Outback Assault

“Nice trick,” Augustyn called out.

Bolan heard him reload his half-depleted handgun. The Executioner remained silent, waiting for his opponent to reveal himself. Augustyn’s chatter was meant to distract Bolan, covering noises. The way the apartment was laid out, with soundproofed walls, there was no certain way to locate Augustyn by sound, though the noise of reloading or acquiring new weapons could be heard.

Bolan cursed himself for not taking down Eugene in a quieter manner, but the business manager was fit and brawny enough to turn a struggle into an extended wrestling match had he taken any other approach. Lethal force would have left Bolan behind the curve in figuring out what Augustyn had just been hired to do. Considering Eugene’s voiced disgust, it had to be bad, and he assumed a lot of people would die.

Bolan had just declared war.

Cruelty in war buyeth conquest at the dearest price.

—Sir Philip Sidney

1554–1586

My enemies are those who violate the places ordinary people hold sacred. For their careless rush to quench their burning greed, I will exact a price that will not be placid or kind.

—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.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Doug Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.

Contents

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Prologue

Arana Wangara was jerked awake by the distant roar of guns cracking in the night. Before she could cry out in dismay, a weathered old hand covered her mouth.

“They will not see us, child,” came a rough whisper. “Sorry, Arana. I keep forgetting you’re not a child.”

Grandfather Wangara’s voice soothed her, but she wasn’t certain that the darkness was cover enough in the outback. For the first time in her eighteen years, she believed that she could die, and the realization chilled her to the bone.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, lying. Her brown eyes were wide and staring to where she could see distant flickers.

The starlit sky, spread out like broken glass on blue velvet, was obscured by the roof of the simple mud hut they’d been sleeping in. Through the doorway, the rolling, dusty terrain looked like dark, frozen waves under the glimmering night sky. With no pollution or electric lights for hundreds of miles, it was a serene, beautiful view that belied the cacophony rumbling in the distance. In the darkness, two Aboriginal tribesmen, their skins as dark as coal, were invisible. Dark-toned clothing helped conceal them under the shadows of their quickly erected hut.

Grandfather had been right to take her and leave their tiny cabin to sleep in a hidden lean-to on the edge of their property, she realized. Ever since the troubles had begun, they’d felt no safety. The sheriff was either too scared or too well bribed to bother to take an interest in the affairs of the Chinese businessmen and their real-estate “transactions” with the Aboriginal Tribal Council.

Arana wrinkled her nose, brow furrowing in frustration. She knew that those transactions had begun to include a bullet in the head and a short trip to the bottom of a shallow grave. The Chinese and their local assistants were nothing more than a pack of savages who were only interested in finding a nice, secluded spot twenty kilometers from the great Uluru mound, the mystical gateway to the Dreamtime.

Arana didn’t know about the truth of the Dreamtime, but Grandfather Wangara’s wisdom seemed to come from sources far beyond those of normal men.

“We are far from our old doorstep, and we have night’s protection,” her grandfather told her. “It would take them hours to find us.”

Her grandfather said that the Chinese would not notice them, and Arana finally felt calm until a powerful crack split the night, a mushroom of fire rising from where their home had once been. Her stomach twisted as the fireball hung lazily, illuminating the gunmen surrounding the house. The building glowed from within.

Arana closed her eyes to the sight, not wanting to see her home burned to the ground. Her grandfather’s hand rested on her shoulder, his weathered face highlighted by the glow of the inferno. She looked up and saw the tears trickle over his cheeks, but his face remained an impassive mask. His brown eyes were unfocused, a sign that he was in touch with the Dreamtime.

Arana pursed her lips and looked back. The men got into their jeeps after their act of arson, not even bothering to pick up the gasoline cans that they’d used to soak the walls. When the law was too timid to poke its nose in, what need was there to hide the evidence? Somewhere, powerful forces were at work to accommodate the Chinese.

All it meant to her was that she and her grandfather had to leave, to run away from the only home she’d ever known. It filled her with anger.

“There will come a man,” the old man whispered. “A crusader who has faced these lowly criminals before. And when he arrives, he will bring death with him, to cleanse the outback.”

Arana looked at him.

“You will meet him in Darwin. And you will know him for his eyes are as cold as a winter sky,” her grandfather said.

“Darwin? We don’t have enough money to go there, and even if we did, they would follow us,” Arana explained, confused.

“I shall not be making the journey with you. I will remain here. The Dreamtime will protect me,” Grandfather told her. “You will go on your own. And though they shall try to interfere with your journey, you will be too clever for them. But remember, your skill will expire the moment you need it most, though luck and the crusader will catch you before you fall.”

