Dark Savior

Bolan remained immobile for a long minute, staring down between his dangling legs until an eddy in the storm gave him a fleeting glimpse of stone and snow-covered ground some ninety feet beneath his boots. A drop from that height would almost surely break his legs and crack his pelvis, maybe drive his shattered femurs up into his body cavity to spear his internal organs. The snow and any fallen pine needles below would cushion him a bit, but likely not enough to avoid crippling injury.

And in this storm, no help within a hundred miles or more, that was a death sentence.

So plummeting was off the table. He would have to climb down—slowly, cautiously—through branches wet and slick with snow and ice, fighting tremors from the cold and the onset of hypothermia.

Bolan considered dropping bits and pieces of his gear—the Steyr AUG assault rifle, at eight pounds loaded; his Beretta 93R, nearly three pounds; his field pack with survival gear, spare magazines and such, tipping the scale at thirty pounds—but balked at that. He didn’t plan on losing anything he’d carried with him when he left the Cessna, and whatever Bolan dropped into the storm from where he hung was very likely to be lost.

So he began his treacherous descent, shedding the canopy but not his harness, reaching for the thickest branch that he could see or feel, and hoping it wasn’t rotten to the core. When both gloved hands had found their grip, Bolan relaxed his arms enough from the chin-up position for his boots to dangle lower, searching for another branch that would support his weight. When they found purchase, he tested his foothold by slow degrees until he trusted it to hold his weight.

Which wasn’t quite the same as holding him.

When he released his grip above, the game would change. The gusting wind could knock him from his icy perch, or he could slip. It took the concentration and the balance of a tightrope walker for him to remain upright once both hands left the upper branch, his muscles straining as he slowly sank into a crouch.

Seven or eight feet covered, another eighty-three or so remaining. Bolan knew that as he neared the forest floor, the great tree’s branches would become both sparser and fatter, each more difficult to clasp with snow-slick gloves, making a drop more likely. Wind-whipped, cold and tiring, he resumed his painstaking and perilous descent.

2

Washington, D.C., One Day Earlier

Mack Bolan walked among the tourists and joggers at the National Mall, but he hadn’t come to see the sights. Somewhere amid the shrines to embattled democracy, among the ambling visitors, another man was watching for him or en route to keep their scheduled rendezvous, a man who might send Bolan to his death.

The risk of meeting here was minimal, by Bolan’s normal standard. No one in D.C. knew his face, except the man he’d come to see. Some might recall his name, but if they heard it spoken, it would likely jar a fading memory of his reported death. Oh, that guy, they’d say. I heard something about him once. He’s long gone.

And they’d be correct, in part. Mack Bolan had been buried in a ceremony thronged by paparazzi, laid to rest forever with his famous face and fingerprints. The tall man strolling down the southern side of the Reflecting Pool toward the Korean War Veterans Memorial was someone else entirely. But he waged the same long war.

Approaching the memorial, Bolan spotted Hal Brognola, director of the ultrasecret, antiterrorist Sensitive Operations Group standing beneath the steel soldiers.

“I’ve got something up your alley,” Brognola said.

“I got that much on the phone,” Bolan replied. “Care to share the details?”

“Did you hear about a shooting in New Mexico two days ago? Las Cruces?”

Bolan frowned in thought. “It doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Three U.S. marshals KIA,” Brognola explained. “It played on CNN for half a day or so.”

“Missed it,” Bolan replied.

“They were on WITSEC duty, covering a witness set to testify in New York City, day after tomorrow.”

“That’s a rarity,” Bolan said. “Not the coverage, the shooting.”

“Right. The service has a pretty solid track record. But things went wrong this time.”

“And the witness?”

“Gone.”

“Taken?”

“The marshals and the FBI say no. There’s evidence—don’t ask me what—that he bailed out before the shooters went in gunning for him. DOJ’s convinced he’s in the wind.”

“A dumb move,” Bolan said. “Except it saved his life.”

“Short term,” Brognola said. “Smart money says the shooters will be after him, trying to take him out before the marshals reel him in. Both sides are gambling big time on a win.”

“They have to find him first,” Bolan observed.

“As it turns out, that’s not the problem.”

