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  Three armed figures stood at the head of the stairs

  They were debating something that was also holding them back from approaching the office. The Executioner figured they had found the dead guy downstairs.

  To Bolan’s right was the door that led to the parking garage—it was the only way open to his escape.

  Aware the three men might push caution behind them and head for the office, Bolan acted. He eased the door wide enough to let him through, raised the Beretta and powered into the corridor. He fired off two 3-round bursts in the general direction of the group and heard the startled shouts. Return shots, fired in haste, gouged the wall, sending plaster dust across the corridor. Bolan kept moving, committed to his action. He reached the door and shouldered it open. A final shot from his pursuers thudded into the door frame inches from Bolan’s head. He slammed the door shut, knowing his freedom would be extremely short lived.

  The thunder of boots approaching the door and the voices shouting back and forth warned him his time was running out fast. They had his scent. The hounds had taken up the chase and Bolan was the prize. The only thing they should have taken notice of was this prize had the choice of fighting back.

  MACK BOLAN®

  The Executioner

  #314 Lethal Payload

  #315 Agent of Peril

  #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

  Don Pendleton’s

  The Executioner®

  DEADLY COMMAND

  The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.

  —Ulysses S. Grant

  1822–1885

  Those who supply the guns that kill innocent citizens can no longer keep their hands clean. I will hunt them down and end their game—hit them where it hurts, and hit them fast.

  —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

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  1

  Miami, Florida

  The background intel that set Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, on his current mission had been encapsulated in frustration and not without a little impotent rage. Bolan had sensed the futility of the feelings behind the words transmitted via the interview that followed the triple funeral of slain police officers. He might not have even caught the televised segment if he had not been taking some downtime, following the completion of a mission he had undertaken at the behest of Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm in Virginia. Bolan’s chosen R & R had him chilling out in an expensive hotel on Florida’s sunshine coast. It wasn’t usual for Bolan to indulge in such opulent surroundings but his state of mind had allowed him a few days of rest, something he needed at that precise moment in time. After three days of allowing himself to relax, Bolan knew his downtime was not going to last for much longer and when he turned on that evening’s newscast, the soldier realized just how true that was.

  In a standoff with warring street gangs in Miami, five police officers had been fired on—three were dead, one was in a coma and the fifth still in critical condition. Two civilians caught in the cross fi
re were also dead. Eyewitness accounts had been corroborated in their descriptions of the weaponry used by the gangs. They had been using sophisticated arms, autorifles and the kind of ordnance not usually seen on the streets. A recovered weapon was shown. It was military ordnance, not available to the general public, and not even in use by the police.

  The reporter, speaking to a Miami-Dade police officer, questioned why such weapons were on the streets. The cop, barely able to express himself calmly, said that the weapons were being supplied by organized crime groups, and that this was not the first time it had happened. The police had their suspicions as to who was behind the supply chain but had been unable to pursue any clear lines of evidence due to lack of solid proof.

  The interview ended with a short piece on the funeral gathering, including shots of the four-year-old daughter of one of the slain officers placing a single rose on her father’s casket. The look of bewilderment and the shine of tears on the girl’s face caught Bolan off guard and he could relate to the held-back anger in the manner and tone of the cop who had been interviewed.

  Bolan knew the man. He had worked with him on a mission that had taken the Executioner from Miami to an island off the Cuban mainland.

  Gary Loomis was a good cop, a dedicated officer with the Miami-Dade force. Bolan remembered him clearly, and seeing the man’s barely checked grief over the slain officers reminded the soldier of the daily risks police officers took when they placed themselves in the line of fire.

  Later that night Bolan found himself recalling the young daughter of one of the dead police officers placing that single rose on her father’s casket. It drifted back to him as he slept. It had been a long time since the soldier had been revisited by a disturbing vision—but the image of the child plagued him until he woke the following morning.

  He called MDPD and was connected to Gary Loomis.

  “Cooper? Hell, of course, I remember you.” Loomis chuckled. “No way I’m liable to forget. So what can I do for you?”

  “It’s what I might be able to do for you, Loomis. Can we meet?”

  “Sure. Give me an hour.”

  Bolan told the intrigued police officer where he was staying, then went down to have breakfast.

  On the terrace they faced each other across a small table, having a drink. The Executioner and the Miami cop, men who walked through the shadow world of violence and corruption, one on the side of the law, the other who worked outside that law.

  “I saw the interview,” Bolan said.

  “Bad time for Miami-Dade.”

  “You know those men personally?”

  “Every damn one of them. Worked with them. Drank with them off duty. Knew their families, too.”

  “The girl who placed the rose?”

  “Emily Crockett.” Loomis stared into empty space for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Sweet kid. She’ll be watched over. We take care of our own. Cooper, our guys never had a chance. They were cut down by state-of-the-art hardware. When I did some checking, I found out similar ordnance has turned up across the country. A definite in Chicago and Newark. I dig deeper. There’s a pattern here. Too much weaponry being sent out. It’s like a preamble for something bigger. The cops on the streets are our only line of defense against these bastards. Hell, Cooper, it’s out of control and we can’t keep up.”

  “Any link to the vendors?”

  “The suppliers?” Loomis gripped his beer bottle until his knuckles turned white. “We have files on them, but nothing strong enough to give us just cause. No real evidence. Oh, we have a couple of local dirtbags we figure are the organization’s crew, but we can’t touch them without airtight proof, and we don’t have that yet. They have lawyers on standby. They’d be back on the street before the charge sheets had finished printing. So we do nothing because if we screw up any investigation, that’s it.”

