Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine

by Don Pendleton

  The farmhouse had three above-ground floors. The second held the command staff's quarters. Without speaking, the two veterans of the sacred battle fires moved along a panelled corridor to a steel door.

  April took a plastic card from her belt and inserted it into the slot in the doorframe. The door slid open. Mack stepped in first. April followed, and the door closed automatically, locking with a faint click. She rotated a rheostat at a control panel just inside, bringing on a mellow glow from a bedside lamp.

  Mack showered. She went to an eighteenth-century Chippendale chair in one corner of the room. Sitting back in its lush upholstery, she slipped off her shoes and waited.

  When Mack left the shower, water still dripping from his sinewy frame, he walked to the barred window and operated a complex sequence of electronic locks that lifted the bulletproof glass.

  He stood at the open window, hands at his sides, staring into the night.

  April came up behind him and raised her hands to his shoulders. "You going to sleep standing up?"

  "Done it before."

  "Well, not tonight," she whispered. "Sit on the bed."

  He sank to the edge of the quilt-covered mattress. He ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed his eyes. Behind him she knelt on the bed to massage his shoulders.

  Her slender fingers found the tension in the big man's back. She rolled and pressed the muscles. "You're all knotted up."

  "I'm cringing out, April."

  Her hands stopped. She rested her head on his shoulder, her long auburn hair falling forward over his chest. He turned his face to the softness of her throat.

  Their lips met. After a moment, she broke away from the long, deep kiss to pull off her sweater in one motion.

  He stood and looked down on her. He seemed taller to her, almost forbidding in the faint light. She shuddered under his stare, his eyes for a moment emotionless.

  Turning away, he started toward the window, but stopped. He stared into the night, then shook his head suddenly. He came back to her, put his face on her belly. She felt his breath warm on her flesh.

  She unsnapped her jeans. Mack's hands took over, finally pulling her Levi's and silk panties off her legs.

  At last he lay beside her, holding her long smooth form in his arms. If she were a weaker woman, he might have crushed her. But she enjoyed his strength, matched it.

  Their lovemaking became more than the urgent meeting of two bodies, more than a craving for abandonment and release.

  They exploded into infinity, April again and again. Now, she watched him sleep.

  Soon he would leave again. How could she slow time?

  "Mack . . .Mack, Look at me."

  He opened his eyes. She wished she had not spoken. What she saw frightened her.

  She saw love and pain and need. But something other. . . something awful.

  Yet she held his gaze.

  All at once, the image of ancient charred forms that were locked together in desire arose from her memory. She had seen them years ago at the Roman ruins of Pompeii; the petrified remains of men and women who—only seconds before being buried beneath the molten lava of an erupting volcano—had sought salvation in sexual love.

  Is that what she saw now in those eyes? Was he, she wondered, clinging to her because she represented life to him—and hope—in the face of certain death?

  He began to take her again. He thrust into her with mounting passion and force. His body beat against her, crushing her full breasts against the contours of his chest. Did he seek life and hope in her? Because this could be the last time?

  She raised her hands above her head and surrendered herself to him, arching her back. Her hands fell to his shoulders and clawed at them.

  Spasming, she wrapped her legs around him, clung to him, held him as his body heaved.

  Their storm of desire broke upon them, and their ecstasy came in waves.

  Again, he slept. And again she watched his face, wishing that they could be together forever.

  The buzz of the speaker-phone shattered the quiet. Before she could move her hand, Mack reached across her to activate the phone.

  "Yeah?"

  Aaron's voice filled the room. "Sorry to wake you. They sighted the freighter. It entered U.S. waters, on a straight line for San Francisco. It won't respond to Coast Guard challenge. You want to fly to the West Coast?"

  "Bomb it."

  "What? Who?" Aaron asked, not understanding. "Anybody who's got bombs. Drop them on it."

  SURROUNDED BY PHOTOCOPIES AND MAPS, Kurtzman relayed Mack Bolan's command to California.

  Another voice blared from the radio monitor. Kurtzman ignored a "call waiting" light on his telephone to take notes as a data-systems specialist at Eglin Air Force Base reported.

