Renegade

“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.