by Dick Stivers
The flat whack of each grenade’s hundred sixty grams of explosive sent thousands of steel wires slicing through air and flesh. Lyons chanced another look. No slugs came for an instant. A truck accelerated through the open door. Lyons snapped up his Atchisson and fired a full-auto burst at the driver. Steel balls punched sheet steel.
Slugs from an AK ripped past him and Lyons threw himself flat. Brakes squealed. Another engine roared away as burst after burst of slugs hammered the fenders and tires shielding Lyons. In all, four trucks escaped.
Uzis fired from Lyons’s side. He saw Gadgets and Blancanales spraying bursts on the run.
Blancanales crouched beside Mohammed. “Sorry we’re late. We had fire coming straight down that hole.”
Gadgets jerked the pin from a frag and lobbed it to the second-floor offices. A rifle went silent. A terrorist jumped to his feet with the grenade in his hand and was swinging to throw it back. Blancanales put a burst of 9mm hollowpoints into the terrorist’s chest. He fell back into the blast.
Only two Muslim rifles continued firing. Lyons crabbed over to his partners. “I haven’t seen the Agency man. And four trucks got out.”
Fanning out, firing bursts, Able Team searched through the carnage.
14
The Lincoln’s door flew open as the three-ton limousine rocked on its springs. Parks bolted out. Katz and Sadek followed a second later. They ran through the trucks and unmarked Fiats jamming the street in front of the warehouse.
An Agency soldier with overcoat concealing a weapon ran to Parks. “We got some people in there who claim to be highest authority. But they don’t have identification or…”
A second CIA soldier rushed forward. “There’s one of our men dead. Another missing…”
Parks took the men aside, out of earshot of Sadek and Katz. They spoke quickly, one man pointing to another block, to a car with shattered windows. The second man pointed to a warehouse door. While they spoke, a siren approached. A Cairo police department squad car whipped around a corner, lights flashing. Uniformed officers jumped out, revolvers in their hands.
Parks returned to Sadek. “Something happened here. We don’t know what yet. But we need to keep the city police at arm’s length until we can sort it out. Can you help us with that?”
“Oh, certainly,” sighed Sadek. “But you understand, there will be a full explanation. We operate as allies in this investigation, correct?”
“You have my word. I know nothing about what happened here.”
Sadek watched Parks with a calm, knowing expression. “Why do the men inside claim Highest Authority?”
“I have no idea… Please, the police are here.”
With a smile, Sadek turned away. Parks watched the Egyptian go to the city officers who stood around, confused. The worried young American turned to Katz. “We got a problem. Come on…”
Motioning Katz to follow, Parks jogged to the guarded street door. The older man, Phoenix Force’s scarred and maimed hero, maintained his Foreign Service investigator role as he limped past the Agency men. He gave them a quick salute. They turned their faces away.
Screams echoed in the vast warehouse. Parks started, his head whipping about as he searched the dim interior for the source of the agonized cry. Katz saw a three-story-high area for trucks, then an overhanging second floor of offices. Bodies of Arabs and Africans lay here and there on the oil-blackened concrete. The bitter odors of blood and cordite hung in the air.
Hands stopped Parks. A young Egyptian in a taxi driver’s jacket stood in front of them, his outstretched arms pushing them back to the door.
“So sorry, sirs. You not come in. Not allowed.”
“Who are you? ” Parks demanded.
The taxi driver pressed them back. “So sorry, no speak much English. You not come in.”
Again a scream tore the quiet, was suddenly choked off. Then another voice cried out, wailed. Words came. They heard a voice speaking quickly in Arabic, punctuated by shrieks.
Parks stared around the warehouse. His eyes finally registered the corpses strewn around the parked trucks. He shoved past the taxi driver, ran through the trucks.
A knot of men in battle armor clustered around a moaning, thrashing prisoner. Parks attempted to pull two of the armored warriors apart. Lyons jumped to his feet. Grabbing Parks by the shoulders, he threw him against a truck. In a quick sweep of a foot, he hooked Parks’s ankles from under him, dropped him to the concrete. He stood over Parks. Blood smeared the black nylon of the hotshot’s battle armor and bandoliers.
