Dirty War

  Annotation

  Five men break all the rules to fight the Vietnam War according to their own moral vision. To these five Cong-hunting, mud-eating dog soldiers, rank means nothing.

  Mack Bolan, Gunsmoke Harrington, Whispering Death Zitka, Deadeye Washington, and Bloodbrother Loudelk risk their lives and military careers on a bold seek-and-kill mission that leads them into the bowels of hell.

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Interlude

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Mack Bolan

  Dirty War

  He knew that the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility.

  Lord Macaulay on Lord Nugent's Memorials of Hampden

  Grim experience has taught me that there is no moderation in war.

  Mack Bolan

  To the 58,022 names etched in the black granite of Washington, D.C.'s Vietnam War Memorial.

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Stephen Mertz for his contributions to this work.

  Prologue

  Southern California

  Death stalked the night and its name was Mack Bolan.

  The big man in combat black crouched below the outcrop of rock.

  A sharp coastal breeze gave bite to the rainy mist that reduced naked-eye visibility to zero beneath a low cloud cover. The hiss of rain and the crashing surf against the base of nearby cliffs were the only sounds in the moonless night.

  The Executioner made a final touch-check of his weapons and gear before moving out.

  Big Thunder, the stainless-steel .44 AutoMag, rode in fast-draw leather, strapped low to his right hip.

  A silenced Beretta 93-R nestled snugly beneath his left arm, near a combat knife sheathed midchest for quick cross-draw.

  The head weapon for tonight's hard action was a short, compact, deadly Ingram-10 submachine gun, equipped with a MAC suppressor.

  The nightstalker's combat blacksuit had been designed to his specifications: skintight, nothing to get snagged or impede movement.

  He toted extra ammo in canvas pouches on military webbing.

  He rapidly final-checked the wire garrote, penetration gear and lightweight assortment of grenades and packets of plastique that encircled his waist.

  Ready.

  Now or never.

  Black-gloved fingers lowered the last piece of equipment over his cosmetically blackened face.

  As the night-vision goggles slid into place over his eyes, the surrounding murky gloom of wet night was transformed into shimmering, surreal "daylight" for the man in black. At the same time the night-vision devise blotted out the whites of his eyes, rendering Bolan an invisible, shadowy oneness with the pitchdark coastal terrain.

  In his hands the SMG traversed the rocky landscape before him, tracking the surrounding veil of night for any sign of danger.

  Satisfied, he moved out.

  His target was a walled estate perched on a promontory high above a small inlet several miles from Balboa along California's irregular coastline. The specter who was the Executioner advanced across the night-shrouded killzone, zigzagging from tree to tree toward the base of the ten-foot-high stone wall surrounding the country estate.

  Bolan had been doing this sort of thing for a long time.

  It seemed like forever sometimes, ever since his combat tours of duty in Vietnam ended, and along successive miles through Hell on earth.

  Then, as now, Bolan perceived his life as but one sustained heartbeat in a continuum wherein the survival and self-destructive instincts of his species wrangled for dominance. And Bolan had an idea that the world could be much more peaceful if and when that species' dark impulses could be subdued.

  Sometimes one heartbeat made all the difference.

  Bolan gained the base of the wall.

  The misting rain rolling in off the ocean increased in intensity, pinpricking the exposed flesh of his darkened face.

  He crouched at the bottom of the high stone barricade and he reached for the looped climbing rope with the multipronged metal hook at the end.

  With his left hand he unhitched the rope. His right fist gripped the Ingram, his trigger finger curled in place.

  Bolan knew that another man of his combat experience could become jaded by the hellgrounds, and then would come the carelessness born of familiarity, followed by death.

  But in this warrior's case, the familiarity served only to hone the survival instincts to a razor sharpness with the knowledge that every mission was different from any that had gone before.

  Death could materialize on the next heartbeat, especially on a hit like tonight. But Bolan was going beyond the impossible here, all senses alert to the overwhelming odds he would be walled in with once he penetrated the perimeter of this Mafia hardsite.

  He stepped away from the wall to give the rope a loose-armed toss.

  The hooked clamp arced leisurely to grab with a barely audible snick atop the wall ten feet above his head.

  He tugged the rope sharply a couple of times to test it, then began climbing as fast as he could, a soundless, spectral shadow walking up a nightshrouded wall, invisible... unless any prowling guards in the vicinity and inside carried night-vision devices, too.

  The Executioner made the top of the wall and stretched out flat. He quickly tugged up the rope after him, coiling it to reclasp onto his belt.

  He remained sprawled a few additional seconds, scanning the layout inside the walled perimeter.

  The grounds of this estate — this Mafia compound — appeared to slumber in the early-morning quiet. Through his NVD goggles, Bolan saw the main house, a sprawling, three-level millionaire-class dwelling, perched one thousand yards away across a shrubbery-covered incline.

  A one-story, ranch-style guest house marked the halfway point between the main residence and Bolan's position on the wall.

