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Most were well behind the speeding jeep.

Bolan roared full speed toward the main gate.

He heard some firing at him from behind, but none of the whizzing projectiles came near man or rocketing vehicle.

The gate sentries and the men in the sandbag-encircled machine-gun nests adjacent to the entrance guardhouse responded to something wrong, finding positions behind their weapons.

But they held their fire as the Syrian jeep bore down on them. Bolan guessed they must have figured it was one of their officers coming with orders for them. Bolan saw the officer of the guard frantically jabbering on a field phone inside a window of the guardhouse.

The Executioner would have preferred taking another way out, but because there were machine-gun emplacements along the perimeter he would still have to make it through multilayered rows of concertina wire. He did not have that kind of time before the troops behind him in the compound amassed with their own vehicles and gave chase.

Then there came a deafening blast from the direction of the Russian tanks and munitions. The explosion shook the earth beneath everyone with a deep-throated roar and the tarmac area exploded into brilliant, blinding flame, blue-black smoke billowing straight up to blot out the rising sun.

It was the diversion Bolan needed.

Knowing the earth-shuddering blast would hit, Bolan did not look toward the area the way everyone else did, including the soldiers stationed at the gate.

It took only the blink of an eye for every man there to whip his attention and weapons back toward the approaching Syrian vehicle. But by that time Bolan had steered the jeep into a sideways skid and heaved three of the grenades he carried.

The first one sailed through the window of the guardhouse where the officer had forgotten his field phone, drawing a bead on Bolan with a pistol. The second landed unerringly into the nearest machine-gun nest, and the last grenade dropped at the base of the mesh-wire gates.

The machine-gun nest of soldiers seemed almost to implode under the force of a blast intensified in the confines of the sandbags.

The officer of the guard and his flimsy guardhouse disintegrated, and Bolan sought cover behind his vehicle as the earth rumbled again and pieces of building and bodies and the main gate rained down upon him.

No gunfire issued from drifting clouds that were an that remained of the gate, the machine-gun nest and everything else that had barred his withdrawal.

He launched himself behind the wheel of the jeep and flung a human arm, severed at the shoulder, the fingers still fluttering spasmodically, from where it had landed in the passenger seat. Then he steered the vehicle pell-mell through those drifting clouds.

The jeep bumped over the gaping pothole left by the explosion that had demolished the gate.

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.