Black Death Reprise

Holding the submachine gun at waist level, he sprang from behind the cover of the tree and dashed forward, angling his way toward an outcropping of rocks. While he ran, he fired the Spectre in short bursts, engaging targets of opportunity as they appeared.

Bullets were flying through the air as Bolan launched himself into a dive that would take him to his intended spot behind the rocks. He felt the sudden sting of a round scratch the top of his scalp. He twisted in midair to direct his reply at the shooter, sending a burst of a dozen slugs into him and the man who knelt nearby.

“How’re you doing?” he asked into the mike as he grabbed one of his two remaining box magazines to replace the spent one.

“The M-60 is out,” LaFontaine shouted back.

“Throw the smoke and give me cover. I have plastique for the four corners. Let’s blow this building!” the Executioner shouted.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Peter Spring for his contribution to this work.

To lead an untrained people to war is to throw them away.

—Confucius, 551–479 BC

Evil men lead blind followers into battle unprepared for what they will face. What they will face is me—their Executioner.

—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 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

1

A gentle breeze passing through the vineyard from the Pyrenees turned the leaves on their stems, making them appear to be waving to the man who glided silently through their tethered rows. The soothing rustle as they stirred on warm air currents, exposing undersides that shimmered a silvery-gray in the moonlight, was the only sound reaching Mack Bolan’s ears as he trod silently across the fertile fields that for more than eight hundred years had been producing wine for the St. Rafael Monastery north of Bayonne.

Dressed entirely in black, with green and brown camouflage paint smeared on the high points of his face to flatten his features, Bolan’s large frame was all but invisible against the inky French countryside.

On his hip, the ex-soldier wore a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, while a holster on his left shoulder held a Beretta 93-R loaded with a 20-round clip of 9 mm Parabellum ammunition. A foot-long Fairbairn-Sykes combat knife, honed to a razor’s edge, rested in a weathered black leather sheath strapped to the outside of his right calf.

Bolan was approaching the monastery from the south because slipping into Spain at San Sebastian and traveling by car through the Pyrenees mountains to Bayonne was considerably easier for a heavily armed man than trying to fly into an airport, whether public or private, anywhere in France. The one hundred rounds of ammunition he brought for the Desert Eagle would have been impossible to get through French customs—never mind the concussion grenades and incendiary tape he carried in the pouches on his combat web belt.

As would most battle-tested veterans with whom death has become intimate enough to be a frequent visitor to their dreams, the man some called the Executioner was hoping not to use his weapons this night. But he had been schooled on the hellfire trail in distant jungles long enough to know firsthand that hope and death were frequent bedfellows. Those who came unprepared to kill at a moment’s notice, surrendering their fate to optimism or hope, were the ones who found themselves easy targets when a supposedly cold spot turned unexpectedly hot.

Despite the vineyard’s tranquil appearance, two CIA agents had been murdered there less than a week earlier, the homing device implanted in one’s deltoid muscle leading the Agency to a wooded area ten miles north, where the operatives’ bullet-ridden bodies had been discovered in a shallow grave. They had met their deaths while on the mission now assigned to Bolan—to rescue Dr. Zagorski from the confines of the ancient abbey.

Bolan’s Porsche 911 Turbo was hidden in a stand of trees about a mile south of the monastery where he had left it in order to approach his objective on foot, a tactic yielding the greatest variety of options. When combat veterans gained enough experience under fire, they learned that flexibility on the battlefield was what survival was all about—the soldier who ran out of options first was the one who died.

The choppy sound of helicopter blades cutting the air shattered the vineyard’s stillness with a noise that touched nerve endings buried deep within Bolan’s warrior psyche. He lowered himself to the ground, pressing his body against the single strand of heavy zinc wire. It ran about six inches above the soil the entire length of each row, alternately weaving inside and outside the slender trunks of adjacent vines, connecting an entire row into a supporting network able to withstand the rainstorms that rushed down the rugged slopes of the Pyrenees. The tended vines were leafless for the bottom two feet or so, forming a canopy under which Bolan would be concealed from the passing aircraft. Lying on his back, motionless to prevent an errant move from catching the eye of an alert passenger in the chopper, he waited for it to pass.

Coming straight across the vineyard, the helicopter was apparently not searching for intruders. As it whizzed past on a direct course for the monastery, more than ten rows to the right of where Bolan lay as still as a statue, he was able to see it was the Bell 206B-3 JetRanger that Hal Brognola told him the Order of Raphael had purchased six months earlier to replace their aging Hughes 300C. The new helicopter carried two-and-a-half times more weight, had room for four passengers and was almost twice as fast as the Hughes.

