Terminal Velocity Read online

  Annotation

  Bolan, bereaved and all but beaten, stands in the shambles of Stony Man Farm.

  The legendary warrior, whose sacred mission began in the jungles of Vietnam and who came home to battle the savage Mob in the urban jungle, now faces an even deadlier enemy.

  A brilliantly conceived KGB trap lies in wait for him. The CIA has orders to kill him. Betrayed and alone, Mack "The Bastard" Bolan has no choice but to rise above all sanction.

  He must strike at Moscow.

  This is Bolan's lonliest, deadliest war!

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Aftermath

  Part One1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Part Two14

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  16

  17

  18

  19

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  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  Part Three29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Epilogue

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Terminal Velocity

  "No. the Cold War is not over. But let us henceforth call it the Third World War. for that is what it really is."

  Brian Crazier

  Strategy for Survival

  "Don't tell me that I can't. I can, and I will, because I must. Forevery action there is a reaction, for every evil a good, forevery weakness a strength — and forevery injustice there is somewhere a final justice."

  Mack Bolan

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Alan Bomack for his contributions to this work.

  Aftermath

  "They'll pay for it... I'm going to get everyone responsible." Bolan forced out the words as he stroked April Rose's hair.

  Hal Brognola stepped forward. His square beefy hands fluttered open in a gesture of compassion. Bolan rocked on his knees, the body of April Rose still supported in the crook of his arm. "Everyone, Hal! I'm going to get them all."

  The two medics stood there uncertainly, then there was a soft rustle as they straightened out the plastic body bag. The dry rasp of the nylon zipper dragged across Bolan's raw nerves like a distant burst of machine-gun fire.

  His mind was clouded with bitter, roiling smoke, his vision red with flames.

  This war never ended.

  The battle raged on.

  His ears pounded with a rushing, roaring sound as strong as a gunship's rotorwash.

  From somewhere behind him came an anguished bellow of pain. Bolan did not turn — for him the sound came out of the past. He did not see the second medic team lifting the wounded Aaron Kurtzman onto a stretcher. Bolan just heard that universal cry of agony and felt its echo within his own heart.

  He would never forget the screams. The sounds were etched in his soul.

  Mack Bolan.

  Sergeant Mercy.

  The Executioner.

  Colonel John Phoenix.

  The same man... fighting the same ceaseless war.

  Or was he? Could he ever be the same again?

  So many good people had been lost. Their faces haunted him still. Familiar features drifted in that crimson haze, forever beyond his reach: the family he loved; the comrades he fought with; and April Rose, the woman who had meant so much. Her face hovered before him now. Those smiling, loving eyes. An image to be fixed imperishably in his mind's eye.

  He must hold fast to that living memory. But already it seemed she was encircled by a garland of flames. Brazen leaves of fire. Bolan reached out as if to brush them away. If only he could reach far enough and touch once more, he'd hold her safe forever.

  Their fingertips brushed lightly. And then he clasped her hand.

  Her pale, cold hand.

  One of the medics tried as gently as possible to disengage his grip.

  "Don't... you... touch... her!" Bolan grated between tightly clenched teeth. Eyes still closed, he lifted his head. "I'll kill you. I'll kill you all!"

  "Steady, Striker, steady!" said Brognola, his brow furrowed in compassion. He touched the big man's shoulder, nodding to the two stretcher bearers to back off for a moment.

  Bolan's lips brushed across April Rose's forehead as he eased the ring from her finger. The ring he had given her.

  He turned the ring over between his fingers, as if mesmerized by the myriad twinkling reflections in the fiery stone.

  Stony Man... the Phoenix program... it had all turned to ashes in his mouth.

  It could never be the same. What a hollow victory they had won here this night.

  April Rose had been his right arm. The loss was immeasurable.

  Mercy was a name he'd earned. Sergeant Mercy they had called him. But that was in another land, another hellground, another story... almost another man. This time there would be no mercy. No more than he had shown the Vietcong. No more than he had ever shown the Mafia. Bolan would grant no quarter. His lips moved in a silent vow: they are going to pay dearly for this! Whoever is responsible, wherever in the world they hide, I will track them down...

  Brognola watched him for a moment longer, then signaled for the medics to proceed. Wearily he turned and walked toward Dr. Ogilvy.

  "Looks bad, Hal."

  "Hmm?" Brognola said absently, still keeping half an eye on Bolan.

  "That man, Aaron Kurtzman. It doesn't look too good for him," said the doctor. "There's a bullet lodged close to the spinal column. It's going to be a tricky operation. With no guarantee he'll ever be able to walk again."

  "The Bear, paralyzed?"

  "It's a definite possibility," replied the physician, nodding.

  Elliot Ogilvy's reputation was well-known: he had once saved the President's life, but he couldn't work miracles. Brognola stared bleakly at the carnage on the Stony Man grounds as Dr. Ogilvy assured him, "We'll do everything possible for Kurtzman. I just felt I should warn you. How about the colonel over there? I have a sedative that..."

  Brognola shook his head stiffly. "No, he won't take it."

