Cairo Countdown

7

Meanwhile, at the curb in front of the tenement, Gadgets and Mohammed scanned the street for sentries. At the far end of the block, a man in ragged polyester pants and jacket stood in the door of a cafe. But he did not watch the street. He argued with someone inside, violently gesturing with his arms, then staggered away, weaving with drunkenness.

A car door closed. Gadgets glanced back, saw Blancanales leave his taxi. He saw no one else on the dark street.

"The trunk."

As if helping a tourist, Mohammed hurried to the back of the Fiat and snapped open the trunk. Gadgets reached inside, took an Armburst rocket, slung it over his shoulder. Mohammed whistled softly. "Man, you're going to do it to them."

"Before they do it to me."

Voices shattered the silence of the dark street.

Gadgets reached into the back seat and snatched up the Uzi. He concealed it under his coat. Mohammed followed a step behind him as Gadgets hurried into the shadows.

Two young men came around the corner. They crossed the street to enter the cafe. Gadgets looked in the other direction. He saw Blancanales leave a doorway.

The radio in Gadgets's coat pocket clicked. The code meant Lyons had reached the alley door. Gadgets acknowledged, then signaled Blancanales. He left his concealment and walked silently along the shuttered shop fronts. Mohammed followed him. He, too, was concealing an Uzi under his cabdriver's jacket.

They stopped at double-wide doors of heavy planks. Light shone through the cracks. Inside, voices spoke in Arabic. A radio blared. Blancanales stood at the other side of the door and looked up at the windows and balconies hanging over the street.

Light came from a window on the second floor. Blancanales slung his Uzi over his back, then checked the holster of the silenced Beretta under his sports coat. He found handholds in the old bricks and eased himself up the wall. He worked the toes of his shoes into the cracks between the bricks.

Gadgets slipped out his Beretta and thumbed back the hammer. Blancanales reached the window and climbed to the side of it, searching for firm handholds and toeholds. He peered into the room. He snapped his head back suddenly, went flat against the wall. Gadgets brought up the Beretta.

A bearded old frizzy-haired man leaned out the window, looking in both directions on the street. He did not see Blancanales. The old man returned to the interior of the room. Blancanales peered in again. He waited a few seconds, then crawled through the window.

"A mullah…" Mohammed whispered.

Lyons's voice spoke from their hand radios. "Wizard, Pol. Sentries. Hold where you are. We'll clear those street doors for you."

Someone in the room heard Blancanales's radio. From the street, Gadgets saw a sports coat fly open, then heard the slap of a suppressed slug hitting flesh. Then silence.

Blancanales leaned out of the window. He waved to Gadgets.

Gadgets clicked an acknowledgment to Lyons. Above him, Blancanales signaled for Gadgets to wait.

Yellow sputters from a kerosene lantern lighted the room. The old mullah sprawled against the wall. A Kalashnikov rifle lay beyond the reach of his dead hand. Blancanales crept across the room, the floorboards creaking under his weight. He heard footsteps outside the door.

A voice called quietly in Arabic. Blancanales froze. He swore at his ignorance of the language. If he could understand the words, if he could fake an answer…

Knuckles tapped the door. Two knocks, three knocks. The door's handle rattled. Blancanales tiptoed behind the door. A band of light from the other room expanded as the door opened. A teenager with a cap over his curly hair leaned into the room. The boy saw the feet of the old man and entered.

Blancanales sent a slug through the base of the boy's skull. He looked into the lighted room. Parts of a field-stripped AK covered a table. He saw an RPG-7 rocket launcher propped against the wall. He entered the room, the Beretta ready, pivoted slowly to scan every corner.

Screams! Running feet! Weapons clattered, doors flew open. Voices called to one another.

Blancanales grabbed his hand radio. "Lyons! Lyons! They..."

A robed man shoved back through the door that the others had fled through. His eyes went wide when he saw the American with the pistol. Blancanales put a burst in the man's face.

He peered through the door and saw a long hallway. At one end, a white-robed man clutched an AK. Wide-eyed with fear, the old man stared around him, shrieked at the sight of Blancanales, dashed down a flight of steel stairs.

A silent .45-caliber slug slammed into the ceiling of the hallway. As a body thumped down stairs, Blancanales heard shrieking and the clanging of steel on steel. He rushed to the stairway, stayed out of the line of fire. Blood dripped from the whitewashed walls.

"Ironman! You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. I even got a prisoner. I tell you, this is strictly amateur night…"

Blancanales buzzed Gadgets. "Action in here. What's going on out there?"

"Nothing. Absolute zero. What happened?"

"Tell you later."

Stepping over corpses as he rushed down the stairs, Blancanales saw Lyons standing over the mullah, one foot on the old man's throat, the modified Colt Government Model pointed at his face. The mullah choked, thrashed, raised a clawlike hand for mercy. The other arm lay limp at his side, the shoulder shattered, blood from the gaping wound soaking his white robe.

"With losers like these against us," Lyons sneered, "we'll be going home tonight. He had me. In his sights. And look…"

He pointed the Colt at the AK. The autorifle had no magazine in place. "Tried to shoot me with an empty gun. Abdul. Watch this lowlife."

The breathless taxi driver stood over the prisoner as Lyons looped plastic handcuffs around the old man's wrists and cinched them tight. He fitted two of the plastic locking strips end to end and bound the prisoner's ankles. Finally, he tore a shirt from one of the dead teenagers and wadded it into the mullah's mouth.

