"I... I understand, comrade Major General."
Strakhov holstered his pistol.
"Retrieve your weapon then. What has been done cannot be undone." Kleb obeyed meekly.
"Thank you, comrade."
"I will be taking over General Abdel's office for my stay in this pit," Strakhov growled, striding briskly with barely a glance at the dead Syrian to a chair behind the desk. "He won't be needing it." He glared daggers at Kleb. "Contact ranking officers of the Druse, Syrian, PLO and Iranian forces in the area. Schedule an emergency briefing. Here, at noon today. "
"That, uh, may be difficult, comrade Major General, considering..."
"Tell them they will be here," Strakhov barked. "They will understand. And they will understand what I tell them at the briefing. Or they shall be replaced."
"I shall see to it immediately."
"Also see to this," Strakhov instructed. He handed Kleb a scrap of paper. "We have traced the license number of a car seen leaving the Iranian compound at Biskinta two hours prior to our attack this morning. It was an unmarked vehicle of the Lebanese government." Kleb registered a puzzled frown.
"The government?"
"Apparently there are things happening in Beirut at this moment that we do not know. A situation I find untenable."
"I shall... pursue the matter vigorously," Kleb promised.
"See that you do, Major, and perhaps I shall have reason to be more generous in my report concerning you to Moscow than I have thus far had reason to be. And see that these, or, things..." Strakhov indicated with disdain the two corpses "...comare removed. The sight of them alive turned my stomach. Now they're worse. Tie the Iranian's neck with rope to the back of a vehicle and have him dragged through the countryside. He will be a lesson. I suppose we must be more subdued with General Abdel. Return the body to his family."
"As you wish, comrade Major General." Kleb saluted smartly and fled the room.
Leaving Strakhov alone with the dead.
And the new dawn beginning to stretch beyond the mountains to the east.
10
The Executioner had been about to storm through that window into Abdel's office in an attempt to save Masudi's life. At least until the Iranian spilled what he knew about a plot to assassinate the Lebanese president.
Then Bolan would deal with Strakhov.
He checked his move, though, when the door of the office flew inward and Strakhov barged in.
The penetrator on the ledge paused.
He could continue to maintain this low profile and eavesdrop. Strakhov would want Masudi alive for the same reasons as Bolan.
When Kleb killed Masudi, too fast for anyone to stop him, Bolan winced at the Russian major's miscalculation, but like Strakhov the Executioner understood that what had happened could not be undone.
He remained listening on that ledge, the Beretta poised.
The first light of dawn began to half illuminate the Syrian base. Birds chirped. The barracks beyond Bolan's line of vision started waking up.
Bolan had better than working knowledge of Russian both written and spoken, and continued to work to master it during any available moment.
He knew enough, however, to decipher the main ideas of most conversations he heard in the language and that included enough of the exchange between the two Russians in the late General Abdel's office.
Bolan now knew he could not kill the man he had come all this way to find and terminate.
The Executioner had traveled halfway around the world to this hellground and had his target under the gun, only to discover at that precise moment that The Executioner and the top savage of them all were allies with the same objective: to halt the assassination of the president of this undersized powder keg on the Mediterranean.
Bolan appreciated that ultimate stabilization of the region could only result in diplomacy. Events were overtaking themselves. There was nothing for the powder keg to do now but blow sky high. Then the diplomats could come in.
America would have to exert her influence in other ways, but it could be done. That's what diplomats did. Bolan's mission to terminate Strakhov had become Bolan's bid at making this part of the world safe for diplomacy.
As the exchange in the office ended, with Strakhov seated at the desk while Kleb scurried off, Bolan pulled back from the window and prepared to withdraw, formulating strategy on the move. He pulled back to the open window along the ledge.
He knew where he would be at noon today, if he lived that long.
Right here.
Strakhov had called an emergency summit of all the terrorist factions. The Syrian base at Zahle would be crawling with more of these vermin than Bolan could ever hope or expect to find in one place at one time.
High noon in Zahle?
Yeah, Bolan would be there.
Bet on it.
In the meantime, he intended to devote his energies to what had suddenly made him an ally of the cannibal chief he had come here to kill.
He had those blueprints snatched from Biskinta and the lead from Strakhov of an unmarked government car tonight where it had no business being at an Iranian camp in the Shouf, well behind Syrian and Druse lines.
Strakhov's presence in Lebanon indicated how important the Kremlin considered his mission to consolidate these terrorist factions. It would be in the Soviets interest to eradicate the more volatile, unpredictable element like the Disciples of Allah, giving Syria carte blanche to escalate hostilities against Israel, paving the way for an expansion of control into the Persian Gulf. Some thirty thousand Israeli troops had already been massed along the Israel-Lebanon border.
In those terms Bolan recognized the magnitude of his own mission in blocking this power play, yet he also appreciated that even when he hit Strakhov and, damn right, Bolan intended to live that long and damn large while he was at it. The Executioner would only be hacking off one more tentacle of a hydra he had given up everything else to fight.
He would find a way.
He would find Zoraya and little Selim, too.
But first he had to get the hell out of Zahle.
At least General Masudi had not bothered to tell Strakhov of the blacksuited nightfighter who interrupted that briefing of the Disciples of Allah before they could leave Biskinta.
Bolan now knew their mission could only have been part of the Shiite assassination plot to kill the president. Masudi probably mistook the commando in blackface as one of the Syrians' strike force.
Bolan almost made the open window along that second-story ledge of the headquarters building. He intended to retrace his route at least part of the way off the base.
The sun would not show itself for a while although the morning was getting lighter by the second. There were still shadows and gloom and the eye had to strain to discern things.
A three-man sentry patrol of Syrian soldiers rounded the near side of the building when the penetrator had only three or four seconds to go to reach that open window and disappear out of sight. The soldiers were marching abreast, AK-47'S slung over their shoulders. The man in the middle gazed up almost idly at the lighted window of General Abdel's office and the other two looked with him. Just one of those things.
Two minutes earlier it would have been dark enough for the nightstriker to go undetected from down there, but Bolan had stayed too long in the heart of the enemy camp.