Patriot Acts

A camouflage tent erupted, the nylon a flaming blossom that disgorged smoke. Bolan slipped on a pair of goggles to protect his vision, pulling a scarf up over his nose and mouth to filter out the choking cloud created by his incendiary round.

With an inferno suddenly ablaze in their midst, the militia gunmen were distracted. Billowing clouds spread through the gap created by Spelling earlier, pouring out over the pair.

“Move in,” Bolan ordered.

Spelling and Bolan charged into the churning cloud, slipping among the militia members. They had finally breached the compound, but the militia was on one side and the commandos were at their back.

The Executioner didn’t mind. He’d engineered the crossfire between the two groups. The chaos and confusion were his protective cloak, enabling him to continue his mission of cleansing fire.

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

Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.

—Samuel Johnson 1709–1784

I’ve seen too many men who have wrapped themselves in the cloak of false patriotism to excuse their bloodlust and greed. I will not shirk my duty to bring my full weight to bear upon them.

—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

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

Epilogue

Prologue

The man in black threaded the sound suppressor onto the end of his Beretta, set the safety and holstered the gun before turning his attention to the key weapon for this mission. The Beretta M-59 rifle was a paratrooper model, with a metal folding stock. Capable of precision accurate single-shot or devastating full-auto fire, its 7.62 mm rounds could slice through a human body with ease. There was a round in the chamber and the magazine was full.

He was here, in the heart of enemy territory to take out Mahmoud Amanijad. The Muslim firebrand was a vocal opponent of the United States government’s procedures in dealing with the terrorist threat that the man had sworn his life to oppose. Amanijad, speaking before the packed audience of fellow fanatics, had been behind a plot to unleash a wave of unholy destruction through the U.S.

The crusader pushed off the safety on the Beretta rifle, setting the selector to single shot, lining up on the target’s forehead.

Deep in enemy territory, surrounded by jack-booted, heavily armed thugs in the service of the radical, reactionary government, the lone warrior would need every ounce of firepower to escape the scene unscathed, but not before he sent a message to the enemies of freedom and justice everywhere.

The crowd was on its feet, cheering and applauding the divisive Amanijad, its combined voice and racket shaking the auditorium like an artillery barrage.

The dark-clad sharpshooter partly let out his breath, holding in half as he steadied the crosshairs on the center of Amanijad’s black-bearded face.

“Too long has America lashed out blindly for the sake of the nebulous concept of national security,” Amanijad began his speech, the crowd’s tumultuous response to his arrival on stage fading quickly so that his words could be heard. “In their insane efforts to protect the needs of their money-grubbing backers, they rob the people of their rights and their voice. We are here now to show them that we will not be silenced!”

It was a planned break in the speech. The crowd, as if on cue, exploded into a cacophony of cheers. It was exactly what the sharpshooter had been waiting for. The roar of the crowd at its crescendo would drown out the muffled crack of his rifle. The marksman milked the trigger of the scoped Beretta and a single 7.62 mm round shot out of the barrel, screaming across the auditorium from the catwalk to the stage.

The speaker seized up, his handsome, bearded face replaced by horrific gore. Amanijad slumped to the polished hardwood floor in a puddle of blood.

The sharpshooter watched uniformed thugs race onto the stage. One of them spotted the sniper and pulled his sidearm from a holster.

The crowd exploded in wild panic.

The Beretta, switched to full-auto, snarled, and a salvo of rifle slugs stitched through the bodyguard’s rib cage, throwing him across the speaker’s corpse. Other security guards spotted the flaring muzzle-flash of the full-auto rifle, and their hands dropped to their guns. The marksman shifted his aim, tapping off a short burst that ripped the head off a second auditorium gunman. He whirled and raced several feet, pistol-caliber bullets ringing and clanging on the metal railing and grating at his feet.

The rifleman paused and spun, firing back at the stage, short precision bursts raking two more uniformed shooters. The sniper turned and raced away.

He sped down the catwalk and kicked open an access door to the roof.

The blaze of the sun lanced down on him, and he felt as if he’d dived through the jet of a flamethrower, but he didn’t allow himself a moment’s respite. The uniformed shock troopers would call in helicopters and backup vehicles to contain him. One did not blow the head off one of the radical government’s beloved own without incurring the wrath of a highly motivated police force.

He closed the folding stock on the rifle and slid down a roof access ladder. It was sixty feet to the ground, and the descent, sliding on the rails, would take several seconds. Gravity pulled him as he glanced around, the battle computer in his mind counting down doomsday numbers as he anticipated the arrival of armed guards.

