Pele's Fire

Pele's Fire
Don Pendleton

When six U.S. naval officers disappear inexplicably while on leave in Honolulu, Mack Bolan is suspicious.Then an informant emerges from the Hawaiian underground with claims that a nationalist group has escalated its home-rule rhetoric to militant action. He claims Pele's Fire is planning a devastating terrorist attack somewhere on the islands. There aren't any obvious links between the two events, but Bolan spots a potentially deadly chain.The masterminds of terror are desperate to eradicate any possibility the traitor who has cooled to their cause will keep them from executing their shocking plan. It's up to Bolan to protect the informant and stop the attack–making the Executioner both hunter and prey.

The gunners hit the ground running

Bolan didn’t wait for them to organize. He fired a three-round burst into the nearer chase car’s windshield, where the driver’s head should be, and thought he heard a strangled cry before all hell broke loose around him.

Bolan couldn’t accurately count the muzzle flashes winking at him from behind the headlights, but he thought that there were only five. If he was right, if he had drawn first blood with the unlucky driver, then he had already shaved the hostile odds by seventeen percent.

That still left five assassins, armed and angry, throwing down at him with everything they had.

Aolani’s car would never be the same. Bullets were raking it from grill to trunk along the driver’s side, some of them coming through the now shattered windows. So far, Bolan could not smell any leaking gasoline, but that was just dumb luck. Both tires were already deflated on the driver’s side, and Bolan knew they wouldn’t leave the Punchbowl in it.

Assuming they ever left at all.

Pele’s Fire

The Executioner

Don Pendleton

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

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Michael Newton for his contribution to this work.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

—Aldous Huxley,

1894–1963

Collected Essays

I’ve learned enough from history to know that some mistakes should never be repeated. I can’t change the past, but with a little luck, I just might change the future.

—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

Epilogue

Prologue

Honolulu, Hawaii

“Here they come,” Tommy Puanani said. “Everyone get ready.”

“Man,” his brother, Ehu, muttered from the backseat of their stolen Ford sedan, “we all been ready for the past six hours.”

“Never mind that,” Tommy snapped. “Just do your job.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

It took iron will to keep from spinning in the driver’s seat and reaching for his younger brother, maybe slapping Ehu’s face. But what would be the point?