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.
Susan Landry's eyes opened wide at the tall, icy-eyed man who suddenly appeared in the room.
The third hood forgot about his bruised toes and his unbuckled pants. He drew his .357 Magnum and had time to trigger off a shot at the darting figure who broke from the open window. The explosion reverberated like a nuclear blast in the close confines of the bedroom. The projectile whistled wide past Bolan's right ear.
The Executioner triggered another round from the Beretta, and the third punk joined his deceased friends in the corner.
'Holy Mother!' exclaimed Susan Landry. From her awkward position tied to the chair, she could not escape the drifting stench of burned cordite that stung her nostrils. She looked around at the three dead men who an instant ago had been about to harm her.
The big man chuckled as he holstered the 93-R and bent to yank loose the knots of the clothesline that bound her. 'The name is John Phoenix, Ms Landry.'
She stood up when she was untied and briefly rubbed wrists chafed raw from trying to break free. She did not take her eyes off this stranger, studying him intently.
'How do you know who I am?'
'Call me a regular reader of your newspaper columns,' Bolan replied truthfully. He snapped a fresh clip into the Beretta and held the pistol out to her. 'Can you handle one of these?'
She nodded and took the pistol in a practiced grip.
'Thank you, John Phoenix. I have a car downstairs. I drove into my own trap, you see. We can drive out of here.'
She did not recognize Phoenix as Mack Bolan. There was no reason for her to. Plastic surgery had altered Bolan's appearance.
They hustled from the bedroom death chamber like a well-rehearsed team, Susan looking no worse for wear from her ordeal.
They hit an upstairs corridor and approached a wide staircase that led to a large foyer downstairs.
Susan and her rescuer were at the top of the stairs when they heard the clatter of footfalls somewhere below.
They saw two guys coming up at them along either side of the stairway. The two hardmen at the bottom grabbed for hardware then had time to do nothing but die.
