The distant sounds of war could have been a thousand miles away.
"Chaim's partner will meet you in ninety minutes at a pub off the Avenue des Frangais."
She recited an address that Bolan committed to memory.
"Such establishments, you see, do a wonderful business at times such as these. Those who cannot escape the city drink while they wait to live or die. He will be there at ten-thirty." She briefly described what the Mossad agent told her he would be wearing. "He says he will recognize you."
"I bet he will. What's his name?"
"Uri Weizmann. He and Chaim were very close professionally and as friends. You can trust him, Mack, believe me."
"Thanks, Zoraya."
She paused, then said, "There is... something you can do for me in return, Mack Bolan."
He gazed up at her from the bed.
"Tell me."
"If you would just... hold me," she said quietly. "I feel... so alone. Just hold me, Mack... please... nothing more..."
Bolan read the sad, lonely look in her eyes and extended his arms.
She stretched out against him atop the covers of the bed, resting tousled midnight hair into the crook of his arm. No, there was not one thing erotic about it at all, only a need for the touch of someone humane and good to somehow balance out everything else and, yes, Bolan needed that, too. They held each other for a long time in the solitude of the attic far away from the war.
They comforted each other and reaffirmed themselves as decent human beings who could care and share gentleness.
14
Somehow, they were all together again at Stony Man Farm, and his heart soared with happiness for the first time in a long, long time because April was there with him.
April Rose and Konzaki and "Bear" Kurtzman.
Andrzej Konzaki, legless since Vietnam, armorer extraordinaire of the Phoenix program, exuded physical stamina from his wheelchair as he recounted a ribald joke to Kurtzman, the Farm's computer mastermind.
Kurtzman pretended the joke wasn't funny, but that was a joke, too, between the four friends on the patio on one of those rare occasions when The Executioner allowed himself to slow down between missions for some R and R-to be human again.
Bolan and April stood away from the patio and picnic table where the four of them had just devoured the steaks Bolan had prepared. The Virginia night had a pleasant coolness. Constellations spangled in the indigo heavens away from the illumination of the patio of the "rustic farmhouse" that was in fact the command center of Bolan's antiterrorist group.
Bolan stood behind April, the love of his life who was also the coordinator, the "warden" of this secret base. His arms enfolded her, the scent of her natural fragrance titillating his nostrils, his senses.
April uttered a contented sound from deep within and Bolan knew how she felt.
Everything was perfect.
The thud of an impacting mortar shell in the near distance awoke Bolan with a start. In a flash he crouched into a shooter's stance next to the bed, fanning the silenced Beretta 93-R around the attic above the garage in Beirut.
Empty.
Zoraya had gone.
Bolan blinked the sleep from his eyes and reprimanded himself, irked that he had allowed it to happen. But he had been forced during the past hours to push himself beyond endurance of even a combat-toughened pro. At least the lapse into deep sleep had occurred in the safety of this refuge.
Where was Zoraya?
And then for just one heartbeat, enough of his dream of April came back to burn through his gut like a bullet, and he brushed at a tear on his cheek. He blinked it away and the iciness of the trained executioner took over.
April and Konzaki were dead, killed in the same KGB-ordered commando raid on Stony Man Farm that had left Kurtzman a wheelchair case for the rest of his life.
Bolan moved to the secret-stair panel and glanced at his digital watch as he moved.
It was 9:55 A.m.
He had not been asleep more than ten minutes.
He still had time to make the meeting Zoraya said she had arranged with the Mossad man, Weizmann, at the pub across town a town falling to insurgents; Bolan could feel it, sense it.
He slid open the partition and lowered himself to the garage of Zoraya's uncle.
The place was empty except for the hulks of stripped vehicles and the body of the old man Zoraya's uncle lay sprawled on his side across the cement floor near the door, his neck twisted at an impossible angle.
Bolan stooped to check the old Muslim's pulse to make sure.
The man's neck had been broken.
A wallet lay alongside the body.
Bolan pried a quick look inside Elie billfold. It had been stripped of currency. The photo identification proved it to be the dead man's.
Bolan figured it three possible ways.
The enemy anyone from the fighting factions in this civil war to sideliners like the CIA, Mossad or even Syrian Intelligence could have spirited Zoraya away in an effort to locate Bolan. And not even the murder of her uncle had made Zoraya reveal Bolan in the hidden attic.
The enemy took her and left the uncle's empty wallet to mislead any Beirut police investigation, which wasn't very likely in the first place.
Too silent, too quick to awaken Bolan.
Damn, damn.
There was of course the likelihood that it had been wandering gunmen from a Muslim or Arab Christian faction who had not thought twice about snuffing a useless old man for the few Lebanese pounds he might carry.
And the final possibility.
Zoraya could have killed the old man.
Bolan wished like hell that he could rid his mind of these ungrateful thoughts about tough, brave, humane Zoraya, but he had a realistic sense of his importance to the real enemy.
Strakhov's KGB had a special unit assigned to terminate Bolan in revenge for Bolan's killing Strakhov's only son.
Considering the elaborate steps taken to frame Bolan for the CIA a while back, it only made sense they could consider and implement a similarly complex operation. But before terminating Bolan they would torture out of him what he knew of the operations of the U.S. intelligence community from his time as "John Phoenix." Zoraya's uncle could have discovered this and threatened to tell Bolan and, yeah, that would get the old guy killed.
Bolan did not have the time to pursue any of these possibilities. He had a Mossad agent to meet.
Unless that was part of the trap, too.
The shifting quicksand of this mission was as unpredictable as the future of Lebanon itself.
He stood up from the body and started toward the door leading out to the street.
The door burst open.
Bolan froze and dropped to a combat crouch, 93-R in hand, ready to kill.
Two veiled Muslim women, surrounded by seven scrambling children, burst into what they thought to be a temporary refuge.
Gunfire erupted outside.
The group regarded with wide eyes the dead body and the imposing sight of the warrior.
Bolan lowered the pistol, motioning them inside.
Seeing the gun, the refugees obeyed, breath caught in their throats, waiting for whatever would happen next. Their faces registered surprise when Bolan trotted out.
A military vehicle with two Muslim gunmen moved leisurely down the middle of the street, punks looking to prey on refugees, such as those who had dodged into the safety of the garage.
The gunmen saw Bolan. The driver braked and reached for his rifle. His buddy bandit scrambled to a mounted machine gun on the back of their vehicle.
Bolan holstered the Beretta and shifted to the AutoMag. A pair of well-aimed shots wasted the duo.
He had to kill another three Phalangists this time. He could have talked his way past, except that they opened fire on him before he had the chance. Bolan had no alternative if he wanted to live.
He arrived at the battered Saab he had bought from the family outside town. Bolan was sure no one had tampered with the decrepit vehicle.