Beirut Payback

13

Bolan abandoned the Syrian jeep well before he reached the city. Twice on foot he dodged military patrols — one Syrian, the other Druse — and it was only because of the ever shifting lines that he was able to move at all.

At a farmhouse he offered a Muslim family more Lebanese pounds than they probably saw in a year for the rusty Saab that had only one fender and no lights. They were glad to take the money and Bolan took the car, continuing on into Beirut.

The address Zoraya had given Katz was in Hay alSalloum, an area generally under the control of the Shiite militia group called Amal.

Centuries of punishing white sun and winds had razored across the neighborhood like the breath of Hades. The area, which had also fallen victim to war, was not very different from the section where Zoraya lived near the Avenue des Frangais, except that Hay alSalloum appeared to be a more commercial district. But it was every bit as closed up and deserted as that corner of the hellground where Bolan had last met Zoraya.

Today's shelling of the city had begun when Bolan got within two blocks of the place his map of Beirut indicated he would find Zoraya and perhaps the child, Selim.

Thoughts of the woman and boy left Bolan's mind when the bombardment from Druse artillery in the mountains resumed, aimed at the Christian sectors of the city and government positions. Yet Bolan knew war well enough to realize the shelling would be taken as a signal by all troops and gunmen in the city that the war was on for another day. The brief respite of the morning was over. The killing could resume.

Bolan parked his car and continued warily on foot, his combat blacksuit, Beretta and Big Thunder again making him appear no more out of place than he had during the hours of darkness.

The streets and avenues streamed with pedestrians, civilians, toting luggage and children, hurrying to be gone.

Bolan passed them going in the opposite direction when he heard moans and tortured pleas for help from an alley.

He paused and glanced in to see two Shiite militiamen tormenting one of their own, a veiled Muslim woman.

One of the soldiers laughed and cruelly squeezed and twisted the hapless woman's breasts through her clothes. The other Shiite forgot his grenade launcher for a moment and fumbled to unbutton the fly on his uniform with one hand. With the other he reached to pull off the woman's veil.

Bolan barely stopped. Big Thunder roared twice and two would-be rapists were deposited headless amid the bombed-out rubble.

He continued on. The woman hurried away.

The address Katz had passed on to him as the rendezvous point with Zoraya turned out to be an auto-repair garage, the metal doors closed.

Bolan tried the handle of a door set into the business front alongside the garage opening, and this portal opened inward.

The street was full of civilians, not soldiers. The gunmen of the different factions engaged one another blocks away, the sounds of the shooting muted by rows of bombed-out buildings and others like the garage that had somehow remained untouched thus far.

Bolan soundlessly closed the door behind him with his heel. Icy eyes and a cold Beretta fanned the gloom. He discerned rusted-out hulks of cars on blocks, stripped of parts over the years.

There was nothing else except a table and a dim lightbulb. Then Bolan noticed a djellaba-robed Arab who stood tentatively watching the fearsome combat figure approach him.

Another small business chewed up and spit out by the ravages of war.

"Yes, effendi, may I be of service?" The Arab's eyes took in Bolan's weapons fearfully.

"You address me in English," Bolan noted. "I am the one you expect. Where is Zoraya?"

Relief shone in the old man's eyes, then reverted to paranoia again as he glanced cautiously back in the direction of the door.

"You were not followed?"

"There are no government soldiers behind me."

"Bah! We have as much to fear from Amal and the Druse!" the old man spit.

He walked over and locked the street door, then returned and spryly stepped up onto the table.

He used a pocketknife to pry open a break that looked like nothing more than the juncture between ceiling and wall from where Bolan stood. The old man tugged. A ceiling panel angled down to reveal some wooden steps leading up into an attic.

The man gestured.

"If you please, effendi. I will remain down here and keep watch. Zoraya knows the signal in the event of... unexpected company." Bolan acknowledged this but did not drop his wariness of the man. He climbed onto the table and up those steps.

He emerged into the secret attic space ready to blast back at any trap waiting for him.

No trap.

Zoraya waited for him.

She had been sitting on a low bed, which, with a chair and overturned orange crate for a table, were the only pieces of furniture in the slant-roofed little place. A high window in one end of the attic wall let in sunlight marred by rising clouds of battle from a neighborhood nearby.

Zoraya stood and approached Bolan with a small sound of relief and happiness.

Bolan emerged fully into the attic. The hidden entrance to the room closed up after him.

He holstered the Beretta and took Zoraya in his arms. They hugged each other like dear friends who had parted and never expected to see each other again. There was nothing sexual, but no way could Bolan the man not be aware of the physical charms of this darkhaired Arab beauty.

She did not stop hugging him for long moments.

