Serpent's Lair

This was not going to be easy

Every step, Bolan turned his efforts to spotting new opportunities, discarding lost openings and chances as they fell behind.

That was how the Executioner had survived for so long—not by being a good shot, not by being strong, not by having the biggest guns. It was having a mind as sharp as a razor, constantly keeping it in motion, like a shark on the hunt, always awake, always sniffing for traces of weakness to pounce on.

That’s when he saw the red dot dance across the back of the man in the lead.

MACK BOLAN

The Executioner

#252 Death Line

#253 Risk Factor

#254 Chill Effect

#255 War Bird

#256 Point of Impact

#257 Precision Play

#258 Target Lock

#259 Nightfire

#260 Dayhunt

#261 Dawnkill

#262 Trigger Point

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

The Executioner®

Serpent’s Lair

Don Pendleton

All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents; and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat.

—Pliny the Elder, 23–79

Natural History

All men have the strength and ability to crush the serpents that torment them. When we speak for truth and justice, our words are poison to them and it destroys them as if they have been burned by acid. To the vipers who stalk the world, my efforts are to make sure that truth defeats them wherever they are found.

—Mack Bolan

To Don, the original dragonslayer who started Mack off tilting not at windmills, but at the real dragons tormenting good people everywhere. You gave us an outlet for hope of justice.

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

Chapter 16

Prologue

Doves broke from the treetops as the man in black raced among the trunks. His pursuers were fueled by a feral rage. The lone warrior reached for the gleaming silver weapon on his belt, but held it in its sheath as he broke through the tree line.

He slowly took out his katana, a long, graceful unveiling of gleaming metal. He walked toward the shore of the stagnant river, his wooden sandals scraping the smoothed river stones and gravel that rose from the edge of the water.

Enemy swordsmen raced to circle him and cut him off, but the man in black didn’t make a run for it. He was in the water, six inches deep, the hem of his hakama soaking through. He spread his legs, keeping the tip of his sword at waist-height, both hands wrapping around the black cords on the handle.

He counted them. Eight men. He breathed deeply, resisting the urge to gulp air after the chase and battle with Zakoji’s guards. Instead, he relaxed.

“You thought that you could bring death to me, intruder?” a voice called out from the tree line.

Zakoji appeared, dressed in black robes, a red serpent embroidered on the left side of his body. It was the Uwibami, a monsterous serpent that snatched men from horseback. It was the symbol of Zakoji’s army.

“I came here seeking work,” the man in black said. “Honest work.”

“There can be no honest work for the henchman of the shogunate. Not the monster who reigns over these lands.”

The man in black was silent. He knew that to survive, he had to be still, to sense his enemies before they even moved. Sensing that brief flash of lethal hostility had saved the warrior more than once.

With the rustle of fabric, the black-clad warrior did a quarter turn, his sword point drawing an arc that went from pointing directly in front of him to sticking out behind him like the tail of some massive scorpion. The attacking swordsman took a second step, but he was already dying before the warrior reversed his blade and sliced it across the cultist’s face.

He dipped the tip of his sword into the water, letting the blood run off the hammered steel.

The circle of seven spread farther apart, to equalize the distance between them, to cut down on the intruder’s ability to escape.

“He sent you. You are no ronin, you are still the shogun’s own second! You came here at his beck and call, seeking to dip your steel in my blood.

The ronin shook his head, but doubted further debate would dissuade Zakoji. He knew Zakoji was a cold-blooded murderer, and his duty stated that he had to act against the savage. He cleared his mind preparing for the attack he knew would start in a heartbeat.

Steel sparked on steel as the first man made his move. The ronin sidestepped, avoiding a second cut from behind as he twirled the sword around, carving through the throat of the first assailant. With a pivot, he brought down his steel, slicing through the arm of the man who lunged at him from behind, the sharp belly of his blade carving through muscle and bone in an effortless movement that dropped the attacker’s sword to the ground.

He dug one foot into the gravel and bowed deeply to twist under a flashing sword. The point of his katana speared the belly of a third man, guts spilling out through the massive rent in his abdomen.

The ronin stood up straight and flicked his sword down, deflecting a chop that lashed at his leg. The blade only snagged the black fabric and exposed the bare leg underneath.

The enemy swordsmen pressed their attack with ferocity. The warrior in black was driven into a defensive fight that he knew he could not win.

Four men were on one side of him. The fifth, though lacking an arm and swiftly losing blood, picked up his blade to continue the struggle for his lord and master. A pang of regret filled the ronin for having to meet such courage with brutal efficiency. It did not stay his sword arm, however. He sidestepped an attack and made a swift downward cut, the stroke striking the shoulder of one swordsman.

