Another forty minutes and they would reach the rendezvous point with Karim Aswadi and his unit of mujahedeen.
"Why did you ask me further about the proposed alliance between Aswadi's faction and General Mahmoud's?" asked Tanya. "Have you reconsidered our offer?"
"I also asked you about names I could use," Bolan countered. "What's wrong with a trade?"
She studied him then, briefly, intently, and seemed to decide.
"I think I know enough about you to offer you an additional inducement, Mr. Bolan. Yuri and I were attached to GRU..." Bolan knew this was the military intelligence arm of the KGB "...who will be providing the immediate support to General Mahmoud's forces. But when your presence was reported in the region, we were assigned a new control officer. KGB. Even Yuri was impressed. He is in Teheran now. His name is Major General Strakhov."
At the sound of Strakhov's name, Bolan ground his teeth in anger, working his jaw muscles. But he tried to keep his face impassive as he eyeballed a checkpoint in the descending gloom when the Mercedes topped the first rise.
They had set the roadblock well. Men stood with their backs to the setting sun at such an angle that the occupants of any approaching vehicle would only discern the forms of men in the shadows of a craggy ridge behind them.
Bolan slackened speed, not enough to draw suspicion from the checkpoint one hundred yards away. He downshifted as any more or less law-abiding citizen would be expected to.
Grimaldi sat up in back and immediately studied the approaching scene.
"Funny place for a roadblock. Wouldn't think an army unit would feel very safe out here from everything I've heard. They never move at night. Too many hostiles."
"You read my mind, buddy," Bolan growled.
He fed the car full upshifting throttle.
The men ahead had set up most of it, right. But only sufficient to fool most frightened civilians hurrying home to beat the dark, slowing them for a bothersome checkpoint without thinking until it was too late. But Bolan, himself an experienced role-camouflage expert, caught the little things like no radio antenna on the jeeplike vehicles. He knew that no patrol would be this far from civilization without damn good communications equipment to call for help, if needed.
Tanya got it then, too.
"Bandits," she whispered.
The five men in the road by the nose-to-nose vehicles reacted to the speeding-up approach of the Mercedes by scrambling for cover behind the vehicles, tracking automatic rifles at the oncoming car.
"Tanya, get down," Bolan instructed the lady. He steered with his left hand, unlimbering the AutoMag with his right in the final millisecond before hellfire erupted. "Here we go, Jack," he warned the man bracing himself with the MAC-10 at the open window in the back. "Pour it on hot and heavy. Now!"
7
Weapons blazed from both sides, dirty orange pencils of gunfire slivering to and from the rocketing Mercedes.
Automatic fire commenced from behind the bandit "checkpoint."
The ear-rattling thunder of the .44 hand cannon and angry popping from Grimaldi's Ingram reverberated through the interior of the Mercedes.
Bolan used the heel of his palm to wrench the steering wheel in sharp circles, almost flipping the car into a turn off the caravan trail without slackening speed.
Tanya obeyed Bolan's instructions and made herself as small as she could, hugging the floorboard of the car.
Projectiles smacked the Mercedes, angry hornets buzzing the rushing machine.
Then the enemy fire ceased as a tidal wave of loose gravel kicked up by the evasive maneuver descended like a small dust storm to blot out riflefiring men behind the jeeplike trucks.
Bolan saw his .44 slug evaporate the head of one back-falling highwayman, the red spray matching the sunset, while another guy curled over with a second navel, courtesy of Grimaldi.
Bolan powered the Mercedes past the roadblock vehicles, spewing up a cloud of dust that blanketed three surviving gunmen.
The three bandits opened fire at the car they heard barreling past before they could see what they were shooting at.
Bolan heard lucky rounds spang the coachwork.
A slug whined past the tip of Bolan's right ear, close enough to make it smart like a mosquito bite before drilling a spiderweb hole into the front windshield.
The dust dissipated and the red dots of stuttering assault rifles winked in the gathering dusk from behind.
The bandits squinted through the clearing dust swirls, tracking their blazing weapons on the receding car.
