Read Beirut Payback: MacK Bolan for Free Online

enough.
    The mess resulted from so many disparate Muslim factions forgetting their grievances and cross-purposes with each other and uniting — with considerable aid from the Soviet Union — under the banner of Islam in nothing less than a Jihad, a Holy War, against an opposing alliance of similarly disparate factions, in most cases pro-Western.
    Bolan knew some history of the region.
    In the eleventh century, a group of nonconformist Muslims infiltrated southern Lebanon, eventually coalescing into the Druse community. Unrest between Muslims and Arab Christians dated to the nineteenth century. Druse opposition to Christians was directed particularly against the Maronites, culminating in a series of bloody attacks.
    After a massacre of twenty-five hundred Christians in 1860, France intervened and the Ottoman sultan was forced to appoint a Christian government, which still was in power.
    The current trouble exploded when Israel's military invaded Lebanon to destroy once and for all the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Israelis succeeded only in driving out moderate PLO factions while diehard PLO terrorists strengthened themselves in an alliance with the Druse.
    Druse and PLO fighters operated jointly against the pro-Israeli, pro-Western Lebanese government, joined by the Iranian crazies and the Syrians, in open civil war. Both sides were driven by real grievances, feeding a bloodlust as exploitable as ever by the cannibals who sat on the sidelines and pulled the strings.
    Syria, on Lebanon's border, backed the rebel factions in a bid to subordinate Lebanon without necessarily annexing it.
    Syria functioned as the Soviets' muscle in this struggle, though Soviet and Syrian interests were often at odds. The Kremlin preferred its clients to remain relatively weak and thus dependent on Moscow's patronage, but the will of Islam is strong. The Soviet terror machine's strongarms in the Mediterranean would never yield to state over religion, the basic tenet of communism to control the masses.
    The Syrian warlords in Damascus played the situation with a hope of making Syria the center of the Arab world. Real power, yeah, but not an easy task for a country with nearly no oil and only ten million people.
    Damascus already had the PLO under its thumb.
    Control over the terrorist network gave Syria sinister leverage over moderate pro-Western oil producers who were exceedingly vulnerable to terrorism.
    The Russian "advisors," of course, played for the big stakes. They wanted this corner of the world-a key to the world slave state their leaders had always envisioned.
    The Executioner had a shot tonight at cutting these savages off at the knees.
    But first he had to find Strakhov.
    Why had the KGB top cannibal risked it all to come to this hellground?
    Did the answer wait in Biskinta?
    Only one thing for sure, thought Bolan. The Disciples of Allah are next.
    The slimebags who sent a truck bomb to massacre sleeping peacekeepers.
    Bolan kept his combat-cool objectivity intact as he drove, but anger tightened his fists around the Volvo's steering wheel until his knuckles shone bone white.
    The Disciples of Allah.
    Craziest of the crazies, not giving a damn if they died, as long as they took plenty of the enemy with them.
    The Shiite fanatics were the most dangerous foe of all on the battlefield, because they believed they had nothing to lose.
    The desire for martyrdom is rooted deeply in Shiism, which in turn is rooted in Iran. The very word assassin comes from hashshashin after the gang of hashish-smoking hit men, directed by an eleventh century Persian cannibal named Hasan ibn al-Sabbah, who often sacrificed their own lives for his cause.
    Less than ten percent of the world's five hundred million Muslims are Shiites, their zeal for martyrdom fanned by their Ayatollah in Tehran, encouraged by the mullahs.
    During the Iranian revolution, anti-Shah marchers wore white burial clothes to indicate their willingness to die for the