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Pele's Fire
Don Pendleton
When six U.S. naval officers disappear inexplicably while on leave in Honolulu, Mack Bolan is suspicious.Then an informant emerges from the Hawaiian underground with claims that a nationalist group has escalated its home-rule rhetoric to militant action. He claims Pele's Fire is planning a devastating terrorist attack somewhere on the islands. There aren't any obvious links between the two events, but Bolan spots a potentially deadly chain.The masterminds of terror are desperate to eradicate any possibility the traitor who has cooled to their cause will keep them from executing their shocking plan. It's up to Bolan to protect the informant and stop the attack–making the Executioner both hunter and prey.
The gunners hit the ground running
Bolan didn’t wait for them to organize. He fired a three-round burst into the nearer chase car’s windshield, where the driver’s head should be, and thought he heard a strangled cry before all hell broke loose around him.
Bolan couldn’t accurately count the muzzle flashes winking at him from behind the headlights, but he thought that there were only five. If he was right, if he had drawn first blood with the unlucky driver, then he had already shaved the hostile odds by seventeen percent.
That still left five assassins, armed and angry, throwing down at him with everything they had.
Aolani’s car would never be the same. Bullets were raking it from grill to trunk along the driver’s side, some of them coming through the now shattered windows. So far, Bolan could not smell any leaking gasoline, but that was just dumb luck. Both tires were already deflated on the driver’s side, and Bolan knew they wouldn’t leave the Punchbowl in it.
Assuming they ever left at all.
Pele’s Fire
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.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
—Aldous Huxley,
1894–1963
Collected Essays
I’ve learned enough from history to know that some mistakes should never be repeated. I can’t change the past, but with a little luck, I just might change the future.
—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
Epilogue
Prologue
Honolulu, Hawaii
“Here they come,” Tommy Puanani said. “Everyone get ready.”
“Man,” his brother, Ehu, muttered from the backseat of their stolen Ford sedan, “we all been ready for the past six hours.”
“Never mind that,” Tommy snapped. “Just do your job.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
It took iron will to keep from spinning in the driver’s seat and reaching for his younger brother, maybe slapping Ehu’s face. But what would be the point?
Across the street and half a block downrange, six young men wearing dress, blue U.S. Navy uniforms emerged from Club Femme Nu, a strip club known for hands-on dancers.
“There’s Benny, right on time,” John Kainoa said, from the shotgun seat.
So far, so good, Tommy Puanani thought. The cab with Benny Makani at the wheel appeared as if from nowhere, zigzagging through traffic on Kapiolani Boulevard to double-park in front of Club Femme Nu. The taxi was a boxy model, like a poor man’s SUV, that would accommodate six passengers if none of them was claustrophobic.
One young member of the six-pack spied the cab and waved to Makani.
“Gotcha,” Tommy said, as the six men jammed themselves into the seats of the taxi.
Benny Makani keyed the microphone of his dash-mounted radio and said, “Cab 41, with six fares leaving 1673 Kapiolani Boulevard, headed for 909 Halekauwila Street.” His four friends in the stolen Ford received the message via a walkie-talkie, resting on the console next to Tommy Puanani’s hip.
“Exotic Nights,” Kekipi Ululani said, naming the destination based on its address. It was another well-known strip club where some of the dancers provided “special services.”
“Whatever,” Tommy said as he fired up the Ford and nosed into the flow of traffic, following Makani’s cab.
“So, where’s he taking them, again?” John Kainoa asked.
“Nowhere special,” Tommy answered, staying focused on the taillights of the cab a block in front of him. “We tag along, see where he stops, and jump ’em.”
“These Navy SEALs know all that kung-fu shit,” Kekipi Ululani said.
“I told you once already,” Tommy said, “they’re just plain Navy. Get it? Not everybody in the goddamned Navy is a SEAL. Besides, that’s why we’ve got the guns.”
And guns they had, for damned sure. Each of them was carrying a pistol underneath his floral shirt, for starters. Tommy Puanani had a mini-Uzi with a foot-long sound suppressor attached. His brother and Kekipi Ululani both had shotguns, 12-gauge pumps with sawed-off stocks and barrels. John Kainoa was their rifleman, packing a Chinese knockoff of the classic Russian AK-47 with a folding stock and 30-round banana magazine.
“Okay,” Ululani said, sounding somewhat mollified.
