a trap.”
“Hold on,” Grimaldi told him, then pulled back on the yoke, sending the nose of the plane upward. “Got to get over those damn treetops.” The fuselage began to vibrate as the engines quivered.
Bolan’s eyes shot to the left. Grimaldi’s face was a frozen grimace, covered with a brocade of sweat.
“You need help?”
“Pull back on the yoke until we clear the trees.”
Bolan gripped it, but they were heading for a solid wall of branches. He braced for impact.
Human trafficking is a scourge, a crime against the whole of humanity. It is time to join forces and work together to free its victims and to eradicate this crime that affects all of us, from individual families to the worldwide community.
—Pope Francis
Criminals have no mercy, no shred of decency. As long as predators stalk the shadows to inflict misery on the innocent, I will work tirelessly to stop them.
—Mack Bolan
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
Note to Readers
Warehouse DistrictSeattle, Washington
A blanket of darkness and light rain had descended over the array of dilapidated warehouses and the dark areas in between. The wide alley contained little in the way of ambient lighting and a silver of moon was framed against a black sky. Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, leaned back in the passenger seat of the nondescript van and waited, occasionally bringing the night-vision binoculars to his eyes to scan the area that bisected the rows of huge warehouses on either side.
The building he was interested in was about fifty yards away. He and Jack Grimaldi had been watching and waiting for the better part of three hours. The tip about the smugglers had been intercepted by the cyber team at Stony Man Farm, the base for the covert antiterrorist and anticrime organization known as Stony Man. Whether the intel would pan out was questionable. This was the first solid opportunity to determine the exact nature and extent of the smugglers’ illegal activities and who their business partners might be.
Grimaldi emitted an extended groan from the driver’s seat. “Think these other guys are ever gonna show?” he asked.
Bolan didn’t reply.
“How many shootouts have we had in this damn city?” the Stony Man pilot continued. “Some of them go way back.”
Just as he was about to offer more words of wisdom, a faint sound caught Bolan’s ear and he held up his hand for silence.
Grimaldi didn’t speak for a few moments. “You know,” he said, “I think I hear a Harley.”
Bolan had heard it, too. The distinctive percussion of the big motorcycle’s engine began to reverberate louder. He raised the binoculars again but switched off the night-vision feature. Soon a lone headlight appeared at the opposite end of the alley, followed by a second set of lights obviously belonging to an automobile.
A big SUV.
This had to be it.
The motorcycle continued