"The entire house staff was dismissed at the close of yesterday's workday," said Rafsanjani. "As you may know, we had intended to be out of your country by this time. The staff has been reduced to the general's two personal bodyguards, myself, and of course the general's brother and Mrs. Nazarour." At a sound from the door, the aide looked past Bolan. "Here is the general now."

Bolan turned to see the study door behind him opened by a burly guy in a security guard uniform that matched the ones of the men outside. The guy held the door open while another uniformed man wheeled in General Eshan Nazarour. The man in the wheelchair waved a curt dismissal, and the bodyguards walked out.

The general swung his wheelchair around in a decisive, abrupt swivel that brought him face to waist with Bolan.

The man in the wheelchair was in mufti, but he was military right down to the tips of the spit-polished shoes on his artificial legs. He was considerably older than his brother, and his face was strong. The general's hair, which was brushed straight back, was bristly and streaked with iron gray, and thinning at the top. Unlike his brother, Eshan Nazarour had no worry lines to mar his countenance. Here was a man, wheelchair-bound or not, who took life by the throat; he commanded his life and the lives of those about him, and expected blind obedience. A savage. Right. And the savage was lord of his jungle.

"Colonel Phoenix," he rasped without introduction, "we will discuss your business here later — perhaps. First, there is something else to be dealt with."

"There is security to be dealt with," Bolan replied coldly. "You know what we're expecting here tonight, General. It's going to be one helluva ruckus. And it's going to happen any minute. I suggest that one of your men give me a tour of the house and grounds immediately. I want to have a closer look at your security. Then we'll talk."

Nazarour wore the frigid, adamant expression of a man whose authority is rarely questioned. "We will talk now, Colonel," he hissed. "I demand to know why you were delayed in getting here tonight. And I want to know why you thought you could smuggle my wife back onto these grounds without my being aware of it."

Rafsanjani seemed stunned.

It had, yeah, become a very complicated mission.

Very suddenly.

Very unexpectedly.

Very definitely.

As Stony Man Farm's liaison with the Pentagon, with CIA headquarters, and with the White House, Harold Brognola had done his share of worrying since Mack Bolan's "new war" had commenced three missions ago. There was no way around it. Worrying just had to be a way of life when yours was a desk job and it was your best buddy out there in the field taking on the hairiest missions anybody could throw at him.

This latest task, the one Brognola had dropped in Striker's lap before the guy's heels had even cooled from his last assignment, was no exception.

A crack paramilitary assassination team: that's what Striker was out there taking on tonight. These dudes who intended to hit Nazarour were the absolute best in the business. Their record was proof enough of that. They had traveled the globe, systematically terminating "with extreme prejudice" those who had been marked for death by Iran's kangeroo-styled "holy courts." And now they were reportedly here in Washington, in Bolan's backyard. No exotic locales this time. No jumping on board a jet for some foreign trouble spot. It was all going down less than one hundred miles up the pike in sedate, upper-class Potomac.

Yet it could be the toughest mission of Bolan's new career if this hit team was even half as good as their record indicated, and Brognola had to acknowledge inwardly, glumly, that they were that good. Bolan was out there tonight — a bone-weary man still drained from his previous mission, which had concluded only hours ago — and he was going up against a disciplined unit, each man of which would be Bolan's equal in combat training and skills.

Fourteen of the bastards! And they would not be bone weary. Bet on that: they would not be tired. They would be open for business. There was no telling how or when they would strike. Each previous hit had been different, under different circumstances, with no discernible M.O.

Yeah. Tonight Potomac would see one shit of a firefight. Of that, Hal Brognola was certain.

Damn Nazarour! A good man was out there risking his life because of that Iranian jackal. How had Nazarour been allowed into the country in the first place? Or rather, whose palms had been greased? When this thing was over and he had a few spare seconds to breathe, Brognola promised himself that he would find out. Sure, there was a good reason for Striker to be out there tonight. A damn good reason, the way things stood now. This hit team had to be stopped.

Brognola fired the cigar jutting from the corner of his mouth. He glanced at his watch. Ten-fifty-nine. The team was going to hit within the next seven and a half hours. Before dawn. That was the one thing the previous hits did have in common: Karim Yazid and his men preferred night work.

April walked into the room, interrupting Brognola's thoughts. She was carrying two cups of coffee.

She handed one to Hal. "Nothing new out of Tehran," she reported. "Except positive confirmation from an additional source that the attempt is scheduled for tonight. Yazid's team caught a flight to Paris out of Tehran yesterday morning, just as our first source reported."

Brognola grunted. "And at Paris they separated, picked up their phony ids, and caught separate flights into the States, to rendezvous somewhere in the D.C. area — It's easy to backtrack after the fact."

"You're really upset, Hal," April said. "What is it? Bad news?"

"I don't know." Hal was scowling at the phone in front of him. "I got a call from Abbas Rafsanjani ten minutes ago. As of then, Striker hadn't shown up at Potomac yet."

"He must've run into something between here and there." April's voice was carefully emotionless, concealing the ache that had begun to gnaw at her.

"I hope it's some sort of a lead," said Brognola, not looking at April. "It can't be the enemy. Tehran has no pipeline into Stony Man. To waylay him, they'd have to know where Striker was coming from. They don't know that. And we didn't get the mission data ourselves until two hours ago."

"Mack's all right," said April quietly, firmly. "He'll be at Nazarour's shortly. Obviously something has slowed him up, and he hasn't been able to get through to us. It's when he does get there that the trouble starts." The pain was reasserting itself. The dull anxiety of not being able to help in any way.

"It's going to be tough," nodded Hal, looking at her directly now. "But they've all been tough, April, since the beginning. Even before you came aboard."

"I know. I know. I just hope and pray he's ready to take these people on. He must be exhausted from the ordeal with Toni...."

"I've had my mind on that," mused Brognola. "But let's look at the facts. He's equipped with his usual hardware, and it's never let him down yet." The fed's voice, slightly gravelly, was getting firmer and more confident as his enthusiasm mounted.

"He can do spectacular things with the Auto-Mag and the Brigadier. The Uzi, as far as I'm concerned, was invented for him. He's also carrying some flash and concussion rifle grenades, and I know he'll use them with considerable imagination.

"Hell, when my people at Justice were up against Mack, he scared them half to death regardless of his physical condition, regardless of how well he was armed. He can break a man's back with his bare hands, and he has done so.

"But Yazid's crew," he added, "God knows what they'll be carrying. AK-47s and AKMs probably. That's what the Cherikhaye have used in the past. Got them from Libya. They'll have been smuggled into this country months ago.''