Colorado Kill-Zone

Don Pendleton's Executioner series is without a doubt the most popular and influential men's adventure series of all-time, with hundreds of titles and spin-off books published and hundreds of millions of copies sold since it launched in 1969. Pendleton created a cultural phenomenon when he dreamed up the "dark knight" named Mack Bolan—a one-man army, holy warrior and vigilante fighting endless battles against the forces of organized crime and terror that took the lives of his family.

I've read several Executioners from the early "New War" period in the 1980s, after Bolan had shifted his focus from fighting the mafia to fighting international terrorists and the KGB with the backing of a "black" US government agency, but I'd never actually read any of the original 38 installments authored by Don Pendleton until I picked up a battered copy of Colorado Kill-Zone (Executioner #25, 1976) from a small-town store recently to see what all the fuss was about. I guess I'd assumed that stories about Bolan hunting mafia goons across the USA would be boring and repetitive compared to him hopping around the globe fighting terrorists and enemy agents, so I never tried the early books. Based on the quality of Kill-Zone, I think it's safe to say that this was a bad assumption.

As the book begins, Mack is rolling down a remote road in the Rockies in his "war-wagon", gearing up to do battle with an enemy he can't see but knows in his gut is very close. The battle is soon joined, and to Bolan's shock and dismay, this enemy is using military equipment, tactics and discipline, much unlike the mafia thugs he's used to dealing with. Mack manages to surprise them with the war-wagon's awesome firepower, destroying some and driving the rest away; he wins this round but knows a larger battle is soon to come. Investigating the wreckage and doing some scouting around, he soon discovers that there is a secret base nearby that houses hundreds of what appear to be US military personnel, all focused on trapping Bolan in a Colorado "kill-zone". Further detective work, with assistance from his old friend from the Justice Department, Hal Brognola, and high-ranking mafia informant Leo Turrin, uncovers the identity of the enemy paramilitary's leader and the existence of a conspiracy to take out someone very, very big.

More exciting action soon follows, as Bolan pulls off one of his trademark deceptions to evade the net the enemy forces have drawn around him and makes his way through a snow storm to a deserted ski lodge where the enemy leader supposedly wishes to meet him. There he meets the nordic beauty Giselda, whose brother has been taken hostage by the paramilitary, and together they make a narrow escape by snowmobile and skis but are unable to get off the mountain.

At this point Bolan, realizing that he's trapped on the mountain, surrounded by the paramilitary force, gets philosophical while deciding on the best course of action. He again opts for the strategem of deception from inside the enemy net, impersonating troopers and officers, discovering their radio codes, gathering intel about their larger plot, and sabotaging their operations from within. The enemy objective is revealed to be something worthy of a James Bond novel, the paramilitary commander makes Bolan an impressive offer, and the story moves a little too quickly and smoothly to a satisfying conclusion.

I don't know how typical Kill-Zone is of the Pendleton Executioners, but it was a much bigger plot than I expected, more like something from the New War and Stony Man era where Bolan routinely defeated super-villains and saved America. I certainly enjoyed the book; I liked how Bolan relied on deception and detective work as much as sheer firepower, which made it more realistic. The conclusion felt a bit rushed and inconclusive though, almost like it was the first act of a larger story arc.

There is something brilliantly unhinged about Pendleton's Bolan, the way he fearlessly and obsessively pursues his one-man war, creates his own stateside reality every bit as lethal as his days in 'Nam, obeys his warrior's "gut" like it's a mystical superpower, and justifies his endless spree of murder and terrorism in the name of personal vengeance and protecting society. I love Bolan's high energy and focus on his mission; it reminds me of another favorite fictional character, the super tough armed robber Parker, who is just as obsessive about his own personal war to enrich himself and take revenge upon anyone who crosses him.

Another attractive thing about the early Executioners is the beautiful cover art of Gil Cohen. Here the cover scene is one of the most exciting moments of Kill-Zone, as Mack is skiing away from a squad of snowmobile Bolan-hunters, weapons strapped to his parka, one pursuer being obliterated while another grenade is about to be hurled at the others, the beautiful Giselda by his side. You don't see covers like that any more, in these days of dull, generic, lifeless, photographic cover art that looks like it has been generated by an algorithm.

There is just something addictive and wildly entertaining about these books. Partly I think it's the 1970s setting, when there was a kind of freedom, adventure, creativity and cynicism in paperback fiction that you don't really see today. But more so I think it's the compelling character of Mack Bolan and the genius of Pendleton's world-building and story-telling. The upshot for me is that I will probably have to collect and read the entire run of 38 Pendleton books (and probably many more), just as I have done with other favorite series such as Parker and Quiller. Stay tuned for more reviews of this all-time classic men's adventure series.

Get a copy of Colorado Kill-Zone here.

