Season of Slaughter

  Bolan wasn’t a man given to rage or petty revenge

  But blood cried out for blood, and he was reminded of the origin of his crusade in the spirit of vengeance for his fallen family. He fought the anger, wrestled it under control, harnessing that fury and force into the power and precision he would need to carry off his penetration into the hell zone this night.

  Avenge the dead and protect those yet untouched.

  The first motto was allowed to run its course, because that activity inevitably would lead him to the second vow. Dead terrorists weren’t nearly as good at killing innocents. Not when they were swept away by the cleansing flames of the Executioner.

  Rage and vengeance, though, took the Executioner only so far. The rest came from a soldier’s duty to protect those he was sworn to defend.

  Other titles available in this series:

  Battle Force

  Rampage

  Takedown

  Death’s Head

  Hellground

  Inferno

  Ambush

  Blood Strike

  Killpoint

  Vendetta

  Stalk Line

  Omega Game

  Shock Tactic

  Showdown

  Precision Kill

  Jungle Law

  Dead Center

  Tooth and Claw

  Thermal Strike

  Day of the Vulture

  Flames of Wrath

  High Aggression

  Code of Bushido

  Terror Spin

  Judgment in Stone

  Rage for Justice

  Rebels and Hostiles

  Ultimate Game

  Blood Feud

  Renegade Force

  Retribution

  Initiation

  Cloud of Death

  Termination Point

  Hellfire Strike

  Code of Conflict

  Vengeance

  Executive Action

  Killsport

  Conflagration

  Storm Front

  War Season

  Evil Alliance

  Scorched Earth

  Deception

  Destiny’s Hour

  Power of the Lance

  A Dying Evil

  Deep Treachery

  War Load

  Sworn Enemies

  Dark Truth

  Breakaway

  Blood and Sand

  Caged Sleepers

  Strike and Retrieve

  Age of War

  Line of Control

  Breached

  Retaliation

  Pressure Point

  Silent Running

  Stolen Arrows

  Zero Option

  Predator Paradise

  Circle of Deception

  Devil’s Bargain

  False Front

  Lethal Tribute

  Don Pendleton’s

  Mack Bolan®

  Season of Slaughter

  To Bobbi, for making the dark shine

  Of all the Causes which conspire to blind Man’s erring Judgment, and misguide the Mind, What the weak Head with strongest bias rules, Is Pride, the never-failing Vice of Fools.

  —Alexander Pope,

  Essay on Criticism, Part II

  Terrorists are motivated by their pride and their hatred, which blind them to the truth. And that is their fatal mistake.

  —Mack Bolan

  CONTENTS

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The two men had birth names, but long ago they’d decided to lose them. Now the tall men were known by the authorities of a dozen nations simply as Adonis and Dark. They were men for hire and had the reputation of being the world’s finest.

  Despite a forty-six-inch chest and twenty-four-inch biceps testing the strength of a red-and-gold gymnasium T-shirt, the long-haired, blond Adonis didn’t draw more than a passing glance. His arms and hands were crisscrossed with scratches, cuts and furrows from bullets over the years, and one hand gripped the heavy nylon straps of two, five-foot-long duffel bags. Only the veins bulging on the back of his hand and forearm showed any sign of effort as he strode along the airport terminal.

  “Your choice. Security or radar?” Adonis asked.

  In comparison, Dark was just as tall as his six-foot-six partner, but where the blond giant had his head rising above the crowd, the other kept his long, black-tressed head nestled tightly between his shoulders, hunching as if against a chill in the air. It was fifty-five degrees, and the sun shone brightly, making Dark wince more tightly behind his wraparound shooting glasses. At the question of his partner, his face split into a grin.

  “I’ll take the fun job,” he said, his tone as cold and grating as a shovel in grave dirt, a faint hint of a British accent to his voice.

  Adonis chuckled and handed the dark man a smaller bag. “Sure, leave me with the heavy lifting.”

  “You know you love it, Captain Beefcake.”

  Adonis looked his friend up and down, then nodded. “Be careful.”

  Dark slung the smaller satchel over his shoulder and gave Adonis a conspiratorial wink. “Then how would I enjoy myself?”

  WEARINESS DOGGED Carl Lyons as he arrived at the airport with the van full of blacksuits and trainees. The men with him were a mix of familiar faces and strangers. After training and a full indoctrination, they would all be made part of the guard force at one of the nation’s most elite nerve centers in the fight against terrorism. Jack Grimaldi was waiting at a helipad at Dulles, ready to take them all back to Stony Man Farm to begin the training.

  Closing in on the terminal, the Able Team warrior became more mindful of the heavy Colt Python in its shoulder holster. Soldiers at every terminal were armed with M-16s and Berettas. Washington police were also on hand, MP-5s on slings, .40-caliber Glock pistols in Sam Browne belts. He wondered briefly at the cause of the new national Orange Terror alert, but he didn’t want to confuse the issue by being part of a heavily armed group of men heading through an airport.

