Cairo Countdown at-5

by Dick Stivers

  The weapon represented long hours of meticulous, frustrating work for Konzaki. How could Lyons politely refuse the weaponsmith’s latest modification?

  Never mind the polite words. He could talk straight with the ex-marine. Konzaki knew more than Lyons about combat.

  “Forget it, Andrzej. No more Berettas. Not for me. They’re great for special occasions, but my personal experience tells me that when the going gets rough, the Berettas aren’t enough.”

  “So I put together a hybrid…”

  “Forget it!” Lyons snapped. “No diamond points, no steel cores, no high-tech modifications. I’ve had it with 9mm. From now on, I’m carrying a silenced MAC-10.”

  “How about a .45-caliber ACP? Suppressed Colt Government Model? Semiauto and three-shot burst? Full-powered loads? Subsonic but full powered? Want to see it?”

  Lyons laughed. “Yeah. Sure do.”

  Hard rubber squeaked on the concrete. Konzaki wheeled back to Lyons with a plastic tray on his lap. “There’s one and only one policy in this workshop: Mack Bolan and his soldiers get the weapons they want. They get research and quality, but first they get what they want. Here it is.”

  He lifted away the tray’s lid. Lyons saw a Parkerized-black Colt automatic fitted with a blunt suppressor. He took the weapon from its bed of silicon cloth, pressed the release to drop the empty magazine, slipped back the slide, locked it.

  The slide had been modified and shortened, the barrel machined to accept the oval cylinder of the suppressor. A fold-down lever and enlarged trigger guard provided a two-handed hold. The arc of the safety continued into the grip, became a fire selector. Like the markings on the Beretta, a single white dot and three dots indicated semiauto and three-shot full-auto bursts.

  “You’re a genius.”

  “And you only see the obvious changes,” Konzaki responded. “I’ve worked on that off and on since I received the Berettas. Basically, I pirated the Beretta design. I had to machine a new slide, a custom-locking block assembly, a new barrel, sear mechanism. I increased the twist of the barrel’s rifling to cut the bullet velocity and increase the accuracy. The suppressor started out at over a foot in length. Look at it now — the entire pistol length comes to only twelve inches. Somewhat awkward compared to the standard Army-issue pistol, but considering…”

  “This is fantastic. And it fires full-powered rounds?”

  “Most .45 cartridges don’t go supersonic. Hot loads, maybe. But your standard ball rounds, with the increased twist of the barrel, no. This weapon will throw a 230-grain slug at a thousand feet per second to generate over four hundred pounds of muzzle energy. Hollowpoints deliver almost as much energy and more shock power. The subsonic nines never produced more than two hundred.”

  “Where’s the ammo? Let’s go shooting!”

  “Look at the magazines. The pistol accepts not only the standard seven-round magazine, but extended ten— and fifteen-round magazines. Someone does manufacture a thirty-round magazine but it’s almost two feet long.”

  “Tell me more!”

  Konzaki laughed. “Like a kid with a new toy.”

  Bumping over a back country road, Konzaki swerved the hand-controlled pickup around rocks and ruts. Lyons loaded an Atchisson drum magazine with twenty rounds of double-ought number-two steel buckshot. On the seat between the men, a clutter of magazines, weapons and aluminum canes rattled with every bump.

  The Virginia hills glowed in the morning light, spring leaves brilliant against smears of raw earth and vividly green grass. The truck splashed through mud and rainwater, swerved through a space in the fence.

  “Where we going?” Lyons asked, jamming the last round in the drum magazine.

  “Don’t know. Just wandering around.”

  “Don’t go anywhere with people. Or county sheriffs. Who needs trying to explain this Atchisson…”

  Konzaki left the tire-rutted pasture, wove through trees. An eroded hillside appeared. The legless man jerked back the brake bar, put the automatic transmission in neutral.

  “Look like a backstop to you?” he asked Lyons, pointing to the sheer dirt wall of the hill.

  “Good enough.”

