Prison Code Read online

  Nuclear Lockdown

  When a plot to unleash weapons of mass destruction on U.S. soil is discovered in a coded message, all clues lead to the country’s most notorious prison in upstate New York. With time running out, Mack Bolan goes in undercover as an inmate to find out who’s behind the attack and stop it from happening.

  Surrounded by corrupt guards and convicted killers who want him dead, Bolan can’t trust anybody—and one wrong move could be lethal. Weaponless and cut off from the outside world, he’s aware that the only tools he has to track down the nuclear devices hidden in the prison walls are psychological warfare and hand-to-hand combat. This high-security facility may have been designed to keep the deadliest criminals in check, but nothing can keep the Executioner down.

  The prisoner turned eyes like tombstones on Zavala

  The guard stopped short of taking a step backward and putting his hand on his pepper spray. Barnes sighed. His spiel would be just as ineffective.

  “Listen, you’re here for a reason, but while you are here, I’d like your stretch to be as easy as possible. If you’re in real trouble, I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  The prisoner turned to stare at Barnes. “Thank you, Officer. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Barnes hit the button and the bars clanged shut behind him and the guard. Hoots and catcalls erupted from the tiers of inmates. Horrific offers and suggestions rang out. Bets were laid. All eyes were on the new prisoner.

  This was a maximum-security facility, and it was overcrowded with murderers, rapists, hit men and assorted cons. For the first time in the jail’s history, an Executioner had walked in.

  #339 Deadly Contact

  #340 Splinter Cell

  #341 Rebel Force

  #342 Double Play

  #343 Border War

  #344 Primal Law

  #345 Orange Alert

  #346 Vigilante Run

  #347 Dragon’s Den

  #348 Carnage Code

  #349 Firestorm

  #350 Volatile Agent

  #351 Hell Night

  #352 Killing Trade

  #353 Black Death Reprise

  #354 Ambush Force

  #355 Outback Assault

  #356 Defense Breach

  #357 Extreme Justice

  #358 Blood Toll

  #359 Desperate Passage

  #360 Mission to Burma

  #361 Final Resort

  #362 Patriot Acts

  #363 Face of Terror

  #364 Hostile Odds

  #365 Collision Course

  #366 Pele’s Fire

  #367 Loose Cannon

  #368 Crisis Nation

  #369 Dangerous Tides

  #370 Dark Alliance

  #371 Fire Zone

  #372 Lethal Compound

  #373 Code of Honor

  #374 System Corruption

  #375 Salvador Strike

  #376 Frontier Fury

  #377 Desperate Cargo

  #378 Death Run

  #379 Deep Recon

  #380 Silent Threat

  #381 Killing Ground

  #382 Threat Factor

  #383 Raw Fury

  #384 Cartel Clash

  #385 Recovery Force

  #386 Crucial Intercept

  #387 Powder Burn

  #388 Final Coup

  #389 Deadly Command

  #390 Toxic Terrain

  #391 Enemy Agents

  #392 Shadow Hunt

  #393 Stand Down

  #394 Trial by Fire

  #395 Hazard Zone

  #396 Fatal Combat

  #397 Damage Radius

  #398 Battle Cry

  #399 Nuclear Storm

  #400 Blind Justice

  #401 Jungle Hunt

  #402 Rebel Trade

  #403 Line of Honor

  #404 Final Judgment

  #405 Lethal Diversion

  #406 Survival Mission

  #407 Throw Down

  #408 Border Offensive

  #409 Blood Vendetta

  #410 Hostile Force

  #411 Cold Fusion

  #412 Night’s Reckoning

  #413 Double Cross

  #414 Prison Code

  It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

  —David Brin

  How does a man become corrupt? How does a man lose his soul? I have my theory. Those who hold the lives of others in their hands have to toe the line of decency or face my wrath.

  —Mack Bolan

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to

  Charles Rogers for his contribution to this work.

  Contents

  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 1

  Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

  MACK BOLAN, AKA the Executioner, scanned the decrepit Holstein barn through his night-vision goggles. Nothing moved. Bolan had learned of the fallow farm’s existence within the past two hours, and he decided to make his move against this group. He’d had his eye on them for some time. He had gotten a satellite window just as he had begun making his approach through the orchards below twenty minutes earlier.

  The soldier didn’t care for what he was looking at.

  Dairy cattle barns in this part of the country were often built into a low hillside. Their forebays overshot the foundation, and that left the area beneath the overhang a pool of darkness. Holstein barns were big. This one could easily swallow up half a dozen vehicles if need be. Their lower levels were made of stone and the barns usually had basements. If a person was misbehaving in Lancaster County, an abandoned dairy barn on an overgrown farm that the forest was busily reclaiming could be a fortress of evil.

  Bolan had very actionable intelligence that someone was misbehaving in Lancaster County this night.