  "Got a definite boogie for you. We spotted the flight cutting straight south from Miami. We tried to raise them on the civilian band, let them know they were about to violate Cuban airspace, but nothing. No radio response, no flight plan at the airport. Nothing."

  "Did it land in Cuba?"

  "Affirmative. Seems they've put in a new airstrip in the Sabanas—"

  "Where?"

  "Archipelago de Sabana-Camaguey. A line of tiny islands along the north coast of Cuba. I don't know if it had anything to do with who you're watching for, but! thought I should get the info to you."

  "You thought right."

  Clicking off that frequency, Kurtzman listened as Gadgets Schwarz, en route from Los Angeles with Able Team, reported on the interrogation of a prisoner.

  "His name's Saeb Shyein. Most definitely Number Ten low-life. FBI's got an Interpol tag on him for atrocities against Christian children during the Lebanese civil war. He's out of that game now. The Ironman pulled a hack job on him."

  "What do you mean?" Kurtzman asked. "Is he wounded or what?"

  "Like I said, Lyons did a hack job on him. With an ax. Before we let Shyein go into surgery, we debriefed him. He was liaison man between a crazy Japanese Yoshida and a Cuban named Munoz. A Russian named Fedorenko dreamed up Hydra. Then Munoz and Yoshida put it together.

  "Fedorenko did the brainwork. Munoz specialized in the equipment and scheduling. Yoshida recruited the crazies. Now dig—what's going on is a mutiny. The Russian just wants to pull this off for the KGB. Same with the Cuban. They worked out this scheme to hold the cities hostage, but they would back off if the President surrendered.

  "Not this Yoshida, Aaron. He's been running around the country telling the kill teams to kill the cities even if the President gives in. He intended to kill millions of Americans all along, no matter what the Russian and the Cuban thought.

  "Yoshida recruited crazies loyal to him, and he intended to kill Fedorenko and Munoz, then take over Hydra. We know this absolutely, from our interrogation. Fedorenko and Munoz got wise, however. They've stayed out of sight. But Shyein says Yoshida's leaving Miami for Cuba tonight, so if you want to get him, scramble."

  "How much information did you get?"

  "I got an hour's talk on tape. And there'll be more. There's some interrogators waiting for him to come out of surgery."

  "When will you get back?"

  "Real quick. How are things on the Farm?" "Crazy. Be ready to take off as soon as you get here."

  "Man, we have broken Hydra. Time to cut some slack—"

  "Talk to Mack about Hydra. Like I told you, be ready to go. Over."

  Kurtzman grabbed the phone finally. "Stand by, Grimaldi. It's all coming together. All at once. The Air Force, the interrogations, our people. It's going to happen. Stand by—"

  Slamming down the phone, Kurtzman gathered his notes. He read through his scrawls, recopied the details. He checked each point, referred to the maps and high-altitude reconnaissance photos.

  The evidence pointed to a small harbor and airport complex in the Sabana islands. The DC-5 of nerve gas that was destroyed in Texas had flown from an airstrip in the Sabana islands. The aircraft from Miami had returned to that same airstrip. The interrogate
d Cubans and Palestinians all mentioned the base. And now, one of the terrorist captains said the leaders of Hydra would be found on the Sabanas.

  But the decision was not Kurtzman's. He did not command the Stony Man forces. The decision was Mack Bolan's.

  Phoenix Force was rested by now, but Able Team would be going in tired.

  Picking up the phone again, Kurtzman punched the code for April Rose's private quarters.

  MACK BROKE THE CIRCUIT. He got up and dressed. April watched his precise, efficient movements.

  It's as if he'd been awake all along, she thought as he buckled his belt. In his combat suit, he was a fighting weapon again, no longer her lover. She lowered her head. She could not bear to see him leave her for war.

  She listened for the steel door to slide open as he departed.

  "April. . ."

  Looking up, she saw him standing over her. He sat on the bed and took her in his arms.

  " . . . I'm not good with words," he started.

  "You don't have to be."

  He leaned forward and kissed her hair.

  "Goodbye," she said, pushing him lightly away from her.

  As the steel door slid open, she called out, "Mack?"

