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“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.
Like most of the dwellings in the other Tehran neighborhood, Mani Bartovi’s house had a garden. But the muddy area in this region of Tehran was far smaller and looked as if had been abandoned as a futile effort long ago. As he crept forward, Bolan looked through the front window and saw three small children playing on the floor of a living area. A woman—apparently their mother—lay back against several large pillows on the floor, breast-feeding an infant. Not far to her side the Executioner saw a man who had to be the cabdriver.
Mani Bartovi lay back against his own pillow, staring across the room at a wall Bolan couldn’t see.
Changing his angle slightly, the Executioner looked through the glass and saw the white glow of a television screen. The picture was all but unrecognizable, and looking up to the roof of the house he saw a bent and weathered TV antenna.
Bolan moved back away from the window, deeper into the shadows. He needed desperately to question Mani Bartovi and to learn where he had taken Anton Sobor. But there was no guarantee that Bartovi would talk willingly. And if he wouldn’t, Bolan would have to resort to a more forceful interrogation.
But not in front of the cabdriver’s wife and children.
Quietly circling the house, Bolan spotted a walk-in toolshed of corrugated steel at the rear of the dwelling. Moving silently forward, he drew a small laser flashlight from the inside pocket of his jacket and tapped the button on the end. The bright glow illuminated the shed just long enough to show him that no padlock was in place. Tapping the button again, the Executioner reached through the darkness and opened the doors.
With the aid of the flashlight once he was inside, Bolan saw rusting lawn and garden tools piled in the corners. In the middle of the shed was an old hand-mower. It wasn’t an ideal interrogation room by any means. But it would do. The question now was, how to get Bartovi out of the house and into the shed without alarming the rest of his family.
Closing the doors behind him, Bolan pulled the cell phone out of his jacket and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm. Like all of the calls sent to, or from, the Farm, this one was scrambled and routed through dummy numbers on several different continents before it finally connected and rang.
Barbara Price answered on the first ring. “Hello again, Striker,” she said.
“I need some help,” the Executioner told her.
“Want Bear again?”
“No. Let me talk to the translator the Farm uses for Farsi.”
Price didn’t question the request—just tapped the transfer button. Bolan heard a click, then the sound of the line ringing again. A moment later a young voice answered. “Yes? This is Ron Touchie. How may I help you?”
“I need you to make a phone call in Farsi.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Executioner was watching through the window again when he saw the woman inside the house get up, hand the baby to her husband and answer the phone on the table against the wall. Her lips opened slightly as she said, “Shalom.” A few seconds went by, then she dropped the phone to her side, said something to her husband, then traded the phone receiver for the baby again.
Mani Bartovi looked angry as he rose from the floor and spoke into the phone. He nodded and his lips moved several times. Then he dropped the phone back into its cradle and disappeared from view into another room.
Bolan moved back into the shadows and called Stony Man Farm again. Price was expecting his call and routed it on to Touchie without speaking. “How’d it go?” the Executioner asked.
“Very well,” Touchie replied. “He’s not happy about going out again tonight but, what can you do when half the cab company has come down with the flu?”
“Thanks,” Bolan said. “Stay on the line. I’ll need you to interpret once I grab him.”
“I’ll stay on if you like,” said Tokaido. “But I don’t think you’ll need me. The guy speaks English quite well.”
Bolan frowned. “How’d you determine that?”
“I asked him,” Touchie said offhandedly. “I told him there was an important New Zealand businessman arriving at the airport and expecting to be picked up.”
“Thanks,” Bolan said into the phone. “I’ll call again if I need you.”
“Okay. Goodbye.”
Bolan hung up and looked back toward the house. He had passed a front door just beyond the wall before moving to the shed. But his instincts told him Mani Bartovi was more likely to leave the house from the rear. He had already started that way when the sound of a back door opening confirmed his suspicion. He stayed out of sight around the corner of the house as he heard the man and woman speaking softly. Then the voices stopped and the sound of a door snapping closed met his ears.
Soft footsteps started toward him.
Bolan flattened harder against the side of the house and drew the Desert Eagle.
A moment later Bartovi had rounded the corner toward the street. A second after that he had the muzzle of a Desert Eagle stuck in one ear.
“This is to get your attention,” the Executioner whispered. “I don’t want to kill you unless you force me to.”
“No English,” Bartovi said. “No—”
Bolan jammed the gun tighter into the man’s ear and grabbed him by the arm. “I happen to know better,” he said softly but sternly. “You just spoke fluent English over the phone.” He paused long enough to let the fact that he knew about the phone call sink in. But not long enough for the man to question how he knew. “You’re coming with me into your toolshed,” the Executioner went on. “I’ve got a few questions for you. You answer them honestly, in English, and you’ll not only live through the night but you’ll go back inside with more money than you make in a month driving that cab.”
The cabdriver was breathing hard now, as if he’d just finished a footrace. “And what,” he said. “If I refuse?”
Bolan cocked the hammer on the Desert Eagle as an answer.
Together, the two men made their way across the darkened courtyard to the shed. Bolan kept the gun in the man’s ear as he opened the door and a moment later they were both inside. The Executioner closed the door behind him before switching on the flashlight. He shone the bright laser beam up into Bartovi’s eyes as he said, “You picked up a man just down the street from where the Hezbollah bust went down today,” he said. “The man had on a red shirt and was limping. You remember him?”
Bartovi was frightened beyond the point where he could even concentrate. “No!” he said in a loud voice, his eyes clenched shut against the light. “No! I am not Hezbollah! I am not a terrorist! I am—”
There were men who wouldn’t talk unless you threatened them and other men who turned incoherent when frightened for their lives. Bartovi fell into the second category, and Bolan brought him back to reality with a light slap across the face. At the same time he dropped the beam to the ground. The light, reflecting off the steel inner walls of the shed, was still bright enough to illuminate the entire area.
Bolan holstered the Desert Eagle. “Relax, Mani,” he said. “I know you aren’t a terrorist—you’re a hardworking cabdriver trying to support a family. Now, let me tell you what I am. I’m a man of my word. You tell me what I need to know and you’ll be fine.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of large denomination bills. “And I told you I’d pay you. I will.”
Bartovi slowly opened his eyes. The expression on his face was one of relief that the huge Desert Eagle was no longer in sight. Then it changed to nothing short of lust when he saw the money that had replaced it in Bolan’s hand.
“The man with the limp,” the Executioner repeated. “He may have spoken Farsi. But he would have done it with either an American or Russian accent.”
For the first time, Bartovi looked up at Bolan. “I remember him, yes,” the cabdriver said. “The accent was…very odd. Not really Russian. Not really American. More a little of both.”
The Executioner nodded. That made perfect sense for a man who had been raised in the Soviet Union but had spent the majority of his adult life in the U.S. “Where did you take him?” he asked.
Bartovi closed his eyes again but this time it was in concentration. “To the airport,” he said.
Bolan frowned. “Which terminal?”
“I am sorry,” Bartovi said, frowning. “I do not know that English word.”
