Blood Toll

“Drop the knife,” Bolan said.

“Uh-uh.” The Hawaiian shook his head. “You want the knife, you have to take it.” Then the giant whipped the kukri underhanded right at the Executioner’s face.

Bolan ducked. The kukri slammed into the wall behind him, handle-first, leaving a dent in the drywall. The Hawaiian was already on the run again, slamming into the fire door fronting the stairwell. Bolan grabbed the kukri and dropped it into his canvas messenger bag, hurrying after the escaping native.

When he rammed open the stairwell door, the first barrage of gunfire rang out. Bolan ducked back as heavy slugs ricocheted in the metal-and-concrete stairwell. The Hawaiian continued to fire blindly up the stairwell.

Bolan pulled out his secure phone and speed-dialed Stony Man Farm. “Barb,” he said quickly, “get in touch with our liaison. Tell her to keep her eyes open for a big Hawaiian, over three hundred pounds. He’s armed and dangerous and we need to stop him before he kills someone.”

The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

—Richard M. Nixon,

1913–1994

Men with power, seated comfortably in rooms far removed from the battlefield, play their games of brinksmanship believing their opponents will blink first. They are always surprised when the enemy pulls a gun instead of blinking.

—Mack Bolan

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Phil Elmore for his contribution to this work.

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

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

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

1

Mack Bolan slammed the steel hilt of his Cold Steel combat dagger against the back of the Chinese sentry’s head. The guard crumpled without resistance, making a choked moan deep in his throat as he folded. His micro-Uzi fell to the asphalt.

The Executioner checked to make sure he was not merely playing possum, then secured the man’s hands and feet with plastic restraints and dragged him out of sight.

The loading dock of Cheinjong Industrial Supply was located among a cluster of commercial buildings just off Mokauea Street, in the shadow of the Kapalama Military Reservation. Shifting the OD canvas messenger bag slung over his shoulder, Bolan pulled himself up onto the dock before sheathing his knife in the custom Kydex rig on the chest harness of his formfitting blacksuit. The black composite grips of the suppressed Beretta 93-R machine pistol filled his hand as he drew the trusted weapon from its shoulder holster and moved the selector to 3-round burst.

The instructions from Brognola and Stony Man Farm had been clear, the mission seemingly straightforward. Jimmy Han, a federal investigator nominally attached to Brognola’s Justice Department, had been dispatched to investigate suspicious commercial shipments. Cheinjong Industrial Supply had, over the past eighteen months, received numerous shipments of machine parts, electronics and chemicals that could conceivably be used to build everything from bombs to EMP and jamming equipment. Taken separately, the shipments were not noteworthy. As a whole, they added up to a potential security risk.

Han was an experienced field agent, but three days ago he had disappeared. The local authorities had been alerted discreetly, but there was no sign of Han in the local hospitals or morgues, nor could he be located anywhere else in Honolulu. Worse, Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman and his cyberteam at the Farm had turned up links between Cheinjong and a series of holding companies associated with the People’s Republic of China. A new cold war was ratcheting up between the United States and the ChiComs, as Brognola put it. The big Fed’s voice, when he finally contacted Bolan to put him on Han’s trail, had been grim.

“The Man has ordered this information classified at the highest levels,” Brognola had told the Executioner, “so I’m not telling you this. Seventy-two hours ago, a pair of Russian-made, Chinese-operated Sukhoi Su-30MK2 Flanker jets engaged a patrol of Navy Hornets in Taiwanese airspace.”

“Casualties?”

“None,” Brognola said, “but one of our pilots had to eject after his plane and one of the Flankers clipped each other. As far as we know, the Chinese plane landed safely.”

“What’s the fallout?”

“It’s not good. The Chinese are calling it a deliberate act of provocation and talking about withdrawing their diplomatic personnel from American soil.”

“So what’s the connection?” Bolan asked him.

“The timing is suspicious,” Brognola said. “Hours after the incident, Han missed his check-in. We lost touch with him and haven’t been able to locate him since. Aaron and his people have found connections to the highest levels of the Chinese government’s covert-ops groups. There’s something China doesn’t want found—and I think Han was in the right place at the wrong time. That’s what makes this so delicate.”

“So you want me to find out what happened.”

“Barb is working with the locals on my authority,” Brognola told him. “Once she settles down all the egos involved, we’ll have a liaison assigned to you. In the meantime I’ll have Aaron vet whomever the locals assign.”

“That will work.”

“Bring Han out, Striker,” Brognola said, using Bolan’s Stony Man code name. “We need to know what he’s discovered.”

Twelve hours after that phone call, Bolan was infiltrating the Cheinjong Industrial Supply building. Bolan crept through the loading dock and eased open the crash bar of a metal fire door. The access corridor beyond was dark. Unclipping a combat light from a pocket of his blacksuit, Bolan swept the corridor with the powerful light held below the Beretta in a supporting grip. At the end of the hallway, another fire door waited. The soldier paused and listened at the doorway.

