Cairo Countdown

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.

Katz watched Sadek and a technician search through the battle litter. He limped across the warehouse, pausing every few steps. He glanced at weapons the soldiers piled, looked inside trucks, as if evaluating the armament of the terrorists. Edging closer to Sadek, he listened to the Egyptian's comments to the laboratory technician.

"Examine those .45-caliber casings under a microscope," Sadek told the technician in Arabic. "Compare the casings to the ones found at the earlier incident. I want it done immediately."

"The staff will not be there until after nine o'clock in the morning…"

"You will do it. You will do it now..." Sadek turned, saw Katz standing near "...or must I request our American allies to open their facilities? I need a report in an hour."

Dismissing the assistant, Sadek stepped over to Katz. "And what are your conclusions, Mr. Steiner, supposedly of the American Foreign Service?"

"Perhaps it was an industrial accident."

"No. I think not."

"A religious rite? I understand that often what a foreigner mistakes for extremism is actually the expression of a fervent devotion to Allah. Perhaps self-flagellation with whips did not cleanse their souls of guilt, and they used automatic rifles to purge their sins instead… with unfortunate consequences."

"Again, I think not."

Katz limped back to Parks. "Assemble your men. We're returning to the embassy."

"What?" Parks asked, feigning surprise. "And leave Sadek here to send coded information to the Communist International?"

Katz smiled at the sarcasm. "Actually, yes."

Wind swirled sand. In the distance, the lights of the National Liberation Front stronghold blinked in the predawn darkness. Able Team and their "taxi drivers," changed from their street clothes to black night suits, now checked weapons and equipment by the glow of penlights. Lyons loaded Atchisson magazines. Blancanales inspected the rockets and launchers they had taken from dead Muslim terrorists. It would soon be the dawn of another terror-racked day for Mack Bolan's avengers.

They did not prefer their days to be ablaze with terror, any more than Mack Bolan, the rogue supercommander of the U.S. government's leading security enterprise, preferred execution to mercy.

But, like Mack Bolan, his three American freedom fighters known as Able Team knew well enough that somebody had to be true to the way things really were. Somebody had to go beyond mercy and face terror openly, fearlessly, immediately. Somebody had to realize there was no other choice.

Able Team was born of the same fires as Bolan's long-ago Death Squad. The same fires of Mack's own mythical immolation in New York's Central Park that brought The Executioner emerging from ashes as John Phoenix, the greatest counter-terrorist known to man. So Able Team went in blazing. Every time.

They were an extension of Mack's will and yet, out of love and out of duty, they acted entirely independently, unpredictably, for the patriotism of it, for the love known only to the selfless volunteer. It was a high path that shimmered with sacred fires.

They went in blazing, but their enemies cropped up everywhere, unendingly.

Their enemies were the children of the devil, whoever they may be, and there were many. The devil's ilk might be Americans, they might be Chinese, they might be Arab or Jew or Englishman or Congolese, they might be man or woman, very young or very old, but they all identified themselves in one way: their fanatical devotion to destruction for its own sake.

Such destroyers needed a stiff lesson. The lesson was Able Team. The avenging warriors taught the ancient law, that for every action — especially destructive action — there is as powerful a reaction. For every act — especially the act of taking innocent life, especially the act of destroying productive endeavor, especially the act of spilling the blood of the harmless and wrecking their lives with shock and horror — there is always an accounting.

Whether you are Jew or Arab or Christian or black man or preacherman or soldier, your life is in the care of Mack Bolan and his friends. But if you are of the devil's party, then the above does not apply…

Mohammed circulated among the others, tucking frag and flash-blast grenades into empty battle-armor pockets. Gadgets fitted an earphone to a captured Muslim walkie-talkie and gave it to Mohammed.

To protect their throats and lungs against the blowing sand, Zaki tore a dark shirt into strips and tied one of the strips over his mouth and nose. Wordlessly, the others took the makeshift bandannas.

On the crest of a brush-choked sand dune, Abdul watched the terrorist base through binoculars. His voice low, he called back to the others, "Sentries. Searchlights."

Lyons finished with the last box mag of 12-gauge rounds. He counted the magazines in his bandolier: fifteen plus one in the weapon — a total of one hundred twelve rounds. He tried walking. With the weight of the steel-and-Kevlar battle armor, an Arm-burst rocket, the Atchisson, the modified Colt and ammunition for both, every step became a conscious effort. And he had a two-mile march through sand to the base.

Oh, well, could be worse. He could be that American the fanatics had taken prisoner. Was the man still alive? Had the torture started?

Lyons slung the Atchisson and struggled up the dune to Abdul. "What do you see on the perimeter?"

"Look." Abdul passed the binoculars to Lyons.

A searchlight swept the desert, revealing a bulldozed flat ring of sand around barbed-wire fences. Fifty feet of sand separated the fences from the clay walls of the institute.

Lyons slid back down the sandbar and returned to the others.

"What are we up against?" Blancanales asked.

Lyons yawned. "Searchlights, cleared fields of fire, barbed wire, maybe a mine field, ten-foot mud walls, sentries, maybe an army of crazies inside and who knows what else."

"Standard stuff," Gadgets commented. He checked his radio and the radios of the others with a penlight.

In the momentary glows of the light, Zaki and Mohammed looked at the three American commandos, studying their faces for fear or false courage. Despite the odds against them, these Americans appeared at ease.

"But we have the element of surprise," Zaki said as if to bolster his own confidence.

"For now," Gadgets nodded. "But with luck, they'll be expecting us."

"Man, you're kidding!" Mohammed cried out.

"Don't sweat it," laughed Gadgets, "it's part of a plan."

"These dudes are loco," Mohammed muttered to Zaki and Abdul as they followed the hulking shadows of Able Team across the lunarlike desert. "Loco, loco, loco."