The Executioner Series Books 4-6: Miami Massacre, Continental Contract, and Assault on Soho
544
The Executioner Series Books 4-6: Miami Massacre, Continental Contract, and Assault on Soho
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Overview
To avenge his father, former Special Forces sniper Mack Bolan declares a one-man war on the Mafia. Included in this volume are books 4–6 in the long-running series.
Miami Massacre: A Miami summit attended by every mob capo in the country offers the Executioner the perfect opportunity to destroy the Mafia in one fell swoop.
Continental Contract: Forced to flee to France, Bolan takes on the thugs of the Paris underworld, foiling the kidnapping of a movie star and rescuing some frisky filles de joie from sex slave traders.
Assault on Soho: The Executioner takes his war to the streets of London, where he’s about to turn merry old England into bloody hell.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504056960 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 11/13/2018 |
| Series: | Executioner (Mack Bolan) Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 544 |
| Sales rank: | 172,982 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Don Pendleton (1927–1995) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He served in the US Navy during World War II and the Korean War. His first short story was published in 1957, but it was not until 1967, at the age of forty, that he left his career as an aerospace engineer and turned to writing full time. After producing a number of science fiction and mystery novels, in 1969 Pendleton launched his first book in the Executioner saga: War Against the Mafia. The series, starring Vietnam veteran Mack Bolan, was so successful that it inspired a new American literary genre, and Pendleton became known as the father of action-adventure.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
SKIRMISH IN PHOENIX
Mack Bolan waited until the last possible moment, then viciously swung the wheel and powered into a screaming turn, his attention evenly divided between the isolated desert road ahead and the receding images in his rearview mirror. A heavy car braked into the intersection behind, swinging broadside and overshooting the turn to careen into the shallow ditch at the side of the road. The pursuing vehicle quickly regained the blacktop and the twin headlights once again began crowding Bolan's mirror. Bolan smiled grimly and pushed his accelerator pedal into the floorboard, then removed a Luger from concealment, thumbed off the safety, and placed the weapon on the seat beside him, fully aware now that he had tarried too long in Phoenix.
The shadowy outlines of an industrial park loomed above the desert horizon. Bolan's mind leaped ahead to the implications thus presented; the road very probably terminated in that cluster of buildings. If so, he could only hope that the complex was unfenced — otherwise, he was trapped on a dead-end road to an executioner's hell. Almost too late, at 95 miles per hour, he flashed past the warning sign and saw the light- reflectors on the heavy chainlink gate just ahead. His mind still racing furiously forward, Bolan hit his brakes and his headlights at the same instant and fought the little car to a fishtailing halt, coming to a broadside rest just inches from the barrier. Then he immediately backed off onto the powdery soil, halting again well away from the blacktop. He left the engine running and jumped out, Luger in hand, and ran to the gate. The chase car's headlights were spotting the road less than a hundred yards distant when Bolan finished smashing the gate reflectors with the butt of the Luger.
Seconds later, Bolan was back alongside his vehicle and leaning in with one hand on the headlamp switch. The heavy car of his pursuers was eating the roadway in smooth gulps when it passed the warning sign, then seemed to falter momentarily halfway to the gate before nosing down in a squealing spasm of locked brakes. Obviously aware that the sliding vehicle could not be halted in time, the driver made a last minute effort to turn away from the impact. The big car slammed into the fence broadside, sheared a steel post, teetered into a sideways roll, then was shudderingly righted and flung back by the tensile strength of the heavy fencing. Both doors on the side nearest Bolan were popped open by the buckling contraction, and a man was flung from the rear seat to flop out onto the roadway.
Bolan had switched on his headlights, catching the other car in their full glare, and was running into the collision scene, his Luger up and ready, even before the car finally settled. A big man with a bloodied face staggered out of the front of the wrecked vehicle and stared dazedly into Bolan's headlights, then raised a pistol into view and wheeled drunkenly toward cover. The Luger roared and dropped him on his second step, and Bolan was already moving swiftly to the other side, firing on the run at the two men still inside.
