Continental Contract Read online

  Continental Contract

  The Executioner, Book Five

  Don Pendleton

  To understand is hard. Once one understands, action is easy.

  —Sun Yat-Sen

  A life which does not go into action is a failure …

  —Arnold J. Toynbee (A Study of History)

  Okay, maybe they’re correct and I don’t know right from wrong, but this much I do know—it isn’t enough to simply believe in something. To be truly alive, you have to be ready to die for something. Harder still, there are times when you have to be willing to kill for something. I am both ready to die and willing to kill.

  —Mack Bolan, THE EXECUTIONER

  Prologue

  Mack Bolan’s war with the Mafia was only a few months old, and already the man had become a legend and a modern day folk hero. Law enforcement agencies at every level of government and throughout the land had taken to keeping a special file on the exploits of the man known as The Executioner, and various foreign capitals would soon be added to the alert network of international police organizations. Others, also, sought the lifeblood of Mack Bolan. It was common knowledge that a $100,000 death contract had been issued against Bolan by the ruling council of bosses of that vast “invisible second government” known as the Mafia, or La Cosa Nostra. This was an “open contract,” with bounty hunters of every walk and stripe invited and encouraged to participate in the hunt. It was also being rumored that various individual family bosses had added attractive bonuses to the final payoff in the event that the murder contract was closed in their territory; it has been estimated that in several areas of the country, Bolan’s head would be worth a quarter of a million dollars to his killer.

  What sort of superman could inspire such nationwide awe, fear, and respect from both sides of a modern society? Bolan himself would be the last man to attempt to answer that question. He knew that he was no superman. Like any other man, he bled when wounded, trembled when frightened, felt loneliness in isolation, and regarded life as preferable to death.

  Short months earlier, this “superman” had been on combat duty in Vietnam, in his own eyes just another non-com fighting another version of the impossible war. But in that war had been comrades, a sense of national purpose, and the brawn and brains of the United States government backing him. Now he was alone, often doubting his own moral imperatives, and with only his own abilities and instincts to stand against what often seemed to be the entire world.

  When Bolan killed enemies in Vietnam, he was decorated for heroism and applauded by the bulk of his society. When he killed the enemy at home, he was charged with murder and hounded as a dangerous threat to that same society. In that other war had been respites from combat, a reasonably safe place to lay the head and rest the soul; in this new war were no places to pause, no zones of safety, no sanctuaries for the man whose battlefield was the entire world and whose enemies were both infinite and often invisible.

  No—Mack Bolan was no superman, and none knew this better than himself.

  Bolan was perhaps a bit too modest in his assessments of self, however. He had received the tag “The Executioner” by virtue of his unusual military specialty in Vietnam. A sniper team sharpshooter, the young sergeant had repeatedly penetrated hostile territories and strongholds, often spending many days behind enemy lines on deep-penetration strikes against Viet Cong terrorist leaders and officials. Steely nerves, precision tactics, and remarkable self-sufficiency had spelled the difference for sniper Bolan, the difference which had kept him alive and functioning through two full combat tours in Southeast Asia and earned him the respect and admiration of superiors and peers alike. But Sgt. Bolan had been much more than a sniper. Executing an important defector or enemy field commander on his own soil could be a ticklish business. Merely locating and identifying the target in unfamiliar territory was challenge enough; to then make the strike, hang around long enough to verify the success of the mission, and then to safely withdraw through miles of aroused hostile country required considerable personal resources.

  Bolan had obviously possessed those resources. He had been regarded as a highly valuable weapon of the psychological warfare being waged for the soul of Vietnam. Now it appeared that Bolan, along with legions of other young Americans, had lost his own soul in that conflict—a point which many homefront moralizers were hastening to make. He had been editorialized as “a government-trained mad dog,” and lamented on the floor of the U.S. Senate as “America’s military sins coming home to roost.”