There were voices beyond. Two men, speaking Chinese, were approaching his position. Bolan took a step back and leveled the Beretta at the doorway, ready to send bursts of 9 mm hollowpoint rounds through the opening. The crash bar on the opposite side of the door moved with a hollow metal creak. Bolan’s finger tightened on the 93-R’s trigger.

The door stayed shut. The Executioner waited as the men on the other side continued their conversation. It was obvious from the tones of their voices that they were arguing. Finally, one of the two relented. Their conversation continued, rapid-fire, as the voices receded. Bolan gave them a ten-count before moving back to the door and easing it open.

The room beyond was a large machine shop of some kind. There were no personnel present that Bolan could see. Several tables bore electronic equipment, while boxes and wooden crates waited in stacks across the floor space. Metal housings, each the size of a thermos, were being turned out at one station. At an adjoining workbench, components were being fitted within each metal tube. As he moved quickly and fluidly across the floor, Bolan snagged one of the housings from the workbench and tucked it into his messenger bag. At the opposite end of the shop floor was a spiral metal staircase. He made for it and climbed quietly upward.

The second floor was divided into office space. Bolan stayed low to avoid the Plexiglas windows set within the walls. He could hear people moving about, so he duck-walked to the end of the corridor in which he stood, making for the wooden doorway opposite. He managed to open and shut the door just before someone walked quickly past.

The small office space was cluttered with cardboard boxes and dominated by a small desk and a smaller couch. Calendars, schedules and shipping documents were tacked and taped to the drywall.

Curled up on the couch was a slight Asian man in a white short-sleeved shirt and red tie.

Bolan whipped around the suppressed Beretta and prepared to silence the unlucky man as he stirred from his nap. The man muttered something, squinting in Bolan’s direction, sounding more embarrassed than alarmed.

The soldier held his fire. A pair of thick-lensed, horn-rimmed glasses sat on the desktop. The Asian man reached for these, patting the desktop lightly as if he could not see them. The Executioner moved in quickly, sliding the glasses back out of reach and rapping the butt of the Beretta firmly against the side of the man’s head. He squawked and fell back as Bolan followed him down, clamping one hand firmly over the man’s mouth.

“Do you understand English?” Bolan demanded.

The man nodded and started to speak, but Bolan clamped his hand down harder.

“Quietly,” Bolan cautioned. “If anyone hears us, you’re dead. Try to call for help, you’re dead. I need some answers.” The man nodded quickly.

“What is your name?”

“Wu Hong.”

“Are you holding anyone here, Wu?” Bolan demanded. When Wu hesitated, Bolan pressed the muzzle of the Beretta’s suppressor against the small man’s forehead. “Last chance, Wu.”

“We are,” Wu admitted.

“Where is he?”

“Here,” Wu said. “The office across from this one, in the opposite hall. Next to the conference room.”

“Where is everyone else?”

“The conference room,” Wu said gravely. “That is where they would be now. That is where I am supposed to be.”

“Will they come looking for you?”

“I do not know. Probably not.”

“Good,” Bolan said. “What’s going on here, Wu? Who are you? What are you building?”

“I cannot tell you.”

Bolan pressed with the Beretta again. Wu merely squeezed his eyes shut.

“Tell me.”

“I cannot,” Wu repeated. “You will have to kill me.”

Bolan knew he didn’t have time for a proper interrogation. He slammed the butt of the Beretta across Wu’s head again, putting the man out, then gagged him with his own tie and cuffed his arms and legs. Finally, he rolled the man over onto the couch, where it would look at least at first glance as if he was still stealing a nap. Checking the hallway, Bolan emerged and circled around to get a view of the opposite corridor.

A single Asian man sat on a metal folding chair outside the conference room. The door had a window in it, but this was covered from inside in what appeared to be newspaper taped to the glass. Shadows of movement played across the newspaper, which did not conceal the light from within the room. The guard in the chair was reading a dog-eared paperback novel. Next to the conference room door was another, this one unmarked and bearing no window. If Han was inside, the guard outside the conference room was there to keep an eye on the Justice operative as much as to mind whoever was meeting in the room behind him.

Bolan flattened himself against the wall, around the corner and out of the guard’s line of sight. Raising the combat light in the dim hallway, he started pressing the tailcap switch. The bright beam silently strobed the corridor. It easily overwhelmed the sparse overhead lights of the hallway, drawing the guard’s curious attention. The Executioner could hear the man’s metal chair slide across the plank flooring as he left his post to investigate.

