Stealth Assassin

KILL COMMAND

A CIA black-ops team and their cutting-edge drones are destroyed in a mysterious plane crash. Suddenly, world leaders and innocent victims are being assassinated one by one...by similar drones. To find the shadowy enemy, Mack Bolan must outgun and outfight mercenary defense contractors, terrorists and deep-cover traitors. But when the president of the United States becomes the next target, the Executioner races against the clock to bring the masterminds’ reign of slaughter to a killer end!

#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

#445 Final Assault

#446 Kill Squad

#447 Missile Intercept

#448 Terrorist Dispatch

#449 Combat Machines

#450 Omega Cult

#451 Fatal Prescription

#452 Death List

#453 Rogue Elements

#454 Enemies Within

#455 Chicago Vendetta

#456 Thunder Down Under

#457 Dying Art

#458 Killing Kings

#459 Stealth Assassin

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Stealth Assassin

Don Pendleton

ISBN: 978-1-474-09654-6

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Michael Newton for his contribution to this work.

Stealth Assassin

© 2019 Harlequin Enterprises Limited

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Worldwide Gold Eagle, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2019-05-28

Bolan clutched the grenade in his right hand.

Walking nonchalantly toward the group of gunners at the front of the building, he kept his head down, shooting quick glances to his right and to his left as he passed each room.

As he reached the halfway point, one of the terrorists looked up and shouted something in Arabic. His comrades dived for their AK-47s.

The Executioner released the grenade’s safety lever and began his count. With two seconds to go, he cocked his arm and threw the bomb, which sailed down the hallway as he ducked into one of the archways. A flash of light, then the deafening explosion a second later burst by him. He raised his rifle and slid around the corner, sending a series of short bursts into the men strewed about the room.

Satisfied that all were down, Bolan keyed his mic. “Jack, eight friendlies in the basement, with unknown number of hostiles. Back my play.”

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The leader or the hired guns—it doesn’t matter to me. All evildoers will take responsibility for their actions and face their judgment. Count on it.

—Mack Bolan

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

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Quotes

The Mack Bolan Legend

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The Gulf of AdenNear the southern coast of Yemen

A few hundred feet below, the water looked black, while the night sky was stained a variant shade of ebony. They were coming in low and fast. Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, peeled back the Velcro strap covering the face of his watch and checked the time: 0334. They were close to their estimated target time. Everything was proceeding well.

This mission had a bit of déjà vu and also more than a little irony. The man they were on the way to capture had been a prisoner in Guantanamo this time last year. Erroneously released as part of a prisoner exchange, the bureaucratic slip-up was suddenly discovered when Ali Sharif was purportedly observed playing an active role in a planned chemical weapons attack against Saudi Arabia. This sent the State Department scrambling to stop Sharif before the attack against the kingdom could be carried out, thus resulting in another can of worms being popped open in the volatile area. Of course, any open involvement by the United States would result in another round of histrionics at the UN, the standard condemnations of American interference, both in the US and around the world, and so forth. Thus, a key player in the Justice Department, Harold Brognola, was asked by the President to utilize his clandestine resources to make a field adjustment, and hopefully recapture or exterminate Sharif before anyone took real notice that he was back in the arena fighting his jihad.

As far as the mission objectives, recapture or extermination, Bolan was leaning toward the latter since the first attempt at intelligence gathering and reprogramming had been so successful.

Bolan needed a team for this mission, but Able Team and Phoenix Force had their own missions. As well as Jack Grimaldi, five young men, all former blacksuits based at Stony Man Farm, had been tapped to assist the Executioner: Elvan Johnson, Romeo Vargas, Dennis Washington, Frank Doerr and Terry Miller. They all had previous military experience in Iraq and had Ranger training, but not all had seen the brutal door-to-door combat of the early days of the war. And none had been on a special operation of this magnitude and complexity before.

Allegedly, no special ops teams were currently available, or were already encumbered with a crisis of their own in the area, and current intel had indicated that an attack was imminent. That was why Bolan had been called in for this one. But the Executioner had his own doubts. The bureaucratic bungling that had resulted in Ali Sharif’s premature release meant that somebody somewhere down the line would be held accountable. Or so it should be. If, however, a team could quietly recapture the errant jihadist, and he could be surreptitiously returned to his cell at Guantanamo, the whole matter could be put to rest. Like sweeping a pile of dust under the rug and pretending nobody would notice the bump. So this “reapprehension,” as Department of Defense liaison officer Kevin McCarthy had put it in their briefing aboard ship “...has to be a surgical strike conducted with the utmost care and precision due to the exigent circumstances, along with an accompanying plausible deniability factor.”

Plausible deniability, Bolan thought. Every bureaucrat’s trump card.

Failure was not an option because it never happened.

The repetitive noise of the slicing rotor blades and the cool intake of the sea air made conversation inside the Black Hawk impossible, so Bolan adjusted the fit of his ear mic and switched the frequency so he could talk exclusively to Grimaldi.

