Rain of Doom

1

Pulling the tab on a can of orange soda, Gadgets Schwarz watched the glass towers of Miami reflect the red dawn. As the Air Force jet climbed and took a southwest course, he inspected the gray landscape. Patterns of lights marked towns. Lines of lights — blue-white streetlights and amber headlights — defined roads. He saw Route 41 to the north. Then the jet left the suburbs and roads behind for the forest and grasslands of the Everglades.

"Forget the sight-seeing," said Jack Grimaldi, coming from the pilot's cabin. "Tonight you got reservations on a fast boat to the People's Republic of Nicaragua. There'll be lots of friends for you to meet, a beach party, fireworks."

"What are you talking about?" Gadgets asked. A veteran of the Green Berets and the electronics specialist for Able Team, he eyed the stack of folders carried by the man behind Grimaldi.

"It'll be a surprise party for an Iranian. This is George. He'll tell you what goes."

Gray-haired, overweight, in his forties, George looked like the stereotypical officer of the bureaucracy. Decades of worry had lined his face, which was unshaven this morning; his gray suit was years out of style. He passed a folder of maps and photocopies and photos to Gadgets.

Rosario Blancanales, an American of Puerto Rican heritage and another veteran of the Green Berets, shook hands with the bureaucrat. "It's a pleasure to meet you, George. Looks like we woke you up early today."

"I haven't slept for days," George said, handing Blancanales a folder.

"So what's going on?" Gadgets persisted.

"Just a minute. George'll brief you," Grimaldi answered.

Carl Lyons, the blond ex-Los Angeles Police Department detective, was lying on a couch at the back of the plane. He did not move as Grimaldi and George approached.

Grimaldi reached down to shake Lyons, but Lyons's hand closed around the other man's wrist first.

"Let me sleep," said the ex-detective, not opening his eyes.

"Get with it, hotshot. No time to dream. You got studying to do before Nicaragua."

Lyons rose instantly. Releasing Grimaldi's arm, he took the folder George offered. He looked at the first page, an eight-by-ten black-and-white print.

"Who's this guy?" Lyons asked.

"An Iranian. Colonel Ali Dastgerdi of the Syrian army," George answered. He closed the plastic window shades as he returned to the front of the plane, then dimmed the interior lights and hit a switch. A screen automatically rolled down as a projector's fan whirred.

"But if he's Iranian," Blancanales asked, pointing to the grainy black-and-white photo in his folder, "why is he with the Syrians?"

"That's one of the questions we want to ask him," George replied as he pressed a button. "This is Dastgerdi."

Several slides of the Iranian flashed on the screen in succession. In two, he appeared in the uniform of the Syrian army. In others, he wore civilian clothes.

"He was the commander of Aziz Rouhani, an Iranian you already know."

On the screen appeared the bearded, thick-featured face of an Iranian peasant staring at the camera, his face deathly white against the black of his beard.

"Hey, there he is!" Gadgets laughed. "How's he getting along since the Ironman did the double zap on him?"

"Not well. Not well at all."

Gadgets and Lyons laughed.

"What's the joke?" Grimaldi asked. "You jokers fucked up in Mexico. Now you got to go..."

"Fucked up?" Gadgets asked, incredulous. "We left those losers in flames, burning! Nothing left but ashes."

Weeks before, Able Team had pursued a gang of Iranian Revolutionary Guards from Beirut to Mexico City. There, Able joined forces with elite antiterrorist commandos of the Mexican army to confront a Soviet conspiracy promising peace, but plotting death not only to Able Team but, inexplicably, also to the Iranian terrorists. Outmaneuvering and destroying the KGB agents and Mexican gangsters, Able Team raced north to encircle and destroy the Iranians and their trucks of Soviet rockets.

"Yes, you wiped them out," George agreed. "But we think they were only a decoy."

"What?" Blancanales demanded. "I can't believe that! They had rockets. They had planes and trucks. They..."

"And those black-nationalist freaks," Lyons added.

"The Iranians and crazies," Blancanales continued, "were an organized unit ready to go north and hit the President. When the trucks burned, I saw those rockets go-off."

"No doubt about it," Gadgets added. "They were the real thing."

"The real thing was in the Bekaa Valley," George said.

"In Lebanon?" Blancanales asked.

"Then turn the plane around!" Lyons shouted. "Forget Costa Rica..."

"Dastgerdi is in Nicaragua!" George spoke over Able Team. "Here!"

He pushed the slide-advance button, and the three men went quiet. A shoreline appeared on the screen: a wide, swampy river flowing into a bay sheltered by a long tongue of land; a line of hills overlooked the river and bay.

Docks and freighters filled the bay. A compound with roads, buildings and long rectangular warehouses lined the shore. Between the compound and the hills, a shantytown followed the wavering line of a creek.

"Finally," George whispered to Grimaldi in an aside. "Are these clowns actually professionals?"

"Only way to shut them up is to give them a target. It's your show. Take over." Grimaldi returned to the pilot's compartment.

George pointed to the harbor complex. "La Laguna de Perlas, Nicaragua. A major public-works project by the new people's government. Soviet freighters, Soviet floating docks, Soviet prefab warehouses, Soviet prefab barracks. Note the chain link and concertina wire enclosing the complex. Our sources report that no one enters or leaves without clearance. Our sources also report there are no — I repeat, no-workers from the surrounding villages. No local people. Only outsiders sent from Managua and ComBloc technicians."

His hand traced a line leading west.

