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“We need to run some more advanced tests,” Bolan replied as he stepped past the man and started toward the Highlander. “Tests which can’t be performed here.”

  The Russian-speaking soldier frowned. He was obviously getting more suspicious of this situation as time went on.

  Bolan kept walking toward their vehicle, half expecting to get a 7.62 mm in the back from the Iranian’s AK-47.

  But that didn’t happen, and a few seconds later he was pushing the backseat down flat to create more storage room for the crates.

  The other men had followed with their own test tube filled boxes, looking like a team of ants transporting goods to the ant hill. Bolan watched as he made ready to return to the building for the next load. But he saw a problem as each man took his turn setting a crate in the back of the Highlander.

  There not only wasn’t going to be enough room for all twelve crates, there wasn’t going to be enough for all the men.

  As he strode purposely past the Iranian guards on his way back into the building, he saw that the anxiety on the face of the Russian speaker had increased. “Where is Dr. Dunyazad?” he asked.

  “Still inside,” Bolan said. After all, it was the truth.

  As he turned and opened the door, Bolan heard the same voice switch to Farsi. He had no idea what the man said, but a quick glance over his shoulder revealed that the other soldier had walked up next to him.

  O’Melton was right on his heels, but Bolan waited until they were inside the building and out of earshot again before murmuring, “Did you catch whatever he said?”

  “Huh-uh,” the priest said as they walked on toward the elevator once more.

  Bolan held the doors back until Ahmad, Mohammed and Hasan were inside, then pushed the button with the number seven on it. As soon as the elevator closed, he said, “Did any of you Farsi speakers hear what the one guard said to the other as we came in?”

  They all shook their heads. “They were whispering,” Mohammed said. “I could not make out the words.”

  “Okay,” Bolan said. “But we’ve got a problem. We can’t fit the rest of these crates in the Highlander, let alone have room for everybody to ride in it.”

  “So what do we do?” Mohammed asked anxiously.

  Bolan looked to the one-time CIA informant, then eyed the rest of the men in turn. “We’re going to have to steal one of their jeeps,” he said.

  The words caused a sudden silence in the elevator.

  Bolan didn’t want the men to have enough time to obsess on how dangerous this mission was about to become. So he said, “When we take the next load down, put as many more as you can into the Highlander. Then stack the rest on the ground just to the side of the vehicle. Between our wheels and the jeep next to it. Zaid...”

  The former Hezbollah operative looked up at him.

  “Zaid,” Bolan repeated, “tell the guards in Farsi that we’re going to have to make two trips, and we’d like them to keep an eye on the remaining crates after we drive off. That sounds plausible, and I don’t want them knowing we’re going to steal one of their jeeps until right before we take it.”

  Ahmad nodded in understanding. “I will do this thing,” he said.

  The five men returned to the lab and each picked up another crate. They repeated the process of taking them down to the first floor, then carefully stowed them, leaving the last two between the Highlander and the Iranian military jeep.

  Bolan watched Ahmad straighten back up and call out to the two soldiers.

  As the entourage reentered the TPRC building for the last time, the Executioner hesitated, letting O’Melton catch up to him. “What did he say, Pat?” he whispered.

  “Just what you told him to,” O’Melton said in an equally hushed voice.

  Bolan nodded. He knew that Father O’Melton was no rookie at facing deception, but he also knew the priest desperately wanted Ahmad’s conversion to Christianity to be real. Would that desire cloud the judgment of this man of the cloth? Bolan didn’t know the answer to that question any more than he knew whether or not Ahmad’s change of faith was legitimate.

  As Ahmad and Mohammed picked up the final two crates of biological warfare cultures and carried them to the elevator, Bolan and O’Melton dragged Dr. Dunyazad’s motionless body back through the narrow passage in the storage room and dropped it onto the floor of the vault. Then Bolan reached up, closed the door and twisted the dial.