Silenced autopistol pointed, Lyons followed the passage toward the street. At the far end, a single bare bulb illuminated the long narrow passage. They stopped at a door. Lyons nodded at the light, looked at the Beretta that Blancanales held. Blancanales sighted on the bulb and popped it with a slug.

In the darkness, a fine line of light outlined the door. Lyons crouched beside the door. Blancanales flattened himself against the wall near the handle. Lyons jerked the door open, dodged back behind the cover of the wall.

No shots came. They heard no movement. Keeping his head low, at less than knee height, below the point where a terrorist inside would aim a burst of autofire, Lyons stuck his head out for a look, saw a garage cluttered with auto parts and tools and jerked his head back.

"Don't see anyone…"

"Doesn't mean they don't see you," Blancanales whispered. He took out his hand radio to buzz Gadget. "Wizard. Hit that door, make noise, a distraction. On the count of three."

"Got it. One, two…"

On three, bursts of silent 9mm slugs hammered into the ceiling and rear wall of the garage, a fender crashing down, glass breaking, plaster falling. Lyons slid belly-down through the doorway.

He saw no one. Staying on the floor, Lyons braced the Colt with both hands. Rolling on his back, he peered into every corner of the garage.

Gadgets knocked on the heavy doors, hissed, "The kid on the motorbike's coming." Then Lyons's hand radio buzzed. He did not stop to answer it as he pulled the crossbar from the doors.

Blancanales leaned through the doorway. "Wizard says the kid on the motorcycle's coming. Thinks you should let him in…"

"Already…" Lyons cut off his answer as the two-stroke roar of the motor scooter became deafening. He stayed behind the door as he pulled it open. The teenager rode in on his Japanese bike.

Three pistols and an Uzi greeted him, Gadgets and Mohammed rushing in a step behind the teenage terrorist. Lyons shoved the door closed. In seconds, they had the boy gagged and bound.

"Back to the stairway?" said Lyons.

Rejoining Abdul, Lyons and Blancanales looked up the stairway to the tenement apartments.

Blancanales shook his head. "I don't want to chance it. There could be a hundred of them up there. Waiting with AKs."

"Second the motion," Lyons agreed. "Maybe they control the entire building, maybe not. There could be children, old people on the upper floors. Depends on what raghead here tells us."

As Blancanales surveyed the stairway, he took a mental body count. "Five. Plus three more upstairs…"

"And two more there." Lyons pointed toward the alley. He held up his suppressed autopistol. "Colt seven, Beretta three. Winner and still champion…"

Stepping past the door, Blancanales looked down at the sentry. One slug had smashed the left arm where it met the shoulder. The arm dangled by tendons and strands of muscle. Only the jaw and a scrap of scalp remained of the head. Blancanales exhaled slowly.

"That's an example of burst fire," Lyons told him. "Point-blank."

"Let's get this old man into the garage." Blancanales handed his Beretta and an extra fifteen-round magazine to Abdul and left him at the stairs.

They dragged the mullah over the stones. In the garage, Mohammed questioned the mullah. The old man babbled, nodded his head, cried.

"If we let him live," Mohammed told them, "he'll tell us everything, take us to the others."

"He doesn't want to be a martyr?" Lyons sneered.

"That's only for soldiers," Mohammed grinned. "This old man, when he dies, he knows where he goes."

"Do they have more SAM-7 missiles?" Lyons asked. Blancanales spoke simultaneously.

"How do they get their information about the planes?"

Mohammed translated their questions, listened to the old man whine and cry. "He wants you to stop the pain in his shoulder."

Lyons looked at the two prisoners, then motioned Blancanales and Gadgets to the passage door. There, Lyons glanced down to the stairway to check on Abdul. He watched the passage as the three men talked in whispers.

"I don't think he's the head man," Blancanales told them. "The old man upstairs had a servant, and he had better robes."

"But he's dead," Lyons commented. He called over to Mohammed. "Ask him if he's the leader, the number one man."

When Mohammed questioned the mullah, the old man nodded again and again, looking around at his captors, beseeching them with his one hand. Mohammed shook his head. "Says he is, but he ain't. I say he's a stupid old priest from the desert."

"Does he know where the missiles are?" Lyons asked.

For minutes, Mohammed translated questions and answers. "He says there are missiles someplace else. If you stop the pain, get him to a doctor, he'll take you there. He doesn't know anything about the airport. Doesn't know anything about the CIA. His group makes war on America. That's all he knows."

"Pushing our luck," Gadgets told them. "We go to another place, and they're ready for us… "

"I haven't seen any telephones or radios," Blancanales told them.

"They have walkie-talkies," Gadgets cautioned. "Limited range, but…"

"This isn't their main group," Lyons reasoned.

"That old man, he's no one. Not these punks, either. They had old AKs and pistols and knives. You see the submachine gun that one raghead punk had? Looked like something out of World War II. They wouldn't have the missiles here. The main group would. When we get them, that's when this show's over."

"That's what that Hershey goof thought," Gadgets muttered. "And now he's over."

"Hershey had a traitor or informer in his team for sure," Blancanales corrected. "We don't."

"Gentlemen..." Lyons numbered his points "...one: we came in here quick and quiet. No shots. No warning. Two: no one got out. Therefore, I vote we hit the next group."

"Second the motion," Blancanales agreed.

"It's unanimous, then. Let's hit them. But," Gadgets cautioned Lyons, "what you mean is, no one got out that you know of… Now they could be expecting us, right?"

Lyons nodded.