Don Pendleton: System Corruption

A sudden burst of confidence boosted Janssen’s ego. “One call and you’re history, Colonel. My employer can get you busted down to buck private.”

“You still don’t get it,” the Executioner said. “I don’t give a damn. You can’t touch me. I’m not in the system. Civilian or military.” Bolan moved his hand so Janssen could see the Beretta. “And this is all the backup I need.”

“So who are you working for?”

Even as the words left Janssen’s mouth his skull blew apart, filling the air with a hazy mist. As Janssen fell the distant bang of the shot reached Bolan’s ears. He was already dropping to the ground, Janssen’s shuddering corpse following him down.

Looking back over his shoulder, Bolan checked out the hole in the armory wall. Big. The bullet had punched through with ease.

A powerful and deadly weapon in the hands of a skilled shooter.

And now Bolan was a target.

The Executioner ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The principal foundations of all states are good laws and good arms; and there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms.

—Niccolò Machiavelli

1469–1527

The Prince

I will use all of the weapons at my disposal against those who decide they are above the law. Justice will prevail.

—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.

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

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Epilogue

The background hum of electronics faded to silence as Frank Carella read through the columns of figures on the wide monitor screen. He reread sections, confirming in his mind what he had just seen, because as reality hit home he found it almost impossible to digest and accept what he was seeing. He leaned an elbow on the console desk and rested his head in his hand, aware that he was trembling—not with excitement, but from sheer disbelief. Studying the scrolling tables, the lines of test results and the conclusions reached, he spent the next ten minutes going over the data, until he finally admitted to himself that his initial reaction had been correct.

The Ordstrom Tactical Group, the company he worked for, had taken negative test results for high-impact armored steel plates used in combat vehicles being supplied to the United States military and had passed those false results into the production system. Carella saw, too, that the specifications had been signed off by one of the company’s heads of quality control, and had been countersigned by Jacob Ordstrom, the CEO. The man not only owned OTG but also ran it like his personal fiefdom.

Carella had stumbled over the specifications by pure accident. He had been inputting fresh data into the company’s massive mainframe computer, working on information drawn from other computers around the manufacturing complex. A momentary power spike had caused a blip, forcing the backup system to shunt Carella’s current work into a safety file. It was standard operating procedure, a decision made by the online computer itself. Carella waited until he received the go-ahead to resume work, keying in the commands that would restore his data. When the file was restored to his monitor he saw a huge amount of extra data that had attached to the end of his string. Carella isolated his own data and saved it to a separate file, then returned to check out the mystery information.

The first thing he noticed was that he had been presented with data from a deletion cache. Someone had dumped a massive file, expecting it to be erased completely, but had neglected to key in the final code that would ensure no trace would be retained. Carella found himself intrigued by the large amount of data. His curiosity made him look further and that was where he found something that pinned him in his seat, staring at the document header. The file names rang a bell at the back of his mind. He tapped in more commands and began to scroll through the data. A sudden chill of unease enveloped him. He cross-referenced the data, moving back and forth, checking and rechecking. The more he dug the colder the chill became.

He brought up the current specs for the armor plating—the one being used in production. He applied a split screen, laying both sets of specifications side by side, and scrolled through the text. It only took him a dozen pages to confirm that the test failure spec was identical to the one being used to make the plating. Headings and dates had been altered, so the failed equations and tables were online as a successful development.

Carella froze, staring at the twin images on the large monitor.

What the hell was going on?

It was deception on a huge scale. Someone had made a conscious decision to push through the below-standard specifications as the genuine article, and the inferior armor plating was being manufactured and fitted to combat vehicles.

Why would OTG let itself be compromised? Carella wondered.

He knew the company had been struggling to meet contract deadlines. They were in tough competition with rival companies within the armaments business. There had been serious complaints from stockholders who were dissatisfied with results and had put Jacob Ordstrom under pressure.

That knowledge pushed its way to the forefront of Carella’s thoughts. He found he was having difficulty believing Ordstrom would allow himself to risk his integrity by doing such things. Yet he realized he couldn’t conjure up any other logical explanation.

His next thoughts were tinged with anger. Anger at the thought of American soldiers being put at risk. Wasn’t it enough that they were already at risk every day in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be accepted.