Arana swallowed hard.

Grandfather Wangara pressed a roll of money into her palm. “Go swiftly, child. Time is of the essence, and the crusader is turning his eyes to our plight even as we speak.”

Arana nodded. She grabbed her backpack and took off, running across the desert. It was twenty miles to the nearest town, and there she’d catch the bus to Alice Springs. From there, it’d be an even longer ride to Darwin.

Her grandfather, though, was rarely wrong.

On a wing, a prayer, and a healthy slice of blind faith, Arana raced toward town, staying to gullies and ruts in the sand. Dawn was seven hours away, but if she hurried, she’d be at the bus stop shortly after sunrise.

1

The penthouse apartment was palatial in scope. Twenty-five stories above the streets of Hong Kong, the multitiered dwelling would have qualified as a mansion in any other city in the world. The terrace included an expanse of lawn dotted with shade trees, as well as a swimming pool surrounded by polished black marble tile. The three-story dwelling had a large patio that looked out over Victoria Harbour. It was so high that in the shadow of night, the lights of the floating shantytown in the bay looked like a simple extension of Hong Kong’s vibrant streets.

The penthouse was the home of Wade Augustyn, a man considered by the outside world to be a polite, very private gentleman. Augustyn was known as a moderately wealthy philanthropist on the Hong Kong scene, but whispered back-street rumors had brought him to the attention of Mack Bolan. Bolstered by intelligence from Stony Man Farm, Bolan had determined that Augustyn was in the employ of the triads and the Chinese SAD, the Communist nation’s premier security organization.

Augustyn was a “cleaner.” He solved problems for his criminal and government cohorts one bullet at a time, usually from a comfortable distance. The death trail Bolan was tracking was long and twisted, especially when Augustyn had begun to operate not only in the criminal sphere, but also interfered with U.S. intelligence operations in the Orient. Augustyn’s alleged hit list included honest lawmen and operatives fighting for the security of the West against Beijing’s less than honorable pursuits.

The final nail that had marked Augustyn’s coffin was the execution of an American agent who was working behind the scenes trying to eliminate sensitive data that had been seized aboard a captured U.S. Navy spy plane. The agent’s dying actions had been two button presses, one to capture Augustyn’s face, the other to launch a desperate e-mail. With that action, Augustyn had been added to Stony Man Farm’s watch list.

Agent Lissa Reynolds’s final cell-phone digital image had been transmitted to the Farm. Reynolds had once been part of the Farm’s blacksuit operation, one of the few women tough and qualified enough to hang with the commandos and special agents who made up Stony Man’s security and training force. Bolan had met Reynolds only once, and she’d impressed him with her professionalism. That professionalism and unyielding determination had been cut off mercilessly.

Bolan looked at the rifle on the rooftop next to him. The Remington 700 was a nondescript hunting rifle, chambered for 7 mm Remington Magnum. Given the chance, the Executioner preferred a clean, antiseptic kill, and the high-powered hunting rifle would provide that in spades. Across the street from Augustyn’s penthouse, he was in a perfect position to pull the trigger on the man made wealthy by the blood of good people.

Unfortunately, after half a day’s stakeout, Bolan had only learned that the man was out of town, returning that night. In the meantime, the other distant reaching tool that Bolan had at his disposal, a long-range directional microphone, had picked up phone data. He called the Farm to see who was trying to get in touch with the assassin, but Augustyn’s penthouse was electronically secured. Except for the faint warble of his phone, Bolan’s microphone could pick up nothing thanks to a white noise generator. Even Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman and his cybercrew were incapable of breaking through Augustyn’s encrypted telephone lines, meaning that the wealthy killer had put as much work into securing his home as he did making it look luxurious.

“He just landed at the airport, Striker,” Kurtzman advised. “His driver won’t take long to get him home, and we haven’t made a dent in his system. By the time he gets there, he’ll know we’ve been trying to intrude because we tripped over some truly amazing black ice.”

Bolan knew enough of hacker-speak to know that “black ice” was a form of electronic security. For the cybercrew to be caught off guard by such measures was more circumstantial evidence that Wade Augustyn was someone with a lot to hide. It could be the industrial secrets of a less than honest businessman, but combined with Reynolds’s last photograph, in the court of Bolan’s opinion, it was more than enough to warrant a hard probe.

Bolan abandoned the mike and the rifle. Both had been picked up locally, and had been sanitized of fingerprints and DNA residue, in case the SAD discovered them. They’d be considered just two more pieces of black market equipment smuggled into China by foreign devils like the Yakuza or the Americans. As he made his way across the street, concealed on his person were a Chinese-made Norinco, a copy of the venerable Colt .45, and a silenced .32-caliber Walther PPK. It wasn’t his usual load in the field, but it was what was available.

