Don Pendleton - Powder Burn

“You think someone inside the CNP betrayed us.” Lieutenant Pureza didn’t phrase it as a question.

“If the bomb had been a random thing, I wouldn’t ask,” Bolan replied. “But when they follow up with shooters, it’s specific. No one tailed me from the airport, so there has to be a leak.”

“You’re right,” Pureza said. “What’s your solution, then?”

“A solo op,” Bolan replied. “Or a duet, if you’re still in.”

“You think I’d leave you at this stage?” Pureza asked. “I must still live with myself—the one person I can absolutely trust. But you understand I represent the law?” she asked.

“You walk. We’ll try to stay out of each other’s way.”

“And Macario wins.”

“No, he’s done, either way,” Bolan said.

Pureza took another moment, making up her mind, then nodded. “Right,” she said. “Where do we start?”

The Executioner ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Sergeant First Class Jared Christopher Monti

3rd Squadron, 71st Calvary

Gowardesh, Afghanistan

June 21, 2006

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

—Joseph Conrad 1847–1924 Lord Jim

I can’t kill fear, but I can touch the men responsible for terrorizing innocents and pay them back in kind, before they die. For now, maybe that’s good enough.

—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

Epilogue

Bogotá, Colombia

“How are we doing on time?” Drake Webb asked his companion.

“Fifteen minutes early, sir,” Otto Glass said.

Webb wore a watch, of course—and a Rolex, at that—but demanding mundane information from lesser mortals was one of the perqs that came with a counselor’s rank in the U.S. Senior Foreign Service. Otto Glass, as chief of station for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Colombia, understood the rules and followed them.

Their limousine rolled northward, passing the Plaza de Bolívar on Webb’s left, with the stately Catedral Primada on his right. Ahead, he saw the looming Palace of Justice, surrounded by uniformed guards armed with automatic weapons.

Webb hated talking drugs with the Colombians, but it consumed most of his time. Cocaine and coffee were Colombia’s main exports to the States—one of those having sparked a war that never seemed to end. For the ten thousandth time, Webb wished that he’d been posted somewhere nice and quiet, where the worst problem he had to deal with was a silly tourist’s missing passport.

“Do you think they’ll go for it?” he asked the DEA man seated next to him.

“Yes, sir. If foreign aid’s contingent on cooperation, they don’t have a lot of choice.”

“Except the old standby,” Webb answered. “They could tell us, ‘Yanqui, go home.’”

“That’s unlikely, sir.”

“Right,” Webb agreed, and thought, More’s the pity.

Being shown the door would make one headache go away, but it would cause a slew of other problems, starting with the ignominious demise of Webb’s career. He hadn’t waded through red tape and diplomatic crap for the better part of thirty years to simply flush it all away.

He wouldn’t be the Man Who Lost Colombia, by God.

And drugs were critical to U.S. foreign policy—had been for decades. Webb knew that, agreed with all the reasons that had been explained to him when he was rising through the ranks, watching the hypocrites in Washington get ripped at parties after blasting dealers and their customers in speeches redolent of hellfire and brimstone. He fully understood political reality.

It didn’t matter that the current President’s drug czar had told America the “war on drugs” was over, that the government would focus more on education, rehabilitation and the other touchy-feely bits, rather than on SWAT teams and no-knock warrants. On the front lines, in the trenches where it mattered, Webb knew that the war on drugs was only getting worse.

And he was in the midst of it.

Ground Zero, if you please.

“Okay, sir,” Glass was saying, as their limo pulled up to the curb, suddenly dwarfed by the Palace of Justice, surrounded by green uniforms. “Step lively till we’re well inside, and everything should be okay.”

Step lively, hell. Did Glass think either one of them could outrun bullets? Or the shrapnel from a car bomb, if it came to that?

Tight-lipped, Webb said, “I’ll do my best, Otto.”

“Yes, sir.”

A second later the door opened. Webb’s bodyguards spilled from the limo, mingled with the uniforms, then Glass was out and Webb was following. They ran a gauntlet of machine guns toward the granite steps.

Webb braced himself for impact, wondering if it was true that no one ever heard the shot that killed them. Almost hoping it was true, to spare himself the last indignity of panic in the face of death.

And then they were inside, doors closed behind them, slowing to a normal walk. The welcoming committee was approaching, smiling, hands outstretched in greeting.

More red tape, Webb thought. More bullshit.

Situation normal.

“ALL POINTS READY. MOVE on my command.”

Manolo Vergara heard no tremor in his own voice as he spoke into the Bluetooth wireless microphone. Despite the rush of raw adrenaline, his hands were steady on the broom he pushed across a highly polished marble floor.

Vergara heard his soldiers answer briskly, one by one, their voices small and disembodied in his earpiece. All were ready, stationed in their proper places, waiting for his signal to begin.

The baggy coveralls draping Vergara’s slender form were large enough to hide a multitude of sins. In this case, more specifically, the denim cloth concealed a micro-Uzi submachine gun dangling from a leather sling beneath his right arm, and belt around his waist, made heavy by grenades. Each of his five commandos, likewise, had arrived for work that morning dressed to kill.