Don Pendleton - Ambush Force

The tail of the Dauphin lifted straight up in the air. Alarms sounded and red lights flew across the consoles. Zanotto snarled in a rage. “We’re hit!”

Bolan gritted his teeth and held on. Zanotto kicked her pedals, and throttled into emergency war power. The helicopter bucked, tilted, lifted and yawed as it slewed across the sky. Bolan had been in this type of situation before. They were done. The flight was over. The Dauphin started to turn into its death spiral.

“We’re going down!” Zanotto punched the transmit button. “Mayday! Mayday! This is Flight Z-1. We are going down at coordinates—”

Bolan reached over and twisted the radio bandwidth. Nothing happened. It was as if the knob had been set and then snapped off on the Shield tactical frequency. “We’re cut off!” he shouted.

Smoke oozed through the air vents and the fire alarm was peeping and blinking plaintively.

Bolan watched Afghanistan hurtle toward them.

The Executioner ™

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Men who take up arms against one another in public do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.

—U.S. Army General Order No. 100, 1863

Men who betray their fellow soldiers will face judgment from their God. But, before that happens, they will face judgment from me.

—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.

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

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

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Alpha squad had been slaughtered. Mack Bolan flipped through the file. The reinforced squad of U.S. Army Rangers had gone into the Jalkot Canyon area of Afghanistan, and to a man they had come back in body bags. They hadn’t just been killed; they had been stripped and quite possibly tortured. The exact circumstances of their deaths were uncertain because their bodies had been decapitated, doused with kerosene and burned.

“This stinks to high hell, Bear.”

Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman nodded and sipped his coffee. “That’s what everyone at the Joint Chiefs of Staff is thinking, but no one is willing to say.”

Bolan ran his finger over a map of Afghanistan. “The Rangers were supposed to be intercepting a Taliban courier?”

“That was the mission profile. A simple grab and go. An informant gave the CIA the courier’s route and a timetable. The weird thing is that according to intel, both the sector that got hit at and the adjacent one have been pacified.”

Bolan peered at the map. “Looks like the courier’s route was right along the sector border.”

“Again, it’s weird. As a matter of fact, both sectors are supposed to be models of the post-Taliban reconstruction of Afghanistan. In Sector G, they’re growing saffron for the spice market, and in H Valley next door they’re growing flowers for the European perfume industry. According to reports, they’re paving roads, building schools and there’s not a woman in a beekeeper suit in sight. Before they were pacified, both sectors were nothing but poppy fields ruled by Taliban-friendly warlords like medieval fiefs.”

“Who’s running the show?”

“German coalition forces cleared both sectors.”

“Interesting.”

“I don’t need to tell you, Striker. The Bundeswehr doesn’t mess around. They give both the U.S. and the UK a run for our military-professionalism money. They’ve quadrupled their patrols and have poured in men and matériel.”

Bolan had worked with the German army. They were about as good as soldiers got.

Kurtzman pulled up a file on his computer. “Shield Security Services has some operators in the area providing private security for some of the local businessmen and foreign contractors.”

That was interesting, as well. Shield was the top shelf of international private security and hired only the best.

“It still stinks. How did they sneak past the German patrols? This was way too professional for the Taliban,” Bolan argued.

“Well, you’ve got to admit they’ve been getting slicker. They had decades of getting fat and sloppy, looting the country of its wealth, beating women with sticks and stoning men in soccer fields for minor religious infractions. The coalition may have come in and kicked their collective asses, but they aren’t gone. The Taliban are lean, hungry, angry and learning their lessons the hard way.”

That was all very true, but it still didn’t answer Bolan’s questions. “I’m not buying a random band of Taliban bumping into Rangers in the field and wiping them out. This was a planned ambush.”

“So…” Kurtzman took a meditative sip of coffee. “Are you willing to tell the President what no one else will?”

“Yeah.” Bolan nodded. “This was an inside job. The question is who.”

Briefing room, Tent City, Kabul

THE MEN FROM DELTA FORCE were seething. Nearly all Delta Force commandos were chosen from the United States Army Ranger Regiment. The Rangers were the Army’s elite. That made Delta Force the elite of the elite. Delta Force commandos remembered their days as Rangers and knew with great pride that the Ranger Regiment was where they had launched their careers as Special Forces soldiers.

Now an entire squad of Rangers had been killed, beheaded and burned. The assembled Delta team was going hunting for some payback.

“All right, ladies!” The black lieutenant looked like an NFL linebacker who had been shoved through a trash compactor. He barely cracked five-six but he weighed 180 if he weighed an ounce, and his Afro pushed the limits of U.S. military hairstyle acceptability. Lieutenant Richard Dirk was “Dick Dirk” to his friends and equals in rank and affectionately known as “the Diggler” behind his back. The vertically challenged Special Forces officer had amassed a sizable legend for neutralizing the designated enemies of Uncle Sam on three continents and was currently working on his fourth. His voice was out of all proportion to his size. “Listen up! We’re going hunting tonight, and your Uncle Sam in his merciful compassion had been kind enough to send us an observer to make sure we don’t screw up!”