Cairo Countdown

12

"Commander Omar!" a warrior called out. "Americans!"

The elegant leader of the National Front's group in Cairo descended the wooden steps from the offices. He saw his Islamic soldiers clutching their Soviet autorifles and rocket launchers. They lusted for battle.

Only thirty minutes before, Omar had danced with a beautiful French girl at a reception for the PLO. But a signal from his beeper had taken him away from the champagne and Brazilian jazz rhythms. Rushing to this warehouse-fortress within the city, he learned of the escape of the American spy plane. Then his Libyan electronics technician told him of the snatches of radio messages between the CIA officers.

Thank Allah, thought the commander, that the United States had such greed it would sell the marvels of modern electronics to its enemies! Though his technician had learned his skills in the Soviet schools of South Yemen, he had worked with American components to monitor and record the communications of the Americans. Now, armed with foreknowledge of the Central Intelligence Agency plot, Omar and his warriors could slash out and kill, then escape untouched. Omar smiled to his warriors.

"I know. I have known of their plot all this night. And I am ready. Tonight, we kill many Americans."

Headlights swept the walls. As Abdul stopped the taxi, Lyons stepped into the garbage of the gutter. The air stank of rot and insecticide. During the day, farm trucks and vendors jammed the street, shoppers crowding around tailgates and merchants' stalls to buy foods fresh from the farms of the Nile. Now, where thousands walked in the daylight, Lyons walked alone. The gray luminescence of the Cairo night left the street market in darkness. No lights showed in the windows and doorways of the warehouses opening to the market.

Lyons moved through shadows, found the steel ladder that the cab's headlights had revealed. He flicked on his penlight to see steel sheet and padlock barring unauthorized entry.

"We need a tire iron," he whispered into his hand radio.

"On our way," Blancanales answered.

Far down the block, another set of headlights flashed in the darkness. Rolling to a stop behind Abdul, Blancanales and Zaki left their cab. Zaki opened the trunk, took out a tire iron and an airline flight bag. Lyons blinked his penlight to reveal where he waited.

By the glow of the penlight, Zaki shoved the point of the tire iron through the shackle. Snapping the padlock away, they swung the steel gate aside.

Wordlessly, Lyons went first, the rusted steel of the ladder creaking with his weight. His hands felt the grit of years of dust and soot. As he neared the roof, he slowed, listening for any sounds or voices above him. He heard nothing. Finally, he eased his head over the edge.

He saw only a black expanse of roof and shadows. An army could be hiding in the darkness. He had to chance it. Here, a block away from the warehouse of the Muslim terrorists, he did not expect sentries. Hoping he wouldn't get a surprise, he slipped over the top of the wall.

Crouching in the shadow, he waited, listening, modified Colt in his hand. Somewhere on the roof, a fan flailed steel against steel. He heard the popping of a motorcycle.

He watched for shifts in the rooftop silhouettes of pipes and wires and fan housings. In the distance, a gentle wind carried dust from the desert, blurring the lights of modern Cairo's high-rise towers. After minutes without moving, Lyons keyed his hand radio's transmit button twice, then twice again.

The ladder creaked with steps. Lyons dashed across the roof, flattened himself against a fan housing. He listened for movement or the mechanical click of a released safety. He heard only the sound of a shoe scraping the wall behind him. Lyons snapped his fingers twice to give Blancanales his position.

A crouching Zaki followed seconds later. He unzipped his flight bag and pulled out his Uzi. He shoved extra magazines into the pockets of his jeans, then joined Lyons and Blancanales.

"Wizard," Lyons whispered into his hand radio, "we're on the roof."

"See anyone?"

"No. Stand by, we're moving."

Loud in the early-morning quiet, tarred sheet metal flexed under their shoes as they hurried across the roof. The huge warehouse spanned the block. As they approached the other side, they moved slower, pausing behind ventilator pipes. Then they dashed forward, one man at a time.

Lyons crouched at the low wall and peered down at the street. Directly beneath them, a CIA surveillance van parked with several other trucks. Diagonally across the intersection of two streets, the warehouse of the Muslim terrorist group showed no lights. From their position, Lyons and Blancanales scanned the roof for sentries.

"There," Blancanales pointed.

"Where?"

"The outline of that water tower. There's the silhouette of an arm. A shoulder. See the rifle stock?"

"Yeah. But I don't see any way to get there."

"The Wizard will have to go up on that other block." Lyons pointed to a line of buildings beyond the terrorist warehouse.