  At a glance, he realized five of the nine men he was with were armed with at least a handgun.

  “Make sure your law-enforcement identification is visible as we’re going through the airport,” Lyons told the men. “We don’t need Homeland Security jumping down our throats if they discover that we’re carrying.”

  There was a chuckle among the familiar members of the group, but Lyons wasn’t sharing in it. He’d been on the line with Able Team too often and forced into open conflict with members of the CIA or supposedly friendly foreign government agencies.

  He glanced to a stocky little fireplug of a guy who was riding shotgun beside him. With a full face that lent him a cherubic demeanor and crystal-blue eyes that seemed alive with the thoughts swirling behind them, he seemed on automatic pilot. He was a veteran of the blacksuit program, and the Able Team leader remembered that this guy had actually accompanied Mack Bolan in the field in a desperate mission in Egypt.

  “You
all right?” Lyons asked.

  David Kowalski gave his chest a rub, tracing a line across his torso. “Just thinking about getting back to work, sir.”

  “Don’t call me sir. I work for a living.”

  Kowalski had his leather jacket in his lap and Lyons evaluated him with a glance. His arms were long and slender, giving the illusion of leanness despite the fact that the muscles under the skin shifted tightly. No, he wasn’t a power-lifter as Lyons was, but there was strength in the corded ropes hiding under the skin. A more apparent gauge of his strength was the stretch of his T-shirt, showing off a chest that rivaled his own.

  The whole effect reminded Lyons of a pit bull.

  Kowalski withdrew a chain from under his T-shirt collar, then bent to sit upright and don his jacket, covering the shoulder holster.

  “Southpaw?” Lyons asked.

  “Despite every effort to cure me, sir.”

  “What did I say about calling me ‘sir’?”

  Kowalski smiled. “You never gave me anything else to call you.”

  “Call me Ironman.”

  “Ski.”

  Lyons nodded. “Okay, gang. Wait here. I’m going to drop off the van and then we’ll be off to the Farm. Don’t wander too far, and no more than fifty pounds of loot from the duty-free shop. Any more and we start dumping you out of the chopper.”

  This time Lyons shared in some of the mirth that rippled through the back of the van. Kowalski chuckled, but got lost again in thoughts of a future in conflict.

  ADONIS PAUSED as he watched the group of men getting out of the van. They all had the look of hardened professionals—well-trained police or military men—and he didn’t doubt that they were together for a reason. He knew that Washington, D.C., was the center of a lot of law enforcement and military training resources, both official and unofficial, and together they looked like students en route to one of their classes.

  He had attended a couple local schools around the area, which had been part of how he’d continued to hone his deadly tradecraft. Most of it was from hands-on training, but there was something to be said for a controlled classroom environment.

  Adonis continued along, carrying his gear, the only sign of anything out of the ordinary being the way his muscles rippled up and down his long arms as he gripped the heavy duffels. The new missile systems were supposed to be man-portable, but the launcher and its four rocket shells still strained against the 250-pound-test nylon on the duffel straps. He made his way through the terminal lobby, relatively invisible for the sheer fact that his T-shirt and bags sported the emblems of the Washington Redskins.

  A few travelers whispered as he walked by, but they assumed him to be one of the giants who wore shoulder pads on the offensive or defensive lines of the football field, not a mercenary who had moved beyond being a pawn on a battlefield. A wave of revulsion washed over Adonis as he passed people.

  He was glad that the RING had established most of these people as expendable in its crusade to make the world a better place.

  “Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” he mused under his breath.

  A couple of green-and-brown camouflaged young men walked toward him and he smirked. Who could believe in a government that issued woodland camouflage to people patrolling an airport? It reminded him of the novelty T-shirt he once saw—the same patterned camou with big white letters reading Ha, Ha, I’m Wearing Camouflage. You Can’t See Me.”

  If it was to make them more visible, he would have to think that a military uniform and an M-16 rifle were about as blatantly obvious a sign that they were armed forces personnel as was needed.

  “Sir?” One of the young men spoke up.

  Adonis kept walking, ignoring him.

  The other one stepped in front of him.

  Adonis smiled, continuing to walk, bumping the man aside. It was only then that he stopped and looked at the wide-eyed youngster. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you. It must have been the camouflage,” Adonis quipped.

  “Like we haven’t heard that twenty times today,” one of the National Guardsmen said almost soft enough not to be heard.

  “We’d like to take a look inside your bags,” the other guardsman said. He didn’t seem so authoritative now.

  Adonis shrugged and smiled. “Go right ahead.”

  He set both bags down, letting them clunk against the floor tiles with a resounding thump. The Guardsmen bent to pick up the bags and found themselves pulled off balance by the sheer weight. Adonis sighed at their relatively poor physical condition before he looked at his palms, rubbed red and raw by the nylon straps despite the heavy calluses put on them by his long career.

  “What do you have in these things?” the first asked.

  “Missile launchers,” Adonis said coolly.

  The guardsman paused while the other unzipped the other bag and choked back a horrified response.

