At the opposite end of the block a jeep screeched to a stop.
Bolan saw a.50-caliber machine gun mounted on a swivel in the rear of the jeep, manned by a bearded Phalangist soldier.
Bolan and Herzi readied themselves as they ran for the safety of the mouth of the alley across the street.
Bolan thought they would make it.
Then he caught movement several feet away and a small shadow took form.
"A child," Bolan grunted.
He dived toward a little five-year-old in rags who had somehow wandered from nowhere into this killground. Bolan reached the dirt-smudged bundle and fell across the child as a human shield.
The machine gunner in the jeep opened fire on the Druse in the street. The heavy reports hammered Bolan's eardrums and almost smothered the screams and shouts of the dying as .50-caliber slugs leveled the Muslim militiamen like a scythe chopping wheat. The bullets zinged well over Bolan and the child he protected.
There was a lull in the firing. The screaming stopped.
Bolan scrambled for the alley, carrying the boy.
The Executioner only caught a glimpse of the slaughter splashed across the Beirut street amid a swirling cloud of gunsmoke from the machine gun.
Clutching the Uzi, Herzi stepped out from the shadows to better cover Bolan and the boy.
The Phalangists did not see the big warrior in blacksuit in the gloom.
Bolan heard them good-naturedly congratulating themselves.
Then more movement came from the opposite corner of the block. At least a dozen Muslim fighters and other combat uniforms Bolan recognized as PLO charged the Lebanese army jeep, raining fire on the Phalangists as they ran.
Herzi turned to track his Uzi on the new danger when the machine gunner in the jeep opened fire, spraying the alley in a stitching cross fire.
Bolan heard the thwack of bursting flesh and a scream. Instinctively he knew what had happened even before he turned around. Herzi had caught a round in the chest. The nightwarrior continued to shield the kid from gunfire as he watched the Israeli stumble.
Bolan raced to the fallen Israeli and grabbed his shirt collar. The hell-blitzer pulled all three of them, the Mossad man and the Arab child-out of the line of fire.
Herzi collapsed against a wall in the alley.
Bolan looked at the guy, whose chest was a bubbling dark horror. Herzi coughed blood and lifted his eyes to Bolan, who crouched beside him, cradling the boy in his left arm. The three figures huddled in the narrow street while the battle raged around them between the crazed factions.
Bolan clenched his teeth in anger as he palmed the AutoMag. A good man lay dying and Bolan could not do a goddamn thing to save him. No one could with a wound like that.
"Y-you will have to carry on alone." The mortally wounded Israeli's voice could barely be heard above the fighting. "Zoraya... trust her..."
Bolan's gut constricted with rage and a pain of regret. He had brought this young man to die out here tonight.
"Chaim, dammit." The man on the ground coughed more blood, darker this time, as he struggled to touch Bolan's shoulder. "You are not to blame... I understand the importance of your mission... T-tell my uncle..." And Chaim Herzi died.
The fighting in the street became more intense.
A rush of movement came from the alley entrance a few feet away. A street fighter with PLO insignia, toting a smoking AK-47, charged headlong for the opposite end of the alley to outflank the Phalangists. Then he saw Bolan and the child and the dead man in the shadows. The guerrilla paused in midstride with a grunt of surprise and started to swing the AK in Bolan's direction.
From where he knelt beside the slain Mossad agent, Bolan twisted slightly, not releasing the child, and tracked up the AutoMag to trigger a round.
The PLO killer's skull exploded in a dark cloud and the terrorist reeled backward.
Two Phalangist militiamen appeared in the dimness at the opposite end of the alley. They also had the bright idea of outflanking their enemy. When they detected movement and shooting in the gloom around Bolan, they opened fire immediately with U.S. supplied M-16 assault rifles.
Bolan propelled himself and his young Arab charge, still clutched tight against his chest, away from the target area.
