Don Pendleton - Beirut Payback

The firefight tapered off in the next street over, the .50-caliber gun silenced. Bolan heard short bursts of small-arms fire every few moments, then nothing from that direction. He took a deep breath, the acrid smell of gun smoke stinging his nostrils.

Diplomacy had obviously failed in Lebanon. Too many had suffered for too long: innocents like the homeless waif that Bolan rescued; Arab Christian and Muslim alike, exploited by power brokers who sacrificed the lives of others for their own obsessive greed; and now his friend Yakov joined the ranks of the suffering, bereaved of his nephew. It had to stop.

The next generation, the real future of this troubled land, must have the opportunity to grow in a stable society, free of the threat of war. Then, perhaps, the population could strive to reach full potential instead of slaughtering each other until the gaps of hate and difference become unbreachable. Direct, positive action could do it, applied with proper control and audacity.

Bolan-style.

The Executioner knew that his present was immutably severed from his past.

And although, in blessed moments, his life touched those of his fearless friends — the men of Phoenix and Able, Grimaldi, Turrin, Kurtzman and those lovely women, Smiley, Toby and their associates — his future was committed to acting under his own command. He was answerable to no one and to nothing except his understanding, born in flames, of justice. There would always be room in his campaign, of course, for his allies.

Dire events had conspired once more — relentlessly and inevitably, it now seemed to Bolan — to impel him onto this lonely odyssey. Bereft of his legions, he accepted his due stoically, determined to pursue his destiny to the end. He knew this war was really his and his alone. Why? Because his war was a simple matter: he would avenge to the last drop of blood the death of April Rose.

In the States, Yakov Katzenelenbogen routinely received intel reports from the Mideast, considered of possible interest to his ex-commander by contacts Katz maintained in Mossad.

When the Phoenix Force boss received news that Greb Strakhov was in Beirut, Katz immediately processed the item to Bolan via one of their standard floating contacts maintained since Bolan went outlaw.

Bolan had agreed: they could not afford to let such an opportunity pass to strike at the top-echelon member of the Soviet terror machine, the man at the head of those who had killed his beloved April.

Katz covered Bolan's travel to the Mideast under anonymous Israeli diplomatic immunity. Bolan's weapons and munitions had been shipped by air, hidden in crates of Tel Aviv — bound machine parts, with Mossad's Security Blue authorization, which meant no one checked them.

In Israel, Bolan had retrieved his hardware without any problems — there are no gun-control laws in Israel — and Katz had accompanied the Executioner as far as the Lebanese border.

There, an Israeli military patrol took "the mystery man from the States" into the war-torn Lebanese countryside for Bolan's rendezvous with Chaim Herzi, Katz's nephew.

At that moment, at a military airfield near the Israeli port of Acre, Katz was waiting for word from Bolan or Herzi on the mission.

Bolan did not look forward to telling Katz of his nephew's fate.

Bolan gripped the Lebanese child to his left side, Big Thunder in his right fist, fanning the night, ready to kill. With no more than a whisper, the nightscorcher in black and his human bundle moved deeper into a city that pulsed like something about to explode, taking everything and everyone with it.

He would find two people amid this rubble of war.

Strakhov.

And the woman, Zoraya.

The Executioner had come to Beirut.

And he would give new meaning to the word Death.

Bolan had long ago accepted that his was a life destined to be War Everlasting.

In a very real sense, that is the lot of all civilized human beings. Life is a war of ideas, ideologies and actions, the conflict drawing the line between good and evil within ourselves and the society in which we live.

The difference is that Mack Bolan is a soldier, and as such he puts himself on the front lines, where wars are stark and real and lives are lost in the conflict.

It had been a long walk through such hellfire without letup since the days when a young infantryman from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, found himself dubbed The Executioner for his successful sniper missions behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War. The fact that Bolan was also nicknamed Sergeant Mercy for his compassionate treatment of Vietnamese civilians often escaped media mention and still does.

Bolan's life altered dramatically when he received an emergency leave to return home to bury his parents and sister, victims of Mafia violence.

Worthwhile as he considered his work in Nam, the jungle-war specialist made a gut-wrenching decision, considering his military background and dedication to selfless duty. Bolan gave everything he had to anything he undertook. He was more than a good soldier. His record attests to the fact that in his sniper penetration missions, Bolan was the best. No one could match him in tracking, identifying and terminating his target.

But neither was Bolan a man who could bury his family, then turn and walk away when the killers and their employers roamed free. Other good men would carry on his work in the jungles of Nam.

The Executioner could not return to the other side of the world while an all-powerful evil cancer claimed his family and festered from within at the vitals of his country. Bolan did consider himself a patriot, and he was much too American to turn his back on a threat like that.

The Army-trained Executioner declared a wholly illegal war against the Mafia. Bolan used all his Special Forces training in a war of attrition to keep the cannibals at bay before it was too late.

At first Bolan was consumed by thoughts of vengeance.

But he quickly realized the danger inherent in such an attitude. So he reassessed his feelings carefully, discovering that he could provide the hard edge between the civilized and the animals in the street.

Bolan saw no justice in the halls of justice, so he personally delivered, the tab to Mafia slimeballs for their lifetimes of sin.

Bolan accomplished the impossible.

The Executioner brought the vile behemoth to its knees in thirty-eight audacious campaigns, in the process doing what law-enforcement agencies had been unable to do.

This led to a top-secret government pardon with Bolan "dying" and being reborn with a new identity Colonel John Phoenix, head of America's covert antiterrorist wars.

The enemy had not changed, as far as Bolan, or Phoenix, was concerned.

The terrorist network tried to do to the world what the Mob had tried with a country.

Now, though, Mack Bolan was on the run.

A lone outsider waging a solo war for justice in a hostile world.

After twenty-four successful antiterrorist missions, Bolan witnessed the slaying of the woman he loved during an assault on his command center.

He found and terminated the KGB mole, planted at White House level, responsible for planning the attack. Bolan canceled the Russian ploy to sabotage America's intel apparatus from within.

But an unavoidable result was the blowing of the elaborate cover of John Phoenix and his government-sanctioned missions with his combat units, Phoenix Force and Able Team.

The public, the Mafia, the KGB, — the world — now knew that Mack Bolan, The Executioner, was alive.

Especially the KGB.

The death of April Rose was permanently seared on Bolan's soul. April died stopping a bullet meant for Bolan. He owed it to her to keep on.

He owed it to himself.

But Bolan could never again "come in from the cold" as he had during his Phoenix period.