Hellbinder Read online

  Annotation

  "This land is mine…"

  The Syrians are seeking territorial control of the Middle East, and they have a plan to annex Israel and drive the Israelis into the sea.

  The Syrian weapon: canisters of deadly nerve gas stolen from the United States.

  But the Israeli nation, forged in the fires of time, has vowed it would never again be subjected to the horror of another holocaust.

  Political and racial passions smolder under a terrorist sun as Mack Bolan, a lone missionary of justice, battles the disciples of death in the Holy Land.

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  Don Pendleton's

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  Don Pendleton's

  The Executioner

  Hellbinder

  The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently but to live manfully.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Violence and brutality are not the same. Only a man of courage will know the difference.

  Mack Bolan

  Dedicated to the victims of chemical war, who have been ravaged by the effects of bacteriological and chemical weapons.

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Chet Cunningham for his contributions to this work.

  OCR Mysuli: [email protected]

  1

  Mack Bolan heard the whispers of the three silenced rounds as they passed inches over his head. He rolled to one side and stared through the grass at the other man's position. He had seen the muzzle flash, faint through the silencer but still visible.

  In the soft, dark silence, Bolan heard the thonk of a two-way radio transmission button being pushed into the send mode. At once the Executioner sent two 3-round bursts from his silenced Beretta 93-R into the shielded position thirty yards below him.

  Before the sound of casings flipping from the machine pistol died, the black-suited nightfighter sensed movement behind him. He turned and saw a form on the skyline, saw it duck behind some bushes.

  Bolan did not move or breathe. Again he sensed the man behind him stir, then the soft snic of metal slipping past metal. He dived away from the sound, hit the dirt, held the Beretta to his chest and rolled a dozen times. Four seconds later the woodsy knoll near where he had been lying erupted with a grenade's shattering roar. Deadly shards of steel exploded in all directions, shredding leaves, digging into the tree trunk, and a few sailing angrily over Bolan's head where he was pressed against the soft ground.

  Bolan stood and ran hard for the position he had pinpointed ahead. He could see that it was a dug-in foxhole, a concealed outpost straight out of an infantry field manual. His target would stay there; the guy had orders and nowhere to retreat. Bolan put three single shots into the parapet around the hole as he ran, then stopped abruptly by the four-foot-deep foxhole.

  A snarl by the surprised guard came too late as Bolan fired a 3-round burst from the Beretta, sending the 9mm parabellums crashing through the man's chest, pulping his heart and driving him into the bottom of the ready-made grave, cheating the undertaker of a fee.

  The deathbringer picked up the foot-long handheld radio, then ran toward the road, away from the fragger man in the brush. He had found out what he wanted to know. Here was a hardsite, with plenty of external protection in a rural area forty miles outside Boise, Idaho. He retreated until he was a quarter mile from the buildings, which he had seen were all that remained of a once thriving dairy business.

  Bolan's nightscope showed him more details.

  The main house was surrounded by a six-foot chain link fence.

  Two Doberman pinscher attack dogs patrolled inside the wire.

  A special shortwave antenna was mounted on the farmhouse roof.

  Night safety lights had snapped on when the grenade exploded, and they now illuminated three sides of the house.

  A guard with a submachine gun walked a post in front of the house, outside the fence.

  Bolan studied all these factors. He decided against taking on the place tonight with his one machine pistol.

  The Executioner put the scope away and lay in the grass, watching. He wondered how long they would keep the lights on. He was not ready to leave without making a larger impression on them, and especially on Aleksandr Galkin, a Class Four KGB Field Agent who had lived in the United States for six years. He was the agent in charge in Boise. His name was high on the list of secret KGB operatives that Bolan had stolen in Moscow, on which notations suggested that this would be a two-man post soon to be involved in an unspecified project.

  An hour later the small two-way radio he captured had still not been used by the enemy. He saw one man come from the hill, enter a locked front gate and go into the house. Then a half hour later the floodlights went off. In the moonlight, Bolan could see the guard moving along his beat in front of the safehouse.

  Deciding to question the man, the black-clad warrior moved like a swift shadow down the hill, across the open area near the side of the house and forward toward the guard.

  He heard faint music. Was it from the house? The sound came closer and louder. Walking his beat, the guard held a small transistor radio to his ear. The spillover was what the Executioner heard in the otherwise silent countryside. In Chicago or New York City or even Omaha the sound would be gobbled up. Here it stood out plainly.

  The nightfighter lay in tall grass twenty feet from the fence around the safehouse. He heard another noise and two black forms surged silently along the fence, like twin demons. Only the bared fangs of the Dobermans showed through the darkness.

  "Vnis! Tikhi!" the guard snapped at the dogs. They turned and padded softly the other way.

  Bolan dredged up his Russian; the words meant "Down! Quiet!" So either the guard was Russian, or he knew the language. Finding out which would be interesting.

