Terror Ballot Read online

  CITY ON FIRE

  When France’s presidential elections are hijacked by terrorists, violence erupts on the streets of Paris, fueling extreme antiforeigner sentiments. The chaos feeds votes to the ultraradical candidate, but intelligence indicates the attacks may be the ultimate propaganda tool. Soon, shock waves reach America, destabilizing foreign policy and U.S. interests in Europe.

  Mack Bolan answers the call of duty, launching a surgical strike against the powerful, skilled radicals carrying out the slaughter. Dodging the triple threat of police corruption, political extremism and the bloodlust of trained killers, Bolan razes the terrorist strongholds. As the city of light bursts into a blaze of cleansing fire, the Executioner casts his vote for the terrorists’ blood—and an end to their deadly campaign.

  The floor was growing hot, the boards starting to creak

  Mack Bolan was running out of time. He grabbed the nearest MAT-49. The gunmen had emptied the magazines, but they had to have spares on their bodies.

  As the soldier pressed forward, the double doors opposite were thrown open. He dived to the floor, rolling away from the bullets that pursued him. The shooters wore the standard ES camouflage BDUs, and they were trying to acquire their target with AK-type assault rifles. Bolan was a sitting duck.

  He did the only thing he could. He stayed prone and fired his weapons with calm deliberation, despite the fury of the bullets striking all around him and the nearness of death.

  In minutes it was over. When the smoke cleared, the Executioner was the only survivor.

  Other titles available in this series:

  Retaliation

  Pressure Point

  Silent Running

  Stolen Arrows

  Zero Option

  Predator Paradise

  Circle of Deception

  Devil’s Bargain

  False Front

  Lethal Tribute

  Season of Slaughter

  Point of Betrayal

  Ballistic Force

  Renegade

  Survival Reflex

  Path to War

  Blood Dynasty

  Ultimate Stakes

  State of Evil

  Force Lines

  Contagion Option

  Hellfire Code

  War Drums

  Ripple Effect

  Devil’s Playground

  The Killing Rule

  Patriot Play

  Appointment in Baghdad

  Havana Five

  The Judas Project

  Plains of Fire

  Colony of Evil

  Hard Passage

  Interception

  Cold War Reprise

  Mission: Apocalypse

  Altered State

  Killing Game

  Diplomacy Directive

  Betrayed

  Sabotage

  Conflict Zone

  Blood Play

  Desert Fallout

  Extraordinary Rendition

  Devil’s Mark

  Savage Rule

  Infiltration

  Resurgence

  Kill Shot

  Stealth Sweep

  Grave Mercy

  Treason Play

  Assassin’s Code

  Shadow Strike

  Decision Point

  Road of Bones

  Radical Edge

  Fireburst

  Oblivion Pact

  Enemy Arsenal

  State of War

  Ballistic

  Escalation Tactic

  Crisis Diplomacy

  Apocalypse Ark

  Lethal Stakes

  Illicit Supply

  Explosive Demand

  Jungle Firestorm

  Terror Ballot

  Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

  —Winston Churchill, 1874–1965

  Fear is a powerful emotion, but there are limits even to fear. You can’t be afraid of evil if you’re too busy fighting it. There just isn’t time.

  —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

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Paris, France

  The terrorist’s arm snapped between Mack Bolan’s palms as the Executioner described a circle with his hands. The thug screamed through his black ski mask, and the Browning Hi Power he’d been holding fell to the marble floor of the opulent Banque de France.

  The blackened clip-point blade of the big American’s fighting knife slipped silently from the inverted sheath mounted to his shoulder holster, where it had been hidden under his three-quarter-length leather jacket. The knife’s false top edge was sharpened.

  As the terrorist turned to face Bolan, the weapon bit deeply into his opponent’s flesh. A spray of crimson jetted from a severed artery. Bolan took him down with a sweep of his front leg, ramming the sole of his combat boot into the back of the enemy’s calf. The terrorist toppled in a puddle of his own blood.

  Bolan sheathed his knife. He was counting in his head.

  When he got to zero he hit the floor, sliding across it as automatic gunfire burned the air where he had been standing.

  Bolan rolled over, twisted and put his feet between him and the gunmen behind the ornate bank counter. The sights of Bolan’s Beretta 93R machine pistol lined up in the gap. He flicked the selector to 3-round-burst mode, a motion as simple and fluid as the leap of a single, practiced impulse across its corresponding synapse.

  The Beretta spit flame through its custom-built sound suppressor.

  The trio of 9 mm hollowpoint rounds skipped across the surface of the bank counter and sheared off pieces of a ski mask. Beneath the acrylic fabric was skin, flesh, muscle and bone. The gunman—believed to be part of the ES—squawked something wet and surprised before he dropped his Kalashnikov assault rifle.