The soldier waited for his prey to get within arm’s length. As the sentry passed him, Bolan stepped past and behind the man, viciously driving the aluminum head of the compact light into the base of the guard’s skull. Bolan struck twice more in rapid succession, hammering down the sentry. He hooked his arm around the man at the last second, easing him down as he folded. He wasted no time securing the sentry, instead heel-toeing back down the hallway to the conference room. The adjacent office door was unlocked. Bolan slipped silently inside, easing the door shut behind him.

With the combat light, he swept the dim, windowless room. There was no furniture. A few sheets of paper and some candy bar wrappers were scattered across the floor. A dirty bucket, obviously pressed into use as a toilet, sat in one corner. On the floor, sprawled against the far wall, was a body.

Bolan knelt by the battered form of Jimmy Han, his face all but unrecognizable from the beatings he’d taken. The soldier checked his pulse. Han was alive, but in very bad shape. Bolan lifted the man gently by the shoulders and spoke to him quietly.

“Jimmy. Jimmy Han. Can you hear me?”

Han’s eyes fluttered open. He stared at Bolan blankly for a moment before drawing a ragged breath.

“Are you…?” he whispered.

“Brognola sent me,” Bolan said. “I’m taking you out of here.”

“Knew he wouldn’t…leave me.”

“Can you stand, Jimmy?” Bolan was only too aware that they were running out of time. If he didn’t get Han moving immediately, this soft probe was going to turn into a bloodbath.

“Wait…” Han said weakly. He tried to free himself from Bolan’s grip. “I need…”

“What is it, Jimmy?” Bolan said.

“Outlet.” Han pointed at the electrical outlet against the far wall.

Bolan eased Han to the floor and went to the outlet. Working a knife edge behind the plastic outlet cover, Bolan popped it off with a hard snap of his wrist. Inside the outlet was a white plastic square. The Executioner removed and examined it. He was holding a card key to a room at the Holiday Inn Waikiki.

“Hid it there,” Han rasped from the floor, “when they first threw me in here….”

“Jimmy?” Bolan said, taking Han by the shoulders again and lifting him to a sitting position.

“James,” Han managed to say. “James…”

Bolan could barely hear the man. He leaned in close. “Jimmy,” he said. “James. Talk to me. What is this key?”

“Five…” Han said softly. “Five-nineteen. Five-nineteen…”

Bolan watched as Han’s bloody, swollen face went slack. One of his eyes was swollen shut; the other turned glassy as the light behind it faded. A death rattle passed through his split lips. Bolan lowered the operative to the floor one last time and closed his staring eye.

Pocketing the key, Bolan rose. His first priority was to escape Cheinjong. He had been too late to save Jimmy Han; he could not afford to let Han’s message die with him. Beretta held before him, he slipped out the office door and back the way he’d come, stepping over the unconscious door guard as he went.

The conference room door opened. There was a pause, followed by alarmed voices shouting in Chinese.

Bolan kept walking, rounding the corner at the end of the corridor. He had almost made the stairway when the first gunshot rang out. The Executioner broke into a run, throwing himself down the stairs and across the machine shop, the floor above and behind him echoing with running footsteps. He caught a glimpse of his pursuers as he crashed through the fire doors to the loading dock. At least half a dozen men with pistols and subguns were chasing after him.

When the soldier’s combat boots hit the loading dock, the fire alarm inside began to ring like a school bell. This was obviously a signal to the sentries outside, who began to converge on Bolan’s position in response to the noise. One crossed Bolan’s field of fire and received a 3-round burst from the suppressed 93-R. The Executioner headed straight for the body, stepping over it without breaking stride and hurling himself at the perimeter fence.

As he scaled the fence, two more sentries caught sight of him. Bullets burned past him as he rolled over the barbed wire topping the fence, hitting the ground on the other side with a grunt. He snapped another pair of bursts back at the sentries as automatic fire sprayed the ground where he’d been. Cheinjong’s guards were willing to use overwhelming deadly force in broad daylight on American soil. As Bolan ran for the nearby commercial buildings, putting distance between himself and the shooters, he wondered why they’d been so quick to cross the line. Something big was going down, something Jimmy Han was trying to tell him.

Bolan’s rented Dodge Charger sat where he’d left it, in the narrow alleyway between two neighboring warehouses. The 3.5-liter engine growled when he turned the key. Leaving black marks on the asphalt, he guided the car through the alley, shooting out into traffic as he watched the rearview mirror. When two minutes passed with no sign of pursuit, he concluded he was not being followed.

Steering with one hand, Bolan removed his secure wireless phone from an inner pocket of his blacksuit. The scrambled line buzzed as he connected to Stony Man Farm, cycling through a series of encrypted cutouts. After a brief delay, Barbara Price was on the line.

“Striker?” Stony Man’s mission controller sounded tense. “What’s your status?”