Bolan remained in place as he watched the chopper reach its destination. Abruptly illuminated by the landing pad’s powerful lights, it hovered like an apparition for a few moments before descending slowly out of sight. From satellite reconnaissance photos he had studied back at Stony Man Farm, Bolan knew the landing pad was a mere thirty yards from a guarded entrance to the research laboratory that was his objective.

The helicopter’s engine tapered off into silence, the landing pad’s lights were turned off, and once again, a hush as deep as prayer blanketed the vineyard.

Bolan rose, touch-checking his gear before resuming. As he set off toward the base of the hill on top of which the ancient L’Abbaye de Raphael sat, he recalled the conversation with Hal Brognola two days earlier that had brought him to the South of France for his mission.

“THE CONSEQUENCES ARE too horrific for the President to ignore,” Brognola had said at their meeting on the National Mall in Washington.

The man from the Justice Department was fully aware of the arm’s-length relationship Bolan held with the federal government even when his sense of righteousness was inflamed to the point where he accepted a mission, so he wasn’t about to beg or plead. Bolan would decide on his own whether to sign on, and that would be that.

Brognola swallowed hard, said, “This is much more than a random terrorist group developing something like anthrax, or getting their hands on a batch of nerve agent. At least we can contain those threats. A project like this could jeopardize humankind’s very existence.”

He paused for a moment before adding, “Jesus, Striker, the plague was devastating the first time around. No one wants to see an updated version.”

They were walking west along the Mall’s boundary on Madison Drive, the brilliantly white Capitol Building shimmering at their backs under the unrelenting sun. As he walked, Brognola mopped his face with one of the cotton handkerchiefs he carried during Washington summers.

Outside the Smithsonian Castle, Bolan could see a group of tourists, mostly families with kids out of school for the summer, clustered around an idling tour bus. Their limp hair and sagging postures told him long before he came into earshot of the children’s whining voices that they had been outdoors in the brutal humidity for a while.

Bolan himself showed no sign of the heat. He was dressed in pressed khaki pants and a navy blue golf shirt. The portion of his face visible under his dark glasses gleamed in the sunlight with a vibrant glow akin to that produced by the light film of oil that coated the ex-soldier’s handguns.

“Terrorists won’t fly airplanes into buildings anymore,” Brognola said as Bolan studied the transcript from the Oval Office while they walked. “They’ll escalate their tactics by using science and state-of-the-art technology to develop more exotic weapons of mass destruction. The news is full of the bird flu. What we’re talking about here has the potential to be ten, maybe a hundred, times more dangerous. A designer disease with its genetic roots reaching all the way back to the Black Death? Tell me that’s not a doomsday scenario.”

“How sure are they?” Bolan asked. “The government’s track record for getting good intel is an embarrassment.”

At the junction of Madison with Twelfth Street, a dozen college-aged girls were sunbathing on the heavy concrete slabs outside the National Museum of American History. As Bolan walked past the building’s front lawn, he could smell the pineapple and coconut fragrances from their tanning lotions.

“This time the CIA has French verification,” Brognola answered. “INSERM doctors working with Sentinelles have forensic evidence from animal carcasses. Someone is definitely mucking around with genetically engineered diseases.”

“And why do they think the carcasses came from—” Bolan hesitated until a group of schoolchildren heading toward the Capitol passed them “—the Order of Raphael?”

They had reached the Washington Monument, the 555-foot marble obelisk pointing ramrod straight into the sky. Brognola steered them to the right, onto Constitution Avenue, waiting until they had distanced themselves a few yards from the closest tourist before saying, “The Order is centuries old, dating all the way back to before the Crusades. Today, they’re a fully modern paramilitary organization with a few hundred members in France, the United States and Australia. Their American office is in Boston. Almost a year ago, they caught Homeland Security’s attention. They—”

Bolan interrupted by asking, “What triggered the initial alert?”

“Cell phone patterns. The NSA’s eavesdropping programs recognized words spoken during the Order’s calls to and from Boston and the monastery at Bayonne. That led directly to Internet surveillance and an on-site CIA probe. The more we pulled the string, the more the Order of Raphael looked like a terrorist organization.”

“But the CIA didn’t find anything in Boston or France?” Bolan asked.

“No. There’s a lab at Bayonne—no law against independent research—and the Agency mined the databases of medical supply houses and uncovered sales documents relating to scientific equipment and supplies. But when Dr. Zagorski was kidnapped from her home outside Paris three months ago, the French authorities suddenly became as interested in the Order as we were.”

