Beirut Payback

6

It was time for action.

Time for The Executioner to strike.

The provincial village was tiered across the slope of a mountain. The cluster of look-alike one-story structures was interrupted only by a minaret towering from the mosque from which the muezzins would call the villagers to prayer. The settlement nestled beneath the starlit bowl of the purple sky did not stir.

At the southwestern edge of town was the barbedwire-enclosed force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

From his position 250 yards to the higheaground from the eight-foot-high fence, Bolan could observe, with little chance of detection, the base where the Iranians hosted the Disciples of Allah.

Before moving this close, the nightpenetrator had ascertained that the detachment of Iranians had no roving guard patrols beyond their perimeter.

The base was a rectangle, 250 yards by 200 yards. A heavily guarded gate at the far corner of the compound from where Bolan sat appeared to be the only road in.

The perimeter was well patrolled on the inside by three-man units toting assault rifles.

A row of tents had to be the troops' sleeping quarters, mess and latrines.

The big shots could only be quartered and operating out of the squat two-story building in the center of the compound.

The Executioner knew that was where he would find the suicide commandos.

He made a final check of his gear and weapons.

He had applied a black facial goo that completed the blacksuit effect, making The Executioner all but invisible this moonless night.

Time: 0300 hours.

Bolan moved out, negotiating the descending terrain in a zigzag course from gnarled tree trunks to inky shadows of wild vegetation.

Zoraya waited with Selim in the Volvo, parked hidden from sight of the main road a quarter mile behind Bolan.

The lady hellgrounder had wanted to accompany him.

"I may be of assistance if you are stopped and questioned," she had reasoned in a low whisper before they parted.

"If I'm stopped, I'll be dead," Bolan had whispered back.

According to Zoraya's intel, Strakhov was on the prowl tonight with an armored Syrian force, and Bolan had little doubt they were in the area, possibly waiting for him with the Iranians at the base.

He would find out.

Alone.

"But I feel so helpless with nothing to do but wait," Zoraya had pressed. "If I am doing something, I... I will not dwell on Chaim... on the emptiness that tries to consume me."

"Another reason I won't cake you along," Bolan had said. "You'd be killed in a firefight tonight, Zoraya. I don't need that kind of help. And there's Selim. That little character is every bit as important as anything I do tonight. We've got to get him home, and safe." She had considered that with a glance at the soundly sleeping boy in the back seat of the Volvo.

"You're right, of course." She had appraised Bolan with a frankness he found vaguely disconcerting. "I have the feeling you are right about most things. You are... a very impressive man, Mack Bolan." He had started out of the car.

"Thirty minutes," he had reminded her. "Unless you and Selim find yourselves in danger."

"I will not run out on you."

"Don't worry about me. I want the child safe, and you. Promise me, Zoraya. That kid needs us and I'm not going to let him down."

"I understand. I promise. I shall keep the little one safe."

"Then I'm gone." Zoraya had leaned over before he closed the car door. She touched his arm.

"Remember, Ib Masudi, the commander of the Iranian Guards... his cruelty... he is feared more than respected by those in his command. Do not give him quarter under any condition. You are one man taking on incredible odds this night."

"That's the one advantage we've got," had been the soldier's grim parting shot.

The Executioner had turned away and disappeared into the gloom.

The nightfighter had not heard the lady's parting shot, whispered soft as a kiss after him.

"May Allah guide you, angel of death. You deliver His vengeance."

Bolan intended to play this penetration soft until he could isolate the commander, Masudi, and do all the damage possible before pulling out and leaving the Revolutionary Guards in total confusion. He had faith that such a hit by one man against such a sizable force had a damn good chance of succeeding, considering the hour.

He could see lights on in the building, but except for the sentries at the gates and foot patrols along the perimeter, no one stirred at the base. The guards would not be at their best at this hour.

And, of course, Bolan had faith in himself.

He had been doing this type of thing for nearly twenty years in one capacity or another from Vietnam to the present.

He understood the risks, the vagaries of such an audacious hit at the heart of the enemy. Talk about vagaries: the Disciples of Allah; an Iranian sadist; something about an assassination; and a KGB boss somewhere in the night with an armored column of Syrians.

Nothing could be planned on a hit such as the one Bolan now contemplated.

He clutched the silenced Beretta in his right fist and came in low at the wire fence, crouching to the base of it. He chose the darkest point between two of the nearest spotlights mounted atop a line of poles evenly spaced along the inside of the perimeter.

He tapped the fence lightly, tentatively. It wasn't electrified. Good.

From a pocket of the blacksuit he produced a miniature set of wire cutters made of a special alloy. He snipped a passage through the fence in seconds.

