Perilous Cargo Read online

  HIDE-AND-SEEK

  The Himalayas become a deadly hunting zone when a nuclear warhead is stolen from a black-market warehouse in Kathmandu. Knowing the incident could start World War III, the President sends Mack Bolan and a CIA operative to retrieve the weapon in the treacherous border region between Tibet and Nepal.

  But the U.S. isn’t the only country in the search. Bolan and his ally are up against cunning Chinese and Russian assassins, and several local warlords are vying for the valuable nuke, as well. These competing parties are determined to reach the weapon first—no matter how many witnesses they eliminate on the way. With few alternatives and the trail of innocent blood growing longer, Bolan accepts the help of an old spy. But can he be trusted? With the harsh mountain terrain working against them, the Executioner will need to rely on his wits to win this race…because coming in second is not an option.

  “Jump clear!” the pilot yelled.

  “The wings are completely iced over!”

  The doors opened and immediately the wind and pelting ice slashed at them. Bolan shoved the equipment container forward, trying to push it into the opening. Nischal leaned down to help, then stumbled in the gusting winds.

  That was all it took for the icy air to snatch her. She rolled toward the opening away from Bolan’s outstretched hand.

  “We’re going down!” the Major yelled. “Get clear! We’ll hold it as long as we can!”

  Nischal continued the slide and Bolan saw her reach for and miss the chance to grab one of the support struts on the ramp. She spun around again and her chute snagged on a piece of metal sticking up from the very edge of the ramp. He couldn’t hear it over the howling wind, but he could imagine the tearing sound it made.

  Her eyes met his and he knew there was nothing for it. He jumped, trying to catch her, but by then she’d torn free and begun the long fall to the ground. Bolan glimpsed the ragged remains of her parachute, still hung up on the cargo bay doors, and at the edge of the ramp, their equipment.

  Then he, too, was free-falling into the storm.

  The Executioner

  #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

  #415 Ivory Wave

  #416 Extraction

  #417 Rogue Assault

  #418 Viral Siege

  #419 Sleeping Dragons

  #420 Rebel Blast

  #421 Hard Targets

  #422 Nigeria Meltdown

  #423 Breakout

  #424 Amazon Impunity

  #425 Patriot Strike

  #426 Pirate Offensive

  #427 Pacific Creed

  #428 Desert Impact

  #429 Arctic Kill

  #430 Deadly Salvage

  #431 Maximum Chaos

  #432 Slayground

  #433 Point Blank

  #434 Savage Deadlock

  #435 Dragon Key

  #436 Perilous Cargo

  PERILOUS CARGO

  Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

  —Lao Tzu

  Anyone who makes himself an enemy of innocent people is an enemy of mine. And he doesn’t have long for this world.

  —Mack Bolan

  THE

  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 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

  PROLOGUE

  Not far from the warehouse, he walked silently over the small stone footbridge that crossed the Bagmati River. Farther upstream, temples lined the banks of the waterway the Hindus and Buddhists believed was holy, but the man was not interested in the spiritual potential of the water—only the rippling, gurgling sound that helped hide his movements. The moonless sky ensured there were plenty of shadows, and the late hour left the streets empty and quiet.

  Kathmandu was unlike any other city
in the world. It was a city of contradictions—wealthy tourists mingled with poor-by-choice monks and hotels catering to the rich found near ancient shrines. Nepal was a strange place, and Kathmandu, a crossroads of religion, money, crime and constantly shifting political powers, was the hub. He liked it, though he was glad that this night would see him on his way home.

  With no fear of being seen by late-night tourists in the remote district, he found the stone shrine he’d been seeking, reached inside to find the switch and slid the hidden panel aside. Cobwebs and dirt covered the handle, but he wiggled it back and forth, eventually pulling it free of its lock. Below the shrine, the opening for the staircase came free, revealing a steeply twisting set of stone stairs. He stepped inside and used another mechanism to close the panel behind him.