  The guard watched the dogs a moment, then turned and walked his route to the other side of the house. Knowing that the noise of the guard's movements would cover his own, Bolan crawled toward a thick concrete post in the fence and rested where the fence made a square turn around the side of the house. The Executioner lay just out of sight of the guard. He angled the Beretta upward.

  The guard walked to the end of his beat and returned, the small am radio still to his ear. As he neared, Bolan noted that he was medium height, of stocky build, and wore a shirt and heavy plaid jacket against the autumn chill. He carried a short automatic weapon, probably a Heckler & Koch, slung over his shoulder.

  When the guard came to the end of his route he was fewer than three feet from Bolan's head, which was screened by the heavy wire fence and the thick concrete post. Bolan kneeled as soon as the guard turned away from the house, then stood and carefully extended a stainless-steel wire noose attached to a three-foot steel rod. The noose encircled the guard's head and Bolan jerked the rod, drawing the noose tight, slightly puncturing the skin around the guard's throat. The man dropped his weapon, clawed frantically at the deadly wire and grabbed for his attacker, but no one was within reach.

  Bolan stepped back, pulling the steel rod and his catch with him. The guard tried to shout: the wire bit deeper into his throat and only a strangled gurgle emerged. Bolan jerked the pole and the guard moved toward him. Then Bolan tugged his prize catch into the tall grass twenty yards to the side of the house.

  The Executioner held the garrote tightly around the neck of his prisoner, forcing
him down into the grass. Finally he eased the pressure and pushed the Beretta into the man's cheek. He looked young, no more than a kid.

  "Not a sound except to answer my questions, understand?" The guard's eyes were wild with pain and fright. He nodded.

  Bolan eased the steel pole down but held it ready. The guard moved his head gently, took a deep breath.

  "What do you want to know?" It was a mid-American drawl with a slight Western twang.

  "How many men inside?"

  "Right now, six."

  "How much security outside?"

  "You're the guy they threw that fragger at! Lew was on the radio, said he pitched one at somebody shooting. There's just three of us out here."

  "None now. Lew is inside, the one in the foxhole is dead, and you're on your way out. That leaves none. Is Galkin inside, Aleksandr Galkin?"

  "Yeah, there's a guy name of Galkin. They call him Al."

  "Any more men coming soon?"

  "I just signed on yesterday to walk guard duty out here. I don't know anything about any of this. You CIA or something?"

  "Something. What is Al doing here?"

  "Didn't say. I'm a soldier of fortune. Work for anybody who pays me to pack a gun."

  "Even these KGB killers?"

  "Hey, they ain't KGB! They ain't Russian."

  "Then why all the security here?"

  "Didn't say. I didn't ask."

  "Why were you talking to the dogs in Russian?"

  "They told me to. They said those were the only words the dogs knew."

  "You're too stupid to be lying." Bolan took the guard's hidden .32 automatic, then gently removed the steel wire from around his throat.

  "You want to go on living?"

  "Yeah."

  "I hope you're that smart. You got wheels?"

  "That's my Honda 250 over by the trees."

  "Get on it and gun out of here. I mean, make lots of noise."

  "They'll shoot me."

  "Maybe. If you don't try it, I'll kill you right here."

  The young man jumped to his feet and ran. Bolan's Beretta tracked him to the trees. A moment later the Honda motorcycle sputtered, then roared into action. It varoomed three times. The kid gunned it again and headed down the lane.

  The exterior floodlights came on. The Executioner ducked lower in the tall grass. Three rifle shots followed the bike rider but the bike kept going.

  Bolan watched the house. Lights inside snapped on. He heard voices. A door banged. Then an outside door burst open and a man ran to the inside gate, out and around to the front. He watched the dark landscape for a moment, then slung his automatic weapon over his shoulder and began to walk along the fence.

  The Executioner waited, giving the man time to lower his watchfulness. Two shadows flittered around the inside of the fence, white fangs moving through the blackness.

  Five minutes later the silent warrior had returned to the corner of the fence, timing his move so the wandering black demons would be on the far side of the compound in their regular movements around the wire.

  The new sentry was smaller, maybe five-nine. He was also more alert. He saw Bolan and swung his automatic weapon on target, muttering a string of Russian curses. Only a round from the silenced Beretta stopped him. The hot lead slanted off the guard's H&K and tore into his shoulder; he dropped the weapon and groaned. The nightfighter surged upward and knocked the guy down, the Beretta smashing hard beside his ear. The man had to be Russian. Nobody learns to swear like that in a stateside Russian-language class. Bolan was especially alert now, expecting trouble.

  The two dogs made no noise as they padded toward him across the fence.

  The guard was unconscious. Bolan found only a candy bar in the guy's pockets. Two sets of gleaming eyes watched the black-clad man through the wire. Lights came on inside. A shout spoiled the countryside quiet. Someone else called in Russian from behind the house.

  Bolan hoisted the unconscious guard above his head, then pushed him over the six-foot wire fence so that he fell into the compound.

