Don Pendleton - Blood Vendetta

Human Target

An American hacker becomes target number one after she accesses the account of a Russian mob boss, revealing his organization’s terror plot against the U.S. by taking out its satellite system. She knows two things: they’re coming for her and she’s out of her league.

Having the intel the hacker stumbled into could prevent millions of deaths, and Mack Bolan is determined to find her before the Russians do. There’s only one problem. No one knows what she looks like. And when one of her friends compromises her location in London, the Executioner knows he must make his final move and end this high-stakes game of hide and seek...one way or the other.

The corpse of the gun-wielding rider was flung from the motorcycle

Bolan thrust himself to the side, rolled when he hit the ground and came up on one knee, his ice-blue eyes sweeping the terrain for more threats. A short volley from his M4 took down two more gunmen.

As he stood, Bolan loaded an HE round into the grenade launcher. He set his sights on a single-story building. An undulating glow of flames was visible inside the structure through the windows. A pair of bay doors that made up half of the building’s facade were buckling from the onslaught of the flames.

The handful of guards, who had been trying to hose down the structure, abandoned their work when they saw Bolan and began grabbing for their weapons.

He noticed another man climbing frantically into the cab of a tanker truck and, judging by his urgency, Bolan guessed the truck wasn’t filled with corn syrup.

The Executioner leveled the launcher and fired.

Blood Vendetta

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

1929—1968

Sometimes to get justice, you need to go around the law.

Is this right or wrong? That’s not for me to say. I am

no judge—I am the Executioner.

—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 com-mand 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

Tim Tresslar for his contribution to this work.

Contents

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

Prologue

The soft, steady beeping roused her from a light sleep.

For a half second, she thought it was her alarm clock, waking her for work. The bank! Jesus, she needed to get up!

Her eyes snapped open. Reality sank in and, like an unseen hand, it jerked her upright in her bed. The lamp on her bedside table flickered on and off in time with the beeping.

By the time she threw aside her blankets, her heart was pounding in her chest, her mouth dry with fear.

Muttering a curse, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, hauled herself upright and padded across the floor to a laptop computer that stood on top of the white pine dresser. The computer, which was hooked into her alarm system, was in sleep mode. She punched a couple of buttons on the keyboard and the screen brightened. A window with a layout of each floor of the two-story home was displayed on the screen. A flashing red dot indicated a tripped sensor at the rear door.

Turning, she grabbed a pair of black denim jeans that were hung over the back of a chair and slipped them on, followed by a black turtleneck and sneakers.

It might be no big deal, she told herself as she laced up her shoes. The house was supposed to be empty. Maybe it was some teens looking for a place to drink or screw. Or a homeless man looking for a warm place to spend the night.

Or maybe someone had come for her. The thought caused blood to pound in her ears. Fear stuck in her throat as a dull but insistent ache.

No, she told herself, not this night. She set her jaw and shook her head to flush out the panicked thoughts. Returning to her bed, she kneeled next to it and felt around beneath it for the Smith & Wesson .38 revolver sheathed in a leather holster. Her memory raced back to the pawn shop where she’d purchased the weapon, to her conversation with the owner. He’d patiently explained that the .38 wasn’t the most powerful handgun in the world, but it was simple and reliable. She’d tapped her finger against a glass case that contained four 9 mm auto-loading pistols.

“Aren’t those better?” she’d asked. “More bullets?”

She’d at least known that much about guns at the time. The pawn shop owner, holding the S&W revolver, the empty cylinder flopped out to the side, flashed a nasty grin. He flicked his wrist and the cylinder snapped into place.

“Lady,” he had said, “you can’t put something down with five shots from this, save the sixth for yourself.”

He’d laughed.

She’d swallowed hard and with barely another word bought the revolver, three speed loaders and two boxes of hollowpoint ammunition.

Years later, she still hadn’t decided how much of what he’d said had been a joke aimed at further unnerving an already nervous lady and how much had been his true belief.

A night-light plugged into a wall outlet suddenly blinked.

The first alarm, which already had stopped beeping, was designed to wake her, alert her to an initial intrusion.

This one told her someone had set off motion detectors on the first floor. Belting the pistol around her waist, she reached under the bed again, feeling around until fingertips brushed against cold steel. She closed her hand around the shotgun barrel and pulled the weapon from beneath the bed.

The 20-gauge shotgun’s double barrel had been sawed down to eighteen inches. Like the revolver, she liked the shotgun’s simplicity. Easy to carry and load and unload. It didn’t require marksmanship to hit a target with this gun, even though she’d practiced with similar weapons over the years. At close quarters, even under stress, she believed she could fire the weapon and score a hit. Gunfights were not her specialty. Her skills lay elsewhere and likely were the catalyst for this late-night visit. Stuffing a handful of shells into her front right pants pocket, she came back to her feet and continued to move.

She’d drilled for this for years. Dozens of times in the real world, countless times in her head. She never knew who might come for her or how they might find her. But she always knew someone would come. She only hoped she was ready.