Assault

by Don Pendleton

  His comrade, on the other bike, had doubled back to make a run across the open courtyard, scattering a group of sentries, dropping two with pistol fire before a spray of bullets knocked him from his seat. The bike ran on without him for another thirty yards, fuel spraying from its punctured tank, and disappeared into the nearest poppy field.

  So much for signals to the backup force. If they were listening, the night wind ought to tell them that the battle had been joined. How many guards on the perimeter would leave their posts and race to help their fellows at the house? He hoped the members of the secondary team would watch themselves. Their numbers — and their timing — could make all the difference in the world.

  Just now, however, Bolan's mind was focused on the more immediate concern of personal survival. Bullets filled the air around him, gouging divots in the courtyard, striking sparks on impact with the jeep. He had to move or die, but cover was a rare commodity. The farmhouse, given all its dangers, still appeared to be his only hope of sanctuary.

  Braced for anything, the Executioner erupted from his crouch, the AK-47 blazing in his grip, and sprinted for the house.

  * * *

  At first the distant, muffled sound of automatic weapons didn't register with Mara. Deafened by her own shrill screams, the fierce, internal hammer of her pulse, it took a moment for her senses to absorb the message. Something must be happening outside, but what?

  She could recall an interruption of the torture. Was it moments earlier or days? The Palestinian, Halaby, had been watching her at first, then he had disappeared — some kind of trick, perhaps — and when she next stopped screaming, he was back again. What was the message he had passed to Bakhtiar?

  She shook her head and tried to focus on the floor in front of her, the generator with its trailing wires. Moheden had removed the alligator clips when the others left, but Mara felt them just the same. She wondered if her flesh was torn or merely burned where they had been attached.

  The message. Something barely understood, a fleeting respite from the pain. Halaby whispering in Arabic, about…

  A Syrian patrol.

  She was mistaken, obviously. Bakhtiar was friendly with the Syrians. He paid them for protection. They would have no cause to fire upon his men, unless…

  Her mind refused to function properly. She raised her head a fraction, caught Moheden staring at the open door and tried her bonds again. The perspiration helped a little, but the straps were cinched too tight for her to free herself. In her condition, weakened, racked with pain, she would have offered him no challenge anyway.

  Assuming that the Syrians had turned on Bakhtiar for reasons that she couldn't comprehend, what would it mean to her? Her family had no friends among the occupation troops. If they discovered her, identified her, it would be a toss-up whether she was executed on the spot or carried off to jail. Whichever, it was still a brighter prospect than continuation of Moheden's questioning, and Mara found herself silently rooting for the attackers, wishing them well.

  The Lebanese knelt before her, soft hands resting on her knees. It disappointed Mara that she couldn't find the strength or energy to spit at him. Unlike her flesh, still glistening with sweat, the inside of her mouth felt dry as dust.

  Moheden's voice seemed small and faraway. "I have been negligent," he said. "I underestimated Joseph and the American, but there may still be time to make amends."

  The man was raving. How were hostile Syrians connected to her brother and Belasko? It amused her to believe his mind had been unhinged by pressure in the past few days, and yet…

  He fumbled with the strap around one ankle, and Mara found that she could move her foot. The other next, and she suppressed an urge to kick the man, knowing she would still be helpless with her arms securely bound.

  He rose and stood beside her chair, unfastening the strap around one wrist and then the other. Mara flexed her fingers, willing circulation to return and marshaling her strength for one last effort. It would be her only chance. If she could pull it off…

  Moheden grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted her from the chair as if she had been weightless. Twisting in his grasp, immune to pain with all that she had suffered, Mara tried to claw his face, but he was quicker, striking with his free hand and bloodying her nose. The second punch struck home with stunning force, and Mara crumpled to her knees as he released her, whimpering in her frustration. When she raised her eyes to look at him again, there was a pistol in his hand.

