Renegade

The overweight cop was still frowning as they drove away.

Six blocks from the Hezbollah safehouse Bolan ordered the driver to pull in to the curb. He got out, jerked one of the officers from the back seat and pulled the Tokarev 9 mm pistol from the man’s holster. Holding the man’s own gun on him, Bolan returned to the shotgun seat. Just before he closed the door, the cop on the sidewalk spoke out in Farsi.

“He asks what he’s supposed to do now?” The balding officer translated for the Executioner.

“Tell him to find a way home and come up with some story about how he lost his gun,” Bolan said. “Of course it’s going to seem a little strange to your superiors that all six of you lost your guns at the same time.” He nodded toward the windshield and the driver took off again.

Bolan repeated the process, ordering the car to the curb every six blocks or so and leaving one weaponless officer at each stop. Some began working on their stories in business districts, others in residential areas similar to the one where the Hezbollah safehouse had been located. They all had one thing in common, however.

They were going to have a hard time convincing their supervisors that they shouldn’t be suspended. Or worse.

When the balding cop’s turn came, Bolan ordered the driver out of the vehicle and shoved the translator behind the wheel. A mile later, the Executioner saw the glittering mirror-mosaic front of Tehran’s famed Gullistan Palace. He ordered his chauffeur to pull into the parking lot. By now he had five Tokarev pistols tucked into his belt and in the pockets of his overcoat, and he used one of them to nudge the driver out of the vehicle before sliding behind the wheel himself.

The balding man had ascertained by now that Bolan had no intention of killing any of the cops unless forced to do so. And that knowledge had brought with it a new confidence that bordered on arrogance. Turning back toward the car, his eyes rose to the emergency lights fixed atop the marked unit, then fell back to Bolan’s. “You will never get away with this,” he said with his newly found haughtiness. “How far do you think you will get in this car?”

“Far enough,” the Executioner said as he drove away.

In the rearview mirror, he watched the man with the receding hairline enter the museum, heading for the nearest phone.

The Executioner drove away from Tehran’s brightly lit downtown area as quickly as he could, ditching the patrol car in the first dark alley he came to, and tossing the keys over a fence into a coop full of clucking chickens. Walking casually to the intersecting street, a number rolled over and over in his head: 2348796.

He had seen Anton Sobor get into cab number 2348796. And at the moment, those numerals were the only chance he had of picking up the Russian’s trail again.

On the street now in a low-income residential area, the Executioner knew his appearance would stand out even more than he had back at the safehouse. And the police would have put his description out over the airwaves as soon as the first cop he’d freed had called in. Few people were outside their houses in the near-freezing temperature as he strolled past. But that didn’t mean they weren’t watching through their windows. And if they were inside, at least some of them would have televisions and radios. And telephones.

His situation was clear. He needed to get away from the curious eyes of Tehran long enough to do two things: change his appearance and check into the number 2348796.

Spotting an ancient Ford Mustang that had probably entered the country during the days of the Shah, the Executioner hurried down the street. All around him he saw poverty, and guessed that the rusting vehicle was some innocent Iranian’s most prized possession.

Which made him hate doing what he knew he had to do next.

Cutting into the driveway where the Mustang was parked, the Executioner tried the driver’s door and found it unlocked. The car looked to be a midsixties model, which meant it would have to be hot-wired under the dash rather than by cracking the steering column. Sliding inside, Bolan was about to begin feeling for the wires when he heard a door open in the house next to the driveway.

A stout man, wearing soiled khaki work pants and an equally dirty ribbed undershirt, came barreling out of the house screaming. Thick black hair covered the man’s arms and chest, growing so high up on his neck that it merged with his beard. Bolan sat up in the seat as the man ran toward him.

In the Iranian’s hand, the Executioner saw a huge butcher knife.

Bolan had no desire to hurt the man—he could hardly blame him for protecting what was his. On the other hand, he needed the vehicle. Stepping out of the Mustang, he threw back the tail of his overcoat and drew the Desert Eagle.

The hirsute Iranian ground to a halt at the sight of the big handgun. His eyes widened and he didn’t have to be told to drop the knife—he figured it out all on his own, and began mumbling what even one unversed in Farsi could recognize as pleas for his life.