Renegade Agent

Renegade Agent, published in 1982, was the 47^th installment of the legendary Executioner men's adventure series, featuring the ultimate commando-vigilante tough guy, Mack Bolan. It's the 9^th installment of Bolan's "New War" against international terrorism and espionage that began in issue #39. Before that, Bolan had been fighting a one-man vigilante holy war against the mafia, who were responsible for killing his family. Now, with the covert backing of the U.S. government and the Stony Man black agency, he is bringing his brutal skills to bear on even more dangerous and depraved enemies around the world.

As the story opens, Bolan, clad in his trademark "blacksuit", is breaking into the offices of a technology company with his tech wizard assistant, "Gadgets" Schwarz. They have come to gather intel from the personal computers of the company's boss, a dude named Charon who is suspected of selling classified info to the Kremlin. With the data they collect, they learn that Charon is also selling state-of-the-art technology to a renegade CIA agent named Edwards, who is running an organization Bolan sums up this way:

An international underground intelligence network ... a "black" CIA, run by men trained by the top legit agencies in the world, serving the needs of the terrorist network. With state-of-the-art technology provided by traitors like Charon.

What a fascinating concept!

After raiding Edwards's Swiss chalet and taking out the whole place in classic Bolan fashion, Mack learns that Edwards has fled to his headquarters in Tripoli, Libya, where his black agency has the backing of Muammar Gaddafi--the leading sponsor of international terrorism in those days. He also learns that an old flame and assistant from his mafia-fighting days is working undercover to infiltrate Edwards' organization, and her cover may be blown. This means Mack has to use disguise and deception rather than brute force to take down Edwards, and his task is made more difficult by a gunshot wound he suffers in the shoulder that limits his use of one arm. There follows more set-piece commando raids on the black CIA's "hardsites" that meet the quota of gory killings and explosions for an Executioner novel.

This was a pretty typical Executioner novel, which means it had some great commando action, black ops intrigue, enemy infiltrations, forgettable characters and internal monologues to justify his vigilante war on evil-doers. Mack is more James Bond than John Rambo in this one, which was a nice change of pace.

I really liked author Steven Krauzer's concept of a "black" CIA or mercenary spy agency, which was no doubt inspired by the real case of Edwin Wilson. Wilson was a rogue CIA agent who sold arms to Libya used by terrorist groups (including 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosive!), recruited retired Green Berets to train Libyan special forces, and was in it strictly for the money. This realistic detail, along with some interesting rants from Bolan, made this a worthwhile read and more than just a mindless men's adventure novel.

Get a copy of Renegade Agent here.

Mack Bolan #53: Invisible Assassins

As I said in a previous review, Mack Bolan vs. ninjas is a matchup I can’t resist, so when I learned that Mack has tangled with the legendary shadow warriors on several other occasions I decided to track them down. The Executioner #53: The Invisible Assassins was Bolan’s first run-in with ninjas, published in 1983 just as the “ninja boom” was exploding.

The first thing I noticed about the book is the striking cover art by iconic Bolan artist Gil Cohen—click here for the full painting. Take a moment to savor the scene: Bolan in his trademark “blacksuit”, with throwing stars on his belt, his silenced pistol raised to blow someone away, in an elegant Japanese bathhouse with a dead ninja sprawled by the pool in the background. If that doesn’t make you want to read this book, you obviously aren’t my kind of shadow warrior!

The story opens with Bolan witnessing the murder of a Japanese-American computer wizard named Shinoda on the streets of L.A. during some kind of transaction. The killing is carried out almost instantaneously, by a shadowy figure who leaves the body without a mark on it and disappears into the night. When Bolan’s partner is then run over and killed by a cold-eyed Asian driver, Bolan vows to bring this “invisible assassin” to justice. Bolan is soon assaulted by the same figure and barely survives—shaken by the assailant’s ability to get to him without triggering his near-infallible danger instincts. But the attack does trigger Bolan’s eidetic memory, and he recognizes the attacker as Zeko Tanaga, a notorious Red Army Faction terrorist who was thought to have been killed in a terrorist training camp in Yemen. Clearly Shinoda was involved in something very big and bad if he was meeting with Tanaga, and Bolan needs to find out what it was.

Bolan follows his only leads to Tokyo, hoping to identify some faces in photos found in Shinoda’s apartment and track down Tanaga. Posing as an American security consultant, he is soon attacked by thugs with shortened little fingers—yakuza. Soon after that, Bolan notices a blonde woman following two of the yakuza goons on the streets, whom he promptly saves by smashing the gangsters’ faces. The blonde turns out to be a graduate student named Sandra who is researching the secret power structures of Japan that led to their involvement in World War II. She has uncovered evidence of a conspiracy of the “Eight Jonin”—a cabal of eight powerful warlords who have run Japan from the shadows for centuries and lead a fanatical organization called the “Circle of the Red Sun.”

