Cairo Countdown

5

Clutching a folded-stock Kalashnikov rifle, Sadek leaned forward from his rear-facing auxiliary seat. Today, he wore a powder blue summer suit. He lowered the limousine's power window a few inches, observed the traffic behind the limousines. At the other window, Katz held a Colt Commander .45 as he watched parked cars and trucks, bicyclists, sidewalk crowds and vendors flash past. The two Lincolns were careening through the boulevard's traffic.

Parks looked back through the rear window and spoke into the intercom microphone. "We've lost them," he told the chauffeur and the bodyguard in the front seat. "But radio ahead to the airport, tell them to send out an escort car to meet us on the Heliopolis road."

"It is very fortunate you saw them, Mr. Steiner," Sadek said to Katz. Sweat beaded the Egyptian's sharp features. He clicked up the lever safety of the AK. "They were, without a doubt, attempting an assassination."

"You recognize them?" asked Katz, alias Steiner.

"Of course not! Do you mean their nationality? Perhaps Libyans, perhaps radical Palestinians. Foreigners certainly."

"Certainly," Katz agreed. He set the safety of the Colt, held the autopistol below the level of the window.

"Why not the Brotherhood?" Parks asked.

"Because our security forces broke those fanatics," Sedak pronounced. "However, there are other groups. Foreigners have come to make war in my country. Unfortunate, but true."

"Is it possible your police could capture one of them?" Katz continued in his role of Steiner, speaking English with a slight German accent. "Then we would know…"

"There will be an investigation, have no doubt."

Katz smiled. "I have no doubt."

Low in the back seat, map wrapping the radio, Blancanales buzzed his partners. Zaki kept the Fiat and mini-van in sight by speeding, then braking, often swerving to maintain his rate through traffic. Horns and screeches came from all sides.

"We're staying behind them. My man's driving like a drunken trucker. But they'll see us gaining on them any second now."

"East on Azhar!" Zaki called back. "They turned east on Sharia el-Azhar."

"Mo-man's moving!" Gadgets's voice told them. "Says we're on… Qua… la… We're on that street, we turned, we're going north. He says we might make it. Watch them."

"Watching. Making the turn now."

"This is..." Lyons voice came on. Another voice cried out, then Blancanales heard what could only be a fist smashing into flesh, once, twice. "Sorry, but I got a detainee who's acting up. We're right behind you and gaining. Making the turn…"

Looking back, Blancanales saw a taxi take the corner on two wheels. A white-uniformed policeman and many drivers saw the side-slipping taxi approach. The policeman commanded them all to stop with his white-gloved hand. The drivers responded with panic, some hitting their brakes, others standing on their accelerators. Metal smashed, glass fell, another wail of horns began.

Missing one car by inches and losing a taillight to a bus, the taxi then did the impossible: it recovered from the two-wheel turn and sped after Blancanales.

"I do not believe what I just saw. Who do you have driving that car, Ironman?"

"Man, this is wild. Here we come. I'll take point, you fall back. We'll rotate with the Wizard, chase these freaks wherever they go. But lose them or not, we got this prisoner."

As he listened, Blancanales saw the taxi carrying Lyons pass. Lyons gave him a salute. Ahead, the cars of the hit team made another right turn.

"Wizard. They went right."

"We got them, got them!" Mohammed the driver laughed, leaned on his horn, stood on the accelerator, whipped to the left and braked. As the taxi slowed to a roll behind a truck, Mohammed leaned out the window and squinted into the fading light. "They're up there, but I don't see them."

"Think we can get close?" Gadgets asked him. "Close enough to slap a magnetic DF on them?"

Mohammed turned his head and gave a manic grin, his long, oval face and white teeth glowing with mischief. "Oh, yeahhhhhhh."

They passed a park of palms and yellow dust. Mohammed eased through traffic as Gadgets scanned the street and the parkways. On the broad tree-shaded walkways, artisans and vendors bustled past old men on benches. Schoolchildren crowded around a skateboard. Then Gadgets caught a glimpse of traffic beyond the walkways.

"Stop here," he told Mohammed. "Wait for me."

Dodging through idle taxis and the vendors' carts, Gadgets pressed through the mob. Several wide walkways converged at a monument. He saw another street, more parked taxis and buses, more vendors. The street curved around the park to create a crescent-shaped island of walkways and gardens. He looked for the Fiat sedan or the mini-van that Blancanales had described. He didn't see them, and he turned back.

Out of nowhere, a mini-van screeched to a stop. Gadgets stood still in the walking crowd and watched two men slam open the side door. A Fiat double-parked next to the mini-van. The driver and passenger left the Fiat to unlock the doors of a nearby step-up van. Moving across the paved path, Gadgets kept his eyes away from the terrorist crew, watched them with his peripheral vision as he let the flow of pedestrians carry him toward the curb. The sun was low in the sky, the day still blazing bright but cooler at last.

Stepping into the street, he slipped the DF from his pocket. He eased to the side for a moment, giving way to a knot of laughing teenagers. He pressed the magnet against the van's sheet metal, felt it click tight. He heard voices in the truck behind him.

