Don Pendleton - Slayground

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 com-mand 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

Copyright

Chapter 1

“Do as I say and no one will get hurt. Don’t, and maybe you will.” The words were followed by a vulpine grin that suggested the speaker would love someone to step out of line so he could show he meant what he said.

It didn’t look as if he was going to get the opportunity. Inside the Griffintown branch of the Florida First State Bank, everyone had hit the floor. It was a small space, between the half-frosted glass wall facing the street and the main counter. The lines to the tellers were cramped by tables for deposit slips. There had been two tellers on duty, five customers, and an aging security guard who had been slow on the uptake and due to retire in three weeks. If the pool of blood soaking the carpet around his head was anything to go by, he wasn’t likely to make retirement.

Thursday afternoon, and the two mothers with babies, the hardware store clerk depositing takings, and the two men waiting to withdraw cash and cursing the defective ATM had been shocked for a frozen moment by the four people who had slipped in and bolted the double doors. A man and a woman stood at the front windows, the woman nervously peering out, then rapidly glancing back to the interior, the man coolly training his Glock machine pistol on the floor. The woman carried a mini-Uzi. Anyone who looked carefully enough would see it gently shaking.

The vulpine man, whose bearing and speech marked him as the alpha male, had strode into the middle of the room, whipping an HK MP5 from beneath his duster and waving it in an arc, the implicit threat enough to make the customers and tellers snap out of their fear freeze and hit the deck. The woman who had joined him was stone-faced, her eyes unreadable, but leaving little doubt as to her intent.

The vulpine man looked up to one of the closed-circuit television cameras that surveyed the bank interior from all angles.

“An audience. Good. I want you to listen. We do not want to harm these people, but if they get in our way, they are expendable. Make no doubt of that. Today’s little raid is to help finance our crusade against the state that seeks to oppress us and to force us ever closer to extinction. We have inside knowledge of the way in which our government—which has the audacity to claim that it serves on our behalf—is working, and we will bring it to its knees. As you can see, we have Elena Anders, who is a devotee of the Seven Stars, and who is committed to our cause. Through her, we have discovered more of the secrets of power. When the time is right, and we can launch our revolution of the heart and mind, her knowledge will be shared with more than just our existing brethren. Then the fire of justice can spread throughout the land, and we will be as free as our constitution promises we are.”

The woman murmured something too low for the mics on the CCTV to pick up clearly. The alpha man shot her a venomous glance, but nodded briefly in deference to her and turned to the tellers.

“You—out here, now. Don’t give me no time-lock shit, either. The locks you have on the vaults here have manual overrides. I want you and everyone in the back room out here now. Call the sheriff and it’s the babies who’ll get it first. You want that on your piggy little consciences?”

To emphasize his point, he fired a short burst into the floor between the two mothers, who screamed hysterically as they clutched their children to them.

It had the desired effect: within a couple minutes, bank bags with cash, securities and items from safe deposit had been piled on the counter, ready to be carried out. The vulpine man’s psychology had been sound; this was a small town where everyone was either distantly related or friends of friends. There were no strangers here, and no one wanted anyone to get hurt. They complied almost with eagerness.

He gestured to his stone-faced companion and to the nervous woman by the door. They moved forward and loaded the haul into large hemp sacks, which they then carried toward the doors as their compatriot undid the bolts. The vulpine man covered their retreat, pausing before he exited to stare directly at the camera above the door. His smile this time was arrogant and triumphant before he moved out of frame.

The footage continued for a few minutes after this. The people in the bank were too shocked to move or make a sound for a few eerie seconds. In the distance, the sirens of a late-arriving cruiser approached. The raiders’ research and preparation had been good—they’d picked a time when the sheriff’s staff roster was low, and they’d placed hoax calls that stretched the department’s resources, dragging officers far from the main street and buying valuable time.

Then, just before the CCTV footage finally elapsed, the silence was broken by a wail of fear and relief from one of the mothers. After that, pandemonium broke out, as the hardware clerk and one of the men rushed to offer what first aid they could to the stricken security guard, while the bank staff and the other male customer tried to comfort the mothers and children.

The picture cut out abruptly just as the sheriff’s team entered the bank.

Hal Brognola hit the remote, and the wide-screen monitor on which they had been viewing the footage blinked and shut off.

“What about the guard?” Mack Bolan asked, although he was certain he already knew what the big Fed would say.

“Three days in intensive care. Didn’t regain consciousness,” he said shortly, shaking his head. “Albert Myres, sixty-year-old vet. Fifteen years on the Jacksonville sheriff’s department, twenty-five in the service.”

“Some part-time job for retirement,” the soldier said. His tone was brooding, both at the waste of the old man’s life, and the stupidity of the suits who had thought nothing of putting him in that position.

Brognola shrugged. “People walk around with their eyes shut all the time, Striker. Not much we can do about that. And to be fair, this is a real sleepy town where nothing much happens aside from the annual gator hunt. It’s a family and retirement town, with just the newspaper industry to keep it afloat.”

Bolan frowned. “Newspapers? In rural Florida?”

“I use the term loosely.” Brognola shrugged. “It’s the editorial and printing headquarters for the Midnight Examiner . Hardly cutting edge news, but—”

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