"So that's your mission. These assassinations have got to stop. All sorts of Third World hoodlums are starting to think they can march into this country and turn it into a shooting gallery whenever they please.

"When that hit team does launch their attack tonight, you'll be there to take them on. Sure, no one would cry if they did hit Nazarour, but the guy is excellent bait, and it's just too good a setup to pass by. The odds are stacked, but with Nazarour refusing to let us onto the grounds to protect him in force... well, your name is the only one in the hat, buddy. When that attack comes, do what you can. It's up to you. The top man says hit teams call for Phoenix."

It was quite a speech. Brognola had spoken those words that afternoon, only hours after a bone-weary Bolan had arrived back at Stony Man from Minnesota. That mission had sapped him to his very soul — mentally, physically, and emotionally. And now it was to be Potomac, Maryland.

There had been time to requisition the necessary ordnance, time for a change into night clothes, time to pick up the cassette with additional background on the mission, to be absorbed on the drive to Potomac. And time to be gone.

There had not been time for any personal words with Brognola or with April, that bright-eyed lovely with the genius IQ, who was both "warden" of Stony Man Farm and the most important lady in Bolan's life.

During Hal's briefing, Bolan could tell that April, sitting on the sidelines, had things she wanted to tell him. Important things, like how glad she was to see her man back from Minnesota in one piece. Bolan could read that much from those brown eyes, which could express so much without words. But those eyes also said that she understood that the mission came first. The mission always came first. April was, yeah, that kind of special lady. She would tell Bolan the important things — the man/woman things that existed only for the two of them — when she saw him again.

Bolan hadn't had time to listen to the full tape that Stony Man's computer wizard, Aaron "The Bear" Kurtzman, had compiled from the general's dossier, but he digested the particulars. And he didn't like any of them.

Bolan knew that since the revolution, Washington had welcomed any number of the Shah's regime into the country, especially those interested in someday restoring some kind of sanity to a homeland being systematically driven back into the Dark Ages by a religious madman.

But Nazarour did not fall into this category. The man was as self-serving as he was ruthless, with nothing save his own shadowy interests at heart. Bolan understood that the Shah's rule had been far less than perfect, and Nazarour epitomized the corruption that had been one of the regime's continuing problems. A man with untold millions pillaged from his years as a top-echelon officer in what the Shah's military had perverted into one of the most dread secret police agencies in the world. Yeah, that was Eshan Nazarour. The man sounded like Savage incarnate.

But whatever else the general was, he would indeed be perfect bait for the trap Bolan hoped to spring when Karim Yazid's hit team came calling.

The world was growing smaller in many ways. There were fewer and fewer places where men could gather and talk of freedom and peace and plans for a better future without yesterday's mistakes. America was one of those places, and it had to remain so. If not for Eshan Nazarour, then for his countrymen who were more honorable than he, who cared about their Iran and dreamed and, yes, plotted for a day when freedom — real freedom — would ring in that torn land.

And not just the Iranian exiles, but those from Afghanistan and anywhere else in the world where the flame of freedom had been extinguished. These men, good and true, had to be reassured that America was safe and open to them. That their dreams and plans for a better world could be nurtured in safety. That they could seek asylum here from those merchants of terror and violence who saw fit to ignore all conventions and rules of diplomacy or morality.

No, Bolan had no love for cannibals of Nazarour's type. Bolan was glad the guy was getting booted out of the country on his tail. He deserved no less. But if protecting Eshan Nazarour for the coming few hours and protecting the values and rights that made this country great were one and the same thing, then, yes, Bolan was ready to take on whatever the Iranian hit force could throw at him, and return it in kind.

There was far more at stake here than the life of one corrupt ex-military man.

Bolan had been thinking about that as he'd approached Nazarour's temporary residence in Potomac.

That was when he spotted the woman.

That was when the complications began....

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.