LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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