“You don’t interfere in our interrogation. I don’t care who you are.”
“Highest Authority does not sanction this.”
“Those terrorists have an American prisoner. That sanctions everything.”
“Craig Parks,” Katz told Lyons as he arrived on the scene. “He’s temporarily Chief Special Operations Officer.”
Parks looked from the oil-smeared face of the blond American to the man he knew as Mr. Steiner. “What’s going on here?”
“We’re doing your work; now stay out of the way.” Lyons went back to the others.
Mohammed translated the Arab’s panted, gasped words to Able Team, “…an old agricultural institute three kilometers past el-Minya. Very well defended. Heavy machine guns, mines, wire. Looks like a farm. But it’s the fortress of the National Liberation Front.”
“Ask him about places in the city here,” Blancanales told Mohammed. “Maybe they won’t take the American out of the area.”
Mohammed questioned the prisoner, listened to the answer. “No, their leader wants the man for bad times. Some of their people went to hideouts in Cairo. But the main force is making it to the desert…”
“You’re in with them, aren’t you, Steiner?” Parks accused Katz. “What are you really doing? Are you with the Foreign Service?”
“Please be calm,” Katz told him.
“Calm! I have a secret team of assassins operating in my area of responsibility. Do you have any idea of what this could do to our relations with this country? When the international news bureaus get this story, the United States will be…”
“Will be nothing!” Lyons interrupted, shouting at the officer. “You’re going to tell them? Are you making the call?”
“No! But it’s inevitable…”
“Nothing’s inevitable,” Lyons countered. The warrior slung his Atchisson over his shoulder as the other men left the prisoner.
“We promised to send this guy to a hospital if he helped us. You care so much, Parks, you take care of him.”
Tourniquets tied off the Arab terrorist’s ankles. Forty-five-caliber slugs had torn ghastly wounds in the man’s feet. Behind the moaning prisoner, a dead man lay spread-eagled on the concrete, his feet and hands shot away.
“One talked, the other didn’t. Who’s he?” Lyons pointed behind Katz.
Sadek watched Able Team straightening their gear. He took a pack of English cigarettes from his coat pocket. He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter.
“Sir, I should ask that of you,” the Egyptian said.
“Ask him,” Lyons pointed to Parks as he moved past Sadek.
The Egyptian watched Able Team and the two taxi drivers jog away. He called after them, “Police and soldiers have surrounded the block. You cannot leave!”
Blancanales called back without breaking pace. “Wanna bet?”
Parks turned to Katz, his face livid. “I’m calling Washington,” he said. “You’ve come here and run your own dirty tricks squad through another country’s laws. A country we’re attempting to convince of our friendship and respect…”
“Why do you shout at me, Mr. Parks?” Katz asked him.
“Those guys knew you. You were talking with them, they…”
“Talking with whom?” Katz glanced around as if confused by Parks’s question.
Parks ran into the open expanse of concrete beyond the parked trucks. His head turned from side to side as he looked for Able Team.
He rushed to the nearest trucks, glanced between the vehicles. Katz followed the angry young Agency officer.
“Talking with whom?” Katz repeated.
“They’re gone…”
“Who’s gone?” Katz asked.
*
In the back of the pitching truck, Jake Newton lay utterly still. Terrorists surrounded him. He felt their boots pressing against his legs, heard the moaning and crying of wounded, the Arabic words of other men.
They ignored him. A minute or so after the terrorists had thrown him into the back of the truck, he had heard the shooting. Slugs and shrapnel had ripped through the canvas. He’d heard the screams and panic, the long firefight. Before he could summon the strength to attempt to escape, hope of rescue had ended as the terrorists crowded into the truck.
