Code Of Honor

Only one of them was walking away from this confrontation alive

The pain from the wound in his arm was starting to burn fiercely, but the Executioner had suffered far worse in his time. He needed to finish Ms. Orange off.

Deciding it might be worth the risk, Bolan reached under his jacket for the SIG-Sauer.

As he did so, another lightning-fast crescent kick caught him on the side of his head. Ms. Orange followed it with a punch to the face that sent him stumbling backward.

But Bolan still had his hand on the SIG-Sauer. Stumbling back even farther than the punch had sent him, he got just enough distance so he could whip out the handgun and squeeze the trigger.

One bullet ripped through Ms. Orange’s turtleneck and splintered her rib cage. Another followed it through the shattered bone and into her heart. As her eyes widened in shock, Ms. Orange collapsed to the ground.

She was good but the Executioner was better.

Code of Honor

The Executioner^®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

If Honour calls, where’er She points the way, The Sons of Honour follow, and obey.

—Charles Churchill

1731–1764

The Farewell

When men of honor are disrespected, it is my duty to avenge that wrong—whatever it takes. It is my code.

—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

Prologue

Albert Bethke missed the cold war.

It was easier in those days. You had the United States, you had the Soviet Union, and you knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were.

After the Berlin Wall came down, it all went to hell, as far as Bethke was concerned. Suddenly, they were working with the Soviets—or rather, the Russians, since there weren’t Soviets anymore. Bethke supposed that was how the old OSS boys felt after World War II, when they brought over Nazi scientists to help with the cold war. But this particular new world order just didn’t sit well with Bethke.

Still, he hung on with his job at the National Security Agency after twenty years in the FBI, and then had helped put the Department of Homeland Security together. But once DHS was up and running, he put in his retirement papers. He’d had enough.

Not that retirement was what he’d been expecting. At first, he did all the things he promised himself he’d get around to some day. He traveled all over the country, visiting the landmarks that he’d seen pictures and films of but never been to: the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Southernmost Point of the U.S., and much more.

That took up three years, and then he was bored. Bethke had been both an administrator and a field agent, and he found he missed the excitement. Not enough to actually go back to work—though he had been told repeatedly by the directors at DHS that they’d take him back in a heartbeat—but enough to want to find more exciting things to occupy his time than play tourist.

So he found himself in New Paltz, New York, hiking in the Mohonk woodlands. Eventually, he planned to work his way up to proper mountain climbing, but hiking would do for now, help him rebuild his stamina. It would also get rid of the paunch that was developing. That paunch had put in appearances before, and it was always a signal to Bethke to get back into fieldwork.

Then, after a year or two of getting shot at, he’d go back behind a desk.

But that was all behind him.

It was the perfect day for a hike. It was a weekday, and it was drizzling, which meant that there was almost nobody else on the hiking trails. The few people he did see were doing the easier trails—Bethke went through the trees and up and down rocks.

The rain made it a bit more challenging, which made it that much more fun.

Bethke was dressed in brown hiking boots, white tube socks, a New York Mets baseball cap—which kept his thinning brown hair dry—cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt, with a beige molle vest over it. Both the vest and shorts had plenty of pouches and big pockets, saving Bethke from having to bring a backpack. He carried bottles of water, power bars, his cell phone and .38 caliber bullets.

Those last were for the Smith & Wesson .38 Special in the shoulder holster that occasionally bit into his armpit as he climbed rocks or maneuvered around trees. The kids in both NSA and DHS had made fun of his “old-time” weapon. To Bethke, though, there was no point in a useless upgrade. Sure, he could go with a SIG-Sauer or a Glock or whatever the hell else they were using now, but as far as Bethke was concerned, a bullet was a bullet, and if you placed it right, it would do what you wanted it to do, regardless of what you shot it from.

In thirty years on the job, he’d never once missed what he was aiming at.

