CHAPTER ONE

      Islamabad, Pakistan, the present

      His hooded head bowed, his body shrouded in heavy robes, the big man shuffled down the street, arms crossed over his midsection, apparently trying to preserve what little heat he could. He stuck close to shadows cast by nearby buildings, stumbled and limped along as though physical pain accompanied every movement. A frigid January wind whipped down the street, carrying with it discarded scraps of paper and the smells of meat, vegetables and spices simmering in neighborhood kitchens.

      In furtive glances, the man’s eyes, like chipped blue ice, scanned the cityscape as he closed in on his destination.

      A pair of hard-eyed men, each brandishing an AK-47, blocked his path, but the man continued on. As he approached, they stepped aside, each staring at their feet as he passed. From his peripheral vision, the hooded figure saw one of them shiver as though touched by Death itself.

      Mack Bolan’s face remained impassive as he moved. Though his life was steeped in violence, he took no pleasure in intimidating others, experienced no intoxicating rushes of power or pride. That was the province of the men he sought, men who abused others simply because they could.

      Besides, Bolan knew that in war—particularly his War Everlasting—things never were as they seemed. Only fools declared victory prematurely.

      Case in point.

      A pair of shadows fell in behind Bolan, grew larger as their owners closed in. With his peripheral vision, the Executioner glanced into a nearby storefront window, saw the two men he’d just passed move in on him. Neither had unlimbered his assault rifle, but one of the men had produced a long knife from under his heavy coat.

      Unbidden, Bolan’s heart sped up and his senses came alive. His pursuers’ gaits remained steady as they came up from behind, but maintained some distance. In this case, Bolan neither wanted nor needed any combat stretch. He planned to take out both men in short order, disable them before they could unleash their firepower on him, or, more particularly, on an innocent bystander.

      At the request of an acquaintance, Bolan had come to Pakistan for revenge, but not a bloodbath. If even one innocent fell during his campaign, it would be deemed a failure.

      Bolan’s pursuers accelerated their approach. The soldier counted down the microseconds, waited for them to pass the point of no return. The hairs stood on the back of his neck as one of them came within grabbing distance. Simultaneously whirling and folding at the knees, Bolan’s hands came into view, clutching the Beretta 93-R and the .44-caliber Desert Eagle. One of his attackers lurched forward, grabbing handfuls of empty air and stumbling under his own momentum. Bolan moved from his path and the man crashed to the ground.

      A glint of steel caught the Executioner’s eye as the other attacker brought down his blade, the razor-sharp edge slashing a collision course with Bolan’s flesh. He fell backward, rolled and came up off to his adversary’s side. The silenced Beretta coughed once, spitting a thin line of flame. The 9 mm Parabellum round slammed into the man’s face, hitting the soft area at the bridge of his nose and driving him backward. Bolan’s opponent dropped his knife.

      A scream sounded from somewhere, but a burst of autofire from Bolan’s other attacker quickly drowned it out. The man still lay on the ground and was aiming the Kalashnikov rifle in haste. The bullets passed overhead as shell casings flew from the weapon, littering the ground around the man.

      Bolan cursed inside. The wide-eyed man’s rifle was spitting rounds everywhere, instantly raising the odds of innocent casualties. Bolan had hoped to take one of the men alive, to turn him into an intel source. With his erratic counterattack, the man had taken that option off the table.

      The big American raised the Desert Eagle and fired two rounds. Even as the thunder from the big-bore handgun shattered the afternoon, reverberating off cars and buildings, the hollowpoint rounds tunneled into the other man’s midsection, pinning his lifeless body against the wall.

      The soldier rose to his full height and slipped his weapons back into the special holsters built into the sleeves of his robe.

      Sirens wailed in the distance, heralding the arrival of police and emergency crews. He heard more screams from down the street, coupled with angry voices. He recognized both men from his briefing with Hal Brognola, head of the Justice Department’s Sensitive Operations Group, a day ago. They were foot soldiers, toadies for Bolan’s real quarry, international terrorist Ramsi al-Shoud.

      But this was their neighborhood and they likely had friends and family here, people who loved them and would be only too happy to put a bullet in Bolan’s brain in retribution for his actions. He could understand their grief and anger all too well. And he wasn’t simple-minded enough to believe that just because the dead men in front of him were terrorists that their whole lineage had been tainted. Bolan no more wanted to shoot a grieving family member on the offensive than he would a police officer.

      That didn’t mean he planned to stand here with a bull’s-eye painted on his back.

      He had important work to do in Pakistan, and he needed to get on with it.

      Holstering his weapons, he slipped his hood back over his head and left the killzone, navigating his way through a series of side streets and alleys. Passing a small tearoom, he heard a group of men speaking loudly, trying to drown out one another as they sipped hot beverages and smoked tobacco from water pipes. The Executioner continued at a dead run, feet barely making a sound, body hardly sagging under the weight of the robes and the weapons he carried underneath.

      He had one other place to try. Al-Shoud’s money man, Pervez Shallallab, lived in an upscale neighborhood only a few blocks distant. The man employed a heavy guard and Bolan likely would have to eliminate the foot soldiers protecting him, slowing his progress and forcing him to raise more of a ruckus than he’d hoped before hitting the head man.

      When circumstances dictated it, Bolan didn’t mind unleashing a boisterous campaign of hellfire and confusion. But al-Shoud was slippery, a survivor who would sacrifice his own mother before allowing an assailant to get within striking distance. In other words, a nauseating coward. The Executioner knew he was racing the clock to get to al-Shoud before he disappeared, living to terrorize another day. Making a lot of noise would only confound those efforts.

      Minutes later, as dusk began to settle over Pakistan’s capital, causing the temperature to plummet, Bolan reached his quarry’s home. Ensconced in nearby shadows, the soldier scanned the ornate home and the reinforced iron gates that secured it. A trio of black Mercedes, engines running, headlight beams knifing through the wintry gray, waited in the driveway. Was the man coming or going? There was no way for Bolan to know for sure.

      A well-lit street separated Bolan from Shallallab’s estate, making a stealthy approach that much more difficult. He knew he’d have to ditch the hooded robe, switch to the combat black-suit hidden underneath and sneak into the grounds. It could add several minutes onto his approach, but Bolan knew it couldn’t be helped. If these men knew about their dead comrades, they’d be on the lookout for an intruder.

      A pair of fighter jets flew over low enough that Bolan almost could read their markings. The jet engines’ whine momentarily drowned out all noise and set Bolan’s teeth on edge. As the sounds echoed for another moment in his ears, he smelled cologne, heard the faint scrape of a shoe sole disturbing gravel.

      Unleathering the Desert Eagle, Bolan whirled. A bulky man stood behind him, a pistol clutched in a two-handed grip.

      “Your mistake,” the man said, grinning.

      Fire and sound exploded from the pistol. Bullets pounded against Bolan’s chest like a sledgehammer, the blunt force stealing his breath, causing white flashes of pain to erupt in his vision. His mind raced as an overloaded nervous system tried to assimilate the fiery sensation spreading through his chest. The soldier reeled back, his legs rubbery, and fell to the ground. His skull hit the pocked asphalt, but