Renegade

With the Desert Eagle leading the way, the Executioner started up the steps. He caught a flash of white at the top of the railing above his head, but by the time he had swung the big .44 that way it had disappeared.

Bolan had nearly reached the top of the steps when he saw the white flash again. This time, the man had moved to the other end of the railing and didn’t retreat. The Executioner’s eyes took in the fact that the “white” was a T-shirt, and that it provided not only a clear background for the blackened submachine gun in front of it, but a clear target.

Leaning slightly backward, Bolan fired behind him and over his head. His first round struck the subgun and the weapon went spinning out of the terrorist’s hand. The man shrieked in both surprise and pain, and grabbed one hand with the other.

The Executioner’s second .44 Magnum round perforated the clasped hands before traveling on to explode the terrorist’s heart.

Bolan crouched again as he reached the top of the staircase. Three doorways led off the large stairwell landing, and he stopped, cocking an ear for sounds of movement in any of the directions. He heard nothing.

The Executioner slid silently across yet another of the expensive woven carpets, concentrating on the doorway to the far left. Stopping at the entryway, he glanced inside. Another bed mat. But this room was larger than the ones below. The master bedroom. Two closet doors stood wide open.

Bolan moved on to the middle doorway, looking in to see yet another sleeping mat on the floor. This closet door was closed. He hurried up to it and listened. No breathing. No sounds at all. There was no sense of human presence at all emanating from the closet so, without bothering to shoot through the wood this time, he swung the door open.

A variety of clothes hung from the hangers on the bar suspended at eye level. More clothing was folded and stacked on the shelf. A quick jab of the Desert Eagle through the hangers proved that no one was hidden behind the garments, and he stepped back out of the closet.

Just in time to hear a soft scraping sound drift down the hall from another part of the house.

The Executioner pivoted back toward the door, the big .44 at arm’s length in front of him. He couldn’t identify the sound, but it could only have come from the final upstairs room—the only one he hadn’t yet checked. Sprinting back to the hallway, he hurried toward the final bedroom. This time, he was close enough to hear the sound of a window sliding open.

Bolan dropped low as he neared the doorway. Speed had taken precedence over silence now, and he knew whoever was in the room would have heard him as well as he’d heard the window rising. He came to halt just to the side of the opening, the Desert Eagle gripped in both hands and pointed down at a forty-five-degree angle in front of him.

The Executioner edged an eye around the corner. The window in the back wall of the house had been opened, and a man wearing a bright red shirt had already stuck one leg through the opening. Bolan could see his face as he bent over and began to pull his chest and shoulders through the opening. The face had light skin, green eyes and was topped by a shock of sandy-blond hair.

Sobor.

Bolan turned slightly, lifting the Desert Eagle and dropping the sights on the back of the man’s left thigh. A bullet here would “hamstring” the former Soviet, and perhaps there would still be time to whisk him away for questioning before the cops hit the house. The Executioner had already started to squeeze the trigger when the sound of footsteps pounding up the staircase behind him forced him to whirl.

The head and shoulders of another terrorist in green BDUs and a long wispy beard suddenly appeared on the steps. A split second later the AK-47 in his hands followed. Then the man’s dark brown eyes caught sight of the Executioner and opened wide in both shock and horror.

Bolan pumped two rounds into the terrorist’s chest and saw the body fly back against the side wall before tumbling out of sight down the steps. When he turned back to the bedroom, the window was still open.

But Anton Sobor was nowhere to be seen.

THE SIRENS THAT HAD SOUNDED in the distance now screamed from the front of the house. As the Executioner sprinted into the bedroom to the window, he saw that it led out onto the flat, tar roof over the single-story rooms at the rear of the house. Ducking beneath the glass, he looked out to see Anton Sobor sprinting toward the edge of the roof. With the cops outside now, there was no way he was going to get Sobor away for questioning. So, gripping the Desert Eagle with both hands, he extended it through the opening. But before he could fire, Sobor whirled as if he’d felt eyes on his back and sent two rounds from a Russian Makarov pistol toward the window.

