Mission To Burma

Bolan and Lily ran from the smokehouse. The men in the guard tower were pointing and screaming, but no one on the ground was paying them any attention.

The Executioner spoke into his phone. “Fatso, hit the tower, then fire at the house.”

“I have bad guys coming my way!” Nyin responded, but the grenade launcher down in Ta village thumped. The two men in the tower noticed Bolan and Lily as they reached the palisade. One began screaming, while the other raised a rifle.

The grenade launcher thumped again as Lily wriggled through the hole. Bolan grabbed her hand and ran for the tree line. Behind them gray gas and white smoke were blanketing U Than’s fortress in a fog of war. It was a war that had just begun, and tomorrow it would become a hunt. U Than was going to want payback.

It was over five hundred miles to the border of Thailand.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Charles Rogers for his contribution to this work.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

—Thomas Jefferson,

1743–1826

No matter how dangerous or deadly my foe, I will not waver in my pursuit.

—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

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

1

Flight 402, Burmese airspace

Lily Na knew she was in trouble. All intelligence agencies kept a few beautiful women on the payroll, and Lily was the most beautiful spy Taiwanese intelligence had embedded in the People’s Republic of China. But jade-green eyes, breast augmentation and the 108 acknowledged Taoist methods of seduction would not save her from the heat-seeking missiles of the PRC jet fighters flanking her flight.

Her bodyguard returned from the consulting the pilot. Jun-Sui was nicknamed “Ox Boy” for the breadth of his shoulders and his massive strength. He was a master of white-ape kung fu and a deadly shot with the silenced machine pistol in his shoulder holster. He bowed to Lily with profound respect. “The pilot believes the jet fighters are about to fire upon us. He and I both agree you should bail out now while the opportunity still presents itself.”

The short flight from Kunming Airport in China to Calcutta should have been a breeze. Then the laptop containing the PRC ballistic missile reentry vehicle guidance technology would be turned over to the CIA station office, after which Lily had planned a well-deserved yoga retreat in Costa Rica. The arrival of a pair of Chinese SU-30MKK fighters had ended her dreams of hot yoga, hot tubs and the pink sand beaches of the Nicoyan Peninsula. The former Union of Burma had nothing in its air force capable of dealing with the massive Chinese fighters invading Burmese airspace, nor would they risk their beleaguered economy by protesting to their biggest trading partner.

The People’s Republic wanted this flight, and they were going to have it. They wanted it turned around and landing across the border at Baoshon Airbase. They would settle for a smoking crater in the Kumon Highlands.

Lily inclined her head slightly at Ox Boy. “I will bail out.”

Ox Boy bowed again. Lily slipped her laptop into a padded pouch and followed him back to the galley. Terrified passengers followed their progress but stayed strapped into their seats as the pilot had directed. Ox Boy yanked open the hatch that dropped into the luggage compartment below. They climbed down, and he pulled a parachute rig out of a locker and helped Lily shrug into it. “Wait until the last possible moment to open your parachute.”

Lily slapped the buckles of her rig and tightened the straps. “When would that be?”

Ox Boy clicked open his cell phone and had a short, cryptic conversation with the pilot and then clicked it shut. “Count to twenty.”

“Very well.”

Ox Boy shoved night-vision goggles down over her eyes as Lily checked the loads in her Browning Hi-Power pistol.

“Turn on your transponder.”

Lily pulled her crucifix out from under the high collar of her dress. She gave it a hard squeeze at the apex of its arms and then tucked it back in. Once the tiny transmitter was activated, certain surveillance satellites of the United States, the United Kingdom and Taiwan would be combing Southeast Asia for its tiny but distinctive signature. The lurid red lights turned off, and the baggage compartment whirled into a hurricane as the loading door opened.

The pilot’s voice spoke over the intercom in Mandarin. “Agent Na, we have been given our last warning. We are about to be fired upon.”

“Very well, I will—”

Ox Boy slammed both hands against Lily’s back and shoved her out the door.

She gasped in shock, but training took over. She arched her body hard and thrust out bent arms and legs as the jet wash flung her about like laundry. Flight 402 shot away westward with a roar as she stabilized her free fall. She jerked involuntarily as the two SU-30MMK fighters screamed past, but a tumbling human body was virtually no target to a fighter’s air combat radar. Lily plunged through space as the jets flew on toward India at six hundred miles per hour.

The clouds flashed as if they were lit up by lightning as both fighters cut loose with their 30 mm cannons. The cloud cover in the west went from orange to white and then to red as Flight 402 broke apart and exploded beneath the automatic cannon onslaught. Lily winced against the sonic booms as the fighter jets turned and went supersonic to return to base. She had lost her drop count, but the Kumon Mountains were rushing up beneath her with disturbing speed. Lily brought her feet together, kicked off her high heels and faced facts.

