Beirut Payback te-67 Read online

  "I am General Chehab," the Arab at the wheel said.

  "Of the Lebanese army," Weizmann added.

  "The general is in charge of presidential security. Naturally, when Zoraya told me you had information on a plot to assassinate the president..."

  "I insisted on coming along," Chehab rasped.

  "There have been two attempts on the president's life in the past month. Syrian agents, trained by the Bulgarians."

  "So this time they got someone else to do their dirty work," Bolan said. "Last night at an Iranian base in Biskinta I found blueprints of the presidential palace at Baabda."

  Chehab lost his cool. The Lebanese officer spun around and eyed the big guy in the back seat.

  "My Phalangist units monitored the fighting. You?"

  "With a little help from the Syrians. They don't want your president assassinated any more than you do. Not right at the moment, anyway. That's why Strakhov is in Beirut." Bolan concisely related the developments regarding General Masudi and the Disciples of Allah and what had transpired during the battle for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' base at Biskinta.

  "We know of the Disciples, of course," the Israeli said when Bolan had finished. "Masudi most likely told the truth before this Major Kleb killed him. That was only one cell of the Disciples you eliminated at Biskinta."

  "American, I thought you had something new to tell us," Chehab snarled at Bolan.

  "Slow down, General, we're not that friendly yet," Bolan snapped. "Are you a general in the army or the Phalangists?"

  "At such a time as this, American, the two forces are much as one."

  "I learned something else at Biskinta," Bolan told them. "An unmarked government car was seen leaving the Iranian base before the Syrians attacked. A car... like this one." The general's poker face remained inscrutable.

  "Are you suggesting anything in particular?"

  "I'm suggesting you get on it, General. Trace and verify the whereabouts of all unmarked government cars last night. You have the clout to do that?"

  "But of course."

  "Then that's all I've got for you, so you can leave us and begin now while I have a few words with Uri in private."

  Chehab got a tightness to his eyes, but he held himself in check and glanced at Weizmann.

  "Do you wish to be left alone with this, uh, gentleman?" Weizmann glanced at Bolan's pistols.

  "I don't seem to have much of a choice, General. But yes, do as Mr. Bolan suggests. And of course keep this extremely confidential. A government car... that means we're dealing with someone on the inside. But I think I shall be safe here. We're on the same side, Bolan and I, after all."

  "As you wish," the general grumbled.

  Chehab left them.

  * * *

  Bolan watched the Arab get out of the Renault and amble down the crowded street.

  "Don't be too sure about the same side. The Phalangists have committed as many or more atrocities against civilians as the Muslims in this war."

  "It is difficult to take either side," Weizmann conceded. "There are no good guys."

  "Except maybe the guys who are trying to put a stop to it."

  "Like us, eh? And is that what you wish to discuss?"

  "Let's settle something first, then maybe I can dispense with this." Bolan motioned with the AutoMag stiff aimed at the man who called himself Uri Weizmann. "Your orders from Tel Aviv are that I'm top-priority TOS. Terminate on Sight. Your showing up to sit over in that pub and wait for me for half an hour, just the two of you, no backup, calls for an explanation and a good one."

  "If what I have heard about you is true, Mr. Bolan, you will understand when I tell you that Chaim Herzi and I had been friends since childhood. Chaim saved my life twice. I never had the chance to repay him and now he is dead. Zoraya told me all about it when she called. And so I must repay Chaim some other way.

  "It is ironic, is it not, that we do not know which side actually killed Chaim in the cross fire between Phalangists and Muslims. Does it matter, really? I don't know if Chaim knew the truth about you, or if he but followed his Uncle Yakov's instructions without question. I know he respected his uncle greatly.

  "But Chaim did understand that only swift, decisive measures can achieve lasting peace in Lebanon and prevent more slaughter at this late date. I have been stationed in Beirut with Mossad for three long years and have seen the situation here only deteriorate. Perhaps it is time the Executioner got here. You may already be too late." Bolan holstered his weapons.

