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.
The sentries saw him.
Bolan jumped off the ledge feet first into the trio of soldiers before any of them could utter a sound or swing their rifles up at the blacksuited blur that descended upon them.
He could have attempted to pick them off from his perch with the Beretta he had that much of an advantage before the soldiers saw him. But he knew Strakhov, in that office, would hear the silenced chugging of the Beretta, and Bolan much preferred to keep this as quiet as possible until the appropriate moment.
Two of the soldiers blocked Bolan's fall when the heel of each boot caught a man in the forehead with enough force to impact skullbone deep into brain matter, rendering those two instantly lifeless.
The momentum of the fall carried Bolan into a somersault, which he came out of just as the third soldier managed, while opening his mouth to shout an alarm, to begin tracking his AK on Bolan.
Bolan moved lightning fast, his left foot coming up in a high martial-arts kick that deflected the soldier's assault rifle, knocking it from the man's hands.
Bolan regained his balance and jabbed his right hand straight and hard in another thrust to crush the soldier's Adam's apple, cutting off the warning before it began. Then The Executioner brought his left hand down in a hard chop, breaking the man's neck, and the sentry collapsed on top of the other two, not quite as bloody but just as dead.
Bolan took off, running across the tarmac toward the Russian tanks and munitions he had spotted coming in. He knew those tanks would be rolling in another hour or two, carrying more death in the world so the cannibals could grab a few more inches on the world map.
A much better use for those war machines would be as a diversion, Bolan decided. He extracted a wad of wrapped plastique as he moved toward them through the growing light of approaching dawn.
The motor pool sat next to that Soviet weaponry, he recalled, and most of the base security had been deployed along the perimeter.
A two-man patrol emerged from between the rows of parked tanks when Bolan had only fifty paces to go. They saw him in the dawn's early light. They were holding their AK'S at port arms. The two rifles leveled as one on the figure in blacksuit, the Syrian soldiers diving sideways.
Bolan assumed a combat shooting stance, steadied his aim with his left hand and the Beretta spit its muted death yip in the quiet air but far enough away from the barracks for the silenced chugs not to be heard.
The two soldiers twirled into a macabre ballet of death, rifles flipping away as the two bodies sank against the nearest Soviet T-55 and collapsed.
Their corpses were still trembling with the shock of death as the Executioner buzzed past, stooping without slowing after he holstered the Beretta to grab up one of the AK'S and one soldier's hip-clipped ammo pack.
Time for the heavy stuff.
It took less than thirty seconds to unwrap the plastique and place the puttylike explosive between the crawler tracks of one of the tanks.
He found the ammunition dump in the center of the row of tanks. The ammo stash had a two-man guard. These Syrians were leaning against a T-55, chatting idly with no idea of their approaching death.
Bolan rifle-butted the soldier nearest him across the back of the head and heard skullbone crack.
The second man started to react to the strange sounds from his buddy when Death jerked the AK-47 sideways in one continuous motion from the first kill, smashing the rifle butt into the second soldier's head, killing him, too.
Bolan spent eleven seconds planting the remainder of his plastique around the stash of rockets. He set the timer in this death putty for the appropriate seconds to coincide with what he left on the tank.
Thirty seconds to blast-off.
The sun splashed its first red traces over the hills to the east.
Bolan dashed from the tarmac toward the collection of jeeps and trucks around the two-bay garage of the base motor pool.
Four sleepy-eyed regulars were loitering around a coffeepot, girding themselves for another day of war. When they saw Bolan on his dash toward a line of jeeplike vehicles, the soldiers all swung simultaneously, coming wide awake. They dropped their coffee mugs and reached for weapons as the air clouded with spraying coffee and blood. The AKBLEDG yammered in Bolan's grip as he rode the heavy recoil of the assault rifle.
Bodies tumbled in the garage like a little St. Valentine's Day massacre.
The big fighter in blacksuit leaped into the nearest jeep and found the keys in the ignition as he expected.
He paused only to slam a fresh magazine into the AK. Then he gunned the vehicle to life and stormed the hell out of there along a roadway that bisected the compound and led to the gate.
The hammering of his AK had alerted the camp.
Soldiers poured out from every building on the compound, freshly awakened and in various stages of dress, but every one of them carrying a weapon.