“Hold on,” Bolan said while flipping through the five-page report to find and reread the section mentioning the scientist. “Okay. What’s her story?”

At the far west end of the park, Brognola could see the sloping walls of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, crowded as always with loved ones seeking healing from a generation-old wound.

Brognola kept his eyes on the monument in the distance as he answered Bolan’s question. “Sonia Zagorski is one of the world’s leading virologists. Shortly after her disappearance, L’Abbaye de Raphael ordered some very specific equipment. Right down to model numbers, it was the same stuff Dr. Zagorski had in her Paris lab.”

“If the French and the CIA both believed that Zagorski had been kidnapped by the Order of Raphael, why didn’t they raid the place?” Bolan asked.

“Interpol did. Two months ago. They didn’t find any trace of her or the new equipment we know the Order bought. Since then, our satellite flyovers have recorded increased security around the monastery with roving guards and limited access to outside suppliers like the electric company and water providers. Homeland Security says the Order is definitely lowering its profile, but we’re still monitoring a ton of coded phone calls, encrypted Internet traffic and scientific purchases. Agents McCabe and Gardner were sent in the night before last for what should have been a soft probe. Langley thinks they were ambushed—neither of their weapons had been fired.”

Bolan continued reading the report, his mouth drawn into a thin line as he turned back to review an earlier portion.

Brognola said, “With the war in Iraq, we aren’t on the best of terms with France right now. The President wants someone independent to get in there and rescue Zagorski.”

Independent, Bolan thought. How many times had he accepted missions knowing that if he was caught, his government would deny knowing him? Granted it was the path he had chosen when life had nothing left to offer, but sometimes he questioned his very existence. He knew he’d eventually find himself in a hot zone out of control, and that’s where it would all end. Was hoping that he went out honorably, a warrior in the heat of battle, the best his future could offer?

“If she doesn’t want to be rescued, I won’t know until it’s too late. Too late for her to be anything more than an obstacle blocking my escape,” Bolan stated.

Brognola looked away, wiping his handkerchief across his brow. “Nothing indicates she’s connected to the Order in any way,” he said.

“Okay,” Bolan said abruptly, handing the file back to Brognola.

They parted without another word, the man from Justice setting off to inform the President that his request had been accepted. Bolan quickly melted into the swells of Washington tourists the way a tiger melted into the jungle.

AT THE EDGE OF A VINEYARD four thousand miles from the spot where he had first learned of a place called L’Abbaye de Raphael, Mack Bolan dropped to one knee and reached into the pouch on his web belt containing his night-vision goggles.

Manufactured by American Technologies Network Corporation, the Gen IV vision system employed XR-5 technology and infrared illumination, which meant the ultra-lightweight gallium arsenide tubes could render a completely dark night into an eerie green landscape as bright as noontime. With the moon peeking every now and then from behind sporadic clouds in a sky filled with stars, night vision was not Bolan’s primary need.

He switched the goggles into infrared mode, and the scene before him shimmered slightly for a few moments while the photocathode sensors adjusted to the new data stream. At the base of the hill, laser-crisp infrared beams became visible, crisscrossing the approach to stone steps leading up to the monastery. To the left, a two-lane road wound up and around the side of the hill.

Bolan scanned the landscape before him, searching for additional infrared security nets. Agents McCabe and Gardner, he thought, had to have broken one of the beams, announcing their presence without even knowing it. There were three other hot spots at various points on the hill, but none in the vicinity of the road.

As Bolan removed his goggles, he recalled the reconnaissance photos he had studied at Stony Man Farm. The lab’s entrance was shielded from the road by a thin stand of trees running almost to the top, which meant he could approach on the asphalt until he got close.

His gaze moved to the field’s northwest corner, where six all-terrain vehicles hitched to open carts containing gardening tools were parked in a straight line pointing south into the vineyard. When he reached the first, Bolan stopped to inspect its controls. Using his foot-long combat knife to pry open the instrument panel, he bent close to examine the three-wheeler’s ignition wiring. A bird cried out in the distance, and the warrior paused while listening hard. Crickets close by chirped a summer symphony in tune with their reproductive cycles. From all other directions, the buzzing and humming of night insects reaching his ears reassured him that he was the only human in the immediate vicinity.

Over the years, on battlefields spanning the globe, Bolan had hot-wired vehicles ranging from dune buggies to M-60 tanks. ATVs were at the low end of the technology continuum. Even in the dark, it took him less than a minute to cut, strip and splice the on-off toggle switch into a hot connection bypassing the ignition key. After dipping his finger into the fuel tank to check the vehicle’s gas level, he unhooked the tool cart from the ATV, pushing it a few feet to the rear.