  * * *

  LES ÉTRANGERS SUPPRIMENT—known to INTERPOL as ES—was “Foreigners Remove” loosely translated. This was the first fact Hal Brognola had related to Mack Bolan when the big Fed, director of the Special Operations Group, had placed a scrambled call through Bolan’s secure satellite smartphone.

  Brognola was one of the few human beings alive who knew that the man now carrying Justice Department identification declaring him to be Matthew Cooper was, in fact, Mack Samuel Bolan. The SOG counterterrorist professionals based at the Stony Man Farm in Virginia answered to Brognola, who answered only to the President.

  As for Bolan, he answered only to himself...but when Brognola asked for his help, Bolan would agree to undertake the mission—as long as it was something that he thought needed to be taken care of.

  “This ES is one of several antiforeigner terrorism groups active in France,” Brognola had explained through the scrambled link. “It’s often difficult to tell the rabble-rouser
s, the street gangs and the ethnic enclave enforcers from the terrorist and paramilitary groups, but our friends in INTERPOL and on the ground in France have been working up a dossier on ES for some time.

  “They’ve stayed in the background for the last several years, building their base and recruiting street muscle, but there have been some high-profile attacks lately, tied to the election. That’s what has the President concerned.

  “France is electing their new president,” Brognola stated. “That president will in turn appoint a prime minister.”

  “And the National Assembly and the Senate of France make up Parliament,” Bolan had told him. “Why the French civics lesson?”

  “Sorry, Striker,” Brognola said. “I’ve spent all morning working behind the scenes to influence congressmen and senators. The usual politicking here in Wonderland. Talking down becomes an occupational hazard.”

  “I get that.”

  “The national election for France’s president is a major power-position,” Brognola explained. “As you can imagine, whoever wins is endowed with a great deal of influence on foreign policy. Right now the election boils down to a two-way call. It’s either going to be Leslie Deparmond, an ultraradical nationalist, or Henri Gaston.”

  “Which one is the Man rooting for?” Bolan asked.

  “Gaston has the nominal support of the United States,” Brognola said. “He’s a moderate who those in the halls of power believe will play ball with us. Deparmond, on the other hand, is a radical. He’s vowed to rid France of foreign influence and, given the serious problems the French have with immigration pressures, anti-immigrant sentiment is running high.

  “You remember the Paris riots a few years back in which hundreds of cars were burned. That was the first hint the rest of the world really had that some areas of France’s major cities had become no-go zones for the French authorities. Their citizens are screaming for something to be done to contain the influence of non-French groups moving into the country. They’re ripe for a leader who caters to that sentiment.”

  “‘Ausländer raus,’” Bolan said in German. “‘Foreigners out.’ A rallying cry for skinheads and other neo-Nazi gangs in Germany and elsewhere.”

  “It does smack of that,” Brognola agreed. “And the election has been complicated by a series of high-profile terrorist attacks by the ES, half of them targeting public places, the other half specifically going after rallies in support of Gaston.”

  “The folks in international intelligence figure ES is acting as street muscle for Deparmond?” Bolan asked.

  “It looks that way.”

  “Are you saying I should pay Deparmond a visit to cut the head off the snake?”

  “Absolutely not,” Brognola stated. “The French won’t hear of it, and even INTERPOL doesn’t want to risk overplaying its hand. There are no links between ES and Deparmond. Not that we can establish with actual evidence. If there are shadows, we haven’t found them yet.

  “If we go after Deparmond directly, we’ll cause an international incident, which will produce the opposite of what the Man wants in France, that being a government friendly to us and our interests, or at least willing to work with us to a mutual benefit.”

  “Nothing?” Bolan asked. “No thread at all? That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

  “It is. Aaron—” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, head of the cyberteam at Stony Man Farm “—and his team usually dig up at least some backdoor links. Nothing that will hold up in the legal arena but enough to paint the targets for us. So far we haven’t found any.

  “There are two possibilities. One is that Deparmond is very smart or very cautious. He has conducted himself in a way that has prevented any connection between ES and himself, perhaps operating exclusively through a personal intermediary somewhere near the top of the terrorist power structure.”

  “Or he’s not linked at all,” Bolan said. “The ES could simply be attacking Gaston because they want Deparmond to make good on his promises.”

  “We’ve considered that,” Brognola said. “Striker, the ES is a large, powerful, well-equipped and well-trained organization. Clearly they’ve been laying their plans for a long time before finally going active. Half of the actions that haven’t targeted Gaston have been made to look like the work of foreign gangs.