  All this was inconsequential to Mack Bolan. He had not expected medals for his war at home. He would admit, even, that his initial strike against the Mafia had been largely motivated by a desire for vengeance. His parents and teen-aged sister had died violently as a result of Mafia terrorism and the police had seemed helpless to do anything about it. Bolan had not been helpless, and he had done something about it. He took his pound of flesh from the Sergio Frenchi family and his sense of personal justice was satisfied in the lightning strikes that left that Mafia arm in shambles. Long before that first battle had ended, however, Mack Bolan came to realize that he had entered into another war without end. The mob would not, could not hold still for that sort of treatment. The entire premise for their survival was based on the idea of their invincibility and omnipresence in the American society. They had to crush Bolan and run his head up their pole for all to see and beware.

  Bolan’s war thus became a holy war, good versus evil, and he clung to this battle philosophy as his only buttress against a disapproving society. And as the war waged on, from front to successive front, his growing familiarity with the syndicate served to intensify this certain feeling that he was fighting the most vicious enemy to ever threaten his nation. The mob was everywhere, in everything—controlling, manipulating, corrupting, wielding an influence such as no political party had ever dared dream. Invisibly they reached out to touch every man, woman, and child in the country—stealing more from the poor than from the rich—squeezing the working man with invisible taxes and tributes, demoralizing and enslaving the young with drugs and insidiously corruptive pleasures, cannibalizing industry and victimizing both retailers and consumers, seizing the reins of government through blackmail and the exploitation of human greed—and everything they touched turned rotten and spoiled and ugly and corrupt. This was Mack Bolan’s vision, and his sustaining truth, and his reason for living when often the most pleasurable thing possible would be to merely die.

  He earned distinction as The Executioner in the jungles and hamlets of Vietnam and it was this same brand of warfare that he brought to the American continent. A police lieutenant in Pittsfield, Bolan’s home town and scene of his first Mafia encounter, was responsible for the nickname living on through the transition from Vietnam to hometown—but it was Bolan alone who endowed the name with the terrible attributes that rocked the Mafia ship of state and struck dread deep into the bones of Mafiosi everywhere, from the lowest street soldier to the most exalted Capo.

  The Executioner was not a cop; he could go and do as no cop could. The Executioner was not a judge or jury; he was not interested in legal technicalities, bribes, or threats. The Executioner was not a prison guard or trusty; he was not impressed with political or underworld influence and intimidation, and he had no reasons whatever for granting special favors or dispensations. He was incorruptible, non-negotiable, ready to die, and willing to kill; he was THE EXECUTIONER, and his target was the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, anywhere and everywhere, so long as he should live.

  1: The Dulles Trap

  For one frozen heartbeat, Mack Bolan knew that he was a dead man. And then the moment ticked on, recording the confusion and hesitation and perhaps even awe in the eyes of the adversar
y, and Bolan lived on. Trained instincts of the jungle fighter responded one flashing synapse quicker; Bolan’s reaction to the surprise encounter was a total one as mind and body exploded into the challenge for survival. His left chopped against the gun even as the yawning bore of the .45 thundered its greetings, his knee lifting high in the same reflex as he twisted into the attack. The shot went wild, the gun clattered to the ground, and the foe momentarily rode Bolan’s knee, buckaroo style, then he was groaning groundward and rolling into a spasmodic knot.

  Bolan scooped up the .45 in a continuation of the defensive reflex and was swinging into the lineup on the fallen opponent when his corner-vision warned him of activity on the flank. He whirled and rapidfired three rounds in the general direction of that threat. Answering fire immediately triangulated on him as shadowy shapes rapidly dispersed and went to ground some twenty yards distant. A thick voice yelled, “It’s him awright—now waitaminnit, Bolan!”

  Bolan was not waiting. He stepped around the writhing Mafioso and jogged quietly to the far corner of the building. A gun boomed from that quarter and a slug punched into the wall beside him. He jerked back and returned warily to his former position where he stared down at the suffering man, grimly assessing his possibilities of escape and quietly damning himself for walking into the setup.