“Oh?”

“We’ve zeroed in on his location.”

“Is it definite?”

“Good as,” Brognola said.

“So pick him up.”

“Not so easy,” Brognola said. “You’ll love this part. He’s in a monastery.”

Bolan cut a glance toward the big Fed but said nothing.

Brognola forged ahead. “You know the rules surrounding sanctuary?”

“It’s political,” Bolan said.

“Not in this case. Think medieval, as in pilgrims fleeing persecution.”

“So, religious.”

“Bingo.”

“I’m no lawyer, but I’ve never heard of a statute in the States that recognizes any church’s right to harbor fugitives.”

“Because there isn’t one. We have a free press, though, and when you think about the Bureau’s history with sieges, going back to Ruby Ridge and Waco, down to Cliven Bundy in Nevada...well, let’s say nobody wants a repetition in the spotlight.”

“That’s a problem,” Bolan granted.

“Plus, if we know where he is, the hunters know. They’re well-financed and well-connected, through their sponsors.”

“Let me guess. The folks your witness planned to put away.”

“The very same.”

“Can’t say I like his odds.”

“He needs a hand, no question. I was thinking, maybe yours.”

“You think the monks will pass him off to me?”

“They’re brothers, technically. And no. You’d have to go in uninvited. Try to make them see the light.”

“Because that’s so much better than a siege.”

“I hope so, anyway.”

Bolan stopped short and faced Brognola. “Rewind. I need to hear it from the top.”

Brognola launched into how it all began. The missing witness was a CPA, one Arthur Watson, thirty-one and never married, formerly employed by a low-profile megabank, U.S. Global Finance. Bolan had not heard of them before and said so.

“That’s no accident,” Hal told him. “The outfit is privately owned by some billionaire types—three Americans, one Saudi and a Russian autocrat. There are no other shareholders, so you won’t find them on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ or any of the rest. They specialize in large commercial deals worldwide, taking in money from depositors and then recycling it as low-interest loans.”

“In other words, a money laundry,” Bolan said.

“Big time. Justice has tracked connections to Colombian and Mexican cartels, the Russian mob, the Yakuza, a couple dozen shady government officials from the Balkans and on across the Middle East to Africa. And that’s without our homegrown filthy rich—owners of two casino chains, some Wall Street sharks, plus a fellow in Atlanta who just beat a human trafficking indictment when the prosecution’s witnesses went belly-up.”

“The DOJ knows this, but can’t put anything together?”

“Couldn’t,” Brognola corrected him, “until this Arthur Watson suffered an attack of conscience after five years of cooking their books. From what I hear, he never managed to explain the change of heart. Just tumbled out of bed one morning and decided he should do something about it. He approached the IRS in Philadelphia, where he was living at the time. They handed him to Justice. Watson spilled his guts, and two weeks back we got a sealed indictment on the top three officers at U.S. Global. Sheldon Page, the president, was on vacation in the south of France, and the FBI held off on busting the other two, CEO Cornell Dubois and CFO Reginald Manson, until Page got back Monday night.”

“Arrests like that, I would’ve thought they’d make the news.”

“Me, too. But U.S. Global has a ton of influential friends, as you may well imagine. Some of them are in the House and Senate, always grateful for those PAC donations at election time. A federal judge in New York City put a gag order on the proceedings until trial convenes—or was supposed to—day after tomorrow.”

“And they’ve lost the witness.”

“Lost and found,” Brognola said. “He’s with the Brothers of Saint Faustus at their monastery up in the Sierras.”

“California.”

“More precisely, Mariposa County. The brothers call their hangout Holy Trinity.”

“And Justice found him how?”

“He’s got a brother at the monastery,” Hal replied. “By which I mean blood brother and a full-fledged member of the order. Brother Andrew Watson, who is also Arthur’s only living kin.”

“Well, if you found him—”

“Others can,” Brognola said, nodding. “No doubt about it. We don’t know any of the hunters, but there’s no way they’re not on his trail by now.”

“Has anyone communicated with the monastery?” Bolan asked.

“Oh, sure. The honcho there—Brother Jerome, he’s called the abbot primate—took some calls and tried to plead the Fifth at first, then finally admitted that our guy has joined them as a postulant.”

