Beirut Payback: MacK Bolan (8 page)

Bob Collins awoke with a start and reached for the .45 automatic he always wore in a shoulder holster. He relaxed when he realized Also Randolph was the man shaking him awake. Collins sat up on the cot in their "office" and blinked the sleep from his eyes.

He and Randolph were partners and sort of friends, CIA agents who had risen through the ranks to find themselves stuck with the worst assignment of all.

"What the hell is it?" The sleep had been fitful but welcome just the same, a respite from Hell.

Collins and Randolph had not only been stuck with the undesirable job, but were right smack in the middle of it and there was no escape at all.

"Wake up." Randolph shook him some more. "We've got trouble."

Collins reoriented himself to the CIA monitoring station: the basement of a closed vegetable business owned by a Company front in the Christian sector of Beirut. Like living in a dungeon, Collins thought again. Then he shook the depression and glowered.

"Okay, Also. Trouble. Trouble in Hell. Give it a name."

"Bolan," Randolph replied, and that woke Coffins up all the way. Randolph moved to lean his bulk against the battered table in the corner where they kept the scrambler phone to the embassy. He lit a cigarette. "Just got it. Thought you'd want to know." Collins turned on the hot plate to heat water for instant coffee. The cellar room felt as claustrophobic as ever.

"And I suppose our orders are to keep this sector wired for public enemy number one."

"You got it. Make that world enemy."

"I know the standing orders on the guy," Collins grouched. "Shoot on sight. I wonder what the hell Mack Bolan is doing in Beirut, now that he's put himself against the KGB.. They're all over this rathole, sure, but nothing that hasn't been going on for a long, long time. Maybe our buddies in Mossad know."

Randolph grunted and lit another butt.

"Buddies, uh-huh. Depending on which way the wind is blowing out of Washington and Tel Aviv this hour. And I don't think we're going to be such buddies with Mossad after you hear the rest of what I just got."

Collins spooned coffee into a cup, added hot water and stiffed.

"So tell me, Also. We've got to hit the streets in the middle of everything that's going to bust loose today, keep our cover intact and monitor the fighting and not get killed. Now we've got Mack Bolan and orders to terminate a guy the Vietcong, the Mafia and all the terrorists in the world couldn't kill. A guy who was on our side until a few months ago and maybe he still is. And you say you've got something else."

Collins looked at his partner. "Maybe we ought to pack a suitcase and slip out and go home, Also. You ever thought of that?"

"What the hell brought us into this, anyway? A few months ago this guy Bolan would've come to us for help. Now we're supposed to kill him. And all the rest of it. I don't want to die in Beirut. Do you want to die in Beirut? We've been conned, Also. Let's go home." The cynicism disappeared from Randolph's face, and all of a sudden he looked honest and as tired as Collins felt.

"Dammit, stop it, Bob. Get it together. You know it's not as easy as that and it does mean something. Even if you did get out that way you'd get what Bolan got." Collins sipped his coffee.

"You're right. Sorry about the whining, Also. It won't happen again. But you want to know something... what Bolan got ain't so bad. He's got himself, buddy. They took him but he got himself back and his name and his soul with it." Randolph dragged on his cigarette.

"I know what you mean. We're on the same side as he is in a way, but orders are orders. The Company can't allow anyone running around tackling wild, unsanctioned actions in sensitive areas like this the way Bolan does."

"He gets results, Also. And I don't think we have to worry about too many people trying or even coming close to what Bolan has done. The Executioner is one in ten million. No, make it one of a kind. That's Bolan."

"So our orders suck," Randolph grunted and the cynical tone returned. "So call up the embassy on the scrambler and tell them the orders suck. And see what they give you back. These orders come from the top, pally. And the orders say: terminate Bolan."

"I said I know the orders. And you said you had something else about Mossad. So we don't share our intel with them. So how worse can it get?"

"Does the name Katzenelenbogen ring a bell?"

"Uh-huh. He's the honcho of the Stony Man Farm operation Bolan used to head before Bolan went lone wolf. I never heard anything bad about the Israeli."