  The man ignored the torch holders and slipped his night-vision monocle into place. The corridor hadn’t been used in years and he chuckled to himself. Some secrets were just forgotten, waiting to be exposed. He knew many of them, in cities and countries far and near. In fact, some might say he was a walking, talking secret himself.

  The descent ended and a long corridor stretched ahead of him. He knew the hallway extended beneath a small market square, then a fenced parking area and, eventually, the warehouse. People walked over this passage every day, ignorant of its existence. Part of it was caved in, but he faced nothing more difficult than scrambling over a dirt mound. He paused, caught his breath and then climbed another set of stone stairs that ended in a sealed door above his head. This one opened onto the warehouse floor.

  The escape tunnel had originally been dug by monks decades before inside a small temple. Later, the temple had been torn down and the warehouse had been built in its place. During the fall of the USSR, some factions within Russia had needed a facility and thus purchased it for their own use.

  The man peered at the door, then found the small niche that would, hopefully, open it after all these years of disuse. He needed all of this to work. And it did. The door opened a crack, enough for him to pull himself up and inside a small office in the warehouse itself. So far, he’d triggered no alarms.

  He slipped in, then snuck through the open office door and moved along the wall toward an interior sentry, half-asleep at his post. The man pulled a knife out of his boot. His movements were so swift the sentry had no time to shout as the man clasped a hand over his mouth and shoved the tip of the blade into his carotid artery. He lowered the guard to the ground as he grabbed his ID. After edging along the wall to the main entrance, the man swiped the guard’s badge along the electronic keypad and watched the lights flash as the bay door began to open.

  He sprinted back toward the massive platform truck with the nuclear warhead attached and began to climb into the cab. Shots rang out and ricocheted off the door. He turned, drawing his own weapon, and fired back, knocking the assailant down in one shot. There was no time for playing around.

  He got behind the wheel and started the truck. The warehouse doorway was beginning to fill with Russian soldiers, most of them milling around in confusion. He reached out the window and opened fire, scattering the sentries as they looked for cover. He shifted up another gear and drove through the door before they could lower it again.

  He didn’t bother to head for the gate, just aimed for the nearest section of chain-link fence and tore through it. The bullets bouncing off the truck didn’t bother him. As soon as he cleared the facility he checked his mirrors. No one was in pursuit. The man smiled, knowing the chaos he’d caused would keep them busy. He shifted into high gear and headed for the Friendship Highway.

  Everything would be different now. It was only a matter of time.

  CHAPTER ONE

  As Hal Brognola, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group based at Stony Man Farm, walked down the silent hallway, he knew that whatever was waiting for him in the Situation Room probably wasn’t something he wanted to hear. He sighed and stopped in front of the door, where a silent Marine guard waited. Brognola removed his Justice Department ID card, held it up for the Marine’s brief inspection, then swiped it through the reader. The Marine opened the door for him, then stepped aside smartly. “Good evening, sir,” he said.

  “Want to bet?” Brognola growled under his breath.

  Stony Man Farm was a covert operations base whose existence was known by a very few and whose director answered directly to the President. Its missions were varied, ranging from domestic anticrime and terrorism to foreign intelligence operations—anything that the United States couldn’t officially be seen—or get caught—doing. Brognola had been in charge for a long time, which perhaps explained why he went through so many antacids in a given day and certainly explained why he knew that a call from the White House at two in the morning wasn’t good news.

  Inside the Situation Room he’d expected to find a large assortment of military brass, but he was startled to see only one man: the President himself. At the moment, his back was to Brognola as he watched some spy satellite footage playing on one of the many video screens in the room. He turned when the door shut.

  “Hal,” he said, pausing the feed. “Thank you for coming in.”

  “Of course, Mr. President,” he said. The two men shook hands. “What’s the situation?”

  The President laughed. “You always come straight to the point, Hal. It’s one of the reasons I like you.”