The warrior grabbed the man’s sword from his insensate fingers and reversed it, drawing its length across his chest in a deep slash that severed his aorta. Zakoji’s cultist dropped to the stones and moved no more. The four surviving clansmen spread apart to avoid the wounded man’s fate, their blades aimed at the black-clad warrior.

The ronin stepped between them, a sword in each hand, like the claws of a scorpion, awaiting the next wave of attacks.

“You have a chance to live. Turn your back on Zakoji, and I shall not slay you,” he told them. “You fought with courage.”

The one-armed fighter lunged. The black-clad warrior blocked with one sword blade and sliced the man from hip to hip. The stroke stopped the man cold, giving the ronin time to sweep the other sword around to cleave the man’s head cleanly from his shoulders.

He sensed the next attack, but Zakoji’s fighter still managed to open up a scratch from shoulder to hip with the tip of his katana. The ronin reversed one sword blade and pivoted, spearing the attacker just above his kidneys. With a turn, the ronin grabbed the dying man’s sword before he tumbled to the ground, blood leaking among the cobblestones at his feet.

And then there were two.

Two, and Zakoji.

Who knew what skills the self-proclaimed sorcerer possessed, but the ronin bled now. It was a scratch, but it was enough of a distraction to slow him by a heartbeat.

It could mean the difference between life and death against a man of true skill.

The two remaining swordsmen took their positions, one to his left, one to his right, but both staying in front of him, away from the water’s edge.

They waited for him. Eyes searched his, sought out any sign of weakness that they could exploit. One blink, one moment of hesitation, and they would be upon him, their curved blades deep within his flesh. He gave them that blink, and as his eyes opened, he turned sideways. The two men sought the ronin as he faced them head-on, their goal to carve at his arms and sides as they passed him. Instead, he presented himself as a slimmer target, one sword reversed around his back, the other swooped in front of him as Zakoji’s fighters passed him.

The katana he swung behind him glanced off pelvic bone as it parted its way through the side of the man who sought to harm his right side. The man on his left screamed as the black-clad swordsman’s edge sunk deep into his back, lodged between two vertebrae and levered the handle from his grip. Both men fell.

The cult leader walked toward the exhausted warrior, his feet invisible beneath his robe so that he appeared to float, ghostlike. The sword cleared its scabbard with a hard push of his thumb. He leveled the point at the warrior, then down to the earth.

The ronin raised his sword above his head with both hands, arms pressing together in perfect position for a downward stroke. Zakoji didn’t adjust his pose, still keeping his sword-point at ground level.

The ronin thought about the stories that Zakoji had sorcery, of sorts. He used trickery and venom to distill success in the form of a potion.

“Has your courage left you?” Zakoji chided. “Has your will to serve the emperor once again abandoned you, executioner?”

The ronin bristled for a moment at his old title. Each new utterance was like sand ground into an old wound. His cut ached, blood caking at the small of his back, his hatori grown stiff with dried blood. Sweat trickled down his forehead and neck, and each breath parted the slice in his back a little more, pain growing with each inhalation.

The ronin breathed deeply again. He twisted his hands around the corded handle of his blade, screwing up his strength, forcing himself back into the mind set of everything and nothing. The pain went away.

The black-clad swordsman lowered the sword from above his head and leveled the tip at Zakoji’s heart.

It was with sudden fury that the cult leader lunged. The ronin blocked the blade with his own, sparks flew from the impact of metal on metal. The black-clad warrior tried to slip his sword past the other’s defense and stab him, but only clipped the kimono sleeve, leaving a crease in the man’s arm. Zakoji’s blade also glanced off the ronin’s flesh, nicking his ribs and coming away with a trail of blood.

The cult leader lunged again, but this time the ronin was ready for the attack and batted it to one side. He sliced down to carve through the embroidery of the serpent on Zakoji’s kimono, parting muscle and flesh as he did so. Bones gleamed from the opened wound.

The ronin winced as he felt his shoulder carved again. As they retreated from each other, Zakoji stumbled, teetering out of the way of a backswing that would have opened up his belly in one swoop. The ronin, however, felt the brutal bite of steel in flesh, his forearm nicked deeply. Blood seeped down to his grasp, both hands sticky and wet.

Zakoji snarled, clutching his wounded bosom, squeezing his kimono’s slashed fabric tight against the cut. The crimson serpent image on the front darkened, growing more sinister as it drank deeply of the necromancer’s blood. Wild, enraged eyes stared at the ronin and his control was completely gone.