Projectiles razored the space occupied by Bolan only seconds before, the heavy-caliber slugs pulverizing the walls, spraying the alley with a cloud of chips. The lifeless body of Chaim Herzi shuddered from the burst.
Bolan fired two more rounds, evenly spaced, accurate enough to blow away the two Phalangists, who flopped over as if yanked from their feet by invisible wires. These two would massacre no more refugees.
Bolan made a dash for safe ground. He passed the sprawled militiamen and leaned against the wall at a cross street, slamming a fresh clip of 240-grain headbusters into the butt of the AutoMag.
The impressive handgun came as close to a rifle as any handgun could, the ammunition produced by marrying a .44 revolver bullet to a cut-down 7.62mm NATO rifle cartridge case, capable of enough velocity to tear through the solid metal of an automobileengine block. When the hand cannon roared, the enemy stayed down.
After reloading the AutoMag, Bolan put his arm around the boy once more.
He remained remarkably quiet, probably too exhausted, in shock, but now the little guy lifted a smudged face to the man who held him and cried out something plaintive in Arabic.
Bolan knew how the kid felt. He felt like crying out in anguish himself.
The misery had to stop.
Bolan held the future of this country in his armspart of the future. He hugged the scared little child tighter and murmured comforting sounds, close to the small tousled head, with paternal strength. The child uttered a few more Arabic words and by the gaunt took of his cheeks, Bolan guessed that he was hungry.
Then the little tyke closed his eyes and drifted back into an exhausted half sleep, quiet as could be. Something closed around Bolan's heart as he looked at the kid's troubled features. Even at this tender age the boy knew how to stay the pangs of hunger-sleep.
The nightfighter leaned around the corner of the alley. He saw some activity at the far end of the block, but on this side the night and The Executioner had the street to themselves.
The firefight tapered off in the next street over, the .50-caliber gun silenced. Bolan heard short bursts of small-arms fire every few moments, then nothing from that direction. He took a deep breath, the acrid smell of gun smoke stinging his nostrils.
Diplomacy had obviously failed in Lebanon. Too many had suffered for too long: innocents like the homeless waif that Bolan rescued; Arab Christian and Muslim alike, exploited by power brokers who sacrificed the lives of others for their own obsessive greed; and now his friend Yakov joined the ranks of the suffering, bereaved of his nephew. It had to stop.
The next generation, the real future of this troubled land, must have the opportunity to grow in a stable society, free of the threat of war. Then, perhaps, the population could strive to reach full potential instead of slaughtering each other until the gaps of hate and difference become unbreachable. Direct, positive action could do it, applied with proper control and audacity.
Bolan-style.
3
The Executioner knew that his present was immutably severed from his past.
And although, in blessed moments, his life touched those of his fearless friends — the men of Phoenix and Able, Grimaldi, Turrin, Kurtzman and those lovely women, Smiley, Toby and their associates — his future was committed to acting under his own command. He was answerable to no one and to nothing except his understanding, born in flames, of justice. There would always be room in his campaign, of course, for his allies.
Dire events had conspired once more — relentlessly and inevitably, it now seemed to Bolan — to impel him onto this lonely odyssey. Bereft of his legions, he accepted his due stoically, determined to pursue his destiny to the end. He knew this war was really his and his alone. Why? Because his
war was a simple matter: he would avenge to the last drop of blood the death of April Rose.
In the States, Yakov Katzenelenbogen routinely received intel reports from the Mideast, considered of possible interest to his ex-commander by contacts Katz maintained in Mossad.
When the Phoenix Force boss received news that Greb Strakhov was in Beirut, Katz immediately processed the item to Bolan via one of their standard floating contacts maintained since Bolan went outlaw.
Bolan had agreed: they could not afford to let such an opportunity pass to strike at the top-echelon member of the Soviet terror machine, the man at the head of those who had killed his beloved April.
