With the .44 AutoMag riding at his right hip, the big warrior was ready for extreme action. And he had armed himself fully in less than twenty seconds.
Bolan had to move fast.
He must meet the assault head on, with full fury.
He didn't waste time with any parting comment to the general. He hit the light switch, plunging the room into darkness, and stepped out into the hallway.
The guards were up, their guns were out, but they seemed instinctively to eye Bolan for instructions. His orders were curt and sharp: kill all the house lights, get everyone in the main group accounted for, and sit on them.
The guards obeyed with alacrity.
So much for preparations.
There was more firing from outside and the sound of a small engine being gunned to its max, approaching the house.
The numbers were completely gone now.
The attack was on.
Bolan left the house to engage the enemy.
11
The small engine being gunned that Bolan had heard from inside was that of Minera's souped-up golf cart. The small contraption came flying full speed around the darkened Olympic-size swimming pool and shuddered to a wild fishtailing stop on the cobblestone walk near Bolan, who had hurried down the front steps to meet Minera.
The security honcho's surliness had disappeared. His eyes were bugged out. There was a sliver of blood along his right cheek. Bolan could see that the back of the cart was riddled with bullet holes.
The head cock leaped from the cart, holding his Dirty Harry .44 and eyeing Bolan with profound relief.
"Am I glad to see you! All hell's broke loose!"
The guy was close to losing it. Bolan spoke to calm him, quietly yet forcefully.
"You're throwing a party and not inviting me? What happened?"
"Damned if I know," Minera grunted, making an attempt to pull himself together. "I was out checking on the dog patrol. On my way back in, I couldn't see anybody moving around in Gatehouse Two. I was gonna pull in and take a look, but I never got that far. Some guys were already coming around from the front gate on foot.
"We saw each other at the same time, and they opened fire. I got a few rounds off, then got the hell out of there to find you. I don't know what the hell went down out front, but I'd say we've been invaded!"
"What about the guardhouse on the driveway?" Bolan snapped.
He had already set out at a stiff jog away from the golf cart, along the cobblestone walk that ran the circumference of the pool, heading toward the front grounds.
Minera stayed with him, trying to catch his breath.
"The boys in the guardhouse have a light machine gun," he told Bolan. "They should be able to hold 'em for a while."
The sound of a chattering chopper drifted in on the night air, as if on cue, from the direction of the guardhouse, a distinct nine hundred yards down the driveway from where they stood.
Bolan and Minera had come to the far edge of the pool, away from the house.
"We split up one hundred yards short of the guardhouse," said Bolan. "We'll close in on both their flanks. You take the left; I'll take the right. Let's just hope your boys with the chopper keep 'em pinned down and busy."
Minera seemed more than happy to let Bolan assume command.
"Just don't expect too much from me, partner." The guard boss tossed a nod at Bolan's weaponry. "Looks like you came prepared. All my heavy hardware is back at the goddamn command post — holyshitl What's that?"
Minera stopped and pointed at a dark human form that lay sprawled out on the ground alongside the cobblestone walk.
Bolan broke stride and stepped over to the form, the Ml held ready for business. With one foot he nudged the body over onto its back.
It was no trap.
The dead man was Dr. Medhi Nazarour.
Someone had rammed a stiletto into the physician's chest just above his heart. The blade had gone in to the hilt.
Bolan stooped down and made a positive verification. The general's brother was dead, all right. Blood still oozed from the wound.
A fresh kill.
Bolan rose from examining the body.
"It doesn't play," he murmured, almost to himself. "They couldn't have made it in this far from the gate already. Not without us seeing them."
Minera couldn't seem to pull his eyes from the corpse. "If it wasn't the attackers, then who..."
But Bolan had already started away from the body, continuing on his way in the darkness toward the fighting. The chopper was still yammering from the guardhouse down the road, its chattering sound punctuated by the popping, of rifles and another handgun in the open air.
The guardhouse was holding its own, but Bolan could tell they were outnumbered. It would only be a matter of time. Unless he and Minera got there first to even things out.
Minera was at his side again, keeping stride. Bolan studied the guy from the corner of his eye as they trotted along together, heading away from the pool, traveling parallel to the opposite sides of the winding driveway.
Bolan knew that he and Minera had probably been on different sides of the fence in that last war of the Executioner's. That was against the Mafia. But that was then. This was now. Now Minera was an ally. Crazy, sure. Another twist in Bolan's life, thanks to the capricious whims of the jungle.
But Minera would be a good fighter in this battle if he was fighting for his survival, as indeed he was. Because Bolan had encountered no more formidable foe than the American Mafia, he knew now that at least he was sided with a man on whose fighting ability he could rely. Minera had lost the shakes he'd had when he'd first zoomed in on Bolan in that damned golf cart of his. The heavyset security chief even looked eager to get into the fray.
Both men were now jogging at full stride.
When it happened.
And Bolan knew they were too late.
The night air erupted with the hellfire roar of what sounded to him like a Russian-made RPG-7, and a fractured second later the guardhouse went up with an explosion of destructive flame and a thunderclap that lifted the roof off the building and blew out the windows, scattering glass and wood and human bodies into the night air.
The cloud of smoke drifting away on the breeze from farther down the driveway confirmed Bolan's guess. Only an RPG-7 smokes off a cloud like that.
The guardhouse blast echoed around the walls of the estate, then died away.
Silence.
Death stalked the hills and valleys of that walled-in hellground, and both Bolan and Minera knew it.
"Now what?" Minera growled in a low whisper.
"Get down," said Bolan. "Let me see what we're up against."
The question of what had happened to Medhi, the general's brother, would have to wait.
As Minera crouched low beside him, Bolan dropped to one knee and lifted the M1 to sight through the infrared scope. The Startron swept the acreage that undulated away from Bolan from this point.
At first he saw nothing. Whether the terrorist team had killed the general's brother back there by the pool or not, there was still no telling how fast the team commander would deploy his forces once they had gained entry past the front gatehouse and secured their escape route — or how long it would take for the individual teams to box in the house. They could already be splitting up as they advanced past the destroyed guard shack, to hit the house from different angles.