Assault

by Don Pendleton

  And still she fought. Her strength was fading, but she slammed the chamber pot across her captor's shoulders, lost her grip and heard it shatter on the floor. The Palestinian backed off a foot or so and lunged again, the impact turning Mara's legs to rubber. She was certain that he hardly felt the blows she rained upon his back, and when he stepped away from her, she crumpled to the floor.

  She saw the first man struggle to his feet, hair plastered to his scalp with urine, one hand pressed against the swelling there. His face was twisted into a mask of rage, and he would surely have attacked her if his comrade hadn't intervened. A whispered word restrained the Palestinian and finished Mara's hopes. Instinctively she knew the man wouldn't have spared her, under any threat of punishment, unless he was convinced that she faced something worse.

  She was propelled along a corridor, through several twists and turns, until they stopped outside another door. No knock this time; her escorts merely threw the door back, hauled her across the threshold and closed the door again behind them.

  Mara glanced around another room devoid of windows, where the furniture was even less hospitable than in her cell. A single heavy chair was planted in the middle of the room, and at a second glance she saw its legs were bolted to the floor. The leather straps affixed to both arms and the forward legs left Mara in no doubt about its function. In one corner, jammed against the wall, a smallish folding table held a bright array of pliers, cutters, probes and blades. The centerpiece appeared to be a compact hand-crank generator.

  Mara let them pull her toward the middle of the room. She offered weak resistance when the urine-smelling guard began to fumble with the buttons of her shirt, but then his partner fired a solid fist against her kidney and she folded, sinking to her knees. They hauled her upright, stripped her bare without preliminaries and conveyed her to the chair. Its polished wood was cool against her back and buttocks as they strapped her in.

  She was completely helpless now, deprived of all mobility beyond a wriggle here and there. She couldn't even tip the chair and try to knock herself unconscious in the fall. Instead she sat before her captors, trying to return their gaze defiantly, aware that she was failing. The one with urine in his hair stepped closer, his rough hands prowling over her.

  The door clicked open, and the probing hands were gone. She saw her guards, both standing at attention, opposite three new arrivals. Two of them, Ahmad Halaby and the bearded Shiite Bakhtiar, she recognized from photographs. The other, tall and clean-shaven, had been out on the veranda when she first arrived.

  Her escorts were apparently Halaby's men. The swarthy Palestinian stepped forward, almost rubbing noses with the urine-scented guard, and fired off several rapid questions Mara couldn't follow. When her captor answered in a weak affirmative, Halaby's open palm lashed out and rocked the soldier's head, its livid imprint branded on his cheek. A left and then another right followed, the guard accepting it without a whimper, his companion carefully avoiding any visible reaction. Finished with the dressing-down, Halaby ordered both of them away and waited for the door to close before he started scouring his palm with a clean handkerchief.

  The three inquisitors surrounded Mara in a semicircle, studying her face and body inch by inch. Halaby's eyes were small and piggish, lustful, like the eyes of his disgraced subordinate. Mir Reza Bakhtiar examined her with clinical detachment, nothing in his gaze suggesting that he was alive below the waist. The tall, clean-shaven man fell somewhere in between the two. She saw appreciation of her body in his eyes, but knew that he would hurt her all the same.

  "Ahmad?" The tall man's voice was soft, yet firm.

  Halaby fetched the hand-crank generator, brought it back and set the box in front of Mara, on the floor between her feet. She saw that both the generator's cables had been fitted with ugly alligator clamps.

  "My name is Bashir Moheden," the tall man said. Her sneer produced no visible reaction. "I'm forced to ask you certain questions. If your answers satisfy, there need be no… unpleasantness. Refusal on your part will lead to pain beyond imagining, and I will learn your secrets all the same. Be wise. Cooperate."

  "I have no fear of you," she lied.

  "So brave," Moheden said. "So foolish."

  Kneeling on the floor between her open knees, he scooped up the generator cables and spent a moment flexing the clips in his hands, their jaws clicking on empty air.

