Final Resort

Final Resort
Don Pendleton

Holiday travel turns deadly after a group of Middle Eastern freedom fighters escapes from Camp X-Ray and declares the U.S. their number one enemy. When a cruise ship is hijacked, a rescue mission fails to save the lives of the passengers. Mack Bolan is called in to neutralize the fugitives before they can strike again.But stopping them won't be easy. Heavily armed and seizing control of a luxury Cuban hotel, the terrorists are prepared to die for their cause–taking the innocent guests with them. In a race to beat the clock and avert a mass murder, the Executioner has only one choice…search and destroy.

This is how the other half lives, but they all die the same

The Executioner pushed the thought from his mind.

Santos followed Bolan closely, turning frequently to check the corridor behind them for approaching enemies. He caught her movements from the corner of his eye and reckoned she was doing all that could be done. The hotel was a warren built as if with ambushes in mind and there was no way he could protect them from all sides.

No way at all.

That was the price of hunting lethal predators. Sometimes—more times than he could count, in fact—the hunter was transformed into the prey.

Like now? he wondered.

He wasn’t sure, but Bolan knew one thing beyond a shadow of doubt—he wasn’t giving up. If he could swap his own life for a thousand hostages, he’d reckon it was a decent trade.

Final Resort

The Executioner

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Michael Newton for his contribution to this work.

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

—General William T. Sherman,

1820–1891

No honest soldier has anything good to say about war—but we fight where we can, where we must.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

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

Prologue

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

The first explosion stunned Lance Corporal Kenneth Pyle. Patrol duty at Gitmo was strictly routine, no surprises encouraged, since Camp X-Ray had been established to contain leading terrorists, insurgents, or whatever the hell they were labeled this week.

The enemy, Pyle thought, and let it go at that.

So, no surprises in the guise of training measures for Marines who drew guard duty at the camp, in case somebody had an itchy trigger finger and he greased a drill instructor.

But what in hell was this about?