He reached the ground after ten seconds that felt like an eternity, landed in a crouch and pulled the pistol from its holster. A quick dash through the shadows behind the auditorium would bring him closer to his wheels and escape. His deeply tanned features and a pair of sunglasses would mark him as just another driver in this land.

He charged full-out, racing toward the vehicle. Normally on an operation like this, the marksman would have his pilot, a good man who had been working along-side him for years, sitting behind the wheel. Unfortunately, the wingman was otherwise occupied. The crusader was on his own, and that was okay. Cameron Richards had fought alone before, and he was good at it.

As he closed on his car, another vehicle pulled in front of him. A pair of terrified eyes locked on him, catching full sight of him before he’d pulled on his glasses to disguise his features. There was a brief moment of uncomfortable uncertainty, the vehicle’s engine rumbling.

Richards aimed at the driver, a woman whose brown eyes widened at the arrival of the gun-toting commando. She’d seen him, could identify him, could link him to the assassination and possibly to the U.S. government, making a messy political disaster. He pulled the trigger on the Beretta and punched a 9 mm bullet through the open window and into her face.

Richards vaulted across the hood of the dead woman’s car and raced to his getaway car. He climbed behind the wheel and fired up the engine.

Tires screeched as he tromped the gas, darting out of the alley and toward a main street. Even as he crossed two lanes, he spotted the shock troopers hot on his heels. Richards hefted the Beretta 59 and leveled it as an LAPD squad car wheeled toward his rear bumper. With a pull of the trigger, the window disappeared in a spray of glass. High-powered rounds tore through the policemen’s Kevlar vests, killing the driver and rendering the cop riding shotgun close enough to dead that he didn’t feel the impact as his out of control car slammed a parked van.

Richards grimaced, but he had anticipated such a response to his escape route. One police car down and his own wheels had lost their anonymity with the shattered rear window. He ran his car up onto the curb. Civilians scattered in panic. He burst out of the driver’s seat, leaving his Berettas behind and charging down into the subway. He discarded the cotter pin he’d yanked from the grenade he’d stuffed under his car’s seat.

At the top of the steps, the detonating automobile sprayed violence and horror into downtown Los Angeles. No one would be able to cut through the carnage left at the subway entrance.

The explosion also parted the crowd ahead of him. He had free sailing down to the platform and he vaulted the turnstiles. With the apocalypse detonating above him, the ticket agents weren’t interested in harassing him for his fare. Richards raced to the edge of the platform and jumped off, racing into the tunnels.

He’d stored a cache of clothes. It would take only thirty minutes to reach it and fade into the crowd.

One more enemy of the United States was dead, and the message was sent.

1

Mack Bolan looked over the reports Hal Brognola had assembled. The Executioner had been wrapping up business in San Francisco when Los Angeles became ground zero of an assault.

Bolan paused, looking at the photograph of the automobile where Rosa Trujillo had been murdered. The crime scene photos had been taken before the coroner had removed the body, and Bolan felt a knot of disgust form in his gut.

“Amanijad was a lawyer for the ACLU. He’d just achieved a court hearing for two Arab-Americans who were being held without charges,” Brognola explained.

Bolan glanced over to the lawyer’s photographs spread on the conference table. His frown deepened as he saw a photograph of a slain police officer, also murdered by the mystery assassin.

“He was sending a message,” Bolan stated.

“About what?” Brognola grumbled.

“This speech was in direct response to finally letting two men have their day in court,” Bolan said. “Someone didn’t want the particulars of that case heard.”

“I looked at the files on those arrests,” Brognola said. “It was sloppy, speculative work all around. Circumstantial evidence at best.”

Bolan nodded. “I heard about the case too. Three years without seeing a lawyer or even knowing what they were being charged with. They even spent some time in Camp X-Ray.”

“Interrogation results were inconclusive,” Brognola said.

Bolan picked up the photo detailing the carnage caused by the grenade in the assassin’s car. The shootings were acts of efficiency. Minimum firepower for maximum effect. The grenade itself provided a barrier of fire and catastrophe between police pursuit and the escaping killer. The cops would pause to help the dying and wounded, and be slowed with the hunk of burning metal barring the subway entrance.

It was a coldly efficient means of stopping the law.

He stacked the photos and inserted them back into the file folder. The images and information within were burned into his memory. He fought down his anger, cramming it into his reserves of strength to keep his mind clear and analytical. When the time came, the Executioner would take the death dealer down.

CARLO ADMUSSEN LIT UP a cigarette and caught a fierce glare from his partner, Maurice Einhard.

“Do you fucking see everything around you?” Einhard asked.

Admussen glanced around at the crates of rifles and grenades stacked around their warehouse. “Yup.”

“So the problem with starting a fire in the midst of all this fucking firepower doesn’t ring a bell?” Einhard snapped.

