Oblivion Pact

HELL ON EARTH

When a firefight breaks out in Mexico, the blitz leaves countless dead and Apache gunships in the hands of an Australian self-made millionaire and the soldiers of his white supremacist group. This in turn puts Mack Bolan in grim pursuit. Hijacking the ordnance turns out to be the first move in a campaign of terror that arms the enemy with an arsenal of NASA experimental limpet mines. The killing sweep then strikes the Cayman Islands, with the object of stealing a supercomputer to control the limpets. And a deadly demonstration off the coast of Brazil leaves no doubt that World War III is the millionaire’s ultimate goal.

Now all things from satellites to rockets are hands-on weapons of terror to cripple global defenses. Cities around the world will burn unless Bolan—using everything he’s got—can dispatch the enemy into eternal darkness.

The entire island seemed to be shaking

Momentarily losing control of the jetpacks, the men struggled to stay away from the walls as the tunnel started to break apart, wide cracks lancing along the interior making countless bricks fall free.

Desperately dodging out of the way, Cinco flew too low and scraped a boot heel across the floor, then Bolan went sideways to carom off the shuddering wall, sparks spraying off the housing as it rubbed the shattering bricks.

Suddenly a bright light filled the tunnel, and Bolan saw a monstrous fireball billowing toward them like the exhaust charge of a firing cannon.

“Fly or die!” he yelled, twisting the controls to the max.

Other titles available in this series:

War Load

Sworn Enemies

Dark Truth

Breakaway

Blood and Sand

Caged

Sleepers

Strike and Retrieve

Age of War

Line of Control

Breached

Retaliation

Pressure Point

Silent Running

Stolen Arrows

Zero Option

Predator Paradise

Circle of Deception

Devil’s Bargain

False Front

Lethal Tribute

Season of Slaughter

Point of Betrayal

Ballistic Force

Renegade

Survival Reflex

Path to War

Blood Dynasty

Ultimate Stakes

State of Evil

Force Lines

Contagion Option

Hellfire Code

War Drums

Ripple Effect

Devil’s Playground

The Killing Rule

Patriot Play

Appointment in Baghdad

Havana Five

The Judas Project

Plains of Fire

Colony of Evil

Hard Passage

Interception

Cold War Reprise

Mission: Apocalypse

Altered State

Killing Game

Diplomacy Directive

Betrayed

Sabotage

Conflict Zone

Blood Play

Desert Fallout

Extraordinary Rendition

Devil’s Mark

Savage Rule

Infiltration

Resurgence

Kill Shot

Stealth Sweep

Grave Mercy

Treason Play

Assassin’s Code

Shadow Strike

Decision Point

Road of Bones

Radical Edge

Fireburst

Oblivion Pact

Don Pendleton

Our single most important challenge is to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual. We must construct that people-centred society of freedom in such a manner that it guarantees the political liberties and the human rights of all our citizens.

—Nelson Mandela

May 25, 1994

We all face challenges, sometimes just to survive. Unfortunately it seems there is always someone, some group, who thinks they have the right to take what is ours. Over my dead body.

—Mack Bolan

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Cancun, Mexico

Death watched from high above.

It was a scorching tropical night, the heat unforgiving in spite of a cool breeze coming off the ocean. A thumping techno beat filled the air with a palpable presence, the lyrics indistinct over the laughter of the drunken college students cavorting on the white sandy beach.

Standing on the balcony of his penthouse suite, Dalton Greene looked down on the raucous party with the impersonal gaze of a surgeon preparing to cut a tumor from the body of a patient.

“Enjoy yourselves while it lasts,” Greene whispered, checking the load of the 10 mm Falcon pistol before tucking the weapon into its shoulder holster.

Neither handsome nor ugly, Greene was simply plain with an ordinary, easily forgettable face and nondescript features. Except for one. The man was huge, not fat, although he would have disagreed on that point, but genuinely enormous, well over seven feet tall and as broad as a gorilla.