Bolan was forced to scramble to the side as both 9 mm rounds flew through the opening and slammed into the wall behind him.

In the house below, excited voices shouted in Farsi. The cops were definitely here now, and Bolan knew if he stayed where he was he’d soon be in handcuffs.

The soldier moved back in front of the window in time to see Sobor drop over the edge of the roof, out of sight. Climbing quickly through the opening, he heard more shouts as the cops raced up the stairs. He looked out to see rooftops at every level imaginable from one story to four. And the houses extended as far as the eye could see in every direction. He had noted how close together they were built earlier, but now he saw that Sobor could easily run for miles, zigzagging up and down the various levels and hopping from one roof to the next. He wouldn’t have to drop to the ground until he came to a major cross street. Or he could leave the roofs and disappear into the ground-level maze between the dwellings at any time he chose.

The bottom line was that if the Executioner didn’t catch sight of him soon, and keep him in sight, he’d lose him for good.

Sprinting to the spot where Sobor had disappeared, Bolan looked down to see that the adjacent roof was only a few feet lower than the one on which he stood. The Russian had been forced to hunch down as he ran to avoid being seen, and that had slowed his progress. Still, he had already crossed the tops of two more houses and was now roughly thirty yards away.

Bolan raised the Desert Eagle and lined up the sights on the running man’s back. He was again squeezing the trigger when the crack of a gunshot roared behind him. He felt the roof tremor slightly as a bullet bore itself into the tar at his feet, and twisted to see a uniformed police officer at the window he’d just climbed through.

Bolan had never killed an honest cop doing his job, and he wasn’t about to start now. On the other hand, letting the Iranian police kill him didn’t do much for him, either. Raising the huge Desert Eagle to shoulder level, he aimed to the side of the window and sent two 44 Magnum rounds into the shingles to the side. The cop shrieked in terror and fell backward, frightened but unhurt.

As he dropped over the same edge where Sobor had disappeared, Bolan saw more blue uniforms enter the bedroom behind him.

He sprinted across the roof directly behind the terrorist house, then leaped over a ledge and landed on another roof roughly the same height. In the distance, he saw the bright red shirt. Sobor had increased his lead to forty yards. But as the Executioner continued pursuit, he saw that the Russian was now limping with each step. He had no idea what had happened—a pulled muscle, a twisted ankle, maybe an old knee injury popping back up at an inopportune time—but whatever it was had slowed Sobor’s pace. By the time Bolan reached the next house, the Russian’s lead had dropped back to thirty yards again.

The Executioner came to another house whose roof rose two feet higher than the one he was on. Without breaking stride, he stepped up onto the retaining wall and sailed high into the air. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the Tehran roof levels, with houses rising to whatever height the builder’s whimsy called for. Perhaps that very irregularity had been the cause behind Sobor’s limp. Each leap from house to house, while not far, was deceptive, and could easily be misjudged.

Behind him, several gunshots popped. Bolan turned as he continued to run and saw a half dozen blue-clad men jogging his way. But their efforts were halfhearted, at best. None of them showed much enthusiasm for confronting the man whose big-bore pistol had blown holes in the wall next to the safehouse window.

By the time he had crossed the fourth roof behind the Hezbollah house Bolan had closed to within fifteen yards of the Russian. As the man limped toward the edge of another roof, Bolan dropped to one knee and raised the Desert Eagle. The big .44 rose and fell with each limping stride of the bright red shirt as the Executioner fell into the rhythm of the Russian’s pace. Then he aimed the weapon a few yards ahead of the running man, centering it slightly higher than waist level, and waited for the red shirt to enter his sight pattern.

He would shoot a split second before Sobor left his feet to leap onto the next roof. His finger took up the creep on the trigger and he held his breath.

Just as the Russian reached the edge of the roof an alley cat seemed to spring from nowhere. Bolan heard it screech as it struck Sobor in the side, paws flailing the air. The Russian’s jump to the next roof thrown off, Sobor tumbled over the edge and fell out of sight between the houses.

