Phoenix Force 07 - Dragon's Kill Read online

  A madman was terminated, but his wrath remained

  A laser cannon, created by a maniac, was pointed menacingly at a nuclear submarine, the USS Zesus. The machinery operating the weapon was irreversible.... Unstoppable!

  When the death charge was released, two hundred U.S. seamen would perish. International security would be blasted to hell.

  Gary Manning faced the control panel. Phoenix Force's Canadian hero hopelessly tried to make sense out of the maze of buttons, switches, knobs....

  Despair ripped his voice. "I'll be damned if I know how to stop it!"

  Mack Bolan's

  PHOENIX FORCE

  #1 Argentine Deadline

  # 2 Guerilla Games

  # 3 Atlantic Scramble

  #4 Tigers of Justice

  # 5 The Fury Bombs

  #6 White Hell

  #7 Dragon's Kill

  Mack Bolan's

  ABLE TEAM

  #1 Tower of Terror

  # 2 The Hostaged Island

  # 3 Texas Showdown

  # 4 Amazon Slaughter

  # 5 Cairo Countdown

  #6 Warlord of Azatlan

  # 7 Justice by Fire

  MACK BOLAN

  The Executioner

  # 52 Tuscany Terror

  # 53 Invisible Assassins

  #54 Mountain Rampage

  #55 Paradine's Gauntlet

  # 56 Island Deathtrap

  # 57 Flesh Wounds

  #58 Ambush on Blood River

  # 59 Crude Kill

  # 60 Sold for Slaughter

  First edition September 1983

  First published in Australia March 1985

  ISBN 0-373-61307-5

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to

  William Fieldhouse for his contributions to this work.

  Copyright © 1983 by Worldwide Library.

  Philippine copyright 1983, Australian copyright 1983,

  New Zealand copyright 1983.

  Scanned by CrazyAl 2013

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 118 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, NSW. All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  The Gold Eagle trademark, consisting of the words GOLD EAGLE and the portrayal of an eagle, and the Worldwide trademark, consisting of a globe and the word WORLDWIDE in which the letter "o" is represented by a depiction of a globe, are trademarks of Worldwide Library.

  Printed in Australia by

  The Dominion Press—Hedges & Bell North

  Blackburn, Victoria 3130.

  1

  The yellow Toyota taxicab pulled out of Tokyo International Airport's main parking lot. The vehicle was not being driven by a cab driver. The man behind the wheel was actually a lieutenant in the Japanese National Security Organization.

  Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Merrill did not know the driver's name, although he was aware of the man's real profession. Merrill, an officer in the United States Army, assigned to the S-1 Department of Intelligence stationed in South Korea, had not come to Japan on leave. He wore a blue civilian suit and striped tie, but he was still on duty for Uncle Sam.

  The cab travelled slowly along the freeway in a dense traffic jam. Merrill accepted the inconvenience in stride. He had been in the Orient for sixteen years, and he had learned to deal with the massive crowds and congested traffic. Patience was not only a virtue in the Orient, it was a necessity.

  The colonel's square face remained impassive as he stared out the window at the enormous metropolis of Tokyo. Skyscrapers, apartment buildings and factories were everywhere.

  Merrill had been to Japan many times before. He had always admired Tokyo for being one of the world's most modern, productive, yet charming spots. Japan combined the old and the new. "Bullet trains," the super-fast monorails, shot across the country. Huge office buildings jutted into the sky, the corporate names of Sanyo, Sony and Honda written on them in English as well as Japanese.

  Yet the great pagoda-style castles of Osaka, Himeji and Matsue remained. The magnificent bronze Buddha at Kamakura, the Moss Garden of the Kokodera Temple and a thousand other remnants of ancient Japan were symbols of a civilization and culture that had endured for centuries.

  Colonel Merrill's mind, however, was too preoccupied with his mission to appreciate the sights.

