Steranko cleared his throat.
"You will not kill us until you know the name of our informant. That is our insurance, is it not?"
"Khomeini hates the Russians as much as he hates good old America," Grimaldi went on. "Hell, he executed most of the Communist party here a few months back."
"It was the hope of our superiors that, Iran being the only, er, spot on the globe right now where U.S. and Soviet interests coincide," Steranko replied in unaccented American, "that in the matter of eliminating Khomeini, we, that is, our organization, might benefit from your own actions here."
"You could try," Bolan grunted. "The American impersonations are great, by the way, and the arms-dealer cover takes off heat for a while, but why risk it?"
"Can you not guess?"
"You've got your own play. The army?"
Steranko's nod and tight smile confirmed an easy guess.
"May I smoke?"
Bolan holstered Big Thunder. Give them enough rope, he decided. His fingertips lingered near the holstered hawgleg.
"Why don't we all smoke. Jack, position yourself outside. Recon what you can of the neighborhood."
"Check," Grimaldi said and left the room.
Bolan brought out his own pack of smokes and fired one.
The Russians sat side by side on the couch.
Bolan perched on a stool facing them, the door and hallway behind the man and woman.
"Whose house is this?"
"It belongs to a General Mahmoud," said Steranko. "The general has granted permission for us to use it in the event of an emergency."
"Which I would say this afternoon most certainly was," the lady finished for her "husband."
At that instant Steranko sprang from the couch, gripping a pistol. It looked to Bolan like a Walther PPK, the diminutive handgun yanked from a hiding place beneath the cushions on the couch, put there long ago for a contingency such as this.
Steranko blurred into action, the Walther tracking speed-draw fast by a guy who had appeared so flustered. Another good impersonation, thought Bolan as he unleathered the silenced Beretta from its shoulder holster in a lightning cross draw, faster than Steranko could ever hope to be.
In the sudden realization that he had lost, Steranko's eyes widened into almost comic circles, just like his mouth, which now tried to cry out something to the Executioner, who had been ready for something like this since they had walked into the den.
The discreet, low cough of the Beretta punched a silenced 9mm projectile into Yuri Steranko's mouth, stuffing any last words back into the guy's brains, as pieces of skull exploded from the back of the cannibal's head.
The Russian toppled onto the couch, spewing rivulets of blood, then rolled forward when the couch stopped his dead-fall. His corpse collapsed into a fetal position between Bolan and the woman, who melded into the far end of the couch.
The blonde did not appear shocked. She stood, averting her eyes from the deceased "husband."
Bolan also stood, tracking the Beretta to the heart region beneath Tanya Yesilov's shapely left breast.
"I think now would be a good time to toss over your hardware, too."
She carefully withdrew her Walther PPK from her handbag, fingertips clasping the pistol by its stubby barrel.
Bolan watched her every movement. He reached down to pick up Steranko's pistol, which lay near the man's outstretched right hand. Bolan dropped the pistol into a jacket pocket.
Tanya tossed her gun to Bolan, staring at him as if transfixed, more speculative than before.
"You knew?" she asked tonelessly with a nod at her dead companion.
Bolan slipped her Walther into his other pocket.
"He overplayed his part. Your people don't employ idiots. Whose house is this?"
"General Mahmoud's, as Yuri told you. All of what he told you was the truth. May I make myself a drink?"
"Go ahead."
She moved to the liquor cabinet. His eyes followed her, both as a precaution and as a man. She had a shape that moved nicely.
Bolan holstered the Beretta and returned to his bar stool.
Tanya poured a bourbon on the rocks and glanced over her shoulder at him.
"Care for one?"
"I'll stay thirsty. If you've got one general in your pocket, you've got more."
She turned to sip the drink and eye him over the rim of the glass.
"Why do you allow me to live?"
"You're worth more to me alive. Your partner would've been, also, but he was too stupid to realize it."
They studied each other speculatively, the tension almost palpable.
