In Nepal, many things are sacred. And worth killing for...

“You were fated to come here.”

Annja thought she showed no reaction but the monk
chuckled.

“Oh, I know that you do not believe in fate,
Annja Creed. Any more than you believe in demons.
Despite the secret burden you carry. You are simply
too polite to tell a fat old man to his face that you
believe he is, as you might say, full of it.

“You believe that only you, and those who think as
you do, see the true face of reality. I can only shake
my head sadly and hope that someday you might
see that this universe of shining gears and ratchets
you have constructed to believe in is itself merely a
glittering toy, an illusion by which you hide the truth
from your eyes.”

She started to say something. Whether to dispute him
or make some polite evasion, she didn’t know. But he
held up a chubby finger.

“No need exists for us to debate. My universe, like
your unseeing, unfeeling, uncaring machine, shall carry
on regardless of whether either of us believes or
disbelieves. I only caution you for your sake—do not
be too hasty to disbelieve in the help that comes to
you in your direst need. You can explain it away later.
What is vital to your quest, and possibly your survival,
is that you not fight it.”

She nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

Look for Seeker's Curse, available July 14, 2009, wherever books are sold.

Survive or perish in a world gone hideously wrong...

One shell hit a gren

Without warning, the wag exploded with a sudden
violence that took the Armorer by surprise.

And then it was over, almost anticlimactic. The convoy
rolled on.

The Armorer looked at Eula, who regarded him
impassively, as though the events of the firefight hadn’t
occurred, as though she were examining him in minute
detail, trying to get inside his head, unconcerned by
what had just happened.

J.B.’s sense of unease welled up with renewed vigor.
There was something odd about the whole situation,
something that could spell danger not just for him, but
for all the companions.

Something for which only he could find the answer—if
he could figure out what the question was….
Look for Desolation Crossing, available July 14, 2009, wherever books are sold.

Powerful Russian backers plot to restore the Soviet hammer

Kurtzman looked concerned

“Hal won’t be particularly pleased with you hitting up
old contacts.”

Brognola was the least of his worries, Bolan mused.
With a death squad on the loose in the streets of
London, the Executioner knew that it was time to
load up for bear.

In this particular case, the ursine was a breed the
Executioner had hunted before, a ghost species
he’d hoped had disappeared with the fall of the
Berlin Wall.

Unfortunately, the Soviet Bear was still a living, vital
threat, and its predatory hunger had claimed the
lives of two of Bolan’s old allies.

Hunting season was on again.

Look for Cold War Reprise, available July 14, 2009, wherever books are sold.

A wave of terror sweeps across an island territory....








“Everybody down!” the Executioner shouted


The machine gun outside slammed into life like
doomsday. The wooden walls of the museum were
no defense against the cigar-sized bullets that passed
through them like they were paper. Glass display
cases shattered in explosions of shrapnel shards.
Juanita was the only one to have disobeyed Bolan,
and she paid for it as a burst from the crew outside
sacrificed her to the revolution.


Bolan glanced at the Beretta in his hand. They were
definitely outgunned.


The weapon outside suddenly fell silent as it burned
up its one-hundred-round belt. The crackle and pop
of small-arms fire filled the gap as the machine-gun
crew reloaded. Bolan rose to a crouch. It was time to
move. “Everyone behind me!” he shouted.


The Executioner threw himself down again as he
heard an unmistakable sound and the real hell-storm
began.


Six-foot streaks of fire geysered through the hundred
machine-gun holes perforating the museum walls.
Somebody had brought along a flamethrower. They
were upping the ante.

Look for Crisis Nation, available July 14, 2009, wherever books are sold.

A Struggle for survival in a savage new world...

The deal was on the table.

“Come along with us to Cascade. Lend a blaster if there’s any chilling to be done on the way. The healer helps patch any wounds, and talks to the old-timers, and the six of you get a fair share of every trade I make,” Roberto stated.

Having done something similar a hundred times before during his years traveling with the Trader, Ryan was impressed. It was a fair offer. And the chance to see a predark city. Ryan got a flutter of excitement in his guts. He glanced at the others. Were they interested? Hell yeah.

“Deal,” Ryan said, offering a hand.

Looking coolly at the man he had wanted to ace only a few hours earlier, Roberto marveled at the strange complexities of life. Friends became enemies, and enemies became friends, often in less time than it took to load a blaster.