  It was a beautiful summer night, cloudless, with a full moon. Fireflies winked through the scrub trees encroaching the fields, lighting up their willingness for love. The soldier’s phone was currently fastened by Velcro to his wrist. He spoke into it now. “Bear, do we have anything on satellite?”

  Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman came back. “No, nothing, and right now I have my hands on a high gain thermal-imaging NSA bird. You’d think if something was really going on in there, there would be some light leakage.”

  “Unless it’s in the basement.”

  “Right, but then where are the lookouts up top?”

  It was a good point, and one that Bolan had already considered. He pushed the selector on his Colt submachine to full-auto. The weapon was a DEA special with a built-in sound suppressor. The Colt had further modifications by John “Cowboy” Kissinger at Stony Man Farm, including a 40 mm grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel, a Taser unit to port and a high intensity flashlight starboard. Bolan glanced over at the farmhouse. The roof had caved in. The windows were missing and the remaining walls list
ed at sharp angles. The farmhouse had gone to wreckage.

  The barn looked dilapidated, but in comparison it was clear that someone was maintaining it. “I’m going in.” Bolan stepped out into the overgrown, waist-high grass between him and the barn. He got three steps in before Kurtzman’s urgent message came across the link.

  “Striker! I have two heat signatures coming at you fast from your eleven o’clock! Straight out of the farmhouse!”

  Through his NVGs Bolan saw the grass rippling and leaving a pair of wakes as two somethings plowed toward him faster than a human could run. They were arrowing in from the house rather than the barn. Bolan faded back into the trees a bit to give himself a clear shot. The mastiffs exploded out of the grass, looking to be over the 150 pound mark. The huge dogs weren’t barking, which told Bolan they were bred to attack rather than guard. Their owners most likely triangulated on the victim’s screams.

  Bolan put his hand on the Taser’s trigger and squeezed twice. The weapon chuffed and dogs twisted in midlunge as the probes hit them. The soldier held the trigger down and gave them the juice. The mastiffs skidded out and fell, twisting and convulsing in the leaves beneath the trees. Bolan cut the current and yanked the barbs. He quickly cut lengths of paracord and hog-tied the two shuddering beasts.

  “Dogs are down,” Bolan reported. “I’m thinking someone’s home.”

  “The dogs came out of the house, but as of now I’m still detecting no movement.”

  Bolan pushed two fresh wire and probe cassettes into the stun gun’s double muzzle and armed them. “I’m thinking the dogs kennel or den in the house and are let off leash at night to blindside anyone approaching the barn, just like they did to me.”

  “So you would think someone would be watching from the barn and have reacted by now?”

  “If anyone is watching, all they saw was the dogs running off into the woods. I’m going to hold tight a minute.”

  “Copy that.”

  Bolan was rewarded within ten seconds. Kurtzman came back. “Two contacts, coming out of the barn.”

  “I have them.”

  Two men walked out of the shadows of the Holstein barn’s overhang. They found the wakes the dogs had made in the grass and then walked in the mastiffs’ footsteps toward Bolan’s position.

  “Shit,” one muttered.

  “Don’t hear no screaming,” the other replied.

  Bolan watched the sentries approach. The two Caucasian males were dressed in civvies and armed with surplus ComBloc SKS carbines that had been dressed up with folding stocks and optics. One was a skinhead and one had a mullet.

  “Well, hell, Dale,” Skinhead said. “If it was a man, they would have run him down by now.”

  “What if the Feds shot ’em?” Dale replied.

  “Feds don’t use silencers, Tucker. There would’ve been gunshots and screaming and a ruckus.”

  “Maybe it was a pig.”

  “They do like pig,” Dale admitted. “Almost as much as human.”

  “Naomi!” Tucker called. “Wynona!”

  Bolan suppressed a small smile beneath his NVGs.

  Dale spoke into his cell. “Kurt, the girls’re off chasing something.” Dale recoiled as he got an earful and clicked off. “Kurt ain’t happy.”

  “Kurt ain’t never happy,” Tucker stated.

  Bolan was fairly certain that if Kurt survived the next ten minutes he was going to be unhappy for ninety-nine to life. The Executioner rose and squeezed the stun gun’s trigger twice in rapid succession, then held it down. Tucker and Dale contracted like burning insects as the electricity ripped through their nervous systems and toppled them to the leaves. The stun gun pumped more juice than was legal for law enforcement, and the two men made little more noise than a few groans and some speaking in tongues as they short-circuited. The soldier cut the juice. He cut some paracord and hog-tied the men next to the dogs. He was running out of paracord and down to his last stun gun cassette. He took two strips of duct tape and gagged the two men.

  The Executioner gave his captives a few seconds to recover, and while he did he linked their cell phones to his and began transmitting their contents back to Kurtzman. Bolan reloaded his slightly less than lethal weapon. “Tucker and Dale, is it?”

  Tucker and Dale twitched as they strained against their bonds and glared over their gags. Bolan pushed the safety off the stun gun. “Guess I’ll just have to juice you and keep juicing you.” He leveled his Colt. “Tucker and Dale, is it?”