He walked behind the truck to see two men transferring burlap-wrapped bundles from the van to the truck. The bundles were the size and shape of RPG-rocket launchers. Two newspaper-wrapped rifles followed. Gadgets continued past the double-parked van, then hurried behind another truck. Almost running, he rushed through the crowded park, shoved past two vendors who had spotted him as a tourist, jumped in his waiting taxi.

Jamming down his radio's transmit key, he ducked down low to watch the walkways. Mohammed swerved into traffic. "This is the Wizard. I got the DF on them, quick and dirty. Saw them changing cars. Took a light blue step-up van, don't know what. Got Arabic writing on the side in white letters..."

Lyons's voice cut him off. "We're at the north end of the street, going slow."

On the boulevard, Blancanales keyed his hand radio as Zaki pulled their cab to the curb. "We're parked. If they double back, we'll be here. When they move, keep your distance. They got rockets."

"I saw them get into the van," Gadgets confirmed.

"There they are," Lyons told his partners. "They're going — going east. Politician, go! Wizard, catch up and take over! I'll circle around the park."

Zaki rolled into the flow of traffic three vehicles behind the blue step van. As the bright afternoon suddenly became gloomy dusk, with a swiftness common to Cairo's latitude, lights came on, and the dust and diesel smoke from the boulevards drifted around the neon signs like fog. Blancanales located the DF receiver in his attache case and flicked the power switch. A loud, steady drone came from the unit.

His hand radio buzzed. "Wizard here. Coming up behind you."

Blancanales turned down the volume of his DF receiver and checked the map covering his radio. "We're with them. Tried the DF; it's strong."

A horn honked outside Blancanales's window. Gadgets waved from the back of the taxi as he passed. His voice came from the hand radio. "Now I'm point."

"You got it. Watch for rockets. Crazy man back there. How's your prisoner?"

"Alive. No identification. Old Welby .38 revolver. Radio's a cheapie, held together with sealing tape. Whoever they are, they aren't well financed."

"Spent all their money on rifles and rocket-propelled grenades," Blancanales muttered.

"We checked the park. The Fiat and the van are still there — must be stolen."

Gadgets monitored the conversation as his driver followed the van. Only two passenger sedans separated them. He leaned forward to Mohammed. "A little more distance…"

"Where we taking this punk for interrogation?" Lyons asked. "You appreciate we cannot put the questions to him in hotel rooms."

His driver, Abdul, answered. "There is a place available. The colonel did not intend you to return to the hotels. Your registration was only to satisfy the authorities' expectations."

"Maybe we should take this one there and dump him."

A motor scooter backfired next to the taxi. Lyons started, instinctively reaching for the pistol under his sports coat. He saw a teenager on a motor scooter looking at him. Then the boy accelerated off between two cars.

Lyons buzzed his partner. "Pol, you said they had two kids on motorbikes?"

"One took off, one stayed on. I guess that's the one you got…"

"The other one's coming up. He eyeballed me, then kept going."

Now the popping and backfiring of the scooter came from the lane next to Blancanales. He kept his head turned away but knew the boy had seen him. "Zaki, that motor scooter next to us…"

"It is one of them. He looked at us."

Blancanales slipped out his silenced Beretta 93-R. He touched the extractor to confirm the round in the chamber, then thumbed back the hammer and set the safety. He looked up to see the teenager two lengths ahead, steering the scooter with one hand, holding a walkie-talkie to his mouth with the other.

Blancanales spoke quickly in his own radio. "Wizard, you heard. That kid's got to fall."

"Unnecessary. They're looking for you, not me. So just stay back, let the Ironman and me switch off the tag car. With a DF and three cars, we can't lose. There goes the kid, he's eyeballing everybody, looking for surveillance. They can't dodge every cab in the city. I say we just hang loose, play it cool."

"Yeah, man," Mohammed agreed from the front seat. "We're too cool."

Ahead of the taxi, a car changed lanes to the right, a truck to the left. Only asphalt separated them from the step van of terrorists. The motor scooter sputtered in the lane to their right. Mohammed sped ahead to the bumper of the van.

"We're too cool, no one would thinkof messing with us." Mohammed slapped the steering wheel to a beat only he heard. "Too cool, too cool."

"Hey, driver. Act natural! That kid's looking at us."

Mohammed turned to face Gadgets. "Dig it, dude. I was born here. I know what is natural."

The van's doors flew open. Even as Mohammed turned forward again, Gadgets threw himself over him and jerked the wheel sharply to the right. The taxi sideswiped another taxi, both cars sliding sideways. Mohammed saw an RPG pointed at him from the back of the van. He floored the accelerator, jammed the steering wheel to the left, then spun it to the right.

Falling over the seat back into the front seat, Gadgets looked up at the side wall of the van. He pulled out his silenced Beretta. Mohammed slammed back the transmission lever, the engine shrieked with red-line rpm in low gear. The rear tires flattened as they bit for purchase near the van's right side door.

The pointed nose of an RPG-7 emerged from that door.

"Lean back — don't move!" Gadgets screamed at Mohammed.

He double-actioned the first shot of a three-round burst.

Flame flashed as the gunner fired the rocket.