Resurrection Day Page 2

  An empty wine bottle clatters to the cold pavement and the sound is muffled by a paper bag. Its owner, sated by alcohol and warmed for a moment by the liquid's fire, pulls a shabby coat tighter, preparing for a dreamless sleep. But slumber is not without its perils and he will not last the night. Because he is weak and defenseless against the onslaught of the human demons that stalk the city's arteries. And his sleep will be dreamless — forever.

  Wisps of steam rise in harsh fluorescence from a manhole. The metal cover shudders, then opens, the reaper gazing out to gauge the prospects, licking bony lips and baring fangs if passage is clear, recoiling and scurrying back to the depths of the sewer if danger threatens.

  A human form hurtles downward past the unseeing gaze of a building to smash on the concrete below. But the cold visage of the monstrous glass-and-steel architecture will divulge nothing, its inscrutable countenance remaining cryptic about victim and perpetrator alike.

  The city respects no one, chewing up the naive and the innocent year after year. Occasionally a merciful heaven unleashes a cleansing rain to wash the concrete corridors, but always indelible crimson stains remain.

  Mack Bolan had seen it all, in cities everywhere. And it had also touched him personally.

  From out of nowhere, Death had come swooping down, hunting for prey. And found it — in Mack Bolan's family.

  For one heartbeat the soldier's world had crumbled about him. But an innate instinct surfaced in the microinstant before the heartbeat was complete. And Bolan knew what he had to do.

  He was always aware of man's decay and degeneracy, but in tribute to the goodness he believed was inherent in all humans, he paid little attention.

  Not all men were strong, he knew. And although he fancied himself no different from others, simply following the rules of right and wrong, an unidentified spark ignited the rage he felt at his family's cruel death. So he made his final peace at his parents' graveside.

  And declared war on Animal Man in all his forms.

  Destiny had long ago decreed that Mack Bolan should travel a long and tortuous road. Along this route the soldier had questioned himself countless times about his motivations, his everlasting war. He had asked himself if what he was doing was worth it. Indeed, he had often thought that if he could have foreseen the future, would he have made the decisions that he had?

  And the answer had always been yes. Because he knew there was no alternative. Just as he knew that as long as man walked the earth, there would always be a dark side to the creature.

  With every step the warrior took it struck him as amusing how man, being as insignificant as he was in a cosmic sense, perpetually flirted with the natural order of the universe. But perhaps courting danger was part of the natural order.

  Maybe.

  Somehow Bolan could not fathom the infliction of pain by the stronger upon the weaker as "natural." No way. Not if he continued to hold sacred the principles of right and wrong that he was taught from childhood.

  Sometimes the fight pulled him down, both physically and emotionally. But Bolan, even in his dispirited and weakened condition, resisted the force, willing himself to take one more step. Because if he didn't, he would be cheating the memory of his parents and all those trampled by the savages.

  Bolan had identified the savages very early in his war. The first to come in Bolan's crosshairs was the U.S. Mafia — La Cosa Nostra. After a while it did not matter to the warrior that the Mob had caused the death of his family. Because he felt he had avenged their deaths long ago. To him the Mafia represented Evil. Pure and simple.

  They could not be allowed to flourish at society's peril. And there was a chance, a small one, granted, that they would one day find his only surviving relative, his brother, Johnny, wherever he was.

  Bolan had always harbored a secret fear — bordering on paranoia, and known only to a couple of people — that Johnny might find himself the target of Mafia guns. Because he was sure to remember the circumstances surrounding his family's death. And if he was a true Bolan, there would eventually be a desire to confront the Evil that made him an orphan.

  For years Mack Bolan had stayed away from Johnny, keeping tabs on him through a friend. And through the years Bolan had often thought of Johnny, wishing he could see his brother, even for a brief instant.

  The moment of truth was at hand.

  1

  Johnny Bolan Gray felt a tingle of apprehension as the LCVP — landing craft for vehicles and personnel — swung away from the U.S. Navy ship and turned toward shore. It was just past midnight as the LCVP's muffled 325 HP diesel engine powered it through a light Mediterranean chop toward the dark Lebanon shoreline two miles away.