  "It's never too late." He reached for a pack of cigarettes, offered Uri one and lit them both. "Do you know where Zoraya is now?"

  "I thought with you. She said she was returning to be with you when she telephoned me to arrange our meeting."

  "I'll need help, Uri. Strakhov has called a meeting of the Muslim factions for noon today at the base at Zahle."

  "I already know of this, my friend." Weizmann smiled. "We have our ear to the ground, as you Americans would say. In fact, the information has already been processed. The base at Zahle will be leveled by Israeli aircraft at precisely 12:10. Approximately one hour from now."

  "Then you've got to pass on additional intel and call off that strike."

  "Call it off?" Bolan told Weizmann what happened to Zoraya's uncle at the garage. And his thoughts on what could have happened to Zoraya.

  "If the Syrians have connected her with you and Chaim and me, then the Russians have her," said Bolan, "probably at Zahle."

  Weizmann frowned.

  "I'm not sure I can do it. Get the Israeli air force to call off the air strike, I mean."

  "The people Strakhov is bringing together could still escape," growled Bolan. "An air strike is too chancy. I've got to hit that summit meeting and make sure every damn one of them is dead. I have the chance to disassemble their entire infrastructure and that would cancel their effectiveness long enough for some real peacekeeping negotiations to take place."

  "And the fanatics of the Arab Christians?" asked Uri. "The Phalangists have run wild, massacring every civilian in sight, many times after ceasefires have supposedly taken place... as you yourself pointed out."

  "Squeeze every source you've got and pin down the government car that showed up at Biskinta last night," said Bolan. "Tap your pipelines into Syrian and KGB intel sources. Strakhov is working it right now, and it could move up standard channels before they realize how important it is."

  "And you? What of the Executioner?"

  "I told you. I hit the Russians and the Syrians at Zahle. And I've got to find out what happened to Zoraya. She's done too much for me just to write her off now. Do the Russians and the Syrians have her? Or is she working for them?" Weizmann's frown deepened.

  "You have reason to suspect that? It seems rather coldblooded considering what she has done."

  "Hot blood gets you killed at a time like this, Uri. You sound like you might be in love with Zoraya yourself."

  "That... that's ridiculous," the Mossad man bristled without much conviction. "I... I am concerned about her. Yes, of course I am... I don't know...." The indignation faltered. "Perhaps..."

  "Some other time," growled the big guy. "I know what you mean. Every man who's ever met that lady has probably fallen a little in love with her. Some women are like that and she's one." He saw no reason to tell Uri of Strakhov. "There are stakes in this that you don't know about and I don't have the time to tell you. There's only time now to do it. Will you help me take these warmongers apart or not?" Reason won the Israeli over.

  "I will do what I can, certainly... Your points are well taken. I may be able to delay the air strike perhaps a short time, perhaps not, but I'm afraid that is all."

  "It will have to do," the Executioner said. "I need a way onto that Syrian base. The site will be vacuum tight after what happened this morning. Is there any possible way your Mossad connections could get me on base for what I have to do?" Weizmarm nodded thoughtfully.

  "Yes, but it will be extremely danger
ous."

  "What in Lebanon isn't?"

  16

  Bolan left Weizmann and returned to his Saab, which was parked nearby. He checked below the car and under the hood this time for explosives, but found nothing. Then he climbed in and gunned the Swedish relic to life.

  He consulted his map for the most direct route to the Druse militia position in west Beirut.

  Time had run out. The summit gathering of insurgents called by Strakhov would be getting under way at the base at Zahle within the hour.

  Bolan had the in he needed, thanks to Uri Weizmann, who had broken all the rules of his organization and training to avenge a friend's death.

  And maybe because he was in love with the friend's lady.

  All that mattered now was that time had run out.

  Bolan's knuckles shone white around the steering wheel. He bit off a curse at every delay he encountered through the bustling streets of this sector. His destination: the Druse militia position occupying what had been a small shopping mall, now concertina wired, the "liberated" shops functioning as offices and to billet fighters between rounds in the ongoing fight for the city.

