Lethal Payload Read online

  The helicopter was completely out of control

  Dr. Mohammedkhani was not going to be terminated, nor even arrested. She would unknowingly do her job and make sure the upcoming launch went off perfectly.

  Dr. Seth was the enemy. Bolan suspected he was not who he pretended to be. The Bear was right. There had been no modifications to the rocket nor any special reentry vehicle built. The weapon was the satellite itself. It would fall with much less accuracy than a guided rocket—but even if it missed Washington completely, some part of the U.S. eastern seaboard would be turned into a radioactive wasteland.

  Nothing was going to interfere with the upcoming launch.

  Bolan knew that he was about to die in a tragic helicopter accident.

  MACK BOLAN®

  The Executioner

  239 Hostile Proximity

  240 Devil’s Guard

  241 Evil Reborn

  242 Doomsday Conspiracy

  243 Assault Reflex

  244 Judas Kill

  245 Virtual Destruction

  246 Blood of the Earth

  247 Black Dawn Rising

  248 Rolling Death

  249 Shadow Target

  250 Warning Shot

  251 Kill Radius

  252 Death Line

  253 Risk Factor

  254 Chill Effect

  255 War Bird

  256 Point of Impact

  257 Precision Play

  258 Target Lock

  259 Nightfire

  260 Dayhunt

  261 Dawnkill

  262 Trigger Point

  263 Skysniper

  264 Iron Fist

  265 Freedom Force

  266 Ultimate Price

  267 Invisible Invader

  268 Shattered Trust

  269 Shifting Shadows

  270 Judgment Day

  271 Cyberhunt

  272 Stealth Striker

  273 UForce

  274 Rogue Target

  275 Crossed Borders

  276 Leviathan

  277 Dirty Mission

  278 Triple Reverse

  279 Fire Wind

  280 Fear Rally

  281 Blood Stone

  282 Jungle Conflict

  283 Ring of Retaliation

  284 Devil’s Army

  285 Final Strike

  286 Armageddon Exit

  287 Rogue Warrior

  288 Arctic Blast

  289 Vendetta Force

  290 Pursued

  291 Blood Trade

  292 Savage Game

  293 Death Merchants

  294 Scorpion Rising

  295 Hostile Alliance

  296 Nuclear Game

  297 Deadly Pursuit

  298 Final Play

  299 Dangerous Encounter

  300 Warrior’s Requiem

  301 Blast Radius

  302 Shadow Search

  303 Sea of Terror

  304 Soviet Specter

  305 Point Position

  306 Mercy Mission

  307 Hard Pursuit

  308 Into the Fire

  309 Flames of Fury

  310 Killing Heat

  311 Night of the Knives

  312 Death Gamble

  313 Lockdown

  314 Lethal Payload

  Don Pendleton’s

  The Executioner®

  LETHAL PAYLOAD

  Honor et Fidelite (Honor and Fidelity)

  Legio Pastria Nosta (The Legion Is My Home)

  —Motto of the French Foreign Legion

  A solider who betrays his comrades is the worst kind of traitor. He will have no honor when he faces his Executioner.

  —Mack Bolan

  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

  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

  1

  “Death to the United States!”

  The words were spoken in Arabic, but the Executioner had heard them before, all too often. They were being chanted in such an orgiastic frenzy that Mack Bolan could hear them clearly on the lagoon. Drums and other percussive instruments beat in rhythm to the thundering chant.

  “Death to the United States!”

  Bolan’s canoe slid through the rollers and crunched to a halt in the sand. He stepped into the foam of the Java Sea and dragged the outrigger out of the surf and onto land. The beach was a patchwork of grays, greens and blacks in his night-vision goggles. The chants grew louder and even more excited. There was exultation in the voices of the chanters, and beneath that, expectation. A clear baritone called out and was met by at least thirty voices in answer.

  “Death to the United States!”

  The call and response grew more and more savage. Bolan smiled grimly. The pandekar was in fine form.

  “Death to the Great Satan!” a new voice shouted.

  Bolan shook his head. The mullah was not willing to be outdone.

  The Executioner was wary of rescue missions. They threw every single advantage into the hands of his opponents. He was always outnumbered, always outgunned, and savvy enemies always had multiple opportunities to kill their captives or use them as shields. Bolan, himself, was always in dire risk of killing those he had come to save. The fact was that in the past two years hostage rescues in the Pacific had not all gone according to plan. American and Australian rescue missions in the Philippines and Indonesia had resulted in dead hostages. It seemed as if fate dealt from the bottom of the deck and gave all the high cards to the goblins. It was the same old situation. Bolan was one man, and he held but a single card.

