Slayground Read online

  SWAMP FEVERS

  National security is on the line when a senator’s daughter disappears from her Florida college. The leader of the cult responsible is desperate to boost his sect’s influence by gaining access to the sensitive government information the girl possesses…even if she dies in the process. Needing to act fast, but quietly, the White House sends Mack Bolan deep into the swamplands.

  Bolan’s mission is to rescue the girl before she gives up any secrets, but infiltrating the leader’s stronghold is no easy feat. Using the humid, marshy landscape to their advantage, the cult has laced the swamps with armed guards and deadly traps. And when Bolan discovers the sect’s most dangerous weapons threaten the mind, not the body, he realizes he’ll need more than guns and brawn to win this battle. But the Executioner has put his faith in justice, and he won’t quit until his enemies are converted.

  He gestured to Elena to keep quiet.

  Ahead of them, he spotted a small group of cult members. They were clustered, whispering, their postures uncertain.

  Leaving the young woman under the dinosaur spine of a rollercoaster, he crept forward until the men were in earshot. He shouldered the HK and slipped the Tekna from its sheath. The three were too preoccupied to notice him...until it was too late.

  Bolan took out the man nearest him with a punch to the throat. The soldier moved toward the second man, following up his punch to the first with a stamp that crushed the guy’s nose and cheekbone. Bolan lunged and thrust upward, driving the Tekna under the second guy’s ribs. As the man fell, the soldier turned, pulling the knife out.

  The third man sprinted away. Bolan began to follow, but instinct held him back. The acolyte ran over a rumpled tarpaulin, and his foot caught a loop of wire and loosened a stake that scythed between two huts, its arc vicious and true. The point caught the man at neck level, slicing his head from his body, which continued forward for two steps before collapsing across the boardwalk.

  Bolan could do nothing as the stake hit a metal strut with a resounding clang, splinters of thick wood flying. Bolan winced as a chunk of wood sliced into his thigh. He cursed as he pulled it out.

  He looked down at the wood in his hand and cursed again. Even in the shadows he could see that one end of the long splinter was stained darker. If he was lucky, the stain was his own blood. If not, then he had a real problem.

  Mack Bolan

  The Executioner

  #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

  #390 Toxic Terrain

  #391 Enemy Agents

  #392 Shadow Hunt

  #393 Stand Down

  #394 Trial by Fire

  #395 Hazard Zone

  #396 Fatal Combat

  #397 Damage Radius

  #398 Battle Cry

  #399 Nuclear Storm

  #400 Blind Justice

  #401 Jungle Hunt

  #402 Rebel Trade

  #403 Line of Honor

  #404 Final Judgment

  #405 Lethal Diversion

  #406 Survival Mission

  #407 Throw Down

  #408 Border Offensive

  #409 Blood Vendetta

  #410 Hostile Force

  #411 Cold Fusion

  #412 Night’s Reckoning

  #413 Double Cross

  #414 Prison Code

  #415 Ivory Wave

  #416 Extraction

  #417 Rogue Assault

  #418 Viral Siege

  #419 Sleeping Dragons

  #420 Rebel Blast

  #421 Hard Targets

  #422 Nigeria Meltdown

  #423 Breakout

  #424 Amazon Impunity

  #425 Patriot Strike

  #426 Pirate Offensive

  #427 Pacific Creed

  #428 Desert Impact

  #429 Arctic Kill

  #430 Deadly Salvage

  #431 Maximum Chaos

  #432 Slayground

  Power that is acquired by violence is only usurpation and only lasts as long as the force of the individual who commands can prevail over the force of those who obey.

  —Denis Diderot

  from The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert

  Whether the violence is physical or psychological, it is my duty to take down those who seek to exploit and control people weaker than themselves.

  —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 com-mand 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 1

  “Do as I say and no one will get hurt. Don’t, and maybe you will.” The words were followed by a vulpine grin that suggested the speaker would love someone to step out of line so he could show he meant what h
e said.

  It didn’t look as if he was going to get the opportunity. Inside the Griffintown branch of the Florida First State Bank, everyone had hit the floor. It was a small space, between the half-frosted glass wall facing the street and the main counter. The lines to the tellers were cramped by tables for deposit slips. There had been two tellers on duty, five customers, and an aging security guard who had been slow on the uptake and due to retire in three weeks. If the pool of blood soaking the carpet around his head was anything to go by, he wasn’t likely to make retirement.

