Homeland Terror

Contents

Prologue (#u8b5c4290-981e-55a0-a30d-c6ca8bffae30)

Chapter 1 (#u518e0b71-de7e-5c26-bad1-a760a621543c)

Chapter 2 (#ucc3564ad-f993-53bd-a1a0-1d03c3aaac8b)

Chapter 3 (#u4ce40651-cc04-5966-9b0a-dedae335350c)

Chapter 4 (#u80663349-ffad-55a9-826d-6565c37aee0c)

Chapter 5 (#u57225850-fc2b-5e88-bfcf-51d69b836724)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

Sykesville, Maryland

It was Mack Bolan’s second day at the Wildest Dreams Covert Ops Fantasy Camp. So far he’d been impressed by the camp’s regimen, which approximated the Stony Man blacksuit trainee program back at his own base of operations in Virginia. Already he’d undergone rigorous exercise workouts, field drills, martial-arts seminars, and an afternoon devoted to countersurveillance techniques and evasive driving maneuvers.

For the blacksuits, tests of this sort were more of a review, as most were culled from law enforcement or the military and had already proved themselves fit, as well as competent to engage the enemy. In sharp contrast, the two dozen initiates at the fantasy camp were, with few exceptions, unprepared for the physical challenges they’d coughed up nearly four grand apiece to take part in at the former Fort Hadley Army base. Most of Bolan’s bunkmates were a motley crew of Walter Mittys, overweight desk jockeys and delusional Rambo wanna-bes who, by the end of the week, would no doubt welcome a return to the humdrum of their nine-to-five jobs. Not surprisingly, within five minutes of lights-out, everyone in the barracks—including the few campers who’d weathered the day’s challenges without collapsing—had surrendered to exhaustion and was fast asleep.

Everyone, that was, except for Mack Bolan a.k.a. the Executioner.

He lay still a few minutes longer, then quietly slipped out of his sleeping bag and threw on the camou fatigues he’d been issued shortly after arriving at the camp the previous day before under the name Mel Schiraldi. With his dark hair trimmed to a buzz cut and his cobalt-blue eyes cloaked by a pair of brown contact lenses, Bolan bore a passing resemblance to the real Mr. Schiraldi, a Baltimore fitness instructor who’d made his reservations with Wildest Dreams more than three months earlier. Schiraldi had been convinced to let Bolan take his place in exchange for an all-expenses-paid Caribbean cruise and five thousand dollars in spending money, all courtesy of the Sensitive Operation Group’s discretionary fund. A small price to pay, SOG director Hal Brognola had reasoned, to allow Bolan to infiltrate the fantasy camp without drawing the suspicion he would have received as a last-minute walk-in.

Once he’d dressed, Bolan quietly carried his boots past the other bunks. Moonlight shone through the barracks windows, illuminating the wooden floorboards. Bolan took care to step on the joints where the wood was hammered down tight and less inclined to creak under the weight of his hard-toned, two-hundred-plus-pound frame. It was a trick Bolan had picked up through his years of stalking the omnipresent beast he called Animal Man, a beast that at various times had taken the shape of everything from Mafia hit man to al Qaeda terrorist. This night, Bolan was out to stalk yet another manifestation of that beast.

The rear doorway of the barracks opened onto a crushed-gravel path that wound through thickets of overgrown bramble to the latrines. It was late spring, and the small stones were cold against the Executioner’s bare feet. Once he came to a break in the shrubbery, Bolan abandoned the path and headed through tall grass to a knoll canopied by the branches of an ancient magnolia grove. Bolan paused at the base of one of the trees and donned his socks, then pried loose the thick heels of his customized boots.

Each of the heels was hollowed out to form a storage cavity. One heel contained a set of foldaway lock picks and a miniature earbud transceiver. Wedged into the other cavity was the closest thing to a weapon that Bolan had at his immediate disposal: a palm-sized neoprene plastic box that contained a high-powered flashlight, GPS transmitter and a firing tube loaded with a single .22-caliber round. Bolan hoped to complete his mission without being drawn into a firefight, but if it came to that, the minigun would at least be a step up, however small, from taking on the enemy unarmed.