  "Once more," he said. "I ask you courteously. No?" The shrug betrayed complete indifference. "Then we must begin at the beginning."

  * * *

  It took the better part of forty minutes for the lookouts to report a Syrian patrol approaching on the Bekaa's secondary north-south highway. With a pair of motorcycle scouts and four other vehicles — a half-ton truck among them — Bolan thought it sounded perfect for his needs. If only they could pull it off without a hitch.

  He parked his stolen taxi in the middle of the highway, pulled some wires on the distributor and settled down to wait. Before he heard approaching engines, Bolan loosened the Beretta in its shoulder rigging and left his army surplus jacket open for a quicker draw.

  This time would be cold blood, at least for starters, but he told himself that Syria was playing an aggressor's role in Lebanon, while simultaneously training terrorists at home and sponsoring their raids around the world. The Bekaa occupation was an act of war, disguised as "military aid." Above all else, these troops, in death, might help him rescue Mara and defeat his enemies.

  It was a chance the Executioner couldn't afford to miss.

  He heard the motorcycles now, outriders gliding into view a moment later. Following behind were two jeeps, an open personnel carrier and the slat-sided half-ton, with perhaps a dozen riflemen in back. That made it close to thirty uniforms, but it would have to do.

  He hunched beneath the taxi's open hood, one hand on the Beretta, seeming not to notice as the motorcycles pulled up close on either side. Inside the taxi, Joseph Chamoun — his «passenger» — sat stiffly, with an Uzi submachine gun in his lap.

  One of the motorcycle scouts called out to him, and Bolan glanced up from the taxi's engine, putting on the face of one who is surprised to find himself with unexpected company. He shrugged in answer to the question, already measuring the angles, waiting for the other vehicles to stop behind his cab.

  The second, closer scout was speaking now, but Bolan scarcely heard him, and he offered no response. The jeeps, the APC and truck were all in place now, lined up neatly ten or fifteen feet between them, with his taxi leading the parade. It was as nearly perfect as a set would ever be.

  He drew the Beretta, fired one round at point-blank range and saw the starboard scout go down before he spun to face the other. Both of them were wearing flap-style holsters, and the pointman never had a chance to reach his gun before a quick round drilled through his upper lip. He toppled backward, pinned beneath the bike, as firing broke out all along the line.

  Chamoun's commandos had concealed themselves along the road on either side, and at the sound of Bolan's first two shots they opened up with everything they had. Chamoun had twisted in his seat, the Uzi spitting through an empty frame where glass had been removed to offer him a better field of fire. He caught the driver of the nearer jeep and knocked him from the saddle with a 3-round burst, his weapon tracking on to nail the shotgun rider where he sat.

  In motion, Boland heard the half-ton's driver fighting with his gear shift, grating hard to find reverse, when a rifle bullet cracked his windshield, drilling him between the eyes. His human cargo was pumping rounds in all directions, scarcely taking time to aim, and some of them began to scatter as they realized the truck had stalled. The driver of the second jeep was wounded, but his men were fighting back. He had the four-wheel-drive in motion, whipping out around the lead car, breaking for the open road.

  Two rounds from the Beretta snapped the driver's head back, and he lost it as he passed the taxi, veering to the right, tires spinning hopelessly until the jeep gave up its bid at climbing t
he embankment. Snipers had already killed the shotgun rider, and they dropped one of the gunners in the rear before he scrambled free. His partner, quicker to retreat, was on his feet and sprinting in a futile search for cover, when another round from Bolan's pistol dropped him in his tracks.

  The personnel carrier was putting up a respectable fight, its machine gun lacing the night with tracer rounds, but its open top left crew members exposed to gunmen on the overhanging bluffs. Bolan saw one of Chamoun's rebels fall, then another, but their collected fire was scoring, hot rounds rattling around inside the APC until they burrowed into flesh.

  He took a chance and dodged across the pavement, ducking rifle fire from both sides as he ran, and leaped up onto the fender of the moving APC. The driver saw him coming, turned to grapple with a weapon on the seat beside him, but there simply wasn't time. The man was cursing helplessly as Bolan reached inside the cockpit, his Beretta spitting twice at skin-touch range.

