Nuclear Reaction

Before it came, one of the soldiers recognized the danger. Calling out to his companions, he rose and turned to run. He wasn’t fast enough. The blast rocked both vehicles, its shrapnel taking down the would-be runner like a point-blank shotgun blast. It also burst the lead jeep’s fuel tank and ignited a spare can of gasoline on the rear deck of the passenger compartment, instantly enveloping both vehicles in flames.

Watching from cover, Bolan saw a handful of soldiers burst from cover, all of them on fire and beating at the flames with blistered hands. They ran instead of dropping to the ground and rolling, partly out of panic, and because the turf around them was on fire, as well. A lake of burning fuel surrounded them, allowing nowhere to go except a mad rush for the tree line that would offer no help, no shelter.

Bolan left them to it.

MACK BOLAN®

The Executioner

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

#328 Triangle of Terror

#329 Hostile Crossing

#330 Dual Action

#331 Assault Force

#332 Slaughter House

#333 Aftershock

#334 Jungle Justice

#335 Blood Vector

#336 Homeland Terror

#337 Tropic Blast

#338 Nuclear Reaction

The Executioner®

Nuclear Reaction

Don Pendleton

For James Morton

It is ironical that in an age when we have prided ourselves on our progress in the intelligent care and teaching of our children we have at the same time put them at the mercy of new and most terrible weapons of destruction.

—Pearl S. Buck, 1892–1973

What America Means to Me

Demagogues and terrorists have too many weapons in their arsenal. Somebody needs to draw a line, and this one’s down to me.

—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

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Prologue

Darice Pahlavi wondered if this would be the last day of her life. She’d spoken of it with the others, when she’d offered to complete the task that no one else within their circle could perform. The rest were all sincere enough, but none of them had access to the data that was needed.

Only she was inside.

She recognized the irony. A generation earlier, no woman of her nationality or faith would have been educated adequately, much less trusted to participate in such events.

But things had changed. In that respect, at least.

Some things, she feared, would never change. The lust for power that consumed some individuals was as powerful as ever. The egomania that warped their view of life and everything around them, made them believe that only they were fit to make the life-or-death decisions that affected thousands, even millions.

Perhaps Pahlavi herself had shared a measure of that guilt, she thought. But she had woken up in time to save herself. To save her soul.

The question burning in her mind was whether she could save her nation, and perhaps the world at large, from a horrendous nightmare in the making.

It could mean death if she failed, but she felt compelled to try.

Concealing the material had not been difficult. The two computer CD-ROMs were slim enough to hide beneath her clothing. She had taped them to her inner thighs, which were slim enough that she did not produce a plastic scraping sound with every step she took. The tape was uncomfortable, but it would hold its grip.

She’d delayed the taping until she was nearly finished for the day. It would’ve been a dicey proposition, working all day in the lab, with two disks plastered to her thighs, but she could easily endure an hour of discomfort, walking to the bus outside and riding to her home. Once she was there, and safe from prying eyes…

She caught herself relaxing prematurely and cut short her reverie. She wasn’t home yet, wasn’t even close. A hundred things could still go wrong.

Anxiety overwhelmed her, made her wish that she could run back to the washroom, but she couldn’t go again so soon. It might provoke an inquiry. Was something wrong? Was she unwell? Did she require examination by the lab’s standby physician? Had she been contaminated in some way?

Once Dr. Mehran started asking questions, Pahlavi knew she’d be finished. It would mean a physical examination, which would instantly reveal the contraband beneath her skirt. The mere suggestion of an illness in the lab provoked decisive and immediate responses that were carved in stone, a law unto themselves.

If she appeared in any way unusual, Pahlavi would be doomed, as surely as if she had been fatally exposed to the materials they handled every day.

She pinched herself, a cruel twist of her flesh beneath the long sleeve of her lab coat. She had to remain focused. Any small distraction, any deviation from routine, might raise a red flag with security as she was leaving.

There was no innocent excuse for smuggling confidential data from the lab. Taking a box of paper clips was considered serious. Stealing the data at the very heart of their most secret program would be tantamount to suicide.

