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      Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, / He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.

      —William Shakespeare

      1564–1616

      There are those who think that killing is a game. There are men who believe the weapons in their hands make them the predators. But the sharpest weapon is the human mind…and the game, when hunting predators, has no rules.

      —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

      The morning air held a tang of moisture that beaded on the windshield as the sun hit it, chasing the crisp October dawn as a pollution-laden haze took its place. Three truant high school kids paused on the sidewalk not far from the parked car, craning their necks for a better look. A uniformed Detroit police officer shooed them away, muttering something about getting to school, and the teens shot back cheerful profanities as they made themselves scarce. The cop, shaking his head, turned back to the chalk outline visible among the milling crime scene team.

      There was blood everywhere.

      The dried blood, thicker and darker than most civilians would or could imagine, had washed across the crags of the asphalt in an impossibly wide bloom that partially obscured the chalk outline. Solemn figures were loading the zippered body bag in the back of the medical examiner’s van. They had seen many corpses; they would be hardened to all but the most brutal of deaths.

      Their grim expressions confirmed what the crimson lake of human blood had already told the man behind the wheel.

      Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, dropped the window on the driver’s side of the rented Dodge Charger. He put his left hand on the steering wheel and leaned forward for a better look. In his right hand, resting on his leg, was a custom-tuned Beretta 93-R machine pistol.

      Satisfied with what he could see from his vantage point, Bolan turned his attention to the weapon. He ejected the well-traveled pistol’s 20-round magazine and racked the slide, catching the loose round in his palm. Then he reloaded the round, seated it and racked the slide again, nudging the weapon’s selector switch and replacing it in the leather shoulder holster he wore under his three-quarter-length black leather coat. The coat concealed both the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle he wore inside his waistband in a Kydex holster and the double-edged Sting knife he carried in a matching sheath, also in his waistband, behind his left hip, angled for a draw with either hand.

      On the seat next to Bolan was an olive-drab canvas war bag. The bag contained a variety of items and gear, including spare magazines and ammunition, grenades, other explosives, and various sundry combat essentials. The Executioner had spent too many years fighting his war, often with very little backup, to walk into the field underprepared. He had pared down his standard mission load-out over that time to make sure he had anticipated every need that could be foreseen. In combat, of course, not all scenarios could be predicted. Still, he was as prepared before fact as was realistic for a soldier to be. The rest was adaptability, flexibility and will.

      Even as his mind turned these thoughts over in his head, the Executioner examined the problem before him. The clinical part of his brain filed the data of his senses—the inordinate quantity of blood, the bodily damage needed to produce it, and the public location of the body. These were indicators of the predator who had taken this kill. Another man might call them clues. Bolan was no detective, but he was an expert in predators. He was a soldier and a hunter.

      One of the locals, who wore an ill-fitting blazer rather than a uniform, detached himself from the crowd working the crime scene. He jogged across the blocked street with a manila folder in one hand. Bolan resisted the urge to shake his head. His contact at Stony Man Farm