Admussen sighed. They’d had this argument hundreds of times. He wondered if they were becoming more like an old married couple than highly-respected black market arms dealers. “One spark in the wrong spot, and we’ll be blown clean to San Francisco,” he muttered.

“Don’t take that tone of voice with me, Carlo,” Einhard grumbled.

“They’re securely boxed, the roof has vents, and I’m here at the fucking desk, not out in the middle of our ammunition stockpiles. Rifles aren’t flammable and matches can’t set off a grenade,” Admussen retorted.

Einhard raised his hands in frustration and walked away.

Admussen tapped out some ashes and smirked.

From the shadows, Mack Bolan watched the two men bicker. When Einhard stormed away, leaving Admussen alone for a moment, he stepped from the shadows and wrapped a brawny forearm under Admussen’s chin. The limb cut off the man’s air and stopped the sudden cry of alarm in his throat.

“Hello, Carlo. You and I need to have words,” Bolan whispered.

Admussen croaked softly.

“Don’t make a sound,” Bolan warned him. He let the dealer feel the hard muzzle of his Desert Eagle against his kidney. “A hole through there will mean a slow, painful death.”

Bolan loosened his grasp on Admussen’s throat, and the death merchant took a deep breath. He glanced back, seeing the Executioner looming above him, features smeared with midnight black grease paint. Cold, deadly eyes stared out of the blacked-out face, pinning Admussen in his seat with the force of their intimidation.

“What do you need?” the gun dealer asked.

Bolan reached to Admussen’s right-hand drawer, pulling out a Glock. He stuffed it under his web belt, out of the black marketeer’s grasp. “Information.”

“I guess I can’t play dumb about why,” Admussen said.

Bolan shook his head. “Who bought the Berettas?”

“The guy didn’t have a name, unless you count Ben Franklin,” Admussen replied.

Bolan’s eyes narrowed. “Description.”

“Six feet. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Nondescript,” Admussen said.

Bolan frowned. “Got the money?”

Admussen looked at the wall next to Bolan. The Executioner saw the wall safe and gestured for the arms dealer to open it.

“We haven’t had a chance to get it laundered,” Admussen admitted. “Then the shooting happened, and I knew we’d be feeling heat. I didn’t realize that we’d be experiencing a visit from the boogey man. I was expecting ATF.”

Bolan looked out to the warehouse. Einhard was busy directing his men to pile crates into the trailers of eighteen-wheelers. “Hence the house cleaning?”

Admussen nodded. The safe door clicked, and Bolan leveled the Desert Eagle at the gun dealer’s stomach.

“Just in case you have another Glock in the safe,” Bolan warned. He opened the safe door, and sure enough, there was a handgun set next to the stacks of bills. It wasn’t a Glock, however. Bolan took the Colt Python and put it next to the Glock in his waistband. “Which is the stack of cash the buyer gave you?”

Admussen handed over a wrapped band. “I take it you’re not going to give me a receipt for that?”

Bolan glared and Admussen took a step back.

“Ten thousand dollars isn’t going to be much compensation for the lives lost because you supplied a psychopath,” Bolan stated. “Nor is it going to do much for the families now suffering thanks to your greed.”

Bolan put the cash in a plastic bag. Admussen realized that the Executioner was wearing surgical gloves. “All this money is good for is finding the madman. Prints, serial numbers. Trace evidence. I’ll find something.”

“And for that, you’ll leave me alone?” Admussen asked.

Bolan nodded.

“And I forget that I ever saw you,” Admussen added.

Bolan shook his head. “The next time you think about selling so much as a toothpick to terrorists, you remember me.”

Admussen’s lips tightened.

“Go out and help your buddy. Just don’t take your cigarette. I don’t want you blowing yourself up before you give me the pleasure,” the Executioner warned. “I’ll let myself out.”

Admussen walked through his office door. He reached the top of the stairs that led into the warehouse and looked back, but the big man had already melted into the shadows, gone from sight.

CAMERON RICHARDS got off the plane in Phoenix, Arizona, and his partner, Willem Noth, met him at the airport.

“What the fuck, Will?” Richards grunted as they met. Noth handed over a small nylon gym bag, containing Richards’s favorite pistol.

“Care to be more specific?” Noth asked.

“I thought we had presidential sanction in L.A.,” Richards grumbled.

“Plausible deniability,” Noth explained. “You can’t have the White House dancing a jig because we knocked out some Arab mouthpiece.”

Richards’s eyes narrowed. “So they have a manhunt going for me. I’m fucked.”

“Cam, you’re swearing again. Have you taken your medication?” Noth asked.

Richards eyed Noth, then grimaced. “Oh, sure. I feel betrayed, and the sudden reaction is ‘are you off your meds?’”