Hacking with one arm, Zakoji lashed out. The ronin blocked two staggering blows with his sword, then pivoted out of the way. He speared the cult leader through his stomach, in the wake of a wildly missed downswing. The two fighters’ bodies were tight against each other.

“You slay me now, you defeat me now…” Zakoji spit. Blood poured over his lips. “But in another lifetime…another lifetime…it is you who will taste bitterly of defeat on this very spot.”

Zakoji gripped the injured ronin’s clothes, coughing up more blood, but in a single spasm, he was dead. The ronin lowered the man to the ground, shaking his head.

He stumbled away, knowing that he had to return to his infant son, to be on the road once more. He would not return this way again. He would not forget Zakoji’s promise, and he offered a prayer to the universe that whoever came to this valley would be able to defeat the sorcerer’s prophecy.

A convoy of two vans and two automobiles tracked its way up the side of the hill overlooking the stagnant stream. Their passing sent doves flying from tree branches, fluttering into the sky with startled warbles and the flash of wings.

A man in a black windbreaker and black jeans stared out the window at the brown water cutting its way among the cobblestones. His cold blue eyes lingered on the scene for a moment, and his memory searched, as if for some handle on the sudden wave of déjà vu that washed over him.

Mack Bolan dismissed the feeling, returning instead to his thoughts of the mission ahead.

1

He was posing as FBI Hostage Rescue Team Agent Matt Cooper. He popped the magazine on the Glock 23 pistol, checking the load. He reinserted it and pulled back the slide, observing the blunt .40-caliber nose of the bullet in the chamber. His stark blue eyes looked up to greet Rhode Hogan, who sat across from him in the back of the van.

“Satisfied, Agent Cooper?” Hogan asked. “I know the FBI started using those a few years ago. I wasn’t sure if you’d be happy with it.”

“As long as it goes bang when I pull the trigger,” Bolan said, shrugging the nylon shell of his black windbreaker off his shoulders. He stuffed the gun back into its holster, with two spare magazines to balance it out.

Hogan smirked. It was all he could do to suppress a full-blown laugh. “That’s the kind of attitude I like from a man. Maybe it won’t be so bad having you on hand.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled with this job either, Hogan.”

“I know,” the mercenary said. He leaned back, looking at the lush Japanese countryside. The valley dropped away as the van crawled up the road. “One man sent for this job. Usually the Feds send a dozen of you guys on one of these cases.”

“One was the most we could get your boss to accept,” Bolan replied. “He trusts you.”

Hogan lowered his head, smiling even more widely, not looking at Bolan. “That’s pretty sad, considering.”

Bolan didn’t make a sound, except for the noise of his palm striking the grip of his pistol.

The mercenary and his men turned on Bolan, fists and rifle butts swinging out at him.

Bolan whipped up his windbreaker and slashed it out like a whip, blinding the men on the right of him in a wave of black, snapping fabric. The movement managed to deflect a blow with one deft movement, pushing it down to snarl other attacks aimed at him.

Hogan cursed the fluid reactions of the FBI agent. While his jacket was tangling up the clubbing weapons of the men to his right, he was shouldering hard into the man on his left, his foot meeting Hogan himself in the breastbone and driving him back into his seat.

While there was strength in numbers, in the confined space of the van, there were only so many avenues of approach to attack. Bolan was shielded by the bodies of the very men who were attempting to pile on him. He swung his borrowed Glock free, but the slash of a rifle barrel forced him to aim low at Hogan’s belly. He pulled the trigger on the pistol.

Nothing happened.

“Oh, by the way, the round we put in the pipe didn’t have a primer. Not something you’d be able to see if you were doing a press check,” Hogan said, taunting. He threw his big frame at Bolan, but again, the jumble of striking arms and weapons stopped him. Hogan’s gun slammed into the Executioner’s Kevlar vest and drove the wind from his lungs. With a surge, Bolan snapped his elbow into the face of the man to his left, rolling the head with the impact. He kicked at the head of the man to Hogan’s right, bouncing him off the back door of the van with such ferocity that he landed in the security chief’s lap.

Hands grabbed at Bolan from his right, but he had wrapped his hand around the frame of an MP-5 and he used it like an ax, chopping down on wrists and forearms. Men grunted and recoiled, hissing in pain from the slashing impacts. Hogan reached out and grasped the frame of the machine pistol, trying to twist it out of Bolan’s clutches, but the Executioner brought his knee up and caught Hogan in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. A hard shove sent the steel frame of the gun cracking into Hogan’s cheek and jawline, a dizzying blow that made him see stars for a moment.