  The "Paris of the Mediterranean" throbbed and echoed under a white sun to the sounds of exploding rocket-propelled grenades. The sporadic popping of Soviet-made rifles intermittently chorused the throatier staccato of heavy machine-gun fire. Most thoroughfares were clogged with civilians being forced steadily from the densely populated neighborhoods near the front line.

  At one point Bolan crossed an untraveled side street that bisected his route. He happened to glance down the alley and saw something he didn't like. He yanked the steering wheel, upshifting, and came down on the tableau of three Shiite punks towering over a woman in dark traditional Lebanese garb. Huddled next to her was a boy of about eleven and they were both cowering against a pile of rubble, each clinging to two bottles of water.

  The woman was pleading for her life.

  The camou-clad militiamen laughed and lifted their AK-47'S. The situation was ready to explode as sweaty nervous glances of anticipation darted from man to man before the barbarians opened fire. But when violence erupted in that street it came from the open driver's window of the passing Saab.

  Bolan triggered the AK-47 he held across his chest, his right finger caressing the trigger while he drove with the left hand.

  The blistering fusillade of automatic fire from the Saab pulped the three Shiite gunmen into flying shreds.

  The woman and her son continued on with their precious bottled water.

  Exiting from the alley, Bolan steered back onto a principal thoroughfare parallel to the first and approached the shopping center commandeered by the Druse militia.

  Again, the contrast of everyday life so close to the killing touched Bolan with chilling awareness.

  Almost every other Lebanese he saw along his route carried or stood near transistor radios, listening obsessively for new developments.

  Beirut buzzed with desperation.

  Static firing, grenade and rifle sniping continued all along the nearby Green Line that divided east and west Beirut.

  According to the English-speaking announcer's voice from the Saab's dashboard radio, the conflict was escalating into severe clashes.

  As Bolan listened, the broadcaster explained how Lebanese army armored vehicles were attempting to advance from the museum crossing point halfway down the Green Line but were being repelled in a fierce battle.

  The prize was the crumbling gutted tower and rubble heap of destroyed St. Michael's Church, where heavy fighting had gone on since the week before for control of the church. The army said it had captured the church and lost it and now wanted to recapture it.

  Big deal, Bolan thought.

  It had to stop.

  * * *

  Piles of dirt had been placed around the entrance to the Muslim militia headquarters to prevent counterattack by the Lebanese. But the ten-foot-high pyramids of earth actually helped Bolan hide the Saab a block and a half from the base entrance. From his concealed position he could observe vehicles arriving and leaving without fear of detection from the Druse sentries inside the base. The dirt piles blocked their vision.

  At one point a tank lumbered out from between the mounds of earth. The Soviet-manufactured machine rumbled past the Saab. Bolan leaned sideways below window level, hidden from the observation window of the war machine or the driver's or gunner's periscopes.

  The tank clanked on past and turned a corner, then rumbled out of sight, the crawler track clattering on pavement toward the Green Line and the fighting.

  Before the tank's noise had faded, another vehicle emerged from the Druse base and turned in Bolan's direction.

  The Executioner got ready, finger on the trigger of the reloaded AK-47 in case this wasn't the connection Uri claimed he could use to set up Bolan's penetration of Strakhov's headquarters summit.

  The meeting would be the biggest gathering of terrorist warlords that a peace-bringer named Bolan, a soldier who cared, could ever hope to target for extinction.

  A jeep with Syrian markings approached Bolan's position. It was driven by a Druse militiaman accompanied by a shotgun-riding gunman, his assault rifle pointed skyward.

  The vehicle, much like the one Bolan had escaped in from Zahle a few hours before, upshifted past the Saab and this time Bolan did not hunch down but sat there with his AK ready to fire. But that proved unnecessary because the vehicle chugged by with neither driver nor soldier sparing the Saab a sideways glance as they drove past him.

