This was not going to be easy

Every step, Bolan turned his efforts to spotting new opportunities, discarding lost openings and chances as they fell behind.

That was how the Executioner had survived for so long—not by being a good shot, not by being strong, not by having the biggest guns. It was having a mind as sharp as a razor, constantly keeping it in motion, like a shark on the hunt, always awake, always sniffing for traces of weakness to pounce on.

That’s when he saw the red dot dance across the back of the man in the lead.

MACK BOLAN

The Executioner

#252 Death Line

#253 Risk Factor

#254 Chill Effect

#255 War Bird

#256 Point of Impact

#257 Precision Play

#258 Target Lock

#259 Nightfire

#260 Dayhunt

#261 Dawnkill

#262 Trigger Point

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

The Executioner®

Serpent’s Lair

Don Pendleton

All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents; and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat.

—Pliny the Elder, 23–79

Natural History

All men have the strength and ability to crush the serpents that torment them. When we speak for truth and justice, our words are poison to them and it destroys them as if they have been burned by acid. To the vipers who stalk the world, my efforts are to make sure that truth defeats them wherever they are found.

—Mack Bolan

To Don, the original dragonslayer who started Mack off tilting not at windmills, but at the real dragons tormenting good people everywhere. You gave us an outlet for hope of justice.

Contents

Prologue

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

Prologue

Doves broke from the treetops as the man in black raced among the trunks. His pursuers were fueled by a feral rage. The lone warrior reached for the gleaming silver weapon on his belt, but held it in its sheath as he broke through the tree line.

He slowly took out his katana, a long, graceful unveiling of gleaming metal. He walked toward the shore of the stagnant river, his wooden sandals scraping the smoothed river stones and gravel that rose from the edge of the water.

Enemy swordsmen raced to circle him and cut him off, but the man in black didn’t make a run for it. He was in the water, six inches deep, the hem of his hakama soaking through. He spread his legs, keeping the tip of his sword at waist-height, both hands wrapping around the black cords on the handle.

He counted them. Eight men. He breathed deeply, resisting the urge to gulp air after the chase and battle with Zakoji’s guards. Instead, he relaxed.

“You thought that you could bring death to me, intruder?” a voice called out from the tree line.

Zakoji appeared, dressed in black robes, a red serpent embroidered on the left side of his body. It was the Uwibami, a monsterous serpent that snatched men from horseback. It was the symbol of Zakoji’s army.

“I came here seeking work,” the man in black said. “Honest work.”

“There can be no honest work for the henchman of the shogunate. Not the monster who reigns over these lands.”

The man in black was silent. He knew that to survive, he had to be still, to sense his enemies before they even moved. Sensing that brief flash of lethal hostility had saved the warrior more than once.

With the rustle of fabric, the black-clad warrior did a quarter turn, his sword point drawing an arc that went from pointing directly in front of him to sticking out behind him like the tail of some massive scorpion. The attacking swordsman took a second step, but he was already dying before the warrior reversed his blade and sliced it across the cultist’s face.

He dipped the tip of his sword into the water, letting the blood run off the hammered steel.

The circle of seven spread farther apart, to equalize the distance between them, to cut down on the intruder’s ability to escape.

“He sent you. You are no ronin, you are still the shogun’s own second! You came here at his beck and call, seeking to dip your steel in my blood.

The ronin shook his head, but doubted further debate would dissuade Zakoji. He knew Zakoji was a cold-blooded murderer, and his duty stated that he had to act against the savage. He cleared his mind preparing for the attack he knew would start in a heartbeat.

Steel sparked on steel as the first man made his move. The ronin sidestepped, avoiding a second cut from behind as he twirled the sword around, carving through the throat of the first assailant. With a pivot, he brought down his steel, slicing through the arm of the man who lunged at him from behind, the sharp belly of his blade carving through muscle and bone in an effortless movement that dropped the attacker’s sword to the ground.

He dug one foot into the gravel and bowed deeply to twist under a flashing sword. The point of his katana speared the belly of a third man, guts spilling out through the massive rent in his abdomen.

The ronin stood up straight and flicked his sword down, deflecting a chop that lashed at his leg. The blade only snagged the black fabric and exposed the bare leg underneath.

The enemy swordsmen pressed their attack with ferocity. The warrior in black was driven into a defensive fight that he knew he could not win.

Four men were on one side of him. The fifth, though lacking an arm and swiftly losing blood, picked up his blade to continue the struggle for his lord and master. A pang of regret filled the ronin for having to meet such courage with brutal efficiency. It did not stay his sword arm, however. He sidestepped an attack and made a swift downward cut, the stroke striking the shoulder of one swordsman.

The warrior grabbed the man’s sword from his insensate fingers and reversed it, drawing its length across his chest in a deep slash that severed his aorta. Zakoji’s cultist dropped to the stones and moved no more. The four surviving clansmen spread apart to avoid the wounded man’s fate, their blades aimed at the black-clad warrior.

The ronin stepped between them, a sword in each hand, like the claws of a scorpion, awaiting the next wave of attacks.

“You have a chance to live. Turn your back on Zakoji, and I shall not slay you,” he told them. “You fought with courage.”

The one-armed fighter lunged. The black-clad warrior blocked with one sword blade and sliced the man from hip to hip. The stroke stopped the man cold, giving the ronin time to sweep the other sword around to cleave the man’s head cleanly from his shoulders.

He sensed the next attack, but Zakoji’s fighter still managed to open up a scratch from shoulder to hip with the tip of his katana. The ronin reversed one sword blade and pivoted, spearing the attacker just above his kidneys. With a turn, the ronin grabbed the dying man’s sword before he tumbled to the ground, blood leaking among the cobblestones at his feet.

And then there were two.

Two, and Zakoji.

Who knew what skills the self-proclaimed sorcerer possessed, but the ronin bled now. It was a scratch, but it was enough of a distraction to slow him by a heartbeat.

It could mean the difference between life and death against a man of true skill.

The two remaining swordsmen took their positions, one to his left, one to his right, but both staying in front of him, away from the water’s edge.

They waited for him. Eyes searched his, sought out any sign of weakness that they could exploit. One blink, one moment of hesitation, and they would be upon him, their curved blades deep within his flesh. He gave them that blink, and as his eyes opened, he turned sideways. The two men sought the ronin as he faced them head-on, their goal to carve at his arms and sides as they passed him. Instead, he presented himself as a slimmer target, one sword reversed around his back, the other swooped in front of him as Zakoji’s fighters passed him.

The katana he swung behind him glanced off pelvic bone as it parted its way through the side of the man who sought to harm his right side. The man on his left screamed as the black-clad swordsman’s edge sunk deep into his back, lodged between two vertebrae and levered the handle from his grip. Both men fell.

The cult leader walked toward the exhausted warrior, his feet invisible beneath his robe so that he appeared to float, ghostlike. The sword cleared its scabbard with a hard push of his thumb. He leveled the point at the warrior, then down to the earth.

The ronin raised his sword above his head with both hands, arms pressing together in perfect position for a downward stroke. Zakoji didn’t adjust his pose, still keeping his sword-point at ground level.

The ronin thought about the stories that Zakoji had sorcery, of sorts. He used trickery and venom to distill success in the form of a potion.

“Has your courage left you?” Zakoji chided. “Has your will to serve the emperor once again abandoned you, executioner?”

The ronin bristled for a moment at his old title. Each new utterance was like sand ground into an old wound. His cut ached, blood caking at the small of his back, his hatori grown stiff with dried blood. Sweat trickled down his forehead and neck, and each breath parted the slice in his back a little more, pain growing with each inhalation.

The ronin breathed deeply again. He twisted his hands around the corded handle of his blade, screwing up his strength, forcing himself back into the mind set of everything and nothing. The pain went away.

The black-clad swordsman lowered the sword from above his head and leveled the tip at Zakoji’s heart.

It was with sudden fury that the cult leader lunged. The ronin blocked the blade with his own, sparks flew from the impact of metal on metal. The black-clad warrior tried to slip his sword past the other’s defense and stab him, but only clipped the kimono sleeve, leaving a crease in the man’s arm. Zakoji’s blade also glanced off the ronin’s flesh, nicking his ribs and coming away with a trail of blood.

The cult leader lunged again, but this time the ronin was ready for the attack and batted it to one side. He sliced down to carve through the embroidery of the serpent on Zakoji’s kimono, parting muscle and flesh as he did so. Bones gleamed from the opened wound.

