His eyes were now blazing with intensity. He was looking at Bolan with the gaze of a mad scientist. These people gave the big guy the creeps; he was beginning to feel alien in his own land.
"You have a sonar device at danger pitch there? Why?" he rasped. He was going to cut through this crazed man's crap with brutal force if need be.
"To preserve and protect, of course," giggled the Iranian. "Watch."
He stepped out of the greenhouse to the rabbit hutch, opened the hutch door and, clutching the animal around the neck, pulled out a piebald rabbit from its bed of straw.
Before Bolan could stop him, Rafsanjani flung the creature through the air. As it traversed the space beneath the bar across the roof, suddenly the animal plummeted to the ground. It was screeching eerily as it lay spreadeagled on the dirt of the floor. Then two streams of blood poured from the helpless animal's ears, and its eyes all but popped from its head. A sickening twitch or two and then silence.
It had been struck stone-dead by the invisible force of sound. Bolan was speechless. The act was wanton and disgusting, the sight of it was an ugly, nauseating thing.
But Rafsanjani was thirsty for more.
"Again?" he squealed as he moved toward the cage.
"Enough," shouted Bolan. With the side of his hand he chopped at Rafsanjani's arm as it reached for the cage.
The act paralyzed the cruel man on the spot. Far from dropping from the blow, Rafsanjani's arm sprung back and stayed outstretched, stiff with shock, as his jaw dropped and he stared at the spreading welt with watering eyes.
"Damn you," he gasped, shaking his arm and dancing about like a struck ape.
"Damn you," spat Bolan. He had no patience with indiscriminate animal killers. Self-defense he applauded, some revenge he could condone, but the careless arrogance of super-predator Man sickened him with its spoiled, idle abuse of the lesser creatures. "You touch another animal in that cage and I'll jam your face into the back of your head.''
He pushed Rafsanjani impatiently to one side, sending the dazed Iranian staggering along the pathway. He swung the wooden-framed wire door of the hutch wide open.
"I'm releasing these toys of yours," he said. "Better they face the danger of dogs and highways than your sick whims.
"They'll be a damn sight safer away from this place tonight anyway," he added. "You'll all be like scared rabbits when this invasion comes down. And frankly," he said, turning to offer Rafsanjani an open sneer, "I'm beginning to look forward to it."
7
The head honcho of the security force was a surly, heavyset dude named Minera. Bolan and a chastened Rafsanjani found him in what had once been the estate's stables. But no fine-muscled racing champions were being bred here now. The old wooden structure had been renovated to serve as the security force command post.
Minera wore the same navy blue uniform as the other guards. His right hand rested habitually on the butt of a Dirty Harry model .44 Magnum holstered at his hip.
When Rafsanjani informed Minera who Bolan was and why he was there, the guy's response was an angry glare at the newcomer. "Nobody told me there was gonna be help rung in from the outside," he groused. "What's wrong?" he demanded of the Iranian. "You don't think me and my boys can handle this tonight?"
"It's a matter of cooperation," Bolan interjected coldly. "If you don't want to cooperate, you can leave now and we'll carry on without you. If you're going to stay, I'll want a tour of the grounds. I'd like to personally inspect your security."
Minera backed down from the confrontation immediately. "I've got twelve men out there tonight," he said. "Besides the five at the front gate and the two in the guard shack on the driveway, I've got three more men out on foot patrol with dogs and the two inside the house with the general. They even watch him go to the bathroom."
"How are you set up electronically?"
"We've got rotating infrared cameras at all the corners of the outside wall." Minera touched the walkie-talkie at the hip opposite the .44. "Plus I'm in radio contact with my men at all times, and I've got a souped-up golf cart over there to get me anywhere I need to be fast."
Bolan started toward the golf cart.
"Let's take a ride," he suggested to Minera. As he and the security chief climbed aboard the nearby contraption, Bolan said to Rafsanjani, "Please return to the house and stay inside. Tell the others to do the same. I think Minera's men should be ordered to shoot on sight tonight. That means we have to restrict movement in the critical area, which in this case means the whole damn estate."
The Iranian again executed his slight bow.
"Whatever you think best, Colonel," he said in his Peter Lorre voice, then he turned and walked away.
"Never did care much for that weasel," Minera grunted to Bolan when Rafsanjani was out of earshot. He turned the ignition key and gunned the golf cart's engine to life. "Well, let's get this show on the road. We can start with a run along the inside perimeter and track down that dog patrol..."
The grounds of the estate had all the natural beauty that a man could ask for. The rolling hills were broken by clusters of dogwood and a lazy, meandering stream. But the natural beauty of the land was marred by the general's security modifications, especially the length of chain-link and barbed-wire fence that ran parallel to the brick wall. Pleasant geography or not, Bolan felt the same ugly emanations out here that he had felt cloaking the main house.
And he decided the security was not all it could be.
As he and Minera went bumping along in the powerful golf cart, Bolan put his thoughts into words. "Why no inner compound?" he asked the security honcho. "The house is on high ground, but it could be made safer."
"The general didn't think he was gonna be here this long," Minera explained. "Things got tied up."
"How long have you been with the general?"
"Since the time he went to ground here," said Minera. "Going on ten months."
"What do you think of him?"
Minera's response was a noncommittal shrug. "It's a job," he growled. That was all he had to say on the matter.
Bolan suggested that one man from the dog patrol be transferred to the first gatehouse at the front entrance. Minera went along with the suggestion, but the guy's surliness was never far from the surface.
Bolan left the security chief, who headed back to his post, and started walking a straight course up a rise toward the house, some two hundred yards away beyond a clump of trees.
Once he had topped the rise and disappeared from Minera's view, Bolan dodged off course and into the trees, out of view of anyone who might have been tracking his movements with night sight equipment. If pressed, he could always offer the call of nature as an excuse.
It was past time for contact with Stony Man Farm, and Bolan wished to make contact without any of the Nazarour household or staff knowing about it.
A lot more was wrong here than a busted marriage, and Bolan needed the full picture. For the time being, his strategy was to give these people free rein. To not let them know that he sensed something wrong with the picture here. He would give the principals of this drama a free rein, yeah. And they would show their true colors. And someone would then make a mistake.