  The dealer found her clothing in the corner and dropped the slacks and tattered shirt in front of her on the floor. "Get dressed," he snapped. "I give you thirty seconds."

  "And if I refuse?"

  He shrugged. "The choice is yours. We are about to leave this house together. If you choose to travel naked, I shall not object. It may be days before I have the time to find you other clothing."

  Days? The glimmer of a hope made up her mind. Still kneeling, Mara slipped her shirt on, leaving it open in the front where all the buttons had been torn away. The slacks presented greater difficulty as she had to stand, but after nearly falling once, she got it right. They fit her snugly, and she grimaced as the seams chafed wounded flesh.

  "You first," Moheden ordered, waggling his pistol toward the door. "Be quick about it!"

  Mara did as she was told, her spirits lifting as the sounds of automatic fire drew closer. Now, unless she was mistaken, she heard firing from inside the house as well.

  She had a chance. No more, no less. Moheden wanted her alive, and she would take advantage of that fact, until she found a weapon and the opportunity to use it.

  Hope would linger while she lived, and Mara's fondest hope was for a chance to kill this man. It was the single-minded goal that gave her strength to carry on.

  * * *

  Chamoun's first Uzi blast had sent two gunmen sprawling, and he followed with a move that dropped him into a crouch beside the jeep. He saw that the American was unloading on the other side, his rifle hammering at someone on their flank, and the commandos seated just behind him were in motion, scurrying for shelter as they laid down cover fire.

  The newest stitches in his shoulder hadn't separated yet, and Chamoun ignored the stabbing pain that emanated from his wound. There was no time to think of personal discomfort when his sister's life was riding on the line, his men outnumbered and surrounded by their enemies. If he could only catch a glimpse of Bakhtiar, just long enough to put a bullet through the Shiite's brain, Chamoun could face his death with feelings of accomplishment.

  A near miss struck the jeep's rear bumper, inches from his face, and shards of metal stung his cheek. Chamoun wormed backward, searching for the sniper, but he had too many enemies to choose from. They were everywhere, their numbers multiplying by the moment, reinforcements racing from the fields and somewhere out of sight, behind the house.

  Too many.

  He'd been a fool to play along with Belasko, but what choice did he have? A lesser man might have abandoned Mara — and his conscience — but the American must have known that duty would compel Chamoun to make the effort. He'd seen his people slaughtered earlier that afternoon, and when the opportunity for payback was presented, he couldn't resist.

  If nothing else, he thought, they could inflict a telling blow on their enemy before they died.

  He found a moving target, stroked the Uzi's trigger, and a member of the Shiite revolutionary guard pitched forward on his face. Another broke from cover, firing as he came, and Chamoun squeezed off another burst, the rag doll figure dancing with the impact of his well-aimed slugs. That made it four, and if his men could do as well across the board, they just might have a fighting chance.

  He saw the hand grenade in flight, and barked a warning as he rolled beneath the jeep. A choking cloud of dust erupted with the blast, and jagged shrapnel clattered off the body of the vehicle above him. Gasoline cascaded from a ruptured jerrican and splashed around him, spattering his face and scalp. Chamoun crawled backward, praying that another ri
cochet wouldn't strike sparks before he had a chance to scramble clear.

  Ironically it was a member of his own command who nearly killed him. Staggered by a chest wound, one of the support troops from the second jeep released a dying burst as he collapsed between the vehicles, his muzzle blast igniting potent fumes. Chamoun was lunging for the open air as flames licked past his face, his eyebrows singed away, and he could feel his own hair burning, hear it crackling as he wriggled through the dust.

  It was the dust that saved him, handfuls mashed against his scalp and forehead, smothering the flames before they could do more than superficial damage. He was twenty feet away before the jeep went up, a fireball rolling skyward, oily smoke obscuring the battlefield. A secondary blast pushed baking heat waves through the air, but Chamoun had found his sanctuary in the shadow of the APC.