"Lend an ear. Katz got Bolan over here using some old ties with Mossad, slipped Bolan in through Israel, and no one who helped knew the guy is on the hit list of every spy agency in existence."

"Must be something real big cooking to get Bolan in," Collins thought aloud. "That incredible dude has taken on the whole KGB. That's full-time work even for him."

"Crazy," Randolph grumbled.

"Yeah." Collins tried on the cynicism.

"Crazy when he took on the whole frigging Mafia. He tore that organization of scumbags to shreds and they still haven't recovered. Crazy when he let the government talk him into taking on the worldwide terrorist network. Well, maybe he did give the government too much of his soul for a while there, but take a look at what a shambles he made of international terrorism. Was Don Quixote crazy? People are still talking about that one a couple of hundred years later for inspiration." Randolph started to light a third cigarette but threw it away in disgust. "Damn things. I'll die of cancer before the guns get me." He looked at Collins. "The only way it figures is that Bolan hasn't tackled our local KGB opposite numbers up to now because the situation has been too damn fluid for anyone to get a handle on it, including Bolan."

"And now he's got the handle and we don't know what the hell it is," Collins muttered. "You're saying whatever has brought Bolan here came from Mossad, through Katzenelenbogen?"

"I'm saying what Control told me."

"And our orders?"

"We have a fix on Katzenelenbogen. He's with an Israeli military unit across the border. We pick him up. We interrogate him. Mossad will cooperate." Collins finished his coffee and set the empty cup down with a clunk.

"Mossad might cooperate. Katzenelenbogen won't. Neither will Bolan. Not by a damn sight."

"Right. That's what I told Control, but those bastards never listen to advice from the street."

From somewhere above came the yammer of automatic weapons. Randolph thought it sounded strangely removed from their subterranean station, yet uncomfortably near. Too near.

Shouts and answering gunfire rang through the streets.

As on virtually all of the stores in the city, the sliding metal garage-doorlike front had been pulled down on the vegetable store. It had not been open for weeks, since the latest outbreak of serious fighting.

Collins glanced at his wristwatch, then in the direction of the warfare, as if he could see through the clay walls of the cellar.

"Hell, it's only 5:00 A.m. They're starting early today."

"We can get out now," Randolph suggested. He grabbed Collins's jacket from a peg and tossed it to him. "We'll be back by early afternoon."

"Is that Control's idea or yours?"

"Coming back? That's the mission, isn't it? We've still got the mission. And there's Bolan." Collins flicked off the cellar light. They started up the stairs toward the back entrance of the building.

"I've got a feeling," Collins told his partner, "there'll always be a Bolan. That bastard's too damn mean to die."

"Sir, the call you've been waiting for is on the field phone." Yakov Katzenelenbogen nodded and grabbed the phone's receiver.

Katz was certain the caller would be Mack Bolan. It would be the first time they made contact since the Phoenix Force leader and the Executioner had parted ways along the Israel-Lebanon border hours earlier. At that time, Bolan had been on his way to meet Yakov's nephew, Chaim.

This call would be from Bolan's miniature transceiver, boosted and scrambled by several Israeli stations until relayed through the wires to this communications tent on the Israeli army base at Acre.

Katz had expected to hear from Bolan well before this and had tried to ignore the worry that plagued him. The thirty thousand Israeli troops had been massed along the border with good reason.

Things were going to hell in a hand basket in Lebanon.

The first light of day warmed comfortably, but Katz felt cold inside.

"Go," he growled curtly into the field phone receiver.

"Mack here." Katz casually turned away from the others in the communications tent and pitched his voice low.

"What have you got, Striker?"

"Bad news, Yakov. Chaim is dead." The Israeli's throat constricted.

"How? Strakhov?"

"No. Chaim got hit in a cross fire between Druse and Phalangists."

"The woman, Zoraya?" Katz kept his voice hard. The senior member of Phoenix Force had been losing members of his family to violence since World War II, leaving him to carry the pain. He had almost gotten used to it.

Almost.

"I had Zoraya and I lost her," Bolan replied.