During his recon he had timed the movement of the sentry patrols. He gave himself another ninety seconds to cross to the back wall of the building.

He hustled the distance, taking his biggest chance, but he met no interference. Along the way he skirted a blacktop tarmac crowded with weaponry, armored personnel carriers, tanks, multiple rocket launchers mounted in the beds of camou — striped trucks — Russian hardware shipped from North Korea by way of Syria to Lebanon as "farm implements." He briefly considered the advisability of planting some plastique amid all this war machinery. But he could not discount the possibility that he might accomplish all he wanted and still withdraw undetected until his work was discovered in the morning. That would be ideal if Strakhov wasn't here and the track led somewhere else.

He almost made the shadows at the back wall of the headquarters building when three bearded soldiers in Iranian Revolutionary Guard uniform of hooded parka, knit hat and camou fatigues stepped from the back door of the building toting assault rifles. The Executioner figured they were sentries on their way to relieve one of the foot patrols.

Bolan saw them well before the Shiite fanatics saw his shadow emerge at them from the night. Then three sets of eyes widened in panicky reaction, and three mouths started to curse or shout something.

But before their rifles could swing up, Bolan knelt in a two-handed shooting crouch and the Beretta quietly sneezed its 9mm death buzzers.

The 3-round death burst sent the trio tumbling off their feet, piling lifelessly into one another.

Bolan continued past without slowing, gaining the door the three men had just stepped from. As he opened the door he realized he could save the play if he moved fast enough.

He found himself in a hallway leading to the front foyer of what appeared to have been a private home before the cannibals moved in and commandeered the building from its owners.

An IRG member stepped into the hallway inquiringly, drawn by the sounds of the commotion outside in the early-morning silence.

The soldier met Bolan eye to eye.

Bolan didn't stop for this one, either. His left hand grabbed the guy's throat, and he rammed the man's head backward against the doorframe hard enough to kill him.

The soldier collapsed, blood trickling from his ears and matted hair to the wood behind him.

Bolan extended his right arm through the doorway of the Orderly Room. As he sailed past he drilled two sleepy-eyed soldiers who started to get up but plopped right back down with tunnels cored through their heads.

The Executioner kept moving.

He reached the foyer and started up some stairs he found there.

The lights he'd seen from this house had come from both levels.

He fed a fresh clip into the Beretta, taking the treaders three at a time.

Survival depended solely on how fast he moved. His presence had only been detected by those he killed. But those bodies could be discovered anytime. And the patrolling sentries would soon begin to worry about their reliefs' delay.

The hallway on the second level was lined with closed doors. Through an archway to Bolan's right dim light filtered into the corridor along with a male voice chanting something in Arabic.

Bolan approached the archway, pressing himself to the wall. No one showed his face as Bolan stealthily breached the distance, the Beretta still in his fist.

The men beyond that passageway must have felt secure with the guards outside and downstairs in the Orderly Room.

The only way this thing played to Bolan was that something important had to be going down for 3:30 A.m. activity.

He reached the archway and crouched well below eye level of anyone in the room around the entrance frame.

The voice in Arabic took on a cadence like a prayer.

Bolan stole a glance around the edge of the wall.

His trained eye sized it all up with one sweep.

Six men.

Ib Masudi.

The slight stature of the Iranian commander did nothing to lessen the cruelty that glittered from eyes like black marbles separated by a hook nose. The Shiite general was in full IRG uniform.

That made this an official briefing.

The four men across a table from General Masudi were in mufti but wore Disciples of Allah armbands. One of them was an older man with gray in his beard, most likely the Disciples' military liaison. The others were younger, with the wary body language of street fighters. The terrorists and the general all wore holstered pistols.

They had unrolled and were studying large pieces of paper on the low table.

Blueprints.

Bolan took in the sixth man in the room, then the room itself, and he knew he had it.

Prayer rugs on the floor.

The sixth, a white-bearded old man doing the chanting and wearing traditional djellaba, was unarmed and clasped a Koran to his breast as he spoke fervently.

The Disciples of Allah and Masudi listened intently with downcast eyes to their mullah giving the blessing before another suicide squad stole into the night to bring terror.

Not this time.

The Executioner straightened and stepped from concealment into the room, the Beretta tracking on Masudi, who first noticed the grim specter.

The general's expression warned the others and they looked up, too. In the next heartbeat everyone scrambled for weapons, fanning away from each other with a flaring of survival instinct. The mullah faded back into a corner, wishing he could become invisible.

Then an earsplitting explosion from outside disrupted the confrontation.

Windows blew inward and the house shuddered to its foundations.