  Above him one of his commandos braved incoming rounds to man the light machine gun, playing automatic fire across the door and facing windows of the ranch house. Craning for a glance in that direction, Chamoun imagined that he saw Belasko, there and gone, around the northwest corner of the building.

  A mistake? Hallucination? It didn't matter. He wished the tall man well, wherever he might be, and concentrated on the task at hand. They each had a job to do, and if they never met again, it would be God's own will. Until he felt the hand of Death upon his shoulder, Joseph Chamoun would keep on fighting, carrying the battle to his enemies.

  And, at the moment, his priority was gaining entry to the house.

  To find his sister and the men whom he had risked so much to kill.

  * * *

  Mack Bolan's rush had been diverted by a storm of gunfire from windows facing on the courtyard, driving him to ground beside a flatbed truck that had been parked beside the house. It offered decent cover, and he dropped two sentries when they tried to root him out, the hot rounds from his AK-47 reaching out to slap them down.

  He saw the frag grenade go off, the forward jeep erupt in leaping flames, and he was grateful for the glimpse of Joseph Chamoun retreating, more or less intact. Away to Bolan's right, fresh smoke was rising from the poppy field, flame visible among the stalks, and he was puzzled for a moment, wondering about its source, before his memory kicked in.

  The motorcycle with its punctured fuel tank. Clearly it had capsized in the field, a spark or simple engine heat igniting gasoline that spurted from the several bullet holes. It might not be enough to torch the crop, and then again…

  He put the question out of mind and concentrated on the more immediate concern of entering the house. His only hope of finding Mara, of eliminating Bashir Moheden and company, lay inside those walls. Unfortunately the defenders seemed to know their job, and Bolan couldn't count on them to make a critical mistake.

  Whatever he achieved, from here on in, the Executioner would have to do on his own. The backup force would be en route by now, but he couldn't depend on them to save the day. If Moheden had panicked at the sound of gunfire — if he was even here — then Mara might be dead already. There was no more time to waste.

  The rooftop sniper nearly bagged him as he wriggled out from underneath the truck. A burst from Bolan's AK-47 caught the gunner as he lined up for a second shot, his tunic rippling with the impact as he toppled out of sight. Unless the rifleman was sporting body armor underneath his clothes, the odds had just been shaved another fraction in favor of the challengers.

  The warrior ditched an almost-empty magazine and snapped a fresh one into the Kalashnikov. His guided tour of the establishment, though brief, had planted something of a blueprint in his mind. In the rear there was a service entrance for food deliveries to the kitchen, and a pair of sliding plate glass doors located on the south, adjacent to a carport. Bolan couldn't reach the latter, but with any luck it would be covered by the gunners from the half-ton. His job, meanwhile, included entry to the house, discovery of Mara's whereabouts and the destruction of his ranking enemies.

  Initial doubts aside, he knew that he would find Moheden — and perhaps his partners — in the house. The volume and ferocity of the defense told Bolan there were influential visitors on hand, but he would only learn their names and number by direct approach, and that meant slipping past the guards.

  All Bolan had to do was cover thirty yards of open ground to reach the corner, ten or fifteen more to gain the service entrance. There, assuming he hadn't been dropped along the way, he would be left to make his way inside the house, past heaven knew how many guards and find the room where they were holding Mara captive.

  Simple.

  And there was no time like the present to begin.

  He spent a moment staring at the poppy field, where flames were leaping briskly in the night, and then came up firing, driving toward his goal.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  From the moment that the shooting started, Bashir Moheden had struggled with a rising sense of panic, knowing that he must control himself if he was to survive. His hostage had provided him with a solution, but it still might blow up in his face. The enemy was all around him, and the dealer recognized his peril. He could die here if he wasn't quick enough and tough enough to save himself.

  He thought about the enemy and knew, regardless of Halaby's warning from the sentries, that they weren't Syrians. It made no sense for a patrol to barge in after nightfall, and the guards on duty wouldn't open fire on uniforms without an order from the top. That meant the «Syrians» were the aggressors, and it narrowed down the field of players to a single choice.