The ronin winced as he felt his shoulder carved again. As they retreated from each other, Zakoji stumbled, teetering out of the way of a backswing that would have opened up his belly in one swoop. The ronin, however, felt the brutal bite of steel in flesh, his forearm nicked deeply. Blood seeped down to his grasp, both hands sticky and wet.

Zakoji snarled, clutching his wounded bosom, squeezing his kimono’s slashed fabric tight against the cut. The crimson serpent image on the front darkened, growing more sinister as it drank deeply of the necromancer’s blood. Wild, enraged eyes stared at the ronin and his control was completely gone.

Hacking with one arm, Zakoji lashed out. The ronin blocked two staggering blows with his sword, then pivoted out of the way. He speared the cult leader through his stomach, in the wake of a wildly missed downswing. The two fighters’ bodies were tight against each other.

“You slay me now, you defeat me now…” Zakoji spit. Blood poured over his lips. “But in another lifetime…another lifetime…it is you who will taste bitterly of defeat on this very spot.”

Zakoji gripped the injured ronin’s clothes, coughing up more blood, but in a single spasm, he was dead. The ronin lowered the man to the ground, shaking his head.

He stumbled away, knowing that he had to return to his infant son, to be on the road once more. He would not return this way again. He would not forget Zakoji’s promise, and he offered a prayer to the universe that whoever came to this valley would be able to defeat the sorcerer’s prophecy.

A convoy of two vans and two automobiles tracked its way up the side of the hill overlooking the stagnant stream. Their passing sent doves flying from tree branches, fluttering into the sky with startled warbles and the flash of wings.

A man in a black windbreaker and black jeans stared out the window at the brown water cutting its way among the cobblestones. His cold blue eyes lingered on the scene for a moment, and his memory searched, as if for some handle on the sudden wave of déjà vu that washed over him.

Mack Bolan dismissed the feeling, returning instead to his thoughts of the mission ahead.

1

He was posing as FBI Hostage Rescue Team Agent Matt Cooper. He popped the magazine on the Glock 23 pistol, checking the load. He reinserted it and pulled back the slide, observing the blunt .40-caliber nose of the bullet in the chamber. His stark blue eyes looked up to greet Rhode Hogan, who sat across from him in the back of the van.

“Satisfied, Agent Cooper?” Hogan asked. “I know the FBI started using those a few years ago. I wasn’t sure if you’d be happy with it.”

“As long as it goes bang when I pull the trigger,” Bolan said, shrugging the nylon shell of his black windbreaker off his shoulders. He stuffed the gun back into its holster, with two spare magazines to balance it out.

Hogan smirked. It was all he could do to suppress a full-blown laugh. “That’s the kind of attitude I like from a man. Maybe it won’t be so bad having you on hand.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled with this job either, Hogan.”

“I know,” the mercenary said. He leaned back, looking at the lush Japanese countryside. The valley dropped away as the van crawled up the road. “One man sent for this job. Usually the Feds send a dozen of you guys on one of these cases.”

“One was the most we could get your boss to accept,” Bolan replied. “He trusts you.”

Hogan lowered his head, smiling even more widely, not looking at Bolan. “That’s pretty sad, considering.”

Bolan didn’t make a sound, except for the noise of his palm striking the grip of his pistol.

The mercenary and his men turned on Bolan, fists and rifle butts swinging out at him.

Bolan whipped up his windbreaker and slashed it out like a whip, blinding the men on the right of him in a wave of black, snapping fabric. The movement managed to deflect a blow with one deft movement, pushing it down to snarl other attacks aimed at him.

Hogan cursed the fluid reactions of the FBI agent. While his jacket was tangling up the clubbing weapons of the men to his right, he was shouldering hard into the man on his left, his foot meeting Hogan himself in the breastbone and driving him back into his seat.

While there was strength in numbers, in the confined space of the van, there were only so many avenues of approach to attack. Bolan was shielded by the bodies of the very men who were attempting to pile on him. He swung his borrowed Glock free, but the slash of a rifle barrel forced him to aim low at Hogan’s belly. He pulled the trigger on the pistol.

Nothing happened.

“Oh, by the way, the round we put in the pipe didn’t have a primer. Not something you’d be able to see if you were doing a press check,” Hogan said, taunting. He threw his big frame at Bolan, but again, the jumble of striking arms and weapons stopped him. Hogan’s gun slammed into the Executioner’s Kevlar vest and drove the wind from his lungs. With a surge, Bolan snapped his elbow into the face of the man to his left, rolling the head with the impact. He kicked at the head of the man to Hogan’s right, bouncing him off the back door of the van with such ferocity that he landed in the security chief’s lap.

Hands grabbed at Bolan from his right, but he had wrapped his hand around the frame of an MP-5 and he used it like an ax, chopping down on wrists and forearms. Men grunted and recoiled, hissing in pain from the slashing impacts. Hogan reached out and grasped the frame of the machine pistol, trying to twist it out of Bolan’s clutches, but the Executioner brought his knee up and caught Hogan in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. A hard shove sent the steel frame of the gun cracking into Hogan’s cheek and jawline, a dizzying blow that made him see stars for a moment.

Diving low, Bolan slipped between two of Hogan’s burly mercs. They had recovered from his initial attack on them, but were still slow. The warrior gave them both pause with punches to their sides, striking them in the kidneys. Choking noises exploded from their mouths and they folded to form a barrier between Hogan and his quarry.

“Stop him!” Hogan called. His beefy hand wrapped around Bolan’s ankle, squeezing tight. It was like holding on to two hundred pounds of bucking bronco as the muscular form tried to rip its way to freedom. The security chief stopped the Executioner’s exit from the back of the van for a moment, but the back doors had flown open during the melee, revealing the empty road behind them. Dust kicked up from the rear tires displacing gravel.

The driver called out to complain about the commotion and the sudden flapping of the rear doors in his mirrors. Bolan twisted and shoved one of the mercs hard against Hogan, their heads bouncing as the van jostled violently on the road.

With the impact of skulls, Hogan let go of Bolan’s ankle, and he quickly slithered out of the back of the van.

Mack Bolan hadn’t counted on Rhode Hogan to have set him up for a snatch and burn, but his skill and prowess had carried the day. When he came to a rolling halt in the middle of the road, he realized that there were still two more carloads of Hogan’s mercenaries plowing up the hillside. The grille of the first chase car was only yards away from him and closing fast.

“HOW MUCH ENGLISH DO you speak?” the girl asked.

Hideaki Machida squeezed his eyes shut and fished a bottle of painkillers out of his suit’s breast pocket. He shook six into his palm and popped them into his mouth, relishing the bitter chalkiness of them as he ground them with his teeth. He opened his eyes and looked at Rebecca Anthony, wishing to hell that her father’s men would get here already and take her off his hands.

She was dressed all in black, including the horrendous, overdone makeup she wore around her eyes and on her lips. Machida had heard about the so-called Goth look, but he’d never read a Gothic romance novel, and doubted the heroine wore a black cable-knit sweater torn at the neck, fishnets with intentional runs in them, or piercings in one nostril, and two in the center of her lower lip.

“I asked you a question, or don’t you—”

“I speak fluent English,” Machida snapped. He flipped open his sunglasses and slipped them over his aching eyes before opening the rear door of the white stretch limousine and stepping out into the daylight.

“Are they—” the girl began to speak, but Machida cut her off, slamming the door and shutting out her voice.

Daimyo Botan Okudaira said the annoying girl was a part of the grand new future of their clan. The money they were getting from snatching this girl was only the beginning. Her father was a man of means, means that would give them a chance to change the entire face of Asia.

Machida shook his head. He put two and two together. Daimyo Okudaira expected to turn the kidnapping into a gateway to link the Silver Tengu Clan and Colin Anthony’s Ironcorp—a Yakuza clan with a formidable contraband distribution network hooked up to a major arms manufacturer.

Machida figured that Okudaira wanted to compete with the triads on a level they hadn’t dreamed of. Machida didn’t know exactly what Ironcorp produced, but it had to be important to attract Okudaira’s attention in spreading his already formidable international reach.

Machida saw one of the men had out a stainless-steel Magnum revolver and was rolling the cylinder of the long, silver beast along his bronzed forearm. Unno smirked at Machida, twirled the gun and slipped it into its holster under his black vest. He shrugged his bare shoulders. His long black hair was tied off into a ponytail that swung down to midback, and when he smiled, a gold tooth glinted in the reflected sunlight. He was trying so hard to be hip and dangerous, he hurt Machida’s eyes.

“Everything okay, old man?” Unno asked with that gold-toothed grin.

