The gunfire from the house had become more sporadic but was continuing, as if one faction had pulled back but was still giving resistance.
Bolan fell prone on the sun deck and through the Startron began scanning the driveway area for targets, to keep the commando teams busy while Minera made his run.
The firing between the guard patrol and the commandos on the right flank had died down to occasional rifle fire in the night.
The hail of incoming bullets at Bolan's position had intensified.
Bolan sighted in on the commandos to the right flank, who were engaging Minera's dog patrol. He flicked the M1's shot — this time for the grenade launcher.
He yanked one of the SAS-style flash grenades from the belt across his chest and fed it into the launcher with practiced precision.
The hellfire here tonight had only just begun.
12
From Mack Bolan 's journal:
Moral shades of gray can be very troubling. I much prefer the simple black and white situation of the mafia wars, when there was never any question as to who the enemy was.
This guy Nazarour is as big a shark as any I've ever encountered. It really bruises the soul to have to keep a man like this alive. In basic black and white, the guy should die. But I no longer deal just in basics. For the moment — for a very limited moment, I hope — the complications of world politics have lent a synthetic virtue to his presence here on American soil. So... for now... the man must live, and I must do everything in my power to ensure that he does. But, yeah, it bruises the soul just a bit.
My feelings for the man have nothing to do with where he comes from, or whom he served while he was there. The same goes for my feelings regarding the job at hand. The whole truth of the matter is that there is no moral issue in Iran, at this moment. I hope that one day soon there will be. As of now, though, what is happening there is a contest between savages... with neither side morally superior to the other. Were it not for the fact that it is always the innocents who suffer most in any such situation, I would say: let the world draw a curtain around Iran and let the savages have at one another until there are none left — or until the good people finally rise up and smash the savages one and all. But it does not appear that anything like that will be happening in the foreseeable future, so we who are on the sidelines will just have to do, what we can to keep the game as clean as possible in whatever limited way that we may. This is the thinking that led me to accept the present mission. I do not want Iranian hit squads roaming this country looking for targets. I do not want their war on our territory. So I am here, and I intend to do what I can to discourage any future operations of this nature. It does not mean that I approve of Nazarour or anything that he may stand for. It simply means that I cannot turn my back on what is happening here.
At the same time, I have to keep the mind alert and the options open. Everything is not as it appears to be....
There is the question of the general's wife: precisely what is her situation and precisely what could or should I do about her?
And then, of course, there is Minera. Shades of gray, indeed. This particular picture appears to be focusing more along the classic lines of black and white. My mental radar picks up strong mafia blips every time I look at the guy. So what is he to Nazarour? And what is Nazarour to him?
Well... the answers will come. And I have the feeling that when they do, the shades of gray will all resolve into strong patterns of opposing colors, and black and white. Then all the options will have narrowed to one.
13
"Striker, this is Stony Man on channel bravo. Do you read?"
For the past seven minutes Hal Brognola had been droning on with that single phrase into the transceiver of the radio set.
April Rose stood behind Hal, trying to ward off the chills that she knew had nothing to do with the temperature in Stony Man Farm's command room.
Hal grunted a curse and tossed the transceiver onto the counter with an angry clatter.
"Damn. We're not getting through at all. He's either deactivated his set or jammed the frequency on the other end."
There was another possibility, of course. But April knew that she didn't have to remind Hal of that other alternative. She tried not to think about it herself.
"The attack may be coming down right now and he's too busy to respond," she said with a confidence that sounded forced even to her own ears. "He'll get back to us."
Hal nodded acknowledgment without turning from the radio. "I just wish we could get through to him."
"You think it's that important, the information about those men he killed at the canal earlier tonight?"
"The fact that they were all Americans — the fact that according to our man in Org Crime they are a direct franchise of what's left of the local Family since Striker's last swing through here — yeah, I think it's plenty important that he know.
"They're Mafia torpedoes. Now where the hell would they fit in? This thing gets screwier and screwier."