Pahlavi knew it wouldn’t be a quick death, either. They would want to ask her questions, find out how and why she dared to take such risks. Who was she working for? Had she accomplices? Being a woman, she would not impress interrogators as a ringleader, much less an operative who conceived and executed such activities alone. If nothing else, theft of the disks signaled that she planned to pass them on, reveal their secrets to some third party, whether for ideology or profit.

She wasn’t sure how long she could protect her brother and the rest, once the professionals began to work on her with chemicals or pure brute force. Her pain threshold had never been extraordinary, and fear had weakened her already, as if her own body was conspiring with her enemies.

Biting the inside of her cheek to make her brain focus on simple tasks, Pahlavi went through the same cleanup routine she had followed every day since starting at the lab. There was a place for everything, and everything had to wind up in its proper place before she could depart. Slovenly negligence invited criticism and a closer look from Dr. Mehran, which she definitely didn’t want.

Her fellow lab workers were chatting as they cleared their stations, making small talk that she couldn’t force her mind to follow. What did she care if a certain film was playing at the theater, or if a coworker’s insipid cousin had been jilted by his third fiancée in as many years? She was on a mission vitally important to them all.

After hanging up her lab coat, she retrieved her bag and trailed the others from the lab, toward the security checkpoint where guards routinely opened briefcases and purses, pawing through their contents, but were otherwise content to let the workers pass. Darice couldn’t recall the last time a lab employee had been frisked or asked to empty pockets.

It was with a sense of panic, then, that she beheld the guards in front of her this day. Two extra had been added to the team, a man and woman, both equipped with flat wands she recognized as handheld metal detectors.

Pahlavi was certain she would faint, but she recovered by sheer force of will. She couldn’t pass inspection with the wands, which left two choices. Either she could double back and ditch the CD-ROMs, or she could find another way out of the lab complex.

Was there another way?

Determined to find out, she turned, making a show of searching through her purse as if for something she’d misplaced, and quickly walked back toward the lab.

1

Southwestern Pakistan

“The trick,” they’d warned him, “isn’t getting in or out of Pakistan. It’s getting in and out.” Eight hours on the ground, and Mack Bolan already had a fair idea of what they’d meant. He’d been here before.

Aside from its northwestern quadrant, ruled by Pashto-speaking clans who’d never paid a rupee to the government in taxes and who’d rather strip an unknown visitor down to his skin than offer him the time of day, the bulk of Pakistan was long accustomed to a thriving tourist trade. British adventurers had led the way, when Pakistan was still a part of India, and during modern times there’d never been a dearth of hikers, mountain climbers, or exotic hippie-types who came to groove on Eastern vibes and drugs.

The country welcomed everyone, but getting out could be a challenge. Departure meant an exit visa, often challenged by venal immigration officers at the eleventh hour, when they noticed various “irregularities” that triggered new and unexpected fees or fines. Export of anything resembling antiquities could land a tourist in hot water, as much as the drugs and weapons that were sold as freely in most market towns as fresh produce. Rugs purchased in Pakistan required an export permit, even when the local vendors ardently denied it and refused to furnish them.

Getting in was easy, getting out required finesse.

But at the moment, Bolan’s main concern was how to stay alive while he completed his work in Pakistan.

The nation as a whole was dangerous, no doubt about it. Some observers ranked Karachi as the world’s most hazardous city, with an average of eight political murders each day, compounded by the toll of mercenary street crime.

Shopping for hardware in Karachi had been easy, once the Executioner found the dealer recommended to him by his contacts at Stony Man Farm, in Virginia. Many Pakistani arms merchants, like the drug traffickers, would sell to foreigners, then rat them out to the police for a reward on top of what they’d already been paid. Bolan’s contact, he’d been assured, was “straight.” He’d sell to anyone and squeal on no one, understanding that his business depended on discretion as the better part of valor.

