Blood Vendetta

Human Target

An American hacker becomes target number one after she accesses the account of a Russian mob boss, revealing his organization’s terror plot against the U.S. by taking out its satellite system. She knows two things: they’re coming for her and she’s out of her league.

Having the intel the hacker stumbled into could prevent millions of deaths, and Mack Bolan is determined to find her before the Russians do. There’s only one problem. No one knows what she looks like. And when one of her friends compromises her location in London, the Executioner knows he must make his final move and end this high-stakes game of hide and seek...one way or the other.

The corpse of the gun-wielding rider was flung from the motorcycle

Bolan thrust himself to the side, rolled when he hit the ground and came up on one knee, his ice-blue eyes sweeping the terrain for more threats. A short volley from his M4 took down two more gunmen.

As he stood, Bolan loaded an HE round into the grenade launcher. He set his sights on a single-story building. An undulating glow of flames was visible inside the structure through the windows. A pair of bay doors that made up half of the building’s facade were buckling from the onslaught of the flames.

The handful of guards, who had been trying to hose down the structure, abandoned their work when they saw Bolan and began grabbing for their weapons.

He noticed another man climbing frantically into the cab of a tanker truck and, judging by his urgency, Bolan guessed the truck wasn’t filled with corn syrup.

The Executioner leveled the launcher and fired.

Blood Vendetta

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

 1929—1968

Sometimes to get justice, you need to go around the law.

Is this right or wrong? That’s not for me to say. I am

no judge—I am the Executioner.

—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 com-mand 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.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Tim Tresslar for his contribution to this work.

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

The soft, steady beeping roused her from a light sleep.

For a half second, she thought it was her alarm clock, waking her for work. The bank! Jesus, she needed to get up!

Her eyes snapped open. Reality sank in and, like an unseen hand, it jerked her upright in her bed. The lamp on her bedside table flickered on and off in time with the beeping.

By the time she threw aside her blankets, her heart was pounding in her chest, her mouth dry with fear.

Muttering a curse, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, hauled herself upright and padded across the floor to a laptop computer that stood on top of the white pine dresser. The computer, which was hooked into her alarm system, was in sleep mode. She punched a couple of buttons on the keyboard and the screen brightened. A window with a layout of each floor of the two-story home was displayed on the screen. A flashing red dot indicated a tripped sensor at the rear door.

Turning, she grabbed a pair of black denim jeans that were hung over the back of a chair and slipped them on, followed by a black turtleneck and sneakers.

It might be no big deal, she told herself as she laced up her shoes. The house was supposed to be empty. Maybe it was some teens looking for a place to drink or screw. Or a homeless man looking for a warm place to spend the night.

Or maybe someone had come for her. The thought caused blood to pound in her ears. Fear stuck in her throat as a dull but insistent ache.

No, she told herself, not this night. She set her jaw and shook her head to flush out the panicked thoughts. Returning to her bed, she kneeled next to it and felt around beneath it for the Smith & Wesson .38 revolver sheathed in a leather holster. Her memory raced back to the pawn shop where she’d purchased the weapon, to her conversation with the owner. He’d patiently explained that the .38 wasn’t the most powerful handgun in the world, but it was simple and reliable. She’d tapped her finger against a glass case that contained four 9 mm auto-loading pistols.

“Aren’t those better?” she’d asked. “More bullets?”

She’d at least known that much about guns at the time. The pawn shop owner, holding the S&W revolver, the empty cylinder flopped out to the side, flashed a nasty grin. He flicked his wrist and the cylinder snapped into place.

“Lady,” he had said, “you can’t put something down with five shots from this, save the sixth for yourself.”

He’d laughed.

She’d swallowed hard and with barely another word bought the revolver, three speed loaders and two boxes of hollowpoint ammunition.

Years later, she still hadn’t decided how much of what he’d said had been a joke aimed at further unnerving an already nervous lady and how much had been his true belief.

A night-light plugged into a wall outlet suddenly blinked.

The first alarm, which already had stopped beeping, was designed to wake her, alert her to an initial intrusion.

This one told her someone had set off motion detectors on the first floor. Belting the pistol around her waist, she reached under the bed again, feeling around until fingertips brushed against cold steel. She closed her hand around the shotgun barrel and pulled the weapon from beneath the bed.