  Thursday afternoon, and the two mothers with babies, the hardware store clerk depositing takings, and the two men waiting to withdraw cash and cursing the defective ATM had been shocked for a frozen moment by the four people who had slipped in and bolted the double doors. A man and a woman stood at the front windows, the woman nervously peering out, then rapidly glancing back to the interior, the man coolly training his Glock machine pistol on the floor. The woman carried a mini-Uzi. Anyone who looked carefully enough would see it gently shaking.

  The vulpine man, whose bearing and speech marked him as the alpha male, had strode into the middle of the room, whipping an HK MP5 from beneath his duster and waving it in an arc, the implicit threat enough to make the customers and tellers snap out of their fear freeze and hit the deck. The woman who had joined him was stone-faced, her eyes unreadable, but leaving little doubt as to her intent.

  The vulpine man looked up to one of the closed-circuit television cameras that surveyed the bank interior from all angles.

  “An audience. Good. I want you to listen. We do not want to harm these people, but if they get in our way, they are expendable. Make no doubt of that. Today’s little raid is to help finance our crusade against the state that seeks to oppress us and to force us ever closer to extinction. We have inside knowledge of the way in which our government—which has the audacity to claim that it serves on our behalf—is working, and we will bring it to its knees. As you can see, we have Elena Anders, who is a devotee of the Seven Stars, and who is committed to our cause. Through her, we have discovered more of the secrets of power. When the time is right, and we can launch our revolution of the heart and mind, her knowledge will be shared with more than just our existing brethren. Then the fire of justice can spread throughout the land, and we will be as free as our constitution promises we are.”

  The woman murmured something too low for the mics on the CCTV to pick up clearly. The alpha man shot her a venomous glance, but nodded briefly in deference to her and turned to the tellers.

  “You—out here, now. Don’t give me no time-lock shit, either. The locks you have on the vaults here have manual overrides. I want you and everyone in the back room out here now. Call the sheriff and it’s the babies who’ll get it first. You want that on your piggy little consciences?”

  To emphasize his point, he fired a short burst into the floor between the two mothers, who screamed hysterically as they clutched their children to them.

  It had the desired effect: within a couple minutes, bank bags with cash, securities and items from safe deposit had been piled on the counter, ready to be carried out. The vulpine man’s psychology had been sound; this was a small town where everyone was either distantly related or friends of friends. There were no strangers here, and no one wanted anyone to get hurt. They complied almost with eagerness.

  He gestured to his stone-faced companion and to the nervous woman by the door. They moved forward and loaded the haul into large hemp sacks, which they then carried toward the doors as their compatriot undid the bolts. The vulpine man covered their retreat, pausing before he exited to stare directly at the camera above the door. His smile this time was arrogant and triumphant before he moved out of frame.

  The footage continued for a few minutes after this. The people in the bank were too shocked to move or make a sound for a few eerie seconds. In the distance, the sirens of a late-arriving cruiser approached. The raiders’ research and preparation had been good—they’d picked a time when the sheriff’s staff roster was low, and they’d placed hoax calls that stretched the department’s resources, dragging officers far from the main street and buying valuable time.

  Then, just before the CCTV footage finally elapsed, the silence was broken by a wail of fear and relief from one of the mothers. After that, pandemonium broke out, as the hardware clerk and one of the men rushed to offer what first aid they could to the stricken security guard, while the bank staff and the other male customer tried to comfort the mothers and children.

  The picture cut out abruptly just as the sheriff’s team entered the bank.

  Hal Brognola hit the remote, and the wide-screen monitor on which they had been viewing the footage blinked and shut off.

  “What about the guard?” Mack Bolan asked, although he was certain he already knew what the big Fed would say.

  “Three days in intensive care. Didn’t regain consciousness,” he said shortly, shaking his head. “Albert Myres, sixty-year-old vet. Fifteen years on the Jacksonville sheriff’s department, twenty-five in the service.”

  “Some part-time job for retirement,” the soldier said. His tone was brooding, both at the waste of the old man’s life, and the stupidity of the suits who had thought nothing of putting him in that position.