“Done, and done,” he growled, and they shook.

Look for Eden's Twilight, available June 9, wherever books are sold.

A man's quest for vengeance knows no limits...

The Executioner abandoned the trail.

He tucked the carbine in close to his chest as he zigzagged down the uneven slope. The going was precarious as the ground beneath him was clotted with loose stones and small rocks. For each sure step there would be one where the ground gave way under his weight. Several times he dropped to one knee, raising welts along his thigh as he half fell, half slid his way downhill, raising a cloud of volcanic ash and dislodging the gravel around him. It was as if he’d become a one-man avalanche.

After another twenty yards, the ground abruptly fell away and he was thrown forward, off balance, into a deep recess. He struck the far edge of the gully knee-first, then with his shoulder, jarring his carbine loose. The rifle sailed past him and rolled sideways another five yards before coming to a rest. Bolan, meanwhile, slumped into the cavity, dazed. He had the presence of mind to drop as low as he could, avoiding the stream of gunfire that, moments later, skimmed past the gully’s rim. As he waited for his head to clear, the Executioner reached for his web holster, unsheathing his Beretta.

He was down but not out.

Look for Loose Cannon, available June 9, wherever books are sold.

The green movement is going blood red...

“PRIORITIES?”

“The recovery of the enriched uranium,” Brognola said. “That’s the top threat. Next, we need to know just how far the connection between the WWUP and these domestic and international terror organizations goes.”

“On it,” Lyons said.

“Coordinate through Barb to have the Farm deliver anything additional you’ll need,” Brognola said. “I’ll arrange for a liaison with local law enforcement both in Chicago and wherever the trail ultimately takes you.”

“You sound like you have someplace in mind.”

“I might. Reginald Butler has long been a political activist. He’s one of the richest men in America, and if he’s mixed up in any of this, or even if he’s simply letting his company sell the Seever units to foreign nationals with ties to terror, I want him taken down.”

“Could get sticky,” Blancanales said dubiously. “Government operatives pressuring an American entrepreneur who’s already complaining about governmental harassment.”

“We don’t exist,” Brognola said. “We do, therefore, what we have to do.”

Drawpoint is available June 9, wherever books are sold.

The jungle offers escape. And another way to die.

“You think I can do this?” Annja asked.

Vic laughed. “Well, you know, you’ve got a pretty strong motivational factor going for you.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, if you don’t hold your own, I’ll leave you behind. These woods are about to turn ugly on me as well. The people I annoyed last night will be out in force looking for yours truly. I’m not hanging around any longer than I have to.”

“You’d leave me behind?” Annja asked.

“In a heartbeat, sister. I’ve got my own agenda to play to. Sorry to break your heart and all.”

Annja frowned. “You’re not breaking my heart,” she said.

Vic smiled. “Let’s get moving.”

Annja stood and rubbed on some more mosquito repellent. Vic hefted his rifle and then stopped. “Here,” he said, holding out a small-caliber pistol. “You know how to use one?”

Annja took the gun, dropped the magazine and racked the slide. As the bullet in the chamber spun out, she caught it in her hand. Then she topped off the magazine, rammed it home and racked the slide again.

“Yeah, I think I can handle it,” she said.

Vic nodded and grinned. “You’re not exactly a damsel in distress, are you?”

Look for Sacrifice May 12, wherever books are sold.

Escaped Annunaki slaves unleash their millennia-old agenda of domination

The monster held in place for a moment

Then the huge beast staggered, a brief three-step dance across the sand, before bellowing another of its unearthly banshee wails, boiling saliva pluming around its face.

Kane watched in horror as the monster threw the crocodile-masked Incarnate to one side, and the man went head over heels before slumping to the ground, covered in sand. At the same time, the monster seemed to turn, to spin in place, its reverse-hinged legs kicking up great clumps of sand, moving faster and faster.

A blur, and then nothing. The creature was gone.

Kane rushed over before Brigid could stop him, ignoring her pleas to be careful. There was a hole in the ground now, a roughly circular tunnel that appeared to go straight down. Kane could hear scrabbling down there as the nightmarish creature disappeared from view, and he kept his Sin Eater trained on the opening in the sand for a long moment, debating in his mind whether he should follow.

Look for Shadow Box May 12, wherever books are sold.

Bolan hunts down a criminal consortium in Croatia...

Bolan cocked an eyebrow. “The Company asked for help?”