Bolan nodded, then held out a hand, palm down, which quieted the hairy Iranian. His face relaxed. But when the Executioner holstered the Desert Eagle, a frown of confusion came over his face once more. Quickly, Bolan reached inside his coat and produced a leather billfold. He had stocked up on Iranian cash before coming to the country, and now he pulled out enough money to pay for the Mustang three times over.

The hairy Iranian’s eyes grew large again.

Bolan extended his hand.

Fearfully, still wondering if what was happening was real, the shivering man accepted the money.

“I need the keys,” the Executioner said.

The man frowned again.

Bolan stuck his empty hand out in front of him, twisting his wrist to pantomime starting a car engine. The Iranian caught on and reached into his pocket. He was still looking at the money in his hand when the Executioner drove away.

Bolan was surprised to find that the Mustang’s engine purred as if it had just come off a Detroit assembly line. Whoever the man was, he had been proud of the vehicle and kept it maintained. Well, the Executioner thought, as he found his way to the thoroughfare heading south toward the ancient city of Rey, the Mustang’s owner now had enough money to replace it, and then some. And with any luck, he’d be able to ditch the vehicle in a place where it would be found by police and returned to him, to boot.

Traffic in Tehran was always insane, with horns honking, drivers shaking their fists at one another and traffic signs perceived more as suggestions than law. Nevertheless, a half hour later Bolan was passing the site where the Reza Shah Mausoleum had once stood, and a few minutes after that he had reached Rey. The sun was beginning to fade behind the mountains as he turned off the main road and began urging the Mustang up and down a hilly path through the foothills. He passed a small pool of water where dozens of women washed the carpets for which Persia had been famous for hundreds of years. On the rocky slopes around the water hundreds of other rugs lay drying. Red, blue, yellow, green and every other hue of the color spectrum made the hills appear to be rainbows fallen to earth.

The Executioner continued to navigate the back roads. He had memorized the location where his pilot—Jack Grimaldi—had hidden the unmarked Bell OH-58D helicopter when they had arrived early that morning. Taking off from an American-held air base in Kirkuk, Iraq, Grimaldi had kept the chopper beneath radar for the full four-hundred-mile trip. Few pilots in the world could have pulled off such a flight and, at the same time, avoided being spotted from the ground. But Stony Man Farm’s number-one flyboy was an ace strategist as well as pilot, and he had done it. Now, Bolan knew, his old and loyal friend would still be sitting in the helicopter, awaiting his return.

Dusk was upon him when Bolan made the final turn, following a path until it ended against the side of a foothill. He killed the engine, pocketed the keys and took off on foot, walking up and down hills for another five hundred yards before he came to the valley.

The Bell was barely visible, wedged in as it was between two narrow hills. Bolan grinned as he walked the last few steps. He and Grimaldi had worked more missions together than he could remember, and while there might be another jet jockey or two who could have crossed Iran unnoticed, he knew of no one else in the world who could have landed the craft as expertly as his old friend. Bolan doubted that it would be seen from the air even if an Iranian surveillance plane flew directly over it.

Bolan reached the helicopter and opened the door to see the two-and-one-half-inch barrel of a Smith & Wesson Model 66 staring him in the face. In his other hand, the pilot held a thick paperback book.

Grimaldi grinned. “Sorry, Sarge,” he said, returning the .357 Magnum pistol to his waistband beneath his brown leather flight jacket. “Couldn’t tell who it was in the dark.”

Bolan climbed aboard before speaking. “You think it was the bogeyman, Jack?” he asked.

“No, but I thought it might be some curious tribesman.” Grimaldi had left the control seat and was sitting in a chair bolted to the deck in the chopper’s cargo area. Now he placed the paperback book on top of a map on the small table in front of him.

Grimaldi tapped the map with an index finger. “According to this,” he said, “we’re several miles away from the nearest village. But these guys have been known to travel like everybody else.”

Bolan nodded as he passed the man, moving up to the front of the helicopter and retrieving a briefcase next to the pilot’s seat. He returned to the cargo area, took the chair across from Grimaldi and pulled out a cellular phone.