  Somehow, against all odds, Chamoun had found out where his sister was confined. There might be any one of several explanations, from a lucky guess to a report from traitors in the ranks and yet…

  Belasko!

  He had slipped away from them in Baalbek and had managed to avoid the sweep that followed. Nothing would prevent him, theoretically, from pushing south and joining forces with Chamoun. He would have been too late to watch the airborne raid or interfere with it, but there had been survivors, and Belasko was a fighting man. He could have whipped them into shape, secured the necessary uniforms — reports of missing Syrian patrols wouldn't be logged until the morning — and prepared the strike himself.

  How had he known where Moheden would take the girl? Again, an educated guess would serve, and the American had nothing much to lose. If he was wrong about the farm, he would have found a token force on duty, wiped them out and gone about his business of destroying Bakhtiar's investment. Strong resistance meant that VIPs were on the scene, and the American could pull out all the stops in his assault.

  Moheden was counting on the woman as his ticket out, but there were still unanswered questions in his mind. Would the American be interested in saving her? Was he merely using Joseph Chamoun as a convenient source of cannon fodder? What precisely did the bastard want?

  No time for futile speculation.

  Moheden steered his hostage through one corridor and down another, taking care that they didn't get close to the battle lines. If he could reach his car and get a fair head start while members of the rebel strike force were distracted, there was still a chance. The rest of it could wait, from answering those nagging questions to the quest for retribution. After he was safe at home, there would be ample time to feast upon the sweet meal of revenge.

  Survival and escape were Bashir Moheden's priorities, and he would use the woman to protect himself. When she had served her purpose, he would kill her and dispose of her remains. Perhaps, he thought, it would be interesting to package her up and mail her to her brother. One piece at a time.

  But first things first. They moved past silent bedrooms set aside for members of the staff, across a smallish parlor, toward the sliding plate glass doors. The draperies were closed, and the dealer kept Mara covered with his pistol as he edged them open and checked out the carport. The reports of automatic fire were louder here, but he saw no one in position to obstruct them.

  A sudden movement near his limo caught his eye, on the driver's side.
One man, from all appearances, attempted to conceal himself behind the car.

  "This way," Moheden ordered, sliding back the left-hand door and shoving Mara through. She offered no resistance, but he kept the pistol jammed between her shoulders, just in case.

  They crept along the wall, with Mara leading, to approach the prowler on his blind side. They were fifteen feet away before Moheden recognized the man and called his name.

  "Halaby!"

  Startled, the guerrilla leader spun to face them, leveling an automatic of his own. He registered relief at the sight of Moheden, his weapon lowered toward the floor. "I thought that someone should protect the cars," he said.

  The dealer let him hide behind the lie. "And where is Bakhtiar?" he asked.

  "We separated." There was obvious reluctance in Halaby's voice as he continued. "Should I try to find him?"

  "No," Moheden answered. "He has made his choice. We're leaving. Now."

  * * *

  The first rush carried Bolan to the northeast corner of the house where he paused, braced for opposition. But the sentries were needed elsewhere, and he had the rear veranda to himself. The service door was locked, and the warrior took a chance with the Beretta, gambling on a silenced round. The latch disintegrated, and he stepped across the threshold into semidarkness.

  He was in the kitchen, facing toward a pair of swing doors with light behind them. The sounds of combat were muffled, but clearly audible. A shadow moved in front of Bolan, taking human form and separating from the bulk of the refrigerator. There was no time for speculating on the fine points, whether he'd stumbled on a slacker or been intercepted by a guard on duty.

  The Beretta chugged a single note, and Bolan watched the opposition fade away. He scanned the room, alert to any sounds of a response beyond the swing doors. When there was none, he let the pistol lead him through a dining room, where a partially eaten meal had been hastily abandoned.