Border Offensive

BLOOD TOLL

American smugglers intent on running terrorists across the Mexican border don’t realize that the extra man they’ve picked up en route is working undercover to stop them. Or that the man is Mack Bolan and he’s dedicated to preventing their treacherous human cargo from ever reaching the U.S.

Partnered with a border patrol agent, Bolan needs to come up with a Plan B fast when their covers are blown...or risk the country coming under a devastating terror attack. The Executioner is setting up his own form of border patrol and no one is crossing without his permission.

The smell of blood had gotten the jaguar’s attention

The Executioner turned slowly as the cat circled him, never quite letting itself be seen by its intended prey. Bolan’s grip on the tire iron tightened as he swung it, trying to loosen his protesting muscles.

“Walk away, pal,” Bolan said. “Go look for dinner elsewhere.”

The only reply he got was the sound of the animal moving through the brush. He caught the flash of a tail out of the corner of his eye. Green eyes met his and Bolan froze. He was very aware of his blood dripping onto the thirsty soil, and of the pounding of his heart.

Bolan let the tire iron slide through his fingers until he was gripping the end. He’d get one swing, just one. “So it had better be good, right?”

The jaguar snarled.

“Come on then. You want me? I’m not going anywhere.”

The jaguar paused, then its muscles bunched and its tail went rigid. Bolan tensed. The cat sprang.

And the Executioner—his body honed into a weapon second-to-none—lunged to meet it.

Border Offensive

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism.

—Tony Blair,

British Prime Minister

There are no borders for terrorism—no lines it won’t cross. But wherever innocent lives are threatened, I will go there and wage my war. Whether it’s here at home or on soils abroad, I will fight strong.

—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 com-mand 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.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Joshua Reynolds for his contribution to this work.

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

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 1

The Mexican border

The truck was military surplus, but any insignia hinting at its origins had long since faded beneath the glare of the Mexican sun. Inside the truck, beneath a reinforced tarp, rested a minor, if profitable, amount of death in posse—black tar heroin. On top of the truck, a substantially larger amount of death in esse clung to the tarp, pressing his long frame as flat as it could go. Mack Bolan blinked, trying to eject the grit from his eyes, and shifted his weight for the hundredth time in as many minutes.

It had been the task of moments getting on the truck, but the ride had been a test to his patience. The heat, the dust and the uncomfortable realities of his position were wearing down his normally stoic outlook about such things. His skin itched with dirt beneath his fatigues, and the body armor felt more and more constrictive as time wore on. He had taken numerous wounds in his long and bloody war—knives, bullets and bombs had each taken a ferryman’s toll from his flesh at some point. At this moment, it seemed as if he could feel every single one of those old wounds.

Bolan bobbed his head, risking a glance at his surroundings. Buildings swept past at a lazy speed. Clapboard affairs with broken, filthy windows and signs that were no longer legible.

In other words, perfect.

A dead-end town, situated on the edge of the Sonoran Desert, caught between national boundaries. There were a hundred just like it scattered along the length of the United States’ southern border—invisible, forgotten places. Some inhabited, others not, but all perfect places to do business for drug traffickers of either nationality. Like leaks in a levee, they excreted trickles of narcotics from Mexico into Texas, Arizona and California.

Bolan had been tracking the current shipment for days, hoping to plug this particular leak. He’d taken out a poppy field in Sinaloa earlier in the week, and then caught up with the shipment as it approached the Arizona border. Getting onto the truck had been interesting and had used up his quota of luck for the week. From here on out, he was playing it careful.

The truck rumbled over a pothole and Bolan gritted his teeth as he was rattled down to his bones. He tried to stretch, to work out the kinks in his limbs, knowing he’d need every iota of agility in the coming minutes. When you were dealing with a bullet, even a fraction of an inch could be a useful distance, and the difference between life and death.

According to his sources, there shouldn’t be more than a dozen men all told at the rendezvous, but that was plenty. The odds were always the same once you crept up into double digits—namely, bad.

He smiled, baring his teeth. Bad odds only meant that he’d have to work fast to even them. And he was in the mood for “fast.”

The truck gave a depressed growl as it came to a halt behind a two-story building that had seen better decades. Voices, speaking Spanish and English in equal measure, rose to audibility. Bolan tensed and prepared to make his move. He pushed himself up an inch, balancing on the struts holding up the tarp, and switched his grip on the Heckler & Koch UMP-45 strapped across his chest. There was a van parked nearby. It had once been white, but presently it was the color of nicotine, and it was occupied. Bolan counted eight heads, plus the man sitting in the van. The odds were better than he’d thought.

The van door slammed. “It’s about damn time, Ernesto. I got places to be.”

Bolan pulled himself slowly toward the edge of the truck facing away from the voices.