"You expect me to tell you everything I know," she said, "then you will turn me over to the mujahedeen and they will kill me slowly after they..."'
"You can believe that or you can believe me," Bolan told her. "A group of generals plotting a coup with the KGB stage-managing as usual, huh?"
"You are neither romantic nor a fool," she responded. "You would not spare me because I am a woman. Your woman was not spared. What is it you want of me?"
"The informer inside the mujahedeen. You know who it is?"
"You threaten me with torture at the hands of these enemies of the people?"
"Your people maybe, not theirs. And I'll see that you're not tortured."
"As long as you live, perhaps, which will not be long in this land." She forced herself to look for an instant at what remained of Yuri Steranko, then she looked away and finished her bourbon with one swig. "All outsiders die in this hell, did you not know that? The cradle of civilization is to become civilization's deathbed. Ironic, is it not?"
She turned to slosh more bourbon into the glass, not as cleanly as before.
Bolan let her get drunk.
"You think like a poet."
She chuckled, only a little tipsy. She turned and some of the booze spilled from the glass. Bolan knew he was witnessing shock at what had happened to Steranko; the lady trying to camouflage normal human response with a mechanical manner as if everything was all right. Except the lady was no drinker.
"Every Russian is a poet. We are a soulful people. Why do you hate us so?"
"Don't be naive. Your country isn't exporting its poets or the soul of the Russian people."
She drained a third of the bourbon from the glass and turned away from Bolan and the corpse.
"I know nothing about an informer. That is the truth."
"Sure it is."
"I tell you, I know nothing!"
"Get specific, Tanya. Why did you toss that rope ladder when the soldiers were closing in? Why does the KGB suddenly want me alive? You started to tell me before. Those 'orders' you mentioned before Yuri decided to get stupid."
"We are prepared to make concessions," she told him. "I... was to make the initial contact. That is, Yuri and I. I was assigned only as his cover."
"Sure you were."
She turned to study the Man from Ice.
"I have never known a man like you before, Mack Bolan. I knew you would not be... average in any respect when I reviewed your dossier. You are very confident and sure of yourself. Perhaps too much so."
"Save the character study. You think you're smart giving me half-truths. You're not."
"It was hoped," she said, "that for... certain concessions, you might lend your capabilities to the generals'... cause."
"Try again. I'm already here as a favor to someone else. You know that from your informer."
She finished the last of the second drink and set the glass down with a clunk.
"The concessions to be offered... could, would extend to the faction you serve."
"I serve the good guys, Tanya, and your bunch don't come anywhere near that and never will."
"And that is your final answer to us?"
At that moment Grimaldi stepped back into the den from his recon outside the house, his Ingram in sight; a sidearm would have drawn no attention in the neighborhood beyond the walled property. Everyone in Iran had at least one
gun. Grimaldi barely glanced at Steranko's sprawled corpse.
"How's it look, Jack?"
"I say we do it now. No signs of army or police activity in the vicinity. We're the other side of town from the pavilion. Guess they don't want to upset the muckety-mucks."
Tanya stepped forward.
"You have more to concern yourselves with than soldiers after assassins," she snapped. "My people will be out looking for me. General Mahmoud is a powerful man."
"So am I, sweetheart." Bolan capped the conversation. "Enough talk. Let's get out of here."
6
The withdrawal from Teheran had its moments. Three of them to be exact, when the Mercedes driven by Bolan was stopped at three different checkpoints, twice by Iranian Revolutionary Guard units, once by a roadblock of local police. Tanya was sitting next to Bolan and Grimaldi sat in the back seat, firearms hidden from view.
The hard guys who surrounded the Mercedes with aimed AK-47s and those who approached the driver of the Mercedes with drawn pistols at each stop could have been called thugs back in the States, Bolan reflected at the final checkpoint on the outskirts of Teheran. And here, where they enforced a dictator's martial law, they were hoods, too.
