Yeah, he appreciated his fighting buddies in all the armed services. And he mourned with every American soldier and patriot their sacrifices made in the name of honor and duty, words that meant something to Mack Bolan.
Bolan equally appreciated the impossible task these guys had been saddled with: trying to maintain a peace where none of the participants wanted peace.
With the Marines' role in Lebanon restricted wisely, Bolan thought — from taking any real, active role in the country's civil war, the U.S. fighting men had been unable to be anything but targets, and Bolan felt a sense of relief when they were at last ordered to pull out of a no-win situation.
Now was the time to payback for all that, with interest, to a summit of cannibal greed heads who schemed to cut up Lebanon like a piece of rotten pie once their slaughtering stopped.
And Strakhov.
Bolan anticipated getting the KGB'S Mr. Big in his sights and canceling a blood feud and a top savage that had both been around too damn long.
Bolan hoped he would learn the truth about Zoraya at Zahle, too.
The village clung to the mountainside exactly as it had that morning. But as the Mossad undercover man steered the military vehicle down the incline approach, Bolan could see that his hit on the Syrian base had caused even more damage than he'd had time to register before cutting out the first time.
What had been the two rows of tanks and rockets were now nothing but charred, mangled, indiscernible metal remains.
The guardhouse that had abutted the gate had not fared much better, nor had the gate itself been repaired.
Soldiers were working on filling the crater in the middle of the road, made when Bolan had blown his way out.
As Bolan guessed, the security around the base had been tripled at least, both as a result of his previous attack and because of the summit meeting taking place.
Bolan and the driver kept their eyes straight ahead when the jeep stopped for a new officer of the guard to personally check Fouad Zakir's credentials.
The officer waved the vehicle through to the guards farther inside the grounds and those men stepped back, giving the Executioner clear sailing onto the base, which would very soon be a leveled death camp.
Weizmann had said he might be able to delay the Israeli air strike, nothing more. That meant Bolan could expect it within the next half hour, and once Israeli fighter planes started swooping from the sky to rain hellfire on this scene, he knew he would have to get out of there pronto.
The vehicle rolled forward onto the base.
The sentries closed ranks after it.
Like the jaws of a closing trap.
17
Uri Weizmann had just begun searching the second of three drawers in General Chehab's desk. Lieutenant Franjieh, the uniformed Lebanese military police officer standing attentively at the door, backed himself to the wall alongside the door of the unoccupied office, his 9mm Browning Hi-Power raised defensively.
"Someone is coming."
Weizmann forgot about the desk.
He had hoped to find corroborating evidence to what he already had, but what he had would do.
The Mossad man and Franjieh, the MP, had gained access easily enough into this Phalangist building on the outskirts of Beirut.
Weizmann cross-drew his HandK.380 automatic and held his ground.
A key turned in the lock. The handle twisted downward. The door opened.
The office staff had gone to lunch.
Weizmann's Mossad ID had admitted him and Franjieh this far without incident.
General Chehab stepped into the office. The Lebanese officer froze when he saw Weizmann. The general's swarthy complexion darkened, the nostrils Chehab stepped all the way into the office and closed the door behind him. Then he saw the Lebanese officer holding the Browning Hi-Power aimed at him.
Chehab glared.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"You are under arrest, General," Weizmann informed him.
"On what charge?"
"I'll let Lieutenant Franjieh take care of that. He's all yours, Lieutenant. Get your men in here."
Chehab's hands clenched into fists.
"I demand an explanation. A couple of hours ago, Uri, you and I sat in a pub sharing a drink. Now this..."
"Correct. We also sat in a car, if you remember, and a man we spoke with suggested the car we sat in might have been the same one seen leaving the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' base at Biskinta last night. That was when the Disciples of Allah obtained blueprints of the presidential palace in their plot to assassinate the president.
"Well, our friend... my friend... was right, General. We traced every unmarked government care using Mossad and Lieutenant Franjieh's combined resources. The vehicle assigned to you, General, is the only one unaccounted for through routine investigation.
"And before Bolan and I separated this morning, he gave me the blueprints retrieved from Biskinta. Those plans have been chemically processed. Your fingerprints were all over them, General."
"A trick," the Arab snarled. "Why should you believe Bolan? His own kind want him dead."
"And why should we trust you?" Weizmann retorted. "You are commander of a government force, yet have your own office and are saluted by the men here at a Phalangist base. We know it all, you see. The military dictatorship you envisioned with yourself in command, militarily conquering and driving out the Syrian and PLO forces with a last-ditch counteroffensive with or without the Israelis' help.
"But you needed a spark to ignite more fighting among people already sick and tired of it, so you decided the stakes were high enough to arrange to get those blueprints to the Disciples of Allah. You planned to make damn sure you were nowhere near the presidential palace when that squad drove into it with a suitcase of dynamite and made the hit for you. You reasoned that because it would be a suicide mission for them, you'd be covered. Face it, General. It's finished. Your dream is over."
"And what do you intend to do with me, Jewish pig? I am a powerful man in this country. I could have all of these charges dismissed."
"That's up to the Lebanese," Weizmann growled. "I did my part to pay back a friend. All right, Lieutenant, take him away."