  He sprang away and let the snipers finish it, a burst from the machine gun chewing pavement at his heels before a well-placed round retired the gunner. Thirty yards downrange, survivors from the half-ton truck were keeping up sporadic fire against their enemies, but only four or five were still in any shape to fight. As Bolan watched, their ranks were whittled down to zero, and a pall of silence fell across the battlefield. Chamoun's remaining troops emerged from cover, scurrying around the scene and mopping up with careful head shots where the fallen soldiers still showed signs of life.

  A quarter hour of concerted effort cleared the highway. The bodies were stacked inside the half-ton and the APC, and the vehicles maneuvered to a side road out of view. Unloading was a grisly task, but grim determination saw them through, as they began to sort the bodies out by size and strip them of their clothes.

  The uniforms were mostly torn and bloodstained now, but it was dark, and they would serve their purpose under cursory examination, if the worst of them were kept inside the truck and APC until the final moment. At a glance, the military vehicles appeared no worse than usual, the bullet scars and dings familiar sights around the Bekaa Valley. Joseph Chamoun had briefed his soldiers on the need for clean, precision fire, and so the vehicles were fully functional, despite their superficial wounds. No tires were flattened, and the engines all responded smartly, grumbling together in the darkness.

  Dressing in the largest uniform that he could find, a bloodstain tucked beneath one arm, Mack Bolan shouldered a Kalashnikov and slipped a bandolier of extra magazines across his chest. The shirt was small, but comfort was irrelevant. They had their edge, if they could only use it to its best advantage.

  Chamoun had stubbornly ignored the Executioner's advice, insisting on a frontline place among the members of the raiding party. Settling in the lead jeep's shotgun seat, while Bolan took the wheel, he kept the Uzi primed and ready on his lap. Behind them, signals flashed along the line, the other gunmen settled in their places, ready to begin.

  "We go?" Chamoun asked.

  "We go," the Executioner replied.

  He only hoped that they weren't too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ahmad Halaby had excused himself from the interrogation after half an hour. He wasn't a squeamish man by any means, but it appeared to him that Moheden was getting nowhere with his prisoner. Halaby thought that Bakhtiar would soon take over, and he didn't care to witness what would follow.

  He had used the guards as an excuse, reminding Bakhtiar of his responsibility for keeping the perimeter secure. It didn't matter if the Shiite bastard thought him weak, unmanly. It wasn't Halaby who avoided touching women in a normal way, extracting pleasure only from their pain and suffering. He would be glad to challenge Bakhtiar at any time, one man against another, with their contest to the death.

  Of course, he knew it would never come to that. While Bakhtiar wasn't a coward, he had lately grown obsessed with "dignity," a need to place himself above the level of his troops. He had become a combination holy man and bureaucrat, too proud to soil his hands with common labor or the simple chores of killing. Thus, it struck Halaby as peculiar that the man would seem so eager to interrogate a prisoner — this prisoner — himself.

  The Palestinian dismissed his train of thought, the other images it brought to mind, and concentrated on his mission. His concern for the perimeter defense hadn't been a total fabrication after all. Moheden was convinced that they were safe, the Christian rebels wounded and confused. But supposition didn't satisfy Halaby. Granted, it was probable their adversaries would go looking for the girl in Baalbek, if they still had men enough to hunt for her at all. However, probability and certainty were very different things. Halaby had seen men lose everything by betting with the odds, and he wasn't about to make the same mistake.

  The ranch was vast, and he didn't have time to tour the perimeter and check every outpost. Instead he took the walkie-talkie offered by his first lieutenant and touched base with his teams. They responded smartly on the north and west. Halaby was beginning on the south, when he was interrupted by a burst of static from the radio.

  A sentry on the east-west access road identified himself and blurted out, "Emergency! A Syrian patrol has just turned off the highway, moving toward the house. Advise!"