A moment later Barbara Price was picking up the phone at Stony Man Farm. “Good morning, Striker,” the beautiful honey-blonde said on the other end of the line. “Or, considering where you are, I guess good evening would be more in order.”

“Is the Bear awake yet, Barb?” Bolan asked, referring to Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman, the Farm’s chief computer genius.

“That’s one Bear who never hibernates,” Price said in return, and a moment later Kurtzman was on the line. Bolan pictured the man who had given his legs in defense of freedom, but who still fought evil from the wheelchair. He was another old friend of the Executioner’s. And another man who, like Grimaldi and Price, was at the top of the ladder in his field.

“Bear,” Bolan said, “I need you to run something down for me.” He went on to explain about Sobor, the taxi and the number stenciled on the back of the vehicle. “Can you hack into the Iranian’s computer base and find out what that specific cab did today?”

“Hack into an Iranian government computer system?” he said. “Like taking candy from a baby.”

“I need to know where the cab took Sobor,” the Executioner said.

“Getting in won’t be a problem, Striker,” the computer wizard said. “The tough part will be trying to make sense of things once I’m there.”

Bolan frowned. His mind had been preoccupied and he hadn’t considered the language barrier. “The Farm has access to translations right.

“Yeah,” Kurtzman came back, “but that’s not what I meant by making sense of things. What I meant was that the Iranians are notorious for sloppy record keeping, even in government. There’s no telling what gets loaded in regard to taxicab records.” He paused for a second, then added, “For all I know, they don’t even keep records. Computer or otherwise.”

“Well, let’s hope they do because it’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

“When do you need this?” Kurtzman asked. Bolan had opened his mouth to answer when Kurtzman spoke again. “Never mind—I know you. You need it yesterday.”

The Executioner grinned again. “The day before yesterday would have been better, Bear.”

“Well, the longer I talk to you, the longer it takes,” Kurtzman said in a phony gruff voice. Bolan heard a click in his ear, felt himself smile, and tapped the button to hang up on his end, as well.

While he had talked to Price and Kurtzman, Grimaldi had pulled a set of earphones over his brown suede bush pilot cap and plugged the wire into a radio mounted to the side of the cargo area. When Bolan started to speak, the pilot held up a hand for silence. Closing his eyes, the pilot listened for another thirty seconds, then unwrapped the headset from his head. “English language radio station,” he told the Executioner. “Seems like the Tehran cops kicked in the door at a Hezbollah safehouse and killed all the terrorists.”

The Executioner couldn’t help but chuckle. The Iranian government was no different than any other around the world, experts at spinning the news to their own advantage. The truth was that the Iranian police hadn’t killed any of the terrorists themselves. There had been none left to kill by the time Bolan had crawled through the window and taken off across the rooftops after Sobor.

“Now they’re advising the public that one of the bad guys—a man wearing a black rabbit hat and a long gray overcoat—got away. They think he was some kind of Russian adviser.”

Bolan nodded.

“In any case, Mr. Mackinov Bolanski, or whoever you are,” Grimaldi said, “I wouldn’t head back into Tehran for a while if I were you.”

The Executioner shrugged. “I may have to, Jack,” he said. “It all depends on what Bear finds out.”

Now it was Grimaldi’s turn to shrug. He had learned long ago that arguing about the risks the Executioner took was a no-win battle. So he didn’t waste his time.

While they waited on Kurtzman to try to run down the taxicab number, Bolan got up and moved to one of the lockers bolted to the wall. Opening it, he found a pair of barber’s shears, a bottle of spirit gum and a plastic bag containing several hanks of human hair in varying colors and shades. The hair came primarily from European women who let their locks grow long with the specific purpose of selling it. The brokers who purchased it marketed the hair primarily to theatrical groups and moviemakers.

Opening the bag, the Executioner pulled out a hank similar to the color of his own hair, then moved to the mirror at the back of the cargo area. Five minutes later he had a wild, curling handlebar mustache fit for any Old West gunfighter.

Grimaldi had been watching from his seat said, “That’s nice, Wyatt. You want me to dig around in the lockers and see if I can’t come up with a Buntline Special and a Winchester lever-action to go with it?”

