Assassin's Code Read online

  “Control, do you still have a fix on our position?”

  The earpiece responded with an empty hiss. Bolan pulled the device from his ear. There was still the hope that even though he couldn’t communicate Keller could still track him.

  Ous stood and steadied himself against a rock. “The gunfire from the top of the gorge has stopped.”

  “They’ll be organizing a hunting party.”

  “Do you think Saboor could convince our comrades to hunt me, much less the Mighty One?” Ous asked.

  “No.” Bolan thought about Zurisaday’s mysterious bodyguards. “They’ll be bringing in ringers.”

  Other titles available in this series:

  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

  Silent Running

  Stolen Arrows

  Zero Option

  Predator Paradise

  Circle of Deception

  Devil’s Bargain

  False Front

  Lethal Tribute

  Season of Slaughter

  Point of Betrayal

  Ballistic Force

  Renegade

  Survival Reflex

  Path to War

  Blood Dynasty

  Ultimate Stakes

  State of Evil

  Force Lines

  Contagion Option

  Hellfire Code

  War Drums

  Ripple Effect

  Devil’s Playground

  The Killing Rule

  Patriot Play

  Appointment in Baghdad

  Havana Five

  The Judas Project

  Plains of Fire

  Colony of Evil

  Hard Passage

  Interception

  Cold War Reprise

  Mission: Apocalypse

  Altered State

  Killing Game

  Diplomacy Directive

  Betrayed

  Sabotage

  Conflict Zone

  Blood Play

  Desert Fallout

  Extraordinary Rendition

  Devil’s Mark

  Savage Rule

  Infiltration

  Resurgence

  Kill Shot

  Stealth Sweep

  Grave Mercy

  Treason Play

  Don Pendleton’s

  Mack Bolan®

  Assassin’s Code

  I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.

  —Joseph Rotblat

  1908–2005

  A terrifying reality is how far bad people will go to bring about Armageddon. But a few good people stand ready to defend.

  —Mack Bolan

  CONTENTS

  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 ONE

  Helmand Province, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

  “Good Luck, sir!” the driver called. Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, nodded as he pulled his shemagh up over the bridge of his nose and his goggles down over his eyes. He shouldered his gear bag and stepped out of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle—MRAP—and into the maelstrom. Except for the watering of the Helmand River, the province was arid and when the wind blew, the dust rose. The dust storm was in its second day, and it turned the world at noon into a howling, hissing peach-colored nightmare of wind and grit.

  Bolan turned his head as a wave of dust slapped him in the face. The wind plucked at his clothing as the dust sought every fold and crevice. He slammed the door shut behind him and knocked twice on the fender for thanks and luck. The MRAP 4X4 rumbled off toward the temporary airmobile depot.

  The soldier leaned into the wind and walked across the village’s single street to a blast-blackened native house. The wind and dust were making an earnest attempt at scrubbing the face of the house clean. What it couldn’t scour away were the pockmarks in the clay from dozens of bullet strikes and the bigger craters and divots from heavy machine guns and grenade blasts.

  A pair of goggled, helmeted and scarf-faced Marines stood hunched at guard outside the door. A designated marksman on the roof was a sand-colored ghost in the gloom. The two Marines below nodded and opened what was left of the shattered, blue-painted wooden door. The wind dropped from a howl to a moan as Bolan stepped out of the storm and into a butcher’s yard.

  United States Assistant Attaché Henry “Hank” Millard had died hard. He had risen to the rank of commander in the United States Navy and was a Defense Language Institute Hall of Famer who spoke excellent Dari Persian and Arabic. He had been sent to the blast furnace of Helmand province to deal directly with the tribal chieftains and to woo them away from the Taliban.

  Only a few threads of flesh and gristle kept his head attached to his body.

  Bolan pushed up his goggles, pulled down his shemagh and set down his bag with a muffled clank. A fully armed and armored member of the Marine Military Police openly scowled at him. A man and woman in plain battle fatigues looked at Bolan suspiciously. The SIG pistols strapped to their thighs told Bolan they were most likely Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents. Of interest was an Afghan man of indeterminate middle age standing slightly off by himself. He wore a mixture of Afghan and Western dress. The pakol on his head said he was probably from the northwest. He smoked a ten-inch church-warden-style briar pipe, and every time he puffed the NCIS agents glared at him, however they seemed unwilling or unable to demand that he cease smoking at a crime scene. The man carried an M-4 rifle crooked in his elbow.

  He looked disturbingly like Clint Eastwood if the actor had a broken nose, grew a salt-and-pepper beard with matching long curling hair and had skin the color and complexion of cracked saddle leather. The man gazed at Bolan in open speculation with the inscrutable yellow eyes of a wolf.