Bolan rose and raced forward, making a final leap to the last rooftop on which he’d seen the Russian. The cat scampered away, hissing, as the Executioner slowed, nearing the edge. This was hardly Bolan’s first gunfight and he didn’t intend to burst into view only to find Sobor waiting there to kill him. Slowly, carefully, the Desert Eagle still leading the way, Bolan peered over the edge of the roof and down between the houses.

Sobor wasn’t laying at the bottom as he’d hoped. But the deep impression the man had left in the mud where he landed was still there.

The Executioner was about to drop down between the houses and follow the footprints the Russian had left when he heard a crash on the other side of the house to his right. Knowing he’d make better time on the roofs, he turned and leaped across yet another small gap between the houses. Running along the edge of the building, he could see the muddy footprints Sobor had left behind. They were leading directly toward the sound he had heard.

When he reached the other side of the house, the Executioner looked down to see that a trash receptacle had been turned over. And while grass covered much of the area below, it was still sparse enough to show footprints. Bolan followed them with his eyes, seeing that they doubled back in the direction from which they’d come. He looked behind him and saw the Iranian cops advancing. But slowly.

They didn’t want to find him any more than he wanted to be found.

A flock of pigeons took flight as the Executioner leaped to the next roof, still keeping his eyes on the tracks below. When the footprints finally led to a narrow sidewalk between the houses, he dropped to the ground and followed the muddy clods that had fallen from the Russian’s shoes. But each of Sobor’s steps helped clean the shoes, and when the sidewalk broadened and intersected with another walk, the trail disappeared altogether.

On a hunch, the Executioner followed the sidewalk, ignoring the turns as he made his way back toward the Hezbollah house. He stopped, his back against the wall of one of the dwellings, as the police crossed his path above. He could hear the blue-clad men whispering to one another as they walked slowly across the rooftops, doing their best to appear to be searching for him while at the same time making sure they didn’t find the man with the big .44 Magnum pistol.

Moving on, the Executioner finally saw the same street he had walked down in front of the terrorist’s house. Sliding the Desert Eagle back into his hip holster, he covered it with the tail of his overcoat, then exited through an open doorway in the brownstone wall. On the sidewalk two houses to his right, he saw the flashing lights of the police vehicles that had parked just outside the wall. At least a dozen officers stood behind the cars, their guns drawn and aimed at the entrance to the house behind the wall. One of the cops—a slender man with a receding hairline—turned to stare at him.

Bolan turned casually and began to walk the other way. It had been several minutes since the cops had first arrived, and assuming they were efficient they would have already searched the immediate area. At this point, even looking as he did, he hoped he wouldn’t attract much more than the second glance the balding officer had thrown his way.

The Executioner stared ahead of him as he walked, and a block farther down the street he caught a flash of red. Squinting into the distance, he saw that the color was that of a shirt, and that the shirt was bobbing slightly up and down as it moved away from him.

Sobor. And the Russian was still limping.

The Executioner was about to break into a run when a rough hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. Turning, he felt the cold steel of a pistol barrel jam into his face. He looked down to see the Iranian cop with the receding hairline staring up at him. The hand holding the gun was shaking as the officer began screaming at him in Farsi.

“I am sorry,” Bolan said in Russian, raising his hands over his head. “I do not speak the language.”

By now three more blue-uniformed Iranians had left their posts behind the flashing red lights and joined the balding officer. All began shouting, as if they believed a deafening volume would suddenly teach Bolan their language.

The Executioner glanced over his shoulder and saw his prey limping toward a taxicab parked on the curb. If he lost the man now, he knew he might never find the Russian again. He could escape into the underground of any of a dozen terrorist-hosting countries and be lost forever.

As he was so often forced to do, Bolan made his decision in a microsecond. Bringing both hands suddenly down from over his head, he turned his body away from the muzzle of the cop’s pistol and grabbed the wrist holding the gun with his left hand. His right came across his body and clasped onto the barrel of the pistol. Pushing one way with his left hand, the other with his right, he snapped the weapon away from the officer, turned and sprinted away.

Though he hadn’t thought it possible for the Iranians to shout louder, he now heard them do so.