“I’m not finished yet,” he said, lifting the shears. He carefully trimmed the mustache until he had achieved a more conservative, less-attention-drawing look. He had shed the overcoat and Russian rabbit hat when he entered the chopper, and now he walked to another locker and pulled out a pair of dark slacks, and a brown leather jacket similar to the one Grimaldi wore.

He was slipping into the jacket when the phone at the front of the cabin suddenly rang. The Executioner lifted it to his ear. “Yeah, Bear?” he said.

Kurtzman cleared his throat on the other end of the line. “Like the old joke goes,” he said. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

“Give it to me either way you want,” Bolan said.

“The good news is that I’ve tracked down the number and found out the name and home address of the cabbie who was driving it,” he said, reading off the information.

The Executioner grabbed a pen and piece of notepaper and jotted it down. “Go on,” he said.

“The bad news is they don’t keep any records of specific fares,” Kurtzman stated. “In other words, there’s no way of finding out where Sobor was dropped off.”

“Yeah, there is, Bear,” the Executioner said. “And you just gave it to me.” Not waiting for an answer, he cleared the line.

“You’re taking one heck of a chance going back to the city this soon,” Grimaldi said. “But I suppose I should add ‘what else is new’ to that comment.”

Bolan didn’t answer as he left the aircraft.

DUSK HAD TURNED to full night by the time Bolan had retraced his route from Rey to Tehran. The lights of the city were aglow. Traffic was even more congested than it had been earlier, with the same honks, obscene gestures and screaming threats issuing from the packed vehicles along the highway.

Navigating through the flashing headlights, the Executioner spotted a small mosque a block down from Tehran’s Fine Arts Museum. He pulled into the parking lot, stopped and left the keys under the cracked rubber floor mat, hoping that the man who had cared for the ancient American automobile would eventually get it back. His war on evil, which had included many oppressive governments of the world, had never been directed at the individual citizens who had the misfortune to live under those regimes. The fact was, the man who had come after him with the butcher knife when he’d taken the Mustang was a victim; every bit as much a victim of the current venomous Iranian government as an innocent foreigner killed by the bomb of one of the terrorist organizations that nation sponsored.

Bolan exited the Mustang and walked swiftly back to the street. A taxicab had just pulled up in front of the mosque, delivering a family of two adults and three children for evening prayers, and the bearded driver nodded when Bolan looked his way. On a long shot, the Executioner checked the number stenciled on the back of the cab as he walked around the trunk to get in. It wasn’t the same vehicle that Sobor had gotten into earlier in the day. But he hadn’t expected it to be.

Lady Luck rarely followed the Executioner that closely.

Sliding onto the back seat, Bolan pulled the folded city map from the side pocket of his leather jacket and glanced down to the area he had circled in red ink. He was now posing more as a tourist of indecipherable origin, hoping to appear to have come from nearly anywhere.

The Executioner gave the cabdriver the address to the Archaeological Museum, which looked to be roughly a half mile from where he was really headed.

The driver turned halfway around and rested an arm over the back of his seat. Frowning, he spoke in Farsi.

Bolan forced an embarrassed smile, pointed to his mouth and shook his head.

“The museum will be closed this time of night,” the driver said, switching to French.

The Executioner nodded. “Yes,” he said in the same language, “I know. But there is a certain café near there where I want to go.”

“Then tell me the name of the café and I will take you directly to it,” the driver offered. “I know that area well.”

Bolan forced another embarrassed grin. “I don’t know the name,” he said. “Or exactly where it is located. Only that it is near the museum. If I can go there, I think I can I find it.”

The cabbie shrugged disinterestedly, turned and took off. He paid no further attention to the Executioner as he drove.

Bolan took advantage of the time to conduct a mental inventory of his weaponry. Beneath the leather jacket, in the same ballistic nylon and Concealex shoulder rig he’d worn under the gray overcoat, the sound suppressed Beretta 93-R machine pistol rode under his left arm. With a 20-round magazine and a sixteenth subsonic hollowpoint round already chambered, the Beretta was capable of either semiauto fire or 3-round bursts.