“Yeah. I just needed some fresh air,” Machida answered, taking a few steps away from the limousine.

He looked at his team with disdain—the younger, hipper, harder Yakuza. Machida knew he was part of the old guard. The almost fifty-year old enforcer felt like he was babysitting a crew of prima-donna kids who thought they were the cutting edge.

Machida sighed, then looked at his watch.

Only a few more minutes, and he’d be done with this and back to watching his career stagnate as the head of security in Nagoya.

He looked down the road, missing the shadow of the suspended Ise Bay Highway. He was a man of the city, not the woods, but there was a quiet calm and dignity here. Machida frowned.

Thoughts of dying far from home haunted him.

MACK BOLAN HAD ESCAPED from the van with a relatively soft landing. His back hurt, but his shirt had protected him from most of the slashing, stabbing chunks of gravel in the road, and the thick, heavily toned muscles surrounding his shoulders and spine kept his bones from shattering as he somersaulted. It was not the most graceful of landings, but any one that you could walk away from, as his friend Jack Grimaldi once told him, was a great one.

The Executioner had only just come out of his roll, when he was looking at the front grille of a car bearing down on him. He had a gun with a dud round under the striker, was trying to recover his balance and heard the sound of brakes being applied behind him. Angry shouts from Rhode Hogan filled his ears.

The car screeched to a halt, the driver acting on instinct, gravel spitting from under the wheels. That was Mack Bolan’s only chance, a break in the onward advance that would have crushed him. He kicked with both legs, launching himself hard out of the path of the vehicle.

More tires screeched, and there was the sound of bumpers hammering each other. Bolan didn’t see the collision. He was rolling once more, this time through thick foliage at the roadside. Pliant green stalks snapped at his bare forearms and face as momentum carried him through. His shoulder felt as if it were on fire. Stinging pain and wet stickiness told him that his flesh had opened, and the enemy hadn’t even fired a shot.

He tucked onto one side and used both hands on the Glock in his fist.

At least the first round in each of the magazines had healthy looking primers. He racked the slide and ejected the dead, dud round, the next shot coming up and ready to go with one pull of the six-pound trigger. There were no safety catches or levers to be flicked into position to get the gun up and running.

The firearm was perfect for Matt Cooper, FBI agent, the smoke screen to get Mack Bolan within striking range of Yakuza daimyo Botan Okudaira.

Bolan considered his situation. This wasn’t about a hostage negotiation. This wasn’t about arresting someone. This was about the Executioner on the hunt for a criminal mastermind and stopping him before his organization grew strong enough to cause a turf war between Chinese and Japanese criminals—a turf war that would leave innocents dead in the cross fire and governments sweating the fallout.

The air was chilly without his jacket or a long-sleeved shirt, but it was starting to heat up as bursts of exploratory fire pumped out of the back of Hogan’s van, silenced automatic fire slicing into the brush. Bolan stayed low and crabwalked toward the tree line, not afraid of getting the Glock covered in mud or dirt. The plastic-framed pistol was nearly as reliable as his Beretta in resisting mud and the elements.

Bolan moved swiftly and was far enough away that all he could make out was Hogan shouting orders, the words suppressed by distance and gunfire.

The odds didn’t look good, not that Bolan was going to poke his head above the top of the foliage to expose himself. He just kept moving, walking on all fours, crouching low. His foot hit some tangled, muddy weeds and slipped. He fell to his knees and one elbow. He suppressed a grunt, but the foliage around him shook.

Bolan didn’t wait for the enemy to spot and react to the sudden movement. With all his strength and speed, he launched from the foliage into the woods, ducking behind a tree just as a blast of high-velocity bullets smashed into the trunk. The Executioner swung around and contemplated returning fire, but instead held it.

Thirty-nine shots wasn’t going to cut it, no matter how good a marksman he was. Not against automatic weapons with twice to three times the range of his pistol, and not against weapons in the hands of professionals who knew how to make use of every ounce of the superior shootability of a long-barreled rifle, or even a submachine gun. Bolan decided firing off even a short, discouraging burst would only attract attention and bring down the hammer of concentrated fury on him.

Instead, Bolan stayed behind the cover of a tree trunk about two feet in diameter. He was fifteen feet in from the tree line, watching for anyone starting for the woods. He watched as four men, wearing body armor and carrying big, black weapons, moved away from Hogan’s convoy.

The vehicles were starting up, disappearing up the road to continue to their rendezvous with the Yakuza.

Between Bolan and the rendezvous were four heavily armed killers, better equipped and better protected than he was, and several miles of road. He looked over his hurt shoulder and saw his shirt was torn. Gravel had scraped a layer of dermis away, leaving him raw and bloodied, but the wound was superficial. His shirt flapped open at the back, and a cold wind washed over him. The weather was in the fifties, and while he knew that wouldn’t be too bad for the short term, spending a whole day exposed to the cool could make him lapse into hypothermia. It happened to hikers all the time, people underdressing for the weather, thinking a spring day or a cool fall day couldn’t possibly threaten their health.

Bolan gave the Glock’s grip a reassuring squeeze, and waited for the enemy gunmen to draw closer. He had cover, and he was scouting out their angles of approach.

No good, he thought. Even if he could tag one, maybe two of the mercs, the others would nail him in a cross fire. They were too well spread out, yet able to give even the farthest of their partners cover fire. If Bolan exposed himself to take down one, three more would spring into action and cut him apart.

The men stopped well before the tree line.

“Come on out, Cooper!” one of them called. “We don’t want to shoot you.”

Bolan checked his watch. Its surface was gouged and scratched, but the hands underneath were undisturbed. He could still make the rendezvous by cutting across country.

But first, that meant getting past the enemy.

REBECCA ANTHONY HATED her name. She’d chosen Viscious Honey as her Goth name. Her hair was the same dark golden color of honey, and nearly as slick and fluid looking. Her green eyes stared out of heavily shadowed eyelids framed with thick black.

Honey leaned against the window and sighed. She tried to remember the day before. There’d been a rave at the club, maybe just a little too much Ecstasy and then she’d been stuffed into the back of the car. A pillow case had been thrown over her head and she’d struggled, but not hard enough.

She hadn’t had a chance to shower, and she had deliberately let her hair go for a while, letting natural oils and sweat darken her otherwise light and fluffy hair. Copious amounts of gel and hair spray made it glossy and heavy, spiking out and curling down in wild arcs from the center of her head. She’d colored it with grape Kool-Aid to make streaks of purple.

Her father hated her look, and that’s just what she’d wanted. She didn’t want to be the daughter of a millionaire who got his money from the spilled blood of the helpless, a man who helped design guidance systems for the bombs responsible for depriving people of power and water and sanitation utilities in two Gulf wars.

Honey always said she would rather be dead than living off her father’s money.

She was horrified at the idea of being traded for some of that blood-spattered cash.

Honey trembled, shuddering as she realized that, because of her, the Yakuza would get hold of the kind of high-tech weaponry that would allow them to rain death on their enemies and slaughter hundreds at the touch of a button. All because she got careless and was yanked into the back of the wrong car by a group of muscle-bound Japanese thugs looking to make some extra money.

She glared at Machida.

“What was I worth to my father?” Honey asked.

“We’ll learn that soon,” Machida answered.

2

Back against the wall, outgunned and outnumbered was not a new situation for the Executioner. In fact, being outgunned and outnumbered with his back against a tree trunk wasn’t even out of the ordinary. But, Bolan thought, at least he couldn’t grow complacent. Not with a supersonic round smashing into the bark sending splinters of wood stinging into his biceps. He dived out of the way before a sweeping scythe of automatic weapons fire cut across the tree at chest level.

Twisting, he landed with the Glock 23’s muzzle aiming at the gunman who’d taken the shot at him. Bolan pulled the trigger and there was nothing but a click. The striker had either snicked home on an empty primer, or the firing pin was malfunctioning. Or both.

Four armed men and a malfunctioning pistol would be enough to make any man give up the ghost.

But Bolan wasn’t just any man.

He rolled out of the way as the machine gunner, spotting the movement on the ground, compensated. Bullets slammed into the earth where he had been only moments before. With a surge of speed, Bolan plunged himself deeper into the woods.

Bullet strikes kicked up leaves at his heels and the Executioner grimaced at the thought of having to run from a fight. He grabbed a tree trunk and swung himself around, cutting away at a hard right angle, leaping over a log and finding himself in a clot of bushes.

He could see the men in the woods following his trail. They hadn’t counted on him breaking the course so quickly. Still, each was watching the other, eyes sweeping the backs of their partners as they advanced. It was a slow leapfrog. They weren’t keeping to the same pace as their prey.