The Executioner rode two elevators to reach Augustyn’s residence. The elevators took him as far as the floor beneath Augustyn’s. The top levels were accessible only via a private car that Bolan couldn’t get into without a security code. Kurtzman tried to open the system, but electronic countermeasures stonewalled the computer wizard. With the assassin’s homecoming only minutes away, Bolan would have to make do with more primitive means. As soon as the car reached the twenty-fourth floor, he stood on a side rail, punched through the access hatch and clambered on top. He tugged on thick leather gloves and climbed the ropes one level.

There were no doors, but there was a ventilation duct access. Bolan scanned it with a flashlight and picked up the presence of pressure sensors on the grating. He fished a 25,000-volt stun gun from his breast pocket and pressed the spikelike leads to the edge of the grating. He tapped the firing stud for two seconds, then flicked on the stun gun’s safety. It was a trick that Stony Man’s Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz had taught him—a means of temporarily disabling an electronic sensor. The scorch marks it left behind were messy and provided telltale signs of the intrusion, but the Executioner didn’t intend to hang around Hong Kong long enough for that to matter.

Bolan removed the grating and entered the ventilation system, crawling to the first opening. A solid kick smashed the grate out, allowing him to slither into Augustyn’s penthouse suite. He’d only needed enough stealth to cross the street without drawing police attention. Now, hundreds of feet above street level in a home that was shielded by white noise generators and soundproofed walls and floors, the Executioner had a wide-open killing ground safe from Chinese interference, either from above or below the law. At the most, he figured he’d have to deal with Augustyn’s chauffeur, who would either have bodyguard training or be a professional killer in his own right.

Following the floor plans that Kurtzman had provided on the building, he moved to where the private elevator would be. It was secured behind a pair of ornate oak doors that, when opened, proved to be extremely heavy. Bolan could feel the weight of a sheet of armor plate sandwiched between the layers of thick, decorative wood.

The first floor had been tastefully decorated. Hardwood floors gleamed with no sign of heel scuffs marring their beauty even where Bolan had crossed them. He left the doors open, drew the .45 and let it hang low at his side while he searched the apartment. Minimal lighting made the place navigable.

A burst of static suddenly sounded over Bolan’s earphone. He flicked off the safety on his Norinco. He knew that Kurtzman had tried to get through to him. There had to have been only a narrow band through which communications could pierce the bubble of security that Augustyn had installed. Since Bolan was operating on a satellite signal, and his cell phone wasn’t coded for the encryption static that engulfed the apartment, he was unable to make out Kurtzman’s message.

It didn’t matter. The attempt to break through produced enough noise to alert the Executioner that Augustyn had arrived. Bolan returned to the huge doors and closed them. The latch snapped shut with an audible click and he turned. He put himself in the mentality of a world-traveling businessman. He spotted a space atop an intricately carved table where Augustyn would probably empty his pockets and with just a single step and a press of a button, access the messages left for him when he was out.

The hired assassin had a layer of anonymity between himself and his employers. As a matter of survival for Augustyn, he’d likely only take communications in his very secure home, not on the road with a cell phone. The potential to be traced by cellular signal was too great to secure Augustyn’s privacy.

Bolan took a step toward the answering machine and studied the sleek, disklike device. It had to have been cutting-edge technology either straight from Tokyo, or knocked-off in a Hong Kong back-alley electronics lab. He pushed the button and the digital player cycled through its memory, bringing up the three priority messages that had drawn Kurtzman’s attention.

“We need you. Tickets have been arranged for you to travel to Darwin. We’ll have a contact brief you on the cleanup,” the first message announced. The other two were identical to the first, no change in urgency, and had been spaced a day apart.

Nonpriority messages began to play on the sleek machine, but Bolan killed the playback. The machine requested to know if he wanted to retain the trio of messages as priority, and Bolan decided to leave them.

He moved to the room where he’d penetrated the penthouse and fastened the vent cover back into place. There was a slight bulge that kept it from sitting true, but it wouldn’t be noticed without a thorough investigation.

Bolan stayed to the shadows, listening for the triad assassin executioner to arrive. He didn’t have to wait for long. The heavy doors opened with a clack and he heard a deep, resonant voice tell someone to put the bags away. From his vantage point, Bolan could see Augustyn, a tall, powerful man. He was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. The image that dying agent Reynolds had sent was of the man disguised as a servant. Taking off his formal hat, he fit Bolan’s general appearance, over six feet in height, with wide powerful shoulders disappearing down into a slender waist, his torso a wedge of lean muscle. Black hair and blue eyes added to Augustyn’s vague resemblance to the Executioner.