  The same thick voice from the darkness called out, “Wise up, Bolan. You’re sewed in. Throw out the gun, then put your hands where we can see ’em and come talk to us.”

  Bolan knew how that conversation would go—with a six-figure bounty on his head. He also knew that this gun crew was not at Dulles International Airport to convoy a nickel-and-dime air freight hijack operation; Executioner Bolan had been suckered. What had begun as a soft surveillance of Mafia activity had quickly escalated into a full firefight, and Bolan could read nothing into the unhappy development except ambush. He gave them credit; they had played it cool. And now he was wondering just how long they had been onto his interest in the airfreight operation. Knowing this, he would know also how elaborately planned was the ambush. If it had been a hasty, last-minute set, then perhaps he stood a chance of busting out. But if they had come there in force, expecting Bolan to walk in …

  He knelt and placed the muzzle of the .45 against the fallen Mafioso’s temple. “How many are out there?” he inquired quietly. “What’s the set?”

  The man was in a paralysis of torment, and obviously cared little whether he lived or died. He made a faint attempt to respond, partially uncurled himself, then quickly drew back into the knot and vomited. Bolan grimaced with sympathy and stood up, leaning against the building and breathing as softly as possible, ears straining to tell him what his eyes could not.

  Frozen time moved sluggishly as he assessed the situation. He could hear them moving about out there in the darkness, closing, consolidating the jaws of the trap. A big jet was taking off from the far side of the airport, another was landing close by, its landing lights probing the darkness as it swept low past the warehouse area—though not close enough to affect Bolan’s situation. He was in a section of the sprawling complex which normally saw little or no activity at this hour of the night, a pre-customs storage area. Perhaps even the gunplay had gone unnoticed in the other noises of the huge air terminal.

  “What about it, Bolan?” asked the voice out there.

  He snapped his .32 out of the sideleather and quickly inspected the load, then threw the appropriated .45 into the open. It clattered loudly as it slid along the concrete ramp, adding another grotesque note to the sounds about him.

  Some one called out, “Watch it! He’s probably got Joe’s gun too!”

  Bolan snapped a round toward the voice and was rewarded with a muffled yelp and a returning volley of fire. Meanwhile he had spun off as he fired, crouching and running along the shadows of the warehouse, his eyes alert to the sudden eruption of muzzle flashes. The fusillade tore into the area he had just vacated, and a gasping groan behind him told of the effect upon the writhing Mafioso who had been identified as “Joe.”

  A voice crowed, “He’s hit!”

  “Watch it, he’s tricky!”

  “Not that tricky.”

  “Well, you just waitaminnit, dammit.”

  Bolan had located the enemy forces, as revealed by the last volley. They were clumped into four groups of about three men each. Two groups were directly across from him, in the shadows of the opposite building; the other two were flanking him, covering from the warehouses to either side of Bolan’s position. The leader was out front, as evidenced by the voice of authority; a sub-regime was off to the left flank, the cocky voice of impatience and disrespect for the Executioner’s image.

  The groups out front would have to cross a wide area of relative light in order to close on Bolan. Either flank, however, could move in with only a momentary exposure between the buildings. The tactical instincts of the professional soldier had instantly become aware of this truth, and Bolan was ready to exploit this single favorable factor.

  “Bolan?” came the voice from out front.

  The wounded Mafioso groaned again, feeble and pained, a convincing sound of approaching death. Bolan tensed and waited.

  “I told you he’s hit!” This from the left flank.

  “Dammit you hold it!” From the center. “How you know that ain’t Joe?”

  “Aw shit, you know better! Joe didn’t live a second, face to face with that guy! We can’t wait around all night. Cops are gonna be …”

  Bolan was satisfied that the time had come. He was rolling slowly toward the edge of the shadow, silently putting as much distance as he dared between himself and the building and straining toward a midpoint position toward the left flank. They would be coming in any second now.