Professional soldiers, to a man, and the Executioner was unarmed except for his wits, a folding knife in his pocket and the steel slide of his Glock. Wrapping his fingers around the barrel, his thumb through the trigger guard, he had a good hunk of square, exposed steel with which to smash the heavy dome of a skull, provided he had enough stealth to sneak up on these men, and had enough strength and speed to take out one man while his partner was preoccupied with advancing. The folding Applegate-Fairbairn combat knife would be his backup, four inches of deadly double-bladed steel that might be able to punch through the heavy Kevlar vests the mercs wore.

Rising silently, the Executioner advanced through the woods, circling back. He closed in on the last man in line.

Bolan sidestepped, knowing that if he missed, he was going to raise a racket. The folding dagger opened soundlessly, but locked securely. Steel in each hand, he was going to make his move, and his legs coiled up tight.

It was only four long strides, two and a leap if he timed it right, to take down the tail gunner. He took a deep, slow, silent breath, let out half and then lunged.

Gun metal struck bone head-on with a crunch, and the enemy mercenary was stunned by the unexpected impact.

Bolan dropped the knife and held on to the man, keeping him from tumbling to the ground. He was hoping the others hadn’t noticed the commotion when he felt the first impacts of the 9 mm rounds strike the man that Bolan suddenly used as shield.

“He’s got Tom!” came the cry, followed by a second burst.

Bolan held the back of Tom’s armor. The fingers on his right hand ached from holding both the Glock and the collar of the protective vest, but his grip on the man’s belt was much firmer.

A third burst hit Tom, and the multiple shocks shook the body so much that the weakened and sliced web belt came apart. The mercenary fell dead from Bolan’s hands, but the Executioner still had his hands on whatever gear the gunman had on his belt.

Bullets tore through the air, and Bolan was in retreat again. He had a handgun and spare clips on the belt in his fist, and at least a mile to cross overland.

Sticking around to take out the three fully armed mercenaries would swallow too much time, allowing Hogan and the Yakuza to meet unmolested.

He couldn’t let the girl exchange hands.

Bolan didn’t know what would happen next, but he intended to get there before anything happened to the innocent life he was suddenly responsible for protecting.

There were no acceptable losses to the Executioner. He had only a few minutes to reach Rebecca Anthony and secure her freedom.

Bounding through the trees, the Executioner raced as fast as he could. He slowed enough to glance down at the gun he had in the holster.

He was carrying an old Walther P-38 K in his holster. With the five-inch barrel trimmed to three inches, yet still holding nine shots ready to fire with a pull of the trigger, it was an attractive weapon. Not as attractive as having fourteen rounds of bigger, fatter .40-caliber slugs, Bolan thought, but it wasn’t massive missiles and having dozens of rounds of firepower that made a gun worthwhile.

It was the ability of the gunmen to hit a target.

The Executioner had that ability. And with a couple spare magazines, he figured he might actually stand a chance. It was a small chance, made even smaller as gunfire chased him through the foliage as he crossed the hillside road, but Bolan wasn’t dead yet.

The Executioner charged on.

HOGAN HEARD THE CLICK of the radio and tilted it toward his mouth, his earpiece feeding him the frantic words.

“The target is climbing the hill as we speak. He’s cutting across country,” Frye stated on the other end.

“Damn,” Hogan murmured. “He’s got a useless Glock—”

“No. He got Tom.”

“Christ, he’s got an HK?” Hogan asked.

“No. We drove him off with automatic weapons fire, but he did manage to cut off Tom’s web belt. He got that creaky old little Walther Tom loved so much,” Frye explained.

Hogan took a deep breath, rolled his eyes and spoke into the radio. “Continue after Cooper. Don’t let him get away. I don’t need him popping up on my six when we burn the Yakuza and get the girl.”

“We’re in hot pursuit, sir. Unless this guy is Tarzan, there’s no way he can outrace us,” Frye replied.

“So why is he still alive and heading back this way when you were between him and the road?”

There was silence on the other end.

“Just as I thought,” Hogan said. “I’ll make sure our people are ready for him to come over the mountaintop. If you do catch him, consider your cut raised.”

“Thank you, sir,” Frye said.

Hogan let the radio mouthpiece rest back on his shoulder. He knew that there were more advanced designs, but the old radio was a thing of comfort, firm, solid and dependable. Just like the HK MP-5 and the Colt he had with him. Strong steel gave him a good feeling.

“Anything on their radio chatter?” Hogan asked his com man, Nickles.

“I’ve got nothing. There was a brief cell-phone call, but they cut it off. They’re tight on their discipline,” Nickles answered.

“Unless they don’t have anyone to call as backup,” Hogan said.

Nickles smirked. “That’s thinking too positively.”

“But it is an option,” Hogan said. “Either way, keep watching. If they’re not making calls out, then they probably have something arranged as backup.”

“I’m worried about this Cooper guy,” Nickles stated. “I was trying to keep track of his calls, but they were too encrypted. I couldn’t get a handle on who or where he was calling.”

“He’s not going to be a factor. Nobody has been following us,” Hogan explained. “Just keep your ears open for the Yakuza radio traffic.”

“You don’t think it’s going to be that much of a cakewalk, do you?” Nickles asked.

“I’m carrying a shitload of firepower. Everyone on this team is. The Yakuza do not fuck around when it comes to business, and the men we’re going against, they might not be military, but they are smart, tough and capable,” Hogan replied. “When we make our move to get the girl, it has to be hard and it has to be fast.”

Nickles smirked. “It’s never soft and easy.”

Hogan slapped the fore stock of his MP-5 into his meaty palm. “No, it never is.”

HONEY LOOKED AT THE tree line surrounding the clearing. Only an old, overgrown path showed any alternate way off the cliff-top clearing where the Yakuza vehicles were lined up. Men spread apart, ducking into clearings and ditches, carrying high-powered rifles and handguns with them.

It was an ambush, she thought, but then she realized that would be a stupid idea. The Yakuza wanted payment for her. If they opened fire on whatever negotiators her father sent, then there was a chance that they’d damage the money or the plans. She squirmed in her seat, keeping her eyes on the path that cut up the side of the mountain.

There was a chance, she thought. She wouldn’t have to go back to her father, and she could get away from these Yakuza thugs, if only she could create some kind of distraction. Her heart hammered under her breastbone, the uneasy tingle of nausea and anticipation filling her mouth with a coppery taste. She could run—

And what? Have not one but two small armies hunting her through the woods?

Anything was better than being Daddy’s little hostage, she thought.

If it came to a choice between living with a murderer or dying with a bullet in her back, she’d take her chances with the slug through her spine.

Her hand touched the door release for a moment, then she looked at Machida.

“They’re coming to take you home,” Machida told her. “If you try to run, people will get hurt. You’ll be one of them.”

“Mercenaries and criminals. What’s my father paying to have me freed?”

Machida shook his head. “That is not my place to say.”

“I can’t live with that. Because of me, some psychopath is going to get his hands on the equipment necessary to exterminate a few hundred people with the push of a button.”

“We do what we have to do,” Machida said. “I am bound by duty to my family to hand you over to your father’s negotiators.”

“No matter who suffers?” Honey asked.

Machida didn’t answer, his face becoming a hard mask. She knew she’d pissed him off, and regretted it. Somewhere, deep inside, she could sense there was something different about him.

“Then, child, if you truly believe in doing your duty, I shall honor you. I will do what I have to do, and I will try to stop you, but I do not blame you for doing what you feel is the honorable thing.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Honey said.

The cell phone in Machida’s hand rang once. He checked the readout on the caller identification. He managed a smile. “I shall be outside of the vehicle. Your father’s men have just passed one of the checkpoints we’ve set up.”

“Oh great. The cavalry is here,” Honey answered. Her upper teeth clicked against the rings piercing her lower lip.

“I wish you well in your endeavor, Rebecca Anthony.”

“Call me Viscious Honey,” she answered.

Machida looked at her. “I wish you well, Viscious Honey.”

She managed a smile as the Yakuza man left the vehicle.

NICKLES LOOKED OVER at Hogan. “There was a quick spurt of cell-phone activity. Only one ring, though.”

“They’re good. We must have passed a scout. For people without military-level communications equipment, they’re very efficient,” Hogan answered. “Any word on Cooper?”

“No sign of him since he crossed the road and went into the woods over the top of the hill.”

“How long ago was that?” Hogan asked.

“Three minutes,” Nickles replied.