“Oh? Better places than this, Jorge?” someone—Ernesto, Bolan assumed—said. “I feel hurt. Here, in the heart.”

“You have a heart?”

“Well, it’s not mine.” Laughter. Bolan hunched, rising into a slight crouch. His finger tapped the trigger guard of the submachine gun.

“Yeah, that’s funny,” Jorge said in a voice that implied it wasn’t. “Look, get the stuff loaded. I got to go.”

“Something I should know about?” Ernesto said before barking orders in Spanish. Bolan heard the tailgate of the truck come open. Metal scraped against metal.

“Sweets needs drivers.”

The truck sank slightly as someone—several someones—climbed aboard. Bolan took a breath and gripped the end of a wire sticking out of the tarp. Earlier, while the truck was in motion, he’d used the KA-BAR knife strapped to his leg to cut a thin hole in the tarp. From there, he’d attached an M-18 smoke grenade—its pull ring connected to the wire in his hand—to the inside of the tarp with a strip of nonreflective tape. The men sitting in the back hadn’t noticed. They would in a minute.

Gripping the wire, he prepared to roll off the edge of the roof.

“Drivers? For what? He outsourcing now?” Ernesto said.

“Not quite. He’s got a hundred units need to be over the border yesterday.”

Bolan froze. Units? Did they mean weapons? Other than drugs, weapons were often smuggled to inner city gangs in the Southwest. He listened.

“A hundred. Huh. That’s more than usual.” Ernesto grunted.

“That’s what I said. Know what he said?”

“Sweets?”

“Yeah. He said, money can roll back the most stubborn of tides,” Jorge said.

Ernesto snorted and said, “Maybe my English is not so good. That makes no sense.”

“I speak English perfectly. It makes no damn sense to me, either. Goddamn Zen cowboy shit.”

The truck bounced under Bolan as the merchandise was moved out. He had to act while the majority of the smugglers were in the truck, but he wanted to hear the rest of the conversation.

Decisions, decisions.

Moments later, his choice was made for him. He heard a muffled question in Spanish. Something jostled the wire in his hand. Bolan moved instantly. He rolled off the edge of the truck, hauling the wire with him. Something went ping even as he hit the ground.

The gas canister hit the bed of the truck and vomited dark smoke with a serpentine hiss. Cries of alarm echoed from within. Bolan let off a burst through the tarp, then rose into a crouch and swung around the edge of the tailgate, the UMP-45 cradled in both hands. A smuggler, tall, dressed in surplus fatigues and wild-eyed, half fell out of the truck. Bolan pulled back on the trigger, sending the man’s body jerking and whirling away.

“Shit! What—” A tall Mexican that Bolan figured was Ernesto dug for a large pistol holstered beneath one arm. He was dressed well, in a thin suit, his dark shirt open nearly to his navel. Bolan caught sight of a gaudy tattoo as the smuggler dived behind the other side of the truck.

A machine gun chattered and tore through the tarp, forcing Bolan to dodge it. The Executioner moved with lethal grace, springing to his feet and sliding around the back of the truck. Smoke boiled out of it, and he let off a second short burst into the interior. He spun on his heel, his weapon snarling. Another smuggler was punched backward, a spray of red arcing from his face and chest. The UMP clicked on empty. Bolan reached for another clip.

A man lunged at him, machete whistling through the air. Bolan let the UMP fall to dangle from its strap, and stepped aside, swatting the blade of the machete with the flat of his hand. He slapped the blade down to the ground and swept its owner’s feet out from under him. As the smuggler fell, Bolan kicked the machete away.

Colored smoke hung thick on the air, and he could hear the scratch of rubber soles on dirt. Bolan jabbed his opponent quickly in the face, then, as the smuggler reeled back, clutching at his nose, the big American rammed his fist into the man’s throat. Cartilage crumpled and the man collapsed, gagging. Bolan swept up the machete and reversed it with a twirl of his wrist, driving it down into the smuggler’s skull with a wet crunch.

Bullets plucked at the ground at his feet and he sprinted forward, toward the van. The owner—Jorge—was a light-skinned man, built stocky, and he backpedaled, hands up, despite the pistol on his hip, as Bolan thundered toward him out of the smoke.

“Wait, wait, wait—” he shouted as Bolan slammed into him, shoulder first. They went down together, but only Bolan came up. He grabbed Jorge’s shirtfront and slung him bodily behind the van.

“Damn it, wait!” Jorge yelped. Bolan knocked him sprawling and joined him behind the van.

“You keep quiet. Maybe you’ll live through this.”

Ernesto and two men, both armed with AK-47s, moved forward out of the smoke, looking around wildly. Bolan pressed his foot to Jorge’s throat and twisted around the edge of the van, bringing his weapon up even as he slammed a full magazine home.