In the dealer’s cramped back room, Bolan had surveyed the merchandise and had gone Russian for the rifle, picking out an AKMS with its folding metal stock, together with a dozen extra magazines. For antipersonnel grenades, he chose the reliable Russian RGD-5s. He’d gone Swiss for his side arm, choosing a SIG-Sauer P-226, the 9 mm with a 15-round magazine, its muzzle threaded to accept a sturdy sound suppressor. His final purchase was a fighting knife of uncertain ancestry, with a twelve-inch blade, serrated on the spine, and a brass pommel stud designed for cracking skulls. Once he’d put it all together in a duffel bag, he was good to go.

Go where?

He had directions and a detailed map, and a satellite phone in case he absolutely needed immediate help in English. If that happened, Bolan reckoned it would be before he met his contact.

If he met his contact.

Negotiating the Pakistani countryside was at least as perilous as crossing a chaotic street in downtown Lahore or Karachi. Dacoits—well-organized bandits who often worked straight jobs by day, then moonlighted as highwaymen—posed one potential obstacle to travelers. And local warlords might exact tribute from passersby while drug runners or traffickers in other forms of contraband were prone to spilling blood whenever they encountered a potential witness to their criminal activities. Plus, a thriving black market revolving around kidnapping for ransom, all ensured the backcountry was dangerous indeed.

But so was Bolan.

His potential adversaries simply didn’t know it yet.

The Executioner kept a keen eye out for bandits and for government patrols as he drove north from Karachi toward Bela. He was supposed to meet his contact, maybe plural, at a rest stop west of Bela, and he didn’t want police or soldiers stopping him along the way, perhaps searching his Land Rover and asking why he needed military weapons for a drive around the countryside. The less contact he had with men in uniform, the better for his mission.

Bela was nothing much to look at, once a visitor got past the gaudy marketplace, and Bolan had no need to stop or browse. He headed west from town, and fifteen minutes later saw the rest stop on his right, two hundred yards ahead, precisely where it had been indicated on his map.

Slowing, he pulled into the graveled space and parked beside an old four-door sedan with several shades of primer paint laid on, in something very like a camouflage design. The car was empty, and he sat behind the Rover’s wheel, letting the engine idle while he waited for his contact to appear.

A creak of rusty springs, immediately followed by a scrape of leather soles on gravel from his left rear told Bolan that he’d been suckered. He was half turned toward the sound when he heard someone cock a pistol. Turning more, he could see the weapon pointed at his face, held by a young man with solemn eyes.

The gunman frowned and said, “The weather is not good for travel.”

“But a soldier has no choice,” Bolan replied.

Still cautious, the gunman dropped the muzzle of his Beretta 92 toward the ground and used the decocking lever to release its hammer harmlessly. He did not slip the pistol back into his belt, however. He shifted it to his left hand as he advanced toward the Land Rover, holding out his empty right.

Having correctly answered with the password for their meeting, Bolan stepped from his vehicle, eye flicking toward the old sedan, its trunk ajar. Two more armed men stood watching him. They’d risen from their hiding place on the old car’s floorboards.

“It was hot, I guess, inside that trunk,” Bolan said.

His handshake indicated strength, the gunman thought. “Hot,” he granted, swiping at his sweaty forehead with the back of his right hand. “How was your journey from Karachi?”

“Uneventful,” Bolan replied. “The way I like it.” Nodding toward the two other men, he inquired, “Are they with you?”

“They are,” the contact said. “In these times, we take no unnecessary risks.”

“Unnecessary risk is never wise,” Bolan said. “You want to trust me with a name?”

There seemed no point in lying, and he’d never used an alias, in any case. “Pahlavi. Darius Pahlavi. Yours?”

“Matt Cooper. Are we talking business here?” Bolan asked.

“I think not. It would be unfortunate if a patrol should come along.”

“Where, then?”

“In the hills nearby,” Pahlavi said. “I have a safe place there.”

The Executioner considered it, but only briefly. Making up his mind, he said, “All right. You ride with me and navigate. Give us a chance to break the ice.”

Pahlavi didn’t hesitate, despite his natural misgivings. This American had traveled halfway around the world to meet him and assist his cause, if such a thing was even possible. Pahlavi knew that he had to draw the line between caution and paranoia at some point.

