Don Pendleton - Beirut Payback

Bolan scanned the countryside, trying to plot a possible trajectory for those kill shots. He gave up when he realized the shots could have come from anywhere. The terrain around the mountainside village was a sniper's paradise.

"We seem to have acquired a guardian angel," Bolan mused. "All right, lady. Ready to travel?"

"We have no choice," replied Zoraya. They returned to the Volvo, Bolan behind the wheel, and drove away from the truck and the road littered with sprawled bodies.

As Bolan wheeled the vehicle away from the site of carnage, many thoughts flashed through his mind with instant clarity. The realization had hit home the moment he saw Zoraya Khaled risking her life for him, trading shots with the enemy. An enemy would never have done that.

Bolan knew his first gut reaction to this special lady had been right all along.

Her voice, throaty and sense-intriguing as always, broke into his thoughts.

"You must forgive me, Mack." Zoraya avoided his eyes. She popped another magazine into the Uzi. "I... lost control for a moment when I first saw you. I was so afraid you had died in the air strike. I warned my sister who cooks for the troops at that base. Uri knows she is a key source of information and told me so I could tell her in time for her to escape. But I wanted to help you. I did not want you to end... like Chaim. I thought... if you needed me..."

"Which I did. Thank you, Zoraya, but I'm afraid I've got some bad news."

"About my uncle, yes. He sent me out for supplies. He thought since it was his business, he could better draw attention away from where you were hidden if anyone came looking. I saw the scum leaving who killed him. Our own kind. Druse gunmen. I... slaughtered them. When I returned to the garage a few moments later... you were gone. But what of now? I do not understand..."

"For starters I'd better get us out of this country," Bolan said. "My work here is done." He did not want to think of Strakhov. Not at the moment. He wondered if the KGB commander boss cannibal had been killed in that air strike. He had a hunch deep inside that he and Strakhov would confront each other again someday. But he saw no reason to lay that on the woman beside him who had already done so much.

"I have spent some time today arranging your withdrawal from Lebanon through my friends in the underground. Just in case your plans went astray." Zoraya smiled. "One cannot always anticipate the plans of Allah."

"You'll accompany me?" He thought he knew her answer to that but he had to ask, and her response told him he had been right about her, yeah. This was one very special lady.

She shook her head without taking her eyes from the countryside flashing past.

"My place is here, Mack. You can see from here how the fighting in Beirut has ceased. The artillery bombardment has ceased."

Bolan had noticed.

"So no one can say Chaim Herzi died in vain," he acknowledged. "His dream of peace may still come true. Maybe today."

"There is talk of the president's being forced to step down," said Zoraya. "Of negotiations for a new government to give more rights to Muslim citizens. My people must continue the struggle because we have no other choice and I must be part of that. I cannot leave my home." And that was when Bolan saw the guy standing in the middle of the road.

Bolan did not peg him as Syrian or Russian. He was wearing American threads, holding his ground in a gunner's crouch, a.45 automatic aimed at the windshield, at Bolan's head. He looked as if he would not give an inch, daring Bolan to run him down.

Bolan braked the Volvo into another abrupt sideways stop.

Zoraya's knuckles whitened on the Uzi.

"Do not stop! It is a trap!" Bolan had already stopped.

As he stepped out of the car to face the man in the road, he whispered back into the car to Zoraya.

"He's mine. Don't shoot. Don't do anything."

"Mack..." Bolan moved away from the car, out of earshot of her plea, to approach the man aiming the .45 at him. Bolan kept his pace steady, his empty hands well away from his holstered weapons. He stopped when he got close enough to discern the sheen of sweat across the American's forehead. He locked eyes with the man. "CIA?"

The man nodded. The .45 did not waver from between Bolan's eyes, the gunner's crouch tense, like an animal ready to spring. "Collins. You're Mack Bolan."

"That's a fact," Bolan replied in a monotone. "So what are you going to do about it, Collins? Do you know what I just did back there?"

"At Zahle? I saw the whole thing and you did good. But orders on you are to Terminate on Sight, buddy boy. I lost a friend today. I saw him blown to bits, and you're a part of the goddamn problem."

"I'm the solution to the problem," Bolan corrected. "I'm sorry about your pal. I've lost some along the way, too. It's that kind of war. But we're on the same side, guy. I've never fired on a comrade in arms. I won't fire on you and I won't have this lady fire, either. But if you saw what I did down there... I can do it again and keep on doing it where it counts until the vultures stop me, if they can. Or you can stop me right here and now and let them score the point. You know that's the truth, Collins. You decide the future."

The .45 drew its unwavering bead for another moment. Then Bob Collins lowered the pistol. "You're right, you know that. I guess the heat... all the killing, it got to me." Collins holstered the.45 and stepped from the middle of the road. "Okay, Bolan. Next time it won't be like this, if we eyeball each other again, but yeah, I saw what you did. This one's for Also Randolph. Okay, go do it again somewhere."

Bolan returned a curt nod to that, returned to the Volvo and drove past and away from the Company man without looking back.

The woman beside him touched Bolan's arm with feather-light fingertips, a look of concern from those smoldering eyes. "You take great chances."

"I have a guardian angel," Bolan reminded her, scanning the receding terrain behind them reflected in the Volvo's rearview mirror, seeing nothing but Bob Collins returning on foot to his vehicle. Bolan felt weary, but he felt good, too. He felt strong, stronger than ever in his belief in a better world as long as there were people like Zoraya in it; a reaffirmation of his dedication to the everlasting war of a soldier's life. "Now then," he said to the lovely beside him as they rounded a breathtaking panorama of the Mediterranean stretched out to the horizon far below, "what was that you said about getting me out of here?"

Yakov Katzenelenbogen lowered the rifle from its target, no longer telescoped with the cross hairs centered on Collins's head. Katz had witnessed the brief scene between Bolan and the CIA man, who now climbed into a sedan and drove off in the opposite direction taken by Bolan and the woman in the Volvo. A fresh breeze blew in from the sea, whisking away the clouds of war and letting the sun shine in on the city far below, battered but still standing, like its people.

Survivors with hope. Katz watched the Volvo drive around the bend in the mountain road leading to the sea, and when the car disappeared he decided he would not follow it farther. The helping hand he'd given the Executioner and the woman had seen them far enough for the warrior in blacksuit to carry it for the touchdown. Katz had worked his way across the Israel-Lebanon border using his knowledge of security along the frontier. Intel from the same sources about Strakhov's summit at Zahle had brought him here. He hoofed over to his hidden vehicle parked nearby. He had his own withdrawal from "Paris of the Med" already mapped out and was not overly concerned with Mossad for the events at the farmhouse where they had tried to detain him. He had far too much dirt on his former colleagues stored away, waiting for release to the media, stuff that could topple governments east and west, ready to go out if they got to him. Katz had gotten out of far worse scrapes than having Mossad angry with him.