"This all-weather highway carries weapons, munitions and heavy vehicles, such as tanks and armored cars, to the interior. As far as we have been able to determine, the government of Nicaragua established this harbor solely for the offloading of Soviet weapons."

George pointed to a long white strip south of the bay.

"You will go ashore on this beach. Here, in this lighthouse, is a bunker guarding the entrance to the harbor. Sandinista regulars — repeat, regular forces, not the militia of teenage draftees — patrol the beach, the hills and the village on foot and in vehicles. There are also patrols in boats and sometimes in light aircraft. After landing, you will cross this stretch of flat ground and go over this ridge. Here..." the bureaucrat pointed to the winding stream passing through the southern end of the compound "...is a culvert. Our people report that storms have washed out the alarms. This will be your point of entry."

"And what if it isn't the way you say?" Lyons asked.

"It will be."

"Who will be our liaison?" Blancanales asked.

"A group of Miskito Indians. Members of a force that mounts frequent incursions into the region's coastal facilities."

Lyons pressed his question. "What happens if it isn't like you say?"

"I suggest you closely study the information the Agency prepared. You will see you have considerable resources with which to counter any contingency."

"Like what?"

"Oh, wow!" Gadgets exclaimed, looking up from the photocopied pages in his folder. "A multiband coded frequency-impulse transmitter. Far fucking out! Forget you, Ironman. I don't need you this time. I'll take my magic box in all by myself."

"What is a multiband..." Blancanales started.

Gadgets continued to read from the list. "Ah... you will be going, after all. I'll need someone to carry claymores."

"Claymores? How many?"

"Ten or fifteen."

"What? You'll break my back with that..."

"Ironman, you can do it. Three and a half pounds each. No problem. Not for a big mean man like you."

"That's forty-something pounds..."

George interrupted them. "You three men have five hours only to prepare. I have been with this project since you captured Rouhani. If you have questions, only I can answer them. And nothing in those folders leaves this aircraft. This project is classified Top Secret, Need to Know Only..."

"And Burn Before Reading," Lyons interrupted. "I got a question already. Dastgerdi's in Nicaragua — so what? If the rockets are in Lebanon, why aren't we going there?"

"We do not know that the rockets are in fact still in the Bekaa Valley," George answered. "The rockets may be in transit or they may have already arrived in Nicaragua. But we know for certain as of yesterday that Dastgerdi's in La Laguna de Perlas. Interrogating him will reveal if the rockets are there, or if..."

Blancanales spoke next. "And what if they are not?"

"Hopefully, the information we gain from Dastgerdi will allow us to intercept them on the Atlantic."

"Hopefully?" Lyons demanded. "What does that mean? We can't hope for shit. What happens if..."

The screen went black. George flicked on the lights. "The briefing is over. Study your materials. I repeat, nothing leaves this..."

"Hey, clerk! I'm asking a question!" Lyons shouted. "You said you've been on this for weeks. So what happens if the rockets aren't in Nicaragua or on a ship? I'll tell you what happens! We'll go to Lebanon and hit those ragheads like we should've as soon as you found out we got played by a decoy. And I want to know what you desk jockeys have been doing for all these weeks!"

"Ixnay," Gadgets snapped. "He looks like he's been working."

Blancanales seconded the question. "I believe my partner has a valid point. When the Agency learned that we had failed to complete our mission, why weren't we immediately dispatched to hit the real threat?"

"Any project of this kind requires intensive consultation and coordination between offices. Matters of international policy and diplomacy..."

Lyons cut him off with a sneer. "Talk or take a walk, Mr. George the Clerk. I asked a question. Answer it."

"Do you believe," George answered, his face suddenly red with anger, "that you make this government's international policy?"

"Forget the foreign-policy jive. We know what goes on. And we know what we've got to do."

"Do you believe that you... cowboy mercenaries can continue improvising your way through one adventure after another, destroying years of subtle diplomacy for the sadistic thrills of your death-squad antics? I will tell you this. The value of your team is under debate. And actions such as your complete disregard of the order to arrest Powell in Beirut do not enhance your prospects for continued employment."

"So that's what took so long," Lyons said, nodding. "That's what took you clerks weeks. You knew about the rockets. But you had to debate whether to send us."

"Your team is wildly erratic in the performance of your assignments."

"We get the job done. We do what's necessary. Now, you..." Lyons left his seat and advanced on the middle-aged bureaucrat. Blancanales grabbed Lyons's arm.

"Calm down."

"You will get out of my sight. Because my instincts are telling me..."

"Be cool!" Gadgets shouted at Lyons. "You throw him out, it'll depressurize the cabin and my orange pop here will most definitely lose its fizz. So be cool!"

George retreated into the pilot's cabin. Seconds later, Grimaldi stepped out. He scanned the seats. The three men of Able Team were reading the prepared materials.

"What's going on back here?"

Gadgets looked at his partners. He looked to the back of the passenger cabin. He looked up at the ceiling. He looked under his seat. "Nothing's going on. You see anything going on?"

"If nothing's going on," Grimaldi asked, suppressing a grin, "how come our friend George is hiding up front? You guys keep aggravating the-Agency clerks, you just might not get any more of these all-expense-paid trips to faraway exotic countries. Understand? Wouldn't have the pleasure of hunting down international creeps and stepping on them. To make the world a better place to live."

Lyons grinned. "Well, then maybe we'd just hang around Washington, D.C., and step on a few Georgie boys. Wouldn't that make the world a better place to live?"