  This was only the second time Johnny had been in a landing craft. The boat was thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide, built like a steel coffin. He didn't like being in it any more than he had the first time.

  Johnny rode the vessel toward the Beirut shore as a member of the twenty-man assault party. Ten were crack combat specialists from a SEAL team unit on the ship, the rest had been drawn from the deck force.

  They would be disembarking north of the airport, near a demolished luxury hotel and a row of modest beach houses that had been the site of the previous landing. An intelligence team had infiltrated the area three nights before and had been due to flash a signal from shore over six hours ago. But no one had heard from them during the past twenty-four hours. Nothing had been seen.

  Trouble.

  The strike force's job was to find out what happened to the intelligence group and bring them out — if possible.

  The night began warm and overcast, but now the cloud cover had dispersed, revealing the bright, nearly full moon.

  The small force crouched behind the LCVP's ramp, getting ready for the short run to shore. There would be no air support, no big guns covering their landing zone.

  Johnny was an E-5 petty officer, second class. He stood five feet ten and weighed one fifty-five. His big wish lately was for contact lenses, but for now he used GI glasses for far vision. He had dark brown hair, and soft blue eyes that women found fascinating, or at least that's what they told him.

  Crouched beside Johnny on the steel deck of the vessel, gripping an M-16 rifle, was Randall Phillips, Johnny's closest buddy for the past two years. Neither one of them had ever fired a shot in anger, let alone aimed at another human being.

  "Gray, you son of a bitch, how did we get into this stinking mess, anyway?" Phillips asked, raising his voice over the growl of the LCVP's engine.

  "Volunteered, remember?" Johnny said, punching him in the shoulder. Johnny liked this rawboned hillbilly from Kentucky. They had hit it off well when they were assigned to their current Navy bucket, and the two young men had shared an easy friendship ever since. They chased girls together, got drunk together and kept each other out of trouble.

  Phillips was six feet two inches tall, gangly, with a mop of straw-blond hair and a wide grin that showed a row of slightly buck teeth.

  Johnny shifted the Armbrust disposable antitank rocket launcher to his other shoulder. "Geez, this thing is getting heavier."

  "I'm crying for you, Gray. I got to carry four rounds for that mother, and you get all the fun of firing it." He scowled. "What the hell are we doing out here, Gray? People could get hurt with all these damn guns and explosives."

  "We're trying to save somebody's ass," Johnny said.

  "Sure, but figure the odds," Phillips argued. "We go in with twenty swabbies to bring out four people. Probably all of us will get wasted in there."

  Johnny remained silent as flashes of light from Beirut lit up the horizon. He hunkered down against the cold metal, looking at the crack SEAL team at the front of the craft. Hell, he and Randall had it made. All they had to do was stay behind the old pros with the hand-held M-60 machine guns and keep their heads down.

  Johnny looked up at the moon again. The added light worried him. The success of this kind of strike depended on the darkness. This operatio
n was shaping up like all the others he had been on: what you had to do was keep your mouth shut, do what you were told and never volunteer. So why the hell had he volunteered?

  A sense of duty — to himself and for his country; indeed, for the free world.

  But he had never expected anything like this when he joined the Navy fresh out of high school in Sheridan, Wyoming. He had asked for boot training in San Diego and the Navy approved. Sitting offshore and listening to the steady pounding as artillery and mortar fire devastated the city had been like looking at a movie. Now it was getting real, too damn real.

  Johnny had qualified on the rifle during boot, but tonight when fired the M-16 it would not be at a bull's-eye or a man-size silhouette target. He would be shooting at another human being — trying to kill him!

  Johnny wondered how he would perform. He had heard old hands talk about combat in Nam on the riverboats where the war had been up close and deadly for thousands of sailors. Johnny remembered the horror and confusion he had felt when he heard stories of hacking Vietnamese apart with a hatchet, blowing their brains out with a.45 round at point-blank range.