  Halaby frowned and answered crisply, "Take no action. Let them pass. They will be dealt with on arrival."

  He would have to summon Bakhtiar, an interruption the Shiite was unlikely to appreciate. But as the master of the house, it was his place to deal with uninvited visitors, and most especially those in uniform. Halaby wondered what the Syrians could want, decided it was probably another, larger bribe, and retreated through the house.

  A muffled scream was audible outside the interrogation room. Halaby waited for the sound to die away before he entered. He kept his face deliberately impassive as Moheden spun the crank again, his captive lurching at her bonds. The scream cut like a razor blade across the Palestinian's nerves.

  "What is it?"

  Bakhtiar seemed out of breath, as if he'd been interrupted in the middle of a distance run. His face was flushed, unusual color present in his cheeks.

  Halaby swallowed his disgust and said, "The lookouts have reported a patrol, just off the highway, moving toward the house. They should be here at any moment."

  "Syrians?" Moheden asked, distracted from his work.

  Halaby nodded. "I've allowed them to proceed."

  The Shiite seemed about to question the decision, then thought better of it. "I will speak to them myself," he said, and led the way outside.

  Behind them, the Lebanese expelled a weary sigh and stood. "We shall resume when you return," he said.

  "I shall take over," Bakhtiar informed him coolly. "You are wasting too much time."

  With that he swept along the corridor, Halaby on his heels. The door to the interrogation chamber snicked shut behind them. They were almost to the parlor when a burst of automatic fire erupted in the courtyard, and Halaby saw his world go up in smoke.

  * * *

  The column had made decent time. Behind the half-ton, half a dozen mismatched vehicles were loaded with the gunners who had come up short of uniforms, assigned to park a full mile back and wait until a summons or the sound of combat called them in to join the party. If the plan worked smoothly, Bakhtiar's defenders would be sucked away from their perimeter positions to defend the house, and so the second wave would slip in, nearly unopposed.

  If everything proceeded on its proper schedule.

  Bolan recognized the access road and turned off the highway, holding to a steady thirty-five and trusting that the other vehicles would match his pace. Two sentries were ahead, their flashlights stabbing through the darkness, but he didn't even brake. If they were sidetracked here, so far from the selected target, they might never make it to the house. He would ignore the sentries, trusting the authority of their uniforms until such time as someone opened fire.

  There were more sentries now, and they made no attempt to hide themselve
s, their weapons on display as Bolan and his convoy rumbled past. He saw confusion on their faces, but it didn't translate to concern. They weren't frightened, and he sensed that they had seen patrols come down this road before. Considering the vast plantation's staple crop, it would have been peculiar if the troops weren't familiar visitors, collecting periodic payoffs as the price of their official blindness.

  The road looked different in the dark, a tunnel brightened only by their headlights, but he recognized the house immediately. They could see the blaze of floodlights from a distance, like a beacon guiding them home. Bolan let the motorcycle set the pace and pulled his AK-47 closer, propping it between the jeep's front seats.

  Around the final bend and they were entering the courtyard, with guards on every side. "Your call," he told Chamoun. "If Mara's in the house, it could go either way."

  "I love my sister," the rebel leader replied. "Her life is precious to me, but her dignity means more. I will not bargain with her soul. When we are close enough, we strike."

  The motorcycles rumbled past the wide front porch, and Bolan followed, switching off the jeep's ignition as they coasted to a stop. A couple of the closer guards were squinting at Chamoun's commandos, noticing the bloodstains on a number of their uniforms and recoiling in surprise. Before they had a chance to analyze the evidence, Chamoun had raised his Uzi, rattling off a burst that dropped two gunners in their tracks.

  It hit the fan behind them, and on every side. The motorcycle scouts peeled off in opposite directions, firing pistols at the darting silhouettes of sentries on the run. One of them tried to climb the porch but lost it on the stairs and toppled over, rolling clear before the heavy bike could pin him down. He had, perhaps, five seconds to reflect on his predicament before a burst of automatic fire came in on target, blowing him away.