  “Spray-painted anti-French slogans, or mottoes associated with immigrant street factions, have been found at the scene of the crimes. The French media is going berserk. They’re not sure who to blame, and they’re spinning bizarre conspiracy theories left and right. This is muddying everything.”

  “What do we have on the ES hierarchy specifically?”

  “Their leader is a guy named Gerard Levesque,” Brognola said. “He spent years with the Basques and half a dozen other splinter groups. He’s more mercenary than terrorist, and while he’s probably no fan of foreign competition, we have no reason to believe he cares about Deparmond’s cause specifically.

  “Chances are that Deparmond’s people, if in fact he is involved, have put together a financial package for Levesque. Money is all the reason he needs to put his people into the fight. Some of them may be true believers, of course. We don’t know. But their strikes in Paris and other French cities make the Basques look cute and cuddly. Levesque has learned well from his time in the political terror trenches. He sends his men in armed to the gills, and kills without hesitation.”

  “And the play?”

  “We’ve put together a priority list of targets,” Brognola told him. “It’s a safehouse network used by the ES and Levesque. You need to hit them in order of priority. Aaron and his team will feed you real-time intel as they get it concerning any more terrorist operations initiated after you arrive. You’re going to hit them full force, as fast as you can.”

  “And if the presidential election is disrupted in the process?”

  “Then it will be.”

  “So we’re fighting for the future impact on American interests and the United States’ allied status with France. Not for justice in French politics.”

  “Correct,” Brognola replied. “Is that a problem?”

  “No. But if I uncover a snake pit, I’m not going to let it lie. I’ll do what I can to safeguard the Man’s interests in France, but if stopping the terrorists means I have to upset the French authorities, I’m going to do it. And if their election process is rigged or otherwise corrupted, that’s going to expose that, too.”

  “The Man trusts your judgment, Striker. As I always do.”

  “Is Jack available?” “Jack” was Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man’s ace pilot and Bolan’s close friend.

  “He’s in North Africa on another mission. You’re flying commercial this time around. Good hunting, Striker.”

  * * *

  THAT HAD BEEN less than twenty-four hours earlier. Brognola, through the Farm’s mission controller, Barbara Price, had arranged for Bolan’s equipment, weapons and a rental car to be waiting for him at a Paris warehouse.

  More important, Brognola had immediately begun running interference for Bolan with the French government, essentially clearing the way for an armed counterterror operative not under their control to work on their soil.

  This type of arrangement never went over well. Bolan was prepared to meet significant resistance, up to and including naked opposition. He trusted the big Fed to smooth it over after the fact, even if Bolan had to break a few things along the way. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  No sooner had the Executioner gotten his bearings in Paris—a city he had visited before—than the call had come in on his satellite smartphone. A terrorist contingent declaring itself to be with the ES had taken over the Banque de France in downtown Paris. They had taken hostages but made no demands other than to order all police away from the building. They had subsequently released an order that Henri Gaston, the moderate preside
ntial candidate, be delivered to them for “crimes against France.”

  Bolan had simply parked his rental car beyond the police cordon, flashed his counterfeit Justice Department credentials to the outraged cops at the barricades and strolled toward the bank. He was wearing his black combat BDUs under his leather jacket, but they would pass for civilian clothing as long as no one looked at him hard or noticed his predatory gait.

  A quick visual survey was all he had required to determine that there were no guards outside the building. He had gambled then on speed and decisiveness.

  He had walked in the door, crept up on the first enemy sentry he could find and dug his fingers into the man’s right clavicle from behind, spinning him. As the terrorist brought his hand up reflexively, Bolan had broken his arm. The rest was a messy smear already behind him.

  The terrorists opened up on full auto from where they hid behind the counter.

  Bolan rolled, his motion not particularly hurried, into the shelter of an alcove. There were two to choose from on either side of the entryway. Again he counted in his head.

  Brognola had said that the terrorists were disciplined and well trained. Their initial fusillade had lasted long enough to exhaust the 30-round magazines in their AK-type rifles. But smart shooters would have held back at least a man or two, preparing to aim and fire at the resistance they were sure was coming.

  Bolan snapped up his pistol and leaned out from the shelter of the alcove, adjusting the selector switch to single shot.

  He did not fire. In the fraction of a second he waited, he observed a pair of security mirrors facing the cameras set high in the walls behind the counter. That made it too easy. He could see what was coming even before they got to him.

  The enemy was a half beat off, probably thrown by the lack of return fire. When the two terrorists popped up at either end of the bank counter, Bolan could hear the distinctive sound of Kalashnikov magazines being dropped and swapped by the other shooters. He would have to deal with those in turn.

  He put a single bullet through the eye of the terrorist on his left, then swiveled and shot the one on the right through the bridge of the nose. Only then did Bolan dart back under cover. He had seen what he needed to see, however.