The kids would still razz him, of course, so Bethke would invite them down to the shooting range. Whoever grouped his or her shots closest would not have to pay for beer at the bar after they were off the clock. He’d even be generous and let them shoot first. They might do a decent job of grouping their shots in the chest or the head. Then Bethke would load his .38 Special and throw all six shots into the target in a perfect circle less than an inch in diameter.

Bethke never once paid for his own drink on those occasions.

He squeezed himself into a small passageway between two rocks, hoping there weren’t any bears. He really didn’t want to be in a position to have to shoot an innocent animal.

Once he made it through to the other side, he saw that a wooden ladder had been provided to get to the top of the rock. That was the end of this part of the hike, bringing him to a plateau that provided a great view of the area.

At the top was a no-longer-functional lighthouse, a few picnic tables, a public bathroom in a small stone structure, a very large rock that was sitting in the middle of the grass and mud and a spectacular view of Lake Mohonk. The mist from the clouds and rain covered the mountain like a blanket.

Best of all, Bethke didn’t have to share it with anyone except for the young couple walking toward the lighthouse. He wished he’d had the foresight to bring a camera. His cell phone had one, but the quality was crap.

For a few seconds, he just stood and took in the view. Something was bothering him, though—he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Then he very slowly turned his head so he was once again facing the couple, making it look as if he was simply gazing over the misty vista ahead of him.

The man was tall and skinny with short curly brown hair and plastic-rimmed glasses. He wore a loose-fitting rain slicker, denim shorts and hiking boots. His girlfriend or wife or whatever was very short and curvy, with wavy brown hair tied back into a ponytail, and was wearing a tight T-shirt that barely contained her large breasts. The shirt was untucked, hanging over a pair of what appeared to be elastic waistband sweat pants. She also wore hiking boots that seemed too big for her feet.

It could’ve been nothing. The man’s slicker and woman’s boots could simply have been too big. That sort of thing happened.

But the former could also be used to hide a holster and the latter to hide a knife sheath.

Then the man leaned in to whisper something in the woman’s ear. She giggled, and he was smiling as he spoke, but when he leaned over, Bethke saw the outline of a bulge pressing against the slicker.

Bethke immediately dived to the ground and unholstered his .38. If he was overreacting, he’d apologize to the couple, but better safe than sorry. He’d made his share of enemies over the years, after all, and he couldn’t risk that one of them might be here.

Even as he fell to the wet grass and mud, the man pulled out a 9 mm OD Green Glock 19, a compact model designed for carrying concealed.

It all happened fast enough that the man hadn’t consciously registered that Bethke had dived to the ground, so his first shot went over his target’s head.

Bethke needed a second to catch his breath—he’d just been doing a heavy hike, and his fatigued muscles and overtaxed lungs were reminding him just how long it had been since he’d done any kind of field work—and then he loosed a shot at the man.

As always, Bethke hit what he was aiming at: the man’s center mass. The .38-caliber bullet sliced through the man’s jacket and shirt like a hot knife through butter, cutting into his chest, splintering his ribs, and ripping into his heart.

The man squeezed off one more shot before he expired. A 9 mm round flew through the air and slammed into Bethke’s left shoulder. He winced briefly against the pain of the bullet, which was now lodged in his rotator cuff—it wasn’t the first time he’d been shot.

The woman had lifted her shirt, exposing a Charter Police Undercover .38 that was tucked into the waistband of her sweats, drew the weapon and fired off two shots that flew over Bethke’s head.

That was just cover fire. She was diving behind her “husband’s” corpse, using the body as a shield. That told him a lot about the level of ruthlessness Bethke was dealing with.

Knowing it was going to hurt like hell, Bethke rolled on the ground to take cover behind the rock. The woman’s .38 rounds hit the mud where he’d been with a squelch, and others hit his Mets cap, which had fallen off while he rolled. More shots followed him until he was behind the protection of the rock.

Bethke took a moment to compose himself, even as the woman’s last two rounds ricocheted off the rock.