One of the gunners had his arms flung out like a bird trying to fly backward before toppling against a vehicle, then forward to the ground an instant after Grimaldi tossed a parting burst from his Ingram MAC-10.
The surviving two bandits held their fire long enough to feed fresh clips into their rifles, then realized the fast-departing Mercedes would be out of their range in another few seconds. They climbed into one of their vehicles, and the jeep-thing tore off in pursuit as if propelled from a catapult.
Bolan wheeled the Mercedes back onto the somewhat smoother strip of caravan trail.
Tanya remained crouched beneath window level, glaring at Bolan in anger and frustration.
"Please, give me my gun," she implored above the noise of the high-powering engine and wind whistling through the car. "I want to help!"
"Stay down."
Grimaldi positioned himself to return fire at the pursuing vehicle, which was already beginning to drop back, unable to match the Mercedes's effortless climb of another steep ridge.
"Save your energy, blondie," Grimaldi said, grinning. "We can outrun them yahoos with no trouble. The fun's over."
"Not quite," Bolan growled.
The two passengers twisted to follow his line of vision.
Grimaldi swore out loud.
Two desert vehicles that matched the pursuing one rocketed into view over ridges from either side of the road ahead. They were traveling at such high speeds they left the ground, airborne for several dozen feet until they each hit earth on a course that would intersect twenty yards ahead, the Mercedes boxed in between them and the vehicle coming in from behind.
The approaching machines appeared top-heavy with men armed with rifles, the carriers jouncing full tilt across the rocky terrain to intercept the Mercedes within a minute or less.
"Five in each vehicle," Bolan growled, combat instincts sizing the options, simultaneously formulating a strategy.
"And two behind us. Those rifles they're carrying will eat us up," Grimaldi grunted, wiping sweat from his forehead. "This one could be kind of close."
"We need some of that firepower."
Bolan downshifted decisively, sharply brakepumping into another high-speed turn, the powerful German car responding smoothly.
Tanya peered out the windshield at the springing of a well-orchestrated trap set for game that eluded the roadblock.
She braced herself and shouted above the rumble of the shuddering 180-degreespin.
"But how will we get their weapons?"
Grimaldi rode the centrifugal force of the turn, reading Bolan's mind, chuckling a response.
"Same way these creeps got 'em, doll. We take 'em."
Bolan upshifted, hammering down before the Mercedes completed its turn, the car speeding away from the two vehicles now closing in from behind.
The roadblock jeep had momentarily dipped from sight behind a ridge of the foothills and missed the action.
When the Mercedes reached a point fifty feet short of where the checkpoint vehicle would appear within a matter of seconds, Bolan steered and braked the Mercedes into a sideways stop.
"End of the line," he growled, already on the move, popping open his door.
He alighted from the Mercedes, the mighty AutoMag in his fist again, an extension of the warrior himself.
Grimaldi and Tanya darted away from the vehicle to beeline alongside Bolan from the Mercedes that now blocked the trail.
The dese
rt vehicles converging side by side from two hundred yards away, twin juggernauts chomping up the distance, had their racing engines joined by the same sound telegraphing the approach of the third vehicle.
Bolan spun around to hold his ground in a springy, kneeling shooting crouch, the hand cannon aimed with both fists at the spot where the third vehicle careered into view over the ridge one hundred feet from Bolan.
Grimaldi and the woman swung around together, the blonde looking like she wanted her Walther PPK from Bolan more than ever.
The bandit driver reacted reflexively, jerking his steering wheel to avoid direct collision with the Mercedes. But he was not quick enough, and the vehicle clipped the front end of the German car, spinning it away under the impact of metal into slamming metal. The jeep's left front tire caught a rut, and the vehicle two-wheeled along for thirty feet or so, the driver fighting for control, his passenger screaming something frantic, the sound cut off when the jeep flipped, landing upside down and skidding until a wall of boulders stopped the grinding slide with another smash.