Hogan looked at the map strapped to his forearm and judged overland travel versus the speed and distance they had traveled by road in the convoy.

“There could be a small problem,” Hogan said. “This guy, Cooper, if he’s a fast runner, he might actually show up on site when we’re making the trade.”

“One more body to add to the pile,” Nickles pointed out. “He’s one guy with an 8-shot pistol.”

“Nine shots. Thomas always kept that thing cruiser-loaded with an extra shot in the chamber.”

“Nine bullets against us?” Nickles asked. “Body armor and automatic weapons and fifteen-to-one odds.”

“Not counting the Yakuza.”

“Who we’ll be taking care of, too.”

Hogan listened to his com man’s words and didn’t quite believe them. There was something about the lone FBI agent. Something that wasn’t right. He smelled phony as a Fed, but he actually seemed like someone Hogan would have picked up for his mercenary unit. The way he checked and cleared the Glock without even a second’s sloppiness showed him as a professional weapon handler. The way he handled himself against a half-dozen men stuffed into the back of a van, and evading four armed killers in the woods was further proof that Cooper was more commando than federal cop.

Hogan knew having him pop into the scene with his gun blazing would only serve to make a tough situation even worse.

The convoy pulled slowly into the clearing.

BOLAN HAD CLEARED the top of the mountain and was three-quarters of the way to the meeting site when he slowed and evaluated his gear. The Walther P-38 K was accompanied by four magazines and a cylindrical tube. Having a sound suppressor for the little handgun would give him an element of surprise, and if he couldn’t have audacity and superior firepower, he’d take stealth and deception on his side.

He quickly screwed the attachment into place and stalked slowly through the increasingly thick foliage. By the time he was in sight of the clearing, he saw Hogan’s lead car arriving.

Bolan also spotted a Yakuza gunman hunkered down behind a tree trunk with a bolt-action hunting rifle. The Executioner knew it wasn’t as clear-cut as a trap. Not with the kind of deal that Anthony wanted to make with the mobsters.

The sniper seemed oblivious to anything around him. Bolan knew from experience that good snipers were stealthy and could sneak in close to the enemy, but they needed a spotter, not only to confirm kills and record other intelligence, but to perform escort duty for the shooter.

Bolan was never ashamed to have someone watching his back as a sniper. But it seemed that the Yakuza gunman hadn’t been given such backup.

The Executioner stayed his hand. He scanned the shrubbery, looking for other hidden forms. He stopped counting when he reached five men, all armed with hunting rifles or long-barreled revolvers with hunting scopes. He couldn’t see more than the quintet present, but that was enough for him to realize that the mobsters were expecting the mercenaries to cause some trouble. The high-powered weaponry postioned at the tree line was enough to cut through even the best of body armor at that relatively short range. Firing from ambush, these five, and any others hidden at angles around the clearing, could make Hogan’s mercenaries honest.

The convoy rolled to a stop as Bolan looked at the main Yakuza vehicle, a white stretch limousine parked near a small, overgrown path leading back up the mountain.

The door to the limousine opened slightly, and Bolan caught sight of a young woman’s face, pale with lack of sunlight, the dark rings around her eyes highlighted by days’ old makeup. Light reflected off the two metal hoops that pierced her lip. It was Rebecca Anthony, or Viscious Honey as she apparently liked to be known.

Bolan looked at the gunmen with their backs to him. He could see that the girl was looking for a distraction, and probably didn’t have a clue about the armed men at the tree line who could cut her down if she tried to make a run for it. He lined up the sights of the Walther, knowing that even with a suppressor, the 9 mm bullet’s flight through the trees would bounce enough supersonic echoes to make it known that he was on the scene.

He’d be giving up his advantage.

But he’d be protecting a young life.

Despite the mission to destroy the Yakuza boss, he still had a duty to protect the helpless.

MACHIDA OPENED HIS JACKET and drew a Beretta from his shoulder holster, taking a deep breath as Hogan and his men got out of the van. They approached slowly and were not subtle about their body armor and automatic weaponry. He counted them and was pleased to see that there were fifteen. Perhaps they wouldn’t be foolish enough to initiate violence knowing they were outnumbered.

“Where’s the girl?” Hogan called out.

“She’s in the limousine. I have sharpshooters in hiding too,” Machida replied quickly.

Hogan paused in his journey to meet Machida halfway. “Sharpshooters? What for?”

“To make certain you behave.”

Hogan smirked.

“You come to take the girl. You will have the girl,” Machida explained. “However, we will have what we need, and we will go home happy as well.”

Machida watched as Hogan leaned toward one of his men.

“Oh, it’s never soft and easy, huh?” Hogan whispered. “Okay, bring out the girl, and we’ll give you the goods,” Hogan said loudly.

The sound a walking stick disturbing the gravel path broke off the dialogue.

BOLAN LOOKED TO HIS LEFT, to the overgrown path. A gaunt man wearing old-fashioned robes was tapping a seven-foot-tall walking staff as he made his way among the rocks and weeds. His wooden sandals swept aside stones and gravel with each step. From the length of his hair and beard, he seemed to be ancient. Bolan was torn between shouting for the old man to turn back and opening fire on the marksmen in the tree line.

He glanced down and saw that even the Yakuza men were looking among themselves. They, too, wanted to say something, and one of the gunners even waved at the walker on the path. Bolan knew enough Japanese to understand the hissed “Go back!” command.

The walker stopped, gazing glassily over to the tree line, scanning it as if to catalog the men hidden among the bushes and grasses.

Bolan held his fire as the limousine door was flung open in a sudden flash of movement.

Rebecca Anthony was running for her life into the middle of a hellzone.

HOGAN SHOUTED AS HE SAW the girl break from the limousine. “She’s getting away!”

Nickles ran toward the trees, making it three steps before a single gunshot into the sky brought everyone up short. Honey paused, halfway to the tree line, her feet already bleeding from cuts where the gravel of the clearing dug and jabbed into the soles of her bare feet. She was suddenly rethinking the preference of being shot in the back. She took a deep breath, then started whimpering as she glanced between Machida, Hogan and the stranger who was coming down the path.

“I’m not going to let you get away, Rebecca,” Machida called out. “Everyone stays where they are.”

The old man continued walking toward the tableau.

Machida switched to Japanese. “I told you, old man, stand still.”

Hogan looked at the walker’s eyes. They were glazed and unfocused, hard black marbles that looked everywhere and nowhere at once. It was an odd, disconcerting visage, like the world was completely beneath him. The walker didn’t stop his movement, despite the command in Japanese.

“Kill him,” Hogan said.

Machida regarded Hogan coldly.

BOLAN CLOSED IN ON the first sniper he’d seen, hoping to cut the distance the bullet from his Walther flew. The shorter the flight path of the bullet, the less disturbed air. The sonic crack from the 9 mm slug wouldn’t draw as much attention. He glanced to his right, and saw that the snipers at the tree line were all keeping their eyes focused on Hogan’s mercenaries.

Machida had just been challenged to kill the intruder on the scene, and Bolan wanted to give the old man a chance to get out of this alive.

At three feet away, Bolan stood over the gunman with the hunting rifle. The sniper sensed the Executioner’s presence and swung the rifle around quickly. Bolan squeezed the trigger, and the gunman toppled lifelessly to the forest floor. Bolan’s hand snagged the rifle before it clattered to the ground.

The Executioner dropped to his knees and quickly slid into the dead Yakuza soldier’s place. In the shadows of the foliage around him, none of the other gunners reacted to his sudden action. The bolt-action rifle would be worth a lot in a gunfight. Ten spare rounds for the magazine were stuck into a saddle on the stock of the rifle.

The Executioner turned his attention back to the stand off in the clearing. The walker passed by Rebecca Anthony as she stood in the middle of the gravel. The spindly figure stopped, looking her over.

“Dammit… I just want to get away from all of this,” she said, voice trembling and soft, but full of angry resolve.

Bolan shouldered the hunting rifle. He’d have five, maybe six shots before he had to reload or switch to the Walther, but he refused to let the girl be harmed.

The walker grabbed her wrist and sneered, flipping aside his robes.

That’s when everything that Bolan knew about the situation turned upside down. The old man was suddenly sporting a fistful of Uzi.

3

When the walker pulled out his gun and yanked the girl in close to his body, several things happened at once.

The fleeing hostage screamed in terror. Her black-lipstick-smeared mouth opened wide, and she clutched a wiry arm of the walker.

The Yakuza head soldier, leveled one Beretta at Hogan and quickly drew a second pistol to aim at the walker. He shouted for his men to remain calm, but even from where he sat, Bolan could see that there was a tremor as he aimed unsteadily at the old man with the Uzi.