“Which is...?”

“The lowest rung on the monk ladder,” Brognola said. “Informal training, getting used to how things work behind the walls, without a uniform or any formal vows. Apprenticeship, you might say, going on for weeks or months, depending on the candidate. If he sticks with it and the monks agree, he graduates to novice and receives his habit, taking on full duties. Make it through a year of that, then he’s a junior for the next three years, and finally a brother, if they vote to keep him on.”

“It doesn’t sound like Watson has four years and change to spare.”

“He may not have four days,” Brognola said. “For all we know, the shooters from Las Cruces or another crew are moving in right now. The only thing to slow them down would be the weather.”

“Weather?”

“Right. Did I mention they’ve got a blizzard moving in? Supposed to be the worst since 1890-something, in the mountains anyway.”

“So the witness has a price tag on his head—”

“Six figures, I was told.”

“—the monks won’t give him up, the shooters likely have his twenty, and a giant storm is moving in to seal the whole place off like Christmas in the Arctic.”

“That’s it in a nutshell.”

“It sounds impossible,” said Bolan.

“Well, I wouldn’t say—”

“When do I leave?”

* * *

THE NEXT FLIGHT OUT of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport took off two hours later, bound for Sacramento, California. Bolan caught a break when Brognola informed him Jack Grimaldi was in San Francisco, on some kind of surveillance gig for Stony Man. The pilot volunteered before Bolan could hint around the job’s details, although the blizzard gave him pause.

“No sweat,” he’d said after a moment. “If they’ve still got air, we’re airborne.”

Grimaldi would meet him when the flight landed in Sacramento, with a plane ready to go. He’d drop Bolan into the High Sierras, as close as he could get him to Holy Trinity, weather permitting, then he’d circle back at a prearranged time to pick up the soldier and, if all went well, Arthur Watson.

While Bolan waited for his flight to board at Reagan National, he popped a USB key Brognola had given him into his laptop. He reviewed the photographs and text describing U.S. Global Finance from its inception in the early nineties to the present day, with current assets estimated in the mid twelve figures. That was property and money on the books; no telling what was tucked away in safe deposit boxes or invested overseas.

Sheldon Page, the president, was fifty-one but could have passed for ten years younger, thanks to money, solid genes and plastic surgery. Before his present gig he’d worked for a major bank as a financial counselor, then jumped ship with his richest clients when U.S. Global started up. He was on first-name terms with several presidents south of the border, though he kept his distance—in the public eye, at least—from the leaders of their top cartels.

The CEO, Cornell Dubois, was forty-eight and twice divorced, a Harvard legacy who’d gone from graduation to the second-largest law firm in Manhattan, keeping big-time clients out of trouble with the IRS, the SEC and anybody else who sniffed around their fortunes. That experience had prepped him for the position he held at U.S. Global’s helm, leading a bicoastal life with junkets out of country when the need arose. Fluent in Spanish, French and Russian, he could wheel and deal in something like a hundred countries with the best of them.

Reginald Manson was the chief financial officer and youngest of the three at forty-six, a bachelor who played the field when there was time between his workload and his private passion, which was big-game hunting. Shooters’ magazines and websites showed him standing over carcasses—the African “big five” and other species standing on the knife’s edge of extinction—with a rifle in his hands and a smug look on his face. Before landing at U.S. Global he had worked for five top banks in various capacities, leaving each post with glowing letters of recommendation.

The fourth man Bolan met in Brognola’s files was Brad Kemper, chief of U.S. Global’s security division. He was twenty-nine, an Iraqi war vet and short-time LAPD officer, forced to resign after a series of brutality complaints climaxed with a dicey shooting, costing the city seven figures in compensatory damages. From there, he’d jumped to corporate security, working with a private military company that banked a bundle from Afghanistan and was suspected of coordinating drug shipments through Turkey to the West. That may have helped Kemper with his next move, to U.S. Global, where he’d caught the guy who hired him skimming funds—or framed him for it, as the case might be. Whichever, Kemper had replaced the tarnished chief and held his post today.