Most people the billionaire did business with called him The Jolly Greene Giant, but never to his face. The one person who had been foolish enough to do that disappeared the next day, and was found a year later. From what the New York coroner could ascertain, the man had been tortured, then allowed to heal, and tortured again, over and over, for weeks, until his head was smashed.

Whether the horrid story was true or not, the billionaire had done his best to circulate it worldwide, and the tale certainly fitted Dalton Greene’s profile. He never got angry or upset, only even, and somehow he always managed to make a profit. Even from death.

“They call it spring break, right?” Greene asked over a shoulder, dispassionately watching the dozens of campfires blazing along the beach.

Hundreds of college students reveled in drunken celebration, singing to the techno beat, the combination creating a low growl.

“Yes, sir, spring break,” Samantha LoMonaco answered, carefully loading a 12-gauge Neostead shotgun.

The lights were off in the palatial suite, making it easier for them to discreetly observe the party below. A dozen other people were in the suite, all of them checking a weapon, or adjusting the straps on military body armor.

“Ridiculous. A break from what?” Greene demanded. “The strenuous task of sitting in a comfortable chair in an air-conditioned room reading books?”

Working the pump-action on the Neostead, LoMonaco shrugged. “Americans are a ridiculous people, sir.”

Easing a clip into an F88 assault rifle, a bearded man scowled. “I thought you came from America, Ms. LoMonaco?” he asked in a thick accent.

“I’m Australian now,” LoMonaco stated with an air of pride. “Just like the rest of you.”

A diminutive brunette with a full luscious figure, Samantha “The Hammer” LoMonaco was a stunningly beautiful woman with lovely dark eyes and a smile so sweet that she often managed to talk her way out of traffic tickets and past security checkpoints.

Her long hair was tied in a ponytail to keep it from her face, and more importantly out of the breech of her weapon. Her nails were cut short, almost to the quick, to make it easier to reload her weapon.

She was also covered with tattoos. Although born in America, she had been raised in the slums of west Canberra, and at a very early age had started getting a tattoo for each confirmed kill.

The first killing had been done in the dark alley behind a bar where a drunken man was trying to assault her friend. LoMonaco grabbed a loose brick and pounded him to death. The next day her friend took LoMonaco to a tattoo parlor and paid for both of them to get matching stars on their wrists so they could always remember that night. As news of the incident spread, LoMonaco was quickly dubbed with the nickname The Hammer because of her assault with the brick.

Then another friend asked for her help with an abusive boyfriend, and LoMonaco earned a second tattoo, then a third, fourth, fifth.... Soon, she learned the terrible truth: blood was like whiskey. After enough of it had flowed, you didn’t want the river ever to stop.

These days, LoMonaco carried a Gerber combat knife sheathed at the small of her back where it couldn’t be easily seen. A boxy Glock 18 machine pistol was holstered at her side, and in her wallet was a fake credit card that contained a ceramic razor blade undetectable through airport security.

Officially, LoMonaco was registered as a professional bodyguard, and thus was allowed to carry firearms in places where other people couldn’t. In reality, she was an assassin, a hired killer for Dalton Greene.

“Mr. Greene, the truck has arrived!” announced David Thomas, adjusting the pipe in his mouth. Still in the long process of trying to quit smoking, the man was chewing on a briarwood pipe these days to help control his urges.

Rolling out of the dunes, an electric flatbed truck was trundling along the beach. The driver stopped at each bonfire to drop off a plastic cooler, and briefly speak to whomever was in charge.

As he drove away into the darkness, the eager college students dragged the coolers out of the light and into the darkness. Minutes later, swarms of people descended on the area, many of them still talking on their cell phones. In rapid order, the party escalated to a new level of debauchery, as the students reeled about smoking what looked like homemade cigarettes. Their laughter became disjointed, and soon items of clothing started coming off, which was a short procedure as most of the students were wearing only bathing suits and flip-flop sandals.