  Bolan turned his attention back to the decapitated attaché. Millard had been sent in with emergency haste to keep the very delicate and contentious negotiations going after the last envoy had been killed. A lot of peacemakers were being killed. Helmand Province was critical to the war effort. The President himself had asked for Stony Man Farm’s involvement, specifically Bolan’s. It wasn’t his usual activity, and babysitting was the soldier’s least favorite job, but he knew what the stakes were in Afghanistan and he had accepted the mission. He’d been twenty-four hours too l
ate in arriving, and it had taken orders from the Man to keep Millard’s murder quiet for the ensuing twenty-four hours Bolan requested. He had twenty-four hours and counting to make something happen before the whole thing blew wide open.

  The Marine MP continued to eyeball Bolan. “And just who the hell are you?”

  It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but the Marine just wasn’t going to get a reasonable or what would qualify as a sane answer in his USMC world-view. Bolan gave the man a friendly smile anyway. “I’m your liaison, Captain Yoshida.”

  Yoshida wasn’t impressed. “And just which branch of government are you—” the captain sought for a word “—liaising for me for, again, exactly, Mr…?.?” He trailed off as he scanned Bolan’s plain uniform in vain for ID, rank or insignia.

  “Which branch of government do you require aid or assistance from, Captain?” Bolan countered.

  The captain contemplated this strange offer. The Afghan suddenly smiled in a friendly fashion and stuck out his hand. “My name is Omar Ous.”

  Bolan shook his hand. “Pleasure. Call me Cooper.”

  The NCIS agents stepped forward. The woman arranged a professional look on her face. It was a nice face, with high cheekbones, a strong chin, big brown eyes and a short ponytail pulled through the back of her fatigue cap. “Kathryn Keller, and this is Agent Neil Farkas.”

  Farkas was a gangling Ichabod Crane–looking individual with a slight stoop, a permanent number-four bad hair day haircut graying at the temples and an Adam’s apple that would cut glass. Bolan pressed the flesh all around and then gave the assassination scene a second go-over. The soldier wasn’t a detective, but his War Everlasting had taken him to firefights on every continent on Earth, and he could read a battle scene like an experienced hunter reading trail sign.

  “It was an inside job,” he stated.

  “You think?” Keller inquired.

  “Millard was done execution style. His pistol is still strapped to his thigh,” Bolan continued. He looked at the four other bodies in the room. They’d all had their heads hammered apart at point-blank range with automatic weapons. “The bad guys literally just walked in and did this with complete surprise. How many servants did the attaché have?”

  Captain Yoshida crossed his arms over the M-4 carbine slung across his chest. “Eight. We have two in custody. The other six disappeared. I have people—”

  “The rest of the servants are dead. Don’t bother.”

  For a moment there was no sound but the howl of the wind and the hiss of the dust outside. The motley crew of unlikely allies stood in the charnel house of death, each considering his or her own analysis. Farkas spoke first. “The man was a United States attaché, and he’s three spaghetti strings of gristle short of decapitation.”

  Bolan nodded.

  “So I got a question for you,” Farkas said.

  “Shoot.”

  Farkas gave Bolan a very questioning look. “How come this isn’t all over FOX news?”

  “Because I asked the President to give me twenty-four hours,” Bolan replied.

  That was good for several more moments of silence in the storm. Farkas shook his head. “You aren’t talking about the president of Afghanistan.”

  “Well, I’m told he agreed to it,” Bolan said.

  Farkas’s face went blank as machines far beyond his pay grade spun their cogs and wheels around him. “Jesus.”

  Keller stared. “Buddy, you’re like straight out of a movie.”

  Yoshida examined Bolan as if he were a spider the size of Shetland pony that had suddenly dropped into their midst. “More like a comic book.”

  “I like him,” Ous opined.

  Bolan inclined his head at Ous and got down to business. “Two attachés in two months. Someone’s trying to kill the peace process in Helmand Province. They want a stink. They want an uproar.”

  Keller’s eyes widened as she started to understand what Bolan was getting at. “And we’re into day two with nothing on the news.”

  Yoshida gave Bolan an infinitesimal nod. “And criminals can’t help but come back to the scene of the crime.”

  “They’re going to want to know what went wrong,” Bolan said, nodding. “And what’s happening.”

  Keller popped the retention strap on her holster. “You think they’re going to come snooping back?”

  “They’re here now,” Bolan stated.

  Ous tapped his pipe empty against the bottom of his boot and put the pipe in his tactical vest. He pushed off the safety of his M-4 with a click. “He is right. Now is the time of ambush. They come.”

  Bolan knelt beside his gear bag. “Get your men inside, Captain.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake…” Yoshida clicked his com unit and spoke to the guards outside. “Yo! Buzz! Munoz! You got anything suspicious, any movement at all out there?”

