Dark savior, p.1
Dark Savior, page 1
SILENT KNIGHTS
A key witness in a money-laundering case gets cold feet before testifying and flees to a monastery in the Sierra Nevadas. But the cartel behind the scheme isn’t about to let someone with that kind of information escape unharmed, and they dispatch hit men into the mountains.
Mack Bolan, tasked with protecting the witness, barely reaches the Sierras ahead of the cartel killers. With an epic winter storm raging, Bolan will need to combine his combat and survival skills to prevent the thick monastery walls from becoming a prison. He can’t control the weather, but with the monks fighting beside him, the Executioner is prepared to unleash a deadly blizzard of his own on the enemy.
Bolan waited for the signal from Grimaldi, then leaped into the storm.
The Cessna’s slipstream carried Bolan backward, his arms and legs splayed, then the plane was gone and gale-force winds attacked him like a sentient enemy. His goggles frosted over almost instantly.
From thirteen thousand feet, Bolan had about two minutes until he’d hit the ground below. Ninety seconds before he reached four thousand feet and had to deploy his main chute. If he dropped any lower without pulling the ripcord, the reserve chute would deploy automatically in time to save his life.
In theory.
At the moment, though, Bolan was spinning like a dreidel in a cyclone, blinded by the snow and frost on his goggles, hoping he could catch a glimpse of the altimeter attached to his left glove. Without it, he’d have to rely on counting seconds in his head. A miscalculation, and he’d be handing his life over to the emergency chute’s activation device, hoping it would prevent him from plummeting to certain death in the Sierras.
If he didn’t survive this jump, it could mean a massacre. A dozen lives, maybe two or three times more, depended on him without those people knowing it. If he arrived in time, unbroken, and could circumvent the coming siege...
A burst of wind spun Bolan counterclockwise, flipped him over on his back, then righted him again so he was facing the jagged peaks below. He kept counting through the worst of it and reached his silent deadline.
Breathing through clenched teeth behind his mask, Bolan reached up to grasp the ripcord’s stainless-steel D ring.
#369 Dangerous Tides
#370 Dark Alliance
#371 Fire Zone
#372 Lethal Compound
#373 Code of Honor
#374 System Corruption
#375 Salvador Strike
#376 Frontier Fury
#377 Desperate Cargo
#378 Death Run
#379 Deep Recon
#380 Silent Threat
#381 Killing Ground
#382 Threat Factor
#383 Raw Fury
#384 Cartel Clash
#385 Recovery Force
#386 Crucial Intercept
#387 Powder Burn
#388 Final Coup
#389 Deadly Command
#390 Toxic Terrain
#391 Enemy Agents
#392 Shadow Hunt
#393 Stand Down
#394 Trial by Fire
#395 Hazard Zone
#396 Fatal Combat
#397 Damage Radius
#398 Battle Cry
#399 Nuclear Storm
#400 Blind Justice
#401 Jungle Hunt
#402 Rebel Trade
#403 Line of Honor
#404 Final Judgment
#405 Lethal Diversion
#406 Survival Mission
#407 Throw Down
#408 Border Offensive
#409 Blood Vendetta
#410 Hostile Force
#411 Cold Fusion
#412 Night’s Reckoning
#413 Double Cross
#414 Prison Code
#415 Ivory Wave
#416 Extraction
#417 Rogue Assault
#418 Viral Siege
#419 Sleeping Dragons
#420 Rebel Blast
#421 Hard Targets
#422 Nigeria Meltdown
#423 Breakout
#424 Amazon Impunity
#425 Patriot Strike
#426 Pirate Offensive
#427 Pacific Creed
#428 Desert Impact
#429 Arctic Kill
#430 Deadly Salvage
#431 Maximum Chaos
#432 Slayground
#433 Point Blank
#434 Savage Deadlock
#435 Dragon Key
#436 Perilous Cargo
#437 Assassin’s Tripwire
#438 The Cartel Hit
#439 Blood Rites
#440 Killpath
#441 Murder Island
#442 Syrian Rescue
#443 Uncut Terror
#444 Dark Savior
Dark Savior
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue.
—William Hazlitt
If the law must be bent in the service of justice, so be it. I do what’s necessary to defend innocent lives. End of story.
—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
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Prologue
Las Cruces, New Mexico
“It’s hot,” Rob Walker said.
“You say that every day. New Mexico,” Greg Kilhane replied. “It’s always hot.”
