Bolan eyed the night beyond the windshield.

"It looks like Nam." His review of last-minute intel prior to arriving in Lebanon fired to vivid life as the Fiat rattled along.

Lebanon's latest civil war, a vicious struggle pitting Arab Christians against Druse and Shiite Muslims aided and armed by Syria, raged out of control, threatening the very existence of the Christian president's fragile pro-Western government.

Fighting between the bloodthirsty factions flared all around the city.

Supply columns traveling the Beirut Damascus highway enabled the Druse to move Sovietmade artillery and mortar placements into the Shouf mountains overlooking Beirut. Druse forces pounded Christian positions with artillery and Katyusha rockets. Lebanese army tanks and troops fought Shiite militiamen in the city's suburbs.

The Druse, joined by Syrian-backed Palestinian guerrilla forces, hoped to link up with the Shiite leftists on the outskirts of Beirut in a drive to take over the capital. The objective of this uneasy alliance: to topple the duly-elected government and existing political systern at the price of a bloodbath.

Artillery fire had rained down on the city throughout the week, hitting hospitals, forcing schools to close, setting homes ablaze.

As always the civilians, caught in the middle, paid the real, terrible price for conflicting political and religious ideologies run amok.

Opposing forces accused each other of conducting massacres.

"Turn right at the next road, coming up beyond those trees, was instructed the Israeli with a gesture. "We'll be in the thick of it in another mile. There is a Muslim residential neighborhood beyond this turn. Or there was before the inhabitants fled. Those were probably the last of them we passed back there on the road. The situation now is very fluid, not only with the army and the insurgents, but also bandits. Anyone can get his hands on a grenade launcher and do what he likes with it."