Brognola shrugged. “Their best operatives are running in Pakistan and Iraq these days.”

“So I’m supposed to enter a section of the city of Split that is a law unto itself. A place where everyone is pretending to be something they aren’t. Then I start following up leads to find two people who have disappeared, but whose disappearances may or may not be linked.”

Brognola nodded. “Yeah. That about sums it up. But don’t forget, if anyone suspects you’re an American agent, there are about one hundred intelligence and terrorist cells who’ll try to kill you.”

Bolan leaned back. “When do I leave?”

Look for Interception May 12, wherever books are sold.

Bolan must extinguish the flames of extremism...

The gunners hit the ground running.

Bolan didn’t wait for them to organize. He fired a three-round burst into the nearer chase car’s windshield, where the driver’s head should be, and thought he heard a strangled cry before all hell broke loose around him.

Bolan couldn’t accurately count the muzzle flashes winking at him from behind the headlights, but he thought that there were only five. If he was right, if he had drawn first blood with the unlucky driver, then he had already shaved the hostile odds by seventeen percent.

That still left five assassins, armed and angry, throwing down at him with everything they had.

Aolani’s car would never be the same. Bullets were raking it from grill to trunk along the driver’s side, some of them coming through the now shattered windows. So far, Bolan could not smell any leaking gasoline, but that was just dumb luck. Both tires were already deflated on the driver’s side, and Bolan knew they wouldn’t leave the Punchbowl in it.

Assuming they ever left at all.

Look for Pele's Fire May 12, wherever books are sold.

Espionage takes to the twenty-first century playing fields...

Ajza knew about the shahidka

They’d been given the name because their husbands had been killed fighting the Russian army. Some said that the shahidka were cursed, born into trouble and bad luck, and death to any man who took their hand in marriage.

Of course, there was no way anyone could tell if a woman was shahidka. There was no test, and they weren’t marked by God until after they’d lost their husbands.

Women in Chechnya married young, sometimes as early as thirteen or fourteen. The men they married weren’t much older, and they became soldiers the instant someone thrust a rifle into their hands.

Unable to afford mercy to the young troops, the Russian military often killed them. Those deaths doomed the women as well. In their culture, a woman belonged to a man. When a woman’s husband died, she became the property of her husband’s family. She could be separated from her children, have her house taken and be left out on the street—or sold to another.

Or she could end up a Black Widow.

Look for BLACK WIDOW from the Room 59 series April 14th, wherever books are sold!

Countdown to War...

“Give me the code,” the Executioner said.

“Give me my final release. It is the only thing I ask.”

“What is the code?”

“Give me your word. What is on that flash drive is time sensitive. Open it in time and you’ll have an intelligence coup that could save lives, perhaps as many lives as I’ve destroyed in my hubris. Take too long and the window closes.”

“How do you know I’ll keep my word once you give me the code?” Bolan countered.

“Faith is all I have left. Give me your word and I’ll give you the code.”

Bolan looked at the former analyst. The man looked back at him. Tears made his eyes look weak and shiny in the unforgiving brightness of the lamp. His head shook with his suppressed emotion.

“Please,” the man whispered.

The Executioner looked at the traitor. He nodded once.

Look for COLLISION COURSE available April 14th wherever books are sold.

100th Issue of Stony Man!

Tokaido yanked out his earbuds and pumped his fist in the air.

“You have something?” Barbara Price asked.

Tokaido nodded. “Our paramilitary one-stop shopping center migrated just a few miles from Barstow. They’re in Hesperia.”

Carl Lyons fielded the young hacker’s heads-up on the location of Army Gideon’s new quarters.

“Any word if they’ve been in contact with Ahmet or Nouhra?” Schwarz asked as he clipped frag grenades to an ammunition belt already loaded with magazines.

“No,” Lyons reported, “but they just got their mitts on a handful of Gustav rocket launchers. If that’s not special orders for our perps, I don’t know what is.”

“Hesperia’s less than a half hour away, tops,” Blancanales said. “Maybe we can beat the shoppers there and be waiting for them.”

“Not that it matters at this stage,” Schwarz said, “but I keep wondering who they plan to take out with these rocket launchers they keep trying to get
their hands on.”

“Beats me,” Lyons said, “but I’m guessing innocent bystanders.”

Look for the 100th issue of Stony Man - HOSTILE DAWN April 14th wherever books are sold!