Bolan and his two companions charged toward the remains of the wreckage, its axles wrenched loose, dust settling over an unrecognizable, twisted pile of junk.
Tanya slowed back a few paces behind the Americans, sensing from their caution that one or both bandits could have survived the crash.
The vehicles barreling in from the west broke away from each other one hundred yards down the track, the drivers reacting to what had happened, advancing from two flanks instead of straight on.
Bolan sensed danger to his left through the haze of settling dust from the crash. He tracked the .44 to a whisper of movement before visual target acquisition and hammered a round from Big Thunder. The ugly slap sound of the head buster exploding living flesh and the thud told him at least one of the two in the checkpoint vehicle was out of play.
He approached the wreck, steam whistling from an overheated radiator the only sound.
He saw the bandit who had hidden behind the overturned hulk was about to fire. An AK-47 lay in his outstretched, quivering fingers.
The driver's broken remains were trapped where the steering column had pressed his head to jelly against hard ground during the vehicle's tumbling slide.
Bolan picked up the discarded AK. He stripped the bandit's military web belt of extra ammo clips.
"Oh-oh," he heard Grimaldi exclaim from the other side of the wreckage.
The flanking bandit vehicles barreled in for a blitz run from either side. The gunmen were ready to open fire as they closed the range in two or three more seconds, creating a cross fire from high ground.
Bolan hustled to where Tanya stood next to Grimaldi, who was straightening up after he grabbed a Russian-made portable grenade launcher. The weapon, wrenched loose from the bandit during the crash, was primed and ready to fire.
Bolan motioned to the rushing bandit vehicle on the left.
"Take 'em, Jack."
"With pleasure."
Bolan turned, tracking low on the vehicle the instant it flew into view from beyond the wreckage.
Tanya grabbed his arm.
"Please, my gun!"
He shook her loose and stroked a yammering burst from the AK-47 at the exact moment the jeep-load of bandits commenced firing. From Grimaldi's position the grenade launcher hammered a blast at the enemy.
Tanya hit the ground and hugged it as dozens of bullets from the jouncing jeep's open salvo sliced overhead.
The oncoming vehicle on Grimaldi's flank began to zigzag wildly the instant the driver and his gunners saw the cannon in Grimaldi's hands. Dismayed faces were swallowed in a thunderclap of a blossoming fireball that fragmented the vehicle and everyone in it, strewing the vicinity with flying debris, body parts and razoring shrapnel.
The other jeep on Bolan's flank flipped into a crazy forward end-over-end roll after the burst from Bolan's AK blew out its front tires. The bandits were thrown like discarded rag dolls, except for the driver who held on to the steering wheel until the vehicle finished its last roll, the steering column skewering him like a baited worm.
Two bandits did not stir from where they landed, their bodies twisted in grotesque angles. Bolan sprayed them anyway, the same fusillade raking two more highwaymen who dazedly gained their feet to look for their rifles. The autofire from the Executioner ended it and everything else for them.
Nothing moved in the wilderness around Bolan, Tanya and Grimaldi as echoes of the altercation receded into the distance. Then silence reclaimed the killground.
Tanya surveyed the aftermath with stunned disbelief. She brushed an errant strand of blond from her forehead, uncovering a not unattractive smudge along one high cheekbone.
"You gentlemen... are most incredible," she began in an attempt to not sound shaken. Then she gave up and said something to herself in Russian that Bolan did not hear.
He slammed a fresh clip into the AK, and swung the weapon's strap over his shoulder. Eyeing the surroundings, he fed a fresh magazine into the butt of the AutoMag, which he did not holster.
Grimaldi ambled over from where he had commandeered an assault rifle and extra ammunition from one of the dead around the stricken jeep.
He motioned with the rifle, indicating what remained of the bandits.
"Close, like I said."
"Too close, for them," Bolan said, nodding.
"And perhaps for us, as well," Tanya Yesilov added bleakly, as if hypnotized by the wasteland of desert and mountains surrounding them. Shadows of dusk spread across the ground like a dark stain toward bodies and the hulks of battered vehicles. "What will we do now?" she asked no one in particular.