Bolan extended the transceiver’s retractable flex mike and clicked it on before planting it in his ear. Within seconds he was in contact with Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi.

“I’m on the prowl,” Bolan whispered.

“Gotcha,” came the tinny reply through his earbud. “GPS signal’s coming in strong.”

“Stand by, then. I’m going in.”

Bolan tapped the earbud, shutting down the transmission. He quickly snapped the heels back into place, then slipped on his boots and made his way to the last of the magnolias.

Downhill from his position was a cinder-block storage building no larger than a one-car garage. Earlier in the day, while driving a BMW Z3 on an obstacle course through the surrounding foothills, Bolan had glimpsed a Ford pickup truck pull up to the shed. The road had quickly led him beyond view of the vehicle, but once he’d finished his road test—deliberately nudging a few pylons so as to not advertise his expertise behind the wheel—Bolan had passed the compound just as two men transferred a heavy crate from the truck to the outbuilding. Judging from the crate’s apparent weight and coffinlike dimensions, the Executioner had felt certain that he’d confirmed that the fantasy camp served as a cache for stolen arms reported missing three days earlier from the U.S. Army’s proving grounds in nearby Aberdeen.

Such thefts were disturbing enough when they involved firearms and conventional ammunition. But in this case, along with an assortment of M-16s and government-issue autopistols, the thieves had gotten their hands on an even more worrisome weapons trove. The implications of the heist were grave enough to earn mention in the daily intelligence brief that had crossed the President’s White House desk the morning after the incident. The President, in turn, had placed a priority call to Stony Man Farm, putting into motion the plan that now saw Mack Bolan roaming the fantasy camp grounds in the guise of fitness guru Mel Schiraldi.

The Executioner lingered a moment at the top of the hill, waiting for the moon to disappear behind an incoming bank of clouds. Drifting on the faint breeze was the smell of barbecued chicken. Bolan shifted his gaze to a two-story clapboard building nestled between the foothills a hundred yards away, near the same mountain road where he and the other campers had earlier tested their driving skills. Smoke trailed up from behind the building, which had once served as the Army base’s administrative headquarters and now housed the Wildest Dreams “faculty.” Bolan assumed there had to be some sort of patio behind the building with an outdoor grill. He also figured the camp staff was likely having a late dinner.

Like him, they’d barely broken a sweat during the day’s activities, and he knew it would be awhile before they all turned in. Their rooms were in the same building, though, and the previous night when Bolan had staked out the quarters, no one had ventured out once the lights had been dimmed. The only other personnel to be concerned about were guards posted out near the main entrance to the complex, but the gate was nearly a quarter mile away, hidden from view behind the bramble and magnolia trees.

The lax security led Bolan to believe that the camp organizers were confident their fantasy enterprise allowed them a means by which to hide in plain sight and pursue their ulterior business without drawing scrutiny. Clearly, the founders of Wildest Dreams—retired Marine Sergeant Jason Cummings and longtime Mercenary Quarterly editor Mitch Brower—were unaware that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had recently linked them to trafficking in black market arms, not only with overseas soldiers-of-fortune, but also a number of U.S.-based militia outfits, including several fringe groups advocating an overthrow of the federal government. Bolan, like his SOG counterparts and the President himself, was concerned that the Aberdeen weapons heist signaled the approach of that day when the militias crossed the line from mere propagandizing to carrying out their threats of armed insurrection.

Once the clouds fully obscured the moon, Bolan broke from the trees and started downhill. Halfway to the storage building, he froze. Behind him, he heard the sound of an approaching car. He was near the camp’s outdoor workout area and quickly took cover behind a stack of old tires used for agility drills. Moments later, the twin beams of the BMW Z3’s headlights swept across the grounds. The sports car was heading down the road that led to the main building. The Executioner ducked still lower as the lights passed over him. Clutching his paltry minigun, Bolan held his breath and listened intently for any sign the car was slowing.