  The engine on the LCVP hummed a note higher and Johnny felt a surge of power as the boat moved through the water faster. The coxswain must have picked out his landing site and was trying to match the waves to help them catch a building breaker so they could surf in. Johnny sensed a stirring among the SEAL members in the front. Most of them had seen action, been «blooded» as they said. Four of the men were new to the team.

  "Thirty seconds to landing," Ensign Walters said.

  The whisper came along the line of crouched, anxious men all wondering what to expect.

  Thirty seconds, Johnny thought to himself. In two or three minutes he could be dead.

  His hands began to sweat. Once more he shifted the 14-pound Armbrust to a new position on his back. He checked to make sure that he had a round in the chamber of his M-16.

  Randall Phillips grinned and nudged Johnny. "Hey, Gray, you sign those papers they gave us? Last will and testament and all that crap?"

  Last will and testament? Johnny frowned at the thought. He had in fact named his brother, Mack, as his beneficiary. Had Mack, on the eve of his first action in Vietnam, experienced the same apprehension that Johnny was now facing? Hell, yes. Johnny's face relaxed into a smile and he drew strength from that last thought as he answered Randall.

  "Yeah. You?"

  "No. I got nothing to leave anybody." Randall shrugged. "I found me a damn home in the Navy. What's to go back to?"

  As. he said it there was a slight shudder as the metal hull of the LCVP scraped against the sand.

  Lebanon…

  Beirut…

  Invasion!

  Johnny could see the SEAL men tensing. They rose to a standing position, still braced as the vessel rode a huge wave that lifted the craft off the sand and shoved it twenty feet farther up the shore. The landing ramp of the LCVP swung outward and fell with a splashing jolt into the Mediterranean Sea. The men began to spill across the metal walkway in ankle-deep water as they hit the hard Beirut beach.

  Johnny felt his feet touch the sand and he kept running.

  There had been no opposing fire so far. Maybe they had made an unobserved landing. Moonlight still bathed the beach and Johnny could see the small dunes and the row of modest beach houses in front of them.

  The SEAL men dashed up the beach with the other ten sailors right behind them. According to plan, five of the sailors spread out on each side of the SEALs at five-yard intervals and continued running toward the row of residences.

  Then it happened. Sudden machine-gun fire sliced into the center of the line like a scythe.

  The instant he heard the gun-chatter, Johnny dived into the sand, still warm from the hot daytime sun. He rolled behind a small dune and pushed back his helmet, trying to catch his breath. To his right he saw three SEAL men writhing on the sand. A fourth lay perfectly still, the top of his head blown off.

  A pair of grenades exploded ahead, then two more.

  "Move it!" somebody shouted. "To the right! On the double!"

  Johnny recognized the voice as Chief Swanson's, the only one of the SEAL men he knew. Johnny jumped up just as Randall pushed past him. They sprinted around the four bodies on the ground, and in the moonlight Johnny saw the shattered, bloody face of Ensign Walters. That made Chief Swanson their leader.

  Swanson had sent two of his combat veterans around the side to make sure the machine-gun position had been neutralized by the grenades. Now they were back and waving everyone forward.

  "I wasn't cut out to be no damn infantryman!" Randall muttered. Swanson angled them forward to a trail that ran parallel to the beach and behind the first row of houses. Most of the structures had been damaged by shelling. Some had holes in the walls, many of the windows were shot out.

  The men all knew the mission. They had to move about a quarter of a mile into the city from the landing zone, find the house that had two palm trees in the front yard and rescue the intelligence party.

  Swanson ran up and down the line of his troops.

  "We're home free right now, but the bastards heard the shooting and will get more troops here pronto. We need to be in and out of that house and back to the beach before they show up. Come on, move it!"

  The men moved forward. The weight of the Armbrust rocket launcher on his back felt like a ton, but Johnny Bolan Gray kept up with the others. He was their heavy artillery if they needed it.

  "Down!" Swanson roared, and the men hit the dirt along the side of the path. The building ahead of them and to the right erupted with small-arms fire. Johnny flattened himself on the ground.

