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.

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.

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."