  “So you have names? Locations?”

  “Well, yeah. But what good…” Loomis stared at Bolan. “What the hell are you thinking, Cooper?”

  Bolan raised his beer. “What am I thinking, Gary?”

  Loomis gathered his thoughts before he spoke. “I know the way you operate, and your rules are way off-the-wall.”

  “We got results last time.”

  “Yeah, I know…but the department would go ape shit if we got involved in something illegal.”

  “The department isn’t going to be involved. Or you. All I need are names and a place to start. After that you forget about me.”

  Loomis ran his hand across his face, taking a deep breath as he considered.

  “Gary, if I’m compromising you, just walk away. I’ll figure another way in.”

  “You could be dealing your way into something heavy. So don’t be fooled into thinking they’ll be easy marks.”

  “No chance of that.”

  Loomis stood up. “Be at the cemetery at five-thirty. Take a look at Jimmy Crockett’s headstone. I’ll be there, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  Before he moved Loomis said, “There has to be a good reason you want in.”

  “There is. Five good reasons, civilians and Emily Crockett.”

  Loomis nodded and walked away, leaving Bolan to his thoughts.

  The soldier could have moved on, walked away and left the matter in the hands of others. But the Executioner was the one who could stand up for the innocents who were unable to fight back.

  Later, back in his room, Bolan powered up the laptop he had borrowed from the hotel. It would allow him to view the contents of the flash drive Loomis had slipped into his jacket pocket as they had stood briefly at the grave of Jimmy Crocket. Loomis had brushed past the soldier as he moved away without a word being spoken, and Bolan had left in the other direction, returning to his hotel.

  Sitting with the laptop on the small table, he let the computer power up. He inserted the flash drive into the USB port and waited while it installed itself. He tapped the keys to open the file and scrolled down: a number of mug shots, each with a short note identifying the individuals.

  Harry Quintain was the local crew chief, a chubby-faced, balding guy in his mid-thirties. His sheet detailed his extensive criminal record.

  Roy Soames was Quintain’s broker-enforcer, a hard-looking guy with a lifelong rap sheet that had started when he was fourteen.

  The files stated that Quintain handled illegal merchandise, including weapons, and had connections in Chicago, which was a distribution hub. Quintain ran the operation in Miami, but his allegiance was to the Chicago operation. It was suspected he moved around his local bases, using diverse locations, which meant law-enforcement agencies were having little success pinning them down.

  For Bolan this was a beginning. The hard work lay ahead.

  THE SOLDIER SPENT a couple of days watching the building that was Quintain’s current base of operations. It was close to the ocean, a modern structure with plenty of glass and shiny steel. The elevator was one of those exposed models that ran up the front of the building so he was able to see Quintain, flanked by two bodyguards and Soames, enter the lobby and step into the elevator. Bolan counted off the floors and saw them step out on the ninth, where Quintain has his suite of offices. His observation of the building, though tedious, fed him what he wanted and by the afternoon of the third day Bolan had enough to make his move.

  Quintain and Soames always arrived in separate cars but traveled together to the ninth floor via the elevator. Quintain spent his days in the building, while Soames made a couple of trips outside daily. Same time each day. He always left on his own, the bodyguards staying in the building with Quintain.

  Bolan was ready on the third day, in his rental car, watching patiently. When Soames stepped out and crossed to his vehicle, Bolan fired up the engine and fell in behind the man as he exited the parking area. The soldier allowed a couple of cars between them.

  They traveled for a good thirty minutes, Soames in no hurry, observing the speed limits. He was in a dark blue metallic Ferrari California conver
tible, an easy car to follow. Bolan stayed well behind. He saw Soames make a right, off the main drag and into an industrial park. The soldier carried on past the entrance, able to monitor Soames through the chain-link fence as he coasted along the line of storage units. A couple of hundred yards along Bolan spotted a service road, swung onto it and parked. He checked the 93-R in its holster under his sports coat, locked the rental and backtracked until he found a break in the poorly maintained perimeter fence.

  Bolan stood for a moment as he fixed the last position of Soames’s car, then moved steadily between the units as he closed in on the general area. It was plainly obvious the industrial area was deserted. Unit doors hung open. Windows, those not smashed, were dusty, which suited Bolan’s purpose.

  He picked up the sound of voices and tracked in toward them, the Beretta in his hand. Edging around the building, he spotted the Ferrari parked nose-in by a unit. The doors were open. A parked panel truck stood inside. Next to Soames’s vehicle was a bright yellow Corvette.

  He was in conversation with two men. One was well-dressed like Soames. The other had on denims and a florid silk shirt. The conversation appeared amiable.

  Soames said something to the denim-clad man, who then went to the panel tuck and opened the rear doors, exposing a stack of long wooden crates. The top was removed from one of the crates and the guy lifted out an M240 7.62 mm machine gun. The weapon was strictly military ordnance, not designated for civilian use. It was a rapid-fire, belt-fed weapon and would prove devastatingly efficient in the hands of illegal users. Regular beat cops would have no defense against such a weapon if it got on the streets.

  Soames checked the M240, nodding his approval. From what Bolan could see, Soames was the buyer, the other guy his source—which made him important to the Executioner.