“How far, Jack?” Bolan asked.

“All the way, Striker,” Grimaldi answered, repeating the old airborne refrain with a chuckle.

Bolan allowed himself a rare smile as he waited.

Seconds later the Stony Man pilot spoke again. “We’re about three minutes out. And the last report from our limited, myopic eye-in-the-sky showed no activity.”

“Roger that,” Bolan said, amused by his partner’s pejorative description of the drone surveillance aircraft. Grimaldi considered himself a top-notch pilot for virtually any type of aircraft, but held a special disdain for the unmanned variety.

Bolan, on the other hand, had developed a healthy respect for the drones and recognized the advantages and capabilities they brought to the battlefield, not the least of which was they could provide a lot of information and firepower without a lot of risk. He’d been in enough combat situations to know that you had to grab every advantage you could get.

He switched back to the team frequency. “Three minutes. Then we’re on the ropes.”

Five heads nodded in unison. Despite the cool sea air rushing in through the open doors, Bolan could smell the adrenaline-laced sweat.

“Approaching drop point,” Grimaldi said over their radios.

Bolan moved to the edge of the door, adjusted his tight-fitting leather gloves and picked up the thick rope. The others did the same. They felt the Black Hawk cant to the left and angle downward. Outside the night sky was still black, but traces of stone buildings dotted the terrain, punctuated by the occasional winking of a light. Other than that, the remnants of the ancient city below were almost totally dark.

When the helicopter’s movement slowed to a stop, Grimaldi’s voice echoed in their earpieces once again.

“Okay, ladies, all ashore who’s going ashore.”

Bolan tossed the coiled rope through the door and followed it down.

He swiveled on the rope to give himself a better view of the target destination. It was an old fort, or rather the remnants of one from the long-lost days of British colonialism in this part of Yemen, set along the sloping embankment of one of the rising hills that overlooked the coast. Not far away, the seaport had once been one of the busiest in the world, but of late had been practically abandoned as the region continued its downward spiral. Bolan hit the uneven, rock-covered ground seconds later and assumed a prone position several feet away. The jutting rocks poked into his torso, making the position uncomfortable, but in combat, comfort was the rarest of luxuries. He heard the grunts of the others as they touched down as well, and heard the faint click of Grimaldi’s mic as the helicopter disappeared into the darkness.

Bolan did a quick equipment verification check, then glanced at his watch again and marked the time. The Stony Man pilot had enough fuel to circle for twenty minutes before heading back to the landing zone to pick them up. That meant they had to get moving. Their pinpoint placement on a slightly higher elevation gave them the initial advantage of the high ground. Taking out his night-vision goggles, he quickly surveyed the area, centering on the stone tower of the old fortress and the missing sections in the deteriorating wall that surrounded it.

The intelligence-gathering drones had provided them with comprehensive and detailed pictures of the area. But the flat, two-dimensional images didn’t provide an exact, three-dimensional perspective. He saw now that the tapering angle was sharper than he’d anticipated. It would slow them down a tad, but at least the heat and humidity had abated due to the darkness. It was still far from pleasant, however, and each of them was wearing level 4 body armor and Kevlar helmets. Bolan could already feel himself starting to sweat from only this mild exertion.

No movement was discernible. Johnson, the highest-ranking team member, crawled up next to Bolan.

“How’s it look, sir?”

Bolan was not in the military anymore and had never been an officer, thus the salutation was inappropriate. He didn’t bother to correct him.

“The decline’s steeper than expected.” He kept his voice at a whisper. “We’ll have to take extra care.”

“Roger that.”

“But it looks pretty quiet so far,” Bolan said, still keeping his tone low. “Hopefully, they didn’t hear the chopper.”

He knew they had to operate on that assumption, but the specter of an ambush was always a possibility.

“Everybody’s good to go,” Johnson said. “Doerr’s setting up as sniper with the Barrett.”

Bolan nodded and motioned for the rest of them to get moving. He regretted not giving Doerr a spotter, but there was no choice. They’d gone through several rehearsals of movement and room-clearing drills aboard the navy ship, but rehearsals, especially in confined area, were no substitute for the real thing.

At least they had the hope that their adversaries didn’t possess much in the way of night-vision capabilities.

Their quick insertion to the area above the fortress meant a downward trek to the long wall, and offered them the best chance of surprise. Bolan rose to a crouch and swung his M4 around so it hung in front of him, ready to go if needed. Indicating with arm signals for the rest of the team to assume the appropriate staggered intervals, they melted into the darkness along the stark rise. The rocky ground made for slow going until they came to a stretch devoid of stubborn shrubbery and errant rocks. Maintaining his forward movement, Bolan lifted his night-vision goggles once more and made another check of the structure. He saw nothing that indicated enemy movement. With a little luck, they would reach the wall in three to four minutes.