  So far, so good, he thought. With any luck, they’d be long gone from the scene by the time the director was even found or woke up. Of course that didn’t take into consideration that they still had two men armed with AK-47s downstairs who might be growing skeptical of their bluff. Each passing second gave the guards more time to snap to the reality that things weren’t quite right.

  As he walked back through the storage room from the vault, Bolan adjusted his shoulder rig slightly. Continuing the train of thought he’d been on, he wondered exactly what they would face when they reached the ground floor for the last time. With luck, the two Iranian soldiers would still be standing there, confused. If so, he could draw down on them with the Desert Eagle, disarm them and keep them covered while the rest of the men loaded the extra crates into one of the jeeps. As soon as that was done, and the guards were bound and gagged, their little rescue party could speed off into the night in both vehicles.

  But if Lady Luck refused to smile on them, there would be a firefight. A firefight that would be loud and long in the stillness of the nighttime campus, and catch the ears of the rest of the Iranian army soldiers Bolan knew must be stationed around the area. But that was not his primary worry.

  The number one thing on the Executioner’s mind was that once the shooting started the chance that one or more of the test tubes would shatter and release the bio-agents that were stored inside was extremely high. It was an almost identical situation to the one they’d faced in Syria with the drums of chemical weapons.

  But there was nothing he could do about that at this stage.

  Another walk to the elevator.

  Another trip down the shaft.

  Bolan sensed trouble as soon as he reached the glass door to the outside. The only guard still standing there was the one who spoke Russian. His taller partner had disappeared. And Bolan could think of only one reason that might have happened.

  The other Iranian guard had gone for reinforcements.

  Bolan and O’Melton stepped through the doorway, with Ahmad, Mohammed and Hasan right behind them. The Executioner twisted his head to whisper, “Ajib, you give us away and you’ll be the first to die. I promise.”

  The professor seemed to have developed a nervous tick, and blinked his eyes hard several times. Then he managed to rasp, “Please believe me. I can give you valuable information on other matters.” An almost choking sound came from the terrified man’s throat. “But I must live to do so.”

  Bolan filed that last remark in the back of his mind. The Persian was frightened, and might just be hinting at more intel he could provide in order to save his life. On the other hand, the offer might be legit. But regardless, Bolan had more immediate problems he needed to attend to.

  When he turned back around, he saw that the Russian-speaking guard had encircled the pistol grip of his AK-47 with the fingers of his right hand. Although he had not yet raised the weapon to aim at them, doing so would require only a split second. “Take these last crates to the stack between the Highlander and jeep,” Bolan whispered to Mohammed and Hasan. “I’ll handle things here.”

  Neither of the two spoke, they just did as they’d been told.

  O’Melton and Ahmad flanked the big American as he let a broad smile cover his face. He walked closer to the guard. “Where is your partner?” he asked, glancing behind the man and to the sides for any sign of the second Iranian.

  Suddenly the guard did bring the b
arrel of the assault rifle up, aligning the hole at the end with Bolan’s midsection. “He will be back in a moment.” The soldier took time to clear his throat, then added, “There is something very strange about all of this. When I called in to my commanding officer a few minutes ago, he knew nothing about a scheduled inspection—and especially a pickup of anything—for this building tonight.”

  Bolan shook his head and blew air through his clenched lips in disgust. “Bureaucracy,” he all but spit. “They can’t get anything straight, can they?”

  The soldier didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “Where is Dr. Dunyazad?”

  Bolan didn’t hesitate. “Still inside,” he said. “There was some paperwork to be done concerning all this, and he wanted to get it finished before he went back home for the night.”

  The soldier with the Kalashnikov didn’t look convinced.

  Turning briefly toward the parked vehicles, Bolan saw that the men had the last four crates together, right beside the closest jeep. They needed to load them on, and he needed to find the key to the vehicle. And if at all possible, that had to be done before the other guard and his reinforcements returned. But as soon as Bolan’s team started filling the jeep, this Russian speaker would plainly see that they were up to something.