April stepped forward and touched feather-light fingertips to the boss's shoulder.
"Hal...."
The fed chuckled mildly. He reached across with his left hand and patted those fingertips.
"I know, April. Cool down and easy does it. But we've got to keep trying."
Then, with his right hand, he brought the transceiver back to his mouth and began repeating over and over again, "Striker, this is Stony Man on channel bravo. Do you read?"
April pulled back and returned to her own chair. She couldn't shake the feeling somewhere deep inside that all hell was breaking loose at this moment, ninety miles north in Potomac.
The feeling was tearing her guts to shreds.
At that moment, the man she cared about was probably fighting for his life.
The big, beautiful man named Mack Bolan who had come into her world and touched her soul and changed that world forever.
A man who had taught her the true meaning of the words sacrifice and concern.
Yes, it was happening in Potomac at this minute.
She could feel it.
But all she could do was sit and wait. And hope. And try not to think about bad things.
* * *
Bolan was playing the enemy's game, doing his best to take them by surprise. Keep them guessing.
A quick scan up-range had shown that two of Minera's guard patrol had been hit. One was wounded but returning sporadic fire; the other appeared dead. One looked okay in the scope's greenish tint.
The commandos hadn't sustained any losses yet. The remaining terrorists to Bolan's right were returning the guard patrol's fire.
Team Number Two continued advancing along the left side of the driveway, moving steadily from approximately five hundred yards. These three were still sending occasional rounds toward the pool area and the front of the house, but they hadn't spotted Bolan on his perch atop the cabana.
The big warrior changed all that.
He triggered the M1 and sent a flash grenade zinging into the right flank of the team. The grenade went off with a blinding flare. When Bolan looked up from shielding his eyes to the flash, the first thing he saw was the three men standing out from behind their cover and clawing at scorched eyes, oblivious to everything but their pain.
Bolan readjusted the M1's selector mode and squeezed off a round. That dropped the first of the stunned commandos.
One of the guards got off a shot at that point, and another Iranian grunted and pitched flat onto his face, lying motionless.
Number Three finally got some sense and flattened out of sight.
The guard patrol would have to handle that one, Bolan decided. He had other priorities. Such as the squad advancing along the left side of the driveway.
He saw through the scope from about four hundred yards that two of them were toting the RPG-7. They were in the process of pulling away from him, falling farther away to the left. Their plan seemed to be to cut around the far end of the pool, away from Bolan, and come aroun
d in front of the main house via the cobblestone walk.
That was the plan.
Except that Bolan had exposed his position by firing the flash grenade.
In one smooth movement that resembled an acrobatic exercise, the big warrior and the M1 and Uzi were off the cabana roof without benefit of the wooden steps.
Bolan landed gracefully and sped off in the direction of the house, hugging the opposite side of the pool from the commando team, following the path that Minera had taken a few minutes earlier.
He jogged along low and fast and had covered close to ten yards when the RPG-7 belched smoke and noise in the distance.
One second later the cabana on which Bolan had been perched only seconds before exploded in another nightmare of sound and spewing brick and glass.
Bolan continued along the cobblestone walk, skirting the edge of the pool, passing the body of Dr. Nazarour with barely a sideward glance. The body appeared as he had last seen it.
Gunfire continued to echo from inside the house.
The commandos out front would now be continuing on toward the house from their own side of the pool. Bolan's actions and decisions in the next few seconds could well determine the outcome of this fight.
He reached the cabana situated at the end of the pool closest to the house. He had won the race with the terrorists who were advancing from the other side of the swimming pool.
The cabana stood three hundred feet from the house. The sun deck would afford a view of the hit squad's approach, as well as of the side windows of the main house, which was probably their destination.
Bolan knew there were only heartbeats left now until that squad would be moving into view in the moonlight. They must have written him off as dead from the rocket attack on the other cabana.