Regal, voluptuous and green-eyed as she was, her problem was that from the get-go she had been designed to be insertable, deniable and expendable. Any extraction assets in the civil-war-ridden mountain and river valleys of Burma would have to be the same. The upper tier of the jungle canopy of the Kumon Mountains rushed toward Lily’s silk-stockinged feet and she wondered what, if any, kind of man might be sent to save her.

2

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Mack Bolan stared at the 8 x 10 glossy of Lily Na. She was Taiwanese National Security Bureau and undoubtedly straight out of “Mystical 110,” or 110 Yangteh Boulevard on Yang Ming Mountain outside Taipei. It was the address of NSB headquarters, a place where no visitors were allowed, and people who did visit usually came in late at night and often never left. Miss Na was undoubtedly one of the NSB’s secret weapons, probably from the Chinese Mainland Maneuvers Committee.

Bolan looked up at Hal Brognola. “Rescue missions aren’t normally my kind of thing, Hal.”

“Yeah, but what about the woman?” Brognola countered. “I know for a fact she’s your kind of thing.”

Bolan returned his gaze to Na’s picture. She was undeniably erotic. “Still not my kind of mission.”

“Yeah, I know.” The big Fed gnawed on his unlit cigar. “But the stakes are high on this one.”

Bolan knew the stakes were about as high as they got in the world of international espionage. The United States and Taiwan very badly wanted the ballistic-missile-defense information. It was information the Chinese government wanted back even more, so much that they’d downed an entire jet full of innocent people over Burmese airspace. They were working on the forty-eighth hour of her disappearance, but her personal transponder was still signaling.

“You know the government has people and agencies who train for exactly this kind of spook-extraction bullshit,” Bolan argued.

“Yeah, I know.” Brognola sighed. “They’ve already tried and failed.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Yeah, actually the CIA was Johnny-on-the-spot on this one. Within twenty-four hours, they sent in two paramilitary rescue teams. One was compromised and stopped at the border before ever setting a boot in country. The second was smaller, a couple of advisers who parachuted in and met up with mobilized local assets. It’s been twelve hours since we’ve heard from them. We have to assume they’ve been captured or killed.”

Two teams in twenty-four hours was not good. “I think you have to assume they were compromised.”

“That’s right. That’s why the President wants to send in someone who’s outside of normal channels.”

Bolan had to admit he was about as far from normal channels as one could get, short of hiring extraterrestrials. “You know, I don’t speak Burmese, Hal. I don’t think I even know any of the swear words.”

“It’s a former British colony,” Brognola said. “Everyone there speaks a little English.”

“That was sixty years ago.” Bolan considered what he knew about the Union of Myanmar, known by most Westerners as Burma. The government was an utterly corrupt military junta that ruled with an iron fist. Human rights were nearly nonexistent. Human trafficking was some of the worst in Asia. Like most of Southeast Asia, the country was a patchwork of mountains and river valleys with dozens of oppressed ethnic minorities. Some of the minorities were large enough and well enough armed that the rule of the government only extended as far as their artillery could reach outside the big cities. Burma was also ground zero of Asia’s Golden Triangle of opium production. The warlords ruled their areas like medieval fiefs, alternately fighting with and doing business with government and rebel alike. “You do realize I’m over six feet tall, white and have blue eyes?”

“Actually I’ve noticed that about you,” Brognola admitted.

“So I can’t exactly blend in. If the first villager who sees me doesn’t turn me into the government as a spy, then they’re going to sell me to the drug lords as a DEA agent.”

“The President and I were both hoping you might do that lurking-in-the-dark thing you do so well.” Brognola brightened. “Besides, we have a local asset to assist you.”

“Hal, the Chinese found out Miss Na and the data were on the plane and shot it down. You had one CIA paramilitary team stopped at the border, and a CIA lead team of local auxiliaries has disappeared. There’s a leak someplace, and you’re going to have to forgive me if I’m not trusting local CIA or Taiwanese assets.”

“I wouldn’t trust them, either.” Brognola smiled. “So he’s neither.”

“Care to explain that?”

“Sure, like you said, there’s a leak somewhere. I’d like to think it’s Taiwan, but we can’t be sure. The President wants you because you’re outside normal channels. That made sense to me, so I went outside normal channels to get you some local backup.”

“Where’d you go?”

“I called David McCarter.”

McCarter was the team leader of Stony Man Farm’s elite international strike force. He was also a former member of the British SAS.

Bolan smiled. “He contacted British intelligence.”

“Well, like I said, they used to own the place, so I figured they must have a few people keeping their hands in. MI-6 was kind enough to get in contact with this guy.” Hal handed over a file. In it was the picture of a bald, buck-toothed little man with a belly like Buddha jammed into a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. He was grinning into the camera. “His name is Fat Sho Nyin. His call sign with British intelligence is ‘Fatso.’ Don’t let his looks fool you. He was a sergeant in the Burmese Airborne Unit.”

