Death List

CRITICAL IMITATION

A notorious assassin is captured before receiving the ultimate hit list from a major crime family. To protect the targets, Stony Man Farm sends Mack Bolan to infiltrate the family’s compound and secure the list. This time, Bolan has an extra weapon in his arsenal: he’s a dead ringer for the assassin. His impersonation is successful...until the escaped killer arrives on the scene. Suddenly, the race is on for Bolan to reach the targets before the assassin or his mercenaries can murder them—or Bolan himself. Yet despite the stolen identity, there will be no mistaking the Executioner’s signature blaze of hellfire and justice.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quotes

The Mack Bolan Legend

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

Copyright

Bullets thudded into the crippled SUV.

“I smell gas,” Pierce said. “Do you smell gas?”

“Try not to think about it, and give me cover fire,” Bolan ordered. “I’ve got work to do.”

The little mobster began laying down a withering 00 Buck fusillade with his 12-gauge. Bolan lined up the iron sights on the AK-47, then drew a breath, and let out half of it.

He pressed the trigger.

One of the Toretto hardmen gasped as blood and brains suddenly coated the side of his face. Next to him, the shooter Bolan had targeted had a crater where his forehead had been. The Executioner took advantage of the startled gunman’s moment of paralysis to punch a round through his throat.

The deaths spurred the shooters to redouble their efforts. They poured whatever they had left into the SUV. Something beneath the truck sparked. A flame caught. Soon the underside of the truck glowed yellow with fire.

“Time to move, Pierce!”

Death List

Don Pendleton

Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.

—Aesop

One man can stand against evil. One man can face the worst that life has to offer and, through his example, inspire others. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated.

—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.

1

Whiting, IL

As Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, reached out to shake the Mafia thug’s hand, the man’s white silk tie bloomed crimson. The soldier dropped to the plush carpet almost before his mind processed why he was doing so, and found himself staring into the dead eyes of the Mafia button man.

Automatic gunfire ripped through the Italian restaurant, which was owned by the Corino crime family, one of Chicago’s most notorious Mafia organizations. That meant that a good portion of the patrons reacted not by screaming for help but by drawing concealed weapons.

Bolan grimaced. He didn’t like what he was about to do, but there was no choice. He rolled himself up and over the corpse, placing the body between him and the south doorway. It was this entrance that was the source of the sudden attack. The Corino family was being hit. It was just the bad fortune of the hitters that Mack Bolan had been caught in the middle.

The Corinos had arranged for “Bolan” to meet them here because it was their home territory. This was supposed to have been a standard meet-and-greet. There being no honor among thieves, the meet was the first of several hurdles Bolan would have to overcome as the Corinos vetted him to make sure he was who he claimed to be.

Of course, he wasn’t.

Bolan drew a pair of Beretta 92-F pistols from the dual shoulder holsters he wore. The weapons had mother-of-pearl grips, which he detested. The pistols, and the custom shoulder harness that bore them, were the personal property of one Vincent Harmon.

* * *

“WHO IS VINCENT HARMON?” Bolan had asked Hal Brognola over the scrambled satellite phone connection two days before.

“He’s one of the most successful assassins in the world, Striker,” the big Fed had explained. From his Justice Department office, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia, had laid it all out for Bolan while explaining the soldier’s newest mission.

Vincent Harmon was a contract killer who had spent the last eight years on top of the Most Wanted list of more than a dozen international law-enforcement agencies. The list of targets attributed to Harmon included world leaders, captains of industry, underworld figures and various media personalities on the wrong side of Harmon’s employers.

“Why hasn’t the Farm prioritized this guy, if he’s such a big deal?” Bolan asked.

“Harmon has been a ghost,” Brognola replied. “The Farm has been tracking him for some time, but he’s an off-the-grid fanatic. He changes his identity frequently and uses cash and prepaid credit cards whenever possible. The guy likes to wear a fedora and scarf when he’s out in public, and avoids any venue where public surveillance is likely to spot him clearly. His devotion to electronic privacy is a way of life, not just a necessity of his job. It’s like a game to him.”

“How’d they catch him, then?”

“Every man has a weakness,” Brognola said. “Harmon’s is women. He’s fond of high-priced escorts, and he finally hired one whose devotion to privacy wasn’t quite so fanatical. She snapped a photo of him while he was sleeping and posted it to a social media site, to a gallery devoted to her more handsome paramours. Like a trophy. The Farm’s been running web-crawl sweeps for Harmon for years, so the photo was picked up. Harmon’s a man of habit, and this girl was evidently a favorite of his. We staked out her apartment. The next time Harmon booked her, a special operations team took him down.”