  The guest house, which Bolan knew to be packed with off-duty security personnel — in this case one dozen street goons drafted from the L.A. and San Diego Mafia families — also appeared dark, restful, peaceful.

  Bolan knew from hard intel, channeled to him from Hal Brognola, head Fed and long-time Bolan ally, that this snoozing, rain-washed setting belied the magnitude of what was taking place here.

  Bolan completed his final recon from atop the wall before penetrating deeper into the belly of this monster to deliver what one official had long ago dubbed The Bolan Effect: a raging hellfire of destruction from a one-man blitzer.

  There would also be one dozen wide-awake hoods within these estate walls, roving the main house and grounds with enough firepower to hold off an attacking regiment, if it came to that.

  It would not come to that, of course.

  Not tonight or any other night.

  Which is why a government-trained "combat specialist" in nightfighting black had marked this particular "country estate" for a Bolan blitz.

  This acreage might have looked innocent enough from the outside. But in fact it was no less than a walled fortress, operating beyond touch of the law, local or federal.

  The Executioner had long a
go understood that operations such as these were part of the wholesale rape of a nation from within, an attempt to debase a great society.

  And like a cancer, this evil was gnawing away at the fiber of America, encouraging and pandering to the worst of its weaknesses.

  The Mafia, cosa di tutti cosi, the "thing of all things" — an "invisible government," in the words of one worried law-enforcement official — neutralized cops and had officials in its pocket.

  This so-called invisible government was composed of criminals grown fat and powerful from exploitation of the weak, from blackmail, murder and torture. It spun a web of tainted power reaching into the White House of two recent administrations, a spreading stain of sin unchecked by an intimidated U.S. government.

  Law courts appeared hamstrung, or unwilling to jail or deport the scum who sold heroin to schoolchildren and enslaved women and, increasingly, young girls for prostitution.

  Untaxable billions were skimmed from every legitimate industry in the country via threats of acid splashed into the face, or the murder of a loved one. And these incidents occurred for more often than people cared to believe. "You don't think our trucks should haul your goods because we charge double the going rate? How'd ya like your daughter to be gangraped some night on the way home from school? How'd ya like your kneecaps shattered with a baseball bat? You wouldn't? Fine, here's the contract..."

  Nothing had changed since the bootlegging days of Al Capone and Dutch Schultz, Bolan knew from grim firsthand experience, from too many campaigns, such as this one tonight.

  There had been advances and setbacks; tough posturing, with some laws outdistanced, before they were passed, by the tightening organization of national and international Mafia families into one central power; one mobster kingdom controlling everything, infiltrating by coercion the pinnacles of legitimate power.

  The preceding dozen years of Bolan's life had been spent paying back an uncollectable blood debt Bolan owed these walking scumbags; vermin who would corrupt and destroy everything this trained warrior considered worth fighting for.

  The Executioner had declared a one-man war against the Mafia and others some years ago, channeling combat skills developed in Vietnam to take on enemies closer to home.

  Bolan's "crazy" war had made him perhaps, as one media scribe dubbed him, The Most Wanted Man in the World.

  This "vigilante" was not only on the hit list of the Mafia and every terrorist group extant, but also wanted by every law-enforcement, national-security and espionage organization around the globe.

  Apart from his unsanctioned activities in sensitive areas, this one man, during his twelve-year, lonewolf campaigns, had executed no less than two thousand cannibals without due process of law, except perhaps for the due process of those laws these "cannibals" themselves operated under.

  Bolan was not a violent man by nature, surprising as that might seem to the casual observer.

  "He is perhaps the most misunderstood man of our time," one sympathetic network news commentator had stated. "A real living, breathing hero and the last of his breed."

  Bolan had submerged his life into his mission, a peaceful man in a violent world; he had been pushed to the limit, the line beyond which no man of honor can be pushed and still keep his ideals intact.

  Bolan's reverence for life was the very reason for his war.

  Animal Man, the dark force of the world, had to be stopped.

  Bolan meant to do everything he could do to stop them, even if it meant sacrificing his life in the attempt.

  He had found no shortage of work on a troubled planet that seemed to be moving inexorably toward the precipice of world anarchy and terrorism. Day by day, hour by hour, Mack Bolan watched the doomsday clock ticking away while the savages grabbed and destroyed everything in sight, while decent people tried to understand why reason and sanity did not rule the day.

  He hoped they would understand before it was too late. There were indications that some were listening.

  Some things had changed, sure. Bolan had changed. But one constant remained: the savages ran loose through America and the world, avariciously devouring, growing fatter, using society's laws and civilized aversion to violence as a weapon.

  The Executioner had brought the Bolan Effect all the way to this secluded promontory on the Southern California coast to do something about that.

  Right now.

  He spotted a couple of two-man patrols at different points along the periphery of the rain-splashed estate. One of the pairs of Mafia soldiers was beneath and behind his position, close enough for him to hear the low mumble of their conversation as they came toward him.