Katz covered Bolan's travel to the Mideast under anonymous Israeli diplomatic immunity. Bolan's weapons and munitions had been shipped by air, hidden in crates of Tel Aviv — bound machine parts, with Mossad's Security Blue authorization, which meant no one checked them.
In Israel, Bolan had retrieved his hardware without any problems — there are no gun-control laws in Israel — and Katz had accompanied the Executioner as far as the Lebanese border.
There, an Israeli military patrol took "the mystery man from the States" into the war-torn Lebanese countryside for Bolan's rendezvous with Chaim Herzi, Katz's nephew.
At that moment, at a military airfield near the Israeli port of Acre, Katz was waiting for word from Bolan or Herzi on the mission.
Bolan did not look forward to telling Katz of his nephew's fate.
Bolan gripped the Lebanese child to his left side, Big Thunder in his right fist, fanning the night, ready to kill. With no more than a whisper, the nightscorcher in black and his human bundle moved deeper into a city that pulsed like something about to explode, taking everything and everyone with it.
He would find two people amid this rubble of war.
Strakhov.
And the woman, Zoraya.
The Executioner had come to Beirut.
And he would give new meaning to the word Death.
Bolan had long ago accepted that his was a life destined to be War Everlasting.
In a very real sense, that is the lot of all civilized human beings. Life is a war of ideas, ideologies and actions, the conflict drawing the line between good and evil within ourselves and the society in which we live.
The difference is that Mack Bolan is a soldier, and as such he puts himself on the front lines, where wars are stark and real and lives are lost in the conflict.
It had been a long walk through such hellfire without letup since the days when a young infantryman from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, found himself dubbed The Executioner for his successful sniper missions behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War. The fact that Bolan was also nicknamed Sergeant Mercy for his compassionate treatment of Vietnamese civilians often escaped media mention and still does.
Bolan's life altered dramatically when he received an emergency leave to return home to bury his parents and sister, victims of Mafia violence.
Worthwhile as he considered his work in Nam, the jungle-war specialist made a gut-wrenching decision, considering his military background and dedication to selfless duty. Bolan gave everything he had to anything he undertook. He was more than a good soldier. His record attests to the fact that in his sniper penetration missions, Bolan was the best. No one could match him in tracking, identifying and terminating his target.
But neither was Bolan a man who could bury his family, then turn and walk away when the killers and their employers roamed free. Other good men would carry on his work in the jungles of Nam.
The Executioner could not return to the other side of the world while an all-powerful evil cancer claimed his family and festered from within at the vitals of his country. Bolan did consider himself a patriot, and he was much too American to turn his back on a threat like that.
The Army-trained Executioner declared a wholly illegal war against the Mafia. Bolan used all his Special Forces training in a war of attrition to keep the cannibals at bay before it was too late.
At first Bolan was consumed by thoughts of vengeance.
But he quickly realized the danger inherent in such an attitude. So he reassessed his feelings carefully, discovering that he could provide the hard edge between the civilized and the animals in the street.
Bolan saw no justice in the halls of justice, so he personally delivered, the tab to Mafia slimeballs for their lifetimes of sin.
Bolan accomplished the impossible.
The Executioner brought the vile behemoth to its knees in thirty-eight audacious campaigns, in the process doing what law-enforcement agencies had been unable to do.
This led to a top-secret government pardon with Bolan "dying" and being reborn with a new identity Colonel John Phoenix, head of America's covert antiterrorist wars.
The enemy had not changed, as far as Bolan, or Phoenix, was concerned.
The terrorist network tried to do to the world what the Mob had tried with a country.
Now, though, Mack Bolan was on the run.
A lone outsider waging a solo war for justice in a hostile world.
After twenty-four successful antiterrorist missions, Bolan witnessed the slaying of the woman he loved during an assault on his command center.
He found and terminated the KGB mole, planted at White House level, responsible for planning the attack. Bolan canceled the Russian ploy to sabotage America's intel apparatus from within.
