The Iranian Hit

19

Bolan was thinking that he should have blown the man away. In a different time, maybe he would have done so. A guy like Nazarour should not be given a diplomatic cloak to legitimize his savagery. But he was wearing one this time, and Bolan had to honor it.

The general's STOL disappeared beyond the hospital district skyline, as though into some new slice of time and space, leaving the realities behind. Bolan sighed and allowed his mind to play with those realities for a moment. Minera, too, had disappeared.

Unmarked federal sedans were clustered at both entrances to the bloodied airfield, awaiting their cue for entry. A hushed crowd of civilians was beginning to form beyond the fence, drawn by the gunfire.

And, as though from another time and place, Carol Nazarour approached, still wrapped in the same leather coat, she'd been wearing when Bolan first saw her — was it just last night? Another time and place, yeah. Aeons ago.

Many dead men ago. She told him in a breathless little voice, "Thank you, Colonel. Many, many thanks."

Bolan smiled at her with eyes only as he lifted the transceiver to his head and spoke into it. "This is Stony Man One. All clear here."

Brognola's somber tones bounced back instantly. "Okay. We're moving. Where's Minera?"

"Gave 'im a white flag," Bolan told him. "Guess he took it."

There was urgency in Brognola's voice as he replied, "You may want to take it back. I've got two words for you: Arnie Farmer."

Arnesto "the Farmer" Castiglione had been the big boss of the Eastern seaboard from Jersey to Florida when Bolan executed him during the Mafia wars.

Bolan's voice was cold and clipped as he responded to that. "Cordon the field. Give me a sieve as fine as you can manage."

"You got it," Brognola assured him.

Bolan told the lady. "Stay put, right here. They'll take care of you." He brushed her cheek lightly with the back of his hand, then bent to kiss her quickly.

"Thank you again," she whispered.

But Bolan did not hear. He was already moving swiftly across the battlefield, seeking a rendezvous with his past.

Time out of sync, yeah. That warp of space and time was right here, right now. Minera was carrying it, not Nazarour. And Mack Bolan intended to find it.

Arnesto Castiglione, or "Arnie Farmer," had been one of those primal American savages who built an empire with jungle cunning, sheer ferocity, and untempered greed. Sometimes also known as "the Lord of Baltimore," the Farmer had "domesticated" the entire U.S. East Coast from New Jersey south by the time Mack Bolan first came onto the guy. He was one of the strongest Mafia bosses in the country, virtually uncontested by the law or the lawless, and he had become accustomed to the kind of absolute power that turns politicians and industrialists, bankers and businessmen, labor and management alike, into puppets.

The common wisdom of the day had Arnie destined to become Capo di tutti Capi, or Boss of All the Bosses — and probably he would have, except for Bolan's explosive entry into the equation.

He removed the Farmer early in the Mafia wars, but so strong was the man's empire, so well stocked with able and ambitious lieutenants who kept rising to power, that it was among the last to fall into disarray under Bolan's determined assaults.

And, of course, the very turf now beneath Bolan's feet had been the heartland of the Castiglione empire. So it had required no great leap of imagination to understand Brognola's terse two-word report concerning the status of Minera as some dangerous echo of the Arnie Farmer empire.

Bolan caught up with the guy inside an A&E hangar. He was stumbling into a pair of white service coveralls that had just been removed from the freshly dead body of a mechanic who unluckily had found himself in a sound wave of that echo from the past.

"Forget it," Bolan frigidly advised the Mafioso.

Minera's gaze came up slowly, traveling the full length of the impressive "colonel," halting finally in a confrontation with icy blue eyes. He dropped the coveralls and kicked them away without breaking that eye contact.

"What's your problem, soldier?" the Mafioso asked quietly, a whole new voice and an entirely new personality behind it.

"You put on a convincing show," Bolan told him. "Good enough to fool me all the way. It would have worked... except the warp caught up with you."

Minera was moving slowly, carefully maneuvering toward a combat stance. "What warp?" he asked coldly. "I don't know what you're saying."

Both men's weapons were holstered. Minera was trying to square off, his right hand hovering stiffly at the butt of his pistol, but Bolan kept moving with him.

"I'm saying, Minnie, that you call the shots for Nazarour."

The guy laughed without humor as he replied. "Bullshit. I just ran the joint for 'im. But so what if I do? What's it to you?"

"Could be a whole lot," Bolan said quietly. "Depends on what it is to you."

A slow smile began at the corners of Minera's mouth, a smile that never quite reached the eyes. He said, "Okay. Maybe I could use a guy like you at this end. You got Pentagon connections?"

The weird little dance was still going on between the two men. "Better than that," Bolan told him.

"How much better?"

"Best you can get. But I'm not interested in a weekly envelope, pal."

The dance halted and Minera laughed, genuinely. "So maybe we'll talk a percentage... if you can really deliver."

"A percentage of what?" Bolan quietly inquired.

"The whole damn world maybe," said Arnie Farmer's heir. "The general will deliver a piece of the Middle East. Soon as he does that, other pieces will fall in line."

"Which others?"

Minera scowled. "We'll talk about it later."

"We'll talk about it right now," Bolan told him.

"Or what?" Minera sneered.

"Or you get what Arnie got," Bolan said coldly.

"What?"

