Annotation
Billowing clouds of smoke violate the neon glow of the Nishi-Ginza when an explosion rips through one of Tokyo's crowded pachinko parlors.
It's a deadly beginning to a trail of deceit and revenge that leads Mack Bolan to a group of corrupt U.S. servicemen operating a drug pipeline back to the States. Their Japanese leader has ambitious plans: he intends to cripple America with the very weapon that scarred him.
Bolan follows his own code of honor to prevent a nuclear bomb from creating another Nagasaki.
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Don Pendleton's Executioner
Prologue
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Don Pendleton's Executioner
Mack Bolan
Code of Dishonor
Hold it the greatest wrong to prefer life to honor and for the sake of life to lose the reason for living.
Juvenal
He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
Walter Lippmann
Honor is actually a physical thing — the heart to know what's right, the guts to do what's right and the muscle to back it up.
Mack Bolan
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mike McQuay for his contribution to this work.
Prologue
Staff Sergeant Wilson Loomis wheeled the dark blue jeep from behind the Air Police shack at the front gate and gunned it across the hard-packed dirt to Freedom Boulevard, which bisected the Fremont Air Base in South Dakota.
"Crap," said Peterson from beside him as they bounced onto the floodlit road, a cloud of white dust following them. "Why don't they pave us a road back over there?"
Loomis smiled over at the other AP. "Then you wouldn't have nothin' to complain about, Sarge."
"Crap," Peterson said again, and his hand went reflexively to the billy club at his side.
They sped past the double rows of barracks that lined both sides of the road, then turned onto Mitchell, just past the BX, and hurried toward the commotion at the NCO Club. The land stretched out flat and wide into the darkness in all directions. Silos filled with near-obsolete Minuteman missiles pitted the barren landscape. It was a cold Dakota night, and once again Loomis wished he had drawn duty in Hawaii.
"Travis is gonna have his bowels in an uproar over this one," Peterson said. "He's been trying to shut down the club for a year 'cause of gamblin', and a big fight ain't gonna make it any easier to keep it open."
"Look!" Loomis said, pointing. The club sat a block down the road. A crowd had gathered around the large wooden structure, and flames were shooting out one of the windows, smoke drifting into the night sky.
Loomis felt his muscles tighten, and his own hand went to the club at his side, his bright white gloves standing out under the glare of the floodlights. "Call for backup," he began, "and get one of the crash cars over here."
He reached down and hit the siren, turning on the cherry that sat on the roof. He could hear Peterson on the radio as he used his horn to part the large crowd that blocked the street.
They skidded to a stop by the wide front steps of the building, their headlights coming to rest on a body sprawled across the stairs.
"Crap," Peterson muttered as they climbed out of the jeep. He ran to the body while Loomis addressed the crowd.
"I want anybody who was in there to come up here by the jeep!" he called loudly as he unholstered his issue .45. "The rest of you get out of here!"
Not surprisingly, everyone moved into the safety of the darkness, which was all Loomis wanted, anyway. A halfhearted bucket brigade had formed and was throwing buckets of water through the window where the flames shot out. He turned to see Peterson sitting on the stairs, staring at his hand. He walked over to the man.
"It's Isley," Peterson said, pointing to the man on the stairs. He held up a hand. His white glove was soaked with blood. "He's dead."
Loomis bent toward Master Sergeant Ted Isley, NCO in charge of the base club, and rolled him over. The man's stomach had been shredded with an SMG; blood and intestines leaked from a series of open wounds. There was no doubt of his condition.
"Good God," Loomis said. Isley's eyes were wide open, a look of perplexity on his face that Loomis couldn't stand to see. He rolled the man back over to hide that face.
Peterson stood and looked into the open doorway. "We got to go in there?" he asked.
Loomis nodded and moved up the stairs. In the distance he could hear approaching sirens — backup. His stomach was in knots as he moved to the right of the doorway, motioning Peterson to the other side. They jumped through the doorway, hitting the floor and rolling into a crouch with their weapons extended before them.
Loomis had spent nearly every night in the club during the past year and a half — there had been little else to do in such godforsaken country — yet he hardly recognized it. The smoke and flames and flickering lights had turned it into a landscape from a nightmare. The sound of the jukebox provided eerie background music.
He stood slowly, cautiously, and Peterson followed his lead.
"I don't like this, Will," the man said.
"Go pull the plug on that damned machine," Loomis said, blinking against the smoke and moving forward.
The place was a wreck, with overturned tables and chairs and broken glass scattered everywhere. There had been more than just a fight here.
He tripped, falling hard against a table before regaining his footing. Loomis had stumbled over another body, a body dressed in civilian clothes.
He retched, vomiting on the dirty wooden floor, and was white as milk when he stood up.
"Sweet Jesus," came Peterson's voice from across the smoke-filled room. "Oh, no."
"Pete? Where are you?"
He made his way to the dining room. His eyes were beginning to burn.
"Loomis?" came a voice from the direction of the doorway. More APs had arrived.