The 20-gauge shotgun’s double barrel had been sawed down to eighteen inches. Like the revolver, she liked the shotgun’s simplicity. Easy to carry and load and unload. It didn’t require marksmanship to hit a target with this gun, even though she’d practiced with similar weapons over the years. At close quarters, even under stress, she believed she could fire the weapon and score a hit. Gunfights were not her specialty. Her skills lay elsewhere and likely were the catalyst for this late-night visit. Stuffing a handful of shells into her front right pants pocket, she came back to her feet and continued to move.

She’d drilled for this for years. Dozens of times in the real world, countless times in her head. She never knew who might come for her or how they might find her. But she always knew someone would come. She only hoped she was ready.

The night-light flashed again. A cold sensation raced down her spine. The flickering meant someone had stepped onto a pressure pad on the second floor and they were coming to her room.

She aimed the shotgun at the door.

The knob turned slowly and quietly. Had she been asleep she never would have heard it. She watched as the door swung inward and revealed a big man clad in black standing in the doorway.

In a flash, she saw his hand come up. The night-light’s glow glinted on a metallic object in his hand. Without hesitation, her shotgun exploded, twin tongues of flame lashing out from the barrel. The blast hammered the man’s midsection, hurled him from the doorway and into a wall opposite her bedroom.

She broke open the shotgun, reloaded.

Her luck was about to run out, that much she knew. She’d just taken out one armed man, probably in part because he’d underestimated her. Or maybe because they’d been ordered to take her alive. Whatever the reason, she guessed things were about to become much worse. They knew she was armed and willing to use a gun. If they were burglars, they’d probably get the hell out. If they were here specifically for her, though, they likely would keep coming for her.

Rounding the door in a low crouch, she gingerly stepped over the body of the first man she’d killed, looked around.

The bulb of a single small lamp burned downstairs, emanating a white glow that quickly was swallowed up by the darkness.

Her ears continued to ring and she forced herself to rely on her eyes as much as possible. She could see shadows shifting along on the walls and guessed others were waiting for her to come down the steps and fight her way out.

Panic started to well up from within. Her knees went rubbery and her chest tightened, making it hard to breathe.

She shook her head. Not happening. She had no idea who they were, or who they worked for, but she guessed her visitors had lost money to her—or more accurately to the Nightingale—meaning they had hurt somebody, maybe many people. Maybe someone like Jessica. An image of her sister—curly blond hair hanging past her shoulders, her stomach curved outward as she entered her third trimester of pregnancy—flashed through her mind. Her breathing slowed and her knees became steady again.

If they’d hurt someone like Jessica, and she’d taken their money, they’d gotten exactly what they deserved.

She crept into a second bedroom. Crossing the floor, she held the shotgun by its pistol grip with one hand and worked the lock on the window with her free hand. She raised the window, which went up about eight inches before it stuck.

She swore through clenched teeth, cast a glance over her shoulder at the door, but saw no one there. With a grunt, she gave the window one last push, but it remained jammed. Leaning the shotgun against the wall, she pushed against the window with both hands. It gave, but with a squeak that sounded like a bomb explosion in the stillness. A moment later, she heard one of the stair steps creaking under someone’s weight.

Pulling the .38 from its holster, she spun around and leveled the pistol at the hall. A shadow appeared in the doorway. She snapped off two quick shots. One slug hammered into the molding around the door, splintering the wood. A second drilled into the plasterboard to the right of the door, just a few inches above a light switch. The figure ducked from view.

Several heartbeats ticked by as she remained motionless, the pistol trained on the doorway.

A door slammed shut downstairs with a crack, the unexpected noise startling her body, which was already overloaded with adrenaline. In the distance, she heard sirens. She guessed someone had summoned the police to check out the gunshots. For a normal person, the sound likely would provide some comfort. But she’d relinquished any pretension of normalcy years ago. Her instincts told her to run. Run from the police. Run from the people who’d come for her. Just run like hell and figure the rest out later.

Looping the shotgun over her back, she pushed herself through the window and disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

SHUTTING THE DOOR behind her, Davis turned the dead bolt and flicked the wall switch. Fluorescent lights sparked to life and bathed the room in soft white light. A wooden workbench, the surface scarred and blemished, ran the length of one wall. A tool chest, its metal skin scratched and mottled with rust spots, stood in another corner. A compact car, its red paint bleached by exposure to the elements, was parked in the middle of the room.

She shoved her keys into her hip pocket and withdrew one of the cell phones from her belt pack. With her thumb, she punched through a group of numbers, put the phone to her ear and listened as it dialed through a series of cutouts. She noticed her hands starting to shake, immediately felt her face flush.