  That didn’t really matter any longer, however. Time had run out.

  Bolan nodded toward the Highlander. O’Melton nodded back, then headed toward the four remaining crates.

  At the same time, Bolan turned back to the guard. Twisting his body out of the center line of fire, he lunged forward and hooked an elbow under the AK-47, between the stock and magazine. His other hand grasped the barrel, and by pulling down on the front of the weapon, and jabbing up with his elbow, he wrenched the assault weapon out of the man’s hands.

  Bolan lifted the AK high over his head, slipping the assault-style sling off the soldier’s head. Then he spun the weapon around with the practiced grace of a baton twirler, and the Kalashnikov wound up with the pistol grip in his right hand and the fore end in his left. As he tightened his finger on the trigger, he saw a half-dozen men dressed in Iranian BDUs come running toward him, perhaps forty yards behind the Russian speaker.

  One of them was the guard’s partner.

  Bolan instinctively slid his left hand under the rifle, his fingers finding the selector switch. It was still set on Safety, and he pulled it down to full-auto mode.

  A 3-round burst thudded point-blank into the Russian-speaking Iranian’s chest and the man flew backward as residual blood from the rifle rounds filled the air.

  “Get ’em loaded!” Bolan shouted to the men around the vehicles. “And O’Melton! Take the wheel of the Highlander!”

  The soldiers running across the campus heard the shots and slowed slightly, trying to get some sense of what was going on before they sprinted into a possible ambush. Bolan turned their way and sent a long full-auto blast in their direction. They were less than thirty yards away now, and five of the six hit the ground or dived behind trees. The sixth man continued racing forward. He was less than ten yards away when Bolan changed from cover fire to aimed fire. And a 6-round burst stitched the man from navel to throat.

  He dropped his AK-47 and plunged headfirst into the grass.

  The men who had taken cover hesitated a moment, giving Bolan the chance he needed. Quickly frisking the Russian speaker, he found a key ring in the front flap pocket of the man’s BDU pants.

  The soldier who had been the partner of the man presently on the ground poked his head around a tree in the distance.

  Bolan recognized the face immediately. And just as quickly shot it off.

  Turning toward the men at the vehicles, the Executioner yelled, “Heads up!” and tossed them the key ring. Ahmad was the closest, and he stabbed a hand into the air and caught it.

  “Find the right key and get the jeep started!” Bolan ordered.

  A second later, another brave but stupid Iranian bolted from behind the tree where he’d taken cover, and came lumbering forward. He was a heavyset man with a short-cropped beard, and he raced awkwardly toward Bolan, wildly firing his own AK-47 as he ran. None of the 7.62 mm rounds came within twenty feet of their target, and Bolan took his time, squeezing the trigger and hitting the man twice in the chest, then once through the bridge of his nose.

  Three down, the Executioner thought.

  And three to go.

  From the edge of the parking lot, Bolan heard Ahmad call out, “I cannot find the key! None of them fit!”

  Bolan knew there could be two explanations. One, they had loaded the last four crates into the jeep that belonged to the other guard—the nearly headless man who had fallen behind the tree in the distance. Which meant he had the key to the vehicle they were trying to start. And getting to him for a search would be all but impossible.

  The other explanation was more ominous. It was always possible that Ahmad’s conversion to Christianity was a sham, as both Bolan and O’Melton had realized all along. If so, this might well be the moment the man had been waiting for. A situation in which he could sabotage their efforts and get them all killed.

  Ahmad would die, too, of course. The soldiers would not be able to distinguish him from the others. But that would matter little to a Hezbollah-trained potential suicide bomber who was ready to give up his life and become a martyr for the “cause.”

  Another of the new military guards who had been called into action went down behind a tree and began firing from the prone position. His full-auto fire whizzed past Bolan’s face far closer than the rounds of the earlier, clumsy man. Bolan fired twice, the first 3-round volley skimming the man’s back and sinking into a hamstring muscle. A long, lonely scream of pain sang out in the night.