"In here," Loomis called. "Get ambulances. Come in careful, but watch for me and Peterson."
"Gotcha."
Loomis made the dining room, the music still rising and falling from the jukebox. The sight was sickening. He closed his eyes, pressing his handkerchief tightly against his mouth to keep from screaming. That music. That damned music was still droning.
"No!" he yelled finally, snapping under the strain. He turned and began firing at the jukebox, emptying the clip into the phonograph. And finallv it died, fading slowly away.
Loomis looked down the dark hallway, and instinctively he knew that the battle had started there. "The back room," he said and reached out to slap Peterson on the arm. "Let's check it."
The man nodded, and they moved into the hallway, stepping across the civilian body that lay there. The back room was where the gambling took place, where the booze was drunk after hours, where the pot was smoked. This was where the noncoms came when they wanted to be bad little boys.
"Watch it," he said and brought up a booted foot.
Peterson hugged the wall as Loomis kicked viciously at the door, tearing it right off its hinges.
Five bodies lay just inside the door of the gaming room. In the flickering light Loomis could see a crap table, its surface covered by what looked like a pile of sand. He reached the table and discovered that a small mountain of white powder was piled on it. It wasn't sand. It sure as hell wasn't sugar. He touched the side of the pile, coming away with a dusting that he
brought to his tongue.
It was bitter, harsh, and within seconds he began losing the feeling in his tongue. Cocaine.
Loomis backed away in awe. He had no idea how much cocaine sold for, but he knew he was looking at millions of dollars' worth. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had gone down in the club. Master Sergeant Isley had tried to move the powder to the civilian pushers, and a greedy fight had broken out.
Loomis stared at the small mountain of coke on the table. He couldn't help but wonder at the power it wielded.
1
The old Hank Williams record scratched through a high-tech sound system as Mack Bolan nursed a coffee at the bar of the Japanese clip joint. The voice of the country singer did little to soothe Bolan's uneasiness.
Hillbilly Heaven was located in an area known as Bar Row, less than a mile from the main gates of Yokota Air Base. It was a phone booth-sized serviceman's bar, squeezed into a two-block area with dozens of other bars just like it. Twenty-seven miles from Tokyo proper, Hillbilly Heaven could just as easily have been in Manila or Panama City or Bangkok or... Saigon. The cities and bars were all the same, with the same country music, the same lonely farm boys, the same bar girls, the same overpriced "tea" they served that encouraged the blond kids from Nebraska to talk about their confusion.
Bolan felt confused. There was something about this whole deal that didn't make sense. It was out of his control, and control was everything in his line of work.
He smelled the woman's perfume before she reached him, and he glanced up to watch her reflection in the mirror behind the counter. She was a bar girl. Her black hair fell below her bare shoulders, and the slit of her tight red dress exposed a shapely thigh.
"Would you like to buy me a drink, big man?" she asked.
"Go find somebody else," he said as he looked at his watch. It was 8:00 p.m. Something should be happening.
She squeezed his shoulder with her red-nailed fingers. "You don't like girls?"
"I like girls fine," he said and turned to stare at her. She returned his cold gaze fearlessly and moved closer, her hands going to his chest. Bolan knew he was being patted down by an expert, and he didn't think it was his wallet she was interested in.
"What do you want?" he asked, grabbing her wrist before her fingertips touched the butt of the Beretta 93-R nestled in its combat harness under his light jacket.
A smile just touched her lips then fled. "You Mr. Reeves?"
"Yeah," he said softly.
"I have a message for you from..."
He put a hand on her mouth. "Let's take a walk," he said.
"But my boss..."
He stopped her with a look, then reached into his pocket and threw a hundred-dollar bill on the polished bar. "Outside," he said.
He took her by the arm and led her outside as several airmen belted out "Your Cheatin' Heart" along with the record. Bolan wondered if he had ever been that young.
They moved into the Japanese night, the narrow, winding street lit by the gaudy neon signs advertising each drinking establishment. The place looked like a carnival.
The street was wet; it was the rainy season, early summer, and the dampness had seeped into everything. He directed the woman into a quiet corner and then turned her to face him. She was young, probably still a teenager.
"What have you got?"
"You're supposed to meet a man in a red cap at the pachinko parlor on the corner of Nishi-Ginza."
He took her arms, squeezing hard. "Tell me the truth," he demanded, and fright finally filled her eyes.
"An old man come this afternoon," she said quickly. "He tell me to look for Mr. Reeves at eight o'clock and to give him the message, and he gave me a thousand yen. That's all."
She was trembling. Bolan didn't believe for a moment that she was frightened of him, but he did believe her story. He let her go, and her manner softened as she raised her hands to massage her arms.
"You hurt me," she said.
Bolan reached into his pocket for a hundred-dollar bill like the one he'd given her boss. It was the government's money. He was simply using it as hands-on foreign aid.
Her eyes lit up, and she snatched the bill. "This a lot of cash," she said, looking around. "Maybe you want something else for it?"