“Special ops? For one guy?”

“Harmon’s background is surprisingly similar to your own,” Brognola told him. “He served overseas as part of the war on terror, in a secret, purpose-built special operations group nominally attached to Delta. He’s an expert in small arms, hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and improvised weapons and tactics. He’s also a stone-cold sociopath who’d murder his mother if he thought she was a danger to him.”

“How do we know that?”

“Because he murdered his mother when he thought she was a danger to him,” Brognola told him. “The Pentagon’s not talking because several of the records have been sealed and ‘lost.’ Harmon’s post-military activities have been a huge embarrassment to them and they’d prefer to pretend he doesn’t exist.

“One thing the team at the Farm has been able to confirm is that Harmon was running opium through a network he either built or acquired while overseas. Apparently with that network came contacts that set him up in the murder-for-hire business once some of his more unsavory activities were uncovered. The military gave him a dishonorable discharge and he was headed for a black-site prison for the rest of his life...but he escaped. He’s been popping up on our radar ever since, attached to various high-profile assassinations. But the moment we get a fix on him, he vanishes.”

“And the mother?”

“That was his first step on returning to the United States, we think,” Brognola said. “Vincent Harmon’s mother was found smothered to death in her own bed. Apparently he put a pillow over her face while she slept. He has no other family. His father has been dead for years. I guess he figured she was the one person who might be able to provide law enforcement with insight on his life and his habits, so he eliminated her as part of embarking on his new career.”

Bolan had chosen not to comment on that; it was simply too cold. “What’s the gig, then?” he asked.

“We’ve got a complete dossier on Harmon, which I’m transmitting to your secure phone now. Your task is to travel to Chicago and meet with a courier from the Farm, who’ll bring you Harmon’s personal effects. While Vincent Harmon is a zealot about staying off the grid, the criminals he works with definitely aren’t. We’ve been getting disturbing chatter about a meeting of the minds where the Mafia network is considered. The Mob’s working on a resurgence. Among its rumored plans is a wish list of assassinations to which all of the major families are supposed to have signed off. We believe Harmon has been selected for the series of hits that would take care of the list. The deaths would position the Mob as players for the next twenty years.”

“So you want me to throw a wrench in the works.”

“Exactly,” Brognola agreed. “We have intel that says representatives of the Corino crime family will be meeting with someone they’ll believe to be Harmon. We have a time and location for the meet. We want to send you in as him. You’ll need to take his place, play the role long enough to get the list of targets and then see to it each of those targets is protected. We’ll assign support as possible, coordinating through the Farm, but there’s precious little we know for sure.”

“So I just have to play the Harmon role and brazen out the rest of it.”

“Pretty much. The two of you are the same size, hair color and overall build. You look quite a bit alike. If any of his clients has a better idea what Harmon looks like, and we have no evidence that they do, you can simply play the plastic surgery card.”

While Brognola couldn’t see him, that had made Bolan smile. More than once the Executioner had received a new face. The big Fed was absolutely correct. If anyone among the Corinos claimed Bolan didn’t look like Vincent Harmon, he could admit to having had plastic surgery. He had the scars.

“What about Harmon?” Bolan asked. “What’s he going to be doing while I’m taking his place?”

“Harmon has a long overdue date with a black-ops prison,” Brognola told him. “He is going to officially disappear, which should satisfy all concerned while keeping him out of your way for the duration of your operation.”

“Then I’d better get started. Miles to go before I sleep, as the man said.”

“Good hunting, Striker.”

The conversation with Brognola had been forty-eight hours and several hundred miles ago. In the two days since, Bolan had traveled to Illinois, met the Stony Man courier, briefed himself on the sketchy details available on Harmon and basically tried to get his mind around the role. Role camouflage was something he knew well, but that didn’t make it any easier when he had to try to be, at least for all appearances, the sort of man he had spent his life fighting against. Harmon was a sociopath and a savage, but he was not stupid. It was his intelligence that made the man so dangerous...and that had kept him out of the hands of law enforcement since he’d first taken to contract killing.

Getting the details of the initial meet with the Corinos, and presenting himself as Harmon, had gone off without a hitch. According to the internet chatter intercepted by the Farm, as well as some not-so-legally sifted emails from Corino family members, the meet was to initiate the relationship between Harmon and the Corinos. He had the talent; they had the job that needed to get done. Bolan just had to walk in as Harmon, gain their confidence, and play out the role until he got the information Brognola and the Farm required. It would be relatively simple to safeguard the targets on the list after that. At least, it should have been.