It would have been Kemper, Bolan thought, who’d fielded hunters to dispose of Arthur Watson. He would not have led the team himself, too risky, but the shooters would be dancing to his tune. If all else failed, Bolan thought Kemper might be worth a closer look, maybe through the crosshairs of a rifle’s scope.

Sacramento, California

JACK GRIMALDI WAS waiting in the terminal as promised when Bolan disembarked The pilot looked the same as ever, suntanned, just a trifle cocky in the way of men who’ve overcome the handicap of gravity and earn their living in the clouds. His grasp was firm as they shook hands. Grimaldi got right to business.

“I bagged a Cessna 207.” he told Bolan. “Not one of the old ones, but a fairly new production model.”

“Fairly new?”

“Early two thousands,” Grimaldi replied. “No worries about getting where we need to go.”

“Except the storm,” Bolan said.

“Well, there’s that. We won’t know whether the National Weather Service is overstating it or not until we’re in the middle of it.”

“Great.”

“We’ll play it by ear, right?” Grimaldi suggested. “I don’t wanna die any more than you do. If you can’t drop in safely, we’ll try something else.”

Except Bolan knew there would be nothing else. He’d either jump into the storm for Arthur Watson, or he’d have to sit it out. Ground travel through the High Sierras would be deadly slow, if it was even possible. He was already starting out behind the field, no way of knowing where the hunters were, what kind of lead they had, or how they would approach their prey.

Bolan had searched Holy Trinity on the internet while he was passing over Kansas. The place looked ancient, like a fortress from a movie about medieval times, when knighthood was in flower and encroaching armies laid siege to a rival’s keep for weeks or months on end.

Neither Bolan nor the hunters had that kind of time, of course. The shooters would be aware that their mark could change his mind again and get permission for the FBI to land at Holy Trinity, extract him and return him to New York to testify. In that case, there would be no payday, and the failed hunters might find their own heads on the chopping block.

The flight from Sacramento to Modesto was a short hop, sixty-odd miles, under thirty minutes at the Cessna’s cruising speed. They landed and refueled with ample daylight left to make the drop, Bolan trusting Grimaldi to have checked his parachute first-hand. Bolan strapped it on when they were airborne, heading east toward a wall of gray and white that was the blizzard blanketing the Golden State’s main mountain range.

And all that he could do was tough it out from there, bearing in mind the cost of failure if he turned back or was otherwise prevented from completing his assignment. Arthur Watson was the target, but it didn’t take a West Point graduate to figure out that U.S. Global’s mercs would leave no witnesses alive. From what Bolan had read online, there were about three dozen full-fledged monks at Holy Trinity, plus a handful of postulants, juniors and novices. Call it forty-plus to be on the safe side, and write them all off if the mercs got inside with no one to stop them.

What could one man do?

That was the question Mack Bolan had fielded from day one of his private war against the Mafia, through combat on a global scale against the predators who menaced civilized society. His answer, then and now, remained unchanged.

One man could do his best. If he was trained, experienced and willing, that could make the difference between a massacre of innocents and a defeat for evil. Permanent elimination of the threat was never part of the equation. Every battle was a thing unto itself. The enemies you killed today would be replaced tomorrow.

But one man could make his mark, all right. In blood.

3

Sierra Nevadas, California

Descending from the ancient pine tree was a slow and awkward process. Bolan relied mostly on touch, as swirling snow and frosted goggles prevented him from seeing more than a few feet in any direction. Swiping the goggles clear meant letting go of a branch, a dicey proposition, but he risked it periodically to keep himself from being completely blinded.

Another problem: Bolan’s high-topped jump boots were designed to save his ankles from a break or sprain on landing, and for marching the necessary distance to his goal, but their lug soles quickly caked with frozen snow, putting him at even more risk for a fatal slip.

He felt exposed up in the tree, knowing that anyone who’d seen him drop could wait below for an easy shot and pick him off, no problem. On the upside, Bolan thought he was at least a mile from Holy Trinity. That meant a grueling hike through knee-deep snow, but it also limited the possibility of encountering an enemy.

