Enemy Agents Read online

  The armor-piercing slug sizzled past Bolan’s face

  It singed his cheek with its hot tailwind as Bolan threw himself behind the exit housing. Though the metal door and plaster walls concealed him from the sniper, they wouldn’t stop the Barrett’s rounds from finding flesh and bone.

  The shooter quickly demonstrated, slamming his next shot right through the structure three feet above roof level, where a crouching man’s head might be found. Bolan was lower, lying prone, but his would-be killer still had six shots left before he’d be forced to reload—virtually guaranteeing at least one stunning hit.

  It was time to move—no mistake.

  But left or right? It was a gamble, either way, and Bolan knew that he was running out of time.

  He hedged his bets, triggered a shot around the right-hand corner—the shooter’s left—then rolled out the other way as two suppressed rounds ripped into the wall that had shielded him. One blew away a fist-size chunk of plaster, while the second came through, dead-on, where Bolan had been a heartbeat earlier.

  And by that time, the Executioner was clear, wide-open for the man who meant to kill him, scuttling across the sun-baked roof on stinging hands and knees, seeking a kill-shot of his own.

  MACK BOLAN®

  The Executioner

  #316 Poison Justice

  #317 Hour of Judgment

  #318 Code of Resistance

  #319 Entry Point

  #320 Exit Code

  #321 Suicide Highway

  #322 Time Bomb

  #323 Soft Target

  #324 Terminal Zone

  #325 Edge of Hell

  #326 Blood Tide

  #327 Serpent’s Lair

  #328 Triangle of Terror

  #329 Hostile Crossing

  #330 Dual Action

  #331 Assault Force

  #332 Slaughter House

  #333 Aftershock

  #334 Jungle Justice

  #335 Blood Vector

  #336 Homeland Terror

  #337 Tropic Blast

  #338 Nuclear Reaction

  #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

  Don Pendleton’s

  The Executioner®

  ENEMY AGENTS

  For Staff Sergeant Jared C. Monti

  September 20, 1975–June 21, 2006

  Gowardesh Valley, Afghanistan

  Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

  —Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929–1968

  Some soldiers hate their enemies without understanding them. I hate what my enemies stand for because I understand them.

  —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 command 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.

  * * *

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Lake County, California

  “I don’t like all these trees,” Jeff Deacon said. “They make me nervous.”

  Ed Johnson, one of his protectors, frowned at him and said, “I thought you were some kind of big outdoorsman. Camping, hunting, all of that.”

  “I am,” Deacon replied. “But down where I come from, it’s mostly desert. You can see for miles and know if anybody’s watching you.”

  “Still worried?” asked Dan Smith, the other bodyguard. “You know we’ve got you covered seven ways from Sunday.”

  “Right. The two of you,” Deacon said, making no attempt to cover his disdain for what the Feds deemed adequate protection.

  “You’re about to hurt my feelings, Jeff,” Smith said. “And you know that we’ve got reinforcements standing by in Sacramento.”

  “Fifty miles away. Does me a lot of good, if something happens,” Deacon groused. “That’s nearly half an hour by air, if you’ve got people suited up and waiting in the chopper when you hit the panic button.”

  “You just need to relax,” Johnson, the taller of the two deputy U.S. marshals said. “Nobody followed us up here. We’ve used this place before without a hitch. It’s off the grid.”

  But Deacon couldn’t just relax. His spit-and-polish watch-dogs didn’t have a clue to what it meant when you were really off the grid
. They’d been to school, learned weapons and karate and a lot of codes for talking on the radio, but what in hell did either of them really know about the threat he faced?

  In two days Jeff Deacon was supposed to testify before a federal grand jury in San Francisco, and damn near anything could happen before then.

  Was it too late to change his mind? Hell, yes.

  At this point it wouldn’t matter if he recanted all his statements to the Feds and crawled back to his former comrades on his hands and knees, begging for mercy. There was no forgiveness in the real world. He’d be lucky if they only shot him, without making an example of him for the rest.

  Deacon had witnessed one such lesson, and it still cropped up in nightmares that he couldn’t shake. The thought of dying that way made him want to snatch a pistol from his bodyguards and finish it right then.