The sounds of gunfire opened up outside before the rumbling of the first explosion ebbed, followed by a cacophony of slaughter that meant only one thing.

The Iranian base had fallen under attack by someone other than The Executioner.

With Bolan caught right in the middle.

The action in the room resumed even as flying shards of glass, blown inward from the windows by the first explosion, sliced through the air.

Four Disciples of Allah terrorists.

General Masudi.

And their Executioner.

The old white-bearded mullah crouched in a far corner of the room on the periphery of the action, shielding himself from exploding glass.

The instant before, Bolan's Beretta 93-R had drawn a bead on the bridge of Masudi's hook nose, but with the attack from outside, everything changed.

A sliver of glass gashed a razor-thin furrow above Bolan's brow. It was only a scratch but deep enough for warm blood to trickle into his eye at the moment everything shifted. He did not trigger the Beretta, knowing Masudi had managed to dodge in the time Bolan needed to think and clear his vision.

The sounds of full-scale conflict emanated from all around the house, but Bolan's concentration centered on the crazies in the room.

The Shiite terrorist graybeard ranked with Masudi as an equal threat to Bolan. Graybeard pointed his piece, tracking on Bolan.

Masudi did the same. The three other Disciples of Allah weren't exactly discussing the weather, either.

Bolan dived into a roll away from the archway as gunfire exploded, magnified in the confinement of the room, drowning out the battle roar from outside.

Bolan came out of the roll.

The religion-drugged fanatics were still trying to get a lead on him, firing as they did. But the rounds plinked into the walls and prayer table, missing Bolan.

His first targets had to be Masudi and the graybeard. He shifted the Beretta to his left hand, flicking it to auto and unleathering Big Thunder in one continuous movement, raking death from both hands.

The AutoMag sheared off Graybeard's skull from the eyes up, and below that the head became a beard of flowing red atop a collapsing corpse.

Bolan tried to sight again on Masudi, but the hooknosed general moved deceptively fast, grabbing one of the Shiite terrorists and jerking the Disciple of Allah in front of him for cover.

Masudi scrambled backward like a scurrying spider toward the archway, dragging the startled young terrorist with him.

Bolan triggered a 3-shot stutter from the 93-R. A row of slugs sizzled into the terrorist in front of Masudi and the human shield went from startled to dead. But that did not stop the Iranian officer.

He tossed the body aside and disappeared in a rush down the corridor out of sight of Bolan, who still had his hands full.

The two remaining Disciples toting AK-47'S separated to opposite sides of the room. Both terrorists opened fire on Bolan, the blazing weapons spitting heavy projectiles at him.

The penetrator in blacksuit hit the floor in a forward sprawl and took both of the creeps out before they could adjust their aim.

The terrorist on the left caught a 3-shot burst of 9mms in the heart area and tumbled over sideways, crushing the prayer table on the way down. The other opened his mouth to yell but a .44-caliber headbuster cored the man's eye socket like hot metal through butter, spraying the wall behind bright crimson.

Bolan thought for an instant that he had finished there and started to get up, when he saw a flurry of movement from a far corner of the room.

The ancient mullah flipped away the folds of his holy robe and lifted a Czech Model 23 submachine gun. He screeched something about Allah and kept on screeching, but the words were drowned out by the chatter of the killer song in his hands. The wily old-timer rode the recoil like a pro, but Bolan had already hit the floor again. A pulverizing volley of screaming lead tattooed the wall where The Executioner had been only seconds before. Bolan stroked the AutoMag's trigger once more, blowing away the holy man. His prayers were answered, all right. But the wrong people had died.

The combat outside increased in intensity.

Screams from the wounded rose above the roar of weapons. Bolan heard more explosions. Another one rocked the building.

He had to get Masudi.

The Iranian commander could be the next link in the chain leading to Strakhov, though Bolan had a hunch it could be Strakhov's Syrian force attacking the base.

Only seconds had passed since the Iranian general had disappeared around the archway.

Bolan moved over to the mullah's body, reloading and holstering the Beretta and AutoMag. He picked up the mullah's SMG and fished three extra clips from inside the old man's robe.

The Executioner stepped over the corpse and moved toward the hallway. He could hear running footfalls and the clunking of military gear outside this room. He paused at the smashed table where the men had stood when Bolan first appeared.

Bolan stooped without slowing and grabbed the blueprints that had been the obvious subject of this briefing.

A blessing from the mullah before these Disciples of Allah left Biskinta for... what?

The nightwarrior paused and looked around. He spotted the object someone had pushed behind some chairs.

A suitcase.

With a timer attached to it, ready to be set.

He had no time to further consider suitcases with explosives. He had to get Masudi.