  As the jeep cruised by, Bolan recalled his parting conversation with Uri Weizmann.

  "We have a man planted in the Druse militia," Weizmann had told Bolan before they split up outside the pub. "A driver. We've spent two years planting him. I can't afford to lose him."

  "Your man will have time to pull out before the air strike."

  "The driver and a soldier will leave the Druse motor pool at a garage they took over near to the area where the new recruits are billeted. The chauffeur is supposed to drive with the soldier to pick up Fouad Zakir, the militia's strategist and liaison with the Syrian command at Zahle."

  The pair continued away from the Saab, away from the base, without turning off at the corner as the tank had.

  When they reached the middle of the next block, Bolan pulled the Saab out from the curb and followed the vehicle at a discreet distance.

  The jeep went a quarter mile, then the wheelman steered onto a several-square-block wasteland of completely gutted, devastated buildings that happened to be well behind the lines of heavy fighting.

  The duo pulled over to what had been the curb of a trashed zone.

  Bolan drove toward the jeep and could see the soldier who had been riding shotgun jumping awkwardly out from the vehicle and trying to bring up his rifle to aim at the driver. Then a pistol in the driver's fist barked once just as Bolan came to a halt behind the jeep.

  The pistol blast spun the soldier around into a death sprawl, a human discard amid the rubble.

  Bolan left the Saab and knelt beside the man to relieve him of AK-47 ammo clips at his waist.

  The driver of the jeep shot worried glances in either direction.

  "Hurry. The area is heavily patrolled by both sides. If it weren't for the fighting elsewhere..."

  "I read you," Bolan returned, and quickly climbed into the dead man's uniform. The outfit was ill-fitting, too small, but with Bolan seated it would not be noticed.

  Bolan and the driver dragged the body out of sight of the road and hid it in the rubble. Then Bolan took the dead man's place in the passenger seat. The Mossad plant gunned the vehicle away from there.

  "Well done, guy." Bolan thanked the Israeli behind the wheel. "I appreciate the help. And the risk you're taking."

  "Control said it was essential. After Zakir reaches the base at Zahle, you and I will be expected to wait on base until their meeting is finished." The driver steered along a deserted street.

  "Wi
ll you be able to get off base without arousing suspicion?" asked Bolan.

  The "Druse" chuckled.

  "Their organization is a joke. I will drive off base once you and I split up. I will wait nearby until after the air strike. The soldier and I were separated in the fighting. At a time like this, no one will give much of a damn that he was found several miles away. The roads are full of deserters. I'll tell the same to my superiors even if there is no air strike." The Mossad man steel-eyed the American. "If Fouad Zakir survives this day my life will be forfeited."

  "I don't think your control would risk a man in your position unless he thought you'd come out alive," Bolan assured the guy. "Leave Zakir to me."

  The guy from Mossad braked the vehicle in front of a row of private residences.

  "Gladly. He lives right here."

  The two "Druse" soldiers proceeded to collect the militia hotshot whose very presence passed them through two Druse checkpoints without problems.

  They entered increasingly hostile territory the farther they got from Beirut along the heavily traveled military road into the mountains toward Zahle.

  Zakir emanated an arrogance that precluded conversation between himself and the chauffeur and bodyguard.

  Bolan felt a gnawing anticipation in his gut with the ascending cool of approaching battle consciousness.

  He had bought time for his Beirut payback. The anticipation had a lot to do with that. The payback, uhhuh, would be in the name of America's best, those much maligned, always — there fighting men of the U.S. Marine Corps, trained warriors who hold the front lines to keep American citizens and values alive and free.

  Some people back home were starting to forget that — the soft, naive bunch who had lived too long in an artificial environment in which the reality of the world is concealed from view.

  Bolan knew. He lived in a real world ruled by force. Diplomacy can function only if it's backed by force.

  These were truths Bolan lived by and had seen proved many times in and out of the hellgrounds.