  Konzaki grabbed his canes, swung out of the truck. The spring clamps were tight around his huge forearms as his fists gripped the handles. He moved fast, using artificial legs and the canes to steady himself on the matted woodland debris. He took ear protectors from the open back of the pickup, tossed a set to Lyons, jammed a pair on his own head. Then he lifted out a folding table and a folding chair.

  “Need any help with those things?” Lyons asked.

  “No problem. It’s all modified.” A strap on the table went over one shoulder, a strap on the chair over the other. “I do this all the time. By myself, with my kids. With Julie. My wife works in an office in State. Never gets any exercise. We go out in the country, I have to carry all the things. She can’t walk a mile on broken ground without blisters.”

  “Bet you never get blisters,” bantered Lyons. “Even with new shoes.”

  He followed Konzaki across the road. A cleared section of woods allowed a firing lane. Stumps here and there jutted out of the grass and ferns. A smiling Konzaki found a place without mud, set down the table, unfolded the legs, put the table on its feet.

  “There’s another chair in the truck. And get the milk crate and the sandbag.”

  In a few minutes, they had chairs and a shooting table assembled. A fresh breeze swayed the trees around them. Konzaki leaned back in his chair, stared up at the branches and the blue sky.

  “This is great!” he shouted out, his breath still clouding slightly in the early spring air. He turned to Lyons. “The Agency was strictly suit and tie, all day long, every day. Never again.”

  “Hey, man. I didn’t come out here to picnic…”

  “So shoot something! You waiting for permission? Put that twenty-round magazine on the Atchisson, see if you can burn it out.”

  “Is that a dare?” Lyons grinned. He lifted the gun from the crate and jammed the drum magazine in the assault shotgun as he stood up. He snapped the stock to his shoulder and fired.

  High-velocity steel balls blasted tree stumps as Lyons whipped the sights from one target to another, firing semiauto single shots.

  “Three-round bursts!” Konzaki shouted.

  Flicking down the fire selector one click, Lyons sighted on a tree fifty feet away, fired again. The weapon slammed his shoulder back, but he held the sights in line. A storm of steel shredded the side of the tree, ripped leaves and branches from the brush behind it.

  “Again!”

  Another tree went to pieces, then another.

  “Full auto! Empty it!”

  Lyons pushed the lever down all the way, dropped the weapon to his waist, walked forward, pulled back the trigger. Straining against the recoil, he continued forward, spraying several trees with a maelstrom of high-velocity steel. Branches exploded in bursts of chopped debris, wood flew, bark showered the ground. Finally the Atchisson’s action locked back.

  “Now put in another magazine, load the first round, but don’t fire!”

  “Yeah, sure.” Lyons felt queasy from the recoil beating; his hands were numb, his teeth ached. He dropped the empty drum, pushed in a seven-round box mag and burned his hand on the receiver when he hit the action release to strip off the first shotshell.

  “Damn, it’s hot.”

  “Hold it away from you. It might pop…”

  They waited a few seconds, then Konzaki took the Atchisson from Lyons and released the magazine. He turned the ejection port to the ground, snapped back the actuator. When the shotshell hit the dirt, he shifted his left leg to set his foot down on top of the hot shell.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “If it explodes from the chamber heat, I can buy a new foot…”

  Hinging open the weapon, Konzaki looked into the receiver. “Ever notice that shotgun shells aren’t brass?”

  “Nah, man. Thought brass cam
e in designer colors.”

  “Look. Melted plastic in the chamber. This shell — ” Konzaki stooped down, picked up the cooled round ” — would have been fused in there. No full-auto firefights with the Atchisson until I come up with improved casings.”

  Lyons laughed. “Andy, firefights with the Atchisson don’t last that long.”

  “Maybe aluminum.”

  “Now the .45.”

  Slapping in a magazine, he pulled back the slide of the autopistol to feed a round. He held the piece with both hands — right hand on the grip, left hand on the fold-down lever, left thumb hooked through the oversize trigger guard. He sighted over the phosphorous sights at a distant tree and squeezed off a shot.

  He heard the slug smash into the wood. But no muzzle blast. He slipped off his ear protectors, fired again. The crack of the slug punching into the tree broke the woodland silence. He aimed into the air, fired, finally heard the muzzle sound: not a blast, more a rushing sound. Sudden, then over. The slug zipped off into empty sky.