“Hey! Gringo, you going to—” Ernesto began.

The UMP burped. Ernesto screeched, and his pistol discharged as he toppled. His companions fell more quietly. Bolan waited a minute, then two. He relaxed slightly. No movement from the truck.

All in all, it had taken only a few minutes. It had been a textbook takedown. Bolan slid his foot away from Jorge’s throat, but kept his weapon aimed at the man.

“Good afternoon. Jorge, was it?” Bolan said, squatting and yanking the pistol from the man’s holster. He tossed it aside.

“Jimmy-Jorge James actually,” the man croaked. “Who the hell are you?”

“Interesting name,” Bolan said, ignoring the question.

“Blame my parents,” Jimmy-Jorge James said. “So, you kill Ernesto?”

“Yes.”

“Crap. I’m going to reach into my pants, get something you probably need to see.” James waited for Bolan’s nod, then reached into his trousers and pulled out a bill folder. He tossed it to Bolan. Bolan flipped it open and quirked an eyebrow in surprise.

“You’re border patrol?”

“That’s what it says on the badge, hombre.” James rubbed the back of his neck. “And you, my friend, just potentially blew two very important federal operations! Now, who the hell are you?”

“I’ll ask the questions. What were you doing here?” Bolan said.

“I was running a sting operation on poor old Ernesto there. Got a problem with that?” James said belligerently. He made to get up, but Bolan motioned for him to stay down.

“Not yet,” he said pleasantly. “Not until I know you are who you say you are. And that you were doing what you claim you were doing.”

“Yes, because I’m the untrustworthy one here,” James said harshly, indicating the bodies all around.

“A little paranoia is good for the soul,” Bolan said calmly. He eyed the badge, looking for telltale signs that it was a fake. Finding nothing to indicate that it was anything other than what it seemed, he let the UMP fall to dangle from his shoulder and reached up to detach the satellite phone from his harness. It would be a simple enough matter to have someone check out the badge number and the identification.

James, however, didn’t seem inclined to wait. As Bolan dialed, the younger man suddenly rolled toward his pistol with the speed of a rattlesnake on the strike. As Bolan cursed and brought his weapon up one-handed, James scooped up the pistol and twisted around, sighting down the barrel.

Bolan ducked to the side even as Jorge fired. Behind him, someone screamed. Bolan spun, and his UMP hummed as he let off a burst into Ernesto’s already sagging body. James’s bullet had torn a neat, round hole in the smuggler’s cranium, sending him into the darkness just ahead of Bolan’s own burst. Lowering his smoking weapon, Bolan turned back to James, who smiled at him weakly.

“Sorry. Instinct, man,” James said, letting his pistol spin around his trigger finger until the butt was facing Bolan. “You can have it back now.”

“Keep it,” Bolan said simply.

Chapter 2

“He’s legit,” Hal Brognola said, his voice echoing oddly through the receiver of the satellite phone. “He’s been with the United States Border Patrol for ten years, straight out of college. He’s a good one, Striker.”

“He mentioned Interpol,” Bolan said.

“Seconded, recently,” the big Fed said. “He and his partner.”

“Partner?” Bolan looked at James, where he squatted beside Ernesto’s body, going through the man’s pockets. “He didn’t mention a partner.”

“Why would he? He doesn’t know if you’re legit, either, Striker,” Brognola said, sounding amused. Bolan grunted. There was truth in that.

“I guess I don’t have one of those faces, huh?”

“Not even close.” Brognola cleared his throat. “From what I can tell, you just dropped into the middle of something that’s been in play for a while, barring recent changes.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Bolan said.

“No, not really. It’s a mess, and only going to get messier. Interpol’s involved, Border Patrol wants the coyotes shut down and all the other federal agencies are screaming about being kept out of the loop. No one really knows what’s going on out there.”

“Including us,” Bolan said.

“How is that new?” Brognola said.

“It’s not,” Bolan said. “Well, whatever the game is, I’m dealing myself in.”

“Why did I have a feeling you’d say that?” Brognola sighed. “Look, I’ll try to find out what’s going on, on my end. Keep me posted on yours. Oh, and, Striker? Let’s keep the property damage to a minimum until we know whose field we’re playing in, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Bolan said and turned off the phone. He clipped it back on his rig and started toward James. “You didn’t tell me you had a partner,” he said. The border patrol agent stood, clapping dirt off his pants.

“Figured if you were really who you said you were, you’d find out, Cooper.” He rubbed his cheek. Bolan had given James the name of his Justice Department cover identity, Agent Matt Cooper, reasoning that it was the quickest way to get the man to trust him. So far, it seemed to have worked.

“Well, I have. Who is he?”

“He’s a ‘she,’ actually. Her name’s Amira Tanzir, with Interpol. She’s working things from the back end.” James watched curiously as Bolan knelt and grabbed Ernesto’s legs. “What are you doing?”