Lieutenant Franjieh blinked twice and squeezed the trigger. The Browning in his fist high-powered a tunnel right through the skull of General Chehab, pointblank, to splatter the wall with the life forces of the treacherous general.
"Justice is served," Franjieh said softly and holstered his pistol.
* * *
They had taken Katz to a squat clay farmhouse set in the wood line beyond sight of the road. The building was accessible only by a winding drive that ran smoothly until it met the shell-marked country road that led back to Acre and the Israel-Lebanon border. The dwelling was one of thousands of such nondescript structures that dotted the countryside.
The two CIA men, Collins and Randolph, had finished their interrogation of Katz more than an hour before.
"And now that you are through detaining me, I trust I am free to go?" Katz groused in his best experience-honed air of command.
He started toward the door.
The Israeli officer, Colonel Lenz, blocked Katz's path from the room, unfurnished except for the wooden chair where they had sat the Phoenix Force leader while they interrogated him; the scene had been like a bad imitation of the third degree in some old police film.
The only difference was that these guys played for keeps.
"I have my orders to detain you here until further notice," Lenz barked, a hand on the butt of a revolver holstered at his hip.
Collins, the Company man who had done most of the questioning, snapped, "You don't think you get off that easy, Colonel. You may be big news in the States but here you're just a guy who used Mossad for your own ends. And I'll bet they've got something to say about that. Stay put."
They left Katz with a guard standing at the door and two more sentries outside the window.
Two Mossad agents then came in to question hi
m for another hour. Katz stonewalled and gave them just enough to impress and interest them. But the Phoenix Force boss did not kid himself, either.
He had been one of their own kind for too long. They would consider torturing him for what he knew about Bolan, and quite likely with the blessing of Katz's own government.
The Mossad interrogators from Tel Aviv left Katz alone again. He knew they would be standing in the hallway on the other side of the door discussing, probably with a superior, the advisability of torture. Katz recalled spurts of electric current to the genitals as being a particular favorite in the Mideast with Mossad and everyone else.
He exploded into action.
He powerhoused from the chair in a blur of movement that belied the thickening waist of late middle age. He aimed at the guard by the door and before the man could shout any sort of warning, Katz crossarmed the sentry's rifle away with the powerfully swung prosthetic arm. The ex-Mossad agent caught the guard with a blow sharp enough to make the Israeli soldier unconscious for a while, but not to kill him.
Katz knelt and snatched the man's holstered pistol and rifle. Slinging the rifle across his shoulder, he took a running dive at the window of the room, his arms crossed over his face. He kept his body loose as he hurled himself through the panes, shattering the glass into a hundred fragments.
He landed smack into the two sentries posted outside the farmhouse. All three tumbled down in a tangled heap.
The guards were mere youngsters.
A seasoned fighter like Katz took them by the numbers, one elbow backward into a forehead, then the butt of the pistol snapped down to bop the other sentry on the temple.
Both men fell to the ground unconscious.
Katz hustled away toward a motorcycle parked alongside two unmarked vehicles behind the building. He figured the bike was there comfort running pieces of physical evidence gathered from interrogations at the Mossad house.
Katz heard shouts coming from the shattered window behind him — the Mossad men demanding him to halt.
The hell with them.
He ran past the unmarked cars first, glanced in hopefully, but saw no keys in the ignitions. He hit the jackpot with the motorcycle.
Katz leaped onto the bike from behind, heeled up the kickstand and kicked the machine to life. He turned around and triggered off three quick rounds at the guys in the window who had been about to fire on him.
He aimed purposely high, and the Mossad men ducked back inside long enough for Katz to do a wheelie out of there, feeding the bike so much power. He roared down the driveway before additional personnel around the "farmhouse" could be alerted to what was happening.
The motorbike whizzed along the smooth surface of the driveway.
Katz knew the difficult part would be when he hit that shell-destroyed stretch of road leading back into Beirut. Right now he had no trouble controlling the handlebar accelerator with the prosthetic device on his right hand.
He thought he had a good chance. He didn't need to use the hand brake on that same side. If he had to stop he'd use the foot brake. But if the ride was too rough.... He dismissed the thought. He only had to get around the first bend in the road. They would be after him within seconds and would easily overtake him in those cars.
But Katz only intended to clear the bend, then ditch the motorcycle and cut into the rugged terrain. He'd lose them on foot in the undulating hill region and find other transportation.
He had no intention of rotting away under Mossad interrogation while Mack Bolan fought alone less than two hours away.
Katz had gotten Mack into Beirut, and he would damn well give everything he had to help the big guy get out.
He heard car engines waking up in the distance behind him and the popping reports of gunfire after him. But no bullets from the direction of the house found their mark. He reached the end of the driveway and leaned into the turn, feeding the speeding machine more gas instead of less for the curve onto the main road.
He had to make it.
* * *
Bob Collins crouched out of sight.
A Syrian supply convoy lumbered onto the base at Zahle.
When the trucks had passed, the CIA man returned to his prone position on a knoll overlooking the base. He focused his binoculars, waiting for something to happen.
