Don Pendleton
The Iranian Hit
There are plenty of devices for shunning death in every kind of danger if a man sticks at nothing in word or deed. But... the difficulty does not lie so much in avoiding death as in avoiding dishonor. For she runs faster than death.
Dishonor is, in itself, a form of death; in the end, the worst form, because it degrades the soul. We take to God only what we give to Life. I will not give it dishonor.
Prologue
There were times when it would seem to a rational man that the whole world had gone crazy. But Mack Bolan knew that it had not. There were a lot of crazy people, sure — and even a few lunatic nations; these could not, however, state the case for the planet earth. The state of the planet was complexity, not insanity. Complexity, Bolan knew, was a natural consequence of growth. As the world's human population increased, and as individuals within that population continued to expand and evolve into smarter and more perceptive humans, then the problems of living together on this crowded earth increased geometrically — sometimes with quantum leaps.
The problem, as Bolan saw it, is that we do not all expand in the same direction, at the same time, or from the same stimuli. Equality between individuals was a political idea — and one not in conformity with natural law. The jungle knew better. All of man's great social inventions were, after all was said and done, a mortal attempt to repeal the laws of nature.
Anomaly. There was a word popularized by the space scientists (who had their own ideas about how to deal with natural law). Anomaly. It had to do with events that had not been planned, or intended....things existing outside the established order, something irregular or abnormal.