A struggle for survival in a new dark age...

The piles of corpses and severed hearts grew.

Realizing what was coming, the slaves struggled futilely with their bonds, weeping and begging their captors for mercy.

All but the companions.

Jak, Krysty, Mildred, Doc, and J.B. were staring at Ryan. Their fixed, defiant expressions all said the same thing: we’re not going to check out like that. Not like chickens on the chopping block.

The one-eyed warrior nodded in agreement, then he looked away. If they couldn’t escape, they could do the next best thing. They could take out as many of the bastards as possible before they were cut down.

Ryan Cawdor withdrew deep into the core of his being, shutting out the grisly sights and sounds around him. He wasn’t preparing himself to die, he was preparing to fight and chill to his last ounce of strength. To expend it all, here, now. And when that strength was gone, death could nukin’ well have him, ready or not. It took only a moment for him to make the attitude shift. It was like a gate swinging open.

And when it was done, Ryan felt a sense of freedom and power.

Look for Dark Resurrection March 10. Available wherever books are sold.

A small town is caught between warring factions in the latest episode of The Executioner.

The Executioner burst into the back room and immediately crouched.

The instinctual move saved Bolan’s life as the escapee burst from behind a desk and triggered two rounds that whizzed overhead close enough for him to hear their passage. He recognized the shooter instantly.

Bolan leveled his weapon and squeezed the trigger. The 9 mm slugs struck center mass, entering the body with an upward trajectory, and punched through lung and heart tissue before exiting out the upper back. The impact sent the man reeling into a filing cabinet with enough force to dent the thin, light gray metal drawers.

The sounds of battle died and Bolan rose slowly amid the smoke of gunfire and the smell of death. The air of violence and spent energies clung to the Executioner like a cloak. The battle had taken less than a minute but the threat had been quelled.

All that remained was to topple the head of the underworld. And it was a task Mack Bolan relished.

Look for Hostile Odds beginning March 10. Available wherever books are sold.

New Mack Bolan - Look for it March 10!

Bolan considered exploding the grenades remotely.

He dismissed the thought immediately. Too risky to civilians. Risking the lives of noncombatants was not acceptable.

Mack Bolan was in the business of conserving life, and killed only when necessitated by factors of duty or self-defense. He didn’t believe the ends always justified the means, and he refused to do anything to put more blood on his hands.

When it came to the rules of engagement, Bolan had never believed it was right to salve his conscience with some “greater good” theory that civilian casualties were the natural collateral damage of warfare. Bolan valued human life much more than that.

Bolan fought for those who were unable to fight for themselves.

Look for Hard Passage March 10. Available wherever books are sold.

On the fringe...on the run!

New Rogue Angel adventure available March 10.

Who’s involved with this?
Annja wondered.

Someone beyond the university, certainly, otherwise she wouldn’t be the target of Arab martial-arts masters. University of Sydney professors didn’t strike her as the types to bring in hired assassins.

She stepped into another chamber, this one much smaller than the first one. It smelled ghastly, and a pan of the light showed why. The ceiling had spiderweb cracks in it. Water had trickled through and ruined the goods arrayed on the floor—long-rotted animal hides, bodies wrapped in cloth, which from their outlines looked to be nothing more than skeletons, jars that had been filled with grain and other foodstuffs and that now contained only mold.

“Ugh,” Annja pronounced. Now it was definitely time to leave.

She spun and blinked furiously, meeting another beam of light—this one aimed right at her eyes.

“Put your flashlight down and put your hands up!”

Because the light had practically blinded her, Annja couldn’t see the speaker, but she guessed it was the man she’d followed. He’d gotten behind her and hidden, waited for the right time to approach.

“Drop it now!” he ordered.

Annja had no choice but to comply.

Look for Eternal Journey wherever books are sold beginning March 10

The day every Stony Man member prayed would never come may have arrived...

JAMES WASN’T LEAVING T.J. BEHIND

No matter what.

“I need a lead, Mack,” Calvin James stated. “Hal gave me the runaround. French security moved
T.J., and we’re no longer trying to figure out where he is. The hit team that came after me was
stripped clean. I’ve got no clues, no bread crumbs to follow.”

Bolan sighed. Every man who had signed up for Stony Man duty, including himself—especially
himself—had understood that it could come to this.