Jake faked unconsciousness throughout the long ride from the city. After careering around corners, bumping over the streets of Cairo, every turn and lurch an agony to the battered prisoner, the truck sped through the highway traffic. Which direction had they taken him? It did not matter. He had already cut the rope around his hands. When they stopped, he would try to make his break.
He listened as the truck drove through desert quiet. No traffic passed. The truck neither slowed nor accelerated, simply held a steady speed on a good road. After an eternity, the terrorists around him gathered their weapons and talked again.
Voices called out. He heard the sound of a generator. The truck stopped. He lay still, as if dead, while the terrorists left the truck. A leader shouted instructions in Arabic.
Hands jerked at his feet. As Jake slid from the floorboards of the truck, he pulled his hands from the tangle of ropes on his wrists and opened the one eye that still worked.
Slamming an elbow into a face, feeling teeth break, he grabbed at an AK, felt the stamped metal of the receiver. But he did not have the strength to stand. Blood drained from his head. His legs, still tied at the ankles, buckled beneath him. He fell into darkness before his body hit the ground.
Merciful unconsciousness sheltered the American from the kicks and punches and rifle butts of the Warriors of Allah.
15
Beyond the noise and streaking headlights of the highway, moonlit fields extended into the distance. Slouched in the back seat of his taxi, Gadgets stared out at the lights of peasant farms and villages. Some lights were the flickering amber of fire, others were electric white. Able Team had left the warehouse as they had entered, through the ancient sewer. Now they raced toward the village of el-Minya.
Would a battle at the old agricultural school end it? All through the night, as they had fought from one terrorist stronghold to another, Gadgets had considered the conflicting and confusing information. He knew the background of the groups, he knew of their involvement in many attacks against moderate Arab leaders and Europeans, he had seen their operations. Able Team had destroyed two separate gangs of Muslim fanatics. Yet he could not think of the night’s actions as steps toward victory. The facts simply did not justify optimism.
Keying his hand radio, he buzzed Lyons and Blancanales. “Hey, this is the Wizard. Conference time.”
“What do you want to talk about?” Lyons answered.
“All of this trash tonight. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Tell us,” Blancanales told him.
“I want a real conference. We should stop the cabs for a second, all pile into one.”
“Why?” Lyons asked. “You think they could monitor our frequency?”
“Not really. I just want to jive face to face. I got a thermos of coffee I’ll share.”
“Stopping immediately!”
Headlights flashed behind Gadgets and Mohammed. A half-mile back, other high beams blinked. As his taxi eased over to the side of the road, Gadgets saw the other taxis slow and stop. Lyons legged it from his car, Blancanales followed a few seconds later.
Lyons sat in the front seat. He put out a Styrofoam cup. “Where’s my coffee? And I didn’t come here for any criticism. I think I’m doing great.”
“No doubt about it, you’re doing fine.”
Blancanales swung open the door, caught a Kalashnikov before it fell out. He set the autorifle on the floor and sat next to his partner.
Flooring the accelerator, Mohammed swerved into traffic.
Lyons shouted. “Go easy, you crazy cowboy Arab. The man’s pouring my coffee.”
Gadgets passed the steaming cup to Lyons, then turned to Blancanales. “You think Mr. Ironman here’s doing okay?”
The Puerto Rican ex-Green Beret considered the question, finally answered, “For a leg grunt, yeah.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Gadgets agreed. “For a leg soldier, he’s got style. Can’t complain.”
“Hey! I’m not ground bound. I jump. High drop, low drop…”
“With parachute or without,” Gadgets added.
“I’ve jumped. Done it for fun. Don’t have jump wings, but… Talking about tough stuff, where were you when I was rolling around on that killing floor? I got shot waiting for you. Look at this…”
He passed them an AK slug that he had pried out of his battle suit.
Gadgets looked at it. “Did it hurt?”
“Nah, man. Hit me in the…”
“Hit him in the head,” Blancanales joked. “Commies should issue armor-piercing rounds when the Ironman comes around.”
“Did you want to talk or what?” Lyons demanded, impatient with the kidding.