  And thanks to the magnification capability of the NVD goggles, he could make out the other two barely discernible figures across the property, patrolling the base of the opposite wall.

  Inland on a clear day the undulating San Joaquin Hills would be shimmering in the desert heat, but now the darkness and the rain made the men across the way, and those approaching Bolan, march their beat with heads bent, the outlines of shotguns showing beneath their dark rain slickers.

  Bolan did not mind the rain at all. He welcomed it. He used it, taking advantage of its effect on the patrolling sentries. The rain bettered his odds, which needed all the help they could get.

  He might not have to kill going in after all, which meant he would not have to leave a trail of bodies that could be discovered and blow this operation before he had a chance to execute the main hit, the vital objective of this night's assault.

  Two sentries could be seen standing inside the bullet-proof window of a brick gate house just inside the double iron gates in the center of the eastern wall, across the compound from Bolan.

  That meant six guards unaccounted for, if his intel on enemy strength was on the money. They were either inside the main house or undetected by Bolan somewhere about the grounds surrounding the main building and the ranch-style barracks.

  The two sentries strolled by ten feet below Bolan's perch, neither man scanning the perimeter, their heads remaining bowed against the elements, their weapons aimed at the ground. Neither sentry gazed anywhere near the infiltrator lying prone atop the wall as they passed by beneath.

  "My left nut for a dry place to grab a smoke," one of the sentries grumbled as they strolled on in the direction of the brick gate house.

  "Chuck and Scar will let us grab some dry when we reach the guardhouse," the second sentry said as they continued on their rounds. "Unless Bobby Trick's got the same idea. This whole bunch is jumpy with Bolan fever."

  "Guess I can't blame 'em at that," offered sentry number one as they proceeded out of Bolan's earshot. "They don't call that bastard in black The Man from Blood for nothing."

  "Yeah, yeah. Just wish we'd lucked out and pulled house duty. Later for this wet crap."

  "Our turn comes again tomorrow night."

  The men's voices faded.

  "Wish this damn Bolan thing would blow over..."

  And they were gone.

  Bolan landed with catlike grace in the deepest shadows at the inside base of the wall, watching the two sentries distance themselves several dozen feet away toward the guardhouse by the iron gates.

  Bolan froze for another second, not making a noise, glancing around him with combat-iced eyes and ready weapon.

  No backup patrol followed the two sentries.

  The guards reached the gate house. They went inside out of the hissing, cold rain.

  The Executioner angled away from the wall and made his way toward the guest-house barracks used by the off-duty Mafia hoods assigned to guard this fortress by the sea.

  He had noted that the sentries did not wear nightvision devices, which did not mean a damn thing, really; they could have been toting NVDs in their rain slickers. Other roving sentries might be equipped to spot an intruder in the darkness.

  Bolan advanced from cover to cover with extreme caution. He moved quickly from shrubbery to tree on an undetected approach to the slumbering ranch
style barracks. The building marked the midway point between the wall and the main house where the unaware mission objective awaited.

  That would change during the next five minutes, if the numbers fell right and this hit unreeled as Bolan intended it to.

  In the opening days of the Executioner's war against the Mob, Bolan had staged an audacious attack on this same walled estate above the cliffs of Balboa.

  At that time, a Mafia savage named Julian "Deej" Di George, Mob capo of all of Southern California, had lived on this estate.

  Until the Bolan Effect ended all of that and Deej along with it.

  A dozen-plus years later another boss had risen to power and taken over the scattered pieces remaining of the Di George organization after Bolan's first strike, all those years, all that blood ago.

  Kenny Ensalvo was referred to as the Kid these days, but only behind his back. He had not lost the cruel, brazen flare of ambition and amorality that had made his rise in power, to fill the leadership vacuum left after Bolan's execution of Di George, meteoric without precedent.

  Kenny the Kid had simply bought off or killed anyone who stood in his way, except for pockets of resistance from some of the racial minority gangs who, in fact, were becoming the criminal majority in some parts of Southern California.

  The black and Hispanic street gangs continued to quarrel among themselves, but for the most part the streets belonged, or would belong, to the Ensalvo family.

  Especially after tonight, if things went the Kid's way.

  Kenny the Kid was holding a top-level meeting inside the main house of this walled fortress, if Brognola's intel to Bolan was correct.

  Hal Brognola was one of several highly placed contacts in the law-enforcement community who sympathized with Bolan's activities to the extent of actually offering assistance. This he did primarily by channeling intelligence to Bolan about the underworld, such as the report that had brought the warrior back to this deathground near Balboa.

  Ensalvo had summoned the leaders of the various underworld factions from the Los Angeles area to his mansion for this early-morning conference. This top-level sit-down of syndicate chieftains was convened to pave over any remaining pockets of dissent, hopefully to emerge with a smooth-running crime machine that would be unbreakable by the most well-intentioned, dedicated efforts either government or local law-enforcement agencies could ever hope to muster.