The Iranian Hit te-42

by Don Pendleton

  Due both to the fact that Bolan had expressly promised his assistance to the lady, and to the fact that he could not help but see Carol Nazarour as a living symbol, if there ever was one, of just what this whole "new war" was about.

  Mack Bolan did not see himself as a do-gooder, crusader, or zealot of any sort. He was a man who simply could not coexist peaceably with flagrant human savagery. Bolan's high-school yearbook showed a picture of an intense young man, captioned: "He can because he must." Hindsight revealed a basic misunderstanding in the mind of the caption writer. The caption should have read: "He must because he can." Mack Bolan's entire existence was based on commitment. It was his reason for being. Commitment to ideals, to doing something in service to those ideals, to making some contribution to the human estate, to the evolutionary process, to living to his full potential — these were what gave his life meaning.

  His commitment was based on a simple philosophical stand.

  The savages — Yazid and all of these other merchants of terror everywhere — had to be fought back. The baseness and inherent self-destructiveness of aggression could not be endured by a civilization that had dreamed of touching the stars and had made those dreams come true, and had the potential for reaching so much more.

  Yet, ironically, only force could subdue savagery. Force, used with discretion and conviction.

  In Bolan's sharp perception of the situation, his own expertise and combat capabilities not only qualified him for the task but made mandatory his commitment as a champion of the human cause.

  There were times, sure, when the spirit lagged. When he longed for the freedom of irresponsibility. When he would have liked nothing better than to just kick back and let go and let the world find its own level without his input. But Mack Bolan understood that the world was not made for people but by people. He was responsible for the world in which he found himself. And there was no rest for such a man.

  A heavy concept, sure.

  But simple also. The new war was a war between evolution and devolution.

  17

  Bolan swung the Corvette's padded steering wheel, cutting off Goldsboro Road onto the blacktopped approach to the landing field. The naval hospital towered in the distance.

  It was 6:30 a.m.

  The open expanse of ground sitting in this residential area made Bolan think of a playing field of some sort. The autumn grass separating the short runways was burnished to a coppery gold by the morning sunlight.

  There was no gate barring entrance. The Vette passed the chain-link fence that ran the perimeter of the field.

  Bolan lifted his foot gently from the gas pedal. His gaze took a quick survey of the acreage — four hundred yards by three-quarters of a mile — that engulfed him.

  He spotted the STOL and General Nazarour's group immediately.

  One hundred and fifty yards to the east.

  The craft, a Sky Terrier, all wings and stubby fuselage, quivered on the tarmac like an arrow drawn tight against its bow, ready to be fired. From the look of the pilot and crew, dimly visible from where Bolan was, the craft had been hired or otherwise appropriated by a team of Arabs, presumably in league with Nazarour.

  The general's Mercedes had entered the field via an entrance opposite the Goldsboro Road access that Bolan had used. The Mercedes was midway between that opposite entrance and the waiting plane. The driver was in a hurry.

  Bolan's mind rapidly computed his chances of intercepting the Mercedes before it reached the STOL. Once the Mercedes made the plane, there would be no screwing around. It would be out of the car and onto the plane and gone.

  Yeah.

  Gone.

  Just like Bolan's promise to Carol Nazarour that he would help her.

  But even as Bolan's foot coaxed more fuel into the car's engine, accelerating for a dead run across the field to intercept the Mercedes, movement from the periphery of his vision brought Bolan's attention to some forty yards behind the Mercedes.

  A blue panel van had come barreling along the tarmac through that opposite entrance, in hot pursuit of the Mercedes.

  Karim Yazid. Amir Pouyan. The Iranians.

  Bolan was faced with a decision of the damned.

  Now it figured why the Mercedes was in such a hammer-down hurry.

  The occupants of the Mercedes knew they were being pursued.

  The Iranian assassins were closing in for the kill.

  The van didn't speed more than a few yards onto the field. Then it swerved into a sideways skid and shimmied to a halt.

