Don Pendleton - Sabotage

Trofimov was somber. “But I will not lie to you. It will be difficult. We will have to make some hard decisions about our standing in the world. We will have to come to terms with the barbarism that lurks, even now, within our armed forces. This will not sit well with many of us, but I know we are up to the challenge. For TBT News, this is Yuri Trofimov.”

Schrader switched off the miniset in disgust. “Can you believe that?”

“What happened?” Bolan asked.

“They’re reporting that a bunch of our guys attacked a village in Afghanistan,” Schrader said, “totally unprovoked. Burned the place to the ground. Shot women and children, and the news report says TBT has a videotape with our guys doing it and laughing about it.”

Bolan’s jaw clenched. Things were getting ugly. And they were about to get uglier.

Mack Bolan ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

—Sun Tzu

The enemy doesn’t play by the rules. He will ruthlessly commit murder and a hundred other crimes. The enemy won’t stop, doesn’t feel pity and never feels shame. The enemy has to be engaged, and overwhelmed with superior force. That’s where I come in. That’s what I do.

—Mack Bolan

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

The graveside service was drawing to a close. Family members paid their respects in turns, filing past the casket as it sat poised on its winch straps. Even for a funeral, the mood was grim; the body language of the mourners was tense, brittle with anticipation. That much was obvious as Mack Bolan, the man known to some as the Executioner, watched through a pair of compact Zeiss binoculars. He knelt on a hill in an older part of the cemetery, surrounded by grave markers that were, in some cases, almost a century old. Partially hidden behind a gnarled weeping willow that stood, incongruously, among the oldest of the tombstones, Bolan monitored the narrow, paved access road leading through the cemetery and past the temporary awning sheltering the mourners below.

The soldier checked his watch. If intel from Brognola and Stony Man Farm panned out, it could happen any minute now.

He didn’t need to check the weapons he carried; they were as much part of him as his hands, after so many missions. The custom-tuned and suppressed Beretta 93-R pistol was holstered in its customary place under his left arm. The massive .44 Magnum Desert Eagle rode in a holster on his right hip. Across his chest, he wore an olive-drab canvas war bag on its shoulder strap, over the close-fitting combat blacksuit. His pants were tucked into well-worn combat boots. His battle gear, including a Boker Applegate combat dagger clipped in a Kydex sheath in the appendix position, was concealed under his black M-65 field jacket. On the ground near his right knee, a Pelican case waited, the customized Remington 700 rifle inside another work of art by Stony Man Farm’s armorer.

Mack Bolan knelt, watched and waited, a black-clad and silent wraith watching over the final resting place of so many Americans.

The Executioner reflected upon what had brought him to this place. The scrambled phone call from Brognola had left a taste like ashes in his mouth.

“Someone,” the man from Justice had said, calling from his office in Washington, “is killing our soldiers.”

“I’m listening.”

“We thought, at first, that it was random,” Brognola went on. “Murders occur, of course. It stands to reason that some of them would affect returning servicemen and-women. But Aaron takes a special interest in veterans, especially wounded vets, and he started flagging the news reports in a database in the Farm’s computers.”

“Understood.” Bolan nodded, unseen by the big Fed on the other end. “Aaron” was Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, head of the Farm’s cybernetics team and a wizard with computers of all types. If it existed in the ether, if it could be located within a network somewhere on the planet, Kurtzman could find it. The computer expert was confined to a wheelchair, the result of an ill-fated attack on the Farm some years before.

“What began to emerge,” Brognola said, “was a disturbing pattern. Aaron’s computers pulled up report after report of murders across the country—involving a returning veteran of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. Six men, three women. In two of these cases, the reports included similar crime-scene evidence, including cryptic notes about ‘peace’ and ‘love’ and ‘ending barbarous imperialism.’ When we dug further, we found that it wasn’t just those two. These notes were found at all nine crime scenes.”

“So you’ve found a serial killer, or killers, who target war vets.”

“No,” Brognola said. “That’s just it. It’s meant to look like that, but Aaron delved deeper.” He paused. When he continued, his voice was tight with anger. “Each of the funerals for the murdered men and women were…protested.”

“Protested?” Bolan asked. “What the hell for?”

“It’s becoming increasingly common,” Brognola said. “There have been a few different groups, mostly crackpots and malcontents, trying to turn funerals for our service people into media circuses. The reasoning behind it never makes much sense. And of course these bastards don’t care how much pain they cause the families, who are already suffering. But this is different.”

“Different how?” Bolan asked.

“Each of the funerals connected to this ‘serial killer’ was protested by the same group, an outfit called Peace At Any Cost. The PAAC organization appeared out of nowhere last year and started staging major publicity stunts during high-profile political events, public appearances by celebrities, even other news reports. Six months ago there was a big media feeding frenzy at the home of a mother in Florida believed to have killed her toddler. When the body was found buried behind the mother’s apartment building, the reporters were ten feet thick. Sign-wavers from PAAC showed up and turned it into a referendum on the war in Iraq, or tried to. It was a mess.”

“So PAAC specializes in veterans’ funerals for the publicity.”

“So it would seem,” Brognola said, “but peel away that layer and there’s more rot underneath. Aaron went after PAAC in a big way, once he made the connection. He found a ‘secure’ bulletin board where PAAC members keep in touch with one another and coordinate their protests. I’m sure they believe it’s secret, but nothing stays hidden on the Net for long once Aaron starts digging. He’s been keeping them under observation ever since, and cross-referencing posts to their board with what we know of the murders and protests so far.”

“And?”

“In most cases,” Brognola explained, “there’s at least a slight delay between when the murders hit the media and when PAAC found out about them and made plans to protest the funerals. But twice, they screwed up. In two of those cases, PAAC referenced the murders before they hit the news.”