"You heard it. I'm the one that wiped him, Minnie."

"What?" The dance began again. Minera wiped his lips with the back of his left hand and chewed on a knuckle for a moment. "What'd you say?"

"I also wiped Billy Garante and Mario Cuba."

"Santelli?" Minera whispered. "Damon? La Carpa?"

"Them, too," Bolan confirmed softly.

Minera went for his piece then. He did not quite get there. Bolan delivered a judo kick to the elbow of his gun arm. It popped audibly and fell helplessly away, dangling in numb paralysis. Minera groaned and tried to throw a punch with his left. Bolan went inside of it and broke the arm against his chest, then pinned the howling Mafioso to the wall with a hand at his throat. That stopped the bleating. Minera's eyes were rolling wildly as he struggled to pull air through his constricted larynx.

Bolan eased off just a bit, enough to allow those dangling feet to find a little purchase.

"You're Bolan!" the Mafioso gasped.

"You got it, pal."

"I thought you were..."

"I'm not. But maybe you are. What's the scam with Nazarour?"

Minera's eyes were reflecting the horror of a brutal soul at Judgment Day. It could have been the realization of a nightmare shared with all of his ilk, a dread that supposedly had found remission in the flaming wreck of a GMC motorhome in Central Park one rainy night, the night when Mack Bolan officially "died." Those horrified eyes were searching for an out, for some rebuttal to the awful truth. They found no comfort whatsoever in the icy stare of this adversary. Miner a groaned with pain and said, "Look, I don't... I was just... it's all bullshit. I got nothing with the general."

"Then you can die with clean hands," Bolan suggested. He returned the pressure, lifting the guy away from earth again.

Those eyes bugged and rolled, and spittle formed at the lips as Minera tried to squeeze airless words past them.

Bolan gave him just enough adjustment and said, "I didn't catch that, Minnie."

"I said okay," the Mafioso sputtered. "It's like you say. I call the shots."

"For what?"

"For the new thing. We're pulling it together again."

"Starting where?"

"Africa."

"Uh huh," Bolan said softly. "What's the territory?"

Minera's groaning response was unintelligible.

"Say it again," Bolan commanded.

Minera croaked, "Military stuff."

"Nukes," Bolan decided.

"Whatever." Minera tried to clear his throat but could not. The eyes rolled as he continued. "I'm dying, huh? You're killing me. Let off."

"There are worse crimes than killing," Bolan told him coldly. "Letting off sometimes, for example."

"Huh?"

"One death against thousands, Minnie — maybe even millions. How do we balance that?"

"I guess I don't get you," Minera groaned.

Bolan reapplied the pressure as he told the dying man, "I guess you do." He lifted the guy completely off the floor, by the throat, and quietly held him there through the final agonized struggle, then slowly lowered the lifeless body to the floor of the hangar.

Brognola came through the door while Bolan was verifying the lack of life signs. The fed turned about quickly and went back out. Bolan joined him just outside the hangar and told him, "Arnie Farmer is dead again. How many times do I have to cancel the guy, Hal?"

"Let's hope this was the last one," Brognola replied with a tired sigh.

"Don't bet any lives on it," Bolan said. "The shit machines have an amazing ability to reassemble themselves. Even from the grave. Nazarour has to be stopped."

"Why?"

"I believe Minera was pulling together a combine to supply nuclear weapons to the Mideast. Someone over there obviously wants them very bad. Minera said Africa. I would have to guess Libya. And that could be only the beginning."

"Of the end," Brognola commented.

"Wherever and however, Nazarour is probably the central figure."

Brognola stared sadly at the ground as he tried to bring it all together in his mind. "Hell," he growled, "we turned the guy loose. Now he's free as a bird."

"Maybe not," Bolan replied. "Can you get me a link to Stony Man?"

Brognola's eyes were question marks as he jerked a thumb toward his vehicle. "Channel A," he explained, referring to the two-way radio.

Bolan strode to the vehicle, punched in the linkage to Stony Man Farm, and devoted some five minutes to quiet radio conversations with several different individuals. Brognola studiously avoided the vehicle during that period, approaching only when it was obvious that the Striker's business had been concluded.

"I'll settle for a hint," the fed told the big man in black.

Bolan lit a cigarette and took a deep pull at it, exhaling the smoke with a tired sigh. Then he gave the fed his "hint" for the day. "A STOL aircraft was observed attempting a rendezvous with a large yacht fifty miles off the coast. Funny thing happened, though. It suddenly burst into flames and fell into the sea several miles short of its goal. No way could there have been any survivors."

Brognola lit a fresh cigar while he assimilated that bit of intelligence. "Strange things do happen," he commented after a moment. "How, uh, how'd you get that?"

Bolan smiled thinly, dropped his cigarette to the ground, and crushed it beneath his foot. "Grimaldi told me."

Brognola nervously shifted his weight and said, "He, uh — you, uh...."

Bolan said, "Yeah. We thought it would be a good idea if he flew a bit of coastal cover during all this. He, uh, borrowed an F-16. You know, any eventuality."

The fed chuckled and stepped into his vehicle. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about," he said cheerily. "My official report is going to say that all mission goals were fully met."

"Or exceeded," Bolan suggested. "You could say that."

And, yeah, you could say that.