  Brognola shrugged. “People walk around with their eyes shut all the time, Striker. Not much we can do about that. And to be fair, this is a real sleepy town where nothing much happens aside from the annual gator hunt. It’s a family and retirement town, with just the newspaper industry to keep it afloat.”

  Bolan frowned. “Newspapers? In rural Florida?”

  “I use the term loosely.” Brognola shrugged. “It’s the editorial and printing headquarters for the Midnight Examiner. Hardly cutting edge news, but—”

  “But it’s been a while since I was in line at the supermarket long enough to be tempted,” Bolan finished. “I had no idea that rag was still going.”

  “It’s not what it was, but it keeps the town afloat. More relevant to us, it still has a strong circulation, and being the only game in town, it got to the CCTV before we did.”

  Bolan’s eyebrow quirked. “We, Hal? Why would a small-town robbery interest you that much?”

  “You heard the man on the movie. Elena Anders.”

  As he spoke, Brognola tossed a copy of the Midnight Examiner across the desk. Bolan picked it up and scanned the headlines. “But there’s nothing in here about any bank robberies.”

  “Exactly,” Brognola said.

  As Bolan read on, it became obvious that the Midnight Examiner’s reputation as a celebrity scandal sheet and paranormal purveyor left its writers ill-equipped to cover the kind of story that had fallen into their laps.

  “The Seven Stars is a religious cult,” Brognola explained. “They peddle a mix of Christianity and an apocalyptic worldview fueled by too many B-movies and ‘true-life’ UFO books. A few months ago, Senator Dale Anders’s daughter, Elena, left her college in Tampa and fell in with this cult. Our intel stops there. At this point, we can only speculate about how much of Ms. Anders’s participation is willing, and how much of it is forced.”

  Bolan sighed as he threw down the tabloid. “They clearly excel in stories about celebrity diets and alien abductions, but why would they omit such a huge scoop? Especially if they got the footage?” He paused. “There’s a backstory here, right? And it won’t be long before the serious reporters start sniffing around.”

  Brognola nodded, but remained silent.

  “There’s a reason this hasn’t broken yet,” Bolan continued. “And there’s a reason you called me here.”

  Brognola walked across the room and stared out his office window.

  “Dale Anders is a good man, Striker. A kind, fair man. That’s rare enough among senators, these days. He’s the kind of guy Jimmy Stewart would have play
ed.”

  “We’re not doing this—whatever this is—because you like him, Hal,” Bolan said softly.

  The big Fed shook his head. “No, but it is relevant. Dale really cares about his job. He’s never courted headlines, and doesn’t see this as a fast track to presidential nomination. He actually wants to make a difference. Both sides of the House like him, despite policy differences. He’s got integrity. I know he was worried about Elena for a good while before she finally disappeared. He even tried to accept that she was old enough to make her own decisions, even though it killed him. But anyone with half a brain gets alarm bells ringing when it comes to crank cults, and so he called me up for some advice, and maybe some information. He’d been trying to establish some kind of communication with her for several months, and I’d kept the press at bay for him. We both hoped this could be resolved without any undue attention.”

  “Not much chance of that now,” Bolan said quietly.

  “This is the third raid in as many weeks,” Brognola said. “That’s a hell of a lot. They’re either trying to grab as much as possible before the law catches up with them, or else they desperately need the cash. And if that’s the case, then you’ve got to wonder why. Just what do they have planned?”

  “So what do you know about them?”

  “The asshole with the HK who loves the camera is Duane Johansen. Thirty-four, served ten years on a robbery charge. Files show that there were probably a whole lot more that he didn’t get arraigned for because of lack of evidence.”

  “These cults will take anyone these days. Other IDs?”

  “Not on this raid. The woman standing next to Johansen is on all three, but she hasn’t been identified. On the second raid they had a crystal meth dealer named Arnie Fry, who’s dabbled in illegal arms on a small scale.”

  “So they know what they’re doing. At least, some of them do. What about the rest of the cult?”

  “The Seven Stars. When they align it will be a sign that the time of great change is on us, blah-blah-blah. The usual.” Hal waved dismissively. “There’s a file on them that I can get Bear to download for you. It’s not pretty reading. The usual collection of misfits, criminals and the confused.”