They reached the first portion of the crumbing barrier and paused for another perimeter check and a sitrep with Doerr.

“Everything’s looking quiet so far,” Doerr radioed. “There appears to some kind of vehicle parked under the overhang on the north side.”

“What type of vehicle?” Bolan asked.

“Unknown at this time. Possibly a pickup truck.”

Bolan acknowledged, told him to maintain observation and motioned the team forward. He estimated that they were more than a few minutes behind schedule, which meant they had to pick it up. They got to the edge of the wall, and the angular confines of the fortress lay about fifty feet away.

The fort had been constructed of mud and stone, and Bolan thought it had to have once shone a bright yellow in the midday sun. But that had probably been close to a century ago. Years of neglect and sand and wind had etched a pitted surface into the stones and mortar. Several sections of the wall had worn away, leaving piles of jagged and uneven rocks that slowed their progress.

The grinding noise of a vehicle engine starting mixed with another milder, but continuous, droning that pierced the stillness of the night.

Bolan raised his fist, signaling a full stop. He listened. The engine caught and settled into a rough idle. The sound was loud and deep, like a truck.

Voices, speaking in Arabic, were audible among the rumbling piston noise. Twin beams of headlights illuminated the darkness perhaps forty feet away, and Bolan saw the flat, macadamized surface of the winding road he’d seen depicted in the drone photos. The front end of a quarter-ton pickup truck pulled forward from the pillars of an overhang, its headlights washing over the curving dirt road. He raised the night-vision goggles to his eyes and pressed the button to enlarge the image. The bed of the truck was covered by a black tarp, so the contents could not be seen. From the look of it, the vehicle was heavily laden with something. It swung around and began driving away from the fortress. He was unable to tell how many occupants were inside.

Bolan keyed his mic. “Jack, we’ve got a pickup moving away from the target. Possibly moving southeast toward the seaport road.”

“Roger that. Want me to light ’em up?”

“Negative. We’re not sure who it is. See if you can swing back and maintain surveillance.”

Grimaldi answered with a click.

The chopper would use up more fuel, so that meant the time factor had just been diminished. Bolan pointed to the entrance and began a rapid, but cautious trek toward the archway from which the truck had come. What intelligence they’d gotten indicated that Sharif had come into possession of a stockpile of sarin nerve gas, most likely from one of the factions in Syria. If he planned to use it again to launch an attack against the Saudis, some or all of it could be in that pickup. Or it could be unrelated. Bolan was willing to bet on the former rather than the latter, and wasn’t going to take any chances. He’d instruct Grimaldi to take the pickup out as soon as they’d finished the interior work. He had to be certain that Sharif was definitely accounted for, if possible, and the sound of a missile taking out the truck would surely sound the alarm inside the fortress.

He motioned for Johnson and Washington to move down the slope first, angling toward the perpendicular wall of the jutting building that was adjacent to the archway. Bolan then followed with Vargas and Miller behind him. Johnson was at the edge now and took a quick peek. He held up his left hand, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger. Bolan stopped behind Washington and patted the man’s shoulder. The ranger repeated the contact on Johnson’s arm and he moved around the corner with Washington taking his place. Once Johnson had secured his position at the next cover point, the others followed, two at a time in rapid, yet stealthy, movements.

Bolan saw the archway extended a good twenty yards or so along the front of the building, then abruptly ended in an immense pile of stones. He could also see a large opening on the right side that led into the building itself. Light shone around the top and bottom of a long, black curtain that was perhaps twenty feet long. The stuttering, whining sound of a portable generator could be heard within the confines of the structure.

Bolan took the lead and went to the curtain, crouching and peeling back the edge. It was made of a black, silky material, almost like a dark parachute, and suspended from a metallic pipe wedged in between the stones. Inside he saw a group of ten men sitting around smoking, and drinking from tin cups. A bronze kettle, tea most likely, was on a nearby stove. The generator sat in the far corner, and three large lights illuminated the room. Beyond them the room narrowed into a corridor perhaps twenty feet wide which extended into darkness. A gray forklift was parked off to the side, and next to it stacks of what appeared to be wooden pallets. Bolan recognized one of the men as Ali Sharif. The man rolled a swath of greenish leaves into a ball and stuck it in his mouth.

Khat, no doubt, Bolan thought.

He knew the drug was omnipresent in Somalia, and frequently used in Yemen, as well. The substance induced an amphetamine-like energy, but also dulled the senses and could make the user both paranoid and jumpy. Each man had an AK-47 across his lap or within easy reach. This wasn’t going to be a simple extraction after all.

Two single wooden pallets sat on the floor to the left of the group. Each one contained a braced, vertical row of white-tipped artillery shells with “GB Gas 105 mm” stenciled across the front. That was the NATO designation for sarin gas. Bolan counted the shells. Twenty on each pallet.