  "Who's got that bazooka?" Swanson roared again.

  Johnny crawled on his elbows and knees until he was crouching beside the leader.

  "Put one into that house, the first floor."

  Johnny swung the Armbrust off his back and onto his shoulder.

  Rifle fire sprayed the area and they all dived to the ground, ramming helmets into the dirt.

  When the flurry of rounds died, Johnny repositioned the Armbrust on his shoulder, sighted on a first-floor window and fired the 2.2 pound warhead. There was no recoil because the countermass of plastic flakes in the weapon's firing tube eliminated it. Nor was there any flash, blast or smoke, as piston brakes at each end of the tube sealed in the gases.

  The chief appeared surprised at the meager, pistollike sound, then turned a second later as the house ahead of them exploded with a stuttering roar, flames gushing out of the windows. A secondary explosion shook the residence and the roof fell in. The chatter of the SEAL machine guns and the M-16s all around Johnny was furious, and he flinched when the second explosion shattered the house.

  "Let's go!" Swanson shouted.

  Johnny slung the Armbrust across his back, grabbed his M-16 and ran ahead. In the moonlight he saw a man in a camouflage shirt and white pants stumble out of the house. The man aimed a rifle at them.

  He's going to kill me, Johnny thought. The young man's knees wobbled for a second. Then he gritted his teeth, lifted the M-16 and triggered the weapon. It was set on full auto, and six slugs slammed into the Arab, knocking him backward.

  Johnny watched the Shiite fall. For a fraction of a second he wanted to scream that he did not mean to kill the man, that it was a mistake.

  He heard gunfire and felt a stinging in his arm. He sprayed more rounds at a window in the back of the house and ran past it, racing with the rest of the men deeper into the city. Passing another row of bombed-out buildings, they settled behind a long stone wall. Johnny checked his arm and found only a scratch.

  The sounds of firing diminished. Soon there were only the sporadic cracks of a few rifle rounds.

  "The next house is our objective," Swanson said, breathing hard from the run. "Our people are supposed to be in there." He pointed at two of his SEALs. "Circle around back. If you draw any fire, get your asses back here quick. If you get all the way ar
ound, find a defensive position to protect the other side of the house. Go!"

  The men moved out at once. Just like boot camp, Johnny thought. They command, you do it. That kind of discipline could save your life — or it could get you killed. As he sat behind the wall he unslang the Armbrust tube, got a live one from Randall and attached it to the triggering stock of the weapon. This was a special combat operational test for the weapon, to see if the military wanted to put it into regular issue. So far, Johnny was impressed by the Armbrust.

  Johnny was breathing hard as he adjusted the weapon.

  The unmistakable smell of rotting flesh came to him. For a moment it was overpowering. He turned to his right and saw a white goat that had been blown apart by a shell. Half of it was bloated. Even in the darkness a swarm of flies buzzed around the decaying flesh.

  The sound of rifle fire came from a half mile away. A moment later the two men Swanson had sent came out on the far side of the house and waved them forward.

  "Half of us will rush the house," Swanson said. "No firing. We hope friendlies are in there." He turned to Johnny. "Keep the bazooka thing back here as artillery. If we don't get in, we'll want you to put a round through a window, any window." He pointed to some of his men.

  "Let's go, now!"

  They darted toward the entrance. Swanson tried the handle, pushed open the door. Johnny heard some soft conversation inside. Then Swanson motioned the rest of them forward.

  Johnny was the last one through. Someone slammed the door shut behind him and a wooden bar dropped into iron holders securing the door.

  Johnny found himself in a modern furnished house, faintly lit by candles on the floor, and a sudden feeling of anxiety washed over him. People lived here! And he had been ready to blow the place into kindling.

  Swanson yelled at a medic, who rushed over to a bleeding man lying on a cot at the far side of the room. Someone was holding a candle near the wounded man. The corpsman broke open a medical kit from his bag, pulled out some items and hurriedly worked over the man.

  "He's dead, sir," the corpsman said.