  "Then get him out of here. Away from this mess."

  The head Fed stuck a cigar in the corner of his mouth and chomped on it hard. Sure, he could find some excuse to move Mack away, find him someplace to rest up. But he could do nothing about the memories of what had happened here — they would scar Mack's soul forever.

  * * *

  The medics had taken away April's body. Following Dr. Ogilvy's advice, Brognola had gently coaxed Bolan away from the scene of death on the estate's rainy grounds for the dry warmth of the Stony Man War Room.

  The red phone rang. Brognola picked it up.

  The outside world knew nothing of the terrible battle fought in this isolated arena of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even as the Stony warriors were touched by the cold shadow of death and destruction, life in the everyday world went on as usual. Brognola stood straighter, taller, when he heard the familiar voice.

  "Yes, sir... uh-huh... immediately? I understand." He took the cigar out of his mouth and threw it away. "Yes, sir, I shall ask him. I know that, sir. Thank you."

  Brognola carefully replaced the receiver.

  Mack Bolan looked up as Brognola approached him.

  "Mack, you're needed..."

  Part One

  A Hawk for the Killing

  1

  Tiny dust devils whirled in the shimmering h
aze over the distant dunes that ringed Fullerton Air Force Base.

  Bolan stared, unseeing, at the horizon between the hangars as the driver showed the necessary passes to the sentry at the main gate. But the Stony warrior was not lost to grief.

  His whole being had been shattered into fragments by the terrible price of April Rose's sacrifice. But each distinct facet of the man was functioning methodically, now fueled by a white-hot anger as great as the rage he had felt in Pittsfield a lifetime ago.

  Once again the nearest and dearest to him had been snatched away. Bolan felt an eerie glow. A total connection with the man he once was, and would have to be again. It was a tremor in the spine. A physical manifestation of the psychic force behind his vow: / will track down every last person in the conspiracy against Stony Man — for they must face their Executioner.

  He would make it simple once more.

  Identification.

  Location.

  Confirmation.

  Destruction!

  Lurking behind that uniform he wore, behind that plastic lapel badge that identified him as Colonel John Phoenix, was another man. A man who had stalked the city jungles to annihilate the predatory packs of the Mob. A man whose own personal motivation had been transformed into a crusade for justice.

  A killing machine, some thought him, but with a living heart. And now, regardless of orders, the Executioner was ready to walk the night streets and concrete clearings once more.

  Even now, behind that blank stare, every sense was alert.

  His guard was up. The hellfire rained on Stony Man Farm was intended to take out one target: Phoenix. And the men who organized the attempt on his life would not give up until they could deliver his head to whoever was paying the price.

  All of his being was on red alert. The sensory perception, the memories of what had gone before, the will to do what must be done — they were fused together by the hot breath of anger.

  "Looks like there's a gentleman here to meet you, sir," said the driver, as he pulled up short of the main entrance to the administrative complex.

  David McCarter was standing by the curb. He wore a denim shirt with epaulets and a pair of crisp bush pants. The Englishman was not in uniform, yet he managed to preserve a casual military air carried as much in his bearing as in his choice of attire.

  "Hello, Mack." McCarter offered his hand as soon as Bolan had climbed out of the car. "I'm broke up about what happened."

  "Don't break," Bolan grunted. "Is everything ready?"

  "I got here a couple of hours ago," said McCarter, gesturing for the American to take the glass door to their right.

  The tough, cocky Briton was a professional fighting man through and through. He lived hard, loved hard and fought hard. Once an officer with the elite Special Air Service, he was now a key member of Mack Bolan's Phoenix Force. He had waged war alongside the colonel in the Congo, but never had he seen Bolan in so dark and brittle a temper.

  He felt it was taking all of the other man's effort to contain the simmering rage beneath that exterior of icy calm. As Bolan brushed past him through the doorway, McCarter could sense a kind of heat radiating from the tense muscular frame of The Executioner, as if the blood boiling in his veins was lava waiting to vent.

  Mack Bolan was a human volcano. And McCarter wasn't sure he wanted to be there when it exploded.

  'This way, sirs," said a sergeant, who hovered nearby. His manner was as sharply creased as his knife-edged pants. "Hurford, take the colonel's bag to his quarters."

  They were escorted by a small patrol to a conference room adjoining the base command center. Four men waited for them.

  All signs of rigid military protocol departed with the guard detail.

  "Colonel Phoenix, Mr. McCarter, I'm Dan Ford." He left a thin, dark cheroot smoldering in the ashtray as he rose to greet them. Bolan noted he carried enough gold braid to make him a major general, but he couldn't tell if Ford was stationed at Fullerton or if, like them, he had flown in for this training phase of the mission.

  "I'd like you to meet Glen Knopfler," Ford said, indicating the expensively tailored civilian seated at his left. "Glen is an intelligence analyst and a presidential adviser on, uh, such delicate matters as this."

  "Good to meet you at last, Colonel," Knopfler said.

  "And this is Andrew Webb, who has just transferred over to the ISA."