* * *

COULD’VE, SHOULD’VE, WOULD’VE, Bolan thought as gunfire tore into the corpse he was using for a shield.

He ran the events of the last few moments back in his mind. He had walked into the restaurant at the appointed time for the meeting. Immediately, a couple of thick-necked Corino leg-breakers had approached him. They had traded meaningless greetings as he’d reached out to shake the lead thug’s hand. Then the gunfire had started.

From his vantage on the bloodstained carpet, Bolan could see three men at the south entrance. The restaurant was raised from street level, which meant those entering from the south, off the street, had to traverse a half flight of stairs to get to the main dining floor. The gunmen were using the stairwell as cover, spraying the dining area with automatic weapons fire. Bolan could not make out all of the weapons used, but at least one of them was a MAC-10 machine pistol with a large suppressor. The muffled clap of the weapon was unmistakable, as was its thick, black muzzle. Bolan was, without a doubt, outgunned.

Not that it would make a difference.

Bracing his arms against the back of the dead man, Bolan extended both of Vincent Harmon’s Berettas. The pistols, despite their gaudy handles, were finely tuned and well maintained. Harmon was evidently a man who understood good gear, if not good taste.

In Bolan’s pocket was an expensive OTF automatic knife with a blade honed sharp enough to shave hair. That, too, had belonged to Harmon. On Bolan’s belt were Kydex holders for extra magazines. Something Harmon had not carried, but that, for matters of sheer survival, the Executioner had insisted on. It was unlikely anyone would notice or care.

The lead gunman poked his head up again and again, trying to scope out targets. Sporadic fire erupted from the dining level as the Corinos tried to regroup. Nearby, a man was gurgling loudly. It was the second of the two button men who had braced Bolan. The wounded man would not live long, but he would be in pain for every second that he did. He had been shot multiple times, including the throat. The dark arterial blood pooling beneath him told Bolan the whole story.

The Executioner considered sparing the dying Corino a mercy round, but fought the impulse. Mack Bolan might give the man a clean death, but Vincent Harmon would not.

The lead gunman poked his head up once again. This time Bolan was ready. He squeezed the trigger of his right-hand Beretta, putting a 9 mm hollow-point bullet through the shooter’s left eyeball. There was a shout of alarm from another attacker, probably because the dead gunner’s partners were now coated in his blood and brains.

Bolan wasted no time. He dropped the Beretta in his left hand, popped to one knee and snatched a pepper shaker from the nearest table. He tossed it overhand at the south stairs.

“Grenade!” Bolan yelled.

It was a dime-store trick in his estimation, but it worked. The remaining shooters scattered, trying to climb out of the stairwell to avoid the clattering object. They were shooting as they went, but Bolan was already prone again, well below the level of their wild spray-and-pray barrage. He punched one then two bullets through the heart of the first man. His second target was shot in the neck and jaw. The results were messy and final.

Bolan waited patiently as the Corino hardmen expended several more shots in the direction of the south entrance. Eventually, though, they figured out that the worst was over. Silence, broken only by the moans of the dying Corino button man, descended on the room.

The Executioner stood. He looked left then right, making eye contact with the other Corino gunners in the room. One of the older ones, probably the leader of the contingent been sent to meet him, nodded. Bolan nodded back and, gun in hand, scouted the south stairs. Among the bodies he found a fourth man still alive. Bolan kicked away the man’s weapon. It was the MAC-10 he had spotted right away.

“Who sent you?” Bolan asked, standing over the dying man. Blood coated the shooter’s face. He stared upward, blinking and trying to talk.

“Don’t bother,” said a voice next to Bolan. The soldier turned and sized up the newcomer. The man was shorter than the Executioner by almost a foot. He had a solid build and a bullet-shaped head that had been shaved smooth. He wore a thin goatee and a suit more expensive than anything Bolan had owned in civilian life. In his hand he held a short-barreled, Commander-length .45 automatic pistol.

“Why’s that?” Bolan said.

“He’s with the Torettos,” the newcomer replied. “Unfortunately he was also born with a terminal disease.”

“What’s that?” Bolan asked.

“It’s called being a Toretto.” The shorter man raised his .45 and put a bullet between the Toretto gunman’s eyes. Then he turned and stuck out his hand. Bolan, surprised, took it, finding the smaller man’s grip firm and confident.