  Bolan saw two men leap out from opposite sides of the van. The two were still togged in their nighttime commando gear, as was Bolan. He couldn't make out every detail from this distance, but he could see that the two men were lugging equipment behind them, which they hurriedly began setting up alongside the van, facing the Mercedes and the plane. Some hundred and thirty yards separated them from their target. But the two didn't seem concerned about that.

  Of course.

  They had the RPG-7 rocket launcher that had wrought such destruction last night in the hell-ground in Potomac.

  Back for an encore.

  The driver of the Mercedes apparently hadn't seen Bolan yet. He had eyes only for what was happening in his rearview mirror back by the van. The Mercedes picked up speed, moving even more rapidly toward the waiting STOL.

  Bolan floored the gas and sent the sleek sports car hurtling toward Yazid and Pouyan.

  The final stretch of pavement between the Mercedes and the awaiting STOL curved and ran parallel to the van parked across the field.

  The general's car presented a perfect target as it sped past the blank white faces of a row of hangars.

  Bolan's Corvette was reaching maximum speed. The machine's powerful engine screamed in his ears as it thrust him across the golden turf toward the van.

  The two men had completed setting up the RPG-7. They were sighting and preparing to fire.

  For the first time they heard the approaching sports car and in unison swung startled glances over their shoulders.

  Bolan could feel the steering wheel furrowing his palms, just as the tires were digging furrows into the grassy ground beneath him.

  It would be tight, yeah.

  Yazid and Pouyan exchanged frantic words.

  The Corvette came on relentlessly.

  Bolan spared a sideways glance.

  The Mercedes also was eating up time and space. Bolan calculated its present distance from the STOL at about thirty yards and closing fast.

  Real tight.

  Seconds flew by like the last grains of sand dropping through an hourglass — impersonal, oblivious to human drama or even life itself.

  As Bolan's vehicle swallowed up the distance between him and the van, the big soldier reached across and grabbed the Uzi from where it had been riding on the seat beside him.

  He was practically on top of the men by the van now.

  They, too, had readjusted their priorities. The general and company seemed temporarily forgotten. The two Iranians in commando black hurriedly began shifting the RPG-7 around in an arc to line up on the approaching car.

  When he was about seventy feet from the van, and while the two were still hassling with their gear, Bolan wrenched the Corvette off course yet again.

  The car swerved in a wide half-circle, bringing Bolan abreast of the two men and still sailing.

  With his right hand only, he continued steering while with his left he swung the Uzi up until its stubby snout was pointing out the window at the two men like an accusing finger.

  The Iranian on the left moved faster than his buddy. He took a dive away from the rocket launcher and fell loosely into a roll that continued under the van and out of sight. Bolan had guessed from watching the two that this was Yazid. He had been giving the orders. And he moved with the grace of a desert snake.

  Out in the open, Amir Pouyan dropped into a crouch, grabbing for a side arm.

  As Bolan sped past, the blurred impression of the Iran
ian's eyes and mouth flying open wide with the awful realization of approaching death registered for one instant.

  Then the Uzi was chattering madly in Bolan's ears, and the hail of 9mm slugs was doing its work, rendering Pouyan's facial expression into exploding matter.

  Amir Pouyan executed a wild jig of death as the Uzi ended his career as an Islamic assassin. Some of the bullets riddled the van behind him, splashing the side of the vehicle with a running mosaic of blood.

  The Corvette sped by, missing the nose of the van by fractions of an inch. Bolan got a view of the other side of the van for the first time.

  Karim Yazid had not remained under the van.

  The last remaining terrorist of the commando team had moved around, retrieving the RPG-7 from the fallen Amir. He was now up on one knee in the classic bazooka firing stance, with the RPG-7 propped over his left shoulder.

  Waiting for Bolan.

  Bolan spotted Yazid at the exact moment that his car roared into the rocket launcher's range.

  Bolan dropped the Uzi. He dropped the steering wheel. He dropped everything. He bent low and, with the car still roaring, propelled himself across the Corvette's front bucket seats, stiff-arming the passenger door open and rolling from the speeding vehicle at precisely the same moment that he heard the booming of the RPG-7.