The horn began sounding, grotesquely perpetuating the noisy invasion of the desert stillness. Bolan moved cautiously into the close inspection. The man in the rear seat had taken a bullet through the throat; a .45 automatic lay on the seat beside him, a sawed-off shotgun on the floor. The driver had an obviously broken neck, in addition to a bullet in the shoulder. The man who had been ejected by the collision was groaning feebly through blood-flecked lips. The first of the group to taste Bolan's lead was dead with a bullet through the heart.
A vehicle with a blue beacon flashing from its roof was approaching from inside the industrial complex. Bolan snatched the registration display from the wrecked car and quickly returned to his own vehicle. He extinguished his lights and made a rapid departure, switching them on again just before reaching the highway junction. He paused there to examine the registry paper he had removed from the wrecked vehicle, then growled deep in his throat as cool anger began to replace survivalist excitement. The car was registered to John J. Portocci; the address shown was in a Phoenix suburb. Bolan recognized the name. Johnny (the Musician) Portocci was the underboss of a Phoenix-based Mafia family.
If Bolan had learned any full-dimensioned truth in Vietnam, it was that an aggressor holds all the aces when the defense is limited to purely reaction and containment. Bolan had been in a reaction-only posture for two full weeks, ever since the close of the Palm Springs battle with the DiGeorge Family. He was tired of "reacting" — and the truth was growing on him that his only way out of Arizona probably lay in a power sweep right through the middle.
Now that the shooting had started, the Arizona Troopers would undoubtedly be getting into the act. Roadblocks, in a sparsely-inhabited state such as Arizona, could be a powerfully effective device.
Bolan weighed the registration slip on an index finger, gazed longingly toward the east, then sighed resignedly and turned back west toward Phoenix. A long-forgotten item of information tugged at his brain lobes, something he had read once in a study of ancient history. The phoenix was the fire-bird of Egyptian mythology, the symbol of regeneration or resurrection. Bolan grinned to himself and sent the little speedster hurtling along the backtrack to the city.
The two-story residence of Johnny the Musician was in Mediterranean villa style and set back about fifty yards from the road. The neighborhood was one of the best in the area, a settlement of curving roads, circular drives, and executive homes. Bolan idly wondered if Portocci had been accepted by the country-club set, as he cruised past in an inspection of the Mafia boss's mansion. Several vehicles occupied the circular drive at the front of the house. A limousine was parked outside the attached garage which was linked to the rear of the house by a short breezeway; extra living quarters were above the garage. A single floodlight illuminated the front area and light spilled through several ground-floor windows.
The upper story of the house and the garage-apartment were darkened. Two men in the front drive leaned against the fender of a car in the full glare of the floodlight. Bolan went on by, turned onto the next intersecting street, and parked. The neighborhood was quiet and dark. Bolan removed his suit coat, pulled a black, tight-fitting jumpsuit from the rear seat, and stepped out onto the street to get into it. Next he buckled on a web belt with a flap holster, affixed a silencer to the muzzle of the Luger, re-loaded, and checked his spare clips. Then he changed into lightweight, crepe-soled "cat shoes" and melted into the darkness. Moments later The Executioner dropped lightly over a low stone wall at the rear of the Portocci property and stepped silently into the shadow of a wooden-slatted windbreak, beyond which lay an oval swimming pool.
The pool was dry and showed signs of neglect. A man, fully clothed, sat at the end of a low diving board, his feet dangling in the air, head thrown back, obviously star-gazing. Bolan watched the man for a full minute, noting the shadowy outline of an object lying across the man's lap and deciding his best move. The decision made, Bolan scooped up a piece of rotted wood which had fallen from the windbreak and sailed it into the shadows of a patio at the far side of the pool. It hit with a soft clatter and slid along for several feet.
The man on the diving board reacted instantly, coming to both knees and peering awkwardly toward the sound of the disturbance, precariously off balance as he swivelled and swung a short shotgun at chest level. Bolan stepped into the open, some twenty feet from the man's position, weapon at arm's length, and said, "Hey!"
