Don Pendleton: Beirut Payback

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.

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.

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.