He found the blonde standing near a clump of bushes about ten feet to the left of the Malibu. She was staring wide-eyed at what was left of the four men who had tried to abduct her. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body as if fighting off a terrible chill. Moonlight cut through the bare branches overhead, illuminating the lovely face framed with silver blonde hair. The face was still stretched taut with fear. Bolan saw her lips drawn tight in a near hysterical grimace. She saw Bolan then, and her expression fluctuated between confusion and even more fear.
"It's all right," Bolan said quietly as he moved past her toward the carnage around the Malibu. "You're okay now."
It was not necessary to check the bodies of the four men who had waited for him in ambush. The rapidly spreading pools of blood on the moonlit pavement beneath them gave mute testimony to their fate. They would terrify no more women. They would kill no more men.
The corpse of their final victim, the man the blonde had been on her way to meet, was scrunched up on the floor of the back seat.
Bolan turned and approached the woman. She kept stepping back as he came toward her, until a tree stopped her.
"W-who are you?" she asked in a quavery whisper. "Did Eshan send you?"
"My name is Phoenix," said Bolan. His ears picked up the sound of rapidly approaching sirens from at least two directions on MacArthur. "We'd better get out of here. Or do you want to wait for the police?"
"No! Please... take me with you."
Bolan extended a hand. "Then come on. It's now or never. We have to move fast."
She accepted his hand. He was surprised to find that hers was warm and vibrant, despite all that had happened.
They started toward Bolan's Corvette. But they never reached it. They were halfway there when a sedan came wheeling in at doubletime and burned rubber into a sideways stop only inches behind the Malibu.
Bolan cursed silently as two more tough guys jumped out. One held a handgun. The other was armed with a Thompson.
Damn!
The boys in the Malibu must have been in radio contact with a backup team. And now here they were, on the kill.
Apparently they wanted the lady alive. The guy with the chopper began raising it at Bolan and opening his mouth to bark a command at his partner.
Bolan's Uzi barked instead, catching the man in a tight pattern in the upper chest area. The guy died on his feet, jerking around in a death dance — with a dead index finger squeezing back on the chopper's trigger.
Bolan saw it about to happen and pushed the woman roughly to the ground beneath him as the Thompson stuttered a short blast, sending a dozen or more rounds zinging into a wild semicircle as the corpse holding the weapon stumbled and fell.
When the Thompson's angry chatter subsided, Bolan lifted his head to pinpoint the second guy. It wasn't hard, and there was nothing to worry about from that quarter.
Backup Number Two must have caught some of the chopper's errant rounds. He was on his back amid all the other bodies, only he wasn't lying still. He was groaning — a murky, bubbly sound — and arching and twisting in pain as if he had no backbone.
Bolan looked at the girl. "Get in the car," he said.
Then, shifting the Uzi to his left hand, he un-leathered the Beretta and approached the wounded man.
The guy's hardware lay a few feet from his right hand. He didn't seem to be aware of it, but Bolan took no chances. He kicked the weapon aside, then knelt down next to the dude.
The guy was in intense pain and must have known he was dying. His lips were flecked with red. His hands were pressed against his abdomen but did nothing to stem the flow of life fluids that bubbled out between the fingers. His breathing was shallow, ragged, and forced. He seemed unaware that Bolan was beside him.
"Who are you?" Bolan asked calmly. "Who sent you after that woman?"
The guy's eyes opened into tight slits. He was a tough one, all right. A young guy who must have still thought that there was some honor among thieves. He spoke through teeth clenched against the pain, and Bolan could tell it was torture for him. But he spoke.
"Bastard...goddamn bastard...I'm not t-telling you shit....Bastard...."
Bolan sighed. "Have it your way," he said quietly.
He squeezed the Beretta's trigger.
Bolan hurried back to the car, climbed in beside the woman, gunned the engine, and got the hell out of there, continuing on into the park, away from the bodies and the two cars and the approaching sirens.
After passing two more turnoffs, Bolan pulled a left and took them back to MacArthur, catching MacArthur west toward Persimmon Tree Road, back the way they had come, toward that walled estate in Potomac, where Eshan Nazarour was temporarily residing.
He finally took time to give the lady beside him a long, sideways appraisal. She was hugging her door, watching him warily. He could see in the passing streetlights that the frightened lines of her face had softened some, but not entirely.
"Where are we going?" she asked quietly, nervously.
Bolan had the impression that she knew damn well, but he said, "Back home. Back where you started from."
"Do we... have to?"
"No. This is a free country. I can drop you off anywhere along here, if you'd like."
She mulled that over for a moment. Then she shook her head. There was something helpless about her that made Bolan want to reach out and touch her. To comfort her. But he did not.
"No, that's all right," she said finally, in a weak voice that was almost like a little girl's. "It wouldn't do any good. I'll go with you."
"Who were those men?"
"I — I don't know. I... don't know."
"Okay, we'll let that one go. Who are you? What's your name?"
He was pretty sure he knew the answer to that. He was remembering the first thing she'd said to him as he'd come in out of the darkness after killing all those men: "Did Eshan send you?"
"Don't you know?" she said, staring straight ahead through the windshield, not even looking at him. "My name is Carol Nazarour. I'm General Nazarour's wife."
"Who was that man you were meeting? The one they killed?"
"It doesn't matter," came the harsh reply. "None of it matters. None of it...."
That was, quite obviously, all she intended to say for the duration.
Bolan did not insist. There are times to push and times to lay off. For right now, the lady needed her space to recover from all that had happened, all that she had been through. Mack Bolan allowed her that space.
Complications, sure.
A corrupt Iranian general marked for assassination and his beautiful American wife who was up to her lovely blonde head in kidnapping and sudden death.
It promised to be one hell of a mission. And only he, because it was a hit team loose in American streets, was truly qualified to handle it.
Great.
Goddamn great.