“Is that marijuana?” Thomas asked curiously, clipping a grenade to his belt. Dashingly handsome, the man was an expert hacker, and always carried an Australian army combat laptop slung at his side.

“I ordered zooters,” LoMonaco replied.

He scowled. “What’s that?”

“Marijuana soaked in formaldehyde.”

Thomas was stunned. “Isn’t embalming fluid poisonous?”

“Extremely.” She laughed. “But first you get incredibly high.”

“How much did you get?” Greene asked, raising an arm to shoulder height. He flexed his hand and a small .44 derringer slapped into his palm, then back out of sight.

“Five kilos.”

Greene frowned. “Do we really need that much?”

“Probably not,” LoMonaco said with a shrug. “But I assumed it would be better to have too much than too little.

“Agreed. Failure isn’t an option,” Greene said, then he turned and shouted the phrase. “Failure isn’t an option!” Inside the darkened suite, the men and women of Operation Daylight repeated the words over and over as if it was a battle chant.

“Where are the whores?” Thomas asked, walking over to the balcony.

“They’ll be here soon,” Greene replied, strapping on body armor. It was as supersized as himself, but fitted perfectly, molded to his specific contours.

“And here they come,” Victor Layne stated gruffly.

Unlike his giant employer, Victor Layne was fat, and didn’t give a damn. His incredible physical strength was infamous from Adelaide to Christmas Island.

A few moments later, six more electric trucks rolled out of the dunes, each carrying dozens of shopworn but still mildly attractive women in skimpy bikinis or loose summer dresses. As the ocean breeze lifted the hem on one, it was clear that the woman wore nothing underneath but tan lines.

Taking LoMonaco by the arm, Greene pulled her aside. “Samantha, are all the supplies ready at Compose?” he asked quietly.

She nodded. “All set, sir.”

“Excellent,” Greene said with a brief smile, then he turned. “Victor, what did you tell the colleges about the party?”

“That I was an alumni and just wanted to help the kids celebrate the big win.”

“What big win?” Thomas asked.

Layne shrugged. “Who cares?”

“Alumnus,” LoMonaco corrected, walking onto the balcony with the Neostead resting on a shoulder. “ Alumni means several, alumus is the male singular.”

Layne scowled. “You’re kidding. Alumnus?”

“God’s truth.”

“Then God is an idiot,” Layne snorted, walking back into the darkness.

Down on the beach, the party was starting to get out of control as naked people began running about, and numerous students were having sex on the beach. Mostly it was couples, but sometimes there were three people involved.

“Bah, sex on the beach,” Thomas muttered in frank disapproval.

“It’s sort of romantic,” LoMonaco countered. “Even for these drunken fools.”

“But the sand gets everywhere. And I do mean everywhere!”

“So you shower afterward,” Layne contributed. “Let’s let them enjoy what little time they have remaining.”

Just then, they heard the crackling of explosions, and suddenly rockets soared high into the night sky to explode into colorful blossoms.

“Fireworks,” Greene grunted, sliding on clear surgical gloves. “Nice touch.”

“Thanks,” Layne said “I thought it might stimulate a faster response from the local PD.”

Softly, in the distance police sirens howled. Soon flashing lights appeared along the coastal highway.

“How many?” Greene demanded, grabbing the banister with both hands, and squeezing tight. “How many did they send?”

“Six, eight...ten cars!” LoMonaco reported, dialing for enhancement on a US Army–issue monocular. Computer-operated, the device took the ambient light of the stars, blocked out the bonfires, and delivered a perfectly clear black-and-white image of the beachfront debauchery.

“Excellent,” Greene exhaled, sliding on a ski mask. “Okay, time to go to work, people.”

“Daylight!” Thomas shouted, brandishing a Colt revolver.

“Daylight!” the armed people in the suite repeated, and surged out of the room.

In the hallway, a young couple gasped at the sight of the armed mob pouring from the suite.

“Go to your room,” Greene commanded, cradling an F88 assault rifle. “This has nothing to do with you!”

The man nodded and dragged the terrified young woman inside with him, and slammed the door shut.