"Hey, Americans!" Zaki hissed. "Down there, the sidewalk!"

"What?"

They looked down, saw a section of the concrete sidewalk hinge back. Black forms with pistols crept from the hole.

Lyons keyed his hand radio. "Wizard! We got four ragheads coming up out of the ground. They're moving in on the CIA boys. Where are you?"

"Coming up out of the ground?" Gadgets asked, incredulous.

"They've got a tunnel under the street," Lyons told him. "They're going to take the men in the car…"

"Which car? Which street?"

"Below us. It's the car on the south corner of the hideout."

As Lyons spoke, Blancanales slipped out his silenced Beretta and folded down the left-hand grip. He leaned over the edge, bracing the 9mm autopistol against the wall. He sighted on the shadows three stories beneath them. "Can't get… can't get a line on them. They're under an awning…"

Tempered glass shattered. A man cried out. The dull smashes of other car windows breaking echoed in the early-morning darkness.

"Too late," Blancanales sighed.

"It's over, Wizard. Silenced pistols."

Blancanales jerked his autopistol up again, sighted straight down. "One's alive! They're taking one of the…"

Two of the black-clothed forms dragged an American to the trapdoor. But the terrorists crouched too close to the struggling American.

At the awkward angle from the roof, Blancanales could not fire without hitting the Agency man. Then the gunmen disappeared down the hole with the prisoner.

Lyons knew what the American faced: merciless torture and mutilation. He keyed the transmit again. "Wizard, they took a man alive."

A breathless voice answered. "I'm on the corner, looking at them. Two of them. They're ransacking the car. And that trapdoor's still open. What do you say we get our associate back?"

His hands and ankles bound, the American rolled into a ball on the concrete, trying to protect his face and stomach from the kicks and rifle butts of the attackers. One terrorist slammed a boot into the prisoner's back again and again, finally finding a kidney. The American arched back in agony.

As kicks thudded into the prisoner's gut, one warrior slammed the butt plate of his Soviet AK into the prisoner's face, smashing the nose.

Omar stopped his warriors. "He cannot die before we question him."

The American groaned. Blood bubbled from his broken face. The knot of Arabs gathered around the semiconscious prisoner. They laughed, jeered. Omar stooped and tried to grasp the American's short hair but couldn't. He grabbed the man's ear, instead, jerking his head from the concrete.

"Do you feel pain?" Omar asked in English. "Do you suffer? Wait. Soon you will know all the pain of the world. You will beg for death. Then I will give you more pain."

The elegant Egyptian stood. "Take him to the truck. We leave immediately!"

The taxis rolled to a silent stop. Lyons and Blancanales stepped out and sprinted for the corner. The two warriors searched the shadows of the street for Gadgets, saw him nowhere. Blancanales clicked his hand radio three times.

"Too late, dudes," Gadgets's voice answered. "Had to do it myself."

They looked around the corner, saw Gadgets and Mohammed weave through trucks parked on the sidewalk. Motioning their taxis to follow, Lyons and Blancanales continued to the open trapdoor.

Water trickled in the darkness below the pavement. The stink of sewage and old, old stones drifted up.

Gadgets pointed to the corpse of a gunman sprawled in the gutter. "Look at his legs. Only his shoes are wet."

Lyons glanced up at his partners. "We go in?"

Gadgets nodded.

"No other way," Blancanales agreed.

They went to their taxis. Taking off their sports coats, they slipped on Kevlar-and-steel battle armor. Gadgets and Blancanales filled the front pouches with magazines for their Uzis. Grenades went in the side pockets. Lyons dropped a few grenades in his front pouches, slung a bandolier of Atchisson mags over his armor. All three men wore their silenced autopistols on web belts.

Mohammed ran up. He now wore battle armor and a bandolier heavy with Uzi mags. He offered Lyons a flashlight.

"I got one," Lyons told him.

"Ain't got one like this. This is one of theirs. Look at the glass."

The lens had been tinted blue. "All right. Smart move."

"Just 'cause I talk like an American, don't mean I is stupid."

Snapping back the actuator of his Atchisson, Lyons chambered a 12-gauge round of high-velocity double-ought and number two steel shot and flicked on the safety. He walked to the trapdoor, the weight of his armor and weapons and ammunition making every step a conscious effort.

Gadgets slung two Armburst rocket launchers over his back.

"Rockets?" Lyons asked, looking back.

"Why not?" Gadgets shrugged. "Suppose we can't find our way out… ?"

The aluminum ladder swayed as Lyons descended into the Cairo underworld.