It’s just adrenaline, she told herself. You’ve been through hell. It’s catching up with you. Ignore it.

After two rings, someone picked up on the other end.

“Yes?” It was Maxine.

“Good to hear your voice.”

“You okay?”

“All things considered.”

“What happened?”

“Someone came after me tonight.”

“Who?” Maxine asked, concern evident in her voice.

“I’m not sure. There were at least two people.”

“They still after you?”

“Not those two.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Yes.”

“Let me ask again—are you okay?”

“No, but it needed to be done,” she replied. She gave a small shrug even though Maxine couldn’t see her.

“I’m sure it needed to be done. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

Davis said nothing.

“What’s your next move?”

“Get out of here,” Davis replied.

“And go where?”

“Tell you when I get there.”

“You don’t know? Or you don’t want me to know?”

“The latter.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not like that. Someone’s looking for me. They found me. Who knows what else they know—about me, the network, you. I need to disappear. It’s probably better that no one knows where I am.”

“I understand,” Maxine replied, her tone telegraphing that she didn’t understand.

“Do me a favor.”

“Of course.”

“I had to leave in a hurry. Call Nigel. Ask him to do a remote wipe of my systems. Please. I’ll also need some equipment. Cell phone—the usual stuff. Need to replace what I lost.”

“Consider it done. What else?”

“Nothing. Yet. I’ll be in touch.”

Davis ended the call and stuffed the phone back into her belt pack. She shut her eyes, rubbed her temples with the first two fingers of each hand. An image flashed across her mind, the first man she’d gunned down, body thrust back by the shotgun blast, his midsection ripped open. Her eyes snapped wide open and she covered her mouth with her hand. My God, she thought, I killed two people on this night, murdered them. A heaviness settled over her, dragged her to her knees. She hung her head, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

Chapter 1

Mack Bolan, a.k.a. the Executioner, rolled into the War Room at Stony Man Farm.

He wore blue denim jeans, a black turtleneck and black leather tennis shoes. Gathered around the room were Hal Brognola, Director of the Justice Department’s Special Operations Group, Barb Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, and Aaron the “Bear” Kurtzman, the head of the Farm’s cyber team. Brognola, shirt sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows, the top button of his dress shirt undone and his tie pulled loose, was seated at the head of the briefing table. Kurtzman sat to Brognola’s right, in his motorized wheelchair, a laptop computer open on the table in front of him. Price, her honey-blond hair pulled into a ponytail, saw Bolan first and flashed him a smile.

“Welcome back, Striker,” she said. “It’s good to have you back.”

Bolan nodded. “I have a feeling I won’t be here long. Am I right?”

“Very perceptive, Striker,” Brognola said. “As always, the choice is yours. But I think you’ll want a piece of the action on this, once you hear about it.”

The big Fed gestured at one of the high-backed chairs that ringed the table and Bolan settled into the nearest one. He set a brushed-steel travel mug filled with coffee on the table.

Kurtzman studied the cup for a couple of moments before giving Bolan a puzzled look.

“What’s that?”

“Coffee, last I checked.”

“I can see it’s coffee.”

“Then why ask?”

Kurtzman gestured with a nod at the drip coffeemaker that stood on a nearby counter.

“I made coffee.”

“I know.”

“You could have had some.”

“True.”

The creases in Kurtzman’s forehead deepened.

“But you didn’t want my coffee.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I just wanted this coffee, that’s all.”

“Because it’s better than mine.”

“I just wanted this coffee,” Bolan said. “That’s all.”

Brognola cleared his throat. “Seriously, I could listen to you clowns do this all day. But if you’ll indulge me.”

Kurtzman scowled. “This isn’t over,” he said, jabbing at the air between them with his forefinger.

Bolan nodded and gulped some coffee from his mug.

“Sorry to call you back in, Striker. Especially on the heels of another mission. But I wanted to give you first crack at this one.”

“I’m listening.”

Brognola pulled an unlit cigar from his mouth, set it in an ashtray.

“You ever heard of the Nightingale?”

“Assuming you don’t mean Florence or the bird, I’d have to say no.”

“You’re right. I don’t mean either of them. It’s a person, maybe several persons—we’ve not been able to nail it down. But there’s someone out there who’s been ripping people off for years, stealing money from their bank accounts.”

“White-collar cyber crime? Not exactly my area.”