“You’re supposed to be taking your pills,” Noth told him. “You are an operative of the Rose Initiative. You have an image to uphold.”

“Image? As what? Some kind of vigilante loose cannon who isn’t worthy of praise?”

“Are you off your meds?” Noth inquired.

Richards closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “No.”

Noth looked at him closely. “Do you have your bottle?”

Richards fished in his pocket and took out an unmarked pill bottle. Noth pulled out his PDA and checked the contents against the readout he glimpsed.

“It’s almost time for your next dose. Humor me and take it five minutes early,” Noth said.

Richards opened the bottle and shook out two tablets. “Want one?”

“Fuck you and eat your damn pills,” Noth growled.

Richards tossed them into his mouth and swallowed. He opened his mouth and let Noth examine his cheek pouches and under his tongue for unswallowed tablets. “Happy? Let’s go get a Coke so I can wash the taste of these out.”

Noth nodded, pocketing his PDA. He took a deep breath, then raised an eyebrow.

The pair made their way to the food court, where Richards got a soft drink and an order of fries while Noth sat. The Rose Initiative operative pinched his nose as if searching thoughts trying to escape his nasal cavities.

“What’s on your mind?” Richards asked, sucking on his soda through a straw.

“Just thinking,” Noth said.

“I’m not going to be given up, am I?” Richards asked, popping a fry into his mouth. “The media’s howling for my head.”

“We’ve already got a half-dozen patsies in place, depending on where the investigation takes the government,” Noth explained. “All you have to do is lay low until we find you a new assignment.”

Richards looked at Noth, his mood darkening as he regarded the liar sitting across from him. “I know too much, despite being an overly medicated little minion,” he said.

“The smell from the pill bottle wasn’t right,” Noth admitted. “Don’t make a scene. I have a gun leveled at your gut under the table.”

“The Rose Initiative takes out a piece of trash, before it can be revealed that he’s their garbage, right?” Richards asked.

“What’d you do? Mold sugar pills to resemble the right medication?” Noth asked.

Richards nodded. “Not that it matters now. You’ve got the drop on me.”

Richards placed a fry between his lips, letting it dangle like a cigarette.

“Spit that out,” Noth ordered.

“Oh, come on, let the condemned have his last smoke,” Richards replied.

“Spit it out,” Noth growled.

Richards spat the fry with blow-gun force, zapping Noth in his left eye. The man’s reflexive jerk caused him to pull the trigger, but it also yanked his aim off target. The bullet seared into the lower spine of an elderly man sitting at the next table. The gunshot and the cry of agony created an uproar in the food court, giving Richards a chance to lunge across the table.

Noth realized he’d left himself wide open, despite the gun in his hand. He pulled the trigger again, but Richards had cleared the top of the table, thumbs rammed into Noth’s larynx, fingers closing on the back of his neck. The third shot plowed into the tiled floor, panic lashing out like a writhing mass of hungry crocodiles through the crowd. Footsteps thundered, screams mounting, drowning out the third gunshot. Richards wrenched with all of his might, Noth’s vertebrae shattering under the force of his powerful hands.

The gun clattered from dead fingers, and Richards charged through the crowd.

He had to contact his pilot, Costell, and get to the base he’d set up for himself. The Rose Initiative would be hot on his heels, and there was no telling what would happen next. Richards let himself be swept along by the running crowds, got out of the terminal and hailed a taxi.

He didn’t know why the Rose Initiative had been feeding him behavior modification drugs for the past fifteen years, but suddenly his assessment of the organization’s sanction left him alone and chilled. Richards had broken loose from their control, and that made him dangerous. The battles he’d waged across the turn of the millennium to protect his government from deadly threats had been real enough. The Initiative had a stockpile of mega-weaponry housed in its Washington, D.C., headquarters, enough matériel to render the surface of the planet uninhabitable for centuries.

Richards stuffed himself and his gym bag into the back seat of the cab.

“Where to?” the swarthy man behind the wheel asked.

Richards rattled off the name of a hotel he frequented while in town. He wouldn’t stay in the place, since the Initiative knew he’d go there, but he’d be able to find a dozen places to hole up from there. The cabbie nodded and steered out into traffic, cursing other drivers in his foreign tongue.

No wonder the President had swiftly condemned his actions in Los Angeles, Richards realized. The Rose Initiative had been using him as a puppet. A weapon to keep the public in the dark about the countless threats that were really endangering them. Richards’s covert wars kept American citizens from realizing the threats of Islamic operatives and foreign influences on U.S. soil. Rather than smear the menace across the headlines and news programs, they were quietly dealt with so that those who would profit from association with the devils could continue their underhanded deals.