“So what’s his story?”

“He was operating in the northern mountains, in the Sagaing Division about a decade ago. He fell in love with a Naga tribeswoman. The local opium lord came in and wiped out her village. She and Nyin’s illegitimate child were killed. Nyin’s commander had a business arrangement with the drug lord and did nothing. The Naga are headhunters. The practice was banned in 1991, but rumor is some of the good old boys up in the hills still stick to the old ways. Rumor is Nyin got together a few of his woman’s relatives, got tattooed and inducted into the tribe, and they went and got a little payback. Most U.S. heroin comes from Afghanistan and Mexico, but a lot of the heroin in England is still coming in from the Golden Triangle. Nyin’s been one of the guys on the ground for MI-6’s antinarcotic Southeast Asia sector for a decade. Mostly, he works against the drug trade, but apparently he’s given them military intelligence from time to time, as well as helping break up a few slavery rings. He’d be your liaison among the locals.” Brognola cleared his throat. “If you go…”

“Anything else you need to tell me?”

“Well, now that you mention it, NSA has picked up some chatter.”

“What kind of chatter?”

“They believe the Indian government is aware of the situation and possibly even taking action.”

Bolan considered that. “India is a strategic ally of ours. Particularly against China. You’d think we’d be allies on this one.”

“So you’d think. But knowledge of China’s latest generation strategic nuclear missiles is vital to India. They lost a border war with them in the 1960s and still have ‘incidents’ with China every year. India might not wait for us to secure the information and share it. They’ll want to get hold of it first, and then probably trade the U.S. and Taiwan something for it economically. Chatter is India may have already deployed assets, and you shouldn’t necessarily expect them to be helpful or even friendly.”

Bolan sat back in his chair. “Great.”

“Listen, Mack, you don’t have to—”

“I’ll have to HALO in.”

Brognola blinked. “You’ll do it?”

“Yeah.” Bolan nodded. “I’ll do it.”

Kumon Mountains

BOLAN LOPED through the trees. It had taken eighteen hours for him to get geared up and to the Diego Garcia Airbase in the Indian Ocean. It took the B-2 Stealth “Spirit” bomber another six to get over northern Burma. Burmese air defense had no radars that could detect the bat-winged bomber, and even if they lucked out it was unlikely they could scramble anything in time to catch it. The problem with a Stealth bomber was it was not designed as a passenger plane. Bolan had ridden in a pressurized, coffin-size pod that had been adapted to fit into one of the rotary launcher assemblies the bombers used to launch cruise missiles. The pod had been just big enough to hold Bolan and his equipment. The belly of the Spirit of Texas had opened, and the transport pod had ejected and fallen free at thirty thousand feet. Bolan had opened the pod at twenty-seven thousand and deployed his chute. He had flown thirty miles into the Kumon Mountains and landed in the designated clearing on his map.

Fatso was nowhere to be found.

Bolan looked at his wrist. Strapped to it was a PDA with a phone feature, but basically Bolan almost had a supercomputer on his wrist. He was using the GPS to navigate his way toward the transponder. He tapped an icon and spoke into his satellite link. “Base, this is Striker. What have we got on infrared imaging?”

Barbara Price came back instantly. The Farm’s mission controller was watching Bolan’s progress on no less than three U.S. satellites. The Chinese data was that big. “Striker, this is Base. I have a possible heat source a hundred yards due east of your position.”

“Copy that. Give me feed.”

“Copy that, Striker.”

A red blob appeared on Bolan’s screen marking his target. A green blob represented him, along with a superimposed grid giving him distance.

Bolan slung his rifle. There had been no point to trying to blend in as Burmese, so Bolan had cherry picked his equipment. He carried a highly modified Steyr Scout Rifle. A suppressor tube covered most of the already short, fluted barrel, and it was loaded with subsonic ammunition. The bolt-action rifle had a 10-round magazine. Its optical sight was set forward of the action to give long-eye relief, allowing the operator to keep both eyes open and take in the full field of view, as well as look through the sight while using night-vision gear. The action was glass-on-oil smooth and the trigger tuned to a glass-rod break. It was a sharpshooter’s weapon rather than a sniper’s rifle, the weapon of a skirmisher rather than an assassin. Bolan’s rifle also happened to have an M-203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the fore-stock for serious social occasions such as needing to break contact, and he carried a bandolier of grenades slung across one shoulder. His Beretta 93-R machine pistol was strapped to his thigh, but that was not the weapon he went for.

