldier to recover his balance. The stench of incinerating heroin was heavy in the air, impenetrable cloying clouds obscuring the burning processing tables sprawled throughout the long room. The soldier’s brilliant, tactical mind was unaffected by the airborne opiates, as his face was masked. He doubted that he’d been physically affected by the gases filling the room, so without muscular impediment, he realized that the door was reinforced. Under the usual set of circumstances, such a kick would have loosened the crossbolt from its mooring in the doorjamb, but the door was locked from the outside, which made sense.

No drug lord wanted his drug processors to have a free way out when they could slip packets into their mouths or other orifices. Locking the lab from the outside was a means of control. Only Long Eddy himself made the profits, not some emaciated, poor, jittery lackey with a rectum full of heroin-stuffed condoms. That’s why Bolan kept a 12-gauge shotgun—a Masterkey—under the barrel of his rifle. He triggered the stubby blaster, and a cylinder of lead powder turned the locking mechanism to scrap.

With a push, the door flew wide open. Even as the first shafts of sunlight and fresh air rolled in through the crack, Bolan realized that he’d made a mistake. With a new supply of oxygen rolling into the burning laboratory, the flames flared even hotter. The process was called a backdraft, and it was one of the most terrifying traps that professional firemen could walk into.

The Executioner had made a mistake—he was only human—and now his nerves were screaming at him, announcing the harm the blast of superheated air around him was causing. It was survivable. The heat rose, air rumbling behind him and igniting under superheated force. His legs pushed, long limbs releasing coiled energy as he sprung out onto the sand, trying to push himself prone and let his heavily protected back and boots absorb most of the damage that vomited into open air. Flames seared the back of Bolan’s head, his hair curling up and snapping off instantly, his scalp singed. Something struck him hard between his shoulder blades, the Kevlar back of his armored, load-bearing vest and the trauma plates inside sucking up much of the force. Something hot and painful seared across his right shoulder, flesh parting under the impact.

Bolan hit the sand and buried his face in it as the gush of superheated air created a vacuum. The walls of the corrugated aluminum and plywood laboratory crumpled inward, the implosion crushing the building like a beer can. Twisted, and spewing smoke in the sand behind Bolan, the Jamaicans’ drug laboratory was history. He knew that he had left wounded enemy gunmen inside, and by now, those people were dead. There was a pang of regret. While he was known as the Executioner, Mack Bolan wasn’t a cruel man. The wounded he’d left behind were knocked out of the fight, no longer a threat to him. They’d have received medical aid once the battle was over, just small fry who didn’t deserve to suffer after they’d been put out of the fight.

It had been Long Eddy who’d set off the conflagration, and the dreadlocked crime lord had little concern for the people under his command. Right now, the Jamaican was racing along the beach toward a long pier where a couple of cigarette boats had been moored. His legs looked skinny and now completely black in contrast to the pristine white shorts that flapped above his knees like a skirt.

Bolan surged to his feet and whipped off the mask covering his nose and mouth, the collar of his blacksuit grinding painfully against the tender skin on his neck. He realized that his right shoulder wasn’t responding, though his hand was still clamped around the pistol grip of his M-4 rifle. He tried to pull up the muzzle of the weapon, and he knew that his nervous system had shut down, trying to suppress the pain of his injured arm.

Tentatively, Bolan reached to his shoulder, feeling the hard edges of broken glass shards sticking out of his deltoid and right biceps. One particularly large spear was jammed into the muscle just below his neck and behind his collarbone. He let his head droop, then his eyes locked on Long Eddy as the cop murderer leaped into his boat.

“Jack!” Bolan called over his throat mike. “I need a pickup, fast!”

“I saw the lab go up just now,” Jack Grimaldi, one of Bolan’s oldest surviving friends and allies, answered. Instants later, the bulbous form of a Hughes 500 helicopter rose over the trees, its downward rotor wash buffeting the Executioner with heavy winds.

“Jesus, Sarge!”

Bolan threw the M-4 onto the floor of the passenger cabin, then dragged himself into the back seat. “Do you see Long Eddy’s boat?”

“You need medical attention first. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig,” Grimaldi countered.

“I’ve come this far to bring down Eddy, I’m not going to let a couple of flesh wounds stop me from finishing the job,” Bolan said. “Go.”

Grimaldi was torn between obeying his friend’s order and concern for his health. “Take care of yourself while we catch up, damn it. I don’t want you bleeding to death—this is a rental, after all.”

It was one of those rare moments when the Executioner would have smiled, suppressing a chuckle at Grimaldi’s smart-ass remark, but the pain of wrenching off his load-bearing vest had overridden that bit of levity. The blood-smeared ballistic nylon shell dropped to the floor in a clump, and Bolan could see multiple deep gouges and burns where shrapnel and flame had tried to reach him. He gently touched his shoulder again and felt for the biggest pieces of broken glass. There were four jagged shards, and he’d have to take care of them before peeling himself out of his blacksuit top.