As he passed each of the remaining five on his way to the access road, he paused for a moment to pierce their wide front tires with his scalpel-sharp combat knife, rendering all but the one he had hot-wired inoperable. Bolan didn’t know if he’d need an ATV on his way out, but disabling all except one created an option.

With a final glance over his shoulder, he stepped onto the asphalt, leaning slightly into the incline.

The road’s rise was steep, curling like a corkscrew up the side of the hill to a plateau on which the ancient L’Abbaye de Raphael stood. Shortly before the road leveled out, Bolan entered the sparse woods surrounding the compound. Moving through the underbrush as silently as a shadow, he reached a concealed spot thirty yards from the helipad.

In accordance with its construction period, the stone monastery was built like a medieval fortress, occupying an area roughly half that of a city block. Rounded parapets protected each corner from assault, and it wasn’t hard to imagine defenders on top of the turrets dumping scalding liquids onto invaders attempting to scale the walls. Bolan already knew there were no windows on the first floor, leaving the front and rear porticos, with buttressed stone archways too narrow to accommodate greater than three men abreast, as the only means of entry from ground level.

Two guards armed with Fabrique Nationale Herstal P-90 submachine guns stood at the entrance beyond the helipad, their presence negating any possibility of unauthorized access. Bolan hadn’t expected to waltz through the laboratory’s front door, but he wanted to view it nevertheless. He took the opportunity to examine his opponents’ hardware.

In addition to their submachine guns, the sentries wore shoulder holsters carrying FN Five-seveNs. Weighing a mere 1.6 pounds, the Belgium-made pistol used the same 5.7 mm ammunition as the P-90, fed from a clip holding twenty rounds. Although the lightweight handguns lacked the punch that a 9 mm Glock or a Smith & Wesson .45 might deliver, its bullets were available in a version with steel-hardened tips that penetrated Kevlar, making them the ideal choice when anticipating an assault by law-enforcement personnel.

Pulling his goggles over his eyes in order to see the pockets of infrared security placed randomly around the monastery’s perimeter, Bolan inched away from the helipad. The natural foliage was plenty thick to provide good concealment, but it was also short, forcing him to circle the building by alternating between a low crawl and half-crouched sprints until he came to the side he had selected ahead of time from the satellite photos.

In person, the side wall was exactly what he expected. It was close enough to the woods to enable a swift approach, and angled in a way that placed it out of sight from the driveways leading to the front and rear entrances. Most importantly, a window approximately sixty feet off the ground, which Bolan believed was the lab’s only escape route, gleamed brightly against the cold stone walls under the enhanced ambient moonlight created by the goggles. Dropping to one knee, he scanned the wall and area directly beneath, ensuring there were no infrared sensors.

From one of the pouches on his web belt, he withdrew a folding titanium grappling hook tied to a coiled length of thin cord resembling braided dental floss. Developed at NASA by the same team responsible for giving the world Velcro, a three-hundred-foot length was fine enough to fold entirely into the palm of his hand while possessing all the strength of mountaineering rope.

After locking the grappling tines into their open position so they formed a claw resembling an eagle’s talons, Bolan stepped from the woods. While walking toward the building, he began swinging the hook in an increasing arc above his head, playing out the line until he felt the proper tug. When the twine started vibrating slightly in response to the pull exerted by the hook’s momentum, he twirled and snapped his wrist with the finesse of an accomplished fly fisherman, releasing the grappling hook onto a trajectory that sent it sailing over the two-hundred-foot-high wall more than thirty feet to the left of the lab window. Using a hand-over-hand motion to pull in the slack, he found that the hook had caught purchase on his first try.

Before scaling the building, Bolan pushed the goggles onto his forehead where he’d be able to pull them quickly into place if needed. He checked his watch. Two patrolling guards were due to make their rounds within ten minutes, but if they stayed true to the schedule Homeland Security had recorded throughout the previous three weeks of satellite flyovers, Bolan had plenty of time to make his ascent.

Drawing the Beretta from his shoulder holster, he checked the sound suppressor while making sure the safety was off. With one hand, he placed the pistol under the strap holding his knife sheath in place on his outer calf where it would be readily accessible. With the other, he grabbed the thin cord and pulled with all his weight. The line remained taut, and after taking a moment to secure the rest of his gear, he began walking up the side of the fortress like a human fly.