Abdel froze, a surprised look on his face. Then his hands dropped and a fountain of blood burbled from his mouth. The Syrian commander fell, dead.
The Iranian whirled again and with a shriek charged the Russian major, who had his pistol only half way out of its shoulder holster.
Kleb's eyes widened with panic.
The Shiite attacked him with the flashing blade.
From his perch position on the ledge outside the window Bolan witnessed and reacted instantly to the eruption of violence.
But the most vital question remained unanswered.
Where the hell was Strakhov?
9
Greb Strakhov grasped the door handle, about to step into General Abdel's office, when shouts and scuffling noises from within made him halt. He had been to the communications room downstairs, coding his report to the Soviet Embassy in Beirut for immediate transmission to Moscow.
His recent tenure behind a desk had not dulled reflexes earned during twenty years of KGB fieldwork.
The spy master tugged out his pistol.
Something heavy thumped into the corridor wall alongside the door inside that office.
Strakhov opened that door and burst in fast, cautious, just in time.
He took it in at a glance: Abdel dead on the floor across the office like a gutted fish. The impact Strakhov heard on the wall had been General Masudi throwing himself at Kleb. They piled into the wall before tumbling to the carpeted floor, locked in combat. The Iranian was on top, one fist in an iron grip on the Russian officer's gun wrist, preventing Kleb from completing his draw. Masudi was trying to force a bloodied stiletto down into Kleb's heart. The GRU man only barely fended him off with a straight-armed grip around Masudi's wrist.
The closed window across the office showed the first glow of dawn. No one came in that way to help Masudi, thought Strakhov as he rushed to Kleb's aid. Masudi had hidden the dagger before they brought him into the room.
The Syrians had not searched him properly.
Strakhov detested all Arabs.
He hurried over and brought the butt of his pistol down hard behind Masudi's right ear, but not hard enough to kill.
The blade dropped from the Iranian's hand.
Masudi collapsed sideways.
Kleb pushed him away and scrambled to his feet, yanking his gun out the rest of the way, too fast for Strakhov to stop him.
"Kleb! No!" Strakhov shouted.
The blast from Kleb's Walther PPK drowned out the command and brought death to Ib Masudi, the projectiles devouring the Iranian general's throat and part of his face.
Strakhov reached Kleb and angrily smashed the pistol from Kleb's fingers with his own Walther.
"You fool!" Strakhov snarled, lapsing into Russian.
"He... he was about to kill me," gasped Kleb.
"You were in no danger you panicked. Now we will learn nothing from Masudi. I had the communications room monitor your interrogation in my absence. He said there are other plotters. He could have told us so much."
"I'm sorry, comrade Major General." The GRU man backed down. "I... I overreacted. But, if I may ask, after tomorrow... and dawn is only a few minutes from now... will the president's fate be of any concern to us?"
"I would not expect your peasant mind to grasp the finer points of my mission, Major," Strakhov snapped. "Do you think, if things go as we plan, that the Disciples of Allah and the other groups like them will simply disband and disappear? Or the Iranians? We must gain control of these factions now, while the power base is fluid. The ruling government in Beirut must not be slaughtered. We can only accomplish our goals away from world attention."
"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.