Collins had parked his vehicle in the brush off the road. He was armed with a Colt.45 automatic.
As he had feared, the interrogation of Yakov Katzenelenbogen had yielded nothing, so Collins and Randolph had decided to play a long shot on intel Mossad fed them for coming in to help on the Katz thing.
The two CIA men had left the clay house where Katz had been questioned and started north back into the hellzone, their Company authorization passing them through Israeli forces happy to be rid of them.
Collins and Randolph had started toward Zahle, but only Collins made it alive.
They had driven over a land mine planted in the road, left by withdrawing Druse forces. The right front tire had touched the explosive, which tossed the agents' vehicle onto its side.
Collins had rolled free through his open window and for a moment thought his partner had made it, too.
Randolph had not made it.
Collins had walked around to the other side of the car and had seen that the force had ripped away most of the right side of Also's body into an awful palpitating red gristle.
Collins had turned his eyes away, puked, then continued on until another means of transportation — a car he hotwired and drove — brought him to Zahle.
He raised the glasses and scanned the base again, shaking his head at the loss of his friend.
Also was dead, no rhyme or reason to it all, and Collins was surprised that he felt nothing yet but a kind of emptiness over the death of a guy who had become sort of a brother.
Collins had pushed on to Zahle where Mossad said a summit of terrorist insurgent factions had been called by none other than Major General Greb Strakhov of the KGB. It was probably taking place down there right now.
Collins had a hunch that Mack Bolan would not miss a chance like this to take on the eradication of the terrorist camp. The CIA agent also knew the air strike would descend on that base and would hit sometime within the next twenty minutes. And if Bolan is down there, he'll be caught right in the middle of it.
Collins in his tour of duty had seen what the Israeli Air Force could do to a target. And if the air strike did not get Bolan... Collins would.
Because a good agent named Also Randolph was dead and Collins was mad as hell about that.
And because those were Collins's orders.
Terminate Bolan on sight.
The CIA agent panned the base and the vehicles appearing with the principals of this emergency summit, like the jeep carrying Fouad Zakir, the Druse biggie and his militiamen bodyguards.
No sign of The Executioner.
Yet.
Come on, Bolan, thought Collins from his place of concealment overlooking the camp. Where the hell are you? Let's have some action.
18
The driver of Fouad Zakir's jeep stopped in front of the Syrian headquarters building.
Zakir punched Bolan in the shoulder from the back seat and brusquely gave an order in Arabic. He pointed to the building where Bolan knew he would find Greb Strakhov.
Bolan did not need a translation this time, either.
The Druse commander wanted his "militiaman" to accompany him inside. That made sense.
Bolan knew the factions Strakhov had called for a summit maintained an uneasy working alliance with each other, but no one confused it for trust.
The bloodspilling would continue between these groups after the imminent fall of the Arab Christian president's government to the insurgents. Unless Bolan hit them now; a head-shed hit to make sure. Then the Israeli Air Force could level what was left and Bolan would be sure.
First, though, he had to find Zoraya. If she was on this base; if she was held captive or... if she belonged th
ere.
If. Maybe she wasn't there at all.
Bolan had to find out before he made his collective head hit and... no, that would not be easy at all, even to a master of role camouflage.
The "militiaman" stepped from the passenger side of the jeep without another glance at the driver. Bolan made sure to position himself toward the rear of the vehicle so he would be facing Zakir's back. The terrorist boss debarked, snapped an order at the driver, then turned to march directly into the Syrian headquarters.
The jeep pulled away.
Bolan followed Zakir.
The Arab did not notice the ill fit of Bolan's uniform or if he did he did not care. And that made sense, too. The insurgents were a barely organized, ragtag force at best.
Bolan quickly eyeballed the place in the moments before he and Zakir left the merciless midday sun for the relative coolness of the same headquarters building Bolan had penetrated in blacksuit a few hours ago.
None of the Syrian regulars or Russian officers that Bolan and Zakir passed made any connection between the Druse bodyguard and the hell-bringer who had delivered these terrorists a taste of real terror.
Bolan's olive complexion, the high cheekbones and firm, squarish jaw contributed to the effect.
The Syrians and Russians saw what Bolan the role-camouflage expert wanted them to see; they even expected a Druse gunman to wear an almost comically ill-fitting uniform. The Druse gunmen were considered bumpkins and worse by the comparatively well-disciplined Syrian army and their Soviet advisors.
Bolan's quick daylight scan of the inner compound around the building confirmed his first impressions from the predawn hit.
If they had a prisoner here, if they had Zoraya, she would be kept and interrogated in one of two places, since Strakhov would not have the HQ building to himself as he had when he brought Masudi here for questioning.
If they have Zoraya, she's in the HQ basement or over in that smaller building that looks like an office annex, Bolan thought. They won't question her in the ground or second level because Strakhov doesn't want the Syrians to know anything he could torture out of her. And they won't take her to the barracks buildings for the same reason, but to the low, sprawling building five hundred feet to the north of HQ. There would be more foot traffic in and out of a building like that, with its Syrian battalion emblem on the door, unless Strakhov has ordered the area cleared of Syrian personnel and has Zoraya in there.
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