fell out of sight between the houses.
Bolan rose and raced forward, making a final leap to the last rooftop on which he’d seen the Russian. The cat scampered away, hissing, as the Executioner slowed, nearing the edge. This was hardly Bolan’s first gunfight and he didn’t intend to burst into view only to find Sobor waiting there to kill him. Slowly, carefully, the Desert Eagle still leading the way, Bolan peered over the edge of the roof and down between the houses.
Sobor wasn’t laying at the bottom as he’d hoped. But the deep impression the man had left in the mud where he landed was still there.
The Executioner was about to drop down between the houses and follow the footprints the Russian had left when he heard a crash on the other side of the house to his right. Knowing he’d make better time on the roofs, he turned and leaped across yet another small gap between the houses. Running along the edge of the building, he could see the muddy footprints Sobor had left behind. They were leading directly toward the sound he had heard.
When he reached the other side of the house, the Executioner looked down to see that a trash receptacle had been turned over. And while grass covered much of the area below, it was still sparse enough to show footprints. Bolan followed them with his eyes, seeing that they doubled back in the direction from which they’d come. He looked behind him and saw the Iranian cops advancing. But slowly.
They didn’t want to find him any more than he wanted to be found.
A flock of pigeons took flight as the Executioner leaped to the next roof, still keeping his eyes on the tracks below. When the footprints finally led to a narrow sidewalk between the houses, he dropped to the ground and followed the muddy clods that had fallen from the Russian’s shoes. But each of Sobor’s steps helped clean the shoes, and when the sidewalk broadened and intersected with another walk, the trail disappeared altogether.
On a hunch, the Executioner followed the sidewalk, ignoring the turns as he made his way back toward the Hezbollah house. He stopped, his back against the wall of one of the dwellings, as the police crossed his path above. He could hear the blue-clad men whispering to one another as they walked slowly across the rooftops, doing their best to appear to be searching for him while at the same time making sure they didn’t find the man with the big .44 Magnum pistol.
Moving on, the Executioner finally saw the same street he had walked down in front of the terrorist’s house. Sliding the Desert Eagle back into his hip holster, he covered it with the tail of his overcoat, then exited through an open doorway in the brownstone wall. On the sidewalk two houses to his right, he saw the flashing lights of the police vehicles that had parked just outside the wall. At least a dozen officers stood behind the cars, their guns drawn and aimed at the entrance to the house behind the wall. One of the cops—a slender man with a receding hairline—turned to stare at him.
Bolan turned casually and began to walk the other way. It had been several minutes since the cops had first arrived, and assuming they were efficient they would have already searched the immediate area. At this point, even looking as he did, he hoped he wouldn’t attract much more than the second glance the balding officer had thrown his way.
The Executioner stared ahead of him as he walked, and a block farther down the street he caught a flash of red. Squinting into the distance, he saw that the color was that of a shirt, and that the shirt was bobbing slightly up and down as it moved away from him.
Sobor. And the Russian was still limping.
The Executioner was about to break into a run when a rough hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. Turning, he felt the cold steel of a pistol barrel jam into his face. He looked down to see the Iranian cop with the receding hairline staring up at him. The hand holding the gun was shaking as the officer began screaming at him in Farsi.
“I am sorry,” Bolan said in Russian, raising his hands over his head. “I do not speak the language.”
By now three more blue-uniformed Iranians had left their posts behind the flashing red lights and joined the balding officer. All began shouting, as if they believed a deafening volume would suddenly teach Bolan their language.
The Executioner glanced over his shoulder and saw his prey limping toward a taxicab parked on the curb. If he lost the man now, he knew he might never find the Russian again. He could escape into the underground of any of a dozen terrorist-hosting countries and be lost forever.
As he was so often forced to do, Bolan made his decision in a microsecond. Bringing both hands suddenly down from over his head, he turned his body away from the muzzle of the cop’s pistol and grabbed the wrist holding the gun with his left hand. His right came across his body and clasped onto the barrel of the pistol. Pushing one way with his left hand, the other with his right, he snapped the weapon away from the officer, turned and sprinted away.
Though he hadn’t thought it possible for the Iranians to shout louder, he now heard them do so.
Bolan dropped the gun as he ran, hoping the cops behind him would see it and resist firing. On the other hand, Iran was hardly a country where police were famous for respecting human rights, and he knew there was at least an even chance that he would be shot in the back. But as he ran on, no one fired.
Ahead, the Executioner saw Sobor get into the back seat of the cab and close the door. As the vehicle pulled away, Bolan had time to squint at the number stenciled in black just above the rear bumper: 2348796.
The Executioner stopped and turned around.
A second later he was tackled by a half-dozen Iranian police officers.
CHAPTER THREE
It was a miracle he hadn’t been shot already.
As the Iranian police officers dragged him to the ground, Bolan let himself go limp. But as he fell, he counted the men around him. Six.
Landing on his back, he felt hands roll him to his stomach as the men continued to yell at him. Turning his head, Bolan could see the parked police cars in front of the Hezbollah house. The cops around the vehicles still had their attention focused on the entrance in the brownstone wall. They were paying no attention to what was happening to him a half block away. Evidently, if they had even noticed his capture, they felt that six officers should be more than enough to handle one man.
Bolan felt his arms being pulled behind his back. He wondered what would happen next. Some police procedures dictated that the handcuffs go on first. If that happened, he would have trouble. But other departments taught their officers to pat down a suspect for weapons before cuffing him, especially when the man taken into custody was as vastly outnumbered as Bolan was now. But whichever way it went, the police were about to find a .44 Magnum pistol, a 9 mm machine pistol, a .45 ACP revolver and a knife.
More than enough to lock him away in an Iranian prison for the rest of eternity. Unless he acted fast.
Luckily, the Iranians had been trained to frisk first. While two of the excited men continued to hold his arms behind his back, a third started at his shoulders and began patting him down. Bolan waited, anticipating the split second of shock he knew would come when the searcher felt the shoulder rig beneath his overcoat. It would be slight and short-lived.
But it would be the only chance he’d have to turn the tables on his captors.
A second later, the searcher’s hand hit the holster under his left arm and froze. A shoulder rig was more than he had expected to find, and it took a second for the