Bolan dropped the gun as he ran, hoping the cops behind him would see it and resist firing. On the other hand, Iran was hardly a country where police were famous for respecting human rights, and he knew there was at least an even chance that he would be shot in the back. But as he ran on, no one fired.

Ahead, the Executioner saw Sobor get into the back seat of the cab and close the door. As the vehicle pulled away, Bolan had time to squint at the number stenciled in black just above the rear bumper: 2348796.

The Executioner stopped and turned around.

A second later he was tackled by a half-dozen Iranian police officers.

CHAPTER THREE

It was a miracle he hadn’t been shot already.

As the Iranian police officers dragged him to the ground, Bolan let himself go limp. But as he fell, he counted the men around him. Six.

Landing on his back, he felt hands roll him to his stomach as the men continued to yell at him. Turning his head, Bolan could see the parked police cars in front of the Hezbollah house. The cops around the vehicles still had their attention focused on the entrance in the brownstone wall. They were paying no attention to what was happening to him a half block away. Evidently, if they had even noticed his capture, they felt that six officers should be more than enough to handle one man.

Bolan felt his arms being pulled behind his back. He wondered what would happen next. Some police procedures dictated that the handcuffs go on first. If that happened, he would have trouble. But other departments taught their officers to pat down a suspect for weapons before cuffing him, especially when the man taken into custody was as vastly outnumbered as Bolan was now. But whichever way it went, the police were about to find a .44 Magnum pistol, a 9 mm machine pistol, a .45 ACP revolver and a knife.

More than enough to lock him away in an Iranian prison for the rest of eternity. Unless he acted fast.

Luckily, the Iranians had been trained to frisk first. While two of the excited men continued to hold his arms behind his back, a third started at his shoulders and began patting him down. Bolan waited, anticipating the split second of shock he knew would come when the searcher felt the shoulder rig beneath his overcoat. It would be slight and short-lived.

But it would be the only chance he’d have to turn the tables on his captors.

A second later, the searcher’s hand hit the holster under his left arm and froze. A shoulder rig was more than he had expected to find, and it took a second for the man to process the information. A quick gasp escaped the lips above the Executioner’s head, and as it did he felt the hands holding his arms lighten their grip slightly in their own surprise.

Bolan didn’t hesitate. With all the power in his shoulders and arms, he snapped his hands down and away from the cops holding him. As he rolled to his back, his right hand shot into the pocket of his overcoat and the Scandium .45 ACP revolver suddenly appeared in his fist. Still lying flat, he aimed the stubby revolver at the Iranian cops standing over him.

The men froze like statues.

“Somebody here understands Russian,” Bolan whispered in a menacing voice. “And they’d better speak up fast if you want to get home to your families tonight.”

Several frightened phrases in Farsi escaped the faces above the Executioner. All mentioned Allah. But they sounded more like prayers than curses.

“This is a 6-shot revolver,” the Executioner added, still in Russian. “And there are six of you. You do the math.” He had already fired one round into the Hezbollah man who’d met him on the garden sidewalk, but the cops looking down at him now had no way of knowing that. The empty brass casing was hidden behind the stubby barrel of the .45 and, even looking straight down at the exposed cylinder holes to the sides of the frame, the gun looked fully loaded. Bolan could see the frightened faces above him as their eyes froze on the round lead noses of the RBCD Performance Plus fragmenting bullets.

“I’m waiting,” the Executioner said. “But my patience is growing thin.”

The balding man who had originally spotted him finally spoke. “Russian,” he said. “I…speak a little…”

“You better hope it’s enough,” Bolan said. “Now, listen closely, then translate what I say to the others.”

“I w-will try,” stammered the cop with the receding hairline.

“Try hard. Your lives depend on it.” The Executioner gave his words time to sink in, then went on. “I want you to tell three of your men to stand directly between me and the other officers still back at the cars. Tell them to stand close together and block the view. If any of the other cops see what’s going on, I’ll kill every one of you. And I’ll start with you.” He paused again, then said, “Tell them. Tell them now.”