“Hey!”

The voice came from behind Bethke. Whirling, with his back now to the rock, he saw an overweight man wearing a sweatshirt with the words Lake Mohonk emblazoned on the chest and white shorts running clumsily toward the tableau. He wore a backpack, and his ample belly was bouncing in rhythm with his strides.

“Hey, lady, what the hell’re you doin’?”

His FBI instincts taking over, Bethke said, “Sir, get down!”

“That lady’s nuts!” the fat man said, still running toward Bethke.

Then Bethke’s spook instincts kicked in. The woman was an assassin who used her partner’s body as a shield—yet this man was in her sights and she didn’t shoot.

Which meant the fat man was part of the team. Bethke raised the S&W with his right hand and threw a shot. This was another reason why Bethke preferred his old-fashioned revolver: he could fire it with one hand, especially if he was leaning against a rock that could absorb the recoil.

The shot wasn’t quite as perfect—it only hit the fat man in the shoulder, about an inch above his heart. It stopped him running, but even as blood stained his gray sweatshirt, he held up his left hand, which was holding a Hibben UC-458 throwing knife, which flew from his hand and lodged in Bethke’s right thigh, cutting through skin and muscle and penetrating the femoral artery.

Feeling the blood start to pour out of his leg, Bethke squeezed off a second shot at the fat man. This one nailed him right between the eyes, splintering his skull and spattering blood all over the grass.

The fat man fell backward to the ground with a wet impact that kicked up quite a bit of mud. Bethke forced his left hand to clamp down on his right leg in what was probably a vain attempt to stanch the bleeding. The bullet wound in his shoulder wouldn’t let him raise his left arm, but as long as he was seated on the ground, it was easy enough to try to hold the wound together. He also kept the knife in, since that was actually doing more than his hand was to keep the femoral artery from leaking out all over Mohonk Mountain.

It also meant he couldn’t really move from this spot. The woman had had enough time while Bethke was dealing with the fat man to do any number of things, including possibly reload her .38.

Then the woman appeared before him. The muzzle of her erstwhile partner’s Glock was staring Bethke right in the face. This close, Bethke could see the way she had modified her boots in order to hold knife sheaths. But she wouldn’t even need those knives. Bethke toyed with the notion of raising his S&W, but she’d blow his head off before he could even start moving his arm.

Since he was pretty obviously dead anyhow, he tried to at least find out one thing. “Why?”

The woman shrugged, her ponytail bouncing. Bethke realized that he wouldn’t get an answer. She and her two dead partners were probably hired assassins who were given a target. Such people were almost never told the why, only the who. If they were caught, they couldn’t give any specifics to law enforcement.

Not that that was likely to be an issue for Bethke. He’d really hoped to climb Mount Kilimanjaro some day.

1

Mack Bolan peered through the Pentax Lightseeker XL scope on his ArmaLite AR-50 .50 BMG rifle. The scope was equipped with a Twilight Plex reticle that was designed for fast target acquisition and low light. It was currently in night-vision mode, not to adjust for darkness—since it was midafternoon—but to detect heat signatures on the other side of the steel plating of the warehouse.

To the general public, the warehouse in this suburb of Detroit, Michigan, was used for meat storage by the Hash & Cox Meat Packing Company. The inside was kept at thirty-eight degrees, so the presence of a ninety-eight-degree human being would stand out like a beacon in the scope.

At the moment, the warehouse was empty of everything other than the meat and assorted tools and storage units.

The Executioner knew that would change soon.

The warehouse wasn’t exactly a front—Hash & Cox was a legitimate business that served as a middleman between suppliers and retailers—but it was used to mask a much less legitimate business. The warehouse was used for drug merchants who supplied cocaine and heroin for many of the dealers working in Detroit. All attempts by the Detroit Police Department to bring the business down had been stymied by Hash & Cox’s CEO, Karl Hash—the brother-in-law of the DPD police chief. Attempts to bring in the DEA or the FBI were equally stymied by the influence of a state senator, who had received numerous campaign contributions from Hash & Cox and its satellite companies. Hash & Cox’s COO, Charles McPherson, was also the nephew of a Michigan congressman who was on the committee that controlled the DEA’s funding.