“Agreed,” Brognola said. “But it’s not what you think. This—well, let’s assume it’s one person for the sake of argument—this individual targets a lot of the same people you do. Mobsters, terrorists, arms smugglers, even heads of corrupt states.”

“Steals their money?”

Brognola nodded. “Right from under their noses. He, she, whatever, is very good at this, too. Best we can tell the Nightingale steals pretty much with impunity.”

“From some very deserving people,” Bolan said. “Sorry, Hal, still trying to see how this applies to me.”

“Getting there, Striker. We don’t know what this individual does with the money. Rumor has it he or she has passed some of it along to crime victims, through a series of cutouts.”

“An altruistic thief,” Bolan said.

“Altruism or a big middle finger to her victims,” Brognola said, “we’re not really sure. Maybe both. Psychologists at Langley did a work-up and believe it’s as much as anything a way to salve this person’s guilt.”

“Guilt for?”

“For stealing,” Price answered.

“From scum,” Bolan countered. “Bad people.”

Price shrugged. “Good people, bad people. If you’re raised not to steal, you’re going to feel bad about it. Doesn’t matter if you know in your heart you’re doing the right thing. You’re still going to feel guilty.”

Bolan nodded his understanding. In his War Everlasting, he’d tried to maintain a few basic rules. Don’t harm police, even crooked ones. Don’t put innocent bystanders in harm’s way, even if it means letting a target escape. These rules had helped him maintain his humanity even when surrounded by hellfire and chaos. Though he’s killed countless times, he takes no joy from it.

“I can understand that,” he said.

“Thought you could,” Price replied.

“So, again, what does this have to do with me? And Stony Man Farm, for that matter?”

“We’re not one hundred percent sure ourselves. But we think the Nightingale may be in trouble,” Price said.

“Not that I’m unsympathetic,” Bolan said, “but there are a lot of people in the world who are in trouble.”

“We, that being the United States, have been tracking this person for a couple of years,” Brognola said, “ever since we confirmed their existence really. At first, we only caught small whiffs. Our intelligence agencies would hear a drug kingpin or a terrorist bitching because a bank account came up empty. The first few times, we wrote it off. We figured they were getting ripped off the old-fashioned way, either through an inside job or by a rival. The more analysts put the pieces together, though, the clearer it became that someone was picking their pockets.” A smile played on his lips. “And that someone was getting away with it.”

“How much did they get away with?”

Brognola shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Estimates run into the tens of millions of dollars. But they’re just that, estimates. A lot of the countries where the thefts occurred, well, the record keeping is for shit. And in Switzerland and some of the Caribbean countries? Not exactly bastions of transparency.”

Bolan looked at Kurtzman and cocked an eyebrow. “Since when has that stopped you?”

“I’m working on it,” Kurtzman said. “I’m working on it.”

The Executioner turned back to Price.

“You said this person—”

“Or persons,” she said.

“—or persons, could be in trouble. What makes you think that?”

Brognola pushed a thin stack of photos across the table to Bolan. The big American picked up the pile and studied the one on top. It was a picture of a man sprawled on the floor. His face was so pale from blood loss it seemed to glow. Dead eyes stared skyward. The flesh of his torso was shredded. The soldier glanced up at Brognola.

“Bear mauling?”

“Shotgun blast, smart-ass,” Brognola said. “Very close range. Gutted the stupid bastard.”

Nodding, Bolan peeled the photo from the stack, set it facedown on the table and studied the next one. The next photo depicted a man laying in a hallway, his chest torn open. He glanced up at Brognola.

“Shotgun?”

“Bravo, Columbo. These two were found in a London residence, which based on the little evidence left behind, we think may have most recently been inhabited by Nightingale.”

“Any IDs on them?”

“Russian, both of them,” Brognola said. “The names are in the case file. Frankly, they’re inconsequential. Couple of hired hands. Interpol had listed them as suspects in a couple of murders, one in France, a second in the Netherlands. Not a couple of Boy Scouts. But they’re hardly supervillains.”

“But you don’t know who they’re working for?”

Brognola shook his head.

“I’ll get to that. But, in short, we believe it’s someone Nightingale stole from. From what we’ve been able to scrape together, they flew into London a couple of days ago. Bought their airline tickets under false names, with fake credit cards. Nothing in their luggage was of any use. If they hadn’t been busted for petty crimes along the way, it’s possible we never would have made them.”

“They leave anything behind?”

