At first glance the property owned by Al Miller was not unlike any number of similar ones in the area.
This was horse-estate country.
Miller had to be doing all right for himself, whatever his scam was.
Or he had solid backing.
Bolan guessed the latter.
The millionaire set liked its privacy. Formidable brick walls about ten feet tall surrounded many of these estates. There were huge expanses of uninhabited acreage in between.
Miller's guise of respectability lasted no longer than a closer visual as Bolan's rental vehicle glided past. The Executioner hoped that those inside viewed it as just another car passing in the night.
The main entrance to the grounds was set midway in the face of the walled perimeter that bordered the paved road.
A brick guardhouse sat behind an iron gate.
Bolan saw two sentries; they wore side arms and there was undoubtedly heavier artillery, out of sight but close at hand.
When he reached the far end of the property line, Bolan continued to drive another quarter mile until the looming walls of the estate were blocked from view by a mild dip in the undulating Maryland terrain.
Bolan parked his car well off the blacktop, concealed from casual glances by a cluster of stately oak trees.
He strapped on Big Thunder.
This would be a hard hit.
He jogged back toward the walled property of Al Miller. He stayed off the road, approaching the side wall that connected with the one fronting the county road.
He was not ideally togged or rigged for a night hit. His dark sweater and slacks helped him blend into the night but his black combat grease had been lost when Sam Datcher and Jimmy Lee Brown blew up his rented Mustang at the Interstate Loan shoot-out.
Bolan hoped the moon would not break through the heavy clouds overhead, but that did not seem likely.
The Beretta 93-R rode ready in its shoulder holster and the AutoMag was fast-draw ready. Heavy artillery, sure, but it would be no heavier than the arsenal on the other side of those walls. His other instruments of death, such as the stilettos, garrotes and high-explosive grenades, so important on an assault like this, had also been destroyed in tonight's car blast.
The hell with risks.
The Executioner was blitzing.
He negotiated the wall with ease, landing on the other side without a sound.
He palmed the silenced Beretta.
He hoped Big Thunder would not be needed at all or only as a last resort to blast his way out.
He remained in a crouch, the 93-R ready. He scanned the darkness, his icy gaze encompassing the deserted grounds of the estate.
He saw no one.
Several lights illuminated a massive main house about eighteen hundred meters across a rolling, gradual incline.
Bolan padded cautiously toward the main house. The nightfighter kept to the shadows of the evergreens trees that dotted the landscape.
The Executioner met no interference.
Miller's place was guarded tonight by only a skeleton crew for some special reason. Or the man had nothing to hide and the gate sentries were only for show to grant the guy his privacy.
Perhaps this was another false lead like those Armenians. But Bolan didn't think so.
The night warrior moved on a course roughly parallel to the long, curved gravel driveway. He reached the edge of a tree line that yielded to a clearing surrounding the main house and another building. He paused for further recon.
Grover Jones's instructions had brought Mack Bolan to an expansive Colonial-style mansion. A huge courtyard was dominated by a large fountain now artistically illuminated by multicolored floodlights.
The other building was a more modern, strictly functional one-story prefab job, twenty meters from the main house.
Barracks, thought Bolan.
There was no sign of human activity.
The area was graveyard quiet.
Bolan remembered the armed guards at the gate.
And the lighted windows in the main house.
There was a roofed porch on the south side of the house, across an expanse of sloping lawn from Bolan's position. The stretch of lawn was bathed in faint glow from the floodlit fountain.
Bolan decided to chance it.
He left the tree line. He made it to the porch and holstered the Beretta. He pulled himself up onto the roof. Then he palmed the 93-R again and stretched out a leg to gain balance closer to the nearest second-floor lighted window.
The window was open against the warm night. Wispy drapes offered no privacy this close up. But there was nothing to see. An empty bedroom. A light someone had forgotten to turn off.
Bolan heard the unmistakable mutter of male voices. Then a female voice, coming from the next window down, also lighted.
A foot-wide ledge ran around the white stone mansion between its two levels. Bolan got a firm footing and edged himself toward the window from which he heard the voices coming.
He chanced a peek inside.
Another open window. A good view through lace drapes into another bedroom.
This one was occupied.
Three men and a woman.
The woman was clothed, but not doing too well otherwise.
She was tied to a straight-back chair in the middle of the bedroom, bound hand and foot and body with rubberized clothesline.
Bolan recognized the woman.
Tonight was an unraveling tapestry of this warrior's life. That's what throbbed and tried to close in and race past him at the same time, unbidden, but there just the same. His back pages and his destiny colliding on a warm spring night in Washington, when Death walked and his name was Bolan.
Her name was Susan Landry, investigative reporter.
Bolan would always remember Landry from his assault on the Mafia's Cleveland Pipeline during the Executioner's war against the Mob.
Landry was a woman no man would ever forget. Especially as a lover, as Bolan had been before he blasted Susan's father out of existence for his unholy alliance with the cannibals Bolan fought.
A lifetime ago, to John Phoenix.
The three hard-eyed men in the bedroom stood around Susan. One wore a shoulder-holstered .357. The other two had shotguns that now rested upright against a wall of the bedroom while they took a closer look at the beauty tied to the chair.
Her shoulder-length raven hair was mussed, and she wore a bruise on her right temple that had turned purple. But Susan was just as foxy as Bolan remembered from that long-ago Cleveland action.
Susan's eyes darted rebelliously between the two men in front of her. Then she tried to glance over her shoulder at the guy behind, but she was too damn tough inside to show these creeps any fear.
One of the men reached over and stroked her face, then his hand drifted lower as he squeezed her breast roughly. He laughed when she didn't cry out.
Bolan saw red.
The man sneered, "A tough baby. I like 'em tough."
"Miller will skin you bastards alive when he gets back and sees what you've done," she snarled in his face.
"Maybe Miller ain't coming back," grunted the other man who faced Susan. He reached over as he spoke and idly flicked her skirt up around her waist, revealing smooth, panty-hosed legs that became beauty-queen thighs and sheer panties. "And if Miller comes back, maybe we'll be gone."
The hood behind her guffawed and started unbuckling his trousers.
"After we have some fun with you, bitch."
"I give you nothing," hissed Susan Landry.
Planting her feet firmly, she leaned forward in the chair, lifting its two back legs off the floor. Then she plunged backward. The chair landed with bone snapping impact upon the feet of the jerk who'd been so anxious to take his pants off.
"Oh, shit," he howled as he stumbled back, hopping about the room on one foot.
The other two started to laugh at their friend's misfortune.
Bolan aimed through the wispy bedroom curtains. The laughter was suddenly cut off as the Beretta whispered once. A 9mm slug drilled through the laughing mouth of one would-be rapist, creating a cavity that no dentist could ever fill. The man had not even begun to fall when the 93-R spit fire again, and the two hardmen toppled to the floor.