“Why leave them alive?” Thomas snarled, hefting an Atchisson autoshotgun.

“We do not harm our own kind,” Greene stated, just as the elevator opened.

Inside the cage were three Latina maids dressed in clean white uniforms, and carrying the various tools of their trades.

Firing from the hip, Greene, Layne and LoMonaco ruthlessly slaughtered the dark-skinned women in a hail of gunfire.

Leaving the bodies where they fell, Greene and Daylight moved through the luxury hotel, wounding any Caucasian they encountered, but ruthlessly executing everybody else.

In the lobby, one of the terrorists drew a bead on the desk clerk, but LoMonaco stayed his hand.

“One of us,” she whispered.

Exiting the building, Greene and his people paused to reload, then moved out, heading directly for the main access road to the secluded beach, and their scheduled meeting with the Mexican police.

CHAPTER ONE

Columbus, Ohio

Firing from the hip, Mack Bolan, aka The Executioner, took out both of the liveried guards, the discharge from the silenced 9 mm Beretta no louder than a hard cough.

As the dead men crumpled to the ground, Bolan moved in fast, smashing both of their handheld radios. Then he put a squirt of fast-acting glue onto the slides of their automatic pistols. If anybody found the corpses, they’d spend precious minutes trying to get the jimmied weapons to work again, and that was all the soldier needed now, just a few more minutes to get the job done.

The search for Eric “Mad Dog” Kegan had been long and hard. The gunrunner shed identities the way most other people did socks, and he always left behind a trail of bodies, most of them innocent bystanders who saw his face. But that reign of bloodshed would end here and now. If only Bolan moved fast enough.

Dressed for full urban combat, The Executioner was wearing a loose trench coat, and soft fedora. Underneath he wore a military blacksuit, Threat-Level-Four body armor, an old canvas web harness rigged with a wide assortment of weapons and tools of war and dark combat sneakers. They didn’t offer the full protection of combat boots, but made less noise.

Easing through the dark Bolan paused just before reentering the sunlight. Across the street was a small building nestled amid leafy trees and shrubs. He could see brick walls and a house set far back from the road. White stucco, the structure was two stories tall, probably a shoe store or something similar in the past, big picture windows on either side of a nice wooden door. The shutters on the second story were closed, with a small red-and-white For Rent sign in the left window that was partially obscured by streaked dust. Old, dirty, valueless, abandoned and forgotten, the store was just part of the neighborhood—there, but never truly noticed.

Crossing the busy street, Bolan attempted to look through the window, but couldn’t see anything. The pebbled glass was tinted a deep blue. Nice. Only a foot away, Kegan would have total privacy to conduct his business.

Easing into the greenery, Bolan checked for traps and hidden alarms, but found the area clear. The interior of the building would contain an advanced security system, but to maintain his cover, Kegan had to relay upon plain, ordinary locks outside so as not to draw any suspicion on the place.

Studying the building, Bolan wondered if the second floor was an apartment. This was an older neighborhood and lots of stores used to have living space above them in order to save money.

Going to the door, Bolan tried the handle but it was locked. Reaching under his windbreaker, he unearthed a keywire gun and shot the lock full of stiff wire, then turned the gun. The lock disengaged with a subtle click.

Wiggling the device free, Bolan tucked it away and drew his Beretta 93R machine pistol before sliding inside the dark building. Using a small can of pressurized talcum powder, Bolan filled the air with a swirling dust cloud to check for laser beams. But the powder revealed nothing, and he continued onward, staying alert for hidden video cameras and trip wires. This was home for Kegan and it was guaranteed to be a major hard site. He simply hadn’t found any security devices yet, which made Bolan slightly nervous. You never heard the bullet that got you. He had to stay alert, watch for everything and live another day. That was all any soldier could hope for in war.