If there were shooters in the neighborhood, they would be headed for the monastery, bent on finishing their work and getting out again before the storm trapped them there. Meeting a hostile party here and now would be a fluke, defying logic and the odds, though it was not out of the question.

As for the High Sierras’ natural predators, they would be deep in hibernation or long departed for warmer elevations by now, or at the very least huddled in shelter from the storm. The checklist wasn’t long to start with—mountain lions, bears, coyotes, rattlesnakes. If he met killers here, they’d be the worst that nature had to offer: human beings.

And the Executioner was used to those.

A heavy-laden branch snapped under Bolan’s feet. One second he was balanced, pausing to wipe his goggles, and then his perch dropped out from under him, its crack sounding as loud as rifle fire.

Sixty feet of empty air yawned underneath him, broken only by the branches that would bruise and break him as he fell. Bolan had one hand on a limb, and he felt his fingers slipping through the slush. His free hand found another one in time, but only just, and dangling there in space, his shoulder sockets burning, Bolan knew he was in trouble.

He would have to find another branch to stand on, then use as his next handhold, which meant moving closer to the pine’s trunk, and inching to his left or right until he found another limb to take his weight.

A bare inch at a time, he worked his way toward the trunk. It was too stout for him to wrap his arms around, but with one hand on the branch overhead and the other hugging the tree, Bolan was hopeful he could extend a leg to the left or right and find another perch before he lost his grip and fell. The pine’s bark, normally as rough as ancient alligator hide, was glazed with ice that made it slicker than a polished fireman’s pole.

It took the better part of ten minutes to pull it off, each minute giving an advantage to his enemies if they were closing in on Holy Trinity. Even if they weren’t—say that the storm had overtaken them in the foothills somewhere and prevented them from getting to the monastery—time still mattered. Bolan had to find the place, wangle a way inside, find Arthur Watson and convince him that he had to finish up the job he’d signed on for.

All that, and then get Watson out alive through snow that might be chest-deep by then, with no flat, open ground to let Grimaldi land, if he could even fly in the blizzard. Did Watson have cold weather gear? The monks, presumably, would stay inside when weather canceled gardening or other chores, huddling by their simple fires or meditating in their Spartan living quarters. Bolan would carry Watson out swaddled in homespun blankets if he had to, but he didn’t like the odds of surviving that scenario.

Bolan’s foot found the branch he had been searching for and he shifted his weight forward, still bracing against the trunk. When he was certain the limb would hold him, he swung his other leg onto it, leaning into the tree for stability. He rested briefly, and when he could feel his arms and hands again, resumed his grueling descent toward whatever awaited him below.

* * *

THE SNOWCAT WAS A Thiokol 601 Trackmaster, designed originally for the U.S. military and adapted over time for various civilian tasks. It was bright orange—or had been, before snow and ice had crusted over it—and reminded Spike O’Connor of a school bus jacked up to accommodate tank treads. The heater worked all right; in fact, he felt a little sweaty, packed in with eleven other guys. The heavy-duty windshield wipers were another story, snow-clotted and leaving more behind than they were clearing on each pass. Not that it mattered in the near-whiteout conditions they were facing.

Denikin handled the driving. Who better to navigate a winter wasteland than a Russian who had done part of his Spetsnaz training in Siberia?

O’Connor left him to it. The other members of his team, clad in all-white uniforms, were from Germany, South Africa, Australia, Israel, Italy, England and the USA, but each possessed that look common to men who had been tested in the fire of battle and proved themselves. Their weapons had been chosen for utility and uniformity. O’Connor and the seven others carried Galil MAR assault rifles, the compact models with folding stocks and eight-inch barrels that still provided the parent rifle’s full firepower, feeding 5.56 mm NATO ammunition from thirty-five-round magazines at seven hundred rounds per minute in full auto mode. Two men packed Benelli M4 Super 90 shotguns, twelve-gauge semiautomatics with collapsible stocks, loading six rounds in the magazine plus one up the spout. Two others, their snipers, carried Accuracy International Arctic Warfare rifles topped with Schmidt & Bender 3-12x50 PM II P telescopic sights. They fed 7.62 mm NATO ammunition from ten-round detachable box magazines, but O’Connor’s marksmen rarely needed second shots to do their job.