Day of Mourning

1

In the beginning, it was like any of the other missions in this government-sanctioned new war against world terrorism: Mack Bolan, the Executioner, now known as Colonel John Macklin Phoenix, the stony man of Stony Man, racing toward another confrontation with dark forces....

The AV-8B Advanced Harrier skimmed the endless expanse of the choppy Atlantic at a snappy 600 mph. Jack Grimaldi was behind the controls of the Vertical Short Takeoff and Landing combat jet, heading on a southeasterly course three hundred miles off the northern coast of Brazil. The Marine Corps' state of the art VSTOL aircraft was equipped with full cannon and missile capability.

Grimaldi's passenger was a big, icy-eyed man outfitted in scuba gear.

Mack Bolan, in the seat behind Grimaldi, felt wrapped in the steady low-pitched whine of the jet's engines.

A gray cloud ceiling melded with the turbulent ocean on the near horizon beyond the Harrier's Plexiglas.

Bolan jarred forward against his shoulder harness as Grimaldi, a longtime ally in the Executioner's old and new wars, slacked off sharply on the mighty aircraft's forward thrust.

Grimaldi then brought the Harrier to a stationary hover at fifty feet above the roiling sea.

The pilot's voice crackled through Bolan's headset.

"Radar beep, forty-seven miles due south. Right on the money, Striker. Do we hit 'em?"

"After you patch me through to Stony Man," growled Bolan. "I want a status report on Phoenix Force."

"Check. Patching you through now," came Grimaldi's voice.

This Harrier boasted a direct communications linkup to a satellite relay capable of establishing near-instant voice contact with the stateside Stony Man control base.

Stony Man Farm was a rolling 160-acre estate in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, three thousand miles away.

The "farm" was in reality the command center of the Phoenix program, a covert operation unrecorded in official files, headed by Mack Bolan. The facility was the headquarters of the most formidable security force ever assembled, operating with full government support.

At this moment Hal Brognola, Stony Man's liaison with the White House, and April Rose, the farm's overseer and mission controller, would be monitoring the progress of both Bolan and Grimaldi, and the men of Phoenix Force, who were on their way to rendezvous with the Harrier.

Upcoming was the Executioner's first deep-sea action.

Underwater combat had been a part of Bolan's Stony Man training that he had not had to use until now. The warrior in scuba black was ready with the know-how and the best equipment and weaponry for this mission.

Bolan could not afford to wait for Phoenix Force. The numbers were falling too fast. But at least he would know their ETA, and that could make a difference.

Bolan noted the lengthy pause from the cockpit.

"What is it, Jack?"

"I'm not sure," crackled the pilot's voice. "We seem to have a communications breakdown."

"Did you try the alternate frequencies?"

"Both of 'em. All I get is static."

"Is it us?"

"Negative. Other channels are loud and clear. I can pick up any frequency from anywhere with this baby. But no Stony Man."

"That radar beep. Is it stationary?"

"Affirmative. The coordinates are right. We're too damn far out for fishing. Anything else would be moving."

"Anything else on the screen?"

"Nothing within range. That doesn't mean our target won't have backup. It would sure help to have Phoenix Force along."

"You know the numbers, Jack. There's no time. Close in on the target."

"We thunder it?"

"Affirmative," growled Bolan. "Do it now."

Grimaldi punched the Harrier's afterburners. Another jolt and the jet shot forward, again at full throttle. The ocean below became a sleek blur like dark glass.

Bolan was concerned about the communications failure. But he was trying not to let it affect his combat consciousness as he prepared for the impending confrontation in a watery hellground.

Bolan could not remember Stony Man Farm ever having a communications-system malfunction.

The Executioner and his Stony Man combat units, Able Team and Phoenix Force, were supported by an intel and communications linkup masterminded and run by Aaron "The Bear" Kurtzman. He was a perfectionist. Nothing Kurtzman touched at Stony Man had ever gone wrong.

Yet here were Bolan and Grimaldi jetting into hot contact with the enemy, and communications were blacked out.

Bolan was used to working on his own. He preferred it that way. Give him at most one or two allies, and this warrior felt confident in tackling any mission.

Many times during his war against terrorism, and that former life of warring against the Mafia, the Executioner had pulled off his most stunning victories with just his weapons. Bolan sometimes missed those days; more and more often lately, it seemed. He knew that it was not absolutely necessary for him to have a communications link with Stony Man at this time.

Nevertheless the unexpected breakdown did concern him.

What's wrong at Stony Man? he wondered.

The flight from Central America had gone off without a hitch. The mission had been a tough, violent one. Colonel Phoenix and Grimaldi had been heading home when Brognola contacted Bolan in flight.

The big guy's senses had leveled into a postcombat cool. He could feel weariness pestering to be acknowledged. His soul felt tired, and so did his body. That changed when he and Grimaldi had listened to Brognola's descrambled message.