  “Try the other jeep!” Bolan called to Ahmad. “Don’t move the crates unless the engine turns over!” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his men scramble from the vehicle they were already in.

  Returning his attention to the man in the prone position, Bolan dropped his own body to the ground and aimed slightly lower. And his next volley of fire struck the man in the face and neck.

  That ended the howling.

  Only two of the guards remained in the distance, and they seemed in no hurry to come out from behind the thick tree trunks that shielded them from Bolan’s fire. So he pulled the trigger back again, sending full-auto bursts into both trees, reinforcing the men’s conviction to stay low.

  The AK-47 ran dry and the bolt locked open. But Bolan found another fully loaded magazine on the body of the dead guard at his feet, dropped the empty one, and hooked the new box up, around the corner and into the Russian assault rifle. As the magazine clicked home, he heard the jeep’s engine roar to life.

  “Now transfer the crates!” he called out. He turned to see the men scrambling once more to get the deadly bio-agents into the jeep for which they had the key.

  Without breaking any of the test tubes.

  Bolan fired more rounds into the trees. There might be only two guards left. But that didn’t mean more weren’t coming. The gunfire would have been heard all over the campus, and there were surely more Iranian soldiers on their way. If he took off this second, by the time he got to the vehicles they would have been loaded correctly and be ready to roll out. But if he ceased firing for long, the two guards cowering behind the trees might regain their courage and resume their assault.

  So far, the men had not fired any of their shots at the vehicles. Which told Bolan they either didn’t know what the crates contained, or that they were as worried about letting the anthrax and smallpox loose as Bolan and his own men were. If truth be told, the shattering of one or more test tubes could probably be contained. There was very little wind to spread the poisons, and if the men in the jeep and Highlander got away from them quickly, they weren’t likely to be exposed.

  But containm
ent would mean leaving the vehicles where they were, so Iranian specialists in hazmat gear could solve the problem. Which in turn meant that Bolan, O’Melton, Ahmad, Mohammed and Hasan would have to attempt their escape on foot. Not any easy feat in the middle of Tehran.

  Most of all, however, Bolan knew it would mean leaving the scene without the biological agents and without completing his mission. When the hazmat workers were finished, Iran would still be in possession of enough anthrax and smallpox to wreak havoc around the world.

  Bolan knew he needed to end this gunfight before more soldiers arrived. But if he left with the two men still hiding behind the trees, and took off toward the jeep and Highlander, he was likely to draw their fire closer to the crates.

  So far, Bolan had been shooting from the prone position—using the dead body of the Russian-speaking guard as cover. Suddenly, he rose to his feet, leaped over the body and sprinted forward. He made sure his footsteps were loud as he raced directly toward the last two men behind the trees with the zeal of an ancient Viking berserker. He was only ten yards away when the closest man realized what was happening, and was forced to lean out around the tree.

  Bolan timed his shots as his feet hit the ground. And a trio of 7.62 mm rounds found their way into the enemy. The first bullet struck steel on the Iranian’s rifle, sent a shower of orange sparks up into the night, then skidded into the man’s chest. The second two rounds went straight into the throat, severing his carotid artery or jugular vein or both—and sending a fire hose spray of crimson into the air to join the sparks.

  The second man’s tree was perhaps five yards farther and to the side. He, too, leaned out and sent a volley of fire toward Bolan. But he was scared and unsteady, a combination of battle drawbacks that resulted in shots every bit as inaccurate as those of the heavyset man who had charged the Executioner earlier.

  Bolan stopped behind the tree, waited for the fire to stop, then immediately twisted around the trunk and fired point-blank.

  A lone, semiauto slug struck the last guard in the middle of the forehead and drove him backward. A look of surprise and confusion covered what was left of his face before he fell onto his back, then began to flop in his death throes like an overturned turtle. Finally, his arms and legs dropped and he stopped moving.