“Hotter today than usual.” Walker used a handkerchief to blot his sweaty face.
Kilhane, who never seemed to sweat, drew on his cigarette and shook his head. “Go back inside, then. I can handle this alone.”
The two of them were standing on the patio so Kilhane could smoke. No smoking in the safe house under the established guidelines. Nearly dusk, and it was still too hot for Walker’s liking, but he’d come out anyway and left their third man with their subject.
“Don’t mind me,” said Walker. “Just keep poisoning yourself.”
Bitching was part of witness duty with the U.S. Marshals Service. Guarding rats was tedious, dead time, when they could just as well have been out serving warrants, busting fugitives, transporting prisoners from jail to court or court to prison. Anything was better, more exciting, than babysitting squealers in the Witness Security Program.
“Only two more days,” Kilhane said.
Until their witnesses testified, that was. Which meant they’d all be flying out the day after tomorrow, headed back to New York City and the high life, handing off their pigeon to the Special Operations Group for coverage until he testified against whomever he’d decided to betray in exchange for a new name, new life, new whatever.
Walker didn’t know the details of the case, except that it was “big,” according to the supervisory deputy who’d handed them the assignment. “Big as in bad guys with billions,” he’d said, a real wisecracker.
That raised the threat level and meant they had two AR-15 rifles and a shotgun at the safe house, in addition to their standard-issue .40-caliber Glocks. There were vests in the house, one for each marshal and a spare for the rat, but Walker hadn’t tried his on and wouldn’t bother with it till they headed for the airport, day after tomorrow.
Easy duty, sure, but boring. And hot today, as usual, even at sundown.
“Done yet?” he asked Kilhane.
“Are you the nicotine police?”
“Forget it.”
Kilhane stubbed his butt into a three-foot-tall ceramic ashtray filled with sand, and sighed smoke. “Yeah, I’m done. Let’s make sure Marshal Marshall hasn’t lost the subject.”
Walker laughed at that, the way he always did, on reflex. Ethan Marshall was their third team member, “Marshal Marshall” to the others like Kilhane, who couldn’t let it go. Sometimes Walker wondered if he’d gotten out of high school, after all. Still hanging out with jocks and trading silly puns, except the stakes were higher. If he dropped the ball on this job, it could cost him his life.
* * *
“THEY’RE GOING BACK INSIDE,” Killer Combs said. “Over.”
A second later Spike O’Connor’s voice came back to him, the walkie-talkie giving it a tinny echo. “Copy that. Let’s do it.”
“Roger that,” Combs responded.
His mama hadn’t named him Killer. She had called him Cleveland, of all things, and that had drawn the schoolyard bullies like a magnet pulls iron filings from the dirt, until Combs taught them that he didn’t swallow any shit. “Killer” came from buddies in United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, two tours of duty in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Combs might’ve still been in the Corps, maybe a master sergeant by now, if slotting Afghans and Iraqis hadn’t turned him on so much. If only he’d restrained himself a bit that day, outside of Lashkar Gah.
To hell with it, he thought, and moved out toward their target. It felt strange, working inside the States and with a dozen guys involved, but who was he to question clients with that kind of cash to throw around? They wanted certainty, an ironclad guarantee that no one in the house would ever bother them again, with cell phone snaps to prove the job was done.
Quirky, but what the hell.
“You heard the man,” he told Cohen and Hitchener. “Let’s roll.”
* * *
“WHERE’S WALKER?” KILHANE asked Ethan Marshall.
“In the crapper.”
“Jeez. How long has he been in there, anyway?”
Marshall considered that, checking the TV against his watch, the six o’clock news winding down into sports and weather. “Twenty minutes, give or take,” he said.
That put a frown on Kilhane’s face. “I’m gonna check on him and—”
The second part of his sentence was cut off as the doorbell rang. Walker emerged from the bathroom.
“Who’s that?” Walker asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Marshall countered. “Jehovah’s Witnesses? Or maybe Girl Scouts pushing cookies.” He rose from the sofa and unholstered his Glock.
“Check it,” Kilhane said to Walker. And to Marshall, “Back him up. I’m going for the subject.”
“Right,” Walker replied, the three of them all business now.
“Up and at it,” Kilhane ordered. “This is not a drill.”
