Crisis Nation

Crisis Nation
Don Pendleton

When American military personnel are found beheaded in the swamps of Puerto Rico, Mack Bolan boards a plane and lands in a political revolution. As the streets of San Juan turn bloody, he suspects someone outside the country is running the show and the gangs behind the military slaughter are simple pawns in a much more complex game.After Bolan almost loses his own head in a midnight ax attack, an ambush sends some of his team to hospital. He decides it's time to take the war to the enemy–even if it means bringing down his own version of the apocalypse. Because when it comes to settling scores, the Executioner is the one wielding the ax.

“Everybody down!” the Executioner shouted

The machine gun outside slammed into life like doomsday. The wooden walls of the museum were no defense against the cigar-sized bullets that passed through them like they were paper. Glass display cases shattered in explosions of shrapnel shards. Juanita was the only one to have disobeyed Bolan, and she paid for it as a burst from the crew outside sacrificed her to the revolution. The machine gun outside slammed into life like doomsday. The wooden walls of the museum were no defense against the cigar-sized bullets that passed through them like they were paper. Glass display cases shattered in explosions of shrapnel shards. Juanita was the only one to have disobeyed Bolan, and she paid for it as a burst from the crew outside sacrificed her to the revolution.

Bolan glanced at the Beretta in his hand. They were definitely outgunned.

The weapon outside suddenly fell silent as it burned up its one-hundred-round belt. The crackle and pop of small-arms fire filled the gap as the machine-gun crew reloaded. Bolan rose to a crouch. It was time to move. “Everyone behind me!” he shouted.

The Executioner threw himself down again as he heard an unmistakable sound and the real hell-storm began.

Six-foot streaks of fire geysered through the hundred machine-gun holes perforating the museum walls. Somebody had brought along a flamethrower. They were upping the ante.

Crisis Nation

The Executioner

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

When you are occupying a position which the enemy threatens to surround, collect all your force immediately, and menace him with an offensive movement.

—Napoleon I

1769–1821

Maxims of War

When my enemy thinks I am surrounded and have no way out, I will take the opportunity to make my own attack.

—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

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

1

Laguna San José, Puerto Rico

Bolan stared at the three stripped bodies as they bobbed in the shallow water. They had bloated up from being in the salt marsh overnight. Bruises encircling the wrists and ankles showed that the two policemen and one policewoman had been bound. Brutal contusions on other parts of the policewoman’s body showed that she had endured other abuses before she had been decapitated with her fellow officers. San Juan CSI had marked off the area with stakes in the silt wrapped with crime-scene tape. It was impossible to get a car down there in the mud, so a harbor patrol fan boat was making its way through the reeds. Bolan glanced up as a passenger jet roared out of Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport across the lagoon. Heat shimmered off the causeway loaded with morning traffic crossing the shallow waters. At nine o’clock in the morning, it was already ninety degrees. He glanced back at the bodies. It was getting to the point that the police no longer waited to be called. Every morning harbor patrol sent out small boats to the lagoon and more often than not they came back with bodies.