“Jimmy Han is dead,” Bolan told her. “Beaten to death. Cheinjong Industrial Supply is staffed by Chinese-speaking Asians packing automatic firepower. They cut loose on me as I was leaving.”

“I’ve got Honolulu Specialized Services Division standing by,” Price said.

“Tell them to move on Cheinjong as fast as they can get into position,” Bolan said. “But don’t count on that being fast enough.”

“Striker?”

“They’ve got some kind of manufacturing operation going,” Bolan explained. “It looks professional, which means they’ll have planned for discovery. I wouldn’t be surprised if SSD finds nothing but empty rooms and half-eaten lunches.”

“I’ll do what I can to speed it up. What about you?”

“I’ve got a lead,” Bolan said over the throaty roar of the Charger’s engine, “but if this starts to get complicated I’m going to need local backup. Has Bear finished looking over my HPD contact?”

“He has,” Price said. “Your liaison is Sergeant Diana Kirokawa. She’s been commended for closing a number of high-profile murder and violent-assault cases. Thirty-six years old, fourteen years with the department. Half-Japanese, Hawaiian born. I’m transmitting an image and her data file to your phone now.”

“Thanks, Barb,” Bolan said. “Contact HPD and see if you can have her meet me at the Holiday Inn Waikiki, soonest. I’m headed there now. Also, get a courier into position at that location. I have something I recovered at Cheinjong that I need to have analyzed ASAP.”

“Will do. Striker?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“Always.” He closed the phone and pressed the accelerator, sending the Charger surging forward.

Jimmy Han had died for whatever was in that hotel room. He wouldn’t die for nothing.

Not if the Executioner had anything to say about it.

2

The lobby of the Holiday Inn bustled with tourists in bathing suits and bright floral prints. With his gear concealed and the blacksuit camouflaged under a light gray windbreaker, Mack Bolan could move without drawing too much attention. Bypassing the front desk, he found the nearest stairwell access, his combat boots ringing on the fire stairs as he ascended.

The fifth-floor hallway looked clear as Bolan stepped quietly to room 519. Jimmy Han’s card key prompted the electronic door lock to release with a faint click. Bolan checked the hallway again, drew his suppressed Beretta 93-R and let himself in. He checked each room. There was no one inside.

Bolan went back to the door and set the dead bolt. Then he holstered his weapon and began searching the room methodically. It took him half an hour to toss the room thoroughly. He was satisfied that there was nothing in the room that would not normally be present. The small hotel room safe was empty. No messages of any kind had been left behind on any surface that the soldier could detect, either. He’d even tried running the shower and sink with the bathroom door closed, the hot water turned on full blast, but there had been no final words written by Jimmy Han on the mirror, cryptic or otherwise.

The Executioner’s eyes fell on the Gideon Bible. He picked it up. Just before he died, Han had said, “James.”

Bolan thumbed through the Bible to James 5:19. On the page in which the verse appeared—appropriately enough, it concerned saving a wayward soul—he found a scrap of paper. Written in very fine point pen, almost too small to read, was a series of numbers completely covering the scrap of paper. The numbers meant nothing to him. He placed the paper on the end table underneath the lamp and took a photograph using the camera in his secure wireless phone. Then he transmitted the image to Kurtzman at Stony Man Farm, with a brief text message: “Found this. Decode?” Finally, he tucked the paper carefully inside an inner pocket of his blacksuit. He checked the Bible once more, just to be certain, then replaced it.

There was nothing more for him here. Bolan turned to leave but stopped just before the doorway. He’d heard something on the other side. Nothing was visible through the door’s peephole, however. Drawing the Beretta 93-R, he reached out and slowly, quietly turned the dead bolt.

The force of the door slamming into him knocked the gun from his hand. Bolan was thrown to the floor by the blow. The three-hundred-pound Hawaiian man in the doorway held a massive kukri knife in one ham-size fist. The banana-shaped, machete-size blade rose for a killing stroke.

From his back on the floor, Bolan ripped the Desert Eagle free from its Kydex holster, high and tight on his waistband beneath his windbreaker. Even as the gun cleared Bolan’s waistband, the big Hawaiian was throwing himself backward. The massive .44 Magnum pistol thundered, deafening in the enclosed space. The 240-grain jacketed hollowpoint bullet punched a ragged hole through the heavy hotel door as Bolan’s intruder yanked it shut in his wake.

Heavy footsteps receding down the corridor outside were unmistakable. Bolan scooped up the Beretta, whipped open the door and gave chase, thrusting the Desert Eagle back into its holster as he ran.

The big Hawaiian was faster than he looked. He barreled around the corner at the end of the hallway. Bolan took the corner wide, the 93-R held ready. His precautions did not go unrewarded. The big man was waiting for him, obviously thinking to clothesline the soldier as he came past.