“Couldn’t wait to get off the elevator to take charge again, eh, Wade?” an older man’s voice croaked.

Augustyn chuckled, his shoulders visibly jerking. “I’m tired, boss,” he said sarcastically.

He listened to the answering machine messages, and frowned. “Forget about the bags, Eugene. Fire up the computer and print out the tickets that Long sent.”

“Tickets?” Eugene asked. “Right. I’ll take care of it. Any idea where we’re off to?”

“Darwin, Australia,” Augustyn said. He wiped out the two redundant digital messages and listened to his remaining messages. “Another cleaning job.”

Eugene’s disgust was broadcast in an audible grunt. He stepped into the open, and Bolan saw a man in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair, looking like an older version of Augustyn, only an inch or so shorter. An older brother? Bolan wondered at first, but then decided Augustyn had to have sought out someone with a close enough resemblance to pass for himself. “Cleaning means we’ve got more than one target,” Eugene said.

“If I’ve got to meet with a local contact, there’s going to be a laundry list of duties to carry out,” Augustyn returned. “Not only a direct kill, but applying more pressure than they could bring on their own.”

Eugene frowned. “This means a big, noisy mess. A deniable one to boot.”

“That’s why they’re calling me in. Print the e-ticket. If you want, you can stay behind and make up for our lost time in Hong Kong,” Augustyn replied. “They assume I travel alone anyhow, so you’d have to make your own way.”

“No, thanks,” Eugene replied. “I’d receive enough worried phone calls that I’d be stuck up the creek without a paddle if I took even another day away.”

“You?” Augustyn chided.

“And you, too, by extension,” Eugene amended, walking off.

The big assassin picked up a sleek cordless phone off the disklike answering machine and dialed a series of numbers. “Set up my usual Australia safari package. Darwin,” he said.

Bolan skulked down a hallway and closed in on Eugene as he hovered over a keyboard, scanning through e-mail messages. The Executioner waited until the man hit the print command on the electronic ticket, then stepped into the den behind Augustyn’s business manager. He jabbed a quick punch under Eugene’s ear, a blow placed perfectly to render him unconscious. The businessman slumped into Bolan’s arms, and he lowered the man on the floor. It took only a few moments to bind Eugene’s wrists and ankles to keep him to the upcoming fight. He’d need more intelligence from the man later.

A sudden movement in Bolan’s peripheral vision ignited his reflexes, throwing him to the floor an instant before the roar of a .45 split the air. The liquid crystal flat panel display for Augustyn’s computer burst, a quartersized hole blown through it.

“You’re good, whoever you are. I didn’t even know you were in the apartment until I heard Eugene’s grunt as you knocked him out,” Augustyn said.

Bolan didn’t answer. He had two alternate ways out of the office. One door to the right would force Augustyn to move more to intercept him, and it was close at hand. He shoved the desk chair toward that door and spun toward the farther exit from the den as another pair of .45-caliber slugs punched into the back of the chair.

As soon as he saw Augustyn disappear to intercept Bolan’s false path, the Executioner exploded in the other direction, drawing his .45 in one swift movement. By the time the assassin discovered he’d been bluffed, it was too late for Augustyn to do anything except blow a chunk of wall apart with another big slug.

“Nice trick,” Augustyn called out. Bolan heard him reload his half-depleted handgun. The Executioner remained silent, waiting for his opponent to reveal himself. Augustyn’s chatter was meant to distract Bolan, covering noises. The way that the apartment was laid out, with soundproofed walls, there was no certain way to locate Augustyn by sound, though the noise of reloading or acquiring new weapons could be heard.

Bolan cursed himself for not taking down Eugene in a quieter manner, but the business manager was fit and brawny enough to turn a struggle into an extended wrestling match had he taken any other approach. Lethal force would have left Bolan behind the curve in figuring out what Augustyn had just been hired to do. Considering Eugene’s voiced disgust, it had to be bad and he assumed a lot of people would die. Bolan had just declared war.

He looked down the hall to the corner and saw a reflective vase. He spotted Augustyn, observing the same curved, mirrored surface. Both men spotted each other at the same time, using the glassy surface to grant an around-the-corner view for defense. Bolan triggered the Norinco, blew the vase to splinters and retreated away from the intersection. Seeing another vase, he picked it up and hurled it toward the other end of the hallway. Crashing glass and an involuntary grunt of surprise told the Executioner that his distraction play worked and he nestled against the wall, crouched low and away from the edge so that he wouldn’t be in hand-to-hand range if Augustyn whipped around the corner, prepared to disarm him.