Bolan’s own research suggests that Shinoda was involved in the development of a revolutionary bio-computing technology, which is somehow connected to notorious war-time Japanese biowarfare research and the Eight Jonin. All signs point to Red Sun Chemicals corporation, which owns a castle overlooking the sea, as the nexus of the conspiracy that killed Shinoda and involves Tanaga, the Circle and the Eighth Jonin. As he is uncovering this information, Bolan is also killing yakuza thugs, narrowly escaping underwater death, being rescued by naked pearl divers and fighting ninjas on top of a bullet train. This guy is a men’s adventure machine!

The story races to a classic Bond-style climax, as Mack and Sandra infiltrate the Big Bad’s castle grounds, which have been maintained as a kind of medieval Japanese theme park, complete with authentically garbed samurai and ninja guards ready to put real arrows, swords and lances into intruders’ vital body parts. There they encounter both the terrorist Tanaga and the Eighth Jonin himself—who, unsurprisingly, is quite mad, bent on revenge for crimes against his ancestors, and determined to use Mack and Sandra as test subjects for his latest weapons of mass destruction. You can probably guess the rest.

This wasn’t a great read, but I found it entertaining. As a student of ninjas in popular culture, I liked how it’s like a mash-up of many popular ninja books and movies: the title and depiction of ninjutsu were clearly influenced by the first book on the subject in the West, Ninja: The Invisible Assassins by Andrew Adams; the dramatic opening murder using a mysterious killing technique and the conspiracy of powerful Japanese industrialists brings to mind Eric Van Lustbader’s seminal 1980 novel The Ninja; the pursuit of ninjas on the bullet train foreshadowed a scene in the excellent 1995 film The Hunted; the castle by the sea, the pearl divers and the mad Samurai overlord brought to mind the classic 1964 James Bond novel You Only Live Twice (and 1967 film) that introduced ninjas to the Western world. Add Mack “The Executioner” Bolan into the mix, and how can it be bad?

Get a copy of The Invisible Assassins here.

Stony Man #27: Asian Storm

After reading a lot of cynical, morally ambiguous Shadow-fiction recently, I decided to try a good old men’s adventure novel, where the good guys are all good, the bad guys are all bad, and the job of the former is to blow away the latter with .44 magnums, Galil sniper rifles, and whatever else is handy.

Such is the world of Mack Bolan—granddaddy of the men’s adventure genre, who sold millions of books and spawned dozens of imitators in the 1970s and 80s. Bolan began his paperback career as a vigilante known as the “Executioner” – a one-man army fighting a holy war against organized crime. By the 1980s, as Ronald Reagan was rekindling the Cold War with the Soviet Union, killing off mafia thugs was no longer enough for Bolan, so he expanded his war to include international terrorists and enemy spies. That was when Bolan joined the “Stony Man” organization, a deep black agency tasked with taking the gloves off and waging war on the KGB and their terrorist allies as ferociously as Bolan had previously taken on the mafia.

Unable to resist the prospect of Bolan matching wits with ninja assassins, I picked up Stony Man 27: Asian Storm, by Jerry Van Cook, and gave it a quick read. The story concerns the machinations of three ambitious Japanese brothers, members of an old Samurai family who have decided that the time has come to carve out an empire in Southeast Asia. Somehow, they have managed to engineer an alliance among several nations in the region, and are on the verge of uniting them into the Republic of Tanaka, which we’re told would be the world’s third great power, after the USA and China. To accomplish this, the Tanaka brothers employ the services of a ninja clan to do their dirty work, just as many Samurai families did in old Japan. The ninja clan is lead by a particular nasty piece of work named Yamaguchi, who is not only a highly skilled shadow warrior and master of disguise, but a sex fiend who enjoys killing women and children in the line of duty. On the Tanakas' orders, the ninjas are assassinating high-ranking Chinese leaders, framing the CIA in the process and bringing the USA and China to the brink of war. They are also stirring up deadly riots and committing terrorist acts stateside designed to inflame Asian opinion against the USA. The various plot threads come together nicely, as Stony Man teams Able Team and Phoenix Force race to stop the Tanakas from creating a perfect “Asian storm” and plunging the world into war.

You don’t read a novel like this for its high levels of Shadow op realism. Bolan, like Joseph Rosenberger’s Death Merchant and Shadow Warrior, has a superhuman ability to engage rooms full of armed men and come out unscathed, while leaving a room full of corpses in his wake. This is a skill the ninja themselves are legendary for; in fact, throughout this book Bolan and other members of the Stony Man crew manage to “out-ninja the ninjas”. Team members pull off several infiltration, diversion and disguise ops; Bolan completes a particularly impressive burglary using a grappling hook gun to cross between buildings, cut through a window, steal data from the ninja boss’s computer and get away via rope as automatic gun fire rains down on him. But at the end of the day, Bolan is more Dirty Harry than Sho Kosugi, and he prefers to settle things in a straightforward Western manner: by blasting the bad guys through the heart with his trusty Desert Eagle .44 Magnum.

For what it was and the time invested, Asian Storm didn’t disappoint. If you don’t expect literary subtlety or nuanced characters and treat this like a men’s comic book, you should have a good time. Get a copy of Asian Storm here.