"Then you've got her again. She contacted Chaim's control officer in Beirut not ten minutes ago. He got the message to me and I got back to her. She... said nothing about Chaim. "

"She probably didn't know how to. I know how she felt. What did she say?"

"That you must contact her." Katz gave Bolan the address in Beirut that Zoraya had given him. "She wouldn't stay on. Chaim's control can't get to her. You must know how the situation is there. He's unable to move anywhere."

"I'll get to her," Bolan promised.

"And your target?"

"Still at large. I had him under the gun, but I gave him a white flag without him knowing it. The enemy is on our side of the street this once. For a few hours, anyway. There's a plot to hit the Lebanese president, but Moscow thinks it's the wrong time. They've sent our man to straighten it out."

"Any leads?"

"The Disciples of Allah."

"The ones who..."

"Right. Only the bunch I found tonight won't be massacring any more Marines or anyone else." Katz started to ask what Bolan intended to do next when he noticed three men strutting toward him with grim determination: the commander of this Israeli detachment and two men in American civilian apparel whom Katz read as CIA.

He lowered his voice even more and spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece.

"Trouble, Mack. I'm about to be arrested and interrogated, if I read this right. Uh, if I allow it, that is. How do I play it?" Katz had only seconds before the three men reached him. They would not buy his beret-topped professorial air but would know exactly how dangerous he was. All three of them carried pistols. What they did not, could not, know was that Katz already had them under the gun.

The one-armed ex-Mossad boss wore a prosthetic device attached to the stump of his right arm. This "hand," a state-of-the-art contraption of steel, insulated wires and cables with four fingers and a thumb, was not as practical or versatile as the threepronged hook Katz favored.

But the device featured an "index finger" that was in fact the barrel of a built-in, single-shot pistol that fired a .22 Magnum cartridge. The bullet was detonated by a nine-volt battery that could be activated by manipulation of the muscles in the stump of Katz's arm. There was a safety catch at the palm of the artificial hand to prevent firing the gun by accident.

Katz computed the odds of grabbing his holstered pistol while two of these men recovered if he fired the "index finger" at one of them, but of course that was only reflex thinking. He could not fire on these men and he knew it.

Bolan's voice crackled over the field phone.

"Cooperate with them like a stone wall. I need time, Yakov. Can you do it and not jeopardize your Stony Man position?" The Israeli chuckled grimly.

"You do your job, Striker, I'll do mine." He hung up the phone as the three men reached him. "Yes, gentlemen?"

"Colonel Katzenelenbogen," began the Israeli officer, "these men are American CIA. Mr. Collins and Mr. Randolph. Mossad has ordered me to cooperate with them fully."

"And those guns you're carrying say I cooperate with you fully, is that it?" Katz retorted. "Very well. Let's hear what you have to say."

Katz hoped these three and those who would certainly continue to interrogate him after these guys were done would not see through his stone wall.

Mack Bolan had just lost his one contact out of Lebanon.

Bolan abandoned the Syrian jeep well before he reached the city. Twice on foot he dodged military patrols — one Syrian, the other Druse — and it was only because of the ever shifting lines that he was able to move at all.

At a farmhouse he offered a Muslim family more Lebanese pounds than they probably saw in a year for the rusty Saab that had only one fender and no lights. They were glad to take the money and Bolan took the car, continuing on into Beirut.

The address Zoraya had given Katz was in Hay alSalloum, an area generally under the control of the Shiite militia group called Amal.

Centuries of punishing white sun and winds had razored across the neighborhood like the breath of Hades. The area, which had also fallen victim to war, was not very different from the section where Zoraya lived near the Avenue des Frangais, except that Hay alSalloum appeared to be a more commercial district. But it was every bit as closed up and deserted as that corner of the hellground where Bolan had last met Zoraya.

Today's shelling of the city had begun when Bolan got within two blocks of the place his map of Beirut indicated he would find Zoraya and perhaps the child, Selim.

Thoughts of the woman and boy left Bolan's mind when the bombardment from Druse artillery in the mountains resumed, aimed at the Christian sectors of the city and government positions. Yet Bolan knew war well enough to realize the shelling would be taken as a signal by all troops and gunmen in the city that the war was on for another day. The brief respite of the morning was over. The killing could resume.