“Just be damn careful with them, yeah? No shooting till I say so, or it’s your head on the chopping block.”
Which, in this case, was not just a figure of speech.
They trailed the taxi along Kapiolani Boulevard, eastbound, until it turned into Waialae Avenue, then southeast from there until Makani found the spot he was seeking, underneath the elevated Lunalilo Freeway.
Tommy wondered if the haole sailors recognized their peril, even now. He guessed they were too drunk and horny to concern themselves with street signs or directions. In any case, it was too late to second-guess their driver as the Ford pulled in behind the taxi with its high beams on.
“Remember what I told you,” Tommy cautioned his companions. “No one fires a shot until I do.”
The sailors were unloading as Tommy stepped out of the Ford. They were confused and getting angry now, but Makani had them covered with an automatic pistol, barking at them to undress. The sailors began to argue, but the sight of four more men with firearms changed their minds, and they reluctantly complied.
It was an awkward business, stripping, when they’d had so much to drink. Their stumbling progress made Tommy Puanani nervous, but he hid it for the others’ sake. When the six uniforms were piled up on the asphalt, Makani gathered them and ran them over to the Ford.
“How ’bout you let us keep our Skivvies?” asked one of the now-sober sailors.
“No problem,” Tommy said, and squeezed the mini-Uzi’s trigger, raking them from left to right and back again, his thirty rounds expended in three seconds.
His companions fired, as well, the heavy shotgun blasts, the automatic rifle stuttering and Makani’s pistol.
Five seconds, maybe six, and it was over. Six young sailors were as old as they would ever be.
“All right,” Tommy said. “Put them in the cab. We’ll follow Benny out to Makapu’u and torch it there.” And as an afterthought he added, “Good work, my brothers. We are on our way.”
1
Leia Aolani was nervous. All right, she’d admit it—and who wouldn’t be, in the same circumstances? Still, she prided herself on maintaining a measure of cool, unlike some people she could mention.
The man seated beside her in the Datsun Maxima, for instance.
Mano Polunu wasn’t just nervous. He was twitching like someone about to collapse into a seizure. His head swiveled constantly, eyes scoping.
They sat parked outside the Royal Mausoleum State Monument’s wrought-iron fence, with gold crowns surmounting each fencepost. Inside the fence lay buried all but two of Hawaii’s ancient kings and queens, missing only King Lunalilo—who was planted at the Kawaiaha’o Church, in downtown Honolulu—and Kamehameha the Great, who’d been buried secretly in 1819, to prevent haole invaders from defiling his corpse.
All that death, and more to come.
But Aolani still thought they were on a mission for life.
Twitchy Polunu didn’t seem so sure.
“He’s late,” Polunu said, glancing at his watch for something like the third time in a minute. “I believe he’s late, don’t you?”
“The timing was approximate,” she once again reminded him. “He’s flying in from the mainland, remember. Could be flight delays, who knows? Then, once he’s on the ground, he has to get his bags and grab a rental car. Cut him some slack. We’re cool.”
“You think so, eh? We don’t even know who this guy is.”
“Polunu, I see the same things you see. Normal traffic on the street, and empty spaces in the parking lot. I don’t see any snipers in the bushes, and I don’t hear any bullets whistling around our heads.”
“You never hear the shot that kills you,” Polunu answered.
“Thanks for that, okay? Is it possible for you to chill out just a little? Turn the heebie-jeebies down a notch or two? For my sake?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll try,” he said. “It’s just that I keep thinking—”
“That they’ll find you. Right, I get it. And I grant you, it’s a real concern. That’s why we’re here, Polunu, remember? We need help to end this thing and keep you safe. To keep Hawaii safe.”
“But we’re exposed out here. You see that, right?”
“See it? I planned it, Polunu. But what I don’t see is anybody sneaking up to kill you.”
“Us,” he said, correcting her. “It’s not just me, now. You’re marked, too.”
That made Aolani shudder a bit, despite the warm evening. “All the more reason to follow through and finish this,” she replied. “If we don’t get it right the first time, we won’t have a second chance.”
“Because they’re killers.”
“Damn it, I know that!” she snapped at him. “Will you stop harping on the obvious?”
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound it, not even a little bit.
They sat in silence for a while, listening to traffic sounds and watching cars glide past on Nu’uanu Avenue. None turned into the parking lot. Why should they, since the mausoleum was closed for the night?