The guard jerked about with a startled grunt, trying to bring the shotgun around with him. The Luger bucked in Bolan's hand and reported with a dull phut through the silencer. The guard's head snapped back grotesquely, and man and gun continued the pirouette into thin air and disappeared from Bolan's view. The shotgun clattered as it struck the cement bottom of the pool and skittered noisily along the incline. Bolan was already streaking across the open area around the end of the pool. He made the shadows of the garage just as another man leaned over the railing of the porch from the upstairs apartment and called out, "Al? Al! What is it?"
Bolan's Luger whispered again and another body abruptly took to the air, impacting almost at Bolan's feet. His progress unchecked, Bolan went on to the stairway and quickly ascended to the porch, then stepped off onto the roof of the breezeway and crossed to a flat overhang of the roof of the main house. The second window he came to stood invitingly open. Bolan entered, and found himself in an alcove of an upstairs hallway, dimly illuminated by a small nightlight in the baseboard. He began a methodical search of the upper story, found two darkened and obviously unused bedrooms with doors ajar, a third with male clothing scattered about but also unoccupied, and a large bath which smelled faintly of disinfectant. A door at the end of the hall was showing a sliver of light at the bottom.
Bolan had to move past the stairwell to reach the end room. Men's voices floated up as he passed, mixed with the sounds of a television late movie. He went on to the closed door and pressed an ear against it. Agitated voices, muffled in excitement, were coming through. A man's and a woman's. Bed sounds. Bolan frowned, hesitated, then tried the doorknob. The door was locked. He moved cautiously to the nearest open bedroom and exited onto the roof through a window, then made his way back to the corner of the end bedroom. It was at the front of the house. Kneeling on the flat overhang, Bolan could see the two outside men in the front drive, still leaning against the automobile and conversing in low tones, backs to the house.
Bolan inched along to the window. It was open, but the drapes were closed, allowing only a muted spillage of light although hardly muffling the impassioned voices on the other side. Bolan surmised that the bed was positioned directly beyond the window. A woman's breathlessly urgent tones implored, "God, Freddie, hurry — hurry up — come on, huh!"
Bolan's scowl deepened. He had hoped to find Johnny Portocci in that bedroom. A playful male voice was replying, "Hurry and do what? How d'you know I'm not just gonna get up, get dressed, and walk outta here and leave you like that? Eh?"
"God, don't tease me, Freddie," the woman was saying as Bolan stepped into the room. She lay crosswise on the bed, a beautifully proportioned blond — late twenties, Bolan guessed — flat on her back and fighting for a scissors-lock on the nude man who knelt on the edge of the bed.
The blond, also totally unclothed, did not see Bolan immediately; the man did, facing him head-on across the bed. His face went momentarily blank as his eyes lingered on the big silencer-tipped Luger in Bolan's hand, then he flipped back in a panicky reaction. Failing to understand his reason for the sudden move toward disinvolvement, the blond lunged after him and wrapped him up with both legs about the waist. He dragged her off the bed with him in a futile attempt to reach a gun belt which was draped across a nearby chair. The Luger phutted a bullet into his ear, and he hit the floor with the blond still in tow. She stared at him stupidly for a moment then made a sick face and lifted stunned eyes to Bolan, apparently noticing his presence for the first time.
She quickly disentangled from the dead, shuddering, and declared, "God, you sh-shot 'im."
Bolan pulled her to her feet gently pushed her toward the bed. She grabbed a pillow and held it in front of her and began talking in a sudden rush of words. "That big ape was trying to rape me. I told 'im Johnny would kill 'im for this. I told 'im Johnny always had somebody watching. God, he was trying to rape me!"
Bolan was busily shaking down the room. "Yeah, I could see you were putting up a hell of a fight," he told her.
"Well h-he threatened me. Said he'd shoot off my nipples if I didn't play ball."
"Yeah," Bolan replied. He was going through the dead man's clothes. "Where's Portocci?" he asked, fixing the girl with a baleful gaze.
She laughed in near-hysteria and said, "God, he don't check in and out with me. Look, you don't have to tell 'im about this — I mean, about me 'n Freddie. When he gets back, we can tell 'im —"
Bolan had crossed to the girl. She fell back onto the bed, retreating from the ominous advance, eyes on the Luger. The pillow fell away. She raised arms and knees in one supplicating motion and gurgled, "God, give me a break. I can make you glad you did."
