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  Something suddenly seized him from behind

  Bolan was yanked to his feet and the tension in his throat and lower back made it obvious that his attacker was big, muscular and very strong. The Executioner tried to twist away from the headlock but his opponent’s muscle mass quickly cancelled the idea. Bolan had managed to hold on to his FNC, so he let his feet come off the ground as he rammed the stock between his legs. The grunt of pain was accompanied by a sudden loosening of the hold.

  Bolan twisted inward and drove the stock into his opponent’s knee a second time. The blow caused the attacker to let go entirely. The Executioner didn’t wait to size up his assailant, instead swinging the weapon upward against the man’s chin.

  Bolan produced the Desert Eagle in one fluid motion, and squeezed the trigger.

  MACK BOLAN®

  The Executioner

  #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

  #315 Agent of Peril

  #316 Poison Justice

  #317 Hour of Judgment

  #318 Code of Resistance

  #319 Entry Point

  #320 Exit Code

  Don Pendleton’s

  The Executioner®

  EXIT CODE

  We can lose the world, one parcel of real estate after another, while we wait for a shot that may never be fired.

  —Admiral Arthur W. Radford

  1896–1973

  There is nothing wrong with technology when used for the good of all. It is when terrorists pervert that technology to oppress the innocent that I will destroy those who abuse it.

  —Mack Bolan

  To all personnel everywhere in the armed forces of the United States of America—may God protect you as you protect us.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Afghanistan

  Colonel Umar Abdalrahman stood at the top of a rise and stared at the smoldering ruins of his main operations center nestled in the mountains bordering the Khyber Pass.

  His crack team of commandos—handpicked from an elite group among Abdalrahman’s various allies throughout the Arab inner circle—had not yet found the remains of his nephew, Sadiq Rhatib. Abdalrahman silently thanked Allah for that. It meant there stood a chance that Rhatib was still alive; if that was true, then he would find his nephew. His men hadn’t been able to gain access to the interior of what had once been their main encampment. Whoever had launched the assault against them had used explosives to blast apart the front wooden facade, and this had collapsed the inner structure. The cavernous remains would not be easy to clear, and Abdalrahman wasn’t sure he even wished to disturb what was certain to have become a tomb for many of his comrades.

  The former mujiahideen warrior turned and studied his surroundings. Bodies were strewed across the neighboring hillside. Abdalrahman stood upon what had served as a helipad. The small attack helicopter they had left there was gone, and there were brass shell casings scattered everywhere. The bodies along the hillside had been stripped of their equipment.

  It looked a lot like the handiwork of nomadic members from radical mujiahideen tribes, but Abdalrahman considered this move a bit too bold. His countrymen were not quite so confrontational; at least, not by their own choosing. They would not have planned such an attack against a numerically and technologically superior force without support.

  Abdalrahman thought he knew exactly who had given them that support: the American named Cooper. What concerned Abdalrahman most was that if his nephew were not buried deeper within the confines of the rubble, then he had managed to escape and had gone into hiding, he had fallen into enemy hands. In either case, Abdalrahman wanted to know—he had to know. Everything in their plan depended on the safety of his nephew. If Sadiq was dead, it would be significantly detrimental to their plans.

  One of Abdalrahman’s men approached—his second in command—and reported, “I do not know how much farther we can go without heavy equipment, Colonel.”

  “Keep digging,” Abdalrahman replied with a wave of his hand. “I have neither the time nor the patience to await the arrival of heavy equipment. There were not a lot of explosives used. There has to be a gap somewhere.”

  The man bowed slightly and walked down the hill to pass on the orders to his men. Abdalrahman looked around him one more time with disgust, and his heart was saddened by the sight. His men had died bravely; he wouldn’t have expected anything less. The New Islamic Front would not be scattered to the four winds as other groups had in the past. His men were different; different kinds of soldiers fighting a different kind of war.

  Abdalrahman was a practical man, and his mentors and trainers had always touted him as a gifted soldier. He had a leadership ability that was exceeded only by his uncanny skill as a tactician. He hadn’t learned to fight the same way as conventional soldiers during his time battling the Soviet invasion of his homeland, neither had he taught his men to fight that way. Abdalrahman believed that the only way to gain victory against your
enemy was to fight in a fashion they had never before encountered. Throughout military history—which he’d studied carefully at an underground university in Baghdad during the height of the Gulf War—armies had lost any battle or war where the tactics of the enemy were unlike any ever encountered by that army. The Crusaders had learned this about the Turks, the English about the Indians, and the Americans about the North Vietnamese.