Hogan shouldered his MP-5, ready to spray either the Yakuza leader or the stranger who’d grabbed the girl. His bulletlike head lowered over the sights, deep-set eyes squinting.

The Executioner tightened his grip on the hunting rifle in his hands, brain racing to evaluate which was the greatest threat to the hostage.

The walker laughed as he pressed the Uzi to the girl’s temple. She closed her mouth but still looked around, the muzzle sliding all over her greasy, slicked hair.

Bolan couldn’t risk a head shot on the goon, in case he pulled the trigger on the girl. He swept the meeting ground. Mercenaries and mobsters alike were taking cover behind vehicles, and to either side of him, along the tree line, gunmen were communicating from their hiding spots. Everyone was trying to figure out what to do.

“Kojo,” someone said. A trail of Japanese followed that was too quick for Bolan to understand, but he knew it was directed at him.

“Hai,” Bolan whispered in response. He hoped to hell he hadn’t blown it.

There was a sudden movement to his left. A harsh sentence was uttered, and Bolan brought up his Walther, pumping out a single bullet into the darkness. The 9 mm slug quietly hit its target, but the gunman gave a scream as he tumbled from the tree line.

The walker spun, and the Uzi came away from the girl’s head. The dying Yakuza shooter crashed into a clump of tall grass, and the old man twisted, looking around for more enemies in the trees.

The Goth girl seized the opportunity, bent double and broke away from the man. She charged madly toward the path, paying no heed to the sharp stones digging into her feet. Fear drove her onward.

Bolan shouldered his rifle, targeting Hogan, who was in midswing to shoot down the Anthony girl. Bolan squeezed the trigger. He felt the hot splash of a stray shotgun pellet slice across his shoulder midshot. The Executioner’s round was off target.

Machida blasted the walker full in the chest with his Beretta, while others opened up on the man, throwing him to the ground.

Hogan grunted, his weapon getting off two shots, then stopping short as a .30-caliber rifle bullet smashed into the frame of his machine pistol and drove him onto his back. Bolan adjusted his aim and threw the bolt on the rifle, hurriedly chambering another shot.

“Hogan! There’s someone else in the tree line!” Machida warned. The gangster opened fire with his other Beretta. The Yakuza men swung their weapons to open fire on the Executioner’s position, but by that time, Bolan was already hot-footing it out of the way.

The mercenaries held their fire, looking on in disbelief as the Japanese mobsters ignored them, turning their attention on some mystery threat.

“Dammit! Shoot the trees!” Hogan roared at his men. He was aching from being slammed in the chest by his own gun. His hand hurt, but he pulled his Colt and opened fire on the spot where the single rifle shot had come from.

THE EXECUTIONER CHARGED through the woods, heading in the direction of the path where Rebecca Anthony intended to make her escape. While on the run, he threw the bolt on the hunting rifle to chamber another round and fired into the shadowed mass of a gunman blazing away with his handgun. The shooter screamed, and his body tumbled away. The number of bullets slicing through the forest hadn’t decreased; they were still out for his blood. Bolan cut hard to the right, charging to where he estimated the young woman would be on the path.

HONEY’S FEET HURT as she made the run along the path. She expected one of the bullets behind her to thunder into her flesh and drop her any minute. She felt completely helpless as she pumped her legs, striving to survive for just a few more yards, to get around the bend and into the foliage.

The prospect of getting shot while escaping filled her with dread. The plan to run for her life and strike out for her freedom seemed like the scatterbrained plot of a woman doomed to die.

Then two hundred pounds of muscle rammed into her in a blindsiding crash. One strong arm scooped her off her cut and bloody feet and carried her into the heavy bushes and trees on the opposite side of the path, as gunfire crackled all around.

“Stop shooting! Stop shooting! He has the girl!” Machida shouted.

“Fuck!” Hogan screamed. “Get into the woods!”

Honey stared up at the man carrying her. He was craggy faced, and intense. However, the way he held her, putting both arms around her to support her, told her something.

This black-haired stranger had no business with either the Yakuza or the mercenaries who showed up to retrieve her for her father.

THE WALKER STIRRED. He sat up with a sudden lurch and aimed at Machida, holding down the trigger of his Uzi. Despite a blood-spattered face, the slender old man was still in fighting form, and if the Yakuza boss hadn’t spotted the motion out of the corner of his eye, he would have been cut down where he stood. As it was, the limousine was peppered with 9 mm holes.

Hogan swung around the back of the car and pulled the trigger on his Colt .45, snapping two shots into the head of the walker, blowing off a huge chunk of skull in the process.

This time, the Uzi-toting old man slumped for good.

Machida and Hogan walked slowly to the lifeless man. Both reloaded their pistols on the slow, uncertain journey over, and saw that the wisps of mustache and beard were glued-on fakes, half-washed away by the spray of blood from the first salvo of fire the combined forces launched at him.

Machida bent and pulled at the ratty gray robes of the old man and saw the black Kevlar armor underneath. “What the hell is this?” he asked.

“You tell me, Hoss,” Hogan said. He raised and leveled his Colt at the Japanese mobster. Machida looked at him but kept his pistol aimed at the ground.

“You think I wanted this fool to let the girl get away?” Machida asked. “She’s running into the woods.”

“This is your country, man. You had men in the tree line,” Hogan grumbled.

Machida shook his head. “We’ll help you find the girl. Under one condition.”

“You’re giving me new conditions for the deal? You already have the ransom from Anthony.”

“I’m not talking about the blueprints,” Machida answered. “Well, in a way I am.”

Hogan lowered his gun. “What are you talking about, then?”

“You came dressed to kill, so to speak. That’s why I had men watching, ready to burn you back. I figured you’d have body armor and automatic weapons,” Machida answered. “What I didn’t anticipate were the two problems coming out of the woods.”

“And how do you know they were two separate problems?”

“Simple. One didn’t want his presence known, but his hand was forced when you were about to shoot the girl,” Machida answered. “This one is Japanese. I’m not sure about the identity of the other man….”

“He’s allegedly an FBI agent named Matt Cooper,” Hogan replied.

“Allegedly an FBI agent? Or allegedly named Matt Cooper?” Machida inquired further.

“Both. I’m thinking he was using us to get closer to you and your boss, and just ended up on the wrong end of our sting,” Hogan answered.

Machida rubbed his chin. “A temporary truce, then? It’ll be more profitable to work together. And there is nothing wrong with taking the blueprints you have, and making two copies of them. One you can blackmail Anthony with, and one we can sell on the black market.”

Hogan tilted his head. “It sounds like a win-win situation.”

“But does it sound acceptable to you?”

The mercenary put his hand forth. “It’s a deal.”

Machida didn’t trust the American as they pressed flesh, but at least it would give the Yakuza headman some stretch to figure out how to deal with him.

BOLAN CAME TO A HALT, his reserves of strength exhausted during his frantic run through the trees with Rebecca Honey in his arms. He set her down and squatted, looking at her feet.

“What’re you stopping here for?” Honey asked, trying to mask her doubt and uncertainty with a hard edge to her voice.

Bolan didn’t bother looking up from the cuts on the soles of her feet. Most of them were shallow, but a couple of them were deep and painful looking, seeping blood. He grabbed his T-shirt and ripped it. There was a slight gasp as Honey looked at his naked abdomen.

“Did you lose a fight with a weed cutter?” she asked.

Bolan shook his head. “Occupational hazard. Scar tissue. Your feet look like they’ll be okay if I can control the bleeding with some direct pressure compresses.”

“And all you have is your T-shirt. What happened, you forgot to go to the standard action-hero supermarket before going on this little adventure?” Honey asked. She looked down at herself, her deliberately torn clothing had no extra material to add to her own healing.

“Why the hell were my father’s men trying to shoot me?”

“They wanted more money,” Bolan answered.

“And you?”

“Name’s Matt Cooper. FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Rebecca…”

“Call me Viscious Honey…or Honey for short.”

Bolan looked at her. “Honey, we’re cut off and have to find some transportation out of this valley. There are men hunting us down who would like nothing better than to gut me like a fish and leave me to watch whatever they’re going to do to you.”

Honey nodded. “Let ’em try something. I’ll make it cost them. Though, I am curious at how well the kidnappers treated me.”

“Not due to honor. Just smart business on the part of the Yakuza. However, Hogan’s going to show you off, roughed up, probably even tape any beating or other abuse they inflict on you,” Bolan said.

“I’m not going back to my father.”

