Don Pendleton: Mission To Burma

Bolan and Lily ran from the smokehouse. The men in the guard tower were pointing and screaming, but no one on the ground was paying them any attention.

The Executioner spoke into his phone. “Fatso, hit the tower, then fire at the house.”

“I have bad guys coming my way!” Nyin responded, but the grenade launcher down in Ta village thumped. The two men in the tower noticed Bolan and Lily as they reached the palisade. One began screaming, while the other raised a rifle.

The grenade launcher thumped again as Lily wriggled through the hole. Bolan grabbed her hand and ran for the tree line. Behind them gray gas and white smoke were blanketing U Than’s fortress in a fog of war. It was a war that had just begun, and tomorrow it would become a hunt. U Than was going to want payback.

It was over five hundred miles to the border of Thailand.

Mission to Burma

The Executioner ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Charles Rogers for his contribution to this work.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

—Thomas Jefferson,

1743–1826

No matter how dangerous or deadly my foe, I will not waver in my pursuit.

—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.

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

Flight 402, Burmese airspace

Lily Na knew she was in trouble. All intelligence agencies kept a few beautiful women on the payroll, and Lily was the most beautiful spy Taiwanese intelligence had embedded in the People’s Republic of China. But jade-green eyes, breast augmentation and the 108 acknowledged Taoist methods of seduction would not save her from the heat-seeking missiles of the PRC jet fighters flanking her flight.

Her bodyguard returned from the consulting the pilot. Jun-Sui was nicknamed “Ox Boy” for the breadth of his shoulders and his massive strength. He was a master of white-ape kung fu and a deadly shot with the silenced machine pistol in his shoulder holster. He bowed to Lily with profound respect. “The pilot believes the jet fighters are about to fire upon us. He and I both agree you should bail out now while the opportunity still presents itself.”

The short flight from Kunming Airport in China to Calcutta should have been a breeze. Then the laptop containing the PRC ballistic missile reentry vehicle guidance technology would be turned over to the CIA station office, after which Lily had planned a well-deserved yoga retreat in Costa Rica. The arrival of a pair of Chinese SU-30MKK fighters had ended her dreams of hot yoga, hot tubs and the pink sand beaches of the Nicoyan Peninsula. The former Union of Burma had nothing in its air force capable of dealing with the massive Chinese fighters invading Burmese airspace, nor would they risk their beleaguered economy by protesting to their biggest trading partner.

The People’s Republic wanted this flight, and they were going to have it. They wanted it turned around and landing across the border at Baoshon Airbase. They would settle for a smoking crater in the Kumon Highlands.

Lily inclined her head slightly at Ox Boy. “I will bail out.”

Ox Boy bowed again. Lily slipped her laptop into a padded pouch and followed him back to the galley. Terrified passengers followed their progress but stayed strapped into their seats as the pilot had directed. Ox Boy yanked open the hatch that dropped into the luggage compartment below. They climbed down, and he pulled a parachute rig out of a locker and helped Lily shrug into it. “Wait until the last possible moment to open your parachute.”

Lily slapped the buckles of her rig and tightened the straps. “When would that be?”

Ox Boy clicked open his cell phone and had a short, cryptic conversation with the pilot and then clicked it shut. “Count to twenty.”

“Very well.”

Ox Boy shoved night-vision goggles down over her eyes as Lily checked the loads in her Browning Hi-Power pistol.

“Turn on your transponder.”

Lily pulled her crucifix out from under the high collar of her dress. She gave it a hard squeeze at the apex of its arms and then tucked it back in. Once the tiny transmitter was activated, certain surveillance satellites of the United States, the United Kingdom and Taiwan would be combing Southeast Asia for its tiny but distinctive signature. The lurid red lights turned off, and the baggage compartment whirled into a hurricane as the loading door opened.

The pilot’s voice spoke over the intercom in Mandarin. “Agent Na, we have been given our last warning. We are about to be fired upon.”

“Very well, I will—”

Ox Boy slammed both hands against Lily’s back and shoved her out the door.

She gasped in shock, but training took over. She arched her body hard and thrust out bent arms and legs as the jet wash flung her about like laundry. Flight 402 shot away westward with a roar as she stabilized her free fall. She jerked involuntarily as the two SU-30MMK fighters screamed past, but a tumbling human body was virtually no target to a fighter’s air combat radar. Lily plunged through space as the jets flew on toward India at six hundred miles per hour.

The clouds flashed as if they were lit up by lightning as both fighters cut loose with their 30 mm cannons. The cloud cover in the west went from orange to white and then to red as Flight 402 broke apart and exploded beneath the automatic cannon onslaught. Lily winced against the sonic booms as the fighter jets turned and went supersonic to return to base. She had lost her drop count, but the Kumon Mountains were rushing up beneath her with disturbing speed. Lily brought her feet together, kicked off her high heels and faced facts.

Regal, voluptuous and green-eyed as she was, her problem was that from the get-go she had been designed to be insertable, deniable and expendable. Any extraction assets in the civil-war-ridden mountain and river valleys of Burma would have to be the same. The upper tier of the jungle canopy of the Kumon Mountains rushed toward Lily’s silk-stockinged feet and she wondered what, if any, kind of man might be sent to save her.