  Bolan hit the ground hard but rolling, keeping his perfectly conditioned body loose and relaxed, carrying through with a roll that ended with him upright on his feet and running at full tilt, the mighty .44 AutoMag under his arm seeming to leap into his right fist of its own volition.

  But even as Bolan was rolling, then running, the ground shook beneath him. The rocket launcher's report was echoed and swallowed up by the second, louder, explosion of the moving Vette being blown into a wild ball of orange-red fire and noise and fragmenting automobile.

  Bolan felt chunks of debris flying by him, but he didn't pay attention to that.

  He was looking for Yazid.

  There was no sign of the guy.

  The commando leader had not waited around to confirm the hit. The Iranian had been sure of himself, and with damn good reason.

  A worthy adversary, yeah. A deadly foe.

  The engine of the van roared to life. Yazid was apparently aborting the mission, forgetting about the general and everything else except staying alive and getting the hell out of there. He was not the martyr type, apparently. The guy knew impossible resistance when he saw it, and all he wanted now was out.

  The van lurched into gear and started pulling away, doing a U-turn that would take it back out the same way it had entered the airfield.

  Bolan squeezed off a round intended for the van's left rear tire, but the vehicle jolted across a rut in the turf at that precise moment, and the slug only kicked up a clump of dirt inches to the left.

  The Executioner was sighting for another shot when assistance arrived from a decidedly unexpected quarter.

  The Mercedes carrying General Nazarour and his group came barreling in full speed from left field, literally. The driver pulled the car around in a sharp turn so that the Mercedes effectively blocked the van's intended route of retreat.

  Yazid tried to avoid the collision by swerving to the left.

  Bolan found himself tensing a split second before the inevitable crash filled the air with the sound of impacting metal on metal, mingled with shattering glass and human sounds.

  The van hobbled away from the collision, slowing to a halt, while the Mercedes didn't seem to have sustained much more damage than a slightly dented front right fender.

  The car had slewed away from the impact and also come to a stop.

  Bolan moved fast toward the driver's side of the van. There was no movement from inside the cab. No silhouette of Karim Yazid's figure behind the wheel.

  That was because Yazid had attempted Bolan's own maneuver, dropping out through the passenger side of the cab, which was facing away from Bolan.

  The Iranian hit leader suddenly appeared from behind the van's tail. He held his Ingram. The deadly weapon was spraying the area where Bolan should have been.

  Except that opponents don't fool Bolan with Bolan's own tactics.

  At the first blur of movement from behind the van, before Karim Yazid had even been a discernible figure, Mack Bolan had dropped forward onto his belly in a prone firing position, his right fist supported by his left, both elbows propped up, and an iced blue eye as cold as death itself sighting along Big Thunder's stainless-steel barrel.

  The two hundred and forty grains of Judgment turned Karim Yazid's skull into a bloody, collapsing thing and his life into nothing but a bad memory. The impact of the head shot lifted what was left of the hired Iranian assassin up off his feet and deposited him in an impossibly tangled heap of bones and dead flesh six feet away.

  Mack Bolan rose to his feet, that smooth combat movement honed as always to a tight edge. The eyes were still iced. The .44 shifted from the dead man to the parked Mercedes.

  Minera, still clad in his head honcho security guard outfit, emerged from behind the steering wheel. The guy was playing it very cool. He was not unaware of the fact that the .44 was now drawing a bead on the area directly between his eyes. But he kept his voice steady.

  "Relax, Colonel. No need to point that thing at me. I figured I owed you for the help you gave me and my boys back in Potomac."

  "Step forward," Bolan instructed, and Minera obeyed.

  An angry sound that Bolan could not identify came from the back seat of the Mercedes.

  Minera chuckled as Bolan approached and came up close. "The general isn't quite as appreciative as I am," he told Bolan. "He said that you were a good diversion. He wanted us to climb aboard the plane and beat it and let you and Yazid take care of each other, I didn't see it that way."

  "I appreciate that, Minera."

  "Sure. So, uh, now I helped you out, I figure we're even, right?"

  "We are." The big guy nodded. But he did not lower the .44. "Now get the general and his bunch out here where I can talk with them. There's one more matter that needs attending to."