The falsified identification papers supplied by mujahedeen connections, and the Mercedes itself, bespoke authority that is more feared than respected in Iran as in ail dictatorships. Bolan's olive complexion, high cheekbones and squarish jaw gave him a subtle Mediterranean appearance that could have easily been part or pure Iranian. It took Bolan and Grimaldi and their blond lady Soviet agent somewhat longer to clear the suburbs of Teheran, but not much. And that bothered Bolan.
"I would've thought they'd have the city sealed tighter than this," he mentioned to Grimaldi after the third checkpoint honcho waved them through.
"Now that you mention it," Grimaldi agreed.
The gut feeling that something wasn't right had not stopped gnawing at Bolan after they had left Mahmoud's house.
"As if nothing's happened," he considered aloud. "As if Khomeini hadn't been hit at all."
Tanya spoke up for the first time since the drive began.
"You pulled the trigger, did you not?" she queried Bolan. "You saw him die."
Bolan nodded, firing a cigarette with the dash lighter while he drove, trying to figure what his gut felt.
The lower-priced one-level adobe houses, the perimeter of Teheran, thinned away to become open country not long after the third checkpoint.
Bolan gave the well-tuned vehicle its lead on the sparsely traveled ribbon of blacktop as they continued southwest. He maintained close watch on the surroundings, using the inside and outside rearview mirrors.
A few more miles and it appeared they had pulled out of Teheran without complication.
Grimaldi stretched a jacket across the back-seat window to block the sun and curled up as best he could in what Bolan knew would be a catnap. He and Jack had been in enough combat zones together to know he could depend totally on the ace pilot for backup on a heartbeat's notice if they ran into trouble.
He wanted Jack rested when they reached the contact point with the mujahedeen. Bolan would catch a catnap of his own at that point. He needed Jack alert then to help keep Bolan's promise to Tanya Yesilov of protection from the mujahedeen, though Bolan felt he could trust the discipline with which Karim Aswadi commanded the insurgents' respect for their leader.
The Mercedes encountered little traffic along the highway, which cut along the base of the foothills. The few vehicles they passed were civilian, heading in the opposite direction, eager to make Teheran before sunset. The countryside was a lawless, treacherous no-man's-land after dark, not only because of the natural dangers of this wilderness. Outlaw bands, nomadic tribes, rebels, anyone hungry enough, willing to kill, roamed this inhospitable terrain; human animals of prey.
The woman beside Bolan sat staring straight ahead like a statue.
The highway skirted the salt flats outside Teheran, the ground deceptively solid, hard and smooth, though Bolan knew it to be a treacherous quagmire.
He traveled an indirect route to his contact point with the mujahedeen, more than an hour and a half additional driving time under the sun that was still blinding despite its gradual westward arc, but Bolan had no intention of leading anyone to Aswadi and his men.
No one followed them.
He concentrated on other things as he drove, allowing his postcombat tautness to relax while maintaining an eye-and-senses probing of their surroundings for danger beyond the Mercedes's windshield.
"Let's use our time, Tanya," he suggested. "Your orders to offer these concessions."
"You refused our offer," she replied quickly, turning to look at him. "I have nothing to tell you. I am your prisoner, that is all."
"Your superiors wouldn't think I'd consider throwing in with them," Bolan growled. "The concessions are for the mujahedeen. The KGB wants them in with your generals. So why are you uptight about where I'm taking you? You'll be able to make your pitch in person and from the premium on beautiful blondes in these parts, you might even charm Aswadi out of his common sense."
"Why is it you so disapprove of an alliance between your friends and ours?" she snapped. "Compromise may achieve great goals. There is little time left for your mujahedeen." She glanced at him intently. "Khomeini is dead. That is all that matters now. General Mahmoud's force mobilizes as we speak."
"The general and his bunch are using you, lady," he told her evenly. "They think the Russians are a pack of godless dogs every bit as much as the mujahedeen hate you. The difference is that the generals are willing to sell out on their anticipated spoils for the help they need to pull off a takeover."
