Rain of Doom

12

The blast slammed Gadgets back into the sandbag wall. As the explosion rang in his ears, he felt the trailer lurch, and the floor fall out from under him.

Metal scratched against asphalt, a woman screamed, things crashed in the darkness, the trailer fell sideways on the road. As the trailer's aluminum side scraped against the road's asphalt, Gadgets felt himself falling through space, then hit the sandbags again with a thud. A scraping noise seemed an overwhelming assault on his ears.

Then it stopped.

In the silence, Gadgets heard his heart hammering; the hammering became the sound of auto weapons. Slugs hit the trailer. He found the disposable penlight in his pocket.

Be prepared, he thought as he shone the light over the now upended mobile bunker.

"Wizard! We're hit! Help me with Desmarais!"

"No shit? We're hit? Think maybe we ought to get a second opinion? Wow, looks like we're hit..."

Ammunition cases lay against the wall. The heavy Browning machine gun and MK-19 now stood horizontal on their pedestals.

All the stacked weapons and equipment had shifted to the one wall that had become the floor. In the clutter, Blancanales struggled to disentangle himself from Desmarais.

Gadgets saw the trapdoor to the bunker far above his head. Before, they had entered by stepping under the trailer then climbing up through the floor. Now they had a problem.

Another flashlight came on. By the glow of Blancanales's flashlight, Gadgets freed a shipping trunk. He made steps by stacking the trunk and ammunition boxes under the trapdoor.

Swinging open the trapdoor, he saw falling snow and darkness. A hundred meters away, autoweapons flashed. The diesel cab lay on its side at the roadside. From behind the shelter of the cab, the Shia drivers returned the fire of ambushers.

A rocket streaked from the darkness. The Shias went flat, and the rocket missed the overturned truck by a hand's width.

"Oh, man. This is serious! Pol! You ready to get out of here?"

Pulling out his belt knife, Blancanales cut the plastic handcuffs linking Desmarais's hands together. He pushed her toward the pile of cases. "Up and out, miss."

Desmarais crawled through and fell with a scream. Autofire hit the trailer. Gadgets ducked.

"They got that exit zeroed!"

"Where's your rifle?" Blancanales searched through the tangled gear to assemble his own equipment.

"Forget the popguns! We got artillery..."

Releasing the clamping lever locking the MK-19 to the pedestal, Gadgets jerked the full-auto grenade launcher free. Groaning with the weight, he had to lower it. He disconnected the box of 40mm grenades. With the linked belt of grenades swinging loose, he picked up the launcher and passed it to Blancanales. Blancanales managed to shove the grenade launcher over the edge of the trapdoor and hook it in place with the swivel-tilt assembly. Gadgets untangled the belt of grenades.

"Do it! Hit them!"

Blancanales sighted on a flashing muzzle. Triggering single shots, he put the first grenade into the orchard wall, the next one over the top. Then he walked the blasts of high explosive and white phosphorous along the wall, hitting the top, the trees behind and a gateway.

Visible in the gray light of burning phosphorous was a person with a rocket launcher. Blancanales sighted and held back the trigger. As the backblast flashed, the night exploded around the rocketman.

Then the rocket hit the trailer.

As the transport slammed through the roadside ditch, Lyons kept the Browning pointed at the autofire. Stone and flesh disintegrated where the .50-caliber slugs hit, rifles firing wild, a dying man staggering, other forms running. Behind Lyons, the Shias fired their PKM machine guns at the ambushers.

The driver steered the awkward troop transport through a wide circle and gunned the engine as he regained the asphalt. Lyons saw the Rover already returning to the killzone where the overturned truck and semitrailer lay in the road. Holding down the firing button of the Browning, Lyons provided cover for Powell by raking the length of the orchard wall.

Using the maneuverability of the Land Rover, the Shia driver swerved under the line of .50-caliber tracers.

Powell heard a sound like jet engines as the .50-caliber slugs passed an arm's reach above his head. He reflexively dropped to a crouch.

"Crazy Shia! Cool it — I'm no martyr man!"

The driver whipped through an orchard gate and sped along the other side of the wall sheltering the fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood. Powell fired straight ahead as the Rover caught the line of militiamen and Syrian deserters in its headlights.

The fanatics spun from the wall and died as they raised their Kalashnikovs, Powell using the full-auto grenade launcher to its maximum lethal effect.

Flashing through clouds of choking acetate smoke and the fumes of phosphorous, Powell rode the bucking Land Rover like a stand-up rodeo star. He never released the grips of the MK-19. The Rover hit wounded and dead militiamen, the small vehicle going airborne, crashing back. A slug zipped past Powell as the Rover passed the last ambusher.