“I’m moving the bodies onto the truck. Jihadists,” Bolan said, dragging the body up into the truck. Clapping his hands together, he hopped down and made for another one.

“Maybe—that’s the rumor at any rate,” James said, rubbing his throat. “Hell, I don’t know, I just go where they tell me, Cooper.”

“But that’s the rumor.”

“Yeah,” he said. Bolan looked at him as he got another body onto the truck. According to Brognola, Jimmy-Jorge James was a veteran of countless border skirmishes with smugglers of all types of cargo—including humans. He’d made his bones taking down snakehead rings in California before gravitating east to the Mexican front, and the troubles there.

Presently he was acting as a dogsbody for Interpol. Bolan could tell that it grated on the man, and the Executioner allowed himself a quick smile. He knew that feeling well. You grew used to working alone, to following your own initiative. It made it hard to follow orders, when it became time to do so again. That was one of the reasons for his current arrangement with the Stony Man organization. That, and the fact that Bolan felt that he was simply more effective on his own. He moved the last body onto the tailgate of the truck and shut it, flipping the body onto the others.

“How long have you been under?” Bolan said, rounding the truck and sinking to his haunches. He unsheathed his KA-BAR and punctured the gas tank with one swift, economical strike. Rising to his feet, he looked at James.

“Only a few months,” the young agent said. “We got word that some of the cartels were using coyotes to get pigment—”

“Pigment?” Bolan said, stepping away from the thin trail of gasoline carving a swath through the dirt of the street. “Step back.”

“Black tar heroin,” James said, backing up toward his van. “Are you sure about this?”

“You’d rather I leave it here?”

“I’d rather you let me call my bosses and let them come confiscate it. Have you ever heard of chain of evidence?”

“No guarantees they’d get to it before someone else did. I’d hate to have gone through all this trouble just to see this crap wind up right where it was going anyway,” Bolan said, pulling a box of matches out of one of the pockets on his combat rig.

“Yeah, about that,” James said. “What the hell was this about? You guys could have let us know you were planning an operation on our patch.”

“No time, I’m afraid. Jihadists,” Bolan said, trying to steer the conversation back on topic and away from dangerous shoals.

“Yeah, well, same shit, different angle. I got myself established as a coyote. I got some routes, made friends, that kind of thing.” James leaned against the side of his van, arms crossed. “I met Sweets.”

“Who’s Sweets?” Bolan said, lighting a match. He dropped it and stepped back in a hurry. The tiny flame caught and zipped back along the gasoline trickle.

“Sweets is Django Sweets. Big-time king coyote. Runs people, drugs, guns, car parts, whatever you want, whichever direction you want them going in. Coyotes have sort of an informal union, if you can believe it.”

Bolan could. He’d seen it again and again with various types of criminals. Someone invariably put themselves on top. “Yes,” he said. When he didn’t elaborate, James went on.

“Sweets put himself in the top spot a few months back. He’s in slick with the cartels, and, unfortunately, it looks like he’s got an in with us as well. He’s been running mules—illegal migrants carrying drugs—into Tucson and such, and he’s skated out of at least two sure-thing sting operations.”

“So you are saying you have a leak?” Bolan said. The truck was engulfed in flames, taking the heroin and the bodies of the transporters with it.

“Worse. We think Sweets has got people covering for him. Don’t know who though. We were hoping to scoop them up in the middle of all this.”

“All what?” Bolan said. “All my contact knew was that it was a mess.”

“Sweets was contacted a few weeks ago by a guy named Tuerto,” James said.

Bolan blinked. “One-Eye?” he said, translating.

“Mr. One-Eye, actually, or at least, that’s how Sweets referred to him.” James shook his head. “We had no clue who he was at the time, but then we got a panicky shout-out from Interpol.”

“Terrorist?”

“Worse. He’s a mercenary, and a good one. His sticky fingerprints are all over a number of incidents going from one end of the world to the other.” James shrugged. “At least, that’s what Interpol said. And they should know, because they’ve been tracking him for three years.”

“Your partner,” Bolan said, reading between the lines. James nodded.

“Yeah, she’s some hot shit, according to her bosses. Undercover work, tactical assault, all that jazz.”

“And what do you make of her?” Bolan asked shrewdly. Tanzir sounded competent, if nothing else.

James was silent for a moment. Bolan could practically see the gears turning in his head. When he finally answered, he chose his words with care. “She’s...intense. Tuerto’s...” He trailed off. “Listen, have you ever read any Melville?”

Bolan caught his meaning instantly. “He’s her white whale,” he said.

James shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. “Something close to that.... She’s not obsessed, but she’s real focused.” James made a gesture. “Tunnel vision, you know?”