  In special operations circles it was spoken of with awe. It was known as surprise. It trumped everything, and there was nothing sweeter when it was achieved.

  The chanting from beyond the tree line degenerated into wordless howls and screams of rage. Bolan wasted no time as he marched up
the beach.

  The voice of the pandekar boomed forth. Pandekars were master teachers of pentjak-silat, the national martial arts of the Indonesian archipelago. Along with the great technical skills they developed, they were renowned spiritualists, famed for their supernatural powers, rumored to include telepathy, mystic healing and clairvoyance. They were thought to be invulnerable.

  Pandekar Binpadgar Regog was a master of the Jokuk style, and was considered by his followers to be a mystic. When the Taliban mullah Abu-Hamid al-Juwanyi had fled Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda, Regog had welcomed the refugee mullah as a divine sign. Al-Juwanyi’s teachings of jihad against the United States had been welcomed and were taken on with religious fervor by Regog and his followers.

  Suddenly a woman’s scream cut across the chanting. Bolan moved quickly through the thin jungle. A two-story hut dominated the clearing. A number of smaller huts arced out on either side of the big house in a horseshoe shape. A bonfire burned in the middle.

  Beside the pyre a pair of posts had been sunk in the soil and Famke Ryssemus was strung between them. She was a famous European fashion model who came to Java annually to help her uncle with his missionary work. That was enough to make her a target of the pandekar. Bolan could see she was bruised and her blond hair was disheveled, but there was no obvious blood or serious wounds yet.

  The real fun was clearly about to begin.

  A half-naked man leaped into the sand near Ryssemus and shrieked. He wore only a red turban, and a white breechclout tied with a red sash around his hips. Foam flecked his lips. His wiry musculature stood out in high relief as his hips and shoulders jerked with the drumbeats. He tossed away his AK-47 rifle. The cries of the mob rose as he reached both hands into his sash and withdrew two Javanese kris. The sinuous handles of the daggers were carved into the shapes of dragons. The mob moaned expectantly as he reversed the twelve-inch undulating blades in his hands. His eyes glazed over as he aimed the quicksilver weapons at his chest. Sweat streamed down his torso in rivers. Spittle flew as he let out a horrific groan. It was matched by the captive woman’s scream of horror as he stabbed both blades into his own chest.

  The crowd roared.

  Roughly forty people formed a circle around the fire. Regog and Al-Juwanyi sat on raised divans. A half-dozen men sat cross-legged in the sand at their feet pounding drums and cymbals. The rest of the gathering stood swaying to the music and chanting. All carried bladed weapons, and most also clutched rifles, pistols, or submachine guns. Many in the throng were working themselves into a trance like that of the dancer. They called out wordlessly as the dancer stabbed himself again. The blades stuck between his ribs, and he yanked them forth with a howl.

  No blood ran down the dancer’s sides.

  A man in a trance was said to be unstoppable. Bolan had faced opponents armed with mystical powers on more than one occasion. Around the globe, martial artists and mystics used rigorous training, ritual and special breathing techniques to manipulate their personal energy and aspects of the autonomous nervous system that were on autopilot in most humans. Such people were capable of almost inhuman feats. But most mystical fighting had been rendered obsolete in a modern world of high-capacity automatic rifles and helicopter gunships. Bolan did not believe in magic, but he had long ago learned not to sneer at sorcerers.

  Facing such opponents made his one-man rescue operation just a little more nightmarish.

  Bolan considered the M-16 he held. If he opened up with his rifle, the mob would blindly, suicidally rush him and he would fall beneath their knives before he managed to empty his magazine, much less reload. However, Bolan had other ideas.

  The dancer turned on Ryssemus. She screamed as the man raised his knives overhead like ice picks.

  Bolan reached beneath his rifle and slipped his finger around the trigger of the FN 303 Less Lethal Launcher mounted under the forestock. He flicked off the safety, and his thumb pressed down. The laser sight came to life and put a red spot on the knife-wielding dancer’s chest.

  It was time to see exactly how much control of his autonomous nervous system the dancer really had.

  The FN 303 was a glorified paint-ball gun that fired fin-stabilized .68-caliber projectiles. They hit the target like a fist, and breaking on contact to prevent penetration injuries. They were unlikely to stop a highly trained martial artist, much less one in self-induced trance.

  But Bolan’s rounds had been custom loaded to rather unique specifications.

  The Executioner squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession. The sound of the compressed air launcher was lost in the roar of the chanting and the drums. The dancer stopped at the impacts but did not fall. For a second his glazed eyes narrowed as he searched the crowd for his attacker.

  No one in the mob even noticed.