Everyone had gone into the offered deal with his eyes wide open. Every man on Phoenix Force and Able Team had agreed, and now that the mission had gone south, that the worst-case scenario had finally occurred, Calvin James didn’t want to play by the rules anymore.

Bolan frowned. He wasn’t much on rules himself.

The Executioner picked up the phone.

Look for SHADOW WAR, available Feb 4

America faces an attack from within...

“I will kill this girl immediately!”

The man’s high-pitched voice threatened to shatter the eardrums of everyone in the Learjet. “You fill a suitcase with old magazines and think we will not open it before we release the woman?”

“Well, Moe,” Bolan said, holding the mike up to his mouth again, “it was all I could think of to do. We didn’t have a million dollars to give you.” Now was the moment of truth. The woman would live or die.

“You have not heard the last from us,” Moe screamed.
“And the blood of this young woman is on your
hands!”

The radio suddenly went silent.

Bolan saw a woman wearing a red dress—her hands and feet tied together—being shoved out of the Cessna just below them.

“Parachute!” he yelled at the top of his voice as he snapped open his seat belt.

With the unopened parachute clenched in his fist, Bolan never even broke stride as he raced out the door and into the open air thousands of feet above the earth.

Look for the latest Executioner adventure, FACE OF TERROR, available Feb 4

New February sneak previews: Outlanders

Kane opened fire with his Sin-Eater again
“Lakesh, we’ve got trouble. I just hit Durga with an implosion grenade, and all it did was knock the wind out of him.”

The Sin-Eater’s heavy slugs tore into sections of bared flesh, but no blood trickled from the scaleshorn meat. Durga lifted his head, golden eyes filled with fury and disdain for the human who simply would not die.

“Keep fighting, mammal,” Durga growled. “The longer you survive, the more time you give your
friends to make peace with their gods.”

“What makes you think you’ll survive killing me?” Kane called back.

Durga laughed, rising to rest on the coiled trunk of his serpentine lower half. He hadn’t recovered fully yet, but scales began to form over the flesh that had been scoured by the implosion grenade. “You amuse me, Kane. I’ll name my first extermination camp after you.”

Look for SERPENT'S TOOTH available Feb 4

In the Deathlands, the future could always be worse. Now it is...Look for Plague Lords available Dec 9.

“This could change all our lives for the better,”
Mildred said.

“If there’s another world out there, an unnuked world,
maybe we wouldn’t want to come back.”

“Mebbe you wouldn’t want to come back,” Krysty said.

“If you’ve got big love in your heart for Deathlands
because you were born here, that’s your business,”
Mildred told her. “From what I’ve seen, I’d say all the
hellscape does is kick our asses.”

“And what if the captain isn’t telling us the whole truth?”
Krysty said.

“A guy doesn’t survive solo without having some neat
tricks up his sleeve,” J.B. said with confidence.

Ryan held up his hands. “It’s about the devil we know
versus the devil we don’t. The familiar, bad as it is, is
still familiar. We can pretty much reckon how we’re
gonna die. Starvation. Thirst. Gutshot. Ate by some
mutie. I don’t particularly care where I croak or how.”

“So you’re for taking this pipe-dream trip and mebbe
never coming back?” Krysty said, aghast.

Plague Lords is available Dec 9, wherever books are sold.

The Nuclear Stakes Got Higher...New Stony Man available Dec 9

Primary Directive preview...


“So what you’re saying is that if al Qaeda manages
to get personnel inside of this place...” Brognola’s
voice trailed off.

“Yes, we’re all thinking the same thing. And it
explains why Bari’s tactical planning called for the
smuggling of so many terrorist operatives into the
country.”

“It’s unthinkable,” Brognola said. “A place like that
could be a terrorist’s playground if they know
where to look.”

“And they do,” Price said. “That’s why they were
monitoring all the sites, particularly the I-25
corridor. They weren’t interested in attacking those
shipments. They wanted to know when would
be the busiest times, when the eyes of most
personnel would be focused elsewhere.”

“All right,” the big Fed stated. “Let’s get hopping on
this. Let’s get both teams on the horn immediately
and apprise them of the situation.”

“Right,” Kurtzman replied, reaching for a phone
that connected directly to their secure satellite
uplink.

“And when you’re done,” Brognola continued, “get
me the President.”

Look for Primary Directive Dec 9, wherever books are sold.

New Executioner out next week - Dec 9

Sneak Peek at Final Resort...

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.