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Extreme Justice
Don Pendleton
Defending the enemyIt was supposed to be an open-and-shut case against a high-ranking mobster on trial for conspiring to aid Middle Eastern terrorists in a series of brutal attacks against the U.S. But the so-called "last don" of New York City is likely to be acquitted when mercenary hit teams kill every prosecution witness except one.Gilbert Favor is a retired money mover now living in Costa Rica, and is the government's last hope. Mack Bolan's mission is to track Favor and return him Stateside. But the money-laundering specialist is less than willing to come forward. The gunmen tracking him want silence by way of a bullet. The Executioner must deliver the witness alive, no matter what the cost.
“Here they come!”
Blanca Herrera advised Bolan, as if she thought he might be unaware of the pursuit.
“I see them,” he replied. “Hang on.”
Almost before she could react to his warning, they cleared the alley and he cranked the Ford into the sharpest left-hand turn he could manage, startling a pair of jaywalkers who squealed and ran for safety on the sidewalk. Gunfire echoed from the alley at his back, even before the first chase car emerged. The pedestrians went prone.
Bolan was making all the haste he dared on residential streets, watching the sidelines where his own headlights and those closing behind him cast distorted, moving shadows. Any one of them might mask another late-night rambler, possibly a child, and Bolan had to balance that thought with the threat of death that rode his bumper. At the same time, if he drove too fast and lost control, smashed up the Ford, he and his passengers were facing sudden death, and the failure of his mission.
“Could you distract them for me?” he asked Herrera.
“How?”
“Shoot back!” the Executioner said.
Extreme Justice
The Executioner
Don Pendleton
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Michael Newton for his contribution to this work.
All evils are equal when they are extreme.
—Pierre Corneille,
1606–1684
Horace
Sometimes we have to match evil with evil. It’s a fact, and I’m prepared to pay the toll.
—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 command 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
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Prologue
Crooked Island, Florida
June 14
Armand Casale rose from the midnight surf, water streaming from the neoprene wet suit that covered his athletic body like a second skin. He spit out the mouthpiece of his scuba breathing apparatus and reached back with his left hand to interrupt the flow of oxygen. Leaving his face mask snug in place to spare his eyes from dripping saltwater, Casale shed his swim fins, hooked them to his belt and crossed the narrow strip of moonlit beach with long, determined strides.
He couldn’t help the moon, but a mad sprint across pale sand to reach the tree line would only invite the notice of the guards.
When he reached the trees without a siren going off or shouting men rushing out to cover him with automatic weapons, Casale reckoned he was halfway home. The hardest bit was still ahead, of course, but other members of his team had worried that he wouldn’t even survive the trip ashore.
Casale knew what he was doing. That was why he’d come alone, against the odds, instead of dragging half a dozen shooters with him like some kind of ragtag army launching an amphibious invasion.
Done right, it was a one-man job.
And if he failed, why take the others down with him?
His target lay a hundred yards inland. The small two-bedroom house would’ve sold for seven figures if it had been offered for sale. A buyer would’ve paid not only for the proximity to the ocean but also for the isolation, which was rare indeed wherever sand met surf around the Sunshine State.
The property was not for sale, however. Hadn’t been since Uncle Sam had snapped it up during World War II for naval exercises. More recently, the Justice Department maintained the property and used it as an outpost of the WITSEC program.
Witness Security, that was.
Casale didn’t know how much his boss had paid for information regarding the location of the Crooked Island safehouse, and he didn’t care. He had his orders, and he meant to execute the plan without a hitch.
Four guards, at least, and one primary target. Casale was authorized to kill them all, if necessary, and to hell with any heat resulting from the deaths of federal agents.
It was perfect.
Casale wasn’t sure exactly how his adversaries would be armed. The Smith & Wesson .40-caliber had been standard issue for the FBI since 1990-something. Shotguns were more than likely, though Casale couldn’t rule out lightweight automatic weapons.
Never mind.
Casale was prepared for anything. In lieu of backup, he was carrying a Spectre submachine gun and accessories inside an airtight plastic bag. The weapon measured only fourteen inches with its shoulder stock retracted, twenty-two if he attached the fat suppressor to its threaded muzzle. Fifty-round four-column magazines gave the Spectre an ammo capacity surpassing any other SMG, while its cyclic rate of 850 rounds per minute bested even the classic Heckler & Koch MP-5.
The Spectre was Casale’s last resort, however. He would hold it in reserve, in case the plan started to fall apart.
His two primary weapons were a customized Walther P-38 pistol, also fitted with a suppressor and hand-loaded subsonic rounds, and a brand-new toy that dangled in a scabbard on Casale’s belt.
He had only used the WASP injector knife once before on a human being—call it a field test—and the results had been dramatic. The WASP carried a 12-gram cartridge of CO2 gas inside its handle, triggered at the touch of a button through a tube in its 5.5-inch blade of razor-edged surgical steel. Upon release, forty cubic inches of gas were injected into the target’s flesh at minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit, expanding to basketball size and instantly freezing soft tissue on contact.
The WASP was created as a self-defense weapon for divers confronted by sharks. Injection of the freezing gas not only killed the shark, but also caused it to rise at dangerous speed, bursting open as it reached the surface and distracting other predators while the diver escaped, forgotten.