“Vincent Harmon,” Bolan said.

“David Pierce. Son of a friend of the family,” he added.

“If you say so.” Bolan was watching his back as the remaining Corinos began policing up the dining area and securing the other exits. The dying button man had stopped moaning. Pierce followed Bolan’s gaze.

“That was Sammy,” he said. “He was a good kid.”

“I’m sure he was.”

“Neat trick you pulled with the saltshaker.”

“Pepper,” Bolan corrected.

“Whatever.” Pierce shrugged. “Come on. Mr. and Mrs. Corino are going to be plenty happy to hear that you saved our butts.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow and looked around at the carnage in the dining area. “You don’t think they’ll be saddened by the loss of... Sammy...over there?”

“I said he was a good kid,” Pierce stated. “Not irreplaceable. Besides, they’re looking to hire the best. So far, you’re not showing me anything otherwise, Harmon.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” As Bolan holstered Vincent Harmon’s gaudy Beretta—he would have to retrieve the other gun from the floor—he reminded himself of who he was and why he was there.

He had to play the role of Vincent Harmon, but he didn’t have to like it.

What he would like, however, would be to take out every last one of these Corino thugs.

“You okay?” Pierce asked. “You all of a sudden look like somebody slapped your old lady.”

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“About all the work there is to do,” said the Executioner.

2

Pierce, behind the wheel of a gold Lincoln Town Car whose vintage had to be late nineties, hauled the wheel over and brought the Detroit battleship yawing around a turn. He drove quickly and aggressively, but his efforts were hindered by the marshmallow air suspension of the luxury sedan.

Bolan watched through the passenger window as the neighborhood around them grew increasingly affluent. They were headed into one of the nicer areas of the city, to the private home of Aldo and Rosa Corino. At least, that’s what Pierce had claimed he’d been tasked to do. He was supposed to take Vincent Harmon to the promised audience with the Corinos so that the hit man could be vetted for the extensive job awaiting him.

Pierce listened to public radio news as he drove. He was not stingy with his commentary.

“We ought to line up all the politicians,” he said, “and put a bullet in each of ’em. Start over. We could do with a little house cleaning.”

“I know a man in Washington who might agree with you.”

“Yeah,” Pierce said. “That’s the thing. Everybody knows the system’s rigged, but nobody does anything about it. But that’s the way the world works, I guess. What can one guy do?”

“One man can stand against evil,” Bolan replied. “One man can face the worst that life has to offer and through his example inspire others. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated.”

Pierce shot Bolan a sidelong glance. “You’re a weird guy, Harmon.”

“I don’t chat politics often.”

“Right. That figures.” Pierce shifted in his seat.

The five-inch, grooved wooden dowel attached to his keychain rattled against his knee when he moved. Bolan had noticed the Japanese yawara right away; it was an effective self-defense tool. While it didn’t look like much, it could be used to break bones and deliver devastating blows by concentrating the force of the strike in the end of the dowel. Not a lot of Mob guys carried such accessories, though he’d known plenty who liked a good pair of brass knuckles or the comforting heft of a leather sap. It was an anomaly. A piece of data that painted David Pierce on Bolan’s radar as more than the typical Mafia goon. He would need to watch himself with the smaller man.

They drove in silence for a while as the area through which they moved continued to become more affluent. The homes they passed were easily worth millions of dollars. Eventually they reached the gated entrance to the Corino estate, which was walled off from the rest of the community.

Bolan took note of the security systems he could spot. The concrete barrier that surrounded the Corinos’ headquarters was ten feet tall and, he could see, about a foot thick. It had been landscaped with small trees and what might have been fake ivy, all in an attempt to make the stone security wall look more upscale. Cameras on pedestals above and behind the wall were spaced here and there. The fields of view would overlap at those distances. Each camera was equipped with the protruding bulb of an LED spotlight. The cameras appeared to be moving independently of one another, not sweeping in predefined arcs. As setups went, it was a solid one.

The front gate of the estate boasted a guard shack with a man in a nondescript uniform. To outside eyes, no doubt, the guard looked like any private security babysitter tasked with working the gate and logging visitors. One glance, though, and Bolan could see he was another of the Corinos’ thugs. He wore a light jacket over his uniform shirt. A telltale bulge was large enough to be a concealed shotgun or a submachine gun on a sling. He didn’t look like the typical bored rent-a-cop, either. He looked annoyed and ready to spring.