  Lyons set the safety as he turned to Konzaki. “This is it! When will it be ready?”

  “When do you need it?”

  A shrill beep came from the pocket of Lyons’s jacket. The tone repeated three times. Then three times again. Both men knew what the code meant.

  “Now.”

  3

  In the tourist section of the crowded airliner, Blancanales studied sales brochures and notebooks of technical information. He reviewed the prices, uses and specifications of the agricultural plumbing of his imaginary company. Three rows in front of him, Carl Lyons also read from notebooks. The tourists around them slept, or chatted or practiced their Arabic phrases.

  Ten hours of flying numbed his mind. But he ignored the voices and laughter around him, concentrated on the photos of plastic plumbing fittings. Rows of numbers and prices went double. He looked out his window to the patchwork of fields and farms and irrigation canals below him. He looked beyond the fertile Nile Delta to the distant windswept desert spanning the horizon, resting his eyes for a moment on the desolation. Then he returned to his study. Only a few minutes remained until they landed at Cairo International Airport. His life, and the lives of Lyons and Gadgets, might depend on his knowledge of the products and the company that he supposedly represented.

  This mission had Blancanales concerned. Unlike the other times Mack Bolan had sent them into action, they had no knowledge of what to expect. Hal Brognola, on the Air Force flight across the Atlantic, had told them only that they would work in Cairo with Yakov Katzenelenbogen, the one-armed ex-officer of the Israeli Mossad, now leader of Bolan’s Phoenix Force. No briefings, no maps, no photos, no information on their opponents. Because they would take commercial flights from London to Egypt, then pass through Egyptian customs, they did not carry weapons. Just phony identification as businessmen and notebooks of sales material from their “companies.”

  An electronic chime rang. Blancanales looked up to see a sign flashing Fasten Seat Belts/No Smoking in English, French and Arabic.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” a proper British voice announced, “we will soon begin our descent to Cairo International Airport. Please fasten your safety belts and remain seated until the…”

  The voice droned on, repeating the announcement in other languages as the flight attendants went up and down the aisle, checking seat belts, adjusting seats, gathering soft-drink containers and tumblers.

  Below them, the green of the delta became sprawling suburbs, modern city, slums: narrow streets and wide highways. Blancanales closed his notebook only when the jet lost altitude, dropping flaps for the landing descent.

  Here I go, Blancanales thought. Where and what for, I hope someone knows.

  *

  Gadgets Schwarz closed the door behind the bellboy and surveyed the plush room. Despite the Egyptian decor and the window that looked out over Cairo, he stood in plastic fantastic America. The room smelled of antiseptic and air freshener. The air-conditioning unit whirred faintly. A tourist guide to the city lay by the phone. The maids had stretched the bed cover tight, polished the furniture and television, left tiny bars of scented soap for him. He went to the television, switched it on. Kojak shouted in Arabic, grabbed a long-legged blonde.

  “Wow,” Gadgets laughed. “First class…”

  The phone rang. Startled, he stared at it a second, letting it ring again, then took it.

  “Your assistant is here, sir,” a clerk intoned in perfect English. “Would it be convenient for you to receive him in your room?”

  “Yeah, sure. Send him up.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Schwarz turned the television up loud, went to the mosaic-tile-and-blue-enamel bathroom. The tiles were decorated with hieroglyphs and stylized scenes. Splashing water on his face, he rinsed away the dust, tried a packet of the hotel’s scented hand lotion as tires shrieked, bullets ricocheted in the next room. Then his assistant knocked.

  A young Egyptian stood in the corridor with two aluminum cases. “Well, hey, man,” the Egyptian drawled in Tex-Mex. He extended his hand. “Here I am. I’m…”

  Without a word, Gadgets motioned him inside. The young man grunted with the weight of the cases, staggered across the room to the bed, put the cases down. Gadgets snapped the first one open.