The knife retailed for six hundred dollars, but Casale’s hadn’t cost him anything. One of Don Romano’s thieves had stolen a case of them back in July, and Casale had appropriated two for himself, with enough gas cartridges to see him through a busy year. He had tried his new toy on a homeless man in San Francisco, two weeks earlier. Police were still puzzling over the case, while tabloid journalists beat the bushes for satanic cultists or black-market-organ harvesters.
After this night, the FBI would have a better handle on the mystery, but what of it? They might know how, and even why, but it would be a stone bitch learning who.
Casale slipped on the running shoes that he had carried in another plastic bag. He wasn’t taking any chances with a seashell or a piece of glass that might leave blood drops for the Bureau lab rats. No one had his DNA on file so far, but why risk injury and help his enemies at the same time?
A gliding shadow in the wind-swept night, Casale slowly approached the target, taking one step at a time.
Hyder, Arizona
June 14
HAROUN AL-RACHID SUPPOSED the small town’s name was meant to be a joke. Why else would agents of the U.S. government attempt to hide one of their most important turncoat witnesses in a community called Hyder?
It was the very sort of arrogance that most disgusted him about Americans, the smug conviction that they were superior in every way. Even their sense of humor was crude and tasteless, heavily dependent on insults directed toward nonwhite minorities or females.
Since bin Laden had surprised the Americans in 2001, Muslims had become targets of American humor. Al-Rachid understood the impulse—in truth, one of his own favorite jokes involved an American missionary and a priapic camel—but he still believed that the Great Satan needed to learn more humility.
This night, in his own small way, he was happy to help.
The desert outside Hyder, Arizona, bore no visible resemblance to that of his Saudi homeland. It lacked the massive, ever-changing dunes of perfect, almost silken, sun-baked sand. Instead, it was a place of grit and gravel, hard soil creased and creviced like an ancient reptile’s skin. It sprouted cacti, Joshua trees, mesquite and tumbleweeds, those prickly, erratic travelers that still made al-Rachid’s driver flinch each time once bounced across the two-lane road in front of them.
“Be careful,” al-Rachid ordered. “The police are everywhere.”
The driver acknowledged his order in Arabic, keeping his eyes on the highway revealed by their headlights.
In fact, except for those he’d come to kill, al-Rachid doubted that he would find another lawman in the area this evening. There was a one-man sheriff’s substation in Hyder, and the district had its own highway patrolman, but al-Rachid had been assured that the sheriff’s deputy went home at 6:00 p.m., except in cases of emergency, while the patrolman—called a state trooper—supervised four hundred miles of rural highway during his eight-hour shift. The odds against encountering him accidentally at any given place or time were higher than al-Rachid himself could calculate.
Upon arrival at their destination, it would be a different story. Al-Rachid and his two companions had been sent to kill one man, but he was guarded by at least four others, armed and trained.
No problem.
FBI agents—and all American police, in fact—were taught to save lives first and kill only in the utmost extremity. Nothing in their experience prepared them to match wits with dedicated warriors fielded by the Sword of Allah.
They would learn that lesson this night, to their ultimate sorrow.
Al-Rachid used a penlight to review the road map folded in his lap. He had the turnoff clearly marked, a thick black arrow pointing from the narrow highway to the right, or east.
“One mile,” he told the driver. Turning toward the soldier in the backseat, he commanded, “Goggles.”
Without answering, the man reached into a duffel bag on the seat beside him, drawing out two pairs of night-vision goggles. Al-Rachid took them both, placed one atop his map and held the other ready as his driver neared the access road that led to their intended target.
“Now,” al-Rachid announced. The driver switched his headlights off, turned slowly off the highway to his right and stopped a few yards down the unpaved road. Brake lights glowed ruby-red behind them, but al-Rachid could not prevent it, simply offering a prayer that his enemies were less than vigilant.
He passed a pair of bulky goggles to the driver, then put on his own, adjusting the head straps until the weight was fairly balanced. Every time he wore night-vision gear for any length of time, al-Rachid wound up with aching muscles in his neck and shoulders, but it was a minor price to pay under the circumstances.
Victory was now within his grasp.
He swiveled in his seat, confirming that the backseat gunner had his goggles on, the AR-18 folding-stock assault rifle held ready in his hands. Two more identical weapons lay on the floor at al-Rachid’s feet.
Given a choice, he would have picked Kalashnikovs, but in the present circumstances Armalites had been the best rifles available. They chambered 5.56 mm NATO rounds, slightly larger than the AK-74’s standard 5.45 mm Soviet cartridge, but the difference in practiced hands was minimal, and the Armalite’s larger 40-round magazine gave the weapons superior firepower.
Loaded with armor-piercing rounds, as these were, the rifles should defeat any Kevlar or similar protective apparel worn by the target or his bodyguards. In fact, the slugs should slice through body armor like a heated knife through cheese.
“Three-quarters of a mile,” al-Rachid reminded his wheelman. The driver knew that, but reminders did no harm, and there was no objection. As they drove along the unpaved access road, raising a plume of dust concealed by midnight darkness, al-Rachid dropped his map and lifted the twin rifles from the car’s floorboard.
They dared not drive directly to the house itself. Even with the headlights off, that would alert the guards and destroy their advantage of surprise. Al-Rachid would stop his driver halfway to the desert bungalow, then proceed on foot across the arid landscape to their goal.
With luck, he hoped to catch the target and at least one of his bodyguards asleep. The agents had to sleep and eat in shifts, with two or three of them remaining on alert around the clock.
But how alert?
Al-Rachid smiled as the car slowed, coasting to a halt.