"We may already be too late, Striker." Brognola had sounded harried. "A terrorist coalition has bankrolled purchase of a top-secret nuclear device from an as yet undetermined European source. A hell bomb the size of a goddamn suitcase was shipped on a Liberian freighter, but the ship went down in a storm. Precautions were taken, and there's a fifty-fifty chance the nuclear device is still intact in a waterproof container."

"Do we have coordinates on the site?"

"We do. The ship's radioman was in touch with the terrorists before radio contact was broken and the ship went down. We were fed the information by a mole in one of the terrorist groups."

"What's the official status on the sinking?"

"Maritime SOP hasn't turned up a thing," said Hal. "The terrorist group already has a salvage operation under way. A Soviet-trained frogman crew set out from Belem on the Brazilian coast yesterday afternoon. We learned of all this only a few minutes ago. The terrorists have their whole network trip-wired for this thing, and the intel came to us secondhand. That's why it took so long for the news to travel. The CIA has lost contact with two of their people inside the coalition. They've already written them off as having been terminated."

Brognola had then given the coordinates to Bolan and Grimaldi.

The Stony warrior and his pilot had briefly touched down at a secret U.S. military air base in Honduras for refueling, equipment and ordnance. Then this fast flight southeast.

It was Brognola's idea to have Phoenix Force flown in to back up the Executioner and Grimaldi.

Grimaldi's voice crackled again.

"Here we go, Striker. Get ready."

Bolan saw the target at that instant: a 100-foot commercial deep-sea fishing vessel, bobbing on the gray Atlantic.

The Harrier lanced in with its specially mounted machine guns yammering away.

The deck crew never knew what hit them as the Harrier flashed by overhead like a giant firebreathing bird skimming the water surface for food. The pounding machine guns strafed every inch of the deck, filling the air with splintering wood and shreds of tumbling bodies and blood as blistering lead killed every living thing.

Then the Harrier banked in a smooth curve. Grimaldi eased the warplane back to a stationary hover off the port bow of the boat.

Nothing moved down there. Lifeless bodies were sprawled all over the pulverized deck. The boat rode the rolling crests of the waves like a ghost ship.

"Here we are, Striker," crackled Grimaldi.

"Hold it right here, Jack."

The Harrier maintained stationary hold.

The hellbringer in the passenger seat slid back the Plexiglas cowling, then stood to begin a final equipment check.

Brognola's intel was that the Liberian freighter had touched bottom in five hundred feet of water.

Conventional scuba-diving gear would not be practical below three hundred feet, so the Executioner was snugly togged in a Deep Diving System suit, courtesy of a Marine Corps scuba unit in Honduras.

The space-age scuba suit worn by Bolan was made of a special neoprene with an alloy helmet featuring a closed-circuit rebreather unit that eliminated telltale air bubbles from the helmet and adjusted the pressure not only within the suit, but within the sinuses and other internal air spaces within the diver's body. The suit's safety depth: twelve hundred feet.

But this scuba suit did have its shortcomings. It was designed for staying down no more than forty minutes, and Bolan would need to spend time in a decompression chamber when he came up.

Bolan activated the DOS and adjusted the harness on his air tanks.

He was armed with a sheathed knife at his left hip and a specially designed shark gun. At one end of the underwater weapon was a rod capable of sending off a six-thousand-volt electrical charge. The gun also fired 41.8mm bullets propelled by carbon dioxide through a barrel above the shock rod. The bullets were designed to explode on contact.

Bolan climbed onto a wing of the Harrier and moved cautiously away from the fuselage, avoiding the jet engines to either side of the cockpit.

"Last chance to change your mind," warned Grimaldi.

"You know better, Jack," replied the blitzer on the wing. "Keep trying to raise Stony Man. Black out communications with me once I'm under. Try to intercept any signals from down below. That's the enemy. We still don't know if they have backup standing by."

"And you come up in forty minutes."

"Precisely forty minutes."

"And if you don't make it up in forty?"

"Then I won't be making it," Bolan replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

"We've had no goddamn recon of what's waiting for you down there," Grimaldi said suddenly. "I don't like it, Striker."

"Neither do I. What's that have to do with anything?'' was Bolan's parting shot.

He adjusted his fins. He was ready.

Bolan again felt a twitch of concern at the communications breakdown with Stony Man Farm. And where the hell was Phoenix Force?

He knew a nuclear bomb in the hands of terrorists was unthinkable in the already bloody arena of Central and South American political terror that was advancing year by year toward America's border.

He put those thoughts aside. It was time for action.

"Good luck, soldier," said Grimaldi.

The Executioner gave a clenched fist and thumbs-up sign to the pilot, then stepped off the Harrier's wing.

Bolan plummeted a fast twenty feet into the frigid, turbulent depths of the sea, disappearing from Grimaldi's sight.