Bolan grabbed an outstretched hand and jerked her to her feet, then pushed her towards the door. "Downstairs," he muttered.
She planted her feet at the door and looked back over a soft shoulder at him. "Like this?" she asked weakly.
"That's right," Bolan growled. "You walk straight through the hall and down the stairs, and don't you say a word, not one word."
"Wh-what do you want me to do?" she asked dully.
"I just told you. I'll be watching from up here, so don't get cute."
The blond opened the door, then turned back to Bolan in obvious confusion. "But Ralph and his boys are down there," she protested. "Shouldn't I put something on first?"
Bolan placed a hand between her shoulder blades and gently shoved her on out the door. "Just do what I told you to do."
"Johnny'll kill you when he finds out what you did to me."
"And when will he do that?"
"Soon as he gets back from this trip."
"What trip?"
The blond swivelled about and regarded Bolan with a curious stare. "Say ... who are you?
"I'm Mack Bolan."
The girl's eyes flared wide. She wet her lips nervously with her tongue, said, "Well I'll be," and went on toward the staircase in a wooden walk. She threw a final look over her shoulder, smiled archly and, seemingly finding something perversely comforting in the sudden twist of circumstances, began humming lightly and swinging her hips in a provocatively swaying descent of the staircase. As soon as her head dropped from sight, Bolan trotted back along the hallway to the bedroom, stepped across the lifeless body, extinguished the bedlamp, and moved to the open window.
When he heard the girl's shrill voice proclaiming the presence of "a nut, upstairs," and the ensuing bedlam, he stepped quickly out the window and dropped to the ground. The two front men were staring curiously toward the house when Bolan touched down directly in front of them. One of them reacted immediately, clawing toward a shoulder- holster. He took Bolan's first muffled shot squarely between the eyes and fell over backwards without a sound. The other man was sprinting toward the rear of the car and jerking to free a revolver from a holster on his hip; Bolan's second shot tore into the back of his head and sent him sprawling face down on the driveway.
Bolan added a fresh clip of ammo to the Luger as he ran for the front entrance to the house. The door was locked. He seized an iron lawn chair and heaved it through the picture-window, following closely with his own diving body. The blond stood at a far wall, gawking at him. A pair of feet hesitated on the stairway, then hastily descended. A heavy man, big pistol in hand, bent low to peer back into the living room, grunted an exclamation, and quickly swung in against the railing for firing position. Bolan got there first, however, firing from the prone position with three rapid shots up the stairwell. The heavy body jerked and sagged as two more men charged down, became entangled in the crumpled body, and slid the remainder of the descent with guns roaring wildly.
Bolan had regained his feet and was whirling to the attack, the Luger phutting unnoticeably against the louder concert of exploding weapons. The firefight was brief, and ended with a tangle of bodies at the bottom of the stairs. Bolan was inspecting them with a probing foot when a fourth man appeared at the top railing and sent a new volley spraying down. Bolan fired twice. The man fell back with a moan and his pistol crashed onto the floor below.
The blond woman, still nude, had sunk to her knees and was trembling violently. Bolan crossed to her, knelt and gripped her shoulder. He clamped down hard with the hand and said, "About that trip ... where is Portocci?"
"G-god I d-don't know," she stammered. "I th-think I'm sick. Yeah I am, I'm sick."
Bolan moved the heat of the Luger close to her glowing flesh and said, "I can make you a lot sicker, doll. I want some words about Portocci."
"I told you, I don't know," the girl moaned. "Flying. He's flying somewhere. Some meeting. I don't know."
"Private plane?"
"Huh?"
"How's he flying? Does he have his own plane?"
"Naw, he had reservations, that's all I know. God, I'm sick, mister, I'm sick. Let me get out of here, huh?"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Executioner Series Books 4–6"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc..
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
MIAMI MASSACRE,
CONTINENTAL CONTRACT,
ASSAULT ON SOHO,
Preview: Nightmare in New York,
About the Author,