Bolan sighed. “I don’t care what you do. I just want to make sure you’re away and safe. If you do what I say, things will be all right.”

Bolan tightened the strip of cloth around Honey’s foot and she gasped again, wincing in pain. Her foot was wrapped from the ball to near the ankle, a single restraining strap up around her ankle providing her with some security for her injured foot. Bolan pressed his thumb along her other foot, but only received a faint hiss as he touched one particularly deep cut.

“I’m trying to give the worst, most painful cuts as much protection as I can. I wish there was a better way, but at least your injuries will be wrapped up until I can get you some footwear,” Bolan said. “If we’re lucky, the next Yakuza guy I fight will have boots you can manage in.”

Honey smirked. “Great. You’re not only a shining knight, you’re an eternal optomist.”

“Planning ahead for possibilities and probabilities. I’m hoping to avoid conflict the rest of the way back to Tokyo, but in case we can’t, I’m going to make the most of the fights,” Bolan answered. “Even if that means looting a few dead bodies.”

Honey’s lip quivered, then she shrugged. “I don’t mind. They kidnapped me, and they want to kidnap me again.”

Bolan took a moment to withdraw the Walther and replace its partially spent magazine with a fresh one. He set the weapon in the grass and Honey reached for it. Bolan froze, looking at her as she held the weapon in her lap.

“I don’t want to leave it behind,” she said. “It’s the only gun you have, right?”

Bolan regretted ditching the hunting rifle, but he had no spare ammunition for it, and he’d needed his arms free to carry Honey. “Yeah.”

Bolan removed the Yakuza gun belt and unhooked the pouches and holster from it. They were all connected to the belt, by J-hooks, so he didn’t have to take off his own belt and run it through the loops. He clipped them on firmly, then stashed the partially spent magazine in its pouch. He held out his hand for the Walther.

Honey seemed reluctant to turn it over, though she wasn’t aiming it at him.

“Honey, we don’t have time for this. What’s wrong?”

“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked. “You don’t look like an FBI agent.”

“What makes you think that?” Bolan asked.

Honey pointed to the scars across his body, visible through the open front of his torn shirt. “An FBI agent with that much scar tissue would have had a desk job by now. Knifed and shot that many times? Plus you have another gun,” she said, pointing at his shoulder.

Bolan gingerly slid out of the Glock’s holster, the leather scraping his injury.

“Hogan, your father’s mercenary, gave me a dead pistol. Took the firing pin out so it wouldn’t shoot. I had to ditch it.”

He took the shoulder holster and began digging briefly. When he had a hole big enough, he shoved the useless belt, holster and Glock ammunition into it then pushed and smoothed leaves and dirt back over it.

Honey moved closer to Bolan, her eyes wide. She handed over the Walther, and Bolan took it, instinctively knowing that their pursuers were close. He made a count of the enemy. There were nine visible across the section of woods that he could see.

“That way,” Bolan said, pointing. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Yeah. Let me go first into any traps?” Honey asked. “Who knows what kind of shit that creepy skinny guy left all over this valley.”

“Don’t make any noise,” Bolan answered. “They’ve slowed down, and they’re looking for tracks.”

Honey glanced back at the trail Bolan’s big boots had dug up in his desperate run. She looked to him, doubtful, but he nodded her on. She turned and scrambled along as fast as she could without making the leaves rustle loudly with her passing. Behind her, Bolan followed, using a branch to wipe out their tracks.

They moved slow and low, and they kept their heads below the level of the saplings and tall grasses growing between the trees.

On the other side of some waist-high grasses, Honey paused. Bolan slipped in beside her.

“Aww, dammit. We’re closing in on a rise,” she noted. “They’ll see us.”

“Cut right. We’ll travel parallel to them. The ground is uneven and there’s a depression at the base of those trees,” Bolan whispered. “Get moving.”

TOSHIEE RAN ACROSS the compound. He knew that Master Zakoji was not to be interrupted, but with the sounds of gunfire rattling on the hill overhead, there was a threat of their facility being discovered.

Camouflage netting cast crazy, obscene shadows on the ground as he raced across the camp to the main building, where Zakoji kept his laboratory and office. It was wide and squat, and he knew that it sunk deep into the ground, where the bodies were taken, to be changed by the almost sorcerous machinations of Master Zakoji’s whitecoats.

Toshiee threw open the doors in time to see his leader, the man chosen by God to carry on the name of the great alchemist who dared defy a corrupt shogun, reborn in this time to bring Japan back to glory. He clapped his fist to his chest and bowed swiftly.

“What is it?” Zakoji asked, puffing a cigarette as he overlooked the glass enclosed underground labs.

“There was the sound of gunfire on the hill,” Toshiee said breathlessly.

“The Yakuza bring another of their victims and execute him, and you worry about that?”

“There was much gunfire,” Toshiee continued. “More than just when they render a body useless to you, my lord. This was the sound of thunder splitting the air. Like the sounds of a great battle.”

Zakoji turned, narrowing his gaze. He then nodded to the man to his left. “See if our scout on the hill is responding.”

“Great Master, so soon on the heels of the previous intrusion—”

“I shall have to get in touch with our men dealing with him,” Zakoji said. “You have done well.”

The young man bowed again. He caught the flurry of robes as his master turned, glimpsed the twisting form of the great crimson serpent embroidered into his kimono as he disappeared up the stairs toward his office.

TOJU SAKEI, KNOWN TO his followers as Master Zakoji, tore through the door to his office, his mind racing.

It couldn’t have been coincidence that brought a gun battle to his doorstep so soon after the government agent invaded. And yet, why would federal agents begin a gun battle so close by, ruining their element of surprise?

Sakei shook the many possibilities out of his mind. He needed all the information he could get. He glanced over to Umon, one of his lieutenants.

“Any word from our sentry?”

“Kawai isn’t answering his radio,” Umon answered, bowing his head reverently.

“Call our team torturing the government man back to the compound. And send some patrols into the woods. I want everyone on full alert, that means body armor and automatic weapons,” Sakei said.

“Who do you think is attacking us?” another man, Rikyu, asked.

“I’m not sure we are being attacked,” Sakei responded. He rubbed his black-bristled chin. “I think someone else brought their fight with the Yakuza into our backyard.”

Umon and Rikyu glanced at each other. “And if the Yakuza discover that the men they’ve been burying over the years are missing?” Umon asked.

“We won’t let them live long enough to analyze that information,” Sakei assured them. “Send out the patrols. Shoot to kill!”

Umon and Rikyu vacated his office, and Sakei looked out over the compound.

If he was going to take over Japan, fulfilling the legacy of the original Master Zakoji, he was going to need a few more days of privacy. Once he perfected the disease’s interactions with the corpses, then he would be able to bring down the great gleaming cities of steel and glass, sweeping away the neon modernization that poisoned the beautiful nation he lived in. He could make Japan a simpler, more noble land once again.

It was regrettable that he had to use the trappings of modern science, but the germ, the lowliest of all organisms, was older than mankind. It was ancient, and thus, in a way, it was worthy of his goal. Did not the alchemist Zakoji develop superior poisons and diseases with which to strike down his enemies centuries ago?

All that came to an end when the lone swordsman came to the secluded valley. Zakoji’s dying curse against the man had been heard over and over again, in tale upon tale in Sakei’s family.

Sakei thought that the government agent being tortured to death on the hill might be the reincarnation of that lone swordsman.

But Sakei knew that the sounds of battle so soon after sending the Koancho agent off to die was a sign. He hadn’t destroyed the reincarnation of the man in black.

But he would soon get his chance.

4

The Executioner continued to obliterate their back trail with the branch, taking care not to bob his head into view as he watched the pursuing team of Yakuza gunmen and American mercenaries. The enemy was hot on their trail to retrieve the young woman, and he had only a single 9 mm pistol with a short barrel and an 8-shot magazine. There was a real danger of Honey Anthony being gunned down alongside him as he tried to protect her.

The girl was keeping her cool, despite the bandages swathed around her bare feet and the fact that she was crawling literally on the ground. Occasionally she’d give a grunt of effort as she moved a limb and found herself overstrained in her position. Fear kept her head down, though. Fear and tenacity.

Bolan knew from reports that she was hardly fighting material, but she clearly had courage.

Bolan knew he could have been worse off, but even so, this wasn’t a good situation. He desperately wanted to get hold of a larger weapon, like an M-16, something that had the necessary punch to knock out large groups of enemies.

As it was, he was left with his best weapon. His mind.