  The two looked at each other for an instant, but it might as well have been an eternity.

  Adonis was in motion, one of his long legs sweeping up from the floor in a savage scythe of speed, the toe reaching up and crushing into the throat of the man kneeling over the open duffel. Blood erupted from the guardsman’s lips, his head snapping up and back, body lifted from the ground by the savage force of the kick. The giant professional didn’t need any more evaluation than the feel of crunching cartilage on his toes to know his first victim was dead.

  Adonis spun on the other guardsman, who was frantically clawing for his rifle, mouth opening to scream. Instead one massive paw closed over his victim’s face, his other hand chopping down hard on the guardsman’s forearm. Bone snapped on impact, satisfying the big man as he yanked his victim off his feet. A pistoning fist flashed up and into the rib cage, again producing the crunching impact of destroyed bones. The young soldier spasmed, eyes staring pleadingly.

  “I’ll be merciful,” Adonis whispered. He brought up his other hand, wrapped it around the dying man’s head and gave a savage twist. The breaking neck sounded like a cracking tree branch and the body slumped to the ground.

  Adonis evaluated how long the two kills took and realized that the crowd around him was still silent, trying to figure out what was going on. Barely a few seconds, he figured as he closed his duffel and calmly picked up both bags, continuing on to his date with the tarmac.

  It was up to Dark to provide the distraction he’d need to get out there.

  DARK WALKED with purpose now, dangling the satchel at his side with playful glee. His head had risen from between his shoulders and he moved with a grace and smoothness belying his intent. Passing between the glass doors of the terminal, he paused and hung the strap of his bag around his neck.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!”

  The crowd slowed, looking at him. Out of the corner of one eye, the camouflaged shapes of National Guardsmen shifted, their attention drawn to him.

  “May I have your undivided attention for a moment?” Dark called.

  He plunged both his hands into his bag and withdrew two guns that looked as if they belonged in a science-fiction movie. They were Calico 950 submachine guns, sleek, angled weapons with long, helical magazines that could fit fifty or one-hundred rounds in a tube magazine across the back. Dark, naturally, had had his Calicos fitted with 100-round magazines, extras securely strapped down just past the mouth of the open bag.

  He planned to make noise and cause carnage, both in vastly liberal amounts.

  One National Guardsman, a young black woman, spotted the weapons first and started to go for the Beretta on her hip. He gave her a moment to cry, “Gun!” then leveled his left Calico at her, tapping off a burst.

  Blood exploded from the woman’s shoulder and face, her body spinning to the ground. Other National Guardsmen cried out in surprise and outrage as she fell. Dark pivoted in a half turn and, punching his right Calico toward them, swept the two men with a longer burst, fanning them down with a wind of 9 mm Parabellum death.

  Screams exploded in the termi
nal and Dark leaped from his vantage point, his long coat flowing behind him like the leather wings of a devil. People were running, scrambling to get away from the figure in black that had just exploded into a fit of murder right before their eyes. He crouched deeply, to take advantage of running bodies as a shield against more oncoming soldiers and security people, then held down the triggers on both Calicos. Pivoting and firing, he swept the crowd for a good three seconds, sixty rounds flying uncontrollably in a wild storm of destruction. Bodies slammed into the ground, some struck by bullets, others thrown down by the panicking crowd that stampeded and trampled over them.

  Dark never could get over his giddy surprise at how easy it was to turn a crowded, public venue into a charnel house simply by inciting a little panic. Bodies were strewed about. He figured there were twenty to thirty of them, all motionless, only a few of them people he’d actually slain with a bullet, the rest crushed underfoot by squealing, terrified, so-called “innocent bystanders.”

  He moved out of the center of the walkway, hitting a shoulder roll over a ticket counter.

  A blond ticket woman went white-faced at the sight of him landing almost on top of her. Clear blue eyes regarded him with abject horror and she curled even tighter into a ball.

  “Please! Please don’t hurt me….”

  “Hush,” he admonished, putting down his gun.

  She seemed to relax from a state of paralyzed panic, looking back into his face. She probably thought he was going to take her hostage. Dark instead stiffened his hand and sliced it hard into her exposed throat. She gave a small kick, her head striking the counter, throat folding and collapsing over his hand. Blood began to seep from the corner of her mouth and her nostrils, her gemlike eyes still staring at him. Dark closed them with a two-fingered caress, then dug into his bag with his free hand. He withdrew a canister and thumbed out a ringed pin.

  The ruthless black-clad murderer casually flipped the canister out and over the counter and, opening his mouth, screamed to equalize the pressure inside and outside of his skull just as the grenade went off on the other side.

  He scooped up the other Calico and rose swiftly. He felt the concussion rolling off the stun grenade’s detonation. Looking over the counter, he saw a hallway full of staggered security officers and National Guardsmen. With a single bound, Dark reached the counter, his trench coat billowing around him, obscuring his body and making him that much harder of a target to hit. Bullets whipped at him, but missed, either by inches or altogether.