  Japan's location in the Far East puts it close to several Asian nations that are not on very friendly terms with the United States. The Soviet Union, North Korea, Mainland China and Southeast Asia form an enormous horseshoe around Japan. The Land of the Rising Sun had remained strong and independent of the Communist powers; both Tokyo and Washington were anxious to keep it that way.

  Merrill was one of the best cryptographers in the U.S. Army. He had deciphered and translated numerous North Korean and Russian military codes. He had also developed codes for the American Forces in Asia that had baffled the experts in Moscow and Pyongyang. Of course, any code can be broken in time, but Merrill kept altering the cipher patterns with new key numerals and letters. He would occasionally change the codes into new variations, using numbers that were actually chapter and verse numbers from the Bible, or page and paragraph numbers from a book or magazine.

  Merrill's mission in Tokyo was to meet with his Japanese counterpart, Colonel Ushiba Kakuei. Together they would create a cryptogram system for Japanese Intelligence that would then be fed into enciphering computers to create enough variations in codes to assist the Nippon security experts for over a year.

  The taxicab pulled onto the expressway bridge that extends across the Sumida River. Bridges overlap bridges in Tokyo. Tokyo has more overpasses and underpasses than Chicago. Such designs are necessary in a city with a population of fifteen million people.

  Suddenly the driver floored the brake. The unexpected stop jarred Merrill forward. He bounced against the backrest of the front seat and muttered a curse.

  "Dow, shitsurei, Merri-san," the driver apologized. "Excuse, Merri-san ," he repeated in broken English. Many Japanese have trouble with the letter L because it is not part of their language.

  Merrill looked up and saw a green minibus stalled in their path.

  The engine must have broken down, Merrill thought, gazing at the opposite lane where traffic moved past the van and the cab. A column of vehicles soon formed behind the taxi.

  "Hell," Merrill muttered.

  The rear door of the minibus popped open and two figures dressed in gray overalls and stocking masks appeared at the opening. Merrill saw the tubular shapes of silencers attached to the muzzles of the Czech-made Skorpion machine pistols. The pistols were pointed at the cab.

  Half a heartbeat later, the Skorpions spit fire and the windshield of the taxi became a network of spiderwebs as 7.65mm bullets punched through the glass. The driver screamed and clawed at his face, then slumped from view.

  Merrill did not have time to react as two more masked assassins sprinted from the bus to the cab. He stared into the muzzle of another silencer-equipped Skorpion. The gunman thrust the weapon through the open window on the driver's side.

  Copper-jacketed projectiles coughed from the machine pistol, tearing into Lieutenant Colonel Merrill's chest. The American was too startled by the swiftness of th
e attack to be frightened, and he died too fast to feel pain. The fourth gunman yanked open the car door and shot Merrill in the side of the head with a Makarov 9mm pistol to make sure their victim was dead.

  The assassins jumped into the back of the minibus, which immediately bolted away, leaving a trail of cars trapped behind the cab. Moments later the bus turned off the expressway into the heart of Tokyo. By the time the police found the vehicle abandoned in the Shitamachi District, the assassins had already finished drinking their first bottle of sake in celebration of the success of their mission.

  ADMIRAL OLIVER SAMUELS stared through the Plexiglas window on the cabin door of his Huey chopper. He nodded in approval when he saw the USS Undefeated waiting in the water below. The great vessel resembled a floating airport. The huge flight deck of the aircraft carrier was large enough to serve as a runway for a U-2 jet and was more than adequate to accommodate the Huey.

  "The Undefeated is right on time," declared Brigadier General Peter Logan, seated next to Samuels in the cabin of the gunship. "Your boys are pretty good, Admiral."

  "The Navy is more or less playing host to this little party, General," Samuels said, smiling.

  Some party, the admiral thought. A top-secret conference of American and Japanese military intelligence officers could hardly be called a social event, but it was welcome nonetheless.

  Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone was very concerned about Japan's national security. Although they might argue about imports and exports, the U.S. recognized Japan as its strongest ally in the Far East. An opportunity to increase defenses and security was eagerly accepted by the Pentagon.

  Admiral Samuels of the Office of Naval Intelligence had met General Logan of Army Intelligence in Okinawa, and the two men had then flown to the rendezvous site in the North Pacific - 40 degrees latitude, 150 degrees longitude, just beyond the coastal region known as the Japan Trench. The covert international conference of high-ranking intel personnel would take place beneath the decks of the Undefeated.

  The Huey hovered nine hundred feet above the green blue sea.

  The pilot of the helicopter had made radio contact with the Undefeated and received permission to land. The gunship descended slowly, approaching the massive gray vessel. Admiral Samuels gazed down at the ocean and noticed a small sailboat cutting across the waves. Although the craft was heading away from the aircraft carrier, her crew could certainly see the chopper approach.

  Probably just pleasure sailors or fishermen, Samuels thought. It was highly unlikely the boat contained enemy agents, since security for the conference had been airtight; only a handful of top intelligence personnel knew about it.

  The Bell Huey had been instructed to land on the starboard side of the carrier, on a huge rectangle that was an aircraft elevator. The elevator would lower the chopper below decks before anyone set foot outside the gunship. Any attempt to spy on them would be useless.

  The chopper gradually descended as it neared the destination. No one inside the Huey saw the white smoke trail of a projectile that streaked from the sailboat. Only a few men aboard the Undefeated observed the tiny missile as it rocketed toward the chopper.

  Before anyone could even shout in alarm, the projectile smashed into the undercarriage of the gunship. A violent explosion ripped the fuselage apart. The eruption tore off the sponson and its support stud, as well as the sliding doors on both sides of the cabin. Fire burst within the cockpit and virtually every window popped from its frame.

  The blast tore into the fuel tank and another explosion followed immediately. The entire gunship was turned into a collection of twisted metal, deformed Plexiglas and charred bits of human bodies. The grisly debris fell to the Pacific while the crew of the Undefeated watched in horror.

  EIGHT HOURS AFTER the incident occurred, Colonel John Phoenix sat in a conference room at Stony Man headquarters and watched the Bell Huey explode in the sky. His lean face stiffened even though Phoenix was no stranger to such destruction.

  Colonel John Phoenix had been born Mack Bolan, but he had become the legend known as The Executioner. Bolan launched thirty-eight campaigns against the Mafia. He succeeded time and time again in chopping down the ranks of the mob. The cannibals of the concrete jungles were beaten by a lone warrior, totally dedicated to stamping out the disease of organized crime.

  Mack Bolan was officially dead. "Colonel Phoenix" continued the battle against the twentieth-century barbarians, most notably the KGB.

  Hal Brognola turned off the videotape machine. "The video footage was taken by a camera mounted on the bridge of the Undefeated," he explained. "Standard equipment for an aircraft carrier."

  "What about the enemy vessel?" the Executioner asked as he extracted a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

  "A pleasure craft stolen from a port at Hachinohe a few hours earlier," Brognola replied. "The commander of the Undefeated kept his cool and did not order the sailboat blown out of the water. Instead he sent several gunships full of SEALS—men from the Navy's Special Force's division—to try to apprehend the saboteurs. The boat had already been abandoned. They had left behind the Russian RP6 rocket launcher used to shoot down the chopper. Naval Intel figures the bastards must have been decked out in frogman gear and jumped overboard after the hit. The SEALS hopped into the sea and searched the area, but the assailants had already vanished."

  "They probably had a scuba sled waiting under the water attached to the boat," Phoenix remarked. "Only way they could have gotten away that fast." The big warrior fired a cigarette. "Okay, Hal, you've been calling these guys 'saboteurs' and `assailants'—everything but terrorists. Why?"

  "Because this could be a direct act of aggression by the Soviet Union," Brognola replied. "I know the first incident was a classic terrorist-style hit, but this is the second top-level intelligence operation in Japan to be sabotaged in less than a week. And the RP6 is a Soviet-made weapon. . . ."