* * *
COLIN HUME WAS dressed up in a brown UPS uniform, the van they’d stolen for the evening behind him, idling at the curb. His parcel was a cardboard box large enough to hold a Bizon submachine gun with fifty-three 9 mm Parabellum packed into its helical magazine, ready to rip. Hume had cut out the back of the box, and now he slid his right hand inside to clutch the Bizon’s pistol grip. A clipboard balanced up on top helped his cover.
He was on the verge of trying the doorbell again when a voice from inside asked, “Who is it?”
Hume smiled at the peephole in the door, its blocking shadow proof that someone was already eyeing him. “Parcel delivery,” he answered, adding a mush-mouth garble for a name.
“What’s that?” the man behind the door demanded.
Hume spat out another mess of jumbled syllables, his index finger on the Bizon’s trigger, that part of the weapon borrowed from larger rifles designed by its creator, the great Viktor Kalashnikov.
Some men were giants in their field. Others, like Colin Hume, stood on their shoulders for a better shot at whoever was marked for death today.
“Hang on,” the guy behind the door said now, clearly disgruntled, maybe wondering if he should get his ears checked. Hume kept smiling as a dead bolt clacked, and then the door began to open.
Easy does it...
Hume waited until he had a clear view of the doorman, checked him with a glance to see if he was wearing Kevlar underneath his wilted dress shirt, then fired a six-round burst into the stranger’s chest. The Parabellum rounds slammed the guy backward as he spouted crimson from a tidy group of holes above his heart, and Hume pushed through the doorway into a small sitting room.
The second marshal waited for him there, as Hume had expected, wielding his Glock but firing just a beat too slow, still not quite believing that he’d seen his partner killed before his eyes.
Hume dropped to one knee, ditched the smoking box and gave the second guard two short precision bursts. The first one opened up his belly before the second caught him doubling over, tattooing his startled face.
Two down, but there were three guards on the target. Hume went looking for the third. The back door opened with a bang, three of his team members moving in to help him sweep the place. Two more were close behind Hume, bulling through the front door he’d left open, which left six outside in various positions, covering the action from a distance, watching for police.
O’Connor, the leader of the operation, began barking orders, and the men fanned out to check the other rooms. Each of them had the floor plan memorized: kitchen and a smallish dining room to the right, four bedrooms, one en suite, and a separate bathroom all off to Hume’s left, down a hallway. In front of him, glass sliding doors faced the desert and a backyard somebody had stripped of grass, replacing it with rocks and cacti.
As Hume started for the hallway, Mueller and Ornelas jogged past him, not wanting to let him hog the fun. He didn’t hurry, knowing that the third watchdog would come to them after he’d heard the racket in the living room.
Safe house, my ass, Hume thought, smiling.
Even if number three were on the phone right now, making a panic call, the reinforcements wouldn’t come in time to save him or the target he was guarding. They were out of time, beyond salvation now.
As if on cue, the third marshal showed himself, clearing the hallway in a rush, an AR-15 at his shoulder. He was clearly stunned to encounter the six men still in the living room, and hesitated long enough for all of them to open up at once, making him dance as bullets riddled him from neck to knees.
“Rest in pieces,” Killer Combs advised the dead guy, as Hume moved past him down the hallway. He focused on the shared bathroom, the room nearest to him.
He kicked the door in, checked behind the shower curtain, then turned toward the window. Funny that it didn’t have a screen to keep the bugs out. Moving closer, Hume peered through the frame and saw the screen in the flower bed below, twisted from being hammered out, dented from someone stepping on it as he cleared the window.
Hume retreated, found the others scanning bedrooms and returning empty-handed. “Spike!” he called. “We lost him.”
“What?”
“See for yourself.”
O’Connor checked the window and immediately turned the air blue with profanity. When that storm passed, he turned to Hume and asked, “How could we miss him leaving?”
“Don’t ask me. I was with you. Sordi and Gounden had the east side covered.”
“Shit!”
“What now?” asked Mueller, from the bathroom doorway.
“Now we split,” O’Connor answered. “Now I call the man and tell him we screwed up.”
“He won’t like that,” Hume said.
“No shit.” O’Connor scowled and hurried past him, out the door.
1
Over the Sierra Nevadas, California
“This is crazy,” Jack Grimaldi said. “It’s snowing like there’s no tomorrow. If I didn’t have the instruments—”
Mack Bolan interrupted him. “There won’t be a tomorrow for the target, if we wait. The window’s small and closing fast.”
“What window?” Jack asked. “Can you see anything down there?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve been over the terrain.”
“From photos, sure. What good is that when you can’t see the ground?”