  This time there was no command given to the dogs. They leaped silently at the guard. The first Doberman's jaws clamped around the guard's throat, then pulled, taking out both carotid arteries. The second Doberman's big fangs tore at the man's head a dozen slashing times. A moment later both dogs backed away. The smell of death stopped their attack. They whined softly and continued their patrol around the fence.

  Just then the floodlights turned on. Bolan was still in their glare. He ran away from them, heard a pistol crack behind him, dived and rolled into the darkness, then was up and running hard again, zigzagging through the soft moonlight toward the woods on the upslope away from the old dairy farm.

  Two down, one gone. That should leave five at the safehouse, if the motorcycle kid knew what he was talking about.

  They would have to wait until tomorrow. He would need some heavy gear to blast his way inside. Tomorrow night, or perhaps the next morning.

  As he ran through the woods he heard a car coming down the half-mile lane between the gravel road and the old farm. Reinforcements, or more of the regular staff? How many men did Aleksandr need in Idaho? Bolan stopped and watched the car come to a halt at the security fence. Now he could see six or seven men around the body of the guard. The dogs killed him, they would know that.

  But they would do all sorts of wondering about who shot him and pushed him over the fence.

  2

  Aleksandr Galkin stared at the bloody, dog-chewed face and neck of his number-three man. "Everyone inside at once!" he commanded. "Put the car behind the old barn! All security lights on until dawn. First watch three hours, second watch to dawn. Let's go!"

  The group followed Aleksandr inside. He was not a tall man, more in the mold of other forty-year-old KGB men. A little over five feet ten and — his doctor told him — thirty pounds overweight. He always dressed meticulously and now wore a light gray sweater and Sansabelt slacks of a contrasting shade of gray. He ran his hand over a widow's peak that was losing its fight to maintain the forehead hair.

  "Two men dead and we have not even seen our attacker! An automatic weapon was used, so that rules out the police. The CIA is not supposed to operate within the United States, so who is it? Our local contacts tell us the FBI is not involved at all in this area." He was speaking to the five men he had carefully recruited and trained.

  "There is no possible way we can alter our schedule," he continued. "We will move against the target as you have been instructed. We need three new men to be trained thoroughly, starting right now. I know it is late. As we are on guard, we will also be training these new men and retraining the rest of you."

  He looked at the men standing in what once had been the farmhouse living room. The furniture had been pushed back and seven folding chairs arranged in front of a standing blackboard. Aleksandr motioned to Sergei Vinogradov, his number two and the man qualified to carry through if Aleksandr himself died early in the operation.

  "Sergei, round up the three new men."

  Within minutes, Vinogradov returned with the three men. Aleksandr excused the other five and put one on watch at the window of a darkened room at the front of the house. The leader looked at his new men and scowled.

  "This is not a suicide mission. I fully expect to go into the target with six men and to come out with all six of us. It is a matter of training, discipline and knowledge. All of us will do exactly as we are directed, complete our part in the mission and move to the appointed place for transport, whether by our own vehicle or the choppers. For you new men I will take this from the beginning."

  He poured a cup of coffee from a vacuum coffeepot and watched the men. Two had been working with him on minor jobs for a year, the third was a recruit. Aleksandr hated to work this close to the deadline with new men, but it did have some advantages.

  "As you have been told, you are committed. There are no leaves or vacations. You will be here until the mission is over. You will each receive the st
ipulated ten thousand dollars. If you are wounded, your medical expenses will be covered completely. In the off-chance of a death, your family will be compensated with fifty thousand dollars. Are there any questions about this aspect?"

  None of the men responded.

  "Moving on. When we attack we will go in softly and quietly, attack with deadly effect and accomplish our mission. We have a set timetable and no more than sixty seconds plus or minus will be allowed for the total mission."

  He swung up the cover on a chart that had been draped over the blackboard.

  "Here is the target, the Binder Chemical Corporation. That is exactly what it looks like — a chemical processor, producer and distributor. In actuality it is much more. The site is ten miles from the little town of Emmett and more than five miles from the closest farm family. The reasoning was to safeguard the civilian population in case of chemical accident.

  "The day after tomorrow there will be one of those accidents, and we will make it worse. For your information, this target is not a simple business, but one of the most secret and highly defended facilities in the United States. In the ten stories of underground vaults, rooms and tunnels, the U.S. government has stored more than fifty percent of the nation's ready-to-use chemical and biological warfare substances.

  "Now for a schematic of the area and the facility," Aleksandr turned over another page of the chart to reveal an artist's rendering of the outside of the Binder Chemical Corporation. It was two stories high, with no windows on the ground floor and few on the second. An overhead view showed that the building was in the shape of a huge, hollow square. Spur rail lines came up to two sides. Aleksandr touched the inside of the square.

  "From one side of the open area to the other is just over two hundred feet. It's a big place. But it is even larger underground."

  He turned over another sheet. It showed a side drawing of a ten-level complex. His pointer ticked off the important points.