  “You don’t call me at this hour if there isn’t a situation, sir. Usually a bad one.”

  “True enough, and this one is more precarious than I’d like, Hal, which is why the only people here at the moment are the two of us. If the Joint Chiefs heard about this, we’d have no way to contain it. As it is, I’ve had to seal everything with ‘Presidential Eyes Only,’ and anyone else who’s seen it has been sent on a long vacation with direct orders to keep their mouths shut.”

  “That doesn’t sound precarious, Mr. President,” Brognola said carefully. “That sounds like an end-of-the-world kind of problem.”

  “The truth is, Hal, we could be looking at a major disaster, but I think—with your help—we might be able to get on top of it.” He turned and restarted the video feed at the beginning. “This is a clip from one of our satellites as it passed over Kathmandu about twelve hours ago. Routine surveillance, so the angle isn’t very precise. The analyst who saw this come through cleaned it up and damn near wet himself.”

  Brognola didn’t speak but took up a position next to the President and watched the screen. The blurred images solidified, showing a mobile launching platform, complete with a nuclear warhead and rocket, moving away from a large building. Guards were shooting at the vehicle, but it was heavily armored and kept right on going, hitting the road and then disappearing from the frame. The data analyst was clearly on his game because the next sequence showed the truck on a deserted highway, heading away from the city. Then it was lost again.

  “Did he do any still image enhancement?” Brognola asked.

  The President nodded and typed in the commands, bringing up the slides. The side of the rocket was in shadow, but the markings were unmistakable. They were Russian.

  Brognola nodded thoughtfully, then took a seat at the conference table. After the Cold War, the Soviets had either lost or hidden a large number of nuclear weapons, though which one this represented was impossible to say. “I was right, Mr. President,” he said. “Precarious was an understatement. Who else knows about this?”

  “The director and deputy director of the CIA, the Vice President, and you,” he said. “Plus the soon-to-be-vacationing analyst.”

  Brognola cleared his throat. “Don’t let the analyst go anywhere,” he advised. “In fact, have him brought in on some pretense. Arrange for him to be held until this is over.”

  “You’re afraid he’ll talk?”

  “If he hasn’t already, yes, I am. Let’s find out for sure if he’s
made any calls or spoken to anyone since his debrief, and hold anyone he’s even said good-night to. He knows there’s a nuclear missile roaming around in Nepal or Tibet. I’d suggest we take him out of circulation immediately.”

  The President glanced at his watch. “He’s still in with the deputy director, going over it all one more time. Give me a moment.” He picked up a phone, dialed, then spoke softly into the receiver. “It’s done,” he said. “They’ll keep him at Langley for the time being.”

  “Good. Now, who else knows?”

  “I already told you, Hal—”

  “Excuse me, sir, I mean which countries?”

  “Well, we’ve got to assume the Russians know—it’s their damn missile that’s been stolen.”

  “Did we have any indication that they were housing arms in Kathmandu?”

  “There were plenty of rumors at the end of the Cold War, of course, but that’s all they were at the time—rumors. The intelligence coming out of the former Soviet Republic was terrible. The CIA didn’t have anything concrete or we’d have moved on it long ago.”

  “But the CIA had something?”

  “One field agent offered up an unconfirmed report, but it was little more than something he’d heard.”

  “Based on what we’re seeing here, I’d say it’s been confirmed,” Brognola said.

  The President stood and paced while Brognola gathered his thoughts.

  “Sir, if China finds out...” he started.

  “Then any hope we have for Tibet is lost,” he finished. “Worse, if that damn nuke gets launched into China...”

  “Then we could be looking at World War III.”

  “Exactly,” the President said. “That seems like a pretty good reason to kick you out of bed, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “No complaints, Mr. President.”

  “All right, so what do you recommend?” he asked.

  “Have we had any contact with the thief? Any ransom or other demands?”

  “No, and I think that’s more troubling than anything. Someone after money and power we can negotiate with, but a true believer of some kind or another...”