Bolan parked his car and continued warily on foot, his combat blacksuit, Beretta and Big Thunder again making him appear no more out of place than he had during the hours of darkness.

The streets and avenues streamed with pedestrians, civilians, toting luggage and children, hurrying to be gone.

Bolan passed them going in the opposite direction when he heard moans and tortured pleas for help from an alley.

He paused and glanced in to see two Shiite militiamen tormenting one of their own, a veiled Muslim woman.

One of the soldiers laughed and cruelly squeezed and twisted the hapless woman's breasts through her clothes. The other Shiite forgot his grenade launcher for a moment and fumbled to unbutton the fly on his uniform with one hand. With the other he reached to pull off the woman's veil.

Bolan barely stopped. Big Thunder roared twice and two would-be rapists were deposited headless amid the bombed-out rubble.

He continued on. The woman hurried away.

The address Katz had passed on to him as the rendezvous point with Zoraya turned out to be an auto-repair garage, the metal doors closed.

Bolan tried the handle of a door set into the business front alongside the garage opening, and this portal opened inward.

The street was full of civilians, not soldiers. The gunmen of the different factions engaged one another blocks away, the sounds of the shooting muted by rows of bombed-out buildings and others like the garage that had somehow remained untouched thus far.

Bolan soundlessly closed the door behind him with his heel. Icy eyes and a cold Beretta fanned the gloom. He discerned rusted-out hulks of cars on blocks, stripped of parts over the years.

There was nothing else except a table and a dim lightbulb. Then Bolan noticed a djellaba-robed Arab who stood tentatively watching the fearsome combat figure approach him.

Another small business chewed up and spit out by the ravages of war.

"Yes, effendi, may I be of service?" The Arab's eyes took in Bolan's weapons fearfully.

"You address me in English," Bolan noted. "I am the one you expect. Where is Zoraya?"

Relief shone in the old man's eyes, then reverted to paranoia again as he glanced cautiously back in the direction of the door.

"You were not followed?"

"There are no government soldiers behind me."

"Bah! We have as much to fear from Amal and the Druse!" the old man spit.

He walked over and locked the street door, then returned and spryly stepped up onto the table.

He used a pocketknife to pry open a break that looked like nothing more than the juncture between ceiling and wall from where Bolan stood. The old man tugged. A ceiling panel angled down to reveal some wooden steps leading up into an attic.

The man gestured.

"If you please, effendi. I will remain down here and keep watch. Zoraya knows the signal in the event of... unexpected company." Bolan acknowledged this but did not drop his wariness of the man. He climbed onto the table and up those steps.

He emerged into the secret attic space ready to blast back at any trap waiting for him.

No trap.

Zoraya waited for him.

She had been sitting on a low bed, which, with a chair and overturned orange crate for a table, were the only pieces of furniture in the slant-roofed little place. A high window in one end of the attic wall let in sunlight marred by rising clouds of battle from a neighborhood nearby.

Zoraya stood and approached Bolan with a small sound of relief and happiness.

Bolan emerged fully into the attic. The hidden entrance to the room closed up after him.

He holstered the Beretta and took Zoraya in his arms. They hugged each other like dear friends who had parted and never expected to see each other again. There was nothing sexual, but no way could Bolan the man not be aware of the physical charms of this darkhaired Arab beauty.

She did not stop hugging him for long moments.

"I... thought I had lost you," she whispered, "as I lost Chaim! Soldiers came after you left me with Selim at Biskinta ... a force of Syrians, Russian advisors with them.... You made me promise to let nothing happen to the little one.... I wanted to stay, but... they were searching the area. They fired on us as we drove away."

"You did right," he told her. "The man downstairs. Can he be trusted?" She nodded against his shoulder.

"He is my uncle. He loved my brothers dearly and now he hates the Druse militia for what they did... for the murder of Adli and Aziz. He hides and protects me here... There is as much rape as killing now." Bolan remembered the action he'd halted in the alley before arriving here.

"I'm glad you're safe. Where's Selim?"

Zoraya sat back down on the bed.

