Don Pendleton: The Iranian Hit

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.

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."