  And if he lived to testify, even survived the long trial that was sure to follow…then, what? Even with a new name, maybe some plastic surgery, how long could he survive as a “protected” witness?

  Deacon knew the score on that game. While they needed you, before a jury voted “guilty” on whichever scumbag they were trying to convict, the Feds were your best friends. But afterward, even when they’d delivered on the promise of a new life, last week’s courtroom VIP was cut adrift, the coverage reduced to spot checks at erratic intervals, or maybe phone calls on his birthday.

  Deacon imagined such a call. Hey, Jeff…er, I mean Englebert! That’s it! How’s every little thing out there in Numbnuts, Alabama? Are you loving it?

  But Deacon hated it already.

  “It’s my turn to barbecue,” Smith said. “You feel like steak or burgers?”

  “Burgers,” Deacon answered, like he gave a damn.

  “I’m on it,” Smith said, detouring through the A-frame’s kitchen for supplies, then on to the rear deck. “You want to get the door, Ed?”

  Smith’s partner put his newspaper aside, got off the couch and ambled to the sliding door. It was a lot of glass for a safe-house. Deacon had asked, first thing, if it was bulletproof, and one of his protectors had advised him not to worry. Maybe it was bulletproof, which wouldn’t help him if the sliding door was open.

  And he had to give the snipers credit. Deacon didn’t know how long they had been watching, waiting, but they fired in unison as soon as his two babysitters were exposed. He didn’t hear the shots, but saw their impact. Crimson spouting from the wounds in two slack bodies as they toppled to the hardwood floor.

  Shitshitshitshit! was all Deacon could think.

  He bolted, knowing that the back of the house was covered and he had no place to hide inside the A-frame. He considered doubling back to grab one of the Glocks his late protectors carried, but that would’ve meant exposure to the riflemen outside.

  Which left the front door, with the marshals’ two-year-old Jeep Cherokee standing outside. He didn’t have the keys, of course, so there’d be no escape with gravel spewing out behind him. No high-speed pursuit along that winding mountain road.

  All he could do was run, and Deacon knew that it would be a freaking miracle if he made more than twenty paces from the cabin.

  But he didn’t even get that far.

  Three men were waiting for him when he yanked open the front door. Deacon recognized the tallest of them, and the other two were suddenly irrelevant.

  “Hey, Jeff,” his killer said, “we’ve missed you. Aren’t you gonna ask us in?”

  1

  Apple Valley, California

  The motorcycle was a Harley Davidson Nightster, that sinister offspring of the classic Sportster produced in 2007 by designer Rich Christoph, who had said in the press that he wanted people to wonder if the bike was legal. Mission accomplished.

  The Nightster’s paint was billed as “vivid black,” from chopped fenders and gas tank to the ventilated chain guard to the matte-finished 1200 cc Evolution engine itself. The bike had black steel-laced wheels, black low-rise handlebars, black front-fork gaiters, and a black seat mounted barely two feet off the pavement. The only hints of chrome showed on the rear springs and the dual slash-cut exhausts.

  This night, Mack Bolan had the Nightster up to eighty-something miles per hour on a desert highway going anywhere and nowhere, arrow-straight as far as the headlight could burn through the darkness. He savored the cooling breeze on his face, in his hair, creeping under the worn leather jacket he wore over nondescript T-shirt and jeans.

  He sensed that the desert was seething with life—and with death—around him, but it sparked no fear. For the moment, at least, he was the baddest thing in the valley.

  He saw the roadhouse up ahead, putting it just two miles outside town. The neon sign out front read Scoots. With no apostrophe, he didn’t know if it had been misspelled or was supposed to be a verb.

  Bolan had two-wheeled it from Los Angeles, seventy-odd miles behind him now, to find this rundown dive. It wasn’t the kind of place where he’d normally drop in to sample the brew.

  This night was work, not playtime. He had buzzed through L.A. traffic, through its eastern suburbs and into the wasteland of San Bernardino County to locate a target.

  The mission, as always, was search and destroy—but he couldn’t be hasty.

