The Iranian Hit

14

The three of them sat around a table in the kitchen, one of the few rooms on the ground floor of the house that had not been scathed in the battle. The greenhouse had gone entirely.

Hal Brognola's expression was a mixture of profound relief at seeing Bolan alive and concern regarding the mission.

"You called it right on how they busted in," he reported. Brognola had just come in from supervising the cleanup detail outside. "They knocked out the guards in Gatehouse Two out there with nerve gas. Someone who had access to the gatehouse planted the canisters beforehand. Kilgore from the lab took a look at 'em and said they were probably triggered tonight by a radio signal from somewhere in the immediate vicinity.

"I'd say that narrows it down to somebody who was here among you tonight. A classic inside job."

April Rose frowned. "But who? Everyone here this evening was dependent on the general for his security or his job. It doesn't make sense."

As soon as they arrived, Bolan had briefed Brognola and April on the details of what had gone down here tonight. At the moment Bolan was sipping coffee that April had prepared for the three of them. It was helping to revive him, which was something he sorely needed at that moment. Now that the pumping adrenalin of the fight had subsided, the weariness was beginning to crawl back over him again. It had been a long time since Mack Bolan's last full eight hours of sleep. But he couldn't slow down. Not yet.

The fighting here in Potomac was over.

But the mission was not.

The big warrior had made a promise to Carol Nazarour. He had promised her that he would see her clear of this nest of vipers. Now she had disappeared, sure. She had gone somewhere with her dear, deadly husband and Minera and Rafsanjani. With them, yeah — but against her will. Bolan could read the situation no other way. If she was all right, Carol Nazarour would have been sitting there in the kitchen with them right now. Beretta or no, she had been overpowered and forced to accompany the others.

When Bolan thought about that, the adrenalin started pumping again, and he knew he had it in him to keep going until this thing was wrapped up.

After verifying that General Nazarour and his group had indeed disappeared, Bolan's first step had been to activate his hip radio and call in the Stony Man team. In minutes waiting choppers had ferried the cigar-chewing top cop and April to the Potomac mansion. Accompanying them had been the team of federal marshals under Hal's command, who were presently outside tagging bodies and canvassing the property. It was early dawn.

"What was the body count?" Bolan asked quietly.

"Twenty-one," Hal replied. "The guards were wiped out, and the hit team left their dead behind. Eleven of 'em."

''Have you tagged any of them as the leader?''

"Unfortunately, no. Looks like you pretty well nullified the guy's operation, but the head man, Yazid, made it clean. So did Amir Pouyan, his second-in-command.''

"They must have been leading the team that swung around into the house while I was busy with the squads out front," Bolan said. "That means that both General Nazarour and this Yazid are on the loose out there somewhere today."

"I've got men covering the airstrip in Rockville where Nazarour was supposed to catch his plane this morning," said Brognola. "Though I doubt if he'll show. He'll probably figure that if Yazid found him here, then he's probably hip to the whole layout, plane and all."

"And he probably is," Bolan added. "How did Yazid's men breach the security at the gate out front?"

Hal spoke as he poured them each another cup of coffee. "Same M.O. as the inside gatehouse. Cyanide, except with gas guns. It was easy. They took the guard when he came up to the car to check their id! Then they opened up on the other guards. That was the firing you say Minera heard. The guards in Gatehouse Two were already knocked out from the planted canisters, so Yazid's people just walked in. And we got what we wanted — a shot at a hit team. The men at Number One didn't stand a chance."

Bolan stared down into his coffee for a moment, as if it might give him the right words to express what he was thinking.

"The guys who were guarding this place fought the good fight," he said finally. "The ones inside who were given half a chance fought with everything they had until their numbers ran out. Whatever the backgrounds on those people, Hal, they fought and died like men."

"But I still don't understand the connection between the general and a security crew that happens to be a franchise of the Maryland Mafia," April broke in. "Was it a coincidence?''

"Nothing's coincidental in Washington, April," Bolan reminded her. "The connection is money. This house was furnished for the general's use by some friends he had made in high places when the Shah was in power. Friends who obviously still want to keep the general alive and comfortable. And these friends have friends. That's who they turned to when they wanted to recruit security for the general. A lot of people in this town aren't too particular about who their friends are."

"And it was some of Minera's own men who were trying to kidnap Mrs. Nazarour when you showed up last night?"

Bolan nodded. The events under discussion — that sudden firefight at the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, in which six other men had died — had gone down only scant hours before. Yet in some ways it seemed to Bolan as if a great passage of time had transpired. So much had happened. So much death.

"Yeah, they were Minera's boys," he replied. "The general is in the habit of having punishments administered to his wife. The lady was having an affair with one of the guards, and of course Minera found out about it and told the general. The general arranged to have the man killed tonight in front of his wife's eyes, then have the wife kidnapped and... punished before they left the country tomorrow morning. Or maybe he'd grown tired of her. Maybe he didn't care what happened to her.

"He was willing to let her go easily enough in a conversation we had just prior to attack."

"It's too bad it was your job to defend the general," said April with quiet intensity. "It sounds as if the creep deserved everything that was coming to him."

