Beirut Payback

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.

He hugged the graffiti-covered walls where the rotted floorboards would not creak, using a toe to clear the rubble of shattered glass and broken brick and mortar in his way.

He heard a rattle of gunfire in the night a few blocks away, then the rumble of a tank, its throaty blast fiercer than the others.

Inside the building, nothing but a tomblike silence.

And quivers of danger from all around. There would be no sanctuary from the hell storming Beirut tonight.

Not that Bolan wanted any.

He would play this one on the heartbeat. There could be room for planning when he had more to work with, but right now all he had was a target.

Strakhov.

For The Executioner, that was enough.

A low-watt bulb barely illuminated the second-floor corridor.

Bolan made his way to the apartment specified by Chaim Herzi and tapped lightly on the door with the barrel of the AutoMag. Then he stepped well back from the line of possible fire, pressing himself against the wall of the corridor, AutoMag up, ready to kill.

He glanced at the boy still slumbering away in his arms. Keep it up, kid, he thought. He had to be ready to move.

The door creaked inward a few inches.

An Arab woman stood there, a dusky, dark-tressed beauty dressed in a traditional floor-length caftan that did nothing to conceal a well-shaped figure.

She saw Bolan and started to speak in Arabic.

Bolan stopped her with a motion.

She stepped aside. He carried the boy into the apartment. She closed the door and turned to lean against it, studying the man and child with expressive, inquisitive eyes.

"Do you speak English?" Bolan asked.

"You are from Chaim?"

"Are you Zoraya?"

"Yes. Who are you, please?"

"I'd like to see some identification." The beauty flared.

"You dare to demand identification from me in my own home?" Then her eyes softened with concern as she seemed to set aside business for the moment. She stepped forward, instinctively it seemed to Bolan, and plucked the child from Bolan's grasp. "And who is this?" she asked Bolan.

The child and the woman considered each other for a few moments, and some of the distrust ebbed from the little guy's big eyes.

"He needs shelter," Bolan growled. "I don't know what happened to his parents. We've been through a lot getting here.

"He is hungry. He must be fed." The woman turned with the boy and walked into a kitchenette. The apartment contrasted sharply to the rest of the rubble-strewn building complex. The lady kept her home neat and clean, with Spartan furnishings.

Bolan did not holster Big Thunder. He cautiously checked the bathroom and bedroom while the woman prepared food for the child.

Then Bolan holstered the AutoMag. He crossed to a window, noting the apartment was sensibly lighted by a floor lamp that was across the living room from the window.

He parted the draperies a fraction of an inch and glanced up and down the street below Zoraya's window. A camouflage-painted truck with a rocket launcher mounted behind turned the corner past the flames of a trashed car, redeploying to some new position. The fighting would resume. The city trembled with expectation of the violence everyone knew had to come.

While the boy sat on a divan and ate, the woman stepped up to Bolan, extending Lebanese, photo ID for his inspection. The ID backed up her claim that this was her place.

Bolan accepted that.

For now.

"Captain Herzi gave me your address. What do you know about Major General Strakhov?" He sensed a sharp mind weighing it all behind deep eyes that dominated a high-cheekboned face.

"How... do I know I can trust you?" she asked. "Chaim was to come here tonight."

"Chaim is dead." Bolan expected her reaction. He had not missed her reference to the Israeli agent by his first name.

She took it like a bayonet in the gut, a gasp of shock. Bolan could tell by the fleeting look of pain on her face that part of the mind wanted to reject what it heard even as the hurt exploded through her. Then she pulled herself together in a visible effort, holding in everything that wanted to burst out.

"We were lovers," she told Bolan. Her voice quavered.

"I understand. I'm sorry." Bolan told her how Chaim died trying to cover Bolan as he rescued the boy.

"It... was an honorable way to die," Zoraya said softly when she heard it all. "I am no stranger to death."

"I'm moving fast," he told her. "You've sot to tell me. Chaim said you knew something about why Strakhov is in Beirut."

"Strakhov. We will all die because of him."

"Why were you informing to Chaim?" Bolan asked. "Because you loved him?"

"Not at first. Love... came later. I had two brothers. I am Druse. I can see by your eyes that you did not know this. My brothers volunteered for the militia to fight the Israelis and the Lebanese army. Do you know the injustices we Druse have suffered at the hands of this government, and yours?"

"And yet you inform for Mossad. You fell in love with one of their agents."

"Aziz and Adli were slain not by the Israelis or the army," the woman told him. "A Maronite spy was discovered in the squad in which my brothers fought. My brother's officers suspected someone in the squad had arranged it. A ridiculous charge. My brothers were devout servants of Allah and the Druse cause. They were summarily executed, as were the others in the squad. At first, I informed out of anger. Then I began to understand Chaim and what he believed. I understood there were other ways to bring peace. I do not inform to hinder the Druse cause, but to further it. I have never passed information that would result in the wholesale death of my people. I only want to help diffuse this tension. Chaim understood."