But an unavoidable result was the blowing of the elaborate cover of John Phoenix and his government-sanctioned missions with his combat units, Phoenix Force and Able Team.
The public, the Mafia, the KGB, — the world — now knew that Mack Bolan, The Executioner, was alive.
Especially the KGB.
The death of April Rose was permanently seared on Bolan's soul. April died stopping a bullet meant for Bolan. He owed it to her to keep on.
He owed it to himself.
But Bolan could never again "come in from the cold" as he had during his Phoenix period.
Phoenix Force and Able Team continued to play vital parts in America's antiterrorist operations, but Bolan preferred not to complicate the lives of his buddies by contacting them.
His past was now wired by the CIA, FBI, NSA — the whole acronymic litany of intelligence agencies around the world. Those groups feared the lone warrior to be a security risk because of his unsanctioned activity.
The orders to all agents in the field: Terminate Bolan with extreme prejudice.
The Executioner had shifted operations to a new target: the Soviet spy-terror network, the KGB. The real force behind the action that killed April Rose.
Same breed as the Mafia, sure.
Cannibals that had to be stopped.
Bolan's Phoenix period made him realize that in centering his efforts on individual acts of world terrorism, he had concentrated on tentacles, not the heart of the beast. The principal enemy was a force of seven hundred thousand agents worldwide, specializing in subversion, oppression and terror. Its aim: world domination. Its name: the KGB.
Bolan knew from hard-fact intel that everything from the attempted assassination of the Pope to international debate over cruise missiles could be traced to the headquarters of the KGB'S First Chief Directorate in Moscow.
Just as he understood during his Mafia wars that the majority of Italians had nothing but hatred toward the Brotherhood, Bolan understood, too, that the Russian people and the general civilian populace under dictatorial rule in Soviet-occupied countries were not always to be confused with their oppressors.
Major General Greb Strakhov was the main focus of Bolan's KGB war.
Strakhov. The KGB'S most powerful official.
Bolan had killed Strakhov's only child, his son, Kyril, during the Executioner's mission to steal a Russian superhelicopter in Afghanistan.
Ridding the world of Bolan became an obsession with Strakhov.
War Everlasting for Mack Bolan, right.
And the citizens of Beirut had it no better.
>
4
The Executioner tracked deeper into the horror, traversing battle-ruined neighborhoods barely controlled by rival militias and roving bands of gunmen.
Bolan knew from experience that urban warfare is the soldier's most dangerous hellground. The fields of fire were restricted, clearly limited by walls, sharp architectural lines making hidden observation difficult and stretches of consistent color making undetected movement hard, even for a hellgrounder of Bolan's savvy and expertise. And there was the ever present danger from unlimited positions above-each street a killground deathtrap.
The city was a no-man's-land of jittery shooting, explosions in the night, smoke and licking tongues of flame.
A frightened city under siege.
Bolan kept to dark streets and alleys with the little Arab kid he toted.
The nightrunner avoided the presence of battling factions during his hazardous penetration. He passed some civilians, but they hurried on with eyes averted from yet another man with a gun in the city of death.
The shelling from the mountains had not resumed, for which Bolan was thankful.
He had no time to slow down for news of the fighting or to contact Yakov across the border.
He crouched in deepest shadow in the rubble of a bombed-out store and let trained patience take over as he made a careful scan of the run-down apartment building where Chaim Herzi had told Bolan he would find the Arab informant.
The nightprober eyed the area, his gaze encompassing the entire scene, watching for movement out of his peripheral vision.
He detected no military or armed presence in or around the building.
He unleathered Big Thunder again, lugging the child as he broke cover in a silent dash forward. He avoided the front entrance of the building, cutting to an alleyway midway up the block. He approached a flimsy back door, found it locked and kicked his way on through with a minimum of sound.
No one in sight.
He moved up rubble-littered steps to the secondfloor landing and slowed his approach, sacrificing speed for stealth.
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