"It is only that my people have fought and died for what is about to come to pass," the Iranian purred hollowly. "Is it not reasonable to expect some recompensation in the form of "Brigand" snapped the Syrian.

"You were never asked to help, you fanatic. We..."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," soothed Fouad Zakir silkily, without taking his eyes from Strakhov. "The Major General is quite correct. To bicker among ourselves...."

The slimiest snake of them all, thought Strakhov.

"I would not think it necessary," Strakhov told them curtly, "to remind everyone here that I speak not as an individual but as a representative of the Soviet Union, and as such I do not offer you suggestions or options but orders."

That got their attention and Strakhov started to continue when an orderly knocked discreetly, stuck his head inside, then walked over to Strakhov's side. The man whispered the words Strakhov had been so eagerly waiting to hear. Now they fanned the warmth in him to a fire hot enough to burn a man to death.

"Major Kleb asks that you come immediately to the annex building," the orderly whispered in Strakhov's ear. "They have captured the man Bolan. Alive."

Bolan noticed how cocky Kleb had become in the hours since Bolan had seen him last, since this morning when Kleb had not known he was being spied upon. Bolan attributed it to the guy's abrasive mentality generally and the success of having shot Masudi to death despite the chewing out it got him from Strakhov.

Bolan still gripped the AK-47 by its strap over his shoulder.

With twelve weapons trained on him, he would have to wait for a break.

To move now would be suicide. If they had wanted him dead, he'd have been fired on already by these anxious soldiers who hung on the GRU man's every suggestion.

Kleb kept his pistol steady on the man who had stepped into the trap.

Kleb's moist smile said he savored this moment.

"Major General Strakhov will be with us directly."

Kleb had dispatched an orderly to interrupt Strakhov in his meeting.

"And now, Mr. Bolan, you will kindly drop your weapons and if you try anything untoward, I shall be forced to shoot off your kneecaps."

Kleb started to say something else.

An ear-piercing sound signaled the approach of jet fighter planes.

The first in a line of explosions started eating up the perimeter with bellowing chomps.

Bolan seized the instant. He crouched, reversing the AK-47 in the flash that every eye in that room, including those of Major Kleb, were wrenched fearfully from the American. Bolan opened fire on the nearest four men, pulping them to sprawled carcasses before the line of explosions quit.

It ended only a few hundred yards from the annex building, the echoes swallowed up by shouts, then another high-keening fighter plane hurtled in low to blast two of the barracks to hell.

Some of the survivors in the annex turned and fled, preferring Israeli jets to the hell-bringer with the AK-47.

Two of the soldiers who stayed tried to bring up rifles, but the AK yammered some more on automatic and the pair were hurled back into a wall as if punched by an invisible fist. When their bodies finally came to rest, parts of them stuck to the wall, glistening red.

Some of the same heavy-caliber projectiles blasted Major Kleb's kneecaps in bloody splats of gore.

Kleb cried out and fell to the floor, his pistol flying from fingers numb with the pain ripping through his every nerve end. He cried out again when Bolan knelt beside this terror merchant and pressed Kleb's throat to the floor with the AK.

As more jets flew low overhead and more shouts and antiaircraft gunfire and explosions rumbled from outside, Bolan spoke very calmly.

"The woman. Zoraya. Where is she?"

"Z-Zoraya?" the GRU man gasped. "Please... I cannot stand the pain!" Kleb screamed hysterically.

"The woman," Bolan repeated. "Where is she, Kleb?"

"This... there is no woman!" Kleb shrieked. "The pain! Please... kill me!" Kleb lapsed into a quick word or two of Russian.

The Executioner twisted the rifle with a harsh yank across Kleb's throat.

The Russian died instantly with a broken neck and no more pain.

Well, he did ask for it, Bolan thought as he moved on.

The soldiers had scattered from the buildings that they all rightfully considered the main targets of the air strike.

Bolan exited the annex building in a dash toward the nearest entrance to the Syrian headquarters.

His instinct told him to believe Kleb's dying statement.

No woman, Kleb had said.

Zoraya was not on the base.

And that left the Executioner's main objectives: a summit meeting of terrorist cannibals on the top floor of the Syrian headquarters. And Major General Greb Strakhov.

Antiterrorist guns pounded vainly at the expertly piloted attack jets that swooped in from unexpected angles. Their strafing runs turned the Syrian base into a shrieking feast of burning death.

Bolan knew the chance he took by entering this building. But the stakes were too high for the Executioner to turn back when he could accomplish what he would when he hit this bunch upstairs.

Bolan had committed himself totally to establishing a crack in the wall of violence that had kept this country destabilized for so long.

This hit would accomplish a lot and no way could a man like Bolan walk away from such a responsibility.

He gained entrance to the headquarters building easily enough in all the excitement. Those staring and crouching every time a jet whistled by or an explosion burst saw a Druse militiaman hurrying back to his post to protect Mr. Zakir.

No one tried to stop "Druse militiaman" Bolan. He took the steps upstairs at a run. Halfway up the stairs he passed a window that overlooked the area separating the building Bolan was in and the annex where he had slain Kleb.

Strakhov, a Russian officer and two Syrian soldiers were hurrying into the annex.

Bolan kept moving up the stairs, gripping the AK-47. He could not run back and forth.

First the warlords of terror.

Then Strakhov.

If Bolan survived.

The confusion he expected in the meeting area from the air strike would work greatly to Bolan's benefit, as would the element of surprise.

He hit the top landing of the stairs on the run.

The banshee shriek of a jet fighter screeching by overhead as Bolan hit that top step suddenly gave way to a thunderclap that made him deaf for a moment.

All he could feel were the shock waves of an explosion that catapulted him into the air. Amid flying mortar, sound and blinding fury, he knew he was airborne, a direct hit on the building pitching him into what seemed like a yawning pit.

He did not know if he was dead or alive as the maelstrom swallowed him whole.