  "Which unfortunately does not prove anything," Phoenix stated. "The Russians supply weapons to many terrorist outfits. This business is too crude for a direct Soviet operation. The Soviets manipulate and control terrorist activity, but they try to avoid direct association."

  "Whoever is responsible, we've still got a critical situation," Brognola remarked. "I told you what the ONI and Army Intel told us. They're ninety-eight per cent certain about how the saboteurs got their information. If they're right, both American and Japanese security is in jeopardy. I'd like to send you to Japan. Mack." Brognola added, "but you were just there —the authorities are still looking for you." The middle man for the White House and Stony Man Farm looked to Bolan for advice.

  "You know as well as I do that there's only one unit of crack antiterrorists in the world who can handle this," Bolan said.

  Brognola nodded.

  Once again, Phoenix Force was on the verge of some hot action.

  2

  "Bloody cowards," David McCarter spat. The cold anger in his tone robbed his clipped British accent of its usual charm. He had just watched the videotape of the helicopter being blasted from the sky.

  "Courage has never been a favoured trait among terrorists," Colonel Yakov Katzenelenbogen commented, fishing a pack of Camels from the pocket of his tweed jacket.

  "Then you agree with Colonel Phoenix?" Hal Brognola asked, addressing the four men seated at the same conference table where he had met with Mack Bolan.

  Four men: McCarter, the dashing short-tempered Englishman, formerly of the crack SAS commandos; Yakov Katzenelenbogen, the one-armed Israeli, who looked like a college professor, yet was one of the most experienced and competent fighting men in the world; Rafael Encizo, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion, a fiery, fearless Cuban an expert in underwater warfare; Gary Manning the Canadian demolitions expert, as strong as a young bull with more endurance than a team of oxen.

  All were Members of Phoenix Force. They were the cream of the professional crop, the best antiterrorists in the world. One member, Keio Ohara, was absent from the meeting.
Phoenix Force was the American foreign legion, handpicked by Mack Bolan. Like Bolan, they fought fire with fire. Phoenix Force asked no quarter from the international cannibals—and they gave none.

  "No doubt about that," Gary Manning answered Brognola's question as he sipped black coffee. "If a MiG fighter jet or a Russian submarine was involved, then we might consider a direct action by the Russians."

  "And why attack the helicopter?" Rafael mused, leaning back in his chair. "A missile or two from a MiG or a sub could have destroyed the entire aircraft carrier."

  "What does the ONI and Army Intel have so far?" Manning asked.

  "Approximately eight hours before Colonel Merrill was assassinated in Tokyo, another S-1 intel officer attached with the U.S. Embassy in Japan was reported AWOL," Brognola replied. "Captain Gerald Kenshaw was one of the few people who knew about Merrill's top-secret assignment. Kenshaw is still listed as missing from the morning report."

  "So he gave the enemy the information," Yakov mused.

  "But did he defect and give the information willingly," Manning added, "or did the terrorists force him to talk?"

  "A psychological profile on Kenshaw seems to rule out the former," Brognola said. "The man's record as a professional career soldier was exceptional, and his superiors vouch for his loyalty."

  "British Intelligence felt the same way about George Blake," McCarter commented as he drank from a can of Coca-Cola. "And he turned out to be a bloody Russian spy."

  "Anything is possible," Yakov allowed. "But why would a double agent blow his cover just to have a cryptographer killed?"

  "And Kenshaw didn't know about the conference scheduled to be held on the Undefeated," Brognola added. "That operation was handled by the ONI. However, a Lieutenant Commander John Barsa knew the locale where the aircraft carrier was to receive Admiral Samuels's helicopter."

  "Has Barsa vanished as well?" Manning asked.

  "That's right," Brognola confirmed. "He was listed as missing from the morning report the same day the attack on the admiral's chopper occurred."