  Outside the dust hissed against the side of the house like the amplified sound of writhing serpents.

  “Buzz? Munoz?” Yoshida’s voice rose. “Come back!” No one came back across the tactical radio. The captain unslung his rifle and spoke to the man on the roof. “Plowman, come back!”

  Nothing came back but the wind.

  “God…damn it…” Yoshida unslung his carbine.

  Bolan unzipped his rifle bag and took out his Beowulf entry weapon. It looked like Yoshida’s M-4 carbine on steroids. The village was just outside the city of Sangin, one of only three major cities in Helmand Province and one that had seen the most brutal urban warfare of almost the entire war in Afghanistan. Bolan’s Beowulf weapon was .500 caliber and was the equivalent of fully automatic buffalo rifle. His also had the unusual modification of a grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel. He had come ready for a battle in the streets.

  It seemed the battle was about to be joined.

  Farkas scooped up a Joint Service Combat Shotgun leaned in the corner and Keller took a stubby black MP-5 K off the couch and pushed the selector to full-auto. Yoshida changed frequencies. “Camp Two, this is Envoy One, requesting immediate reinforcement. Come back.”

  Nothing came back but the same hiss.

  Bolan slung a bandolier of grenades and spare mags over his shoulder. “You’re being jammed across all frequencies.”

  Yoshida was appalled. “When was the last time the Taliban could jam U.S. military com links?”

  Bolan loaded a fragmentation round into his grenade launcher. “Puzzler, isn’t it?”

  Yoshida’s face set in a ferocious scowl. “I’m going outside. I have to find my men. Anyone coming with me?”

  “Whoever took them in this storm did it point-blank,” Bolan cautioned. “They’re right outside.”

  “Plowman’s on the roof. You can’t see from rooftop to rooftop, he’s—”

  “They’re on the roof, too.”

  “Shit,” Keller observed.

  “Crap,” Farkas agreed.

  Ous smiled the smile of a warrior who had given himself over to violence and intended to enjoy it. “Shit-crap!”

  Bolan took three steps and kicked the front door open.

  Shit-crap was right.

  The MRAP was roaring straight toward the door. The gears ground as someone unused to driving an MRAP built a full head of steam. Luckily whoever was in charge seemed to have no idea how to use the remote-weapon station and bring the .50-caliber weapon to bear. Bolan vainly wished he’d loaded an antiarmor round, but he sent the frag grenade flying into the armor-glass windshield and lunged back. “Get back! Get back!”

  The MRAP hit the house in a forty-mile-per-hour, fourteen-ton car wreck. The door, the jamb and a significant chunk of the wall came down in an eruption of shattering clay. A chunk of wall hit Yoshida in his armored chest and knocked him into the next room. Keller screamed as a section of roof fell in, Plowman’s body falling on top of her. Two screaming, flailing terrorists followed as the ceiling dropped in a cascade. Bolan’s Beowulf thunder-clapped twice as he gave each killer a .500-caliber sledgehammer to the chest. />
  Ous’s M-4 made a distinctive clack as he pushed the usually deactivated selector switch to full-auto. The glass on an MRAP was rated to stop shell splinters, the blast effect of roadside improvised explosive devices and hits from .30-caliber rifle rounds. Ous’s weapon was .30 caliber, but the range was point-blank and he emptied his 20-round mag on full-auto. Armor glass geysered and cracked beneath the onslaught.

  Bolan batted cleanup as he sent his eight remaining rounds through the driver’s window and shattered it. Arterial spray followed the glass shrapnel. The engine died at the same time as the driver, and the vehicle stood stalled in wreckage. Armored doors clanged open and the cry of “Allahu Akbar!” howled above the storm as killers boiled out the back door and made for the breach on either side of the vehicle. Others came over the top.

  Bolan racked open his grenade launcher and slid another frag grenade into the smoking breech. Keller rose from the rubble and human wreckage. Her submachine gun bripped as she put bursts into the portside invaders. Farkas’s shotgun boomed aft in rapid semiautomatic. Bolan raised his weapon as gears ground in the MRAP as someone tried to get the vehicle moving while crouching beneath the level of the shattered windshield.

  “Fire in the hole!” The team crouched as a unit as Bolan fired his grenade through the MRAP’s window and turned the insides of the vehicle into a slaughter box of buzz-sawing shrapnel. Engine activity in the MRAP ceased and desisted.

  Bolan roared as he moved back and reloaded. “Move back! Farkas! Check the captain!”

  Farkas pulled a fade as Bolan, Keller and Ous knelt and shot. The killers came on crying out God’s name and with their AK-74s spraying as they stumbled over the rubble. Their faith made them fearless, but it didn’t make them accurate or bulletproof. They fell going forward, but they fell. Bolan slammed in a fresh mag and counted a dozen dead. “Cease fire!”