Before the tank's noise had faded, another vehicle emerged from the Druse base and turned in Bolan's direction.
The Executioner got ready, finger on the trigger of the reloaded AK-47 in case this wasn't the connection Uri claimed he could use to set up Bolan's penetration of Strakhov's headquarters summit.
The meeting would be the biggest gathering of terrorist warlords that a peace-bringer named Bolan, a soldier who cared, could ever hope to target for extinction.
A jeep with Syrian markings approached Bolan's position. It was driven by a Druse militiaman accompanied by a shotgun-riding gunman, his assault rifle pointed skyward.
The vehicle, much like the one Bolan had escaped in from Zahle a few hours before, upshifted past the Saab and this time Bolan did not hunch down but sat there with his AK ready to fire. But that proved unnecessary because the vehicle chugged by with neither driver nor soldier sparing the Saab a sideways glance as they drove past him.
As the jeep cruised by, Bolan recalled his parting conversation with Uri Weizmann.
"We have a man planted in the Druse militia," Weizmann had told Bolan before they split up outside the pub. "A driver. We've spent two years planting him. I can't afford to lose him."
"Your man will have time to pull out before the air strike."
"The driver and a soldier will leave the Druse motor pool at a garage they took over near to the area where the new recruits are billeted. The chauffeur is supposed to drive with the soldier to pick up Fouad Zakir, the militia's strategist and liaison with the Syrian command at Zahle."
The pair continued away from the Saab, away from the base, without turning off at the corner as the tank had.
When they reached the middle of the next block, Bolan pulled the Saab out from the curb and followed the vehicle at a discreet distance.
The jeep went a quarter mile, then the wheelman steered onto a several-square-block wasteland of completely gutted, devastated buildings that happened to be well behind the lines of heavy fighting.
The duo pulled over to what had been the curb of a trashed zone.
Bolan drove toward the jeep and could see the soldier who had been riding shotgun jumping awkwardly out from the vehicle and trying to bring up his rifle to aim at the driver. Then a pistol in the driver's fist barked once just as Bolan came to a halt behind the jeep.
The pistol blast spun the soldier around into a death sprawl, a human discard amid the rubble.
Bolan left the Saab and knelt beside the man to relieve him of AK-47 ammo clips at his waist.
The driver of the jeep shot worried glances in either direction.
"Hurry. The area is heavily patrolled by both sides. If it weren't for the fighting elsewhere..."
"I read you," Bolan returned, and quickly climbed into the dead man's uniform. The outfit was ill-fitting, too small, but with Bolan seated it would not be noticed.
Bolan and the driver dragged the body out of sight of the road and hid it in the rubble. Then Bolan took the dead man's place in the passenger seat. The Mossad plant gunned the vehicle away from there.
"Well done, guy." Bolan thanked the Israeli behind the wheel. "I appreciate the help. And the risk you're taking."
"Control said it was essential. After Zakir reaches the base at Zahle, you and I will be expected to wait on base until their meeting is finished." The driver steered along a deserted street.
"Will you be able to get off base without arousing suspicion?" asked Bolan.
The "Druse" chuckled.
"Their organization is a joke. I will drive off base once you and I split up. I will wait nearby until after the air strike. The soldier and I were separated in the fighting. At a time like this, no one will give much of a damn that he was found several miles away. The roads are full of deserters. I'll tell the same to my superiors even if there is no air strike." The Mossad man steel-eyed the American. "If Fouad Zakir survives this day my life will be forfeited."
"I don't think your control would risk a man in your position unless he thought you'd come out alive," Bolan assured the guy. "Leave Zakir to me."
The guy from Mossad braked the vehicle in front of a row of private residences.
"Gladly. He lives right here."
The two "Druse" soldiers proceeded to collect the militia hotshot whose very presence passed them through two Druse checkpoints without problems.
They entered increasingly hostile territory the farther they got from Beirut along the heavily traveled military road into the mountains toward Zahle.
Zakir emanated an arrogance that precluded conversation between himself and the chauffeur and bodyguard.
Bolan felt a gnawing anticipation in his gut with the ascending cool of approaching battle consciousness.
He had bought time for his Beirut payback. The anticipation had a lot to do with that. The payback, uhhuh, would be in the name of America's best, those much maligned, always there fighting men of the U.S. Marine Corps, trained warriors who hold the front lines to keep American citizens and values alive and free.
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.