Bolan waited for the words to be translated, then watched the men nod as three of the six moved in behind him. Keeping the .45 aimed at the balding head, he said, “Now, you reach down and lift me to my feet by the left arm. Make a play for the gun and you’re dead. Got it?”

The cop with the thinning hair nodded nervously and bent slowly, tugging Bolan back to his feet with both hands. The Executioner kept the S&W tight against his coat, out of reach but still aimed at the man helping him. “Very good so far,” he said. “Now, instruct one of your men to go get a car and bring it back here.”

“Which man?” the slender cop asked, licking his lips.

“I don’t care,” the Executioner said. “Either of the ones not blocking the view.”

“Which car?” the cop asked, obviously stalling for time.

Bolan transferred the .45 to his left hand and in one smooth motion drew the mammoth Desert Eagle from under his coat. “I already warned you that you were trying my patience,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Keep asking stupid questions and I’ll shoot you just for that.” He had no intention of killing any of the cops. He was counting on bluff, and so far it had been working. “And be sure whoever you pick understands that if I get even the slightest impression that he’s tipping off the other cops, I’ll kill you and everybody else here.”

The balding cop licked his lips again and turned to the nearer man. He whispered several sentences in his native tongue. The man to whom he spoke—a short, stocky cop with a thick, bushy mustache—nodded and walked away.

Bolan holstered the Desert Eagle again, switched the wheel gun back to his right hand and held it up briefly so the men around him could see it. Then he jammed the revolver back into his overcoat pocket but kept his hand in the pocket, as well.

There was no need to explain, in Russian or Farsi, that he could still shoot any of them he chose with the mere pull of an index finger.

The Executioner instructed the balding cop to keep holding on to his left arm as the stocky man walked down the block, slid behind the wheel of one of the patrol cars and backed it away from the wall. None of the other uniformed men paid attention as he threw it into drive, then rolled it slowly up to where the Executioner and the other five men stood.

“Tell him to stay behind the wheel,” Bolan ordered the balding man. The man did as ordered. “Now, keep holding on to my arm and escort me to the back seat as if you’ve just arrested me.”

The man who spoke Russian saw another chance to stall for time and took it. Shaking his head, he said, “If the others see it, they will not believe it.” He nodded toward the cops still stationed around the whirling lights outside the wall. “You are not in handcuffs.”

“Just tell your men to move. We’re all going to pack ourselves into the car and go for a little ride.”

“But there are six of us,” the balding cop protested. “With you we are seven. The car cannot hold—”

Bolan slapped him again, this time on the other side of he face to make the red marks match. “Tell them and do it,” he repeated.

The cop whispered out another long stream of Farsi. The other five uniformed men nodded.

The man with the thinning hair took the Executioner’s arm again and they all started to walk toward the vehicle. Bolan kept one eye on the men around him, the other on the cops still back at the cars. So far, they still had taken no notice of what was happening. To them it appeared that the big “Russian” was being taken back to the station for questioning. Handcuffs or no handcuffs.

When they reached the vehicle, Bolan used his translator to assign seats. The beefy cop with the mustache stayed behind the wheel. The bald man took a seat up front next to him, and the Executioner slid in on his other side.

The other four cops packed themselves into the back seat like two cans of sardines pressed into one can, and it was that tiny detail that finally caught the attention of the dozen or so Iranian cops still standing behind the other vehicles.

Bolan saw it begin as he slid into the car and closed the door. An older, overweight officer glanced their way. He frowned with bushy eyebrows as the men crammed themselves into the back seat.

Through the window, the Executioner could almost see the man’s brain working behind his wrinkled forehead. Why were so many officers riding in one car when other vehicles were available? And why had the prisoner been the last to enter the vehicle instead of being tossed in first by the officers? For that matter, why was the man in the long overcoat in the front seat instead of the back?

His eyes still glued to the beefy officer, Bolan said, “Drive.” The bald man translated and the patrol car took off. The Executioner pulled the .45 from his pocket and jammed it into the neck of the balding officer so all of the men in the back seat could see it.