“Couple of cell phones. The London authorities are tracking them. We’ll see how far it takes them. Their weapons, obviously. Night-vision goggles. A rental car.”

“Most likely they didn’t fly into London with all that stuff,” Bolan said. “They must have had someone on the ground supplying them.”

“We thought of that,” Brognola said. “Solid theory. We don’t have the intel to back it up, though. But we have someone working that angle.”

“That someone is?”

“David McCarter.”

“McCarter’s in London? My apologies to the queen.”

Brognola grinned. “David was already over there, buying a Jaguar that had been buried under some tarps in a garage somewhere. We thought it might help having someone on the ground to act as—” Brognola made quotation marks with his fingers “—a liaison between MI5, Scotland Yard and the U.S.”

“God help us.”

“Yeah, we needed a diplomat, but we got McCarter. Imagine.”

“The Brits will appreciate his deft touch.”

“Look,” Brognola said, “here’s the upshot of all this. As you can imagine, the U.S. government finds itself in a unique position here. Officially, the government doesn’t condone vigilantes. We don’t condone stealing money from people, even if they’re criminals and terrorists, unless it’s part of a sanctioned intelligence operation.”

“There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

Brognola downed some coffee and nodded. “Absolutely. What this person has accomplished is pretty damn amazing. As best we know, she or he has no governments backing her.”

“Which means no government-imposed constraints.”

“As I said, what Nightingale has been able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing,” Brognola said. “This person has acquired account numbers and pieced together complex financial networks. He or she knows lots of things, and we want to know how.”

Bolan’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “Look, if you want someone to plug a leak.”

“Hardly,” Brognola replied, shaking his head vigorously. “Frankly, we want to recruit this person. Nightingale could fill in gaps in our knowledge. There’s a place for those skills.”

“Off the books, of course,” Price interjected. “But we can offer full legal protection, a new identity, the works.”

“What leads do we have?” Bolan asked.

Kurtzman gestured at the stack of photos in Bolan’s hand.

“Look through those,” he said, “stop when you find a picture of a white-haired guy.”

Bolan found a close-up of a round-faced man with pink cheeks, pale green eyes and white hair trimmed down to stubble. He studied the photo for a couple of seconds, then tossed it, face up, on the tabletop. “This the guy?”

“That’d be him,” Kurtzman said. “His name is Jonathan Salisbury. He’s British by birth, but moved to the United States in the early 1970s and eventually became a citizen. Did a lot of computer work for the Pentagon, all highly classified. Guy was a genius.”

“Was?”

“He’s dead,” Kurtzman said. “Poor bastard asphyxiated himself in a garage. Neighbors found him in the car while it still was running. Hadn’t been dead long. I have a file I’ll give you with some clips about him. It was big news in the Beltway when he died.”

“I’ve never heard of him. He famous in computer circles?”

“More like infamous,” Kurtzman said. “Technically, he was in deep shit with the Feds.”

Bolan sipped his coffee. “Isn’t that like being a little pregnant?”

“I knew the guy,” Kurtzman said. “We weren’t friends, but I knew him. I knew his work. To say he was brilliant would be an understatement. His depth of knowledge when it came to computers and cybersecurity was nearly unmatched.”

“Except by you.”

“There are maybe three dozen people with this guy’s chops. Me and thirty-five others.” Kurtzman allowed himself a grin, though it faded almost immediately. “That said, the guy was branded a traitor.”

“Because?”

“He tapped into the Defense Intelligence Agency’s computers, dug up some records on a Russian guy, Mikhail Yezhov, and passed it along.”

“Passed it along to whom?”

Kurtzman shrugged. “Nobody knows for sure,” he said.

“That’s a pretty big deal.”

“Sure,” Kurtzman said. “I’m not saying otherwise. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But there were extenuating circumstances. His wife was killed. Not by Yezhov, but a couple of his shooters. At least that was the working theory of the Russian investigators. Not a far-fetched theory, either. But the Russians didn’t want to go after Yezhov, so they let the whole thing go. Salisbury’s wife was a criminal justice professor and taught at Georgetown University. She’d written a couple of papers on Yezhov’s network and then she turned up dead.”

“The Justice Department tried to get the Russians off the dime on this thing,” Brognola added, “but they wouldn’t budge. Apparently, Yezhov rates top-level protection in his country.”

“You think Salisbury got pissed off enough to steal information?” Bolan asked.

“And pass it along to Nightingale? Yeah, I do. That’s the theory. And our two dead friends have links to Yezhov, too.