  And now, the Westerners were about to learn this about the New Islamic Front. Abdalrahman meant to teach that same lesson to the man named Cooper. And he would do it in such a way that it would never be forgotten. He would write it in the blood of the American people, as it ran into the gutters and streets of some of their greatest cities.

  And that was exactly where it belonged.

  Prologue

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  Mack Bolan rubbed his eyes, yawned and stretched in his chair, his combat hardened sinew and muscles pushing through the torn, dirty blacksuit.

  Barbara Price watched him with concern, but he didn’t really acknowledge her attention. There was a time and place for more intimate contact, and Bolan knew that Stony Man’s mission controller understood that all too well. Besides, Bolan was pretty tired and stiff from his long journey. The Executioner had been unable to do more than doze on the flight from Pakistan, and the coffee he’d consumed had left him no more rejuvenated and with a sour stomach to boot. Even without having to worry about the NIF’s terrorist whiz kid—taken into custody at Peshawar and escorted back to the United States by CIA agents—Bolan’s job had really only just begun.

  The situation still hadn’t stabilized such that Bolan could exit and let Stony Man handle the cleanup phase. Sadiq Rhatib was refusing to talk and unless they could get him to start squealing, they stood a snowball’s chance in hell of bringing down the roof on all of the participants. Still, there were a few players in the game dangling out there, and Bolan was thinking that if he couldn’t get Rhatib to roll over, maybe he could get someone else—someone less hardened by religious fanaticism and patriotic fervor—to betray the NIF’s real purpose.

  One man topped that list. Nicolas Lenzini ran most of the numbers games along the East Coast, and his ties to organized crime were hardly a secret. Anybody who was somebody inside the law-enforcement community knew that it was Lenzini, or one of his immediate Family members, who had control over numbers activities in Washington, D.C. Knowledge wasn’t the problem; it was how to get inside the guy’s very tight circle of friends. There was only one man who had the kind of experience required for that.

  Although he’d kept an eye on things, Bolan had let Lenzini’s activities slide, preferring to let the wheels of justice grind away until they got enough solid evidence to put him behind bars. But with the recent intelligence gathered by Stony Man that tied Lenzini and his crew to the New Islamic Front terrorist cell operating inside the United States, it was time to deal with the problem in the only way Bolan knew how: cover, role camouflage and—when the time was right—a full blitz. The rules hadn’t changed any since Bolan’s first campaign against the Mafia so many years ago, the same campaign that had kicked off his War Everlasting.

  Bolan was about to open his mouth and speak to Price when Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman suddenly wheeled himself through the doorway, immediately followed by Harold Brognola, the Stony Man chief.

  The team was gathering to discuss Sadiq Rhatib’s campaign for the NIF to seize control of the FBI’s Internet packet-sniffer, Carnivore.

  “How’s it going, Striker?” Brognola asked, an unlit cigar jammed between his teeth.

  As the Executioner rose and gripped the man’s hand in greeting, he replied, “I’ll let you know after a shower, change of clothes and some shut-eye.”

  Brognola nodded as he pulled the cigar from his mouth and sat. “I know you need to rest, but I wanted to give you what we know so you can plan your next step.”

  “I’m all ears,” Bolan replied.

  “I assume Barb briefed you on the situation with Nicolas Lenzini.”

  “A bit,” Bolan said, looking at Price, “Haven’t really had time to get more in-depth on it, but I do think there’s enough evidence to assume he’s heavily involved with NIF activities here in the States.”

  “And abroad,” Brognola added, not missing a beat. “At least, it would seem that way. I’ll let Bear fill you in on that.”

  As the lights in the War Room dimmed, Kurtzman punched a button on the remote keyboard and the overhead projector mounted into the ceiling displayed the image of a swarthy-looking character in a tailored three-piece suit. The photo image wasn’t the best, but Bolan immediately pulled the face from his list of mental files.

  “Lenzini?” Bolan asked Kurtzman.

  The Stony Man cybernetics expert nodded. “Age sixty-one, place of birth, Boston.” Kurtzman looked at Bolan, winked and replied, “A homeboy, Striker.”

  “I feel so honored,” Bolan replied with an expression of mock humility.