"I... thought I had lost you," she whispered, "as I lost Chaim! Soldiers came after you left me with Selim at Biskinta ... a force of Syrians, Russian advisors with them.... You made me promise to let nothing happen to the little one.... I wanted to stay, but... they were searching the area. They fired on us as we drove away."

"You did right," he told her. "The man downstairs. Can he be trusted?" She nodded against his shoulder.

"He is my uncle. He loved my brothers dearly and now he hates the Druse militia for what they did... for the murder of Adli and Aziz. He hides and protects me here... There is as much rape as killing now." Bolan remembered the action he'd halted in the alley before arriving here.

"I'm glad you're safe. Where's Selim?"

Zoraya sat back down on the bed.

"There is the good news. The government has an agency for exactly such situations: children separated from their parents and the like. I took Selim there first thing this morning when they opened and did not leave until I had their assurance that they would ascertain the whereabouts of the little one's parents. They were displaced during the fighting." Bolan felt a weight of responsibility lift from his shoulders. He straddled the wooden chair next to the bed and faced Zoraya.

"I'm glad to hear that. And I appreciate your getting word to me the way you did through Chaim's uncle."

"I had to tell Chaim's control officer about General Strakhov at Zahle and the Disciples of Allah in case you did not return. And... Chaim's partner told me more about you, Mack Bolan. They call you The Executioner."

"What else did they tell you?"

"Chaim's uncle has been detained for questioning regarding your presence here and how you got into Lebanon."

"And what are your orders from Chaim's partner?" She held eye contact with him.

"To report the moment you contact me."

"And your uncle?"

"My uncle knows nothing of any of this. Mossad cooperates with your Central Intelligence Agency. They must try to stop you. But I had heard of The Executioner before this. Your name is legend, you see, even in such a wasteland as this, Mack Bolan."

"And now?"

"I am your friend," she replied without hesitation. "I knew you would return; that you would not die in Biskinta."

"Or Zahle," he added dryly. He stood up, reached inside his blacksuit and sat next to her on the edge of the bed. He unfolded the blueprints retrieved during the battle at the Iranian base and spread the plans out on the blanket. "I need you to translate something for me, Zoraya." He directed her attention to the Arabic lettering along the bottom of the sheet of paper.

She read it, then looked up with question marks in those Mediterranean eyes.

"These... are floor plans of the presidential palace at Baabda."

Bolan refolded the blueprints.

"That clinches it, then. I've got to contact Mossad with this and I'll need your help."

"I will do anything to help stop this war, as I told you. But Mossad... are they not your enemies, too?"

"I've got an angle on that. Tell Chaim's partner that you've got me and I wish to talk with him. Tell him I've got information on an assassination plot, but start the conversation off by saying he's not to let on to whoever he's with. Most likely he'll be with a Company man and the moment they know it's me they'll try to trace the call. Even if Chaim's partner agrees to meet me alone, the CIA wouldn't let him. They want me real bad."

"Because of what you will do?"

"Because of what I've done and what they think I am. Can you do this for me?"

"Of course. You will wait here?" He nodded and watched her lower the hidden stairs.

"Be careful, Zoraya."

She nodded, then left him, closing the partition behind her.

Bolan stretched out on the bed, then palmed the Beretta in his right hand.

This would be a good spot for an ambush, in which case he had read Zoraya one hundred percent wrong. It was a chance he had to take.

He rested his head on the pillow, relishing these few moments away from the fray. He appreciated the opportunity to recharge his inner batteries for what stretched ahead.

Zoraya returned minutes later and reclosed the secret opening.

The distant sounds of war could have been a thousand miles away.

"Chaim's partner will meet you in ninety minutes at a pub off the Avenue des Frangais."

She recited an address that Bolan committed to memory.

"Such establishments, you see, do a wonderful business at times such as these. Those who cannot escape the city drink while they wait to live or die. He will be there at ten-thirty." She briefly described what the Mossad agent told her he would be wearing. "He says he will recognize you."

"I bet he will. What's his name?"

"Uri Weizmann. He and Chaim were very close professionally and as friends. You can trust him, Mack, believe me."

"Thanks, Zoraya."

She paused, then said, "There is... something you can do for me in return, Mack Bolan."

He gazed up at her from the bed.

"Tell me."

"If you would just... hold me," she said quietly. "I feel... so alone. Just hold me, Mack... please... nothing more..."

Bolan read the sad, lonely look in her eyes and extended his arms.

She stretched out against him atop the covers of the bed, resting tousled midnight hair into the crook of his arm. No, there was not one thing erotic about it at all, only a need for the touch of someone humane and good to somehow balance out everything else and, yes, Bolan needed that, too. They held each other for a long time in the solitude of the attic far away from the war.

They comforted each other and reaffirmed themselves as decent human beings who could care and share gentleness.