  Bolan stiffened at the mention of the rival agency. He had not forgotten how they slowed him down when he was tracking the KGB assassin, Fyodor Zossimov.

  Ford sensed trouble and wished to avert it He qualified Webb's attendance. "It was the ISA boys who got hold of the footage you're about to see." He jabbed a button on the console in front of him and a portion of the wall slid apart to reveal a projection screen.

  "Mr. McCarter, I'd like you to meet a countryman of yours. This is Geoffrey Miles." Ford waved his hand to indicate the balding pipe smoker seated next to Knopfler. "Mr. Miles works for a well-known aviation almanac. He's here to provide us with a narration. And he's been a big help to the technicians in Hangar G."

  "Should be ready for you two sometime tomorrow," Miles said, smiling at the major general's compliments.

  "We got this reel of film from a contact in a laboratory in West Germany," explained Webb. "It was being developed for a free-lance filmmaker who had smuggled himself into Afghanistan as a peasant."

  "It's our first look at the Russians' latest war machine in action." Ford pressed the intercom switch. "Roll it as soon as you're ready, Jim."

  Along the far wall the array of television screens displaying data, graphics and straight visuals shut down or flipped to silent test patterns. The illumination of the back-lit map of the world faded away. A squiggled string of writing and numerals flickered on the large screen in front of them.

  The darkened room was momentarily dazzled by the bleached-out image of the noonday sun arched high above the hard-baked rocks of the Afghanistan wilderness. The camera tilted downward to show a panoramic view of a wild and desolate valley.

  The rock-strewn slopes on either side rose sharply into steep bare cliffs. A single track wound through the cleft, following the edge of a dry watercourse. The only sign of life was a solitary eagle floating high on the thermals generated within the oppressive heat of the canyon.

  "This view is looking down the length of the Khazani Valley to the Devil's Gateway," said the aviation expert. "The mujahedeen are located behind that ridge on the left of the screen. Now, watch, at the far end. See, the first Russian vehicle is coming through the gap."

  For an instant, Bolan thought of the mujahedeen — the beleaguered Afghan warriors who believed they had a divine dispensation to resist Soviet efforts to annex their ancient land.

  Then Bolan's eyes refocussed on the screen as the first armored car came through, kicking up a trail of dust from the beaten earth roadway. As the vehicle disappeared behind a squat column of rock around which the road detoured, a troop carrier sped through the constricted opening.

  The towering valley walls could not have been much more than eighty feet apart. The Russian convoy was squeezing through at a fast pace, fearful of an ambush.

  "This is an ammunition convoy traveling west, probably to the garrison that mans the new Soviet airstrip outside Sharuf."

  Having reached a less claustrophobic stretch of highway where the valley floor widened, the lead vehicle slowed, giving the other drivers the chance to take up station again at their proper distances.

  That was when the first rocket was fired.

  The armor-piercing projectile punctured the BRDM-2 command car. The scout vehicle slewed down the graveled embankment, exposing the next troop carrier. Most of the soldiers had leaped clear before the second missile struck home.

  Plumes of smoke streaked from the rocks as a fusillade was fired from the guerrillas' position overlooking the hapless Russians and Afghan militia below.

  "Two rockets, gentlemen. That's all these freedom fighters have to stop
a Russian convoy. Now they must rely on their rifles. Lee-Enfields, mostly. World War I vintage." Miles shook his head wearily as he recited the sorry details.

  The camera zoomed in to catch sight of a Soviet trooper scrambling for better cover. He didn't make it. A mujahedeen marksman hit him between the shoulders and sent him sprawling in the rust-colored grit. Then the filmmaker panned across for a medium close-up of a radio operator shouting frantically into his microphone.

  "He's calling for help." The screen went blank for a moment. "Schroder reloaded his camera at this point, then started filming again. As you can see, the situation doesn't seem to have changed a great deal."

  Another truck was smoldering in the background; perhaps a lucky shot from one of the ancient rifles had set off some of the ammunition. Suddenly the whole picture blurred as the camera swung up to the right. The German filmmaker must have reacted instantly on first hearing the sound of the helicopter's approach.

  It came soaring over the contours of the surrounding mountainside like some prehistoric flying reptile. The side-painted red star stood out against the olive and sand markings. The pilot was good, Bolan silently conceded, to hug that close to the cliff face. The camera followed as the machine rushed headlong down the valley, its rocket pods belching three waves of air-to-ground missiles.

  They straddled the mujahedeen position. Geysers of dirt, rock and roiling fireballs erupted in eerie silence, obscuring the left side of the picture in a dusty pall.

  "We estimate the speed of its attack run at well over two hundred miles per hour!"

  "That's even faster than a Hind!" exclaimed McCarter.

  "This machine can outperform anything the Soviets have ever built before." Miles sucked on his pipe before he added, "Or anything that we've got on our side for that matter. The Russians have taken all the best features of Western-built choppers to come up with this one."

  Bolan's eyes were riveted to the screen. For a moment the camouflage-painted gunship hovered in midair like some loathsome slug as the pilot inspected his handiwork. Then it twisted away in a sharp climbing turn.