All this made Hash & Cox off-limits to legitimate law enforcement.

That was where the Executioner came in.

Bolan would bring the company down because nobody else could. He’d learned that McPherson and Hash were meeting at the warehouse to make sure that the place was cleaned out of all narcotics in preparation for an FDA inspection the following day. When Bolan had talked to a friend of a friend in the FDA to get the inspection to happen, he’d been hoping for this result. Hash and McPherson had too much riding on this warehouse to risk trusting underlings. They’d want to check the place themselves, make sure it would pass inspection.

He planned to take out the pair of them as soon as they showed up by taking up position on the roof of another warehouse on the same backstreet. With the pair of them dead, the path would be cleared to legitimately bring down the drug operation.

A limousine pulled up to the warehouse gate. The driver hopped out and fumbled with a set of keys before inserting one into the padlock that secured the chain holding the gate shut. The padlock snapped open, and the driver pulled the chain out and tossed it aside. The gate slowly creaked open on its own, leaving the way clear for the limo to continue inside, once the driver got back inside.

Once the limo pulled up to the side entrance, the driver again hopped out, opening the door to let the other occupants out: two white men in pinstriped suits who matched the pictures of Hash and McPherson in Bolan’s dossier. At first, the Executioner was concerned that the driver might go inside as well, but he got back into the car once he closed the back door behind the two men. The scope couldn’t differentiate people inside the warehouse, just heat signatures, and the warehouse had no windows.

He could have taken them down outside, but it was better to wait for them to be inside, so that the driver would remain in the dark for as long as possible. The driver himself aided in this by turning on the limousine’s sound system at a very loud volume.

The Executioner had been waiting on the roof for these two to show up for four hours. He could hold off another minute.

After they went inside, Bolan waited until he saw two heat signatures. First one entered his sights, and he squeezed off a round. The rifle had been in his hands so long, it was like an extension of his arms, and firing it barely required a conscious effort on Bolan’s part.

The .50-caliber bullet easily penetrated the thick metal of the wall and blew off the head of either Hash or McPherson. The formerly upright heat signature fell into a crumpled mess on the floor.

It took only a second for Bolan to adjust his aim slightly and take out the heat signature of the second person, who hadn’t yet registered what had happened to his colleague. The bullet whistled through the air and pulped the head of the target.

When the second body went down, Bolan continued his vigil, making sure the heat signatures didn’t move and the driver didn’t respond to the loud report of two rifle shots being fired. After a while, the signatures got cooler as their body temperatures went down, accelerated by the low temperatures inside the warehouse.

But Bolan still didn’t move.

The limo sound system had been going for four songs before the driver turned it off. Seconds later, he bounded out of the car, a cell phone at his ear and a concerned look on his face, and ran to the entrance. Bolan assumed that Hash and McPherson had only expected to be a minute or two inside, and that the delay had the driver worried.

As well it should have.

Only then did the Executioner remove the scope and head for the roof entrance.

After making his way down the stairs of the warehouse to the street, he placed the rifle and scope in the trunk of the Chevrolet Aveo he’d rented, got behind the wheel and drove toward Interstate 94. Using his secure sat phone, he dialed the number for Stony Man Farm, the base for America’s ultracovert counterterrorist organization.

Within seconds, he was put through to Hal Brognola.

“Both men have been taken care of,” Bolan said without preamble, and without specifics.

“Good work, Striker. Your ride’s waiting at the Selfridge Air National Guard Base to bring you back here. We’ve got a big one.”

Bolan’s original plan had been to drive south on I–94 to Detroit, where he’d hole up in a motel room for the night, but instead he headed to Selfridge.