He crumpled the blueprints against his chest and stuffed them beneath the blacksuit. Then he grabbed the suitcase in his left hand.

The archway filled with Iranian Revolutionary Guards, three of them toting AK'S ready for action. They charged in, but only one man got off a shot that plowed into the ceiling. A burst from the Czech machine gun in Bolan's right fist stuttered like an angry jackhammer, making the IRG invaders perform a death dance like marionettes gone wild in an epileptic puppeteer's hand.

Bolan charged over their bodies after Masudi.

All of the activity since the general slipped the scene had taken less than a minute. But Bolan knew his numbers were almost gone if he hoped to nail Masudi for what he knew and still pull out of this action intact.

He fed a fresh clip into the machine gun and peered into the hallway.

No one.

The house seemed deserted.

The battle continued outside the building. A tank rumbled again. Crumbling plaster rained from the ceiling.

Bolan dashed toward the stairs. He thought it was the only route Masudi could have taken unless the Iranian had not left the building at all, which Bolan doubted. He made the landing and started down.

Masudi had looked like a man on the run to save his ass. Sacrificing that terrorist's life to give himself cover proved that.

Bolan doubted Masudi would wait around.

The front door of the house was swinging back shut, indicating the general had just gone through.

Bolan hit the bottom step and paused before leaving cover of the doorway for outside.

Three figures charged in through the back door behind Bolan at the other end of the hall downstairs: Syrian uniforms.

The instant they saw him, the trigger-happy Syrians opened fire on Bolan, their assault rifles on full-auto. Dodging the onslaught, Bolan shoved the suitcase safely away and aimed the Model 23.

Hot lead scorched the air near him, one projectile zinging close enough past Bolan's ear for him to feel the heat.

Then the SMG bucked in his fists, spitting flame and bullets.

The two Syrians in front screamed and jitterbugged under the hail that shredded flesh and sprayed blood onto the third soldier. Panicking, he started to turn and scream even as pursuing slugs pureed his brains from behind. The three dead tumbled into a heap in the back doorway and Bolan returned his attention to the front, hoping he hadn't been diverted long enough for Masudi to escape.

The Executioner crouched back at the doorway, paused to slam another magazine into the Model 23, then peered out at the turmoil.

The presence of the Syrians he'd just killed prepared the nightscorcher for what he saw.

The Iranian base was now brilliantly illuminated by piercing spotlights and headlights of Syrian tanks and personnel carriers that had already penetrated into the center of the compound. Orange-red flames licked the night sky from the area of tents where the main fighting was taking place.

Syrian and Iranian soldiers ran shooting at each other everywhere Bolan looked.

Bolan saw General Masudi.

Six Syrian soldiers stood around the Iranian officer. The soldiers to a man had their rifles aimed at Masudi's head.

The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards stood with head bowed, his hands handcuffed behind his back. His uniform looked scuffed and dirty.

The general and his guards walked toward three men who stood waiting next to a limo that Bolan knew would be armor plated.

Syrian army markings designated it a staff car.

Two Iranian regulars wearing only the trousers of their uniforms with civilian tunics came running around the corner of the headquarters building in Bolan's direction, their rifles ready but not ready enough.

The Executioner diverted his attention from Masudi and the others for an instant and triggered a short burst from the Czech Model 23. The volley stitched the two Iranians, stopping them forever.

The fighting had begun to taper off in the compound.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards who were not strewn in lifeless disarray all over the base could be seen throwing down their weapons, raising arms in surrender to the Syrian troops who closed in.

Not far from the main house, at least forty surrendering Iranians were being herded together by rival cannibals.

Masudi and his guards reached the Syrian staff car.

One of the three men waiting there stepped into the light and Bolan felt a cold fist clench his gut.

The man could be none other than Major General Greb Strakhov of the KGB.

In person.

Bolan pedigreed the two with Strakhov as the local operatives of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye — GRU — the chief intelligence directorate of the Soviet military that shares overseas assignments with the KGB. The other man was a Syrian officer.

Jackpot.

Except that Bolan would have to move damn fast or this jackpot would slip through his fingers.

The Syrian troopers shoved General Masudi into the limo. Strakhov and the other two also climbed into the car.

Bolan turned and darted back down the hallway. He exited the house into the night via the back door, not slowing for the obstacle course of scattered corpses.

As he passed, Bolan snatched the suitcase with the attached timer device he'd left in the hallway. He charged from the house in the direction of the hole in the fence where he'd entered.

He had considered a direct hit on the group by the limo, but it had been too far from the house for accuracy with the machine gun and he still did not have the big picture.

