Don Pendleton: Beirut Payback

Phoenix Force and Able Team continued to play vital parts in America's antiterrorist operations, but Bolan preferred not to complicate the lives of his buddies by contacting them.

His past was now wired by the CIA, FBI, NSA — the whole acronymic litany of intelligence agencies around the world. Those groups feared the lone warrior to be a security risk because of his unsanctioned activity.

The orders to all agents in the field: Terminate Bolan with extreme prejudice.

The Executioner had shifted operations to a new target: the Soviet spy-terror network, the KGB. The real force behind the action that killed April Rose.

Same breed as the Mafia, sure.

Cannibals that had to be stopped.

Bolan's Phoenix period made him realize that in centering his efforts on individual acts of world terrorism, he had concentrated on tentacles, not the heart of the beast. The principal enemy was a force of seven hundred thousand agents worldwide, specializing in subversion, oppression and terror. Its aim: world domination. Its name: the KGB.

Bolan knew from hard-fact intel that everything from the attempted assassination of the Pope to international debate over cruise missiles could be traced to the headquarters of the KGB'S First Chief Directorate in Moscow.

Just as he understood during his Mafia wars that the majority of Italians had nothing but hatred toward the Brotherhood, Bolan understood, too, that the Russian people and the general civilian populace under dictatorial rule in Soviet-occupied countries were not always to be confused with their oppressors.

Major General Greb Strakhov was the main focus of Bolan's KGB war.

Strakhov. The KGB'S most powerful official.

Bolan had killed Strakhov's only child, his son, Kyril, during the Executioner's mission to steal a Russian superhelicopter in Afghanistan.

Ridding the world of Bolan became an obsession with Strakhov.

War Everlasting for Mack Bolan, right.

And the citizens of Beirut had it no better.

The Executioner tracked deeper into the horror, traversing battle-ruined neighborhoods barely controlled by rival militias and roving bands of gunmen.

Bolan knew from experience that urban warfare is the soldier's most dangerous hellground. The fields of fire were restricted, clearly limited by walls, sharp architectural lines making hidden observation difficult and stretches of consistent color making undetected movement hard, even for a hellgrounder of Bolan's savvy and expertise. And there was the ever present danger from unlimited positions above-each street a killground deathtrap.

The city was a no-man's-land of jittery shooting, explosions in the night, smoke and licking tongues of flame.

A frightened city under siege.

Bolan kept to dark streets and alleys with the little Arab kid he toted.

The nightrunner avoided the presence of battling factions during his hazardous penetration. He passed some civilians, but they hurried on with eyes averted from yet another man with a gun in the city of death.

The shelling from the mountains had not resumed, for which Bolan was thankful.

He had no time to slow down for news of the fighting or to contact Yakov across the border.

He crouched in deepest shadow in the rubble of a bombed-out store and let trained patience take over as he made a careful scan of the run-down apartment building where Chaim Herzi had told Bolan he would find the Arab informant.

The nightprober eyed the area, his gaze encompassing the entire scene, watching for movement out of his peripheral vision.

He detected no military or armed presence in or around the building.

He unleathered Big Thunder again, lugging the child as he broke cover in a silent dash forward. He avoided the front entrance of the building, cutting to an alleyway midway up the block. He approached a flimsy back door, found it locked and kicked his way on through with a minimum of sound.

No one in sight.

He moved up rubble-littered steps to the secondfloor landing and slowed his approach, sacrificing speed for stealth.

He hugged the graffiti-covered walls where the rotted floorboards would not creak, using a toe to clear the rubble of shattered glass and broken brick and mortar in his way.

He heard a rattle of gunfire in the night a few blocks away, then the rumble of a tank, its throaty blast fiercer than the others.

Inside the building, nothing but a tomblike silence.

And quivers of danger from all around. There would be no sanctuary from the hell storming Beirut tonight.

Not that Bolan wanted any.

He would play this one on the heartbeat. There could be room for planning when he had more to work with, but right now all he had was a target.

Strakhov.

For The Executioner, that was enough.

A low-watt bulb barely illuminated the second-floor corridor.

Bolan made his way to the apartment specified by Chaim Herzi and tapped lightly on the door with the barrel of the AutoMag. Then he stepped well back from the line of possible fire, pressing himself against the wall of the corridor, AutoMag up, ready to kill.

He glanced at the boy still slumbering away in his arms. Keep it up, kid, he thought. He had to be ready to move.

The door creaked inward a few inches.

An Arab woman stood there, a dusky, dark-tressed beauty dressed in a traditional floor-length caftan that did nothing to conceal a well-shaped figure.

She saw Bolan and started to speak in Arabic.

Bolan stopped her with a motion.

She stepped aside. He carried the boy into the apartment. She closed the door and turned to lean against it, studying the man and child with expressive, inquisitive eyes.

"Do you speak English?" Bolan asked.

"You are from Chaim?"

"Are you Zoraya?"

"Yes. Who are you, please?"

"I'd like to see some identification." The beauty flared.

"You dare to demand identification from me in my own home?" Then her eyes softened with concern as she seemed to set aside business for the moment. She stepped forward, instinctively it seemed to Bolan, and plucked the child from Bolan's grasp. "And who is this?" she asked Bolan.

The child and the woman considered each other for a few moments, and some of the distrust ebbed from the little guy's big eyes.

"He needs shelter," Bolan growled. "I don't know what happened to his parents. We've been through a lot getting here.

"He is hungry. He must be fed." The woman turned with the boy and walked into a kitchenette. The apartment contrasted sharply to the rest of the rubble-strewn building complex. The lady kept her home neat and clean, with Spartan furnishings.

Bolan did not holster Big Thunder. He cautiously checked the bathroom and bedroom while the woman prepared food for the child.

Then Bolan holstered the AutoMag. He crossed to a window, noting the apartment was sensibly lighted by a floor lamp that was across the living room from the window.

He parted the draperies a fraction of an inch and glanced up and down the street below Zoraya's window. A camouflage-painted truck with a rocket launcher mounted behind turned the corner past the flames of a trashed car, redeploying to some new position. The fighting would resume. The city trembled with expectation of the violence everyone knew had to come.

While the boy sat on a divan and ate, the woman stepped up to Bolan, extending Lebanese, photo ID for his inspection. The ID backed up her claim that this was her place.

Bolan accepted that.

For now.

"Captain Herzi gave me your address. What do you know about Major General Strakhov?" He sensed a sharp mind weighing it all behind deep eyes that dominated a high-cheekboned face.

"How... do I know I can trust you?" she asked. "Chaim was to come here tonight."