A FALCON 10 PRIVATE JET belonging to Stony Man had been waiting for Bolan at Selfridge, and it took off shortly after his arrival. One of the airmen stationed at the base said he would take care of Bolan’s rental car. The Executioner knew that Brognola had contacts all over the military and in law enforcement, and it was no surprise that he’d gotten Selfridge to do him this favor without their knowing precisely what it was about—or who it was they were doing it for.

The Falcon 10 had only one occupant when Bolan arrived: Charlie Mott, a civilian pilot who sometimes flew for Stony Man. “Welcome aboard, Striker,” Mott said with a sloppy salute at Bolan’s approach.

“Since when does Brognola give you chauffeur duty?” Bolan asked, as he climbed the small set of steps leading to the aircraft’s interior.

As he pulled the steps up into the closed-door position behind Bolan, Mott said, “He wanted to make sure you got to the Farm in one piece. He said this one’s a biggie.”

“So he told me over the phone.”

Mott then went into the cockpit and started preparing the plane for takeoff.

The Executioner slept for most of the two-hour flight to Stony Man Farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The Falcon 10 could accommodate up to eight people in extremely comfortable seats, and Bolan had long ago learned to take his rest where he could get it.

Mott taking the Falcon 10 into its final descent was enough to awaken Bolan, and as soon as the plane touched down, he gathered his rifle case and satchel and waited for the aircraft to come to a stop.

Brognola was waiting for him on the runway of the Farm’s airfield. “Welcome back, Striker. Let’s head up to the farmhouse so you can get a shower and a change of clothes. I’ve got a full briefing ready to go as soon as you’re ready.”

“No need to wait. You obviously want to get going quickly on this.”

“Fine.” Brognola hadn’t expected Bolan to actually accept any delay in getting the briefing to his next mission, but he had made the offer in any case out of respect for the man.

He and Bolan walked the short distance to the farmhouse, rather than accepting a ride in the Jeep that was standing by. After walking up the front steps and keying in the proper access code, the two men made their way to the War Room. A solid wooden conference table, surrounded by ergonomic chairs, dominated the room. At one end was a state-of-the-art laptop with a twenty-inch monitor. A USB cable was plugged into the laptop at one end and into a huge plasma TV mounted on the far wall, showing what was on the computer’s monitor in high definition.

At the moment, that was the desktop, which had assorted icons of programs and folders with file names made of seemingly random alphanumeric characters. Bolan knew that these were codes. Brognola moved the cursor to one of those folders and double-tapped the laptop’s track pad.

The folder contained several Portable Network Graphics files, also given coded alphanumeric file names.

First, Brognola called up four of the images, which were all crime-scene photos of dead bodies, and arranged them on the screen so Bolan could see all four.

There was a man with thinning brown hair lying against a rock in a grassy area, a woman with short steel-gray hair lying dead in a city street with a bullet wound in her back, an overweight man with his head literally blown off in a parking lot and a bald man with multiple stab wounds in his chest.

“You’re looking at Albert Bethke, Michaela Grosso, Terrence Redmond and Richard Lang.”

Bolan started at the third name. “Redmond’s been retired from the NSA for, what, ten years?”

“Twelve. And that’s something he has in common with the other three. They’re all people with a history of covert ops, and they’re all retired. Bethke was one of the people who set up DHS after 9/11, and before that he was NSA and FBI. Grosso and Lang were both CIA. They were all killed over the course of the past week or so—assassinated by the Black Cross.”

“You’re sure?”

Brognola hesitated. “No. But the evidence points to it.”

“The lack of evidence, you mean.”