  But the chanting faltered as the dancer’s legs suddenly wobbled and his knives fell from his hands. The music subsided as the dancer staggered. He took three rapid steps toward his master, then fell clutching his belly. Shouts of indignation replaced the music and chanting as the dancer vomited all over the pandekar.

  Bolan’s projectiles were rear-loaded with Adamsite.

  Adamsite had another more colloquial nickname. It was known as vomit gas.

  The dancer collapsed in the pandekar’s lap, convulsing violently.

  Bolan began squeezing the trigger of the launcher repeatedly as he moved the laser sight from target to target. The projectiles carried only small loads of the irritant, but as the stunned Javanese milled and tried to help one another, the effects spread like wildfire. The soldier swiftly loaded another 15-round cassette of projectiles and resumed firing. Total surprise had been achieved. The entire mob was down or in the process of falling prey to the Adamsite.

  Famke Ryssemus screamed and strained against her bonds. She was seemingly surrounded by a ten-foot halo in the sand. Everyone outside the circle Bolan had drawn lay in their own personal, intestinal hell, part of the greater sea of writhing fanatics. But Bolan could not hold off an army with Adamsite. He had to get in and get out. There were others on the island, and it was only a matter of seconds before the situation would turn deadly.

  Bolan pulled on his gas mask and strode out of the trees.

  A screaming man staggered into Bolan’s path brandishing a razor sharp panga. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he raised the heavy knife over his head. The soldier put a .68-caliber projectile point-blank into the side of the man’s neck, and he collapsed unconscious on the sand.

  Bolan moved into the circle.

  He turned and scooped up a fallen knife. Ryssemus screamed and then collapsed into his arms as he cut her bonds. The soldier leaned toward her ear and shouted through his gas mask. “Close your eyes! Hold your breath!” He lifted her over his shoulder and picked his way back through the heaving throng in the sand. He cleared the gas area and yanked up his mask as he set the woman down.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She swayed on her feet. Her beautiful blue eyes were as wide as dinner plates. She looked at Bolan like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. “I…”

  “Where’s your uncle?”

  “My uncle?” Miss Ryssemus jolted into awareness. “They tortured him! Oh, my God! He’s still in the big hut!”

  Bolan took the woman’s wrist and pulled her into the trees outside the semicircle of huts. She stared in dull horror as he drew his Beretta 93-R and shoved it into her hands. “Stay here,” Bolan said as he flicked the selector to semiauto. “Hold the gun in both hands. Point it and pull the trigger on anyone besides me or your uncle. I’ll be right back.”

  Bolan shoved her down into the bushes and ran through the trees. He skirted the outer perimeter of the horseshoe-shaped village and made for the rear of the biggest hut, which was built on a raised platform of logs. The beams of the structure were solid, but the walls were made of densely woven lengths of split bamboo. Three men with rifles spilled out of the hut and ran down the steps toward
the fallen mob. Bolan stayed in the shadows. He crept around the building and stopped at the edge of the veranda.

  A man stood with his rifle shouldered, watching the other men run to the circle of writhing bodies. Bolan watched, as well. The men ran and knelt beside their stricken comrades. Within seconds they were doubled over, contorting with nausea.

  The man on the veranda stayed put, tracking his rifle for a target. Suddenly the man turned toward Bolan. The laser sight of the Executioner’s weapon system put a red dot on the rifleman’s head. The silenced M-16 coughed once, and the gunman fell.

  Bolan vaulted onto the veranda, but he stopped at the door.

  Every instinct screamed danger.

  From within the hut a voice spoke in Dutch, a language Bolan had some understanding of but could not easily speak. He kept his body behind the heavy teak beam framing the doorway as he spoke slowly in English.

  “Let Pieter Ryssemus go, now, and I will let you live.”

  There was a lengthy pause before the answer came back in very thick English. “Preacher man gonna die, GI. Throw down your gun. My boy come pick it up, and maybe we talk.”

  Bolan drew the 9 mm Centennial hammerless revolver from his ankle holster and tucked it into the back of his belt. He pulled his pant leg back over the empty holster and stood. He tossed the assault rifle through the door. It fell with a clatter.

  “All right,” the voice beckoned.

  Bolan stepped into the doorway.

  The hut was a meeting place. The vast majority of the floor was woven grass matting where people sat and received instruction. A small, elevated platform near the back with a pair of cushions marked where the pandekar and the mullah held court.

  A section of the matting was pulled away, revealing a hatch in the floor that led to a cellar. A Javanese man stood in the stairway leading down. He wore a red turban, and was bare chested and heavily muscled. He held an AK-74 rifle with the buttstock folded and the bayonet fixed. Bolan assessed the situation. The man was an amateur, but he was armed with an automatic rifle and the range was five meters.