Honey stopped abruptly, and Bolan dropped to one knee, checking on their pursuers. They were still about fifty yards behind in the forest, barely visible. He glanced at the girl. She was staring at the top of a hill up ahead.

“More bad guys?” she whispered.

Bolan took in the scene. A man was jammed into a tree, and three men with knives stood around him. His shirt was a gory mess, and his face a crimson mask of dried blood. The trio was laughing as it was doing its ghastly butcher’s work. Bolan frowned.

“They might be with that man who grabbed you back in the clearing,” Bolan noted.

Honey looked at him. “You think?”

The Executioner almost smirked. “If I can get the jump on them, I might be able to pick up some spare firepower.”

“That would be a good thing,” Honey said. The prospect of violence played across her face with a displeasure that Bolan knew all too well. It mirrored his own feelings. Violence was the last resort, but in Bolan’s world, he was already called in when that point had been looted, pillaged and burned to the ground.

“Stay close behind me,” Bolan whispered. He dropped his branch and swung around, making his way up the side of the rise. He looked back and saw that no one had spotted the outlines of the two black-clad people as they climbed toward the quartet near the killing tree.

As they closed in, the coppery smell of blood threatened to make Honey gag. She held it down, though. Bolan was inured to such scents.

He drew his Walther from its holster and leveled the front sight at the man nearest the victim pinned on the tree. The tortured man looked up, his dark eyes glassy, his face blood-spattered, but he didn’t give away the Executioner’s presence.

A single shot puffed out from the Walther. It smashed into the back of the first torturer’s head and blew open the skull. Chunks of brain matter and blood rained in a halo around the knife-wielding maniac before his body tumbled to the ground.

The other two men spun. One was in the middle of lighting his cigarette, a machete tucked under one armpit. The other man glanced at the weapons they had rested against the side of a log, stocks in the dirt, barrels pointing into the sky.

Bolan swung the Walther at the gunman who was looking at the guns. A bullet crossed the distance between them before he could dive and scoop up a sawed-off shotgun resting against the fallen tree trunk. It struck the gunman just above his clavicle, and tore out a messy chunk of throat. Blood exploded from the shotgunner’s mouth and he collapsed against the line of weapons, his body covering them.

Bolan turned his attention to the machete-wielding cigarette smoker. He’d abandoned his efforts to light his smoke and brought his blade out from under his armpit in a single, fluid movement. The tip of the blade connected with the end of the Walther’s sound suppressor after a rapid lunge and redirected the next 9 mm slug into the sky.

The Executioner let the Walther swing to the wayside and freed his left hand from its support position in his shooting grip. He speared the machete-wielding torturer in the stomach with a swift punch, then slammed the steel frame of the Walther hard against the sadist’s cheek. Skin split and bone cracked under the powerful impact, and the man fell backward, stunned.

Bolan swept his leg around and hooked the man’s ankle. Another hard left hand snapped into the killer’s chest with a hollow thump, and the man tumbled, crashing to the forest floor. The machete man snarled and kicked Bolan hard in the knee before the Executioner could aim his Walther at the downed man. A 9mm bullet dug up dirt and leaves next to the blademan’s head before Bolan fell to the ground next to his foe.

The man swung his machete around, but Bolan caught his wrist, squeezing hard to grind the forearm bones and wrist cartilage together. The Japanese man screamed and let go of the blade. Bolan lurched to one knee and rapped the killer hard across the jaw with the butt of his pistol. Bone crunched on impact, and the blademan went still.

The Executioner panted, the brief battle accentuating the amount of energy he’d burned in the past half hour without rest. The relentless pace was draining his reserves of strength. He glanced over Honey. “Check their shoe sizes against yours.”

Honey gawked at him. “You’re shitting me, right?”

“You need to protect your feet, so just put some shoes on.”

Honey glared at Bolan, then bent to get the shoes.

He got up, took an M-16-like rifle and walked over to the man on the tree.

“Can you speak English?” Bolan asked in his halting Japanese.

“Hai, a little,” the wounded man said. His voice came out as a hoarse croak, and his eyes were heavily lidded.

“What’s going on here?” Bolan asked. “Who were these men?”

“These are the men of the Burakku Uwibami Clan. They are a cult—” He coughed up some blood. “I appear to be dying…”

Bolan took his knife out and cut the man’s bonds. “You’re not going to die.”

The man looked him over and smiled. He slumped against Bolan, his blood spattering across the Executioner’s clothes.

“Who are you?” Bolan asked.

“My name is Chiba. I am with Koancho.”

Bolan nodded. The Japanese Public Security Investigation Agency was a top secret counterintelligence agency. Very little was known about them, but they handled investigations both inside and outside of the country. If Koancho was involved, Bolan knew, the cult clan was a possible world-class threat.

Chiba continued. “The cult…has been developing a new germ warfare weapon. If it succeeds…”

He coughed again, there was a rattling sound in his chest. “You must stop Zakoji.”

Bolan looked down the hill. He, Chiba and Honey were behind the tree and out of sight of the Yakuza and mercenaries hunting them, but it wouldn’t take long for them to come up the hill.

“Zakoji claims that his ancestor was first defeated by an executioner in black. He claimed that someday, they would meet again, and the blood of that executioner’s reincarnation would redden the ground at his feet…”

Chiba’s eyes glazed over. “That is why he was bleeding me… He thought… I was…the executioner…”

The Koancho agent’s lips stilled, his eyes staring sightlessly from a lifeless face. Stunned, Bolan closed Chiba’s eyelids and laid him on the ground.

“Why was he talking about executioners?” Honey asked.

Bolan didn’t say a word.

The flash of a laser sight suddenly crossed his shoulder.

HOGAN PAUSED, holding his receiver a little tighter.

“This is Higgins. We’ve got activity at the tree line. There seems to be more than just Cooper in these woods,” the mercenary said.

“Are they together or what?” Hogan asked.

“Seemed like there was a scuffle at the top of the ridge. I’m not sure, but maybe silenced gunfire.”

“Take out Cooper, but don’t harm the girl. If she bolts, put a bullet in her arm or leg. Nothing fatal,” Hogan ordered.

He looked at Machida, who stared on, his face unreadable. “Do you have a problem with shooting the girl?” Hogan asked.

“It does not matter. I am not on the scene to take the shot,” Machida replied.

“Nobody likes a smart-ass,” Hogan grumbled.

“I will keep that in mind.”

Hogan was about to growl when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Branches shifted slightly, but not in the direction of the breeze. He turned and swung up his spare machine pistol. “Indian country!”

The mercenaries around him understood the two-word shorthand for ambush. The Yakuza gunmen in the clearing with them needed only to see Hogan’s people dive for cover to react. Machida’s and Hogan’s forces crouched, aiming outward around the clearing.

Hogan directed the first gunfire. He blasted away with a borrowed machine pistol and swept the area of tree line that had moved out of sync. A gunman grunted and stumbled into view, but he wasn’t killed by the initial blast. The ambusher’s weapon spoke, chopping off a mercenary at the knees, then walked a blast of gunfire up into the stomach of a Yakuza gunman.

The raider’s victory was short-lived, however. Mercenary and mobster alike lit him up with their weaponry, focusing the arc of their fire on the woods around him in a blasting firestorm of activity. Hogan ducked behind the limousine as more incoming gunfire chopped its side panels apart. Machida was right at Hogan’s heels, returning fire with his two Berettas even though he couldn’t see anything.

“Cease-fire! Cease-fire!” Hogan called out.

Mercenaries and Yakuza gunmen dragged their injured and dying companions to cover behind the parked convoy of vehicles in the clearing. Moans of the wounded resonated to drown out the ringing in Hogan’s ears that resulted from the firestorm of automatic weapons cutting the air.

Hogan reloaded his weapon and looked around. He didn’t dare call out to confirm the condition of his men. Betraying the status of their remaining forces would leave them open for any attackers to move in and finish them off. He didn’t know how many were striking from the woods, but he wasn’t going down so easily.

Machida was reloading his two pistols. “It seems the old man had friends in this area,” he said softly. “And they are well-armed.”

“No kidding,” Hogan snarled. “Is there a reason for you to tell me the obvious?”

“It is a more productive use of nervous energy than screaming in fear,” the Yakuza man replied. He stuffed one Beretta into its holster, keeping the other out. His free hand dived immediately for his cell phone, and he hit the speed dial.

“What are you doing?” Hogan asked.

“I am calling for my backup. You call for yours. We’re not leaving without our intended trade,” Machida answered. “Or else.”

“Or else what?”

Machida’s silent stare was more effective than any boast. His calm face housed eyes full of black clouds of fury.

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