  This outing required some finesse.

  Approaching Scoots, he scanned the parking lot. It had the standard vehicle assortment for a rural juke joint—dusty pickups, desert-bleached sedans—and two new SUVs. The only other bike, an old Japanese model, had been parked around the west side of the roadhouse, chained to a steel hitching post.

  Bolan rumbled into the lot, smelling beer on the breeze before he was clear of the two-lane blacktop. Music was playing in the bar, but all he got was base line, like the heartbeat of a drowsy dinosaur. Inside, it would be loud and smoky.

  Cruising the lot, he eyed the SUVs, one Hummer H2 and one Ford Explorer, both shiny beneath a patina of dust that no ride in the desert could ever escape. Bolan rolled past them, backed into an unmarked space near a cage filled with squat propane tanks and switched off the motorcycle.

  He dismounted, pocketed the Harley’s key, and let his fingers stray for just a second to the black KA-BAR Bowie knife sheathed on his hip. State law in California granted him permission for the fighting knife, as long as it was not concealed. It made a statement, right up front, and if the message didn’t come across, its nine-inch blade could emphasize the point.

  Bolan moved to the bar’s stout front door, steel-toed Red Wing 988 motorcycle boots crunching sand and cracked concrete under thick soles. He pulled the door open, stepped into the racket and haze.

  Scoots was like any other low-end roadhouse found from coast-to-coast, border-to-border. Same songs on the juke box, same signs advertising basic beers and whiskeys for the drinker who came in without a plan in mind. There was a kitchen in the back that smelled all right, considering. Bolan supposed the burgers would be safe enough, and felt his stomach growl in answer to the thought.

  Scoots had a fair crowd for the time of night, still short of nine o’clock. He found an empty booth midway along the south wall, made a beeline for it without meeting anybody’s gaze along the way.

  Some of the drinkers checked him out, while others were already drifting on an alcoholic tide toward sweet oblivion. Two bartenders were working, one of them a porky bouncer-type who hadn’t shaved in several days, the other a willowy redhead who seemed a cut or two above the level of her customers. One barmaid for the tables, circulating constantly with no apparent time to rest.

  Before he sat, Bolan already had his targets marked.

  All he had to do was wait.

  “NEW GUY,” LARRY MOSIER said around a bite of porterhouse.

  Clay Halsey glanced up from his T-bone, toward the stranger, taking in his chiseled face and rangy build. He looked like another drifter, passing through.

  “Nobody,” he replied.

  “Can’t have the same old faces every night,” Steve Webb chimed in.

/>   “Some of them never change,” Mosier said.

  “’Cept for getting uglier and older,” Tommy Gruber added, reaching out for his Corona longneck.

  Including Brian Doolan, they were five in number at a table near the middle of the room. Halsey supposed they were considered regulars, spending at least one night a week at Scoots when they were in the area, but he would never put himself in the same class as those who always seemed to have a bar stool claimed whenever he stopped by. Scoots was a place for Halsey to relax, wash down a steak with beer from time to time, but it would never be a lifestyle.

  He felt certain he would always stand apart from, the sweaty laborers and farmhands who had nowhere else to go after they clocked out from another working day. He was their natural superior.

  Not that he’d ever say that to their faces.

  It was all about equality these days—at least, for people of a certain kind, he thought, a common breed and background. There were no blacks in the bar. No Asians or Hispanics, either. Scoots had no sign on the door forbidding them to enter—which, of course, would violate the law and bring the Feds to crack their whips—but most people knew where they’re welcome.

  And where they’re not.

  “So, anyway,” Webb said, “about the shipment—”

  “I’m still working on it,” Halsey interrupted.

  “All I’m saying is, they got the money, and—”

  “I know they got the money, Steve. I paid them. And we’ll get the product, one way or another.”

  “Okay, then. Because the German—”

  “Can I eat my steak in peace? Is that too much to ask?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just relax and change the subject.”

  “I’m looking forward to the exercise this weekend,” Doolan said. “Try out that new HK416. The rotary diopter sight’s supposed to make a world of difference.”