From the transport, Lyons watched Powell's wild counterattack and held his fire. Now no rifle fire came from the wall or the orchard. The strange gray light of phosphorous illuminated the length of the wall. Burning wounded screamed and pleaded.

Flames rose from the trailer. On its side, it had been hit twice, one blast tearing off the back wheels, the other scattering boxes of contraband everywhere.

A man ran from the wrecked diesel truck and fired into a ditch. The headlights of the troop transport revealed one of the Shia drivers finishing off a Syrian deserter. Another Shia waved from the shelter of the overturned cab.

Lyons did not see his partners.

As the transport braked to a stop, Lyons leaped off the tailgate. He looked for the trapdoor of the mobile bunker. He found the open rectangle. Below the trapdoor, he saw an MK-19 grenade launcher without the tripod.

"Wizard! Politician!"

"You okay?" Blancanales called.

"Yeah! What about you?"

"AMU shook up," Gadgets jived. "Get that truck backed up here. We got luggage to offload. Where's that crazy Commie bitch? Tell me she's dead."

"I don't have her!" Lyons shouted back. "She was in there."

"She was. El Senor Politico played the gentleman and boosted her out. You see her?"

"No!" Lyons ran to Hussein and told him to back up the transport. As the others transferred gear from the wrecked trailer, Lyons searched the area for Desmarais.

Beyond the orchard wall, the Rover cruised, still searching for ambushers. All firing had stopped. But Lyons moved cautiously, knowing any number of riflemen could still be watching.

He rushed to the blast-twisted trailer. Shielded by the wheels and open doors, he searched for Desmarais.

He waved a flashlight over the wheels. Not there. Edging around the door, he checked in the spilled boxes of the contraband. The rocket had hit the rear of the trailer, the blast shredding the contraband and blowing out the cargo doors, which had twisted on their hinges. Boxes of toothpaste and breakfast cereal littered the road.

But no Desmarais.

Inside the trailer, a fire had ravaged everything. She could not hide there. He glanced at the roof and saw only the gaping hole where the armor-smashing warhead had torn the aluminum like paper. Flames and smoke poured from the ragged hole.

Sitting on a box, his back to the trailer to minimize his exposure, Lyons swept the road with the light. The sliding trailer had scraped much of the asphalt clean of snow and ice. But near the shoulder, Lyons saw shoe prints, a woman's size. The trail disappeared into the gray distance.

In those street shoes, with only her coat for shelter from the storm, Desmarais would not live long. If she did not freeze to death, she faced a long walk through a war. A young, attractive foreign woman walking among thousands of desperate soldiers, at the mercy of Syrians and Libyans and Palestinians and Soviets — who could say what her chances were?

The others heard Lyons laughing as he returned.

"What's so funny?" Gadgets asked.

"She escaped."

Running through the falling snow, she heard the distant firing stop. She hoped the Arab nationalist force had annihilated the Americans and their mercenaries, but she could not put her freedom at risk. She continued running, glancing back every few seconds.

The Puerto Rican one was the smooth-talking death-squad goon who fought for the fascist monsters holding his island nation in peonage. Whatever his name was, the Puerto Rican one had pushed her through the trapdoor, and afterward, she had crawled to a ditch, lain in the snow and watched the fight. As the Americans fired grenades, desperate to forestall their inevitable defeat, she had crawled out of the cross fire.

Then a rocket had streaked over her to deliver a second devastating blast to the Americans. She paused in her crawl, waiting for more fire from the goons in the trailer. But no fire came. Evidently the rocket had killed them.

Hundreds of meters away, the other truck and the Land Rover turned. As they fired, she laughed over the deaths of the two goons in the trailer. She climbed from the ditch and ran on the road, leaving the dead Americans far behind.

But she still had the other two Americans — Powell and that other goon, the blond Nazi — to fear. If they caught her, she could expect only death.

She ran through a pink semidarkness. Ahead of her, red light glowed from the overhanging clouds. She glanced at her watch and saw that four hours remained until morning. The false dawn cast a diffuse pink light on the swirling snow, the glistening road, the forlorn orchards. The pink light allowed her to maintain an easy run.

The highway met a side road. Studying the snow and ice on the asphalt, she saw the recent tire tracks of several vehicles. The last tires to turn here had been double truck tires like those of a cargo trailer. She remembered the truck slowing to turn.

Seeing no lights on the other road, she continued along the highway. She watched for farmhouses or villages. Seeing one house, she approached the door only to see the broken windows and the soot