"There is the good news. The government has an agency for exactly such situations: children separated from their parents and the like. I took Selim there first thing this morning when they opened and did not leave until I had their assurance that they would ascertain the whereabouts of the little one's parents. They were displaced during the fighting." Bolan felt a weight of responsibility lift from his shoulders. He straddled the wooden chair next to the bed and faced Zoraya.

"I'm glad to hear that. And I appreciate your getting word to me the way you did through Chaim's uncle."

"I had to tell Chaim's control officer about General Strakhov at Zahle and the Disciples of Allah in case you did not return. And... Chaim's partner told me more about you, Mack Bolan. They call you The Executioner."

"What else did they tell you?"

"Chaim's uncle has been detained for questioning regarding your presence here and how you got into Lebanon."

"And what are your orders from Chaim's partner?" She held eye contact with him.

"To report the moment you contact me."

"And your uncle?"

"My uncle knows nothing of any of this. Mossad cooperates with your Central Intelligence Agency. They must try to stop you. But I had heard of The Executioner before this. Your name is legend, you see, even in such a wasteland as this, Mack Bolan."

"And now?"

"I am your friend," she replied without hesitation. "I knew you would return; that you would not die in Biskinta."

"Or Zahle," he added dryly. He stood up, reached inside his blacksuit and sat next to her on the edge of the bed. He unfolded the blueprints retrieved during the battle at the Iranian base and spread the plans out on the blanket. "I need you to translate something for me, Zoraya." He directed her attention to the Arabic lettering along the bottom of the sheet of paper.

She read it, then looked up with question marks in those Mediterranean eyes.

"These... are floor plans of the presidential palace at Baabda."

Bolan refolded the blueprints.

"That clinches it, then. I've got to contact Mossad with this and I'll need your help."

"I will do anything to help stop this war, as I told you. But Mossad... are they not your enemies, too?"

"I've got an angle on that. Tell Chaim's partner that you've got me and I wish to talk with him. Tell him I've got information on an assassination plot, but start the conversation off by saying he's not to let on to whoever he's with. Most likely he'll be with a Company man and the moment they know it's me they'll try to trace the call. Even if Chaim's partner agrees to meet me alone, the CIA wouldn't let him. They want me real bad."

"Because of what you will do?"

"Because of what I've done and what they think I am. Can you do this for me?"

"Of course. You will wait here?" He nodded and watched her lower the hidden stairs.

"Be careful, Zoraya."

She nodded, then left him, closing the partition behind her.

Bolan stretched out on the bed, then palmed the Beretta in his right hand.

This would be a good spot for an ambush, in which case he had read Zoraya one hundred percent wrong. It was a chance he had to take.

He rested his head on the pillow, relishing these few moments away from the fray. He appreciated the opportunity to recharge his inner batteries for what stretched ahead.

Zoraya returned minutes later and reclosed the secret opening.

The distant sounds of war could have been a thousand miles away.

"Chaim's partner will meet you in ninety minutes at a pub off the Avenue des Frangais."

She recited an address that Bolan committed to memory.

"Such establishments, you see, do a wonderful business at times such as these. Those who cannot escape the city drink while they wait to live or die. He will be there at ten-thirty." She briefly described what the Mossad agent told her he would be wearing. "He says he will recognize you."

"I bet he will. What's his name?"

"Uri Weizmann. He and Chaim were very close professionally and as friends. You can trust him, Mack, believe me."

"Thanks, Zoraya."

She paused, then said, "There is... something you can do for me in return, Mack Bolan."

He gazed up at her from the bed.

"Tell me."

"If you would just... hold me," she said quietly. "I feel... so alone. Just hold me, Mack... please... nothing more..."

Bolan read the sad, lonely look in her eyes and extended his arms.

She stretched out against him atop the covers of the bed, resting tousled midnight hair into the crook of his arm. No, there was not one thing erotic about it at all, only a need for the touch of someone humane and good to somehow balance out everything else and, yes, Bolan needed that, too. They held each other for a long time in the solitude of the attic far away from the war.

They comforted each other and reaffirmed themselves as decent human beings who could care and share gentleness.