Opposite the 93-R, helping to balance the weight at the other end of the shoulder rig, were three extra 9 mm magazines in Concealex carriers. Like the one already stuffed up the Beretta’s grip, each held twenty rounds, two containing the same subsonic cartridges that, along with the sound suppressor, kept the noise down to a mere whisper. The third extra magazine had been loaded with high-velocity, pointed, armor-piercing bullets. They would break the sound barrier after leaving the barrel, so the sound suppressor wouldn’t be nearly as effective with them. But Bolan wouldn’t use them unless he encountered an enemy wearing a ballistic nylon vest, or found himself forced to shoot through metal or some other equally bullet-resistant material. And then, he would only have to resort to them if his Desert Eagle had run dry.

The .44 Magnum Desert Eagle was the heart of the Executioner’s weaponry. There was no way to effectively quiet a pistol with that level of authority, nor would he have done so if he could. When the “Eagle screamed” it screamed louder than any other firearm in the gunfight and, to an enemy not accustomed to such stentorian roars, it could be psychologically devastating. The Desert Eagle was secured in another Concealex holster, this one worn in the traditional strong-side hip position on Bolan’s belt. More of the space age, carefully molded plastic had been slid onto the Executioner’s belt just behind the huge pistol, and the butts of two extra .44 Magnum magazines extended from the tops. There was no need for retaining straps or any other methods of closure when using Concealex—the form fit around each item and held it in place on its own.

The Executioner had reloaded the S&W .45 ACP wheelgun and it rode inside the hand-warmer pocket of the leather jacket much as it had in the gray overcoat he’d worn earlier. The revolver, using automatic pistol ammunition, required that either a half or full-moon clip be used to eject the spent casings. But those same clips made for the fastest possible reload with a wheelgun. The shooter just dumped the empties and dropped a fresh clip into the cylinder. It didn’t even require clearing a speed-loader out of the way before slamming the wheel back into the frame, and Bolan carried a pair of the full moons in his other hand-warmer pocket, opposite the S&W.

The last weapon the Executioner carried was a knife known as the “Baghdad Bullet.” A relatively new design by the Tactical Operations company, the blade had the basic shape of a pistol cartridge, which made it look much like a short, wide dagger. Only one edge was ground, however. One of the Baghdad Bullet’s advantage was in its size, which could be easily hidden almost anywhere on the body. The other was that the grip was short enough to palm, and the end was rounded to fit the contours of the center of the hand. This meant that once a thrust had been made, the palm could be rolled to the butt and pushed in further. The Baghdad Bullet could then be shoved all the way into the body, from tip to the end of the Micarta slab grips.

Once that was accomplished, it would take a surgeon to get it out again.

The cab arrived at the Archaeological Museum. Bolan handed several bills over the seat to the driver and got out. He forced himself to frown, looking up and down the street as if he couldn’t decide which way to go first. But as soon as the cab had driven away, he pulled the map out of his pocket again and took off down the sidewalk.

According to Kurtzman’s computer probe, Mani Bartovi, the driver who had manned the cab in which Sobor had escaped, lived less than a half mile away.

Bolan walked swiftly but casually, stepping around the many Tehranians who still crowded the bazaars. At the stands he passed he saw everything from foot-high cones of sugar to donkey saddlebags, camel saddles and intricately embroidered women’s purses.

The Executioner had left the map in his hand as he walked, using it not only for reference but to further his guise as a foreign sightseer. Three blocks from the museum, he turned onto a side street and followed it two more blocks to another residential area with a brownstone wall separating the houses from the street. The only difference he could see between this neighborhood and the one where the Hezbollah house had been located was that this area of town was in a sadder state of disrepair. Chunks of the brownstone had fallen, or been knocked out, and the sidewalk was cracked and pitted. Here and there on the wall, spray paint announced the feelings of the younger Iranians. Many of the slogans ranted against the “Great Satan America.” But others railed out against Iran’s own oppressive Islamic fundamentalist leaders, and called for freedom and reform.

Bolan came to the number on the wall he’d been looking for, and found that the gate leading through it was not only open but had broken off its hinges. It stood just inside the opening, leaning against the wall. After a quick glance up and down the street, he ducked inside and began making his way through the shadows toward the rundown house.