capable of maintaining the missile trajectory upon reentry to the atmosphere.
Soon, he thought, the world would bow before North Korea’s might. The puppets in the South would be overthrown, and not even the Chinese, who had for so long cast their dominant shadow over the Korean peninsula, would be an equal.
He closed his eyes and pictured the long-ago sea vessels, a huge dragon’s head rising from the armored bow of each, striking fear into the hearts of the hated Japanese and Chinese. These vessels, once the most powerful ships to roam the seas, had been conceived and piloted by his ancient namesake, Yi Sun-Shin. Soon these new dragon ships would restore his country to its proper place of prominence. It would be one Korea, unified and under Communist rule, no longer a small fish dominated by whales.
Soon...
Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico
Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, and his team were spread out in the darkness along the tree line, about thirty yards from the high cyclone fence that surrounded the facility. The remote grounds, once the site of a Jesuit monastery, now housed a warehouse for the Sinaloa Cartel. Just outside the fence were the crumbling ruins of the old church.
The Executioner gently tapped the bottom of the magazine inserted into his Heckler & Koch MP-5 to make sure it was properly seated, then checked the tape that secured the inverted second magazine to the first. His weapon was ready.
Aerial photos had given them the layout of the place, a metal, prefab building approximately one hundred yards in length, set on a concrete slab and surrounded by the cyclone fence. A short, curving road led to a paved airstrip on the west side of the compound. Once Bolan and his team were through the fence, they would have to cross a wide courtyard with little cover to get to the warehouse.
An informant had told the authorities that trucks would be loaded that night with marijuana, cocaine and brown heroin. The green light for the raid had been given less than an hour earlier, and the team had been hustled to the airstrip to be transported to the remote site. The highway was a scant quarter mile from the compound, and they’d double-timed it all the way to the tree line.
Bolan glanced at his watch: 0252. It was as good a time as any for a raid, he thought, and keyed his mic to Jack Grimaldi’s frequency. “Jack, do you copy?”
“Your eye in the sky is waiting for the show to start, Sarge,” the Stony Man pilot replied from the helicopter high above. “I’ve got your back.”
“We’re almost in position,” Bolan said.
“Roger that. Want me to do another flyover?”
Before Bolan could answer he heard the drone of an aircraft engine. He looked upward, but was unable to see the sky through the thick canopy.
“Sounds like a plane approaching,” he said. “See anything?”
It took Grimaldi a few seconds to reply. “Roger. Looks like a twin-engine craft coming in from the east. I’d better drop back and down for a bit.”
Bolan knew that Grimaldi was blacked out and now positioning his helicopter to minimize the chance of being spotted by anyone in the plane. It was a reasonable assumption that the aircraft was going to land on the airstrip located on the other side of the building.
Bolan clicked his mic in reply just as Sergeant Jesus Martinez, the team leader of the Mexican marines, tapped him on the shoulder.
“What does your friend in the helicopter say?” he asked. The dark camo paint on his face was shiny with sweat.
“An aircraft is coming. Un...avión, ah, viene,” Bolan said in broken Spanish, for the benefit of Captain Ruiz, who was next to Martinez and had a limited knowledge of English.
The two men could not have appeared more different physically. Ruiz was handsome and lean, while the bulky Martinez looked like an aging heavyweight past his prime and gone to seed. The two bent close and whispered together, their words too soft for Bolan to discern, even though he had deliberately kept his fluency in Spanish to himself.
Martinez smiled and nodded. “Bueno.” He whispered again to Ruiz, then turned back to Bolan. “Perhaps we will catch some fish this time, eh, my friend?”
Bolan assessed the most prudent move, considering the unexpected development of the approaching plane. He and Grimaldi had been assigned as “civilian assistants” to the Mexican marines for this raid. US government personnel had been regularly assisting the Mexican authorities with raids on the cartel locations, but an FBI agent had been wounded during the last one, sending up a red flag in Washington. US participation was supposed to be covert, their agents not directly involved in hazardous situations without official sanction, but things were moving at such a fast pace that clandestine ops had been ordered to cut through the miles of red tape. Now, while the various agencies braced for a full and transparent hearing and investigation on the Hill, the President had contacted Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group based at Stony Man Farm, to assist in this latest interdiction effort.
So here they were, Grimaldi dropping off the assault team in the vicinity and playing guardian angel in an old beat-up Huey, without armament, and Bolan on the ground with an unfamiliar group of Mexican marines.
“Looks like they’re lighting up for a landing,” Grimaldi’s voice said in Bolan’s ear mic. “A van just exited the front gate, heading toward the strip.”
The Executioner turned to Martinez and suggested they move into the old ruins and send two men to cut a hole in the fence during the distraction of the plane landing. Martinez agreed and dispatched the men. It took them less than five minutes to accomplish the task, and in the interim Bolan heard the sound of the plane’s tires touching down.
Grimaldi confirmed the landing and said he was still blacked out, but ascending to a better vantage point.
“Jack, stay far enough out so they don’t hear you,” Bolan said, keying his mic.
“Roger.”
Bolan and Martinez took cover by a dilapidated wall that had long ago been the front of the church as the rest of the twelve-man team filtered through the ruins, taking up their positions. Bolan flipped down his night-vision goggles and surveyed the scene. Everything looked clear at the rear of the compound. He knew at least one man was stationed at the guard post by the front gate, and two others in watchtowers strategically placed at the far corners.
“The plane’s on the ground,” Grimaldi said over the radio. “Several subjects getting out. The van’s picking them up... I’m counting five total.”
“We move now,” Bolan said.
Martinez keyed his mic and issued the order. After pausing to cross himself, he pulled his mask up to cover the lower portion of his face, then moved to the door.
Ruiz nodded to both of them. His mask hung loosely around his neck, and he had declined camo paint, indicating that he was not going to be an active participant in the raid.
Bolan ducked through the opening, then sprinted toward the gaping hole in the fence. The two cutters had done an excellent job. The Executioner
