Don Pendleton: Killing Ground

Before Bolan could put out a distress call, a faint popping sounded from atop the peak behind him, followed by an ominous whoosh and the harsh glare of two igniting flares. The clouds turned a bright shade of ochre that illuminated the ridgeline, exposing Bolan and O’Brien.

“Go!” O’Brien feebly reached for the compress and pushed Bolan away. “Now!”

The flares touched down, landing close enough that their sparks made the Americans an even clearer target. Two more rounds rained down on Bolan and O’Brien. One glanced off the Executioner’s M-16 mere inches from his trigger finger. The other tore through O’Brien’s neck, just above his flak jacket. The recon officer went limp, blood spurting from a severed artery.

Given the trajectory, Bolan knew the shots were coming from the distant peak behind him, well beyond the range of his assault rifle. It also seemed a safe bet that there were at least two snipers.

Bolan had to make a quick decision. Staying at O’Brien’s side meant certain death, but venturing any farther along the ridgeline would only court the chance he’d trip another land mine. That left one option.

The Executioner took it.

The Executioner ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

They are dead; but they live in each Patriot’s breast, And their names are engraven on honor’s bright crest.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1807–1882

Every soldier who fights for freedom and justice deserves honor and peace in death. Anyone who threatens this right will have to answer to me.

—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

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Safed Koh Range, Afghanistan-Pakistan Border

Fifty miles southeast of the Afghanistan capital of Kabul, Mack Bolan steeled himself against the harsh, cold wind that swept up through the moonlit mountains, stirring a clot of low-hanging clouds that partially obscured the steep, jagged slopes stretching before him. He was nearly ten thousand feet above sea level, positioned along a battle-scarred ridgeline just below the highest peak in this stretch of the Hindu Kush, lying prone on a bed of pine needles. Under better conditions, he would have had a clear view of the trails below, along which, according to all available intel, Taliban forces would most likely attempt to slip into the country from covert bases in the tribal lands of neighboring Pakistan.

The intermittent cloud cover made this an ideal night for the terrorists to make their move. To tempt them farther into the open, an attractive bait had been set two miles to the north, atop a plateau several thousand feet below where Bolan held his vigil. There, U.S. and NATO forces had begun to erect a new base for their joint military operations. It was a familiar modus operandi for the Taliban to take advantage of such situations, staging predawn raids in hopes of capitalizing on uncompleted fortifications manned by security personnel not yet acclimated to their new surroundings.

In this case, however, the half-built site was merely a red herring. Once the Taliban crossed the border and closed in on its target, their advance would bring them into the crosshairs of a half-dozen Special Ops teams lying in wait at key points along every known access route. Bolan was one of those who would likely sound the first alarm. If he had his way, by the time the ambush was underway, he would have already made his way downhill to lend a hand in helping crush those from whose ranks America had been subjected to the moment of infamy now known, with grim simplicity, as 9/11. Granted, it would take more than one such victory to eradicate the black-turbanned sect once and for all, but after weeks of making little headway against the terrorists, both U.S. and NATO forces were anxious to boost their morale and at least match the recent success of their host confederates, the Afghan National Army.

The Executioner had come to Afghanistan intent on a solo mission against the Taliban, but once apprised of plans for the ambush—which Pentagon spin doctors had optimistically christened Operation Rat Trap—Bolan had quickly realized that prowling alone through the mountains would more likely draw friendly fire from the commando squads than bring him face-to-face with the enemy. He’d grudgingly allowed himself to be thrown into the established mix, and when he’d set out for his lofty surveillance post, it had been in the company of a recon specialist from the Army’s 25th Infantry Division deployed at Bagram Air Base.

The man at his side, as the stakeout dragged into its third hour, was Captain Howard “Howitzer” O’Brien, a beefy, gray-haired veteran halfway through his third tour of duty in Afghanistan. Prior to that, the Cleveland native had served in the Gulf War, and his cumulative experience had brought with it a hardened cynicism surpassed only by the officer’s apparently incessant need to vent his notions as to how the U.S. military brain trust had mismanaged both conflicts.

“Y’know, if we’d done things right from the get-go, we wouldn’t be stuck here doing this kinda shit,” O’Brien murmured as he, like Bolan, peered downhill through night-vision goggles that, for the moment, did little more than deflect grains of sand periodically whipped up by the late-October winds.

“Back in ’91 we had Hussein and his fucking Imperial Army dead to rights,” he went on. “All we had to do was march into Baghdad and finish the job. But what do we do instead? We call it quits and head home so those scumbags can regroup and pick up where they left off. Real smart, huh?”

It was an old argument, one Bolan had tired of the first few dozen times he’d heard it. When he didn’t respond, however, O’Brien took it as a cue to forge on.