'No, but it would not matter if there were. The hospitals, those that have not been destroyed... their personnel work around the clock. No one would have time to take in another lost soul.'
'Then he's safer with us. Okay, lady. Let's take that drive.'
She gathered car keys, tossed them into a purse and Bolan saw a 9mm Browning Hi-Power before she snapped the purse shut. Then she gently picked up the blanket-wrapped bundle without waking the little boy.
Bolan motioned her to the side when they were ready to leave her apartment.
He flicked off the light switch, drew the AutoMag and prepared to open the door a crack to check the hallway before they left.
Zoraya touched him on the arm in the darkness before he unlatched the door, her fingertips graceful, transmitting deep emotion.
'May I know your name?
'Does it matter?'
'To me, yes.' He told her.
She repeated it in the stillness.
'Mack. It is a strong name. I know much about you, you see, from the short time we have spent together. You use your strength to build a better world, not to tear it down in ruin as those all about us tonight would. Chaim was like that. I could not bear to think of two such men dying in one night. Promise me, Mack, do not risk your life for me. Please.'
He unlatched the door, pulled it inward a crack and peered out.
No one lurked in the hallway.
'Let's go!' said the Executioner.
The mission.
Strakhov.
And one word: assassination.
And a war about to blow wide open again at any second, engulfing them all.
5
They traveled a circuitous route out of Beirut. Bolan's blacksuit, weapons and gear were hidden beneath a blanket that covered him to the neck.
Zoraya steered her Volvo through the labyrinth of streets she knew so well. The Arab child snoozed in the back seat as the Volvo bumped along the crater-scarred road.
Bolan wished he could fully trust this woman.
Chaim had vouched for her, sure. Bolan had seen her ID, right. But The Executioner had kept breathing all these years, all these miles through blood, by not taking one damn thing as it appeared.
Especially in the heat of battle in a hostile, alien environment.
Especially not on a night like tonight.
The damn thing was, Bolan liked the human being who said she was Zoraya.
She had not faked the humane instinct that transformed the tough, gun-packing Zoraya to gentle protector of the Arab waif.
With the shelling of the city temporarily ceased, the streets funneled a surge of pedestrian and vehicular traffic trying to get out despite the pre-dawn hour. The mass exodus only served to blur already tenuous lines between Muslim and Lebanese Christian forces.
Lines that were impossible for even the militias themselves to determine.
No one slept in the war zone tonight.
The woman drove them from the city along the coast.
A sea breeze cooled the air.
The war seemed not so immediate out here.
They passed djellaba-robed Muslims standing before their homes, observing the noises of war from the direction of the city, ruminating camels tethered to trees.
Both sides of this stretch of the main road were littered with debris: the charred remains of trucks, tanks and human corpses.
Two miles north of Beirut, Zoraya turned onto a secondary road, taking them northeast.
'This leads to Biskinta.'
'We've been damn lucky,' Bolan noted, never taking his eyes from surveying the dangerous night.
'Twenty-four hours ago, we would not have gotten this far,' Zoraya said. 'Militia checkpoints were everywhere. But the new fighting has changed everything. The armies are busy with each other.' As she spoke those words, the Volvo rounded a bend and Bolan saw the lights of a military checkpoint blockading the road a quarter of a mile ahead.
He positioned himself sideways in the seat, like a man taking a rest. He made a final check to ensure the blacksuit and drawn Beretta were fully concealed. Zoraya slowed the Volvo as they approached the lights.
'The instant it goes wrong,' he told her, 'get us out of here.' The lady looked tough enough and competent behind the wheel.
Bolan kept his finger ready on the silenced 93-R's trigger beneath the blanket.
Zoraya braked to a stop at the checkpoint. A guard shack stood to one side and next to it three men, wearing the informal Druse militiaman's uniform of parka, knit hat, jeans and combat boots.
The three were armed with Russian AK-47 assault rifles.
Another soldier stood beside a jeep, near a radio in case anything went wrong.
Tension crackled in the night as one of the soldiers approached the car.
The others stood behind him, their AK'S leveled.
Bolan feigned sleep.
The Arab beauty would handle the soldier.
Bolan could not understand the dialogue, but the exchange did not need translation. He had briefed Zoraya on what to say.
She showed her papers to the militiaman.
'This is my husband and child. My husband was wounded in the fighting. We have been to the hospital in Beirut but had to leave after his surgery to make room for more wounded. He is heavily sedated, as you can see. We are Druse. We live in Biskinta.'
'You are crazy to return,' the soldier said gruffly, returning the ID with barely a glance at Bolan or the child. 'The fighting in the hills is bad. You should not go back.'
'It is our home. We return to get our belongings.' At that moment, the little boy in the back seat let out a caterwaul that echoed off eardrums and did not stop.
Zoraya played it to the hilt.
'There, you see?' she bitched. 'My child is awake. Do you want to nurse him back to sleep?' The soldier grunted something and stepped back from the car and waved her on through, already half forgetting the refugees and, like his companions, warily scanning the barren darkness around them for the enemy.
Bolan reached for the child, who continued to raise a hellish racket. He tried rocking the kid, making clucking noises that did no good. He became aware of a quiet chuckle from the woman behind the wheel.
'Perhaps we should trade places,' Zoraya suggested.
When they made the first dip in the terrain that put them beyond sight of the checkpoint, she steered onto the shoulder.
Zoraya took the little one and when the kid's scared eyes saw her, the squawling diminished to a murmur.
By the time Bolan got behind the wheel, Zoraya had the boy in her lap in the passenger seat, the boy transformed once again into a purring angel.
Bolan allowed a chuckle of his own as he steered the Volvo back onto the road.
'Thanks again.' Bolan went back to scanning the night beyond the cone of headlights.