  Tucker’s mullet bobbed in acknowledgment.

  “You make any sound I don’t ask you to, and I’m going to Taser you in the face. The juice goes straight through the optic nerve into the brain. You don’t know the meaning of heartbreak until the day you’ve had that done to you. You read me?”

  Tucker nodded, then flinched as Bolan stripped the tape away. “How many inside?”

  “About twelve?”

  “About?”

  “Twelve.”

  “You’re sure?” Bolan probed.

  “Twelve!”

  The soldier stripped Tucker’s weapon and cleared it. He cut the man’s ankles free and hauled him to his feet. Bolan hung the empty SKS across Tucker’s chest.

  “Are you a Fed?” Tucker asked.

  “Nope, worse.”

  “Worse.”

  “Oh God, you’re black helicopters and shit!”

  “Worse,” Bolan said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s means I’m worse. I’m me.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” Tucker asked.

  “Don’t know. Maybe let you go if you cooperate.”

  Dale snarled behind his tape.

  Tucker looked at Bolan hopefully. “Really?”

  “Sure, shooting man and beast with a stun gun, taking down the Lancaster County Regulators?”

  Tucker flinched. The Lancaster County Regulators were a rural, northeastern white supremacist group who vaguely modeled themselves after the “regulators” from New Mexico’s Lincoln County Wars.

  Bolan shrugged. “Letting people go? I pretty much do whatever I want. Now what’s going on in that barn?”

  “They’re having a meeting,” Tucker whispered.

  Dale thrashed.

  “And?”

  Tucker gave Dale a leery look. “It’s something important.”

  “Forget him,” Bolan advised. “Go on.”

  “A guy drove out from Harrisburg. Someone high up, a suit.” Tucker nodded meaningfully. “He drives a Town Car.”

  Dale actually managed to rock himself up onto his knees. Bolan aimed his weapon at his face. “As God is my witness, both probes. One under each eye.”

  Dale sagged back to the ground. Bolan put his boot on the back of the man’s shaved skull and pushed it down into the crackling summer leaves.

  “Town Car’s a sweet ride,” Bolan admitted. “What are they talking about?”

  “I don’t know.” Tucker cast his eyes down. “I’m only second tier.”

  “An Outrider.” Bolan nodded. He’d done his homework on the Lancaster boys. “Not yet a Regulator.”

  “Yeah...”

  Bolan believed it. Tucker was barely sentry duty and managing the man-eating dogs material, and that was only because the Regulators were short on manpower in Pennsylvania. “So who’s minding store besides you, Dale and the dogs?”

  “We pulled sentry duty. Dale was in the National Guard.”

  “And you?”

  Tucker hung his head. “I washed out.”

  “I’m sure you have other talents.”

  “You think so?”

  Bolan was pretty sure Tucker was about as useful as bird droppings on a pump handle. “The Regulators saw something in y
ou.”

  Tucker beamed. “Thanks, do you really think—” He suddenly caught himself. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get me to the barn without getting shot.”

  Tucker looked down at his boots. “Okay... That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Tucker looked up hopefully. “You’ll really let me go?”

  “I give you my word.”

  Dale was literally crying beneath Bolan’s heel. The soldier sighed. “Sorry about this.” Tucker jumped as Bolan shot Dale between his shoulder blades and stunned him hard. He snatched the Pittsburgh Penguins cap from Tucker’s head and settled it on his own with mild distaste.

  “Let’s walk.” Bolan and Tucker headed through the tall grass toward the barn. “Anyone likely to be watching us?”

  “Maybe, but that was, like, our job and stuff.”

  “Who’s Kurt?”

  Tucker started as they passed an old stone well. “Kurt’s the district Regulator. He used to be a Marine.”

  Tucker was turning out to be a minefield of knowledge. “Which one’s he?”

  “Oh, Kurt’s easy to spot. He looks like Thor.”

  “Good to know.”

  In the gloom beneath the upper barn overhang Bolan made out a newly installed steel security door. The overhang flooded with light as the door flung open and a reasonable facsimile of the Norse god of thunder in a wife-beater and jeans thundered forth his wrath. “What the hell are you assholes doing out there? You know we got—” Kurt’s eyes flew wide as he made out Bolan. “Jesus!” The steel door slammed shut and clicked.

  Bolan leveled his weapon at Tucker. “Sorry about this.”

  “Oh, God...”

  “Run, when you can.” Bolan fired his last stun gun probe and juiced Tucker to the ground. The soldier broke open the breech of his grenade launcher and pressed the button on the base. Inside the launch tube the grenade clicked like a switchblade as the five-inch standoff probe extended. The U.S. military used door busting rifle grenades of Israeli design, but they were two feet long and had to be attached to the muzzle of a rifle. Bolan’s munition was a Cowboy Kissinger special. The grenade detonated when the probe touched its target. That meant it exploded against the obstacle rather than through it, killing everyone behind.