Strapping the M1 over the shoulder opposite the Uzi, Bolan moved to the area of ground between the cabana and the house, over which the squad would have to approach if Bolan's reading of their strategy was correct.
He was a blurred shadow in the darkness. When he reached a spot midway between house and cabana, he paused and reached into the pouch that had been riding at his left hip. He carefully withdrew the curved metallic body of a portable claymore antipersonnel mine. He positioned the mine on the ground so as to cover the approach of the expected team, pointing it away from the cabana. The object was indistinguishable in the nighttime shadows.
The snap of a twig ten yards off told Bolan how little time he had left. He had gained some seconds by his jog around the pool. But they were still coming. Almost on top of him.
Call it twenty seconds on the outside.
All at once he was aware that the gunfire from inside the house had ceased.
He continued preparing the surprise, unrolling a long strip of pressure-sensitive detonation tape and running it across the width of ground where he expected Yazid's men to pass. Then, with all due care and pressing speed, he connected the wires of the trigger tape to the mine. With seven seconds to spare, he reeled around and got the hell out of there, back to the cabana, taking the wooden steps on the run and sprawling out flat across the roof of the sun deck. He swung the Ml back and around, sighting through the Startron to pinpoint the enemy.
He made out the three-man team clearly enough. They were practically on top of the detonation tape, but not quite. He probably could have taken them out from his perch, but with three-to-one odds and all of them pros, Bolan had chosen to take all three at once, and that was still seconds away from happening.
He swung the rifle up-range until the Startron sighted in on the cobblestone pathway alongside the pool. It picked up one commando moving in along that route. He must have recovered from the flash grenade that Bolan had sent his way.
He was no doubt headed toward the house to join his teammates.
Bolan triggered off a round at the lone man. Again it was one round, one kill. The Startron magnified in pale green the awful impact of missile on flesh. Bone structure turned to fading mist as the guy was yanked off his feet as if he had been shoved backward over a low wire.
The M1 packed its usual mighty recoil, but the explosive report was drowned out as the HE below on Bolan's left was triggered by one of the commandos tripping the detonation tape.
In a night full of hell's fire, the claymore had a power all its own. That other cabana seemed to shake beneath Bolan. But the chief benefit of the claymore is that its blast can be aimed in a specific direction.
Bolan rose up to one knee without fear of being hit by debris. He set aside the M1 and swung up the Uzi for a fast cleanup.
The mighty blast of the antipersonnel mine was rolling across the Maryland hills, echoing off into the night.
It was a bloody mess down there below the cabana. The Iranians had come to this land to deliver horror. And that's what they had received.
The top half of a torso, most of its head gone, had pitched against the base of a tree.
A lone shoe, the foot inside it taken off at mid-ankle, smoldered on the ground all by itself.
Two relatively intact bodies were thrashing around wildly on their backs like crushed insects.
Screams of pain and the smell of burned flesh filled the air.
Bolan sprayed the two bodies with a quick burst from the Uzi.
The screaming stopped.
Death was their business, huh?
Now they could sample the goods.
The final echoes of battle, that last chatter from the Uzi, receded into the distance. And with that — as abruptly as that — the battle seemed to be over. Peace again reigned over Potomac.
Sure it did...
Bolan climbed down from his cabana. He crossed over and slung the Ml in through the window of his parked 'Vette. The Uzi was what was called for now. The ideal weapon for quick spurts in tight areas. For indoor fighting.
There was still, after all, no way of telling why the gunfire had ceased inside the main house.
Bolan moved to the house and entered silently through a ground-floor window.
All he found inside were dead men.
The walls of the front hallway and the study where Bolan had left General Nazarour were riddled with holes and splashed with blood.
The dead men included one commando and the two security guards that Bolan had left behind to guard the general.
Bolan hurriedly, methodically, searched the house from top to bottom.
There was no sign of the general. Or of Rafsanjani. Or of Carol Nazarour. Or of Minera.
They were gone.
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?"
The Iranian Hit te-42 Page 8