  “Awright, check ’im out,” came the grudging instructions from up front, verifying Bolan’s prediction. “Bolan—if you’re listening—you fire once, just once, and you’re gonna get blasted to hamburger.”

  The prospective hamburger was lying prone with pistol extended toward the shaft of moonlight falling across his left flank. Cautiously moving feet scraped the concrete out there as a crouching figure leapt across the lighted zone. Bolan held his breath and his fire; another man hurtled over, and then another. The Executioner smiled grimly to himself over that fatal mistake; the entire left flank had moved in, leaving none to protect their own rear. He heard them moving cautiously into the trap as he moved also in a silent circling, and then they were between him and the building and he was sighting down from his prone position, rolling swiftly now and squeezing off a single shot for a calculated effect.

  A grunted exclamation of alarm and a confused volley from his original position signalled the success of step two of the bold escape plan; reflexive fire came in from the front and the other flank and the trap closed fully with the Mafiosi firing into each other’s positions in a contagion of over-reaction.

  Bolan himself was on his feet and sprinting into the open flank, leaping across the thin shaft of moonlit area and disappearing into the shadows beyond.

  An excited voice cried, “Hold it, we’re shooting at each other! Th’ bastard’s behind us!”

  Indeed, the Executioner was behind them. He could hear them shouting and damning one another for their fatal error, the groans and frightened cries of the wounded becoming a cacaphony which was now entirely too familiar and increasingly repugnant to Mack Bolan. But this was the world he had built for himself, Bolan kept remembering; it was the only one available to him now.

  He reached the small van truck which only moments before had been receiving looted pharmaceutical supplies from a darkened warehouse, the object of Bolan’s earlier surveillance and once hopefully the lever into the Family’s Washington area operations. The lever had become a boomerang, and now Bolan had more of a bite into the Family than he’d anticipated.

  The cab door of the truck stood open and the driver was gaping at him across the hood; two men who had been loading the van stood indecisively just i
nside the warehouse, uncertainly poised between fight and flight. With the ominous appearance of Bolan’s .32, they opted for flight and moved hastily into the interior of the building. Bolan waved the pistol in a tight circle encompassing the driver and said, “You too, beat it.”

  Wordlessly, the driver went into the warehouse and closed the door behind him. Bolan swung in behind the steering wheel of the truck, meshed the gears, and spun about in a rapid acceleration just as the regrouped remnants of the gun crew pounded into the vehicle lane and again opened fire. He dropped low in the seat and swerved into their midst, scattering them and momentarily disrupting their attack, then he was grinding past and careening into a power turn at the corner of the warehouse and the van was taking hits like puncturing hail. He felt a wheel tremor, then vibrate into a wallowing rumble. The clumsy vehicle lunged out of control, scraped the side of the building, rebounded, and plowed into a raised loading ramp an instant after Bolan had leapt clear. The truck partially climbed the ramp then overturned and fell to its side in a screech of grinding metal.

  Bolan’s own vehicle was parked just beyond the next warehouse, spotted into an escape corridor, and this was his goal. He was running along in the shadows as the Mafia gun crew carefully explored the wreckage of the van, and as he cleared the corner he heard an excited command: “He’s not here! Spread out! Al, you take the north side; Benny, the south. Rest o’ you guys …”

  Bolan was in his MG and cranking away in a full power run when a fast moving figure darted out of a shadow and began futilely pumping away at him with a handgun. At the far end of the building another began unloading on him. He took no hits and was settling down with a sigh of relief as he hurtled into the Y leading from the freight area, then he noted the flare of headlamps as two vehicles swung onto the road to his right. Bolan took the left leg, powering into the turn that would take him toward the main air terminal. His first suspicion had proven correct; he had blundered into a massive mantrap, the end of which he had not yet seen. Another pair of vehicles were swinging in above him; there would be at least one more gauntlet to run.