Mack Bolan turned away from the confrontation with Medhi Nazarour with several answers to the puzzle that was tonight's mission.

He now knew, for instance, that the reason Carol Nazarour had not responded to his knock at her door when he had been on his security tour with Rafsanjani was that her husband had ordered her heavily sedated, and Rafsanjani had locked her in her room as an added precaution.

Yeah. A great marriage.

And Bolan knew Medhi Nazarour's motive in coming to Bolan, even if the good doctor had evaded the issue.

Dr. Nazarour was a junkie. Bolan had seen enough, of the type in his two bloody miles through the Mafia hellgrounds. The eyes, the body language, a doctor who sweats at night — the guy was a walking advertisement for stiffer drug controls.

The trouble was, for every answer, more questions seemed to pop up behind it.

Like what exactly had Dr. Nazarour been warning him against? Who was it who was working with Yazid's hit squad from the inside?

In this short hiatus before the bloody storm, Bolan could not ignore the other questions screaming for answers. It was time for another talk with General Nazarour himself. It was eyeball-to-eyeball, lay-the-cards-on-the-table time. Bolan stepped up his pace toward the front entrance to the house.

He had taken four steps when the small object landed at his feet.

He halted, crouched, reached for the Auto-Mag rather than the Beretta. Then a closer inspection revealed that this was not danger.

The object was a woman's low-heeled shoe with a folded piece of paper tucked inside.

Bolan retrieved the shoe, and faded back against the deeper shadows close to the house. The paper was white stationery; Bolan detected a faint whiff of exotic perfume on the night air as he unfolded it. He read the note, obviously written in hurried feminine script:

In back of house right now.

Please. Tell no one. C.N.

Bolan tossed the shoe behind a thicket, pocketed the note, and moved cautiously around toward the back of the building. He unleathered Big Thunder.

So Carol Nazarour, if the note was to be believed, had not taken the sedative as ordered by her husband.

Bolan smiled to himself in the darkness.

Yeah.

He'd had the lady pegged as a special kind of woman, and she was proving him right.

He found her waiting for him under an ancient tree beside the rear of the house. She looked like a pretty college student. Jeans, the same leather jacket as before, and a canvas backpack slung over her shoulder. Her perfectly sculpted face beneath that breathtaking head of hair was taut with anxiety.

Bolan holstered the .44 and approached her, touching her lightly on the arm for obviously needed reassurance. He nodded at the backpack. "Running away from home, Carol?"

"Please. I'm an American citizen. I want to get out of here." Her voice was a desperate plea. A visible shiver coursed through her. "I don't want to leave the country with...these people."

Bolan recalled the shivering fear of Medhi Nazarour only moments before. "Life with the general must be a real bowl of cherries," he grunted.

"It's worse than you could imagine," she told him bluntly. "I stopped trying to run away after the first year. He usually sent Rafsanjani after me. Once they tracked me across Europe. I thought I'd got away. Rafsanjani waited until I was in line at the Frankfurt airport. After he had me alone, he had me...beaten. But always with leather gloves so there were few marks or bruises."

Bolan felt a red-hot rage building deep in his gut. "Why didn't you take off earlier tonight when I gave you the chance?"

"Because I thought you were one of them! Rafsanjani did that to me one time. He offered me a chance to leave. When I started to leave, he said it was only a test. And I had failed. So I was beaten again."

"But now you know that I'm not one of them, is that it?"

"Yes. Medhi, the general's brother, told me who you are and why you're here.''

"I met Dr. Nazarour."

"He's the only one I can even halfway trust around here," said the blonde. "I feel sorry for Medhi, but I don't always trust him. He's a slave to his brother. He'll do whatever the general tells him."

Bolan was working at cooling the burning anger that was ripping at his insides. Rage would do him no good when the fighting began. It would only get him killed.

"How did you fall in with these creeps?"

"I was an army brat," she said simply. "And a rebellious one at that. A real terror. A real ignorant little jerk who was too stupid to trust the wisdom of her parents. Dad was stationed with the NATO forces in Turkey. So was Eshan.

"I didn't fall in love with Eshan so much as I fell in love with his image. He wasn't in a wheelchair then, of course. That happened during the revolution, just before we had to flee the country. Before we started this life on the run.

"But when I met Eshan in Turkey, he was tall, dark, dashing, and mysterious. My parents objected furiously, but I guess I was also in love with the idea of one final rebellious gesture to let them know that I didn't need their guidance. That Iknew exactly what I was doing." She shook her head and looked down at the ground, laughing softly without humor. It was the sound of irony. "If only they could see me now. But they're dead. They died in an automobile accident six months after I left home."

Bolan's senses were finely tuned to the immediate surroundings, but he heard no sounds of anyone in the area. Time was running out. The numbers were falling away.

"Who was the man you met outside the wall this evening?" asked Bolan. "The one who was killed."

"That was Tony. He was one of the men on the guard crew. But he didn't seem like the others. He could be...kind when he wanted to."

"Were you in love with him?"

She looked squarely up at Bolan. There was a bitter twist to her mouth. "Love? I don't think I remember what that word means anymore, Colonel. Tony was just someone to pass away the time with, when I needed someone to be kind."

"Was Tony going to take you away from your husband?"

"No. Tony was too weak to go against the men he worked for. And I think they discovered our relationship anyway. Or my husband did. My husband sent those men tonight, Colonel. They killed Tony and they were going to 'punish' me for my indiscretion, no doubt. Until you came along."

"And all on the last night that you were in the country," Bolan muttered. "Your husband has a flare for the dramatic. How did you get outside the wall?"

"I thought that I'd found a hidden tunnel. I discovered it one afternoon when I was exploring the house. I used it often to meet Tony. The tunnel looks as if it hasn't been used in a hundred years. But if Eshan had those men waiting to jump us when I met Tony tonight, then he must know all about the tunnel and everything else."

Again he nodded at her backpack. "And now you want me to help you run away, is that it?"

Her eyes pleaded desperately with him. An edge of panic slipped into her voice as she sensed his hesitancy. "Please, Colonel. I'm an American citizen, and you're an agent of this government. Please get me away from here! I don't want to leave the country with these people. I need your help."

"And you'll have it," Bolan assured her. "But I can't help you now, Carol. I'm here on a specific mission, and I've got to commit myself to that first.

"I'll see that your rights aren't violated further. But I'm needed here right now. I can't leave to accompany you somewhere else. I'll take you with me when I leave. That's the best I can do."

She glided close to him as he said that, molding herself to him until he could feel every warm, feminine curve of her body pressing against him. There was a subtle erotic fragrance to her blonde hair, which he recognized from her stationery. She entwined the fingers of her right hand through his and moved the palm of his hand upward across her leather coat, squeezing the hand fiercely when it was over her left breast. Bolan could feel the warmth of her even through the layers of clothing.