The commandos hadn't sustained any losses yet. The remaining terrorists to Bolan's right were returning the guard patrol's fire.
Team Number Two continued advancing along the left side of the driveway, moving steadily from approximately five hundred yards. These three were still sending occasional rounds toward the pool area and the front of the house, but they hadn't spotted Bolan on his perch atop the cabana.
The big warrior changed all that.
He triggered the M1 and sent a flash grenade zinging into the right flank of the team. The grenade went off with a blinding flare. When Bolan looked up from shielding his eyes to the flash, the first thing he saw was the three men standing out from behind their cover and clawing at scorched eyes, oblivious to everything but their pain.
Bolan readjusted the M1's selector mode and squeezed off a round. That dropped the first of the stunned commandos.
One of the guards got off a shot at that point, and another Iranian grunted and pitched flat onto his face, lying motionless.
Number Three finally got some sense and flattened out of sight.
The guard patrol would have to handle that one, Bolan decided. He had other priorities. Such as the squad advancing along the left side of the driveway.
He saw through the scope from about four hundred yards that two of them were toting the RPG-7. They were in the process of pulling away from him, falling farther away to the left. Their plan seemed to be to cut around the far end of the pool, away from Bolan, and come around in front of the main house via the cobblestone walk.
That was the plan.
Except that Bolan had exposed his position by firing the flash grenade.
In one smooth movement that resembled an acrobatic exercise, the big warrior and the M1 and Uzi were off the cabana roof without benefit of the wooden steps.
Bolan landed gracefully and sped off in the direction of the house, hugging the opposite side of the pool from the commando team, following the path that Minera had taken a few minutes earlier.
He jogged along low and fast and had covered close to ten yards when the RPG-7 belched smoke and noise in the distance.
One second later the cabana on which Bolan had been perched only seconds before exploded in another nightmare of sound and spewing brick and glass.
Bolan continued along the cobblestone walk, skirting the edge of the pool, passing the body of Dr. Nazarour with barely a sideward glance. The body appeared as he had last seen it.
Gunfire continued to echo from inside the house.
The commandos out front would now be continuing on toward the house from their own side of the pool. Bolan's actions and decisions in the next few seconds could well determine the outcome of this fight.
He reached the cabana situated at the end of the pool closest to the house. He had won the race with the terrorists who were advancing from the other side of the swimming pool.
The cabana stood three hundred feet from the house. The sun deck would afford a view of the hit squad's approach, as well as of the side windows of the main house, which was probably their destination.
Bolan knew there were only heartbeats left now until that squad would be moving into view in the moonlight. They must have written him off as dead from the rocket attack on the other cabana.
Strapping the M1 over the shoulder opposite the Uzi, Bolan moved to the area of ground between the cabana and the house, over which the squad would have to approach if Bolan's reading of their strategy was correct.
He was a blurred shadow in the darkness. When he reached a spot midway between house and cabana, he paused and reached into the pouch that had been riding at his left hip. He carefully withdrew the curved metallic body of a portable claymore antipersonnel mine. He positioned the mine on the ground so as to cover the approach of the expected team, pointing it away from the cabana. The object was indistinguishable in the nighttime shadows.
The snap of a twig ten yards off told Bolan how little time he had left. He had gained some seconds by his jog around the pool. But they were still coming. Almost on top of him.
Call it twenty seconds on the outside.
All at once he was aware that the gunfire from inside the house had ceased.
He continued preparing the surprise, unrolling a long strip of pressure-sensitive detonation tape and running it across the width of ground where he expected Yazid's men to pass. Then, with all due care and pressing speed, he connected the wires of the trigger tape to the mine. With seven seconds to spare, he reeled around and got the hell out of there, back to the cabana, taking the wooden steps on the run and sprawling out flat across the roof of the sun deck. He swung the Ml back and around, sighting through the Startron to pinpoint the enemy.
He made out the three-man team clearly enough. They were practically on top of the detonation tape, but not quite. He probably could have taken them out from his perch, but with three-to-one odds and all of them pros, Bolan had chosen to take all three at once, and that was still seconds away from happening.
He swung the rifle up-range until the Startron sighted in on the cobblestone pathway alongside the pool. It picked up one commando moving in along that route. He must have recovered from the flash grenade that Bolan had sent his way.
He was no doubt headed toward the house to join his teammates.
Bolan triggered off a round at the lone man. Again it was one round, one kill. The Startron magnified in pale green the awful impact of missile on flesh. Bone structure turned to fading mist as the guy was yanked off his feet as if he had been shoved backward over a low wire.
The M1 packed its usual mighty recoil, but the explosive report was drowned out as the HE below on Bolan's left was triggered by one of the commandos tripping the detonation tape.
In a night full of hell's fire, the claymore had a power all its own. That other cabana seemed to shake beneath Bolan. But the chief benefit of the claymore is that its blast can be aimed in a specific direction.
Bolan rose up to one knee without fear of being hit by debris. He set aside the M1 and swung up the Uzi for a fast cleanup.
The mighty blast of the antipersonnel mine was rolling across the Maryland hills, echoing off into the night.
It was a bloody mess down there below the cabana. The Iranians had come to this land to deliver horror. And that's what they had received.
The top half of a torso, most of its head gone, had pitched against the base of a tree.
A lone shoe, the foot inside it taken off at mid-ankle, smoldered on the ground all by itself.
Two relatively intact bodies were thrashing around wildly on their backs like crushed insects.
Screams of pain and the smell of burned flesh filled the air.
Bolan sprayed the two bodies with a quick burst from the Uzi.
The screaming stopped.
Death was their business, huh?
Now they could sample the goods.
The final echoes of battle, that last chatter from the Uzi, receded into the distance. And with that — as abruptly as that — the battle seemed to be over. Peace again reigned over Potomac.
Sure it did...
Bolan climbed down from his cabana. He crossed over and slung the Ml in through the window of his parked 'Vette. The Uzi was what was called for now. The ideal weapon for quick spurts in tight areas. For indoor fighting.
There was still, after all, no way of telling why the gunfire had ceased inside the main house.
Bolan moved to the house and entered silently through a ground-floor window.