Okay, review time. They were about to whisk Masudi away. Had the Iranian commander set up this hit on his own troops? From what Bolan had seen and heard of Hook Nose, it could go down that way.

Bolan had to determine where Strakhov intended to take Masudi, and why.

The Executioner had to fit this piece of the puzzle in with the others to make sure their whole scheme collapsed, and not only part of Strakhov's Lebanon scenario. He could hit Strakhov and Masudi now and terminate them, sure, but Bolan knew when the odds were against him.

Uh-uh. The way he saw it, any move now would needlessly endanger his life and that definitely did not fit in the picture for the night.

He had to follow that Syrian staff car when it left the base.

The limo could only take one route out of Biskinta and the Iranians' temporary compound to get to the main roads to either Zahle or Beirut: the same road off which Bolan had left Zoraya and little Selim waiting in the concealed Volvo. The chauffeured car with Strakhov and Masudi would have to pass the spot where Bolan had left the Druse woman and the little Arab boy.

He could make the distance to the Volvo on foot if nothing slowed him. Then he could take a chance on following the limo with his lights off.

Bolan was halfway to the fenced perimeter of the compound, angling away from the opposite side of the house from the limo when he heard a shout to halt. It came from the Syrian soldiers herding IRG prisoners near the house.

Bolan paused, set the timer device on the suitcase for five seconds, then heaved the suitcase. Even as the container left his hand, the Executioner put on a burst of speed, continuing his withdrawal.

The terrorist package from the Disciples of Allah zeroed right into that crowd of Iranians, who had protected and supplied terrorists, and anti-American Syrians who thought it fun to shoot down U.S. reconnaissance planes, to kill and capture U.S. pilots.

The incredible blast of the dynamite-loaded suitcase sent shock waves that pushed the warrior along from behind like a huge hot hand. It started drizzling blood and dull thumps sounded in the night as body parts fell all around him.

Something hollow sounding landed in Bolan's path and he jogged past the wide-eyed, openmouthed features of a bearded man's freshly decapitated head.

He reached the fenced perimeter and on through the hole. He almost made the track that led to the car when he heard movement in the darkness to his left, just before the trail began. He swung sideways low and loose, fanning that flank with the machine gun.

In the starlight, combat-honed night vision discerned two crouched figures: disheveled young men in IRG uniforms, their AK assault rifles tossed to the ground. Bolan judged them to be not much past their teens.

When the Executioner stopped they shook their heads and waved their hands frantically, beseeching Bolan in a language he did not understand. But he read it clear enough; these two sought refuge there from the slaughter in the camp.

That was okay with Bolan.

The Executioner granted them a "white flag." Sergeant Mercy continued on his withdrawal.

He covered a dozen paces before warning tremors that had never let him down started battling for acknowledgment at the base of his spine.

It only took the teenage soldiers a moment to consider wasting the blacksuiter, to turn their cowardice into heroism for dropping the penetrator.

Before the AK-47'S even left the ground Bolan spun, brought up the Model 23 and triggered the SMG.

Nothing happened.

The damn thing had jammed!

The IRG punks tracked on Bolan, who tossed away the useless weapon and dived for cover.

Each soldier got off one round. One projectile splintered the trunk of the tree Bolan dived behind. The other 7.62mm projectile screamed off harmlessly into the night.

Then Big Thunder spoke loud and deadly and both Revolutionary Guards flew backward with faces transformed into smears as black as the night.

"Idiots," Bolan grumbled.

He jogged back onto the trail with one last glance at the Iranian base.

The fighting down there had ceased, all of Masudi's command either dead or captured.

The chauffeur-driven Syrian staff car left the compound, traveling the rutted road leading from Biskinta, and disappeared from Bolan's view around the far side of the mountain.

It would be a matter of three to four minutes before it would pass the point where Bolan had left Zoraya and the child in the hidden Volvo.

Bolan jogged faster, not bolstering the AutoMag.

He met no further interference.

Too many people had died already this night — good people like Chaim Herzi and uncounted, anonymous innocents and others caught in the cross fire of rampant savagery — for Bolan to let this vital thread slip through his fingers.

His view of this mission had altered in the hours he'd been in the country.

He had originally come with the sole objective of locating and terminating Greb Strakhov. He now realized he could not leave Beirut without doing something decisive to attempt to restore some course of stability in Lebanon.

It could be done. Bolan wasn't sure just how yet. That's why he could not afford to let the staff car escape.

He reached the darkness alongside the road where the Volvo had been parked just as the headlights of the limo pierced the night, Strakhov's driver making good speed despite the road's poor condition.

Bolan crouched.

The headlights missed him as the limo roared past.

The nightfighter glanced around.

Zoraya, the child and the Volvo were gone.