The vehicle rolled forward onto the base.
The sentries closed ranks after it.
Like the jaws of a closing trap.
17
Uri Weizmann had just begun searching the second of three drawers in General Chehab's desk. Lieutenant Franjieh, the uniformed Lebanese military police officer standing attentively at the door, backed himself to the wall alongside the door of the unoccupied office, his 9mm Browning Hi-Power raised defensively.
"Someone is coming."
Weizmann forgot about the desk.
He had hoped to find corroborating evidence to what he already had, but what he had would do.
The Mossad man and Franjieh, the MP, had gained access easily enough into this Phalangist building on the outskirts of Beirut.
Weizmann cross-drew his HandK.380 automatic and held his ground.
A key turned in the lock. The handle twisted downward. The door opened.
The office staff had gone to lunch.
Weizmann's Mossad ID had admitted him and Franjieh this far without incident.
General Chehab stepped into the office. The Lebanese officer froze when he saw Weizmann. The general's swarthy complexion darkened, the nostrils Chehab stepped all the way into the office and closed the door behind him. Then he saw the Lebanese officer holding the Browning Hi-Power aimed at him.
Chehab glared.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"You are under arrest, General," Weizmann informed him.
"On what charge?"
"I'll let Lieutenant Franjieh take care of that. He's all yours, Lieutenant. Get your men in here."
Chehab's hands clenched into fists.
"I demand an explanation. A couple of hours ago, Uri, you and I sat in a pub sharing a drink. Now this..."
"Correct. We also sat in a car, if you remember, and a man we spoke with suggested the car we sat in might have been the same one seen leaving the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' base at Biskinta last night. That was when the Disciples of Allah obtained blueprints of the presidential palace in their plot to assassinate the president.
"Well, our friend... my friend... was right, General. We traced every unmarked government care using Mossad and Lieutenant Franjieh's combined resources. The vehicle assigned to you, General, is the only one unaccounted for through routine investigation.
"And before Bolan and I separated this morning, he gave me the blueprints retrieved from Biskinta. Those plans have been chemically processed. Your fingerprints were all over them, General."
"A trick," the Arab snarled. "Why should you believe Bolan? His own kind want him dead."
"And why should we trust you?" Weizmann retorted. "You are commander of a government force, yet have your own office and are saluted by the men here at a Phalangist base. We know it all, you see. The military dictatorship you envisioned with yourself in command, militarily conquering and driving out the Syrian and PLO forces with a last-ditch counteroffensive with or without the Israelis' help.
"But you needed a spark to ignite more fighting among people already sick and tired of it, so you decided the stakes were high enough to arrange to get those blueprints to the Disciples of Allah. You planned to make damn sure you were nowhere near the presidential palace when that squad drove into it with a suitcase of dynamite and made the hit for you. You reasoned that because it would be a suicide mission for them, you'd be covered. Face it, General. It's finished. Your dream is over."
"And what do you intend to do with me, Jewish pig? I am a powerful man in this country. I could have all of these charges dismissed."
"That's up to the Lebanese," Weizmann growled. "I did my part to pay back a friend. All right, Lieutenant, take him away."
Lieutenant Franjieh blinked twice and squeezed the trigger. The Browning in his fist high-powered a tunnel right through the skull of General Chehab, pointblank, to splatter the wall with the life forces of the treacherous general.
"Justice is served," Franjieh said softly and holstered his pistol.
They had taken Katz to a squat clay farmhouse set in the wood line beyond sight of the road. The building was accessible only by a winding drive that ran smoothly until it met the shell-marked country road that led back to Acre and the Israel-Lebanon border. The dwelling was one of thousands of such nondescript structures that dotted the countryside.
The two CIA men, Collins and Randolph, had finished their interrogation of Katz more than an hour before.
"And now that you are through detaining me, I trust I am free to go?" Katz groused in his best experience-honed air of command.
He started toward the door.
The Israeli officer, Colonel Lenz, blocked Katz's path from the room, unfurnished except for the wooden chair where they had sat the Phoenix Force leader while they interrogated him; the scene had been like a bad imitation of the third degree in some old police film.
The only difference was that these guys played for keeps.
"I have my orders to detain you here until further notice," Lenz barked, a hand on the butt of a revolver holstered at his hip.
Collins, the Company man who had done most of the questioning, snapped, "You don't think you get off that easy, Colonel. You may be big news in the States but here you're just a guy who used Mossad for your own ends. And I'll bet they've got something to say about that. Stay put."
They left Katz with a guard standing at the door and two more sentries outside the window.
Two Mossad agents then came in to question him for another hour. Katz stonewalled and gave them just enough to impress and interest them. But the Phoenix Force boss did not kid himself, either.
He had been one of their own kind for too long. They would consider torturing him for what he knew about Bolan, and quite likely with the blessing of Katz's own government.
The Mossad interrogators from Tel Aviv left Katz alone again. He knew they would be standing in the hallway on the other side of the door discussing, probably with a superior, the advisability of torture. Katz recalled spurts of electric current to the genitals as being a particular favorite in the Mideast with Mossad and everyone else.
He exploded into action.
He powerhoused from the chair in a blur of movement that belied the thickening waist of late middle age. He aimed at the guard by the door and before the man could shout any sort of warning, Katz crossarmed the sentry's rifle away with the powerfully swung prosthetic arm. The ex-Mossad agent caught the guard with a blow sharp enough to make the Israeli soldier unconscious for a while, but not to kill him.
Katz knelt and snatched the man's holstered pistol and rifle. Slinging the rifle across his shoulder, he took a running dive at the window of the room, his arms crossed over his face. He kept his body loose as he hurled himself through the panes, shattering the glass into a hundred fragments.
He landed smack into the two sentries posted outside the farmhouse. All three tumbled down in a tangled heap.
The guards were mere youngsters.
A seasoned fighter like Katz took them by the numbers, one elbow backward into a forehead, then the butt of the pistol snapped down to bop the other sentry on the temple.
Both men fell to the ground unconscious.
Katz hustled away toward a motorcycle parked alongside two unmarked vehicles behind the building. He figured the bike was there comfort running pieces of physical evidence gathered from interrogations at the Mossad house.
Katz heard shouts coming from the shattered window behind him the Mossad men demanding him to halt.
The hell with them.
He ran past the unmarked cars first, glanced in hopefully, but saw no keys in the ignitions. He hit the jackpot with the motorcycle.
Katz leaped onto the bike from behind, heeled up the kickstand and kicked the machine to life. He turned around and triggered off three quick rounds at the guys in the window who had been about to fire on him.