Bolan drew his tomahawk in one hand and his Cold Steel Outdoorsman knife in the other as he ran wide around his adversary. Bolan was going to have to lurk rather than infiltrate and considered both implements much more as tools than weapons. However, a bullet was never sure, and a man could still flail with his throat cut.

There was no surer way of silencing a sentry than sinking a tomahawk into the back of his head.

Bolan squelched his electronic devices and moved in for the kill. Most people thought of Southeast Asia as one vast, green mass of impenetrable vegetation, but much of it, Burma in particular, was much more rolling low mountains of hardwood forest.

Bolan could see his prey in his night-vision goggles. A man was crouched on a little promontory holding a rifle. Bolan noted the short, curved blade of a dha sword thrust through his belt. The man knelt in a stand of trees that made a sheltering cathedral on the little knoll and looked down on the valley below. It was a perfect hunter’s point. Bolan’s boots made no noise in the soft soil as he approached. The man jerked in alarm as the Executioner whipped the bottom edge of his tomahawk under his chin and yanked him backward. The man froze as the point of Bolan’s blade pressed against his liver. “Nyin?”

“Shit, Hot rod! Don’t sneak up on a brother like that!”

Bolan withdrew his steel, and the man sagged and turned. Fat Sho Nyin wiped his sweating bald head and exposed his buck teeth in a shaky smile of relief. He took in the goggle-eyed, weapon-laden and camouflaged warrior looming over him and shook his head. “God damn! Uncle Sam ain’t playing around!”

“No, he’s not,” Bolan agreed. He sheathed his weapons and held out his hand. “MI-6 has a lot of good things to say about you. My name is Cooper.”

Fatso clapped his palm happily into Bolan’s hand. “Bullshit GI! But you go ahead and call me Fatso. I will call you Cooper.”

Bolan shrugged. “Make it Coop.”

“Coop.” Nyin savored the familiar diminutive. “Sorry I was not at extraction sight. Some assholes came by.”

“What kind of assholes?”

Nyin’s smile dimmed in wattage. “U Than assholes.”

Bolan knew all about U Than. He was an opium warlord, and they were deep in his territory, which was where Lily’s transponder signal was transmitting from. The good news was that U Than was in league with the heroin syndicates in Thailand rather than the triads in China. Of course, ten or twenty million Chinese yuan notes could change that allegiance, but at least he wasn’t going to immediately go goose-stepping to Beijing and hand over Lily without some profitable negotiation first. U Than’s problem was that while he ruled his area, he was surrounded by three ethnic groups that considered him their traditional enemy. He had a private army of his own and some backing by some high-ranking army officers, but his neighbors and even his serfs were highly warlike and given to rebellion at the least sign of weakness or provocation. He guarded his poppy fields to the death, but if he was sending men up into the highlands at night that meant U Than was all stirred up about something.

Bolan had a good idea what.

“Have you seen the woman?”

“No, but I saw crash site. It was no ‘catastrophic mechanical failure.’ That plane shot down. I know cannon hits when I see them.”

“Any survivors?”

Nyin shook his head. “No one survive that. You want to see?”

“No, the woman is our priority, and according to intel she jumped right before the fighters opened up.”

“What woman look like?”

Bolan tapped an icon on his screen and called up a photo of Lily Na. “This.”

“God damn!” Nyin shook his head in wonder. “That worth going to war over!”

Bolan changed the screen back to the GPS tracking Lily’s transponder signal and then spoke over his link. “Base, this is Striker. Have established contact with Fat Man. Proceeding to signal source.”

“Copy that, Striker.”

Bolan turned to Nyin. “You ready to go to war?”

Nyin grinned and brandished an ancient-looking .30 carbine. “Always!”

“Then follow me.” Bolan set out at a ground-eating jog, and despite his laughing-Buddha-like physique Nyin kept up easily. Bolan watched as the signal got closer and closer on his screen. They had to stop twice as armed men passed by on the trails through the heavy woods.

“Dangerous place,” Nyin muttered after a group of men passed by. The men weren’t wearing uniforms and wore a hodgepodge of Western and traditional highland clothing. They also carried a collection of weapons from the latest assault rifles to World War II relics. All carried one or more blades. They were sweeping the forest trails and keeping a wary eye on the forest itself. Traditionally it was where danger came from. They were right to be wary. This night Mack Bolan crouched among the giant ferns, and the forest had never been more dangerous.

Bolan and Nyin moved out and quickly came to a river. They dropped low by its banks and observed. A village huddled on either side of the river. The lights in the village were all out. On a low hill above the village sat what could only be described as a fortress. The main house was low, sprawling and made of heavy wooden beams and roofed with tile. A number of similarly constructed smaller outbuildings squatted around it like satellites. A bamboo palisade topped with razor wire surrounded the entire complex, and a twenty-foot-tall guard tower that had a good vantage on the village below completed security.