Don Pendleton: Patriot Strike

TEXAS BLAST ’EM

After the murder of a Texas Ranger, Mack Bolan is called in to investigate. Working under the radar with the dead Ranger’s sister, he quickly learns rumors of missing fissile material falling into the wrong hands are true—and the terrorists plotting to use the dirty bomb are die-hard Americans determined to remove Texas from the Union, no matter what the cost.

Following a trail of cold bodies, Bolan finds himself always one step behind the oil tycoon funding the deadly plot and his New Texas Republic army. But as the countdown to D-day begins and millions of Texans are oblivious to the target on their backs, time is running out. The only option is to take the bait of the superpatriots and shut them down from the inside. You don’t mess with Texas. Unless you’re the Executioner.

“Out!” Bolan snapped

Sergeant Granger bailed out on the passenger’s side. Bolan crouched behind his open driver’s door and Granger found cover between two semitrailers.

Any second now…

The chase car roared into view, headlights lancing toward the parked RAV4. They had to see it, but the black car sitting there, stopped dead, would confuse them long enough for Bolan to begin the fight on his own terms. A slim advantage, but he would take what he could get.

Which, at the moment, was a clean shot through the Yukon’s tinted windshield. Bolan didn’t count on hitting anyone with that first round, but it forced the larger SUV to swerve away, tires screeching on the asphalt.

Breaking from his own partial concealment, Bolan sprinted in pursuit of the Yukon. He was the hunter now, whether the Yukon’s occupants knew it or not. The game had turned around on them, but there was no change in the stakes.

Still life or death.

Patriot Strike

Don Pendleton

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of

malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

—Aldous Huxley,

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

and Tomorrow (1956)

We fought one civil war for the Union already. I’m shutting down the second one.

—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 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 inhis Everlasting War.

Contents

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

Epilogue

Prologue

Lubbock, Texas

The Golden Sage Motel stood on Highway 82 west of town. Also known as the Marsha Sharp Freeway—named for the former coach of Texas Tech’s Lady Raiders basketball team—the highway is Lubbock’s primary east-west access road, providing greater access to the university and downtown Lubbock.

But no one would ever know it from the Golden Sage.

Built when the freeway was still just plain-old Highway 82, the motel squats beside six lanes of asphalt, blank-eyed windows watching traffic pass. A few cars stop, inevitably, but a glance at fading paint, cracked cinder blocks and spotty neon signage on the fake saguaro cactus out in front quickly reveals that business isn’t thriving.

Jerod Granger didn’t care.

He’d checked in looking for a place to hide, taking a room around in back where passing drivers couldn’t see his six-year-old Toyota Camry XV30 sitting by itself. He’d told the clerk he couldn’t sleep with too much highway noise outside his window and accommodating his desire was easy, since the Golden Sage had only two guests registered when Jerod had arrived.

Three bodies for two dozen rooms. So much for economic stimulus.

He had one night to kill before tomorrow’s meeting, couldn’t push it forward any further. He’d said the deal was urgent, but he’d balked at saying life or death. That part would have to be explained in person, face-to-face, tomorrow morning.

Lubbock’s FBI office, on Texas Avenue, watched over nineteen of the state’s 254 counties. Lubbock, in turn, was supervised from Dallas, one of the bureau’s fifty-six regional field offices scattered nationwide. Granger didn’t trust the Dallas office and in fact had been advised to seek out only one of Lubbock’s resident agents.

Hence the delay.

If he could trust just anyone, he could have strolled in off the street last week, sat down and told his story to the first G-man or G-woman available. That wouldn’t fly, however. Not with the explosive secret he was carrying, the stakes that he was playing for. He’d asked the only person that he really trusted for some advice and had received a single name.

Case closed.

Now all he had to do was make it through the next—what? Thirteen hours and change?—to have that talk, give up his evidence and breathe a huge sigh of relief over a job well done.

A job he’d never wanted, obviously, but it made no difference. Sometimes a circumstance reached out and grabbed a guy by the throat, and wouldn’t let him go.

So here he sat, on his bed in Room 19, watching a crazy show about a woman with six personalities, while he ate his KFC meal with a Ruger Super Redhawk .44 Magnum revolver beside him. It was the “small” model, with a 7.5-inch barrel versus the maximum 9.5-inch, still bigger and badder than Dirty Harry’s Smith & Wesson Model 29. It would kill anything that walked on two or four legs.

And Granger hoped it would keep him alive.

By this time tomorrow he would be in protective custody—assuming he lived that long and that any such thing still existed. Granger wasn’t even sure the FBI could protect him.

Still it was the best chance he had left. His only chance.

The wacky chick on TV was dressed like a man now, drinking a longneck Corona and scratching herself like a truck driver in a strip club. Hell, she was in a strip club, paying ten bucks for a lap dance. Granger scowled and switched it off with the remote, not minding nudity but put off by what he regarded as the program’s sheer absurdity. He reached out for his soda can, ready to wash down some of the colonel’s original recipe—and found it empty.