"I understand, too. But from what I've seen tonight, Zoraya, you're not doing too well."

"There is no hope," she said with quiet desperation. "Chaim is dead. The dogs of war run wild."

"Strakhov," Bolan prodded gently. "What have you learned about him?"

"Yes, of course. I'm sorry. It is something very high level. Security makes it all very vague. The major general is billeted with the Syrian army at Zahle, less than thirty miles from here. This knowledge in itself is enough to get one killed."

"Chaim mentioned an assassination."

"He told you that? I had not made the connection."

"Zoraya, if it's supposed to happen tonight, perhaps I can stop it."

"I know none of the details. It has all come to me in a very roundabout way, you understand. Something overheard in a crowd, repeated many times before it reached me. You know of the Disciples of Allah?"

"Shiite fanatics," Bolan growled.

"Broke off from the militia because the Amal weren't killing Christians fast enough." The Disciples had been one of two Shiite groups to claim responsibility for the truck-bomb massacre of U.S. Marines at the airport.

"The Disciples of Allah operate from Biskinta, about twenty miles northeast of Beirut," said Zoraya.

Bolan recalled intel from his briefing by an Israeli army officer at the airfield across the border five hours before Bolan penetrated Lebanon.

"Biskinta. The Iranians control that area."

Zoraya nodded.

"The Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Volunteers in the war against Israel. The Iranians are sworn to fight and die for their oppressed Shiite brethren around the world. Fanatics, yes. The Iranians supplied the Disciples with the explosives that killed your Marines."

The little Arab boy had finished wolfing down his meal.

Bolan crossed the room for another look out the window while Zoraya got a blanket from a closet and wrapped the child in it.

Nothing moved in the darkness of the street.

Bolan heard Zoraya ask the boy some questions in Arabic in a tender, motherly tone, but the little guy's eyelids drooped shut before his tousled head touched the arm of the couch.

Zoraya returned to the man in the blacksuit.

"I fear our little one is still too afraid to speak. I cannot get him to tell me his name. But he should sleep for hours."

"Thanks for your help."

"I could not do otherwise. But now... there is your mission." Bolan found himself pacing, itching for action.

"I've got Shiite fanatics, Biskinta and an assassination. What else, Zoraya? Whose assassination? The president of Lebanon?"

"I do not know. I am sorry."

The warrior forced himself to stop pacing. He thought aloud, trying pieces of the puzzle for size.

"I can see why you didn't make a connection between Strakhov and the Disciples of Allah or the Revolutionary Guards. The Russians and the Iranians don't get along. But something big could change that. A common interest. An assassination. You said Strakhov is at Zahle now with the Syrians?"

"Yes, the major general left the base early this evening with a detachment of Syrian troops. My contact in Zahle is my sister, who cooks for the Syrians."

"It's happening tonight," Bolan decided, "and Strakhov has to be tied in one way or another, whatever it is. I've got to get to Biskinta. I'll need transportation. Can you help me again?"

"I have a car. May I come with you? I do not want to be like my neighbors, hiding with the lights off, waiting to die. I must be doing something. I know the way to Biskinta. I can drive."

"You're on," Bolan returned, and he looked at the sleeping child on the couch. "Is there a hospital on the way?"

"No, but it would not matter if there were. The hospitals, those that have not been destroyed... their personnel work around the clock. No one would have time to take in another lost soul."

"Then he's safer with us. Okay, lady. Let's take that drive."

She gathered car keys, tossed them into a purse and Bolan saw a 9mm Browning Hi-Power before she snapped the purse shut. Then she gently picked up the blanket-wrapped bundle without waking the little boy.

Bolan motioned her to the side when they were ready to leave her apartment.

He flicked off the light switch, drew the AutoMag and prepared to open the door a crack to check the hallway before they left.

Zoraya touched him on the arm in the darkness before he unlatched the door, her fingertips graceful, transmitting deep emotion.

"May I know your name?

"Does it matter?"

"To me, yes." He told her.

She repeated it in the stillness.

"Mack. It is a strong name. I know much about you, you see, from the short time we have spent together. You use your strength to build a better world, not to tear it down in ruin as those all about us tonight would. Chaim was like that. I could not bear to think of two such men dying in one night. Promise me, Mack, do not risk your life for me. Please."

He unlatched the door, pulled it inward a crack and peered out.

No one lurked in the hallway.

"Let's go!" said the Executioner.

The mission.

Strakhov.

And one word: assassination.

And a war about to blow wide open again at any second, engulfing them all.