  "Yeah?" he said, glancing back. He was already gone, his spirit running ahead to the hell grounds.

  She gave him a wry smile, though it cost her. "Stay hard," she said huskily.

  THEIR FACES GRAY WITH EXHAUSTION, their bodies bruised and cut and aching from days of nonstop action, the men of Able Team and Phoenix Force waited for Mack Bolan to brief them.

  Bolan's eyes seemed to bore through them, as if their souls stood exposed to his examination. But it was he who felt exposed.

  For Bolan, these nine men operated beyond the law, guided by their duty and honor to their country and the decent people of the world. They were sanctioned in their fight by the President.

  Now he took them beyond that sanction.

  This would be a descent into Hell. A strike against the Hydra in its own pit. Who would live?

  The leaders of Hydra had risked war to attack the United States. Now Bolan risked war to exterminate the Hydra. Even those of his men who survived the attack—what nation would accept them? Bolan had no illusions about how the international press and the United Nations would react to an attack on Cuba.

  There would be no discussion of why, no examination of the evidence against Cuba and the Soviet Union, no consideration of unknown millions of innocent lives saved by these nine men.

  They would be international criminals. Men with-out countries. Doomed to wander the world with false identities. Never to know peace again.

  The jackals would never let his men live.

  Yet even if it meant the death or lifelong exile of these brave men, Bolan could not avoid this fight. In several days of unrelenting counter strikes, they had broken Hydra's attack on the United States—in the Atlantic off New York City and Washington, and in Florida, in Texas, in Nicaragua and in Los Angeles.

  But the Hydra leadership had eluded the vengeance of his warriors. The body count included terrorists and mad technicians from perhaps every country in the world, but the killer squads had been only pawns — weapons to be used in the attack.

  They had not cut off the head of Hydra. And like the monster of mythology, Bolan knew Hydra could grow many more. A thousand killers could again snake through the borders of the United States, more ships with cargoes of poisons could dock in the harbors, more planes armed with devices of mass murder could chance American radar.

  But if he struck the head now, at least he bought his country time to prepare for the next attack. He did not doubt that there would be more attacks.

  Nothing shook the hold of the KGB on Russia and the other socialist slave states, not famine, not war, not revolution.

  While the United States existed, and while the distorted thinking about the United States existed in the minds of the Russians and Eastern Europeans, the KGB would wage unrelenting war. War against faith. War against hope. War against prayers for freedom.

  The KGB had killed twenty million Russians to suppress all thought of freedom. Why would they ever hesitate to murder their enemies?

  Bolan could not turn from the battle. Even if the pursuit of Hydra to its Cuban lair meant his death, and the death of his men.

  Pulling down a map of Cuba, he touched a pointer to the tiny, unnamed island in the Archipelago de Sabana-Camagüey....

  30

  Archipielago de Sabana-Camagüey, Cuba

  Monday

  5:00 a.m.

  (1000 Greenwich mean time)

  FOR THE FIRST TIME, they would fight together. All the men of Mack Bolan. The three men of Able Team: Gadgets Schwarz, Rosario Blancanales and Carl Lyons. The five of Phoenix Force: Yakov Katzenelenbogen, Rafael Encizo, Gary Manning, David McCarter and Keio Ohara.

  Now they waited a mile from a Cuban beach. The black-painted power cruiser bobbed in the swell, the offshore breeze bringing the scents and stink of tropical night from the island.

  The island of Hydra. They stared into the predawn darkness, studying the positions of the lights. From time to time headlights streaked through the palms.

  Encizo supervised the inflation of the landing rafts. He checked the internal pressure and the tension of the black neoprene by touch. He positioned and secured the heavy gear.

  The others attended to their equipment and weapons. This would be an assault against a hardened base. The terrorist army of Hydra held the advantages of sentries, electronic alarms, prepared defenses. The men of Stony Man knew what they faced. They prepared themselves for a one-day war.

  All wore heavy Kevlar and trauma-plate combat armor. Encizo and Blancanales carried M-16 / M-203 hybrid assault-rifle / grenade launchers. Bandoleers of magazines for their assault rifles crisscrossed bandoleers of 40mm grenades.

