He risked a glance back over his shoulder as he steered up the incline leading from the valley of Zahle and the Syrian base.
From the high ground as the jeep bounced along, he could see the tanks and munitions on the tarmac being eaten up, incinerated by hungry flames that some of the surviving soldiers were fighting to extinguish before the blaze spread.
Other soldiers were piling into the remaining vehicles at the motor-pool garage.
Getting ready for hot pursuit.
11
Major General Strakhov charged from the headquarters building less than thirty seconds after the explosions had rocked the base.
The compound looked like a hive of insane bees.
Syrian soldiers and Russian advisors were scurrying everywhere in the confusion, trying to find an enemy to fight. The light of the new day bathed an inferno ten times as bright when secondary explosions blew up the tarmac: and stung Strakhov's eardrums.
He hurried to the motor-pool garage where he saw Major Kleb and two of the GRU man's. Russian subordinates trying to establish some order, dead bodies and destruction everywhere.
Strakhov raised his voice above the melee.
"Major! What is going on here?" Kleb's face shone in the flames around him, covered with sweat and soot, his eyes wild.
"An attack, comrade Major General!"
"I can see that, idiot! How many of them were there? Were any apprehended?" Kleb nodded to the Syrian officers ordering their men into troop trucks.
"I have instructed them to give chase, as you can see. Those who saw the attack say it was the work of one man."
"One man?" Strakhov echoed, gazing incredulously at the damage and bodies and fury of flames from the tarmac and the gate. "Preposterous!"
"Uh, er, yes, my sentiments exactly, comrade Major General. Nonetheless, as you can see, he, or, uh, they... shall not get far."
Four troop carriers gunned their engines in final preparation for frantic pursuit.
Strakhov grabbed the lapel of Kleb's tunic and shook him with barely contained rage.
"Fool! Send one truck, imbecile. This could be a trick. A trap to lure us away. Triple the security around the perimeter. Have all officers report to me in the headquarters building immediately."
Kleb saluted. "As you wish, comrade Major General."
Strakhov turned and stormed back into the HQ building, wondering how the attackers had managed to breach the tight security measures and wreak such havoc.
He did not for a moment believe one man could possibly be responsible for all this.
As he drove, Bolan found he had no difficulty remembering this route. He had paid close attention to the road into the base less than an hour ago, as the driver of the troop truck. He had memorized the prime spots for an ambush along the way. Now that paid off. In another hour or less these hilly back roads would be swarming with soldiers, but now he had this road to himself as he coaxed more speed from his vehicle, pedal to metal.
When he did approach Beirut and the Phalangist positions, he would need to ditch the jeep, of course, but in his withdrawal from the Shouf, these wheels could serve him well. And if he encountered Druse or Syrian checkpoints and the Syrian army markings did not do the trick, well, he had the Beretta and Big Thunder and the AK-47.
He negotiated a down-curving bend and found a spot he remembered.
He tromped on the brakes and his vehicle shuddered to a grinding stop, halting sideways across the road.
Bolan scrambled from behind the steering wheel and hustled up a steep incline beyond the culvert on one side of the road to a rim of wild shrubbery.
He would have less than a minute before his pursuers rattled around that bend after him. Bolan hoped like hell they had not sent more than a truck or two, which could be manageable.
With General Abdel dead Strakhov would assume temporary command back there, until the Syrian chain of command realigned itself after the Executioner's hellfire.
The Russians called themselves "advisors," sure, but everyone knew who really called the shots and that would go double for a vip from the head shed.
A hothead Syrian might send every trooper on the base in pursuit of Bolan, but coolheaded Strakhov would know better. He did not yet know of Bolan's presence in the area and would read this hit-and-git strike as possibly the work of government commandos testing the reflexes of the enemy preparatory to a follow-up strike.
Strakhov would most likely send a squadron after the stolen vehicle, but with the main force remaining at Zahle.
Pebbles and small rocks skittered down the incline behind Bolan's hurried climb, when a troop carrier came roaring down the grade and around the bend. The driver was too busy negotiating the turn and braking to keep his truck on the road and not hit the jeep to notice the telltale traces of an ambush setup.
Bolan had the AK-47 ready from cover shrubbery on the high ground overlooking the road. He had parked his vehicle far enough from the curve in the road to allow the driver to halt his truck without crashing into the jeep, but close enough to fully occupy the driver's attention.
The troop truck fishtailed to a stop.
There were angry shouts from the men in the rear.
Then those shouts and everything else got buried beneath the bucking reports of Bolan's rifle as he riddled the cab of the truck, pulverizing windshield and the heads of the driver and another man in a shower of glass and gore.
The Executioner came loping down the incline as two soldiers started climbing out frantically from under the tarp at the back of the truck.
Bolan squeezed the AK'S trigger, and twin sprouts the color of the red dawn exploded from shattered bodies that collapsed like discarded toys onto the road behind the vehicle.
Bolan approached the troop carrier and underhanded a grenade into the rear of the truck before anyone else could try to get out.
Then it was too late for any of them to do anything but disintegrate. The blast catapulted the carrier onto its side, leaving the tarp, machine and occupants in shredded ruins. The explosion echoed from mountain to mountain.
Bolan hurried back to the jeep, which he had left idling, and got the hell away from there before any more trucks decided to give chase when they got no word from this one.
He had to get back to Beirut, the city of hate.
Back to where the hellfire flamed hottest.
For the mission; for Zoraya and Selim.
For Lebanon.
For the War Everlasting against cannibals like Greb Strakhov and everything that ultimate savage stood for.
A new day, right. A new war. The Bastard in Black would see them both through to the bloody finish.
12
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.