8
Bolan and Grimaldi made an inspection of the fender-bent Mercedes, Bolan's AutoMag and Jack's rifle all the while fanning the descending gloom for any sign of danger.
Tanya accompanied them without a word, averting her eyes from the torn, bleeding human carcasses littering the area.
The German-made sedan rested at an angle across the caravan trail and bore little resemblance to the sleek machine of a short while ago, before it was plowed into by a bandit vehicle.
Bolan provided cover for Grimaldi, who crawled beneath the car for a closer look at the damage. Then he climbed behind the steering wheel, fired up the engine and drove the vehicle through a few turns and stops.
"Looks worse than it is," he called to Bolan. "It'll be a tough ride. The front end looks screwed up and we're minus a headlight. Back home we'd call a tow truck. Out here, I'd say we could make it maybe fifty miles, maybe half a mile."
"Let's go," growled Bolan. "Slide over, Jack. I'll take the wheel. Tanya, you ride in front between us the rest of the way."
The woman did as she was told, saying nothing, avoiding eye contact with either man.
Bolan settled behind the wheel, and they continued on.
The Mercedes exhibited a severe alignment problem, and Bolan fought a pull in the steering wheel every inch of the way.
The bashed-in front end kept wanting to tug the vehicle off the caravan track, and the twisted fan kept hitting the radiator, sending up a loud racket in the silence of the rocky terrain. Occasional bursts of steam fogged the cracked windshield, and the Mercedes listed along at a maximum traveling speed of around forty mph.
Bolan curbed his irritation at not being able to move ahead faster.
So much to do. So little time. So many unanswered questions. A more or less straightforward mission complicated by far too many variables.
Variable number one continued to be the something dancing just beyond his conscious reasoning faculties, telling Bolan over and over that, sure, he saw Khomeini die through the sniperscope of the Weatherby on a Teheran rooftop that afternoon. Why then, Bolan wondered, did his subconscious keep pestering? Why did he continue to feel the vague, restless unease of a job left undone?
Other variables had a lot to do with it.
Like the Russian presence in Iran, which made about as much sense as Bolan's p
resence here, right; the single common cause shared by West and East. Everyone wanted this powder keg defused.
Variables.
A straightforward mission? Not anymore.
Nothing remained straightforward in Bolan's world anymore, if it ever had.
Certainly not in hellground Iran.
Variables.
Tanya Yesilov.
Blond, tough, nervy, unsure, afraid, dangerous. Especially dangerous, which is why Bolan had no intention of returning the lady's Walther PPK.
He had not stayed alive these many years of hellgrounding by handing out guns to women he did not trust, who had reason to hate his guts and everything he stood for, even if they had saved his life.
There was something about the tough yet vulnerable Tanya that Bolan liked, but he had liked her more as Ellie Talbot.
He wondered if he could believe any of what she had told him.
And Strakhov, the name she'd mentioned before Bolan had spotted the bandit roadblock.
Major General Greb Strakhov.
The KGB's most powerful official and the main focus of Bolan's KGB wars.
Strakhov had been the one to implement the KGB operation that resulted in the attack on Stony Man Farm and the death of April.
Bolan owed Strakhov. In spades.
And Strakhov owed Bolan much the same, for on a previous mission into Russia, the Executioner had terminated a KGB savage, one Kyril Strakhov, only child of widower Greb Strakhov.
On news of his son's death, the KGB chief had relinquished loss of his last emotional connection to normal human feeling. He devoted every waking hour and the considerable power and resources at his command to an all-consuming hatred of Bolan that could only be satiated by the death of the Bastard in Black, as the world media had dubbed the Executioner.
Bolan, Strakhov.
Executioner and KGB Boss of Bosses, Cannibal of Cannibals.
Strakhov's cannibal colleagues cautiously whispered of their superior's having gone a bit mad over the Bolan matter, though this had no effect on the power Strakhov continued to wield.
Bolan and Strakhov.
Teheran Wipeout Page 5
