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.
15
Karim Yazid was slowly coming out of his state of shock. The slaughter of his men on the grounds of the estate in Potomac had left him stunned and responding purely at an instinctual level.
The Iranian hit-squad leader vaguely remembered fleeing that scene with Amir. There had been staunch resistance inside the house from the guards protecting the general. The guards had fallen, along with one of Karim and Amir's squad. Then Minera, whom Yazid had once met through Rafsanjani, had arrived in the house. The security chief had been a mighty fighter, and somehow he had spirited the general and his party away.
But the ferocity of Minera had been nothing compared to the level of resistance encountered by the three squads of Karim's men who had attacked the front of the house.
The scene of dismembered bodies where the claymore had been detonated had sickened both Karim and Amir. From that point on, Karim's memory became hazy. He remembered running silently with Amir toward the front gate. He remembered, as if it were a dream, passing the bodies of his men, which lay stretched across the property of that estate.
These images somehow became interspersed in his mind with images of that climactic day of the '79 revolution, when these same fourteen men of his squad had stormed the Lavizan barracks in northeastern Tehran. It had been their finest moment, as these tough commandos had outmaneuvered and slain scores of the Shah's crack Javidan guards in one bloody sweep through their fortress compound. Now, on an estate in Maryland, these men had gone to Allah. They had died with weapons in their hands. Martyrs to the cause of Islam.
And Karim Yazid was left without a team. At first he could not believe what he had heard from the lone survivor of the front assault squads — a badly wounded man whom Karim and Amir had carried between them on the final leg of their trek out through the front gates of the estate, to where one of their vans had been parked nearby.
The man had mumbled that only one man had delivered all of this devastation to Yazid's crack team.
One man!
Karim remembered pulling away in the van to the shrieking of sirens that had been approaching from all directions in response to the sounds of open warfare.
Slowly, the images of then evolved to the present.
Karim blinked and stared at the restaurant out through the front window of the van.
He knew now where he was. He knew what he had to do.
Luck had finally shone on Karim as he, Amir, and the wounded man had fled in the van. Karim had hardly driven forty feet when he spotted a car pulling away from a cluster of shrubbery below and alongside the road, where the car had been hidden.
Karim fell back and followed the car, a sleek new Mercedes.
He could not shake the certainty that he was following General Nazarour and company.
The cries of the wounded commando had filled the van. Amir administered a shot of pain killer, and the cries had subsided to low, unintelligible murmurs.
Karim had followed the car into Bannockburn Heights, and at a twenty-four-hour restaurant on River Road, Karim's suspicions had been confirmed.
He watched as Rafsanjani, that hellion Minera, the general himself, and Mrs. Nazarour had gone into the restaurant. From a point halfway up the block, Karim had continued observing them with binoculars through the plate-glass window of the restaurant.
The conversation between the four had been fervent and secretive. Minera had left the party for several minutes. He returned to make a report. Karim was sure that they were lining up another flight out of the country. A few minutes later, a scene had transpired during which it appeared that Mrs. Nazarour was being discreetly but severely chastised for something she had done.
The important thing to Karim, sitting there behind the wheel of the van, was that he was still on the general. There was still hope for the mission.
He had to isolate the general's party. There were two rounds remaining for the rocket launcher. But he had to choose his spot carefully for the ambush if he wished to make a successful withdrawal. Karim did not underestimate the efficiency of the local police agencies in the face of an event such as the one that had occurred that night in Potomac. All neighboring precincts would be on alert.
Karim decided that the best time to assassinate his target would be as the general was actually boarding the plane that was to fly him out of the country. There was a risk involved, certainly. The risk that something would go wrong, without a second chance. But the general's group seemed to be unaccompanied by additional security. That man Minera was a worthy fighter, true. But he would be one man against a rocket launcher. And in an open area such as an airfield, the chances of a clean withdrawal were practically guaranteed. The risk would be minimal, when compared with trying to make the attack on a city street.
It was only a matter of time. A matter of following the general from the restaurant to whatever airstrip Nazarour had engaged for his rescheduled departure.
Yazid became aware that the murmurings of the wounded man in the back of the van had ceased. Yazid turned from the steering wheel as Amir moved forward and sank into the passenger seat alongside him.
"He's dead," Amir reported quietly. "It's down to the two of us now, Karim."
Karim looked back in the direction of the restaurant. The general's group was in the process of leaving. The Iranians could see Abbas Rafsanjani through the window, paying the tab at the cash register. Soon the party would be back in the Mercedes.
Then to the airfield.
And that was where they would die.
As he watched the group move hastily from the restaurant to the car, Amir hissed, "We should kill them now for what they have done to our brothers!"
"Be patient, my friend," Karim replied. "They will die. But not here. I have considered the matter. We could not get away. You must trust me."
"I do trust you, Karim," the lieutenant said, and he lapsed into silence.
Karim Yazid also fell into thought as the general's car, driven by Minera, exited the restaurant parking lot, turned south onto River Road, and continued toward Bethesda.
Karim fell in at ten car lengths behind the Mercedes, and continued tailing the general's group through the quiet early-morning streets of Washington suburbia.
The cold gray traces of dawn were lighting the eastern horizon. There were a few more vehicles on the streets, but that was just as well. More traffic meant better camouflage.
As he drove, Karim Yazid's mind shifted to the factor that he and Amir had avoided discussing.
Who was that individual who had wrought such havoc among the three frontal-assault teams? It must have been the man whom Amir had seen returning with Mrs. Nazarour earlier that night. But who was he? And would he appear at the final confrontation at the airstrip?
For reasons of his own, General Nazarour appeared intent on eluding this mysterious figure. Very well. That would be the error that would seal the general's fate.
And if this mysterious fighting man did appear?
Yazid thought of the dead comrades he had left behind in Potomac. A part of him fervently hoped that this man would make another appearance.
There was a blood debt to be settled.
But either way, the general would die.
To the south, within the residential section of Bethesda through which Karim
had been tracking the Mercedes, the open expanse of an airfield loomed into view.
It would happen soon.
Karim Yazid was prepared to meet his fate and to deliver the general's fate.
This time he and Amir would not fail.
Nazarour, his wife, Rafsanjani, Minera — they would all die.
But even as he felt the prekill iciness begin to creep over him, Karim Yazid could not free himself of two lingering questions. Who was the warrior in black? And where was he now?
16
River Road was just beginning to clog with commuter traffic as Bolan caught the Goldsboro Road turn and continued on the hilly roller-coasterlike stretch with the Corvette's gas pedal floored, racing through suburban residential neighborhoods on a direct course toward the Bethesda Naval Hospital district.
It was 6:18 a.m.
The sun had risen minutes earlier like an ornamental silver disc in the eastern sky. The warmth of the newborn sunlight hadn't penetrated his car yet. And even with the heater on, Bolan felt chilled to the bone. The world outside looked grim and bleak.
Bolan held the Corvette at fifty miles per hour, playing morning traffic, moving smoothly in and out of lanes, unobtrusively gaining every second he could.
This had become a personal matter for the big man with the icy eyes — this race against time to intercept General Nazarour's group before they could rendezvous with the plane that would whisk them out of the country.
Bolan had no idea what would happen at this confrontation. But he would damn sure be finding out, within short minutes.
The two leaders of the Iranian hit squad that had been this mission's original top priority were still on the loose, and Bolan felt that there was a good chance he would encounter them ahead also. If Yazid and Pouyan were not about to make an appearance, then they could be anywhere in the D.C. area. But tracking them down was no longer a one-man job. Hal's forces were working on that end.
Helping Carol Nazarour was another matter entirely.
It was, yes, a personal matter.
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