He looked at her, remembering a girl no older than this one, a young woman who had been unselfish and kind. "Go home and give that money to your family," he said. Although his sister had been gone for many years, the pain of her forced prostitution and subsequent death still burned within him. "Don't flash it around if you want to keep it."
"You don't worry about me," she said with youthful arrogance as she slipped the bill down her bodice. "Mari take care of herself, Mr. Reeves."
She turned then and hurried away before he could change his mind, and Bolan was alone again. Reeves was the name on his passport, one of many identities that he'd had in the past twenty years. In Nam they had called him Sergeant Mercy. The last time he'd been to Japan, they'd called him Colonel Phoenix. And there was another name for which he was well known — the Executioner.
Bolan moved down to the end of the block and turned onto Meiji-Dori, heading away from the base. He knew where the pachinko parlor was. He had done a recon of the whole area during the daylight hours, just in case he needed to get away quickly. Japan is a country of many mountains and streets that wind in and out like jungle paths, an easy place for most Westerners to lose their way. Under the circumstances, Bolan wanted every advantage he could get.
He walked slowly, watching. It was the end of the month, so most of the GIs were out of money and staying away from Bar Row. Only gangs of Japanese youths, who prowled their territories like panthers, roamed the streets. Straight ahead, barely defined in the darkness, Mount Fuji towered over the Tokyo landscape.
He kept moving, trying to walk out his apprehensions about the mission. It had been called Operation Snowflake, but who — or what — it was, no one knew. There was something about a cocaine smuggling ring operating within the Air Force, but death had stilled the connecting voices and Internal Security had failed to turn up anything about the operation. But then there had been the call from the American Embassy in Tokyo. The embassy had received a message from a hysterical Japanese national who claimed to have information about Operation Snowflake. But the man wouldn't divulge anything until he was protected. Hal Brognola had called Bolan and asked him if he could handle a clandestine mission that couldn't be trusted to government channels.
Bolan rarely trusted anything to government channels. He operated alone, waging a personal war against those who would take away the freedom and lives of innocent people. In his war of attrition, the petty bickering and compromises of governments held no sway. Mack Bolan was justice, swift justice with cold blue eyes. He was death itself to those who deserved it — the drug pushers, the loan sharks, the terrorists. Hunted by every government and law-enforcement agency in the world, he continued his work with the help of a few good people who cared, including Hal Brognola.
Bolan's attention was diverted to a roaring Honda .950 ridden by a Japanese youth dressed in black leather and an opaque black helmet. A red circle was fixed on the left breast pocket of the punk's jacket.
The rider stopped ten feet away from Bolan, blocking his path. Bolan kept walking, ignoring him. The rider turned to watch, although Bolan could not see his eyes through the black visor of the helmet. When Bolan got right up to him, the youth gunned the engine and sped off into the night.
The pachinko parlor was just ahead, a well-lit establishment with Japanese neon characters dancing up and down the sides of the building, the only thing open in this quieter section of town.
As Bolan approached the building, he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that had been with him for some time. Nothing about this mission made any sense.
He drew a long breath and then walked into the building and into layers of cigarette smoke and a never-ending clacking sound. Row upon row of pachinko machines filled th
e place, many of them operated by old men who kept feeding small ball bearings into their fronts. Then they'd turn a dial, shooting a marble-sized steel ball up to the top of the machine. Gravity pulled the ball onto a series of ornately arranged pegs where it would bounce crazily down the length of the machine and either fall to the bottom or into one of the payoff holes where the operator would be rewarded with another handful of ball bearings. The players fed the balls one after another so that each second another ball began the course.
Bolan had been in one of these places before. People addicted to this particular form of recreation would arrive early in the morning and stay, transfixed, until closing time, sometimes amassing several buckets of ball bearings that they could trade for merchandise inside the parlor. The authorities didn't consider pachinko to be gambling, which Bolan knew was illegal in Japan.
He moved deeper into the noise and the garish yellow lighting. The building had ten rows of back-to-back machines, each row containing perhaps twenty units. The men operating them sat tightly together, their shoulders bumping with each pull of the lever. Bolan moved slowly, cautiously, along the rows, searching for a man in a red hat.
Why here? Bolan wondered. What did this place have to do with cocaine in South Dakota? Bolan moved slowly, nearly mesmerized by the hypnotic action of the tumbling balls, when all at once he was staring directly at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap atop the head of a small old man.
The man fed his balls quickly from a bucket at his feet that was nearly filled. Bolan was sure the small man had been there for many hours. He talked to himself in a singsong cadence, moving slowly back and forth as he plugged the balls into the machine's small opening.
"I'm Reeves," Bolan said, but the man couldn't hear him over the noise. "I'm Reeves!" Bolan said loudly, and the man turned to him, shaking his head, his eyes laughing.
"You come!" he exclaimed, turning from the machine and bowing to Bolan.
Code of Dishonor Page 1