  Bolan’s remark produced smiles from the rest of the team. The Executioner had been born in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam, but his battle on the home front had begun in the small town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

  “Six years ago, Lenzini started taking an interest in more than just the numbers rackets,” Price said. “He began investing in dot-coms all over the place, focusing particularly on the larger ones that provided Web-based services and Internet technologies to anyone requiring them. At first a large number of local law-enforcement agencies were convinced he was just using these companies to launder funds or take bets electronically. Nothing ever came of it though.”

  “Why?” Bolan asked.

  “They couldn’t build enough evidence to support a grand jury indictment,” Brognola said.

  “So they just dropped it,” Bolan stated.

  “You’ve got it,” Price continued. “After the attacks on the WTC, priorities suddenly shifted. Nobody figured it was worth their time because terrorists were the bigger fish to fry.”

  Bolan shook his head. “The problem with that kind of thinking is that it doesn’t account for the real foundation of organized crime—greed. They obviously didn’t figure the syndicate might use that to their advantage, and even go as far as to crawl beneath the sheets with terrorists if it meant easy money.”

  “True,” Price agreed. “And that, coupled with the collapse of dot-coms, left the FBI convinced that Lenzini had simply made a bad investment and lost enough to put to rest any ideas he had about maintaining his legitimate businessman charade.”

  “But now we think differently?”

  “Absolutely,” Kurtzman said. He tapped a key and displayed a 3-D map of the United States. The map showed a series of gold stars in various areas of the country, with dotted blue lines connecting those areas.

  “Once I got into Lenzini’s network, I found quite a few interesting little tidbits.”

  “Such as?” Bolan asked.

  “Well, for one, his system has network-wide security protocols that very much mirror those Rhatib used to cover his tracks inside Carnivore.”

  “I’d say that’s a pretty strong connection,” Brognola chimed in.

  Bolan nodded.

  “Additionally,” Kurtzman continued, “he’s got an infrastructure as large as the federal information system repositories, and damn near as large as Stony Man’s own network. This map shows only the connections within North America, but there are also hits in twenty-seven foreign countries, including a concentration in Europe, and scatterings throughout every remaining continent.”

  Bolan couldn’t refrain from whistling his surprise. “Sounds like Lenzini’s been busy.”

  “What bothers us most is that we didn’t catch it before now,” Price said. She sighed with a look of frustration.

  “I wouldn’t get too down on yourselves,” Bolan replied. “Not even Stony Man can be everywhere at once. You can’t plan for every contingency.”

  “That’s for sure,” Brog
nola added with a grunt.

  “No, but we sure as hell can do something about it now,” Kurtzman continued. “My team is already working on a new detection program that can head off something like this in the future by allowing us to see it ahead of time. You see, every programmer and technologist has his or her own set of signature work. You could almost compare it to the signature of a bomb maker or arsonist.”

  “Like a profile?” Brognola asked.

  “Sort of, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. We do build a profile on them, without a doubt, but there are telltale signs they leave behind, and no two are alike. You could call it the electronic version of a fingerprint. Maybe it’s the particular system or combination of systems they use to build their infrastructure, maybe it’s their methods of programming. Whatever it is, we can hit upon it and expand the profile at an exponential rate. And if we can actually tie this information to the identity of that individual, just like we did with Rhatib, we’re one step closer to closing the holes in all of our information and defense systems.”

  “But for the time being,” Price said to Bolan, “we need you to put an end to Lenzini’s operations. Basically, we need you to buy Stony Man some time.”

  Bolan shrugged. “The only way for me to do that is to get a clearer understanding of how Lenzini’s work ties to the NIF. What’s the motivation here?”

  “That’s what we don’t know,” Brognola said, cutting in. “What we can tell you is that Lenzini set up this network to get Rhatib access to specific areas, most of them defensive operational systems and defense networks belonging to the Defense Department.”

  “Something’s wrong here,” Price said. “Why would the NIF go after defensive systems? You’d think they would want to get their hands on offensive weaponry, particularly nuclear or chemical.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking as well,” Bolan said. “Unless they plan to launch some type of major offensive and use Carnivore to shut down defensive systems. That would render us vulnerable to just about any attack.”

  “Precisely,” Kurtzman added.

  “Your friend, Tyra MacEwan, was the one who really helped us to see how this works,” Price said. “She possessed key knowledge we didn’t have. About four years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency started a program called the Next Generation Internet, or NGI, which they nicknamed SuperNet. The funding was sanctioned at the highest levels within the Oval Office and the Pentagon, and plans started immediately for its design, engineering and ultimately its implementation.” She smiled and then looked at Kurtzman. “But I’ll let Bear get into the technical details.”