Cairo Countdown

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 gave 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."