“Of course,” he said, then turned and gave instructions to the others in Urdu, telling them to follow closely and be ready if the stranger should betray them. Neither one looked happy with Pahlavi’s choice, but they did not protest.

As Pahlavi climbed into the Land Rover, he considered the risk he’d taken—communicating with the United States, when Washington supported the regime in power, mildly cautioning its leaders on their worst excesses while refraining from decisive action to control them.

It had been a gamble, certainly, but once Pahlavi passed on what he knew, via a native said to be a contract agent for the CIA, the answer had been swift in coming. The Americans would send someone—a single man, they said—to see if he could help Pahlavi.

Not to kill his enemies, per se, or see them brought to ruin, but to see if he could help.

Whatever that might mean.

As they pulled out, Pahlavi glanced behind the driver’s seat and saw a duffel bag, zipped shut. He couldn’t tell what was inside it, but he had already glimpsed the slight bulge underneath the man’s windbreaker, which told him the American was armed.

And why not, in this land where human life was cheaper than a goat’s? Only a fool would face the unknown in the living hell his homeland had become, without a weapon close at hand.

Above all else, Pahlavi hoped that the American was not a fool. Intelligence and skill were more important than his personality—although it wouldn’t hurt if he dispensed with the persistent arrogance Americans displayed so often in their dealings with “Third World” nations.

What he needed was a man to listen and to act.

But what could any one man do, that Pahlavi and his allies had not tried themselves? he wondered.

“Have you a plan?” he asked, embarrassed by his own impatience, even as he spoke.

“I need to know the details of your problem, first,” Bolan replied. “My briefing on the other side was pretty…general, let’s say.”

“Of course.” Pahlavi nodded. “I apologize. You see, my sister—”

The Executioner had already seen the military vehicles approaching from the opposite direction. He could hardly miss the driver of the lead vehicle slowing to stare at them, while one of his companions leaned in from the back seat, mouthing orders that he couldn’t hear.

“That’s trouble,” Bolan said, as they rolled past the two jeeps and the open truck behind them, filled with riflemen in uniform.

“It is,” Pahlavi agreed, turning in his seat to track the small convoy. He was in time to see the lead jeep make a U-turn in the middle of the two-lane highway, doubling back to follow them.

“I make it six or eight to one,” Bolan remarked. “Smart money says we run.”

“Agreed.”

Bolan floored the accelerator, surging forward with a snarl from underneath the Land Rover’s hood. “All right,” he said. “This is the part where you’re supposed to navigate.”

2

Lieutenant Sachi Chandaka was often bored on daylight patrol. Encounters with bandits were rare, since the scum did their best to avoid meeting troops or police, and the most he usually expected from an outing in the countryside was some sparse evidence of crimes committed overnight by persons he would never glimpse, much less identify or capture. He supposed some criminals transacted business when the sun was high and scorching hot, but most of them dressed in expensive suits and had plush offices, where they sipped coffee and decided the fate of peasants like himself.

The fact that he was often bored did not mean the lieutenant’s wits had atrophied, however. On the contrary, his eyes were keen and he could feel malice radiating from an undesirable at thirty paces. More than once, while working in plain clothes or killing time off duty, he had startled his companions by selecting sneak thieves from a market crowd, all ordinary-looking men, then watched and waited while the petty predators moved in to make their snatch.

Perhaps it was a gift. Chandaka couldn’t say and didn’t really care, as long as he could work that magic when he needed it the most.

From half a mile away, he’d seen the two vehicles standing at the rest stop, on the south side of the highway. At a quarter mile, he’d counted four men idling by the cars, presumably engrossed in conversation. By the time his small convoy rolled past, the men were back in their cars, two passengers in each. Even someone as dull-witted as his driver, Sergeant Lahti, had to have known that they were criminals.

It wasn’t so much what the four men did, as what they didn’t do. It was unnatural for anyone surrounded by vast tracts of nothingness to keep his eyes averted as a military convoy rumbled past, almost within arm’s reach. And yet, among the four men in the two vehicles, only the driver of the lead car even glanced across the pavement at Chandaka’s jeep.

One man—and he was not Pakistani.