They hustled from the bedroom death chamber like a well-rehearsed team, Susan looking no worse for wear from her ordeal.
They hit an upstairs corridor and approached a wide staircase that led to a large foyer downstairs.
Susan and her rescuer were at the top of the stairs when they heard the clatter of footfalls somewhere below.
They saw two guys coming up at them along either side of the stairway. The two hardmen at the bottom grabbed for hardware then had time to do nothing but die.
Susan snapped off a coughing round from the Beretta that pitched one hood backward. If the slug did not kill him, then there was no mistaking the sickening crack as his skull hit the marble floor.
The Executioner triggered Big Thunder, sending hood number two into oblivion. A headless body flew backward as if tugged by an invisible string. Blood splattered the wall as high as the ceiling, then the body crumpled into a heap near the closed front door.
They left the house through a corridor that led to a side exit.
Bolan allowed Susan to lead the way.
They emerged into the night and into a parking lot on the blind side of the house from the floodlit fountain out front.
A half-dozen vehicles occupied the area, including a Datsun station wagon.
Susan led him to it.
"Any idea how many men we're up against?" Bolan asked.
Susan yanked open the door on the driver's side and slid behind the wheel. She reached for keys that were in the ignition as Bolan jumped in alongside her.
"Miller took the main force with him."
The car roared to life.
"Miller took them where?"
They sped along the driveway, hugging the tight curves. They raced past the fountain lights that illuminated the front courtyard.
"I don't know where they went," Landry told him. She wheeled into the straightaway toward the iron gates. "But I overheard him giving orders. There are two men at the gate. Hang on."
"You do the same," grunted Bolan. "Good luck, lady."
Landry aimed the vehicle on a direct course for the iron-grille gate, where the two guards stood with shotguns, alerted by the sound of the revving engine.
The stunning brunette twirled the steering wheel hard to the left. The tail end of the wagon skidded to the right, gouging the trimmed edge of the turf. The Datsun stopped its slide, the passenger side parallel to the guards' left flank.
The sentries spun in Bolan's direction. Too late.
Bolan's AutoMag spoke.
The sentries were kicked backward from the impact of the .44 headbusters.
Susan left the car. These fresh kills were still shuddering in their own blood as Susan dashed to the guardhouse and activated the mechanical gate release.
She dashed back into the Datsun wagon and trod the gas so hard that the rear end of the subcompact danced from side to side as it sped through the gate.
The investigative journalist sped into the Maryland night.
Leaving Mack Bolan to wonder.
A fireball from his past named Susan Landry had reappeared.
It was all coming down.
Tonight.
A night of blood.
16
The vehicle driven by Susan Landry flew along the dark county road away from the Miller place.
Bolan bolstered his AutoMag in its fast-draw rig on his hip. He reclaimed and holstered his Beretta.
"My car is in that clump of trees," he told her as they approached the spot where he had concealed the vehicle. "I suggest you come with me. This car is your death warrant if these people have the connections I think they do."
Susan cut her speed and guided the Datsun over the gravel shoulder and among the trees that Bolan had indicated.
"Miller has connections," she acknowledged. "You're right, of course. Care to give a lady a lift?"
Bolan's rented wheels were right where he left them.
"Wouldn't have it any other way," Bolan assured her, already climbing from the station wagon.
Landry briskly kept pace with him, easing into the passenger seat as he kicked the engine over, backed out and continued their course toward MacArthur Boulevard and D.C.
He felt her eyes appraising him in the darkness as he drove.
"Thank you for saving my life," she said.
Those were the exact words Kelly Crawford had used less than two hours ago.
What a night.
Without looking up, he reached for the pack of cigarettes wedged behind the sun visor above his head, stuck one in his mouth and lit it with the dash lighter.
Susan Landry had gone through changes since he last encountered her in Cleveland several years ago. Then, she had been an idealistic young woman; an idealistic young journalist. The toughness had been there, but not the maturity, the inner strength that had come from years as a roving investigative reporter.
There were character lines around her eyes that made her more beautiful than she had ever been before she had earned them.
"You got us out of there in one piece,'' he reminded her as he caught MacArthur Boulevard heading back into the city. The street was virtually untraveled at this hour. "You're a hell of a wheelperson, Landry.''
He offered her a cigarette. She shook her head.
"I'm also a reporter," she said. "Even if I wasn't, I'd sure like to know what a man named Phoenix is doing stalking the wilds of Maryland like some jungle panther. Don't laugh. That's what you are, and mister, you look like pure trouble."
"Trust your instincts on this one, Susan. You're right. I am trouble."
"I'd say I was in a good deal more trouble before you showed up. I guess I will have a cigarette."
Her hands shook when she took the smoke from the pack and tried to light it.
"Let's trade," said Bolan.
"Fair enough. Ladies first, I assume."
Bolan grinned at her. He liked her style.
"Talk to me, Susan," Bolan said.
"I'm investigating the soldier-for-hire community that thrives in this city. Men with professional military training, soldiers, ex-government service people."