“Yes,” Brognola said reluctantly. “There’s virtually no evidence at any of the crime scenes. No hairs, no fibers, no fingerprints save those of the victims, no biological residue for DNA save those of the victims, no shell casings or bullets at the scene or in any of the bodies despite the presence of bullet wounds, and almost all the blood traces that aren’t compromised by liberal application of bleach are also the victims’.” Brognola called up several more files, which were also digital photos. “Any number of killings over the years have matched this total lack of evidence. The FBI has a file a mile long on these—I know, ’cause I’m the one who started it. Of course, some of those are your executions, but the ones that aren’t…”

“The rumors about the Black Cross go back to my Army days,” Bolan said. “An elite group of assassins made up of the best of the best.”

“I know. And I know that there’s nothing to support it.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, just because the theory fits the evidence—or lack of same—doesn’t mean it’s right. And we’ve got nothing solid, except for the fact that local police were completely stymied. They kicked it up to FBI, and they brought it to me.”

Bolan scratched his chin thoughtfully. “When you referred to the evidence, you said ‘virtually’ and ‘almost.’ What’s different about these crime scenes from all the other ones you think are Black Cross?”

Brognola actually smiled at that, pleased that Bolan noticed how carefully he’d chosen his words. “Not ‘these,’ just the one. Bethke was killed in the Mohonk woodlands in New York. Two distinct sets of blood evidence were bleached far away from Bethke’s body—but there were a few drops of blood that weren’t bleached, and didn’t belong to Bethke. DNA identifies it as belonging to a former sharpshooter in Baltimore City PD’s Quick Response Team named Bert Hanson. He retired after only nine years on the job and then fell off the grid.”

“You think Black Cross recruited him?” Bolan asked.

“Makes sense. If I was looking for assassins, the QRT would be on my list of possible recruiting sources. Hanson had been a model cop—several decorations, no bad notes in his jacket. And then, out of nowhere, he quits, no reason given, and he’s not been heard from since—until he bled on the ground at Mohonk.”

“So what does that get us?”

In response, Brognola double-tapped another graphics file, which called up the face of a walleyed man with a thick beard, a large nose and curly hair. “I did a little digging into Hanson’s departure from the BPD. This is somebody who met with him at BPD’s Western District headquarters shortly before he quit. They talked in an interrogation room. He signed in as a lawyer, so there’s no audio of their meeting, but the name he signed in with doesn’t match any lawyer in the Maryland State Bar Association. So I ran his face through the database and eventually got a hit.”

Double-tapping on yet another file brought up another picture of the same man, but with the beard shaved off and thick-lensed glasses over the walleyes. “The only name we have for him is Galloway, and he’s been seen with a wide variety of dodgy personalities. Terrorists, arms dealers, assassins, you name it. But nobody’s ever been able to pin anything on him, or even find out his first name.”

“You think he’s recruiting for the Black Cross?”

Nodding, Brognola said, “Yes. And he’s a regular attendee of the Valley Forge Gun Show. He doesn’t have a booth, he just attends as a citizen. That show runs three or four times a year, and one of them is this weekend.”

“Hence your rush?”

“Yes. You think the Black Cross would be interested in gaining a new member?”

Bolan took a sip of his coffee. “Only one way to find out.”

“Good. We’ve already created a new identity for you.”

Raising an eyebrow, the Executioner asked, “Why not simply use the Matt Cooper ID?”

“He fits the profile, but this op risks burning that ID completely, and it’s too useful.” Brognola minimized all the files so the desktop was revealed once again, and this time he double-tapped another folder.

Several files became visible in the window, and Brognola called up several of them. One had a recent picture of Bolan, with a caption that read Michael Burns. Another had a U.S. Marines dossier that revealed Burns was a rifleman who served in the first Gulf War, but was dishonorably discharged due to insubordination—specifically for killing a prisoner after being told to bring him in alive.

“I see Bear’s been busy,” Bolan said, referring to Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, Stony Man’s computer expert.

“I had a feeling you were going to say yes to this one, Striker.”

“I know how important the Black Cross is to you, Hal.”

Brognola waved him off. “I don’t care about that—I just want these people stopped.”

“Redmond and the others served their country with honor and deserved a quiet retirement. I will take down whoever killed them.”