Don Pendleton: Pressure Point

But it wasn’t a member of the Lashkar Jihad or the United Islamic Front. It wasn’t even human. Instead, Bolan found himself staring at a roiling, slow-moving cloud the color of pea soup. His mind flashed on the briefing papers he’d read on the way to Samarinda: an entire work crew killed in seconds by mingling pesticide vapors.

Trapped, all Bolan could do was watch as the cloud spilled over the side of the precipice and drifted down toward him. It looked almost alive, like some deadly creature on its way to claim a hapless prey that had fallen into its web.

Already he could smell the noxious fumes and his eyes were starting to burn, as well.

This is it, he thought. At long last, his number had come up.

Evil Kingdom

Counterblow

Hardline

Firepower

Storm Burst

Intercept

Lethal Impact

Deadfall

Onslaught

Battle Force

Rampage

Takedown

Death’s Head

Hellground

Inferno

Ambush

Blood Strike

Killpoint

Vendetta

Stalk Line

Omega Game

Shock Tactic

Showdown

Precision Kill

Jungle Law

Dead Center

Tooth and Claw

Thermal Strike

Day of the Vulture

Flames of Wrath

High Aggression

Code of Bushido

Terror Spin

Judgment in Stone

Rage for Justice

Rebels and Hostiles

Ultimate Game

Blood Feud

Renegade Force

Retribution

Initiation

Cloud of Death

Termination Point

Hellfire Strike

Code of Conflict

Vengeance

Executive Action

Killsport

Conflagration

Storm Front

War Season

Evil Alliance

Scorched Earth

Deception

Destiny’s Hour

Power of the Lance

A Dying Evil

Deep Treachery

War Load

Sworn Enemies

Dark Truth

Breakaway

Blood and Sand

Caged

Sleepers

Strike and Retrieve

Age of War

Line of Control

Breached

Retaliation

Pressure Point

Don Pendleton

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

—Winston Churchill

Those who promote terror against their fellow citizens sink as low as men can get. I will risk everything and stop at nothing to put these terrorists out of business. Our survival depends on it.

—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

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

INDONESIA

“Okay, I think I’ve got the hang of it,” Mack Bolan said, speaking through the condensor microphone duct-taped to the inside of his gas mask.

“It gets easier once you’ve done it awhile,” Abdul Salim told him. As they both took off their masks, Salim, a decorated major who’d come up through the ranks of Indonesia’s Royal Marine Commandos, added, “The biggest thing to remember is not to hyperventilate.”

Bolan nodded. The truth was, although this particular mask was new to him, he’d worn similar protective gear on several occasions over the past few years. It was a sign of the times, a concession to the ever-increasing chance of biochemical attacks in the grim, unending war against global terrorism. Bolan missed the days when he could feel secure going into battle shielded only by the thin layer of Kevlar armor beneath his blacksuit. This day he’d even had to forgo the blacksuit in favor of a bulky, mud-colored HAZMAT suit. He’d been issued an armored vest, but it wasn’t made of Kevlar and, in comparison, felt as heavy as chain mail.

Major Salim was similarly attired. The two men were seated in the rear of a dust-covered white minibus making its way up a narrow, winding, two-lane mountain road seventeen miles north of Samarinda, capital city of Indonesia’s East Kalimantan Province on the island of Borneo. The bus was following its usual itinerary, a scenic route that led to a hilltop textile center long popular with the tourist crowd.

Those aboard the bus that day, however, were not tourists, and their ultimate destination was not the textile center, but rather a nearby storage facility managed—or mismanaged as many contended—by the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture. The other eleven men in the vehicle were members of KOPASSUS, an elite army commando unit that had seen extensive duty of late battling the rise of Islamic extremism throughout the country’s sprawling chain of islands. They, too, carried gas masks and were suited up in full HAZMAT gear. When Bolan first rendezvoused with the force at a private hangar at Samarinda’s small regional airport, the men had also been issued 10-shot, .45 ACP Heckler & Koch carbines, one of the few such weapons equipped with a trigger guard large enough to accommodate their thick protective gloves. Rounding out their gear, each soldier also carried a belt pack containing ammo clips, three flash-bang grenades and a first-aid kit loaded with ampules and various syringes for use in the event their suits were compromised during the impending raid.

This was the second time Bolan had joined forces with Abdul Salim. Several years ago they’d worked together putting down a rebel coup across the Java Sea in the province of Sumatra. That insurrection, which claimed the life of Salim’s uncle, renowned freedom fighter Ismail Salim, had been clandestinely backed by the Chinese military. Beijing was out of the picture now, but in their place an even greater threat to Indonesia’s fragile stability had emerged in the form of the notorious Lashkar Jihad. The so-called Soldiers of the Holy War had come into being as a retaliatory force against Christian militants in the Molucca Islands. Over the past two years they had grown in number and expanded their agenda proportionately, embarking on a violent campaign to seize control of the entire country, whose two hundred million Muslims constituted the world’s largest concentration of followers devoted to Islam.

The Lashkar had been formidable enough as a self-contained entity, but in recent months it had bolstered its might even further by joining ranks with the United Islamic Front, the global terrorist network cobbled together from the ranks of al-Qaeda and other kindred organizations decimated by the U.S. and its allies in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Whereas Abdul Salim had once thought his country was making headway in its efforts to eradicate terrorism within its borders, the UIF connection now tipped the scales in favor of the enemy.