Bolan was amused at the increasing vehemence of this fine woman, who had joined the Stony Man team only months ago.

"I still don't give much of a damn about the general," he told her. "His past will catch up with him soon enough, one way or another. But Mrs. Nazarour reached out to me. I promised her that I'd help. I will help her, any way I can.

"I just hope something comes in that we can follow up, and fast. If Karim Yazid is running leads down faster than we are, or if he's luckier than we've been and he's located the general and his party, then he's going to give everything he's got to carrying out his original mission to hit Nazarour. In a situation like that, the general's wife will probably be dead before we can get to her."

April leaned forward and touched Bolan's hand across the table. She spoke in that soft voice which could convey so much strength.

"You're doing the right thing," she assured him. "And you've been pushing so hard for so long. There's nothing you can do right now but wait for that phone on the wall to ring. Hal's men are doing everything they can. You should use this time to rest. You'll need your strength later."

She was right, of course, Bolan reflected. April Rose, along with Hal, was one of the few people whose judgment Bolan trusted implicitly. He made the decisions, sure. But he always listened to what April said.

Brognola struck a match and relit his ever present stogie. "Please don't you two start making moon eyes at each other," he begged in mock desperation, through a cloud of cigar smoke. "How about trying to figure out who killed the general's brother out there by the pool? There's a healthy pastime. Any ideas on that?"

Before Bolan could respond, April added to the question. "And how many bad guys are we dealing with here? Is the person who killed Dr. Nazarour the same person who planted the cyanide canisters in the gatehouse out front?"

"Yeah, they were the same person," said Bolan. "My guess is that Dr. Nazarour came across the guilty party out there by the swimming pool just as the person was triggering the radio signal to release the cyanide in the gatehouse. I don't know what the general's brother was doing out there. I had it figured that he'd be in his room, junked out on something. But somehow he ended up out there just before the fighting commenced, and somehow he got himself killed."

Brognola snorted. A sour sound. "Whatever happened to the old-time simple missions?" he asked rhetorically. "This damn thing has more angles than a..."

He was interrupted by the ringing of the kitchen wall phone. Bolan stood and grabbed it.

"Hello?"

"Colonel Phoenix? Thank God it's you. This is Carol Nazarour. I — I need you...." The voice came in a panicky, hushed whisper. She must have been praying that it was Bolan who would answer the phone in her beleaguered home.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"At a restaurant in Bannockburn Heights. Do you know where that is?"

Bolan knew. "Where are they taking you?"

"To a small airstrip in Bethesda."

"Bethesda? That's all residential or government property."

"There's supposed to be a very short airfield near the naval hospital," she told him. "They use it for STOLs — that's what Minera called them — whatever they are."

"Short Takeoff and Landing," said Bolan. "There's a field on Goldsboro that the hospital uses. Is there any way you can break away now?"

"No. I'm in the ladies' room. Rafsanjani is waiting for me outside the door. He doesn't know there's a phone in here. I was trying to escape on my own. I knew the tunnel was useless because Eshan would probably have someone guarding it. I was holding your gun and cutting off from the ground when Rafsanjani took me by surprise from behind. I never heard him. He moved like a cat! He took the gun and — oh, my God! No!..."

Bolan heard a flurry of motion on the line. The distinct sound of flesh being brutally slapped.

The line went dead.

Hal and April were both watching Bolan keenly as he hung up the phone and swung around.

"It was her, wasn't it?" said April.

Bolan nodded. "There's an airstrip in Bethesda. The general's on his way there to meet his flight. That's where the action is."

Brognola rose and started with Bolan toward the door. "Let me get some of the boys together and we'll..."

Bolan stopped him with a slight touch on the arm. "No, Hal. I've got to do this alone."

"Alone?" Brognola obviously had not expected this from Bolan, but he fielded it smoothly. "No way, buddy. Yazid and what's left of his Iranian attack force could show up at that airstrip. You've done more than your share already, Striker. You've got to let me back you up on this one."

But Bolan was adamant.

"Hal, that lady's life is my chief priority at this point," he told the fed. "Don't worry, I'm not forgetting Yazid and his bunch. Maybe they're onto the general, maybe they're not. But either way, I am going to get Mrs. Nazarour safely out of that situation she's in.

"If Yazid and his sidekick Pouyan are there and I show up with a cadre of federal marshals and the shooting starts — well, the idea is to get the woman safely away from there, not get her killed in action."

April spoke from where she sat at the table. "He's right, Hal. We have to let him do it his way."

Brognola snorted with mock gruffness. "Don't we always. Okay, Striker. We'll fall in as backup a mile to your rear. I trust that will be giving you enough room to swing?"

"That'll give me plenty of room," said Bolan grimly. "Thanks for understanding, Hal. Okay, let's roll."

He lifted a clenched fist as a final silent "Stay hard" to these fellow warriors on the team.

Then he was off and moving into the night again.

For one more confrontation possibly with two separate enemies.

He was pushing himself to the max and he knew it.

But there was no way he could shrug off his responsibility to Carol Nazarour.

No way at all.

Bolan knew in his gut that the coming confrontation would be fast, bloody, and decisive. And it was less than thirty minutes away.

No more sitting by the phone.

The game was again in play.