  Manning and Gadgets carried lightweight CAR-16 commando rifles. They packed gear for defeating electronic defenses. Gadgets carried a long-distance radio fox communication with Jack Grimaldi and Stony Man. Manning carried a device for jamming the terrorist frequencies. Once they attacked, that device would sever the island's communications with Havana and the Soviet army battalions garrisoned there.

  To save weight for a load of Viper rockets, which would eliminate concrete obstacles, Ohara also carried a CAR.

  McCarter and Lyons manned the heavy weapons. To provide sustained full-automatic fire, both carried M-249 machine guns. Unlike the reengineered M-249 that Lyons had used to annihilate the Hydra ranks in Nicaragua, these weapons had no modifications. The short-barrelled folding-stock weapons had been designed to provide deadly fire-support for airborne assaults. McCarter and Lyons each carried a thousand rounds of belted 5.56mm shells.

  For pistols, Encizo, Manning, Gadgets and Blancanales had opted for silenced Beretta 93-R auto pistols. Though the Italian weapons required subsonic cartridges to fire without a report, the pistols would fire full-power 9mm loads in combat.

  Disdaining the 9mm cartridge of the Beretta, Carl Lyons carried a modified Colt Government Model. Reengineered for silence, the bulky, awkward weapon satisfied his demand for a first-shot-every-shot knockdown shock power. He also carried a 4-inch Colt Python with X-head hollow points.

  Yakov chose a familiar Uzi. For a backup weapon, he carried a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson 9mm revolver. Almost identical to the .38 revolvers carried by police officers in the United States, the Smith & Wesson fired the same 9mm cartridges as his Uzi.

  Ohara chose for his backup pistol a Ruger eight-inch-barrel revolver with the same calibre as his commander's AutoMag—.44 calibre.

  Carl Lyons, the ex-LAPD detective, surveyed the armament and intoned his familiar sentiment to the others. "Long life through superior firepower."

  Unfamiliar with Lyons's cynical humour, Yakov commented quietly, "Considering your occupation, I would not think that concerned you."

  "Be cool," Gadgets told Yakov. "The Ironman's jiving. What's with Mack?"


  Blancanales went to the door of the cruiser's cabin and glanced inside. He saw Mack Bolan writing by the glow of a tiny blue-tinted penlight.

  Bolan folded the pages, placed them in an envelope, and gave the envelope to the 60-year-old Cuban expatriate who owned and captained the black cruiser.

  Then he slung an M-16 / M-203 over his shoulder and joined his men.

  "Ready?"

  They all nodded. He repeated his self-imposed directive. "The leaders of Hydra are on the island. We know that much. We don't know where they are. We only know what they look like—from the photos in the files. But we have to get them.

  "Photo reconnaissance organized by Kurtzman and Grimaldi from satellite sources shows no villages on the island, only the Hydra base. The prisoners we interrogated say civilians are never allowed to approach or land. Therefore, we have no local people to worry about.

  "Every one of the terrorists must die. It's the only way to make sure we take out the leaders. You all understand?"

  His men nodded.

  "Then let's go."

  In silence, they lowered the landing rafts into the ocean. They stowed their gear and eased into their positions.

  Taking the first paddle stroke, Bolan led his men toward the dark beach.

  Behind them, the power cruiser started its muffled engine and left the warriors alone with their fate.

  YOSHIDA PACKED HIS FEW POSSESSIONS: his European-style clothes, his one silk kimono, the old samurai sword set that a Yakuza lord had given him.

  A boat waited to take him from the island. But first, before he departed for Libya to seek sponsorship for a reborn Hydra, he would joke.

  He wore a black shirt, black pants, black gum-soled shoes. He wrapped his head and face with a black cloth. In his years as a Yakuza assassin, dressing in the ninja suit-of-night shadow had become a ritual for him. Even when circumstances forced him to wear European fashions while he made a kill, he had imagined himself clothed in black.

  A silenced MAC-10 submachine gun waited on his bed. He reconsidered his choice of weapons. Now, in the last hour of night, he would demonstrate his strength and cunning, his silence, his skill in horror.