"Дон Пендлтон. The Iranian Hit ("Палач" #42) " - читать интересную книгу автора

influential ties with plenty of big money in this town, and some of that
money has been putting him up. But legs or no legs, the guy's a mobster,
plain and simple, and the administration doesn't want anything to do with
him.
"His visa expires at midnight tonight. He's sticking it out until the
last minute, hoping his lawyers will be able to pull some strings - which
they can't. The kicker is that we learned today that Nazarour has been
marked for death by an Iranian assassination squad. At any time from now on.
Any time today or tonight.
"Now we all know what it's like to have a foreign hit team prowling the
country. It makes people edgy, right? But this time around we have hard data
on the bastards and we're going to get them.
"The squad is a fourteen-man paramilitary commando unit - the best
they've got - and they've been on his trail ever since January '79, when
Khomeini's government took power. During the first week of trials, Nazarour
was sentenced in absentia to death, on charges of torture, massacre of
people, treason, and earthly corruption, and our intel says he's guilty as
sin of those charges and a whole lot more. So this hit team wants him bad.
"I don't know how they tagged him here, but our spook in Tehran reports
that they picked up his scent the day before yesterday. The agent gathered
the intel after the team had already been dispatched from Tehran - they left
within two hours after learning of the general's whereabouts. They've
probably been in D.C. most of today, reconnoitering and setting up the
operation.
"This won't be their first hit, either. The team is led by a man named
Karim Yazid, who made quite a bloody rep for himself with the Cherikhaye
Fedaye Khalq -яPeople's Sacrifice Guerillas - in Iran before the revolution.
The group was trained by Libyan military personnel, financed by a radical
Palestinian group, and was the toughest in the Mideast. Yazid drew from the
Cherikhaye Fedaye Khalq when he put his present outfit together.
"So far, they've racked up a total of thirty kills in the past three
years of Khomeini enemies around the world. Four in the Mideast, ten in
Europe and sixteen - count 'em, sixteen - here in America. That's what's got
the CIA and the other agencies asking us for help. We've advised Nazarour of
our intel, and he's gone stone hard. He's been paranoid as hell the whole
time he's been here, and I got the feeling after talking to him on the phone
that he suspects this of being some sort of American trick.
"He's refused to allow any of our troops or security personnel onto the
grounds. But he has agreed to allow Colonel John Phoenix to act in an
advisory capacity to his own security staff.
"As I say, he has his suspicions, but he's not taking any chances in
case our information is on the level. He's aware of this hit team, of
course, and fully appreciates their capabilities. He's being guarded by a
private security agency provided by one of these big-money friends of his,
but he must know that better security than he's got hasn't kept Yazid's
outfit from hitting effectively in the past. And he certainly knows that his
'protection' wouldn't stand a chance against this team in the dark.
"So he's refused to budge from the grounds of that estate until dawn.
Which is fine with us. Striker, that hit team must attack tonight. Either at
the place in Potomac or just after dawn, en route to the private airstrip in