“Oh, yeah. I don’t call a conference to practice my Ironman jokes. About all this stuff with the Raghead International. I been running it through my cranial circuits over and over but it does not make sense. I mean, there’s no schematic. It’s strictly circle city.
“First, we ran up against that gang who tried to rocket the limousines. We hit them then. Twice. Hard. We went looking for the SAMs, but what do we find? Artillery rockets. Not exactly something you smuggle across the border in a crate marked Farm Tools.
“Then the Agency runs their scam on the jet shooters. They spot one agent in the control tower. But he wasn’t the one that alerted the missile crews in the city. They had a radio at the airport communicating with their headquarters in the city. Think about it. They wouldn’t have just one man with a buzzer and one man with a voice radio. Ten to one, they got a network of spotters out there at the International.”
Blancanales shook his head slowly. “That’s not certain. Their agent in the tower couldn’t radio his information straight, so they had a backup. Makes sense that way, too.”
“Maybe. But look at how they operate in the city. They’ve got a central command, then satellite units scattered all over the place. The command center got the word, then relayed it to all the other units.”
“Not anymore,” Lyons told his partner. “Command Central is deactivated.”
Gadgets gulped his coffee, poured more from the thermos. “We killed some of them. I checked inside those trucks. Crated SAM-7s and good radios. But you said four trucks got away. And how do we know all of their field units were in the warehouse? Anyway, they hit Air Force planes. Why not American airliners? That’s what scares me.”
“We’ve been chopping arms off the octopus,” said Blancanales. “We have to take the head off. But we don’t know where the head is.”
“Might have already done it,” insisted Lyons. “That one I saw had to be a diplomat. He had the look of an international type. I put an M-67 grenade under him.”
“We didn’t find his body,” Blancanales reminded Lyons.
“I think I got him. Blood all over the place…”
“Blood spots don’t make the body count.”
Gadgets cut them off. “Doesn’t matter if that one’s alive or dead. I don’t think the head was the diplomat the Ironman saw. Dig it, these people have infiltrated everywhere. They’re in the Egyptian army, in the government, they work at the airport, they’re kids on motorbikes. These people are major pros at secrecy. Therefore the head would not
have made an appearance at that warehouse. Capture one of his soldiers, you get a description of the leader, you close down the entire operation. My bet is, the head man’s some dude no one would suspect. And that’s what’s kicking me. We have to have a way to close down this operation, not just hack at it.”
“What about that Egyptian with the Agency?” Lyons asked.
“I listened in on a conversation between Katz and that Parks guy. They’ve checked him and checked him. They say he’s straight.”
“I don’t care what they say,” Lyons snapped back. “That one saw us. I bet you, and I’ll give you even odds, that we get it because of him.”
“From Washington?” Blancanales commented. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not talking about Washington. Now the Egyptians know. I’m saying we could get shat upon out here in the desert.”
Gadgets tapped the radio linking Able Team to Katz. “I got a message from the colonel. He’s sticking close to that Sadek. He won’t let him spill it for a while.”
Mohammed shouted out, “El-Minya, two kilometers.”
“Time to split up again.”
They buzzed their drivers. Gadgets pressed his argument as the taxi slowed. “So we’ve still got to positively identify the head man. Otherwise we’re wasting our time, we’re just shooting sand dunes.”
“Tell it to the colonel.” Lyons gripped the door handle as he waited for the taxi to slow. “We can’t do it all.”
Lyons jumped out the door. Dust billowed in the glare of the other taxis’ headlights. Blancanales gave Gadgets a salute and stepped out, too. Mohammed waited until the two men got in their cars, then threw the Fiat into gear. “We’ll be at the village in about two minutes. Road we want cuts east, into the desert.”
“Go. You’re the driver — just go.” Gadgets flicked on the switch of the high-powered radio unit. Cairo would be at the extreme range of the radio. But he needed to send one last message to Colonel Katz.
*
Bleary-eyed orderlies with plastic bags shuffled through the warehouse. Soldiers struggled to descend the stairs with stretchers.
