Don Pendleton: Hostile Odds

The instinctual move saved Bolan’s life as the escapee burst from behind a desk and triggered two rounds that whizzed overhead close enough for him to hear their passage. He recognized the shooter instantly.

Bolan leveled his weapon and squeezed the trigger. The 9 mm slugs struck center mass, entering the body with an upward trajectory, and punched through lung and heart tissue before exiting out the upper back. The impact sent the man reeling into a filing cabinet with enough force to dent the thin, light gray metal drawers.

The sounds of battle died and Bolan rose slowly amid the smoke of gunfire and the smell of death. The air of violence and spent energies clung to the Executioner like a cloak. The battle had taken less than a minute but the threat had been quelled.

All that remained was to topple the head of the underworld. And it was a task Mack Bolan relished.

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Jon Guenther for his contribution to this work.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

—Napoleon Hill

1883–1970

My war grew out of opposing those who oppress the weak and exploit the innocent. In that respect, it is a war the enemy has declared on itself.

—Mack Bolan

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

Klamath Falls, Oregon

The two F-15E Eagle fighter jets streaked into the air with the thunderclap of sonic speed, their aluminum skins glinting silvery-blue with the twilight of dusk. Suddenly they lost altitude and crashed several hundred yards outside the perimeter fence of Kingsley Airfield.

The tower crew could only discern what looked like engine flameouts, and then the explosions of impact a heartbeat later, each red-orange fireball fed by twenty thousand liters of jet fuel. As one controller began to scream out the call signs of the two trainer fighters, the tower chief contacted the command duty officer at the USAF headquarters building. The CDO ordered an immediate lockdown of the base and surrounding area even as the tower dispatched emergency services to the crash site.

The tower crew would later testify they hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, even swore the flashes of light just prior to the accident could only have been reflections of the engine flameouts. What they didn’t know—couldn’t possibly have known at that time and what the government wouldn’t tell them—were that those flashes marked the points where surface-to-air rockets had struck the pair of trainer fighters.

Rockets fired from portable launchers in proximity to the airfield.

“Which meant is wasn’t an accident at all,” the chief investigator told the CDO and Colonel Harlan Winnetka, the wing commander, a week later.

“Any ideas who the hell might be responsible for these attacks?” Winnetka asked.

“I can’t be certain of anything right now, sir,” the investigator replied. “To be perfectly honest, there isn’t enough evidence to draw a definitive conclusion. The only thing we know for sure is that these craft were brought down by shoulder-fired weapons. The perpetrators were diligent to cover their tracks in the confusion, because we were too busy working this initially as an accident, maybe a midair collision. After all, these were trainers with students at the stick. We thought one of the students lost control and ran into the other, bringing down both birds in the process.”

“Except that those fighters were also attended by highly experienced pilots,” Winnetka said. “And with the evidence of antiaircraft weapons, we know different. Could this be the work of terrorists?”

Major Leonard Swope, the CDO on duty at the time of the incident, expressed incredulity. “You think these were…terrorists? If that gets out to the press, sir—”

“Well, then we just make damned sure it doesn’t get out, Major!” Winnetka’s face reddened. He jabbed a finger at the investigator and his eyes flashed. “And I don’t even have the details of this incident off to Washington yet, so you have to promise you’ll keep quiet about this until I can make a full report to the Chief of Staff. Is that understood, Captain?”

The investigator nodded. “Yes, sir, of course. But I must submit my written report within forty-eight hours.”

“I’m aware of the regulations, mister,” Winnetka said. “I have no desire to make this sound like a cover-up. I just don’t want a media circus. If either of you are approached by anyone about this, you simply advise them it’s still under investigation. In fact, better to just refer them to me.”

After he swore both officers to secrecy and warned of the consequences should they disobey his direct orders, Winnetka dismissed them. He spun in his leather office chair and looked absently out the window.

Winnetka had put out feelers and gotten just the response he expected—the shock of suggesting a terrorist group might be responsible for another attack on American soil had practically sent his two subordinates into a fit. What they didn’t know, either because they were too blind or too afraid to admit it, was that domestic terrorist activities across the Northwest had increased in recent months. Winnetka didn’t know exactly who or what, but he couldn’t ignore the signs. The Pentagon would call him paranoid, maybe even suggest he take some leave to reconsider his assertions without hard evidence, but at least he could prove this had been a wanton attack against the United States Air Force and not just a training accident. Either way, he needed help on this—a specialized kind of help.