Diving low, Bolan slipped between two of Hogan’s burly mercs. They had recovered from his initial attack on them, but were still slow. The warrior gave them both pause with punches to their sides, striking them in the kidneys. Choking noises exploded from their mouths and they folded to form a barrier between Hogan and his quarry.

“Stop him!” Hogan called. His beefy hand wrapped around Bolan’s ankle, squeezing tight. It was like holding on to two hundred pounds of bucking bronco as the muscular form tried to rip its way to freedom. The security chief stopped the Executioner’s exit from the back of the van for a moment, but the back doors had flown open during the melee, revealing the empty road behind them. Dust kicked up from the rear tires displacing gravel.

The driver called out to complain about the commotion and the sudden flapping of the rear doors in his mirrors. Bolan twisted and shoved one of the mercs hard against Hogan, their heads bouncing as the van jostled violently on the road.

With the impact of skulls, Hogan let go of Bolan’s ankle, and he quickly slithered out of the back of the van.

Mack Bolan hadn’t counted on Rhode Hogan to have set him up for a snatch and burn, but his skill and prowess had carried the day. When he came to a rolling halt in the middle of the road, he realized that there were still two more carloads of Hogan’s mercenaries plowing up the hillside. The grille of the first chase car was only yards away from him and closing fast.

“HOW MUCH ENGLISH DO you speak?” the girl asked.

Hideaki Machida squeezed his eyes shut and fished a bottle of painkillers out of his suit’s breast pocket. He shook six into his palm and popped them into his mouth, relishing the bitter chalkiness of them as he ground them with his teeth. He opened his eyes and looked at Rebecca Anthony, wishing to hell that her father’s men would get here already and take her off his hands.

She was dressed all in black, including the horrendous, overdone makeup she wore around her eyes and on her lips. Machida had heard about the so-called Goth look, but he’d never read a Gothic romance novel, and doubted the heroine wore a black cable-knit sweater torn at the neck, fishnets with intentional runs in them, or piercings in one nostril, and two in the center of her lower lip.

“I asked you a question, or don’t you—”

“I speak fluent English,” Machida snapped. He flipped open his sunglasses and slipped them over his aching eyes before opening the rear door of the white stretch limousine and stepping out into the daylight.

“Are they—” the girl began to speak, but Machida cut her off, slamming the door and shutting out her voice.

Daimyo Botan Okudaira said the annoying girl was a part of the grand new future of their clan. The money they were getting from snatching this girl was only the beginning. Her father was a man of means, means that would give them a chance to change the entire face of Asia.

Machida shook his head. He put two and two together. Daimyo Okudaira expected to turn the kidnapping into a gateway to link the Silver Tengu Clan and Colin Anthony’s Ironcorp—a Yakuza clan with a formidable contraband distribution network hooked up to a major arms manufacturer.

Machida figured that Okudaira wanted to compete with the triads on a level they hadn’t dreamed of. Machida didn’t know exactly what Ironcorp produced, but it had to be important to attract Okudaira’s attention in spreading his already formidable international reach.

Machida saw one of the men had out a stainless-steel Magnum revolver and was rolling the cylinder of the long, silver beast along his bronzed forearm. Unno smirked at Machida, twirled the gun and slipped it into its holster under his black vest. He shrugged his bare shoulders. His long black hair was tied off into a ponytail that swung down to midback, and when he smiled, a gold tooth glinted in the reflected sunlight. He was trying so hard to be hip and dangerous, he hurt Machida’s eyes.

“Everything okay, old man?” Unno asked with that gold-toothed grin.

“Yeah. I just needed some fresh air,” Machida answered, taking a few steps away from the limousine.

He looked at his team with disdain—the younger, hipper, harder Yakuza. Machida knew he was part of the old guard. The almost fifty-year old enforcer felt like he was babysitting a crew of prima-donna kids who thought they were the cutting edge.

Machida sighed, then looked at his watch.

Only a few more minutes, and he’d be done with this and back to watching his career stagnate as the head of security in Nagoya.

He looked down the road, missing the shadow of the suspended Ise Bay Highway. He was a man of the city, not the woods, but there was a quiet calm and dignity here. Machida frowned.

Thoughts of dying far from home haunted him.

MACK BOLAN HAD ESCAPED from the van with a relatively soft landing. His back hurt, but his shirt had protected him from most of the slashing, stabbing chunks of gravel in the road, and the thick, heavily toned muscles surrounding his shoulders and spine kept his bones from shattering as he somersaulted. It was not the most graceful of landings, but any one that you could walk away from, as his friend Jack Grimaldi once told him, was a great one.