She turned to stare ahead again as Bolan gunned the German car, gas pedal to the floorboard, the speedometer steady near a hundred mph.
"I understand why you had to kill Yuri, though you must know you faced no real danger from him," Tanya said evenly.
"I guess he forgot people aren't supposed to point guns unless they intend to use them."
"The gun was meant to buy him time, not to kill you. Our orders regarding you were quite the opposite."
"Your cover assignment as his wife. Did you fall in love with him, Tanya? I need to know where I stand."
A heartbeat pause.
"I... became fond of Yuri. We... acted the role of husband and wife... completely only one time, but we were not compatible as lovers. Do you understand? We chose not to allow this... disparity to interfere with our work. I came to like and respect him, and now he is dead because of you."
"He brought himself to the moment of his death, Tanya."
Another heartbeat. Bolan's peripheral vision caught one pearl-sized tear squeeze from the corner of the lady's eye to ease down her left cheek. She did not blink it away.
"As do we all. You are right, of course. You, too, are a poet, Mack Bolan. This I did not expect from your dossier."
"Let's talk about you."
"I would prefer not to."
"You're young for this kind of work. Posing as an American housewife called for someone good, but you were meant as window dressing. A rookie assignment."
The intended jab got a response.
"You bastard. It will be my ass when I get home, as dear Ellie would say."
"Why did we get out of Teheran so easily, Tanya?"
She blinked in surprise at the question.
"You suspect me of being the bait to pull you into a trap? If you believe that, then by all means stop this machine immediately and 1 will gladly unbait the trap."
Bolan scanned the bleak landscape they were traveling through.
The countryside rated a look — the deserted ribbon of blacktop highway the only indication of today, all else unchanged since the dawn of time.
The highway curved along the northern tip of the endless sand nothingness of the Dashti-i-kavir, a trackless sea of thin sand blowing over rock and gravel, a desert rimmed by barren hills like the mesas of the Amer
ican southwest, traveled only occasionally by caravans along a strip of sparse oases.
"I couldn't let myself turn you loose out here no matter what the circumstances," said Bolan. "I've seen you in action and they trained you well, first assignment or not. But there are too many cannibals prowling these hills. You'd run out of ammunition no matter how long you held them off, no matter how many you killed. Then they'd get you."
She nodded. Bolan saw a shiver course through her.
"I believe you. The mujahedeen we travel to meet, they will get you, us, out of the country?"
"That's the plan."
"And have you a plan for me after, .if we leave this country alive?"
"I've thought about it. I plan to escort you safely beyond Iran's border and turn you loose, Tanya. And advise the proper agencies of your identity, so you'll have to stay out of the spy game whether you like it or not. Then you're on your own.
"You can return to Moscow and try to explain things and hope for the best from superiors who are not noted for accepting failure gracefully, as you must know, or you can choose from a million and one other points on this earth and go there."
"Defect, you mean," she snapped. "Your bourgeois capitalist mentality obviously cannot grasp real political and idealogical commitment." Then she seemed to hear herself and glanced at him contritely. "That is not true. You are a brave man, committed to your ideals, however wrong-headed."
"What you decide after we leave Iran is up to you," he finished, not taking his attention from his driving. "I just don't want your blood on my hands. Then we're even for you tossing that rope ladder."
"All very impersonal, is it not?"
"Stop it," he growled. "You said it already. We're enemies. Take the white flag and be grateful."
He had been closely watching the last several miles for the spot he remembered from the sketchy maps of the region he had seen the night before his and Grimaldi's penetration into Teheran.
They eased closer to undulating ridges to the west, the lowering sun already tinting their silhouettes a rosy hue.
Bolan slowed the sedan and steered from the highway onto a well-marked caravan track rising into shadowed patches of scrub brush at the desert's edge where hills began lifting higher.
Teheran Wipeout Page 4