And that’s all this was, a covert war for the streets of America, Bolan noted. On one side were Kegan and his kind, cannibals in thousand-dollar suits, and on the other side was civilization. Long ago, Bolan had decided that he wasn’t Animal Man’s judge, or jury, but his executioner. The soldier wasn’t here to enforce the law, but to dispense justice, hard and absolute. Street justice. Red law.

Kicking some torn manila folders out of his way, Bolan crossed the littered floor and stood amid the piles of destruction. There was no other way to describe the office area but totally trashed.

Pictures were smashed on the walls, the empty frames hanging from bent nails. The file-cabinet drawers had been removed and cast aside, sofa cushions ripped apart, the stuffing scattered about randomly, and assorted papers were everywhere. Somebody had been very serious about searching this room. An amateur, but dead serious.

However, just because a room had been searched, Bolan noted privately, didn’t mean that anything had been found.

The next room was an office, just as bedraggled as the waiting room but now empty shell casings from a dozen different weapons lay scattered about, telling Bolan how things had gone down. Four people had entered through the sitting room, each armed with automatic pistols, and one with a shotgun. Three others had opened fire from the staircase using M16 assault rifles, and something that left bullet holes but didn’t eject brass. The fire pattern was too tight for a bolt action...a caseless rifle? Impressive. The weapons sounded like a zipper in operation, and threw out lead faster than anything but a motorized Gatling gun. A caseless assault rifle was a serious threat. Bolan would have to keep a sharp watch out for— He froze.

Lancing through the swirling cloud of talcum powder was a scintillating red beam, thinner than a human hair, almost invisible. Dropping low, Bolan eased under the laser and carefully rose on the other side, his heart pounding. Touch the beam of light, and all hell would have broken loose, probably in the manner of a dozen Claymore mines plastered inside the wall. Close, but no cigar.

Going to the window, Bolan saw the real-estate sign. At the bottom was the monthly rent, a phone number and the name of the management company. Out of curiosity, Bolan tried the number, and wasn’t surprised to get only a busy signal, then voice mail, but the box was full. That was all anybody would ever get, a busy signal. Kegan lived in a building advertised as for rent. Clever. That would have stopped most investigations, but Bolan had sources everywhere, most of them whispers and hints. Add a few together, and suddenly a pattern became visible. A soft probe, followed by a hard probe, and when the target was confirmed, a full blitz with guns blazing. But he wasn’t there yet, this was just the soft probe.

Making sure the door was locked, Bolan did a quick sweep of the place and found nothing more interesting than a couple of thousand in cash and a kilo of marijuana. He took the cash.

“Thanks, Mad Dog,” Bolan whispered, tucking the wad of bills into an empty pouch on his gunbelt reserved for just that purpose.

Bolan really didn’t have an accurate count of how many millions he had stolen from the Mafia, terrorist organizations and organized crime in general, but their bloody profits had purchased a lot of hard justice rammed back down their throats. If that wasn’t karma, then Bolan had no idea what the proper definition was.

The last room on the ground floor was an office, all brass and leather, and smelling of death. A man lay behind the sofa in a position it was impossible to achieve while alive, and a woman was draped over the desk. Her tattoos identified her as an assassin for the Colombian drug cartel.

Pitting rival gangs against each other was an old trick in his book, and one that worked extremely well most of the time. Not always, but often enough. Bolan knew that it had been a gamble to tell Kegan’s enemies where the gunrunner could be located. But he hadn’t read them as foolish enough to drive up to the building and unload a couple of rocket launchers through the front windows. Kegan’s former customers, cheated of their goods, and often betrayed to the police for the reward, wanted hands-on revenge, up close and very personal. If they had succeeded, so much the better. But at the very least, they had diverted Kegan and his people, giving Bolan a precious few minutes to try to find Kegan’s next identity and permanently end his reign of terror.

Alongside the corpse was a cheap pressboard computer desk, the PC smashed to pieces, the hard drive gone. Damn. That could have been useful. Not that Kegan would keep anything major on the drive, but there could have been hints and subtle clues. Sometimes Bolan felt as though he was fighting ghosts in the dark.