  Minera glowered. "What is this? I help you out and you start pulling shit! The general's got a plane to catch."

  "The general can catch his plane after we settle one last thing." Bolan's tone was colder than chilled steel, brooking no response save obedience. "I said to roust them out, Minera. Don't push me. You had a man killed last night. Before I even got to Potomac, some of your boys were trying to waste me over in Canal Park. I could remember all of that and blow you away very easily. Capice?"

  Another heartbeat.

  Minera seemed to weigh his options and decided that there was only one.

  "Okay, we play it your way," he muttered.

  Minera moved to the rear door of the Mercedes, on the side that was facing Bolan. He leaned inside to speak to the car's passengers.

  The Executioner stood his ground, waiting, the .44 held down at hip level but ready.

  There was a bustling movement from the back seat of the foreign car as the occupants prepared to follow orders and show themselves in the new morning sunlight.

  The sunshine had warmed the air considerably by this time. But Bolan was still chilled to the bone as he psyched himself for the commencement of this drama's truly final act.

  It was not over, no.

  Not yet.

  Not by any means.

  18

  In the distance, the STOL was taxiing toward them, maybe another three or four minutes away, Bolan estimated. Otherwise, the airfield in Bethesda belonged to the players in this drama. According to previous arrangement, Hal Brognola was holding his men in check at the entrances to the field until he was contacted by Bolan or saw Bolan go down.

  Bolan did a quick scan of the four people who were lined up before the Mercedes, facing him.

  General Eshan Nazarour sat in his wheelchair. The passenger quarters of the Mercedes evidently were equipped to accommodate it. He was swathed in a heavy blanket
against the morning chill. He was trembling with rage.

  "I insist that you allow me to leave on this aircraft, Colonel Phoenix," he snarled, with a nod toward the approaching STOL. "I appreciate your assistance. But your assistance is no longer necessary nor warranted. I must demand..."

  Bolan did not hear him out. He looked at Carol Nazarour, who stood between her crippled Iranian husband and Abbas Rafsanjani.

  "Here's where you get off, lady," Bolan told the blonde. "If you still want to."

  Carol started forward. "Thank you, Colonel. I'd be more than happy to..."

  One of Nazarour's gnarled hands shot out from under the blanket and clasped itself around his wife's nearest wrist.

  "Not so fast, my precious," he hissed. Then, to Bolan, "Any previous agreement that you and I may have had, Colonel, is null and void. My wife displeased me greatly a while ago when she called you from that restaurant and told you of our plans."

  The STOL was drawing closer along the short airstrip. Bolan hoped that it carried only a pickup detail for Nazarour, that no one in the STOL would cause trouble. He did not want the situation to bother Hal and his men at the perimeter unnecessarily....

  He turned his attention to the general. He lifted the .44 and sighted in along a straightened arm at the man in the wheelchair.

  The Executioner was not bluffing when he quietly said, "Release her, general, or I will blow your brains all over this airfield. Do as I say."

  From a few feet away, Minera advised Nazarour in a stage whisper, "This guy is not bullshitting you, general. I'd say leave the lady behind."

  "Sound advice," chimed in Rafsanjani.

  Carol Nazarour was through being a passive observer of her own fate. She yanked her wrist from Nazarour's grasp, and he did not stop her.

  "Let me go, you filthy pig!" she said vehemently. "I spit on you and what you are!"

  And that is exactly what the hot-eyed blonde proceeded to do. The spit caught Nazarour squarely in the left eye. He reached up to wipe it away as his wife stalked over to stand beside Bolan.

  Bolan looked at Minera. "You just gave the general some real good advice," he told the security chief. "Now I'll give you some. Take it if you want to live." He nodded at Nazarour. "Don't put anything on the line for this guy, Minera. He's a bigger hood than you are, and he doesn't give a shit if you live or die. If you want to get out of this thing, all you have to do is turn around and walk away. You killed one of your own men last night for the general because the guy was messing with the general's wife. Tony should've been smarter or more careful, but he was Mafia just like you are, so this time around, you get away with it. If you stay, I kill you. I'd rather not, after all we went through last night. But the choice is yours."