"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.