"Mercs," growled Bolan. "A real mixed bag."
Landry nodded. "And I drew the rottenest one."
"How did you hook up with Miller?"
"I was a disgruntled woman with a prison record. Bitter. Unable to find work. I knew some of the places in Washington where contracts for services in the merc community are lined up. I made sure I was in the right place at the right time. It goes with the territory."
"Miller must be pulling in some heavy bread to have a place like that in Potomac."
"He's paid well, but that house isn't really his. No one in the community knows that, of course. Say, this is the way to the airport...."
Bolan fired another cigarette. It was close. What he'd been tearing this town apart all night to find out.
"The house in Potomac. Did you trace it?"
"As far as a paper corporation operating out of an Arlington PO box. It dead-ended there. Why are we going to the airport?"
"I have a friend waiting there with a helicopter. What was Miller doing behind those walls with all that acreage?"
"He was training men for night commando work. Where are we going in a helicopter?"
"How many men does Miller have?"
"He bragged to me about that. About twenty for the raid, not counting those scumbags he left behind to watch his place tonight. They were going to rip him off while he was gone and — "
Her hand with the cigarette started shaking again. So did her voice.
Bolan knew she was thinking how close she came to being raped. "Easy," said the big man softly.
She snapped out of it. "And you didn't answer my question. I thought this was a trade. Where are we going in a helicopter?"
They crossed the Wilson Bridge and swung north onto Mount Vernon Highway parallel to the river. The lights of Washington National Airport came into view up ahead to the right.
"
We are not going anywhere in a helicopter. Do you have any idea what kind of target Miller was training his men to hit?''
"Not going anywhere," she echoed. "Then I guess our little trade is off."
"Miller is taking orders from someone high up in the U.S. intelligence community," he told her.
He could feel her eyes spark with interest even in the dim interior of the car.
"Now we're trading. And I don't suppose you'll tell me who this person is?"
Bolan steered them into one of the airport approach lanes. He followed the curve away from the main terminal to the private landing area. He could see Jack Grimaldi's Hughes chopper waiting.
"I don't know who's giving Miller his orders," said Bolan.
Suspicions. They were all he had to go on right now and he could hardly breach the security of Lee Farnsworth, the CFB or General Crawford by dropping names to a journalist.
He braked the car to a stop near the chopper.
When Grimaldi saw who the driver was, he revved up the Hughes's engine. The rotors started whirling. The flight lights started blinking.
"I've only been... with Miller for two weeks," Landry told him, raising her voice to be heard above the throbbing rotor. "I've concentrated on the workings of his operation, the training of his men. I... assumed they were training for action in some other country. I never realized — "
Bolan had no more time. He opened his door and gave her a last look.
"Take the car, Susan. Go somewhere and find yourself a typewriter and write whatever you want about Miller."
"What about you?"
"If you write about me, some good people will have their cover blown and probably die."
"So it's like that?"
"That would be a hell of a way to repay me for saving your life, wouldn't it?"
She laughed. A nice sound.
"You bastard. You're used to having your own way, aren't you?"
He started out of the car.
"Take care, Susan. Good luck."
"Wait a minute, soldier. You are talking to the world's most hardheaded woman. I don't get off this easy."
He paused, not mistaking the determination in those sharp blues. He saw the same look in the mirror whenever he shaved.
"Susan, I can't take you with me. I know where Miller is planning his hit. You told me enough for me to know it's going down tonight. Or this morning. I've got to do what I can to stop it from happening."
"You are not going to stop me from going with you," said Landry, distinctly enunciating each word.
"Sorry, lady, but I've got to," said Bolan sincerely, and he formed a loose fist and popped her one on the jaw that pitched Landry's head against the seat. He felt the pulse and nodded, satisfied she was unconscious, but unhurt.
"Sorry, Susan."
Bolan left the car wondering if he and this lady would ever cross paths again.
He knew they would.
Grimaldi commenced lift-off the moment Bolan was half inside the chopper's bubble front.
The pilot chuckled, gave his passenger a disparaging look.
"You sure do have a way with the ladies, boss. You sure do."
"I'd rather have that lady unconscious for a while than dead permanently."
"What a guy, throwing away a woman like that."
"I've got a feeling we haven't seen the last of her," Bolan growled, reaching for the radio transceiver on the chopper's dash control cluster.
"Whereto?"
"The Farm, Jack, and don't spare the horses." Then, activating the transceiver, "Striker to Stony Man, come in Stony Man."
April's voice came over a backup shortwave setup at the Farm.
"This is Stony Man, go ahead Striker."
"I'm coming in. The hit will go down this morning before sunrise. Give it a ninety-nine percent probability. Commando unit, about twenty men."
"I'll pass the word."
"Anything turn up on that security scan on Captain Wade?"
"Negative. He appears to be clean all the way."
"Everyone is so clean but still there's so much dirt. Damn. Okay, lady, batten down the hatches. Jack and I are on our way in. Over and out."
"Hurry home, Striker. Over and out."
Static crackled in Bolan's headphones.