  A fiberboard packing box filled half the interior. Stenciled words spelled out the manufacturer: European Defence Products. To identify the product, someone had lettered with marking pen, “2 Armbursts.” Gadgets was pleased. Unlike the shoulder-launched RPG-7 and LAAW rockets, this German-manufactured weapon produced no deadly backblast. A charge inside the disposable tubes propelled the rocket and a counter-mass in opposite directions. The counter-mass, a kilogram of harmless plastic chips, sprayed behind the launcher as the rocket shot from the tube. The rocket’s propellant then accelerated the warhead to a speed of six feet per second. And Able Team now had two of them!

  In the other half of the case, a battlejacket of Kevlar and steel wrapped an Uzi and a bundle of magazines. Gadgets saw a second weapon, a silenced Beretta 93-R, with custom shoulder holster and several magazines of subsonic rounds.

  Gadgets snapped open the second case. He found radios, electronic units, ammunition. Taking out one small device, he switched on the power and pulled out an antenna. He turned in a circle slowly, waving the antenna at the walls of the hotel room. He touched the antenna to the telephone, walked into the bath, then returned to the Egyptian and waved the unit over him.

  “I got no electric cooties!” the guy said.

  “Supercool,” Gadgets commented. He took a hand radio from the case, keyed the transmit. “Man Number Three speaking… Who’s out there?”

  “I am,” Carl Lyons answered.

  “You swept your room yet?”

  “This is your International Fluid Technology sales representative,” proclaimed the voice of Rosario Blancanales.

  “Both of you,” Gadgets interrupted, “don’t talk until you’ve checked your rooms. In fact, forget it. I’m in 505. Meet me here. Have your assistants watch the equipment.”

  “You one paranoid hombre,” the Egyptian told him.

  “You got a name?”

  “Mohammed. You can call me Mo. I’m talking the Arab talk for you, driving your car, showing you the sights. Mr. One-Hand told me this might be a real party, wild times. He said you guys are hardcore cowboys.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  Mohammed grinned. “You! Ask me another tough one.”

  “Your name Mo as in Mossad?”

  “Who’s that dude?”

  “Okay, that’s cool. You look Egyptian. I guess you speak the language like one?”

  “I am one, man. I talk it mucho perfecto. Want to hear?”

  “Hope you speak it better than you do English…”

  Mohammed shammed offense. “Hey, wait a minute…”

  Knuckles tapped the door. “Later. Right now, take a walk.”

  The jiving Mohammed gav
e Blancanales and Lyons a quick salute as he left. Lyons squinted an eye at the young man, then closed the door and locked it.

  “Konzaki include those Armburst rockets in your CARE package?” Blancanales asked.

  “Sure did. Rockets, Uzi, Kevlar battlesuit with trauma plates. I think we’re into something heavy here…”

  “How do we verify those three kids?” Lyons interrupted.

  “My man had the right id,” Gadgets answered.

  “What identification?”

  “There…” He pointed to the equipment in the aluminum cases.

  “Not good enough.”

  “We’ll talk to Katz,” Blancanales told them. “I want to know exactly what goes on. Immediately.”

  “Conference call.” Gadgets pulled another radio from the case, selected a frequency. “The Wizard calling,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Team waiting. Wizard calling…” Repeating his code, Gadgets checked his watch.

  “This is Phoenix One,” Yakov Katzenelenbogen answered in his upper-class English soldier’s accent. “I trust you had a pleasant flight.”

  Lyons leaned to the radio to cut off the pleasantries. “Request positive identification of assistants. Absolute positive.”

  “I watched the young men enter the hotel. I assure you of their identity and trustworthiness.”

  Blancanales squatted beside the bed and reached for the radio. Gadgets pointed to the handset in his pocket. “Use your own. Your signal will be relayed to Katz.”

  Keying his hand radio, Blancanales asked: “Is there surveillance? Can we meet for a conference?”

  “No! Coded radio only. We cannot risk a meeting. Allow me to explain…” He briefed them on the destruction of the secret U-2, then the ambush of the CIA squad. As he detailed his investigation of the incidents, the three men of Able Team looked to one another.

  When the ex-Mossad agent — the unofficial leader of Phoenix Force — voiced his conclusion, the words came as no surprise. “I believe the Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated the Central Intelligence Agency.”