This was, yeah, the kind of stuff flashbacks are made of.

The silent Beretta was in Bolan's big paw before there was time for the conscious mind to send the signal. It sneezed twice with hardly a gap between the two, dispatching twin 9mm projectiles across that no-man's-land to the left flank, instantly taking out the two Iranians on that side who were the farthest removed from Minera. The Security Chief under his own combat impetus was already furiously upon the third man with his bare hands.

It was at this point that Bolan lost track of Minera. He had problems enough of his own. The two remaining flankers on his side were now fully alert to the situation. They were scrambling, flinging themselves groundward in opposing directions while screaming warnings to the others. Meanwhile, the point man and those in the center had become occupied with Minera's three-man squad up front — and the night had come alive with the booming and chattering of combat weapons in open conflict.

Bolan himself was instinctively on the move, quitting his position as expertly triangulated fire raked the ground behind him. It was not a retreat but a planned withdrawal. Minera had been instructed to fall back to the pool area as soon as hot contact was made. Whether or not the guy was in any shape to do so was still a question... and Bolan could not wait around for the answer. The three-man security patrol had at least a fighting chance now. Maybe they would succeed in pinning these guys to the ground here, and there was even the possibility that they could drive them back or maybe even wipe them out. Bolan was not betting on any of that, however, and this particular commando team could be but one of several others also on the advance.

So he was not retreating, no. He was, in fact, advancing to the next line of heat.

He had covered about half that distance when the wheezing, disheveled security chief rejoined.

"Jesus Christ!" Minera panted as he jogged alongside.

"Make that a prayer," Bolan suggested.

"How many did we get?''

"Not nearly enough," the big man told him. "Four... maybe five."

"So what do we do now?''

"Now," Bolan replied quietly, "we do or die."

"I'll take do," Minera said.

"Or you could just bail out," said Bolan, giving the guy a quick, hard toss of the eyes.

"What the hell you think I am?" the security boss growled.

"I guess," Bolan muttered to himself, "I'm going to find that out damn quick."

And he probably would not like the answer. No, probably not any part of the answer.

The cabana was a solid brick structure, ten by ten, with a wooden ladder leading up to a sun deck on the roof.

Bolan started toward the ladder as he spoke over his shoulder. "Get back to the house," he instructed Minera. "There are four men on that squad unaccounted for."

Minera hesitated. "You're still not sure what happened to the general's brother, are you?"

Bolan was about to tell the guy that this was no time for conversing. But before he could speak, the sound of handguns, definitely more than one, carried from inside the main house.

Minera whipped around toward the sound. "Damn! Sounds like I'm too late!"

The gunfire from the house continued.

Other rounds were slapping into the far side of the cabana as the teams out front continued to advance, peppering the air before them.

"Forget trying to solve the murder," Bolan told the security man. "Get back to the house and give your boys some backup."

"What about you? Let's fall back together. There's six men closing in on you from out front!"

With one hand Bolan hefted himself up the ladder onto the sun deck, while he carried the M1 in the other.

"Suit yourself," he told Minera. "There's nothing you can do at this range with that .44. You can keep low and hide here, or you can fall back and help your men."

More rounds whistled into and around the small building. Some rounds made deadened plop noises as they hit the tarp covering the pool.

Bolan's analysis of Minera as a fighting man proved correct.

"I'm on my way," he called up to Bolan. He took off at a sprint around the darkened pool toward the big house.

The gunfire from the house had become more sporadic but was continuing, as if one faction had pulled back but was still giving resistance.

Bolan fell prone on the sun deck and through the Startron began scanning the driveway area for targets, to keep the commando teams busy while Minera made his run.

The firing between the guard patrol and the commandos on the right flank had died down to occasional rifle fire in the night.

The hail of incoming bullets at Bolan's position had intensified.

Bolan sighted in on the commandos to the right flank, who were engaging Minera's dog patrol. He flicked the M1's shot — this time for the grenade launcher.

He yanked one of the SAS-style flash grenades from the belt across his chest and fed it into the launcher with practiced precision.

The hellfire here tonight had only just begun.

From Mack Bolan 's journal:

Moral shades of gray can be very troubling. I much prefer the simple black and white situation of the mafia wars, when there was never any question as to who the enemy was.

This guy Nazarour is as big a shark as any I've ever encountered. It really bruises the soul to have to keep a man like this alive. In basic black and white, the guy should die. But I no longer deal just in basics. For the moment — for a very limited moment, I hope — the complications of world politics have lent a synthetic virtue to his presence here on American soil. So... for now... the man must live, and I must do everything in my power to ensure that he does. But, yeah, it bruises the soul just a bit.

My feelings for the man have nothing to do with where he comes from, or whom he served while he was there. The same goes for my feelings regarding the job at hand. The whole truth of the matter is that there is no moral issue in Iran, at this moment. I hope that one day soon there will be. As of now, though, what is happening there is a contest between savages... with neither side morally superior to the other. Were it not for the fact that it is always the innocents who suffer most in any such situation, I would say: let the world draw a curtain around Iran and let the savages have at one another until there are none left — or until the good people finally rise up and smash the savages one and all. But it does not appear that anything like that will be happening in the foreseeable future, so we who are on the sidelines will just have to do, what we can to keep the game as clean as possible in whatever limited way that we may. This is the thinking that led me to accept the present mission. I do not want Iranian hit squads roaming this country looking for targets. I do not want their war on our territory. So I am here, and I intend to do what I can to discourage any future operations of this nature. It does not mean that I approve of Nazarour or anything that he may stand for. It simply means that I cannot turn my back on what is happening here.

At the same time, I have to keep the mind alert and the options open. Everything is not as it appears to be....

There is the question of the general's wife: precisely what is her situation and precisely what could or should I do about her?

And then, of course, there is Minera. Shades of gray, indeed. This particular picture appears to be focusing more along the classic lines of black and white. My mental radar picks up strong mafia blips every time I look at the guy. So what is he to Nazarour? And what is Nazarour to him?

Well... the answers will come. And I have the feeling that when they do, the shades of gray will all resolve into strong patterns of opposing colors, and black and white. Then all the options will have narrowed to one.