Grimaldi piloted the Hughes in a southwesterly course. The lights of residential Virginia thinned out as the flight took them over black patches of Blue Ridge mountain country. Toward Stony Man.
There was no inclination to talk.
A merc-gone-bad named Al Miller.
The next link in the chain.
Bolan would find Miller at Stony Man Farm.
He could have waited at the Farm all evening for Miller instead of tearing apart Wonderland on the Potomac, looking for the truth in a city of lies.
Sure.
Hindsight is 20-20.
But Bolan would have missed the privilege of dispatching the vermin he had encountered on this chase that was about to erupt at the very heart and soul of everything that meant anything to Bolan in his life as John Phoenix.
A commando assault on Stony Man Farm.
How many men had the Executioner killed this night?
Not nearly enough.
17
The undulating Blue Ridge terrain was magnified and rendered clear by the infrared binoculars, pitch-darkness turned into dusk hazed with a reddish glow.
Al Miller was splayed flat on a low knoll that interrupted the forest with a superb view of the killing ground.
From a point five hundred meters outside the Farm's perimeter, he slowly panned the acreage with the glasses, reconfirming the patterns of security established by Stony Man after the sabotage of their satellite-communications unit.
Personnel were working desperately down there to repair the unit.
Not that it will matter, thought the misguided merc.
"Not after tonight," he said aloud to himself.
Movement from his right. He dropped the binoculars to let them hang by their strap and whipped the Uzi around as he darted back to the base of a wide-trunked oak.
"Zebra alpha," he hissed into the darkness. Then he soundlessly switched positions in case someone wanted to fire at the sound of his voice.
"Ambrose tango," came a cautious whisper out of the early-morning gloom, and another commando approached Miller's position.
Pete Kagor and the rest of the team wore night-infiltration garb that matched Miller's. They were togged in black, faces camouflaged with black combat cosmetics, toting side arms, Uzis and grenades.
Kagor lay flat beside Miller.
"We're twenty seconds and counting."
"We'll give them five minutes to engage security," Miller said, continuing to view the Farm stretched out in the distance below their position.
"Five minutes? Jeffcoat expects us to follow through two minutes after he initiates."
"Jeffcoat is wrong."
"Hold it, Top. Those are good men."
Miller pulled his attention away from the binoculars to eyeball his second-in-command.
"You getting an attack of the conscience, suddenly? Kinda late for that, isn't it?"
"No one said we were going to sacrifice good men."
"It'll be worth it." Miller resumed his infrared pan of the terrain. "Those folks down below are going to respond fast. Faster than we think. Another three minutes will give their security that much additional time to pull extra forces into the fray at the airfield, and that's less warm bodies we'll have to kill on our way in."
"I understand your reasoning, but — "
"Aren't you getting paid enough, soldier?"
"Okay... okay, I'm getting paid enough," Kagor grunted. "But there are other ways — "
"Get to your goddamn post," Miller snarled. "We move in five minutes after Jeff coat's team hits. Or do you want to argue about it?"
"I just don't think it's right."
"Fuck what you think is right," Miller hissed. "Git."
Kagor
got.
Al Miller focused the infrared binoculars on the airfield situated two thousand meters inside the north perimeter of this secret base. He could see two hangars, camouflaged from air detection, and a runway. Two aircraft, a prop job and a chopper, sat on the airstrip. There would be more in the hangars.
Any second now.
Miller's attack force was deployed into six-man combat teams, as they had rehearsed for so long at the grounds of the Potomac estate. One team was waiting outside the Farm's north perimeter, not far from the airfield; another team was poised to strike from the southwest corner of the Farm.
The remaining team hid in the dense predawn darkness near Miller's present position.
Each team was equipped with two portable one-man grenade launchers. The teams had rehearsed to close in slowly, then group into two three-man squads with a pointman leading a squad by twenty paces.
These men were combat specialists, intensively trained by Miller for this one hit in all the arts of silent night killing. The grenade launchers would devastate any serious defense encountered by Miller's commando unit.
He intended tonight's action by this crew to be a standard hit-and-git night attack.
Jeffcoat's team would engage Stony Man forces at the air base.
Kagor's crew would hit from the southwest. Miller's own team would strike from this easterly position they now held. There would be casualties on Miller's side, he knew, but they would spread out around the Farm's command center, that innocent-appearing farmhouse in the middle of the acreage.
The Stony Man Phoenix project would be canceled forever.
And Al Miller would be a rich man.
They would all be rich men.
Those who survived.
Miller had learned his infiltration technique as a Green Beret in Vietnam. Covert actions in that war made it an easy step to work for the CIA when the war was over; the connections had already been made, and the Company knew Miller to be a ruthless specialist in the many arts of violent death.
Miller considered himself a success because he kept morals out of his professional work. His only morality was a big paycheck, and he had a healthy Swiss bank account full of hefty retainers as a specialist and adviser in such places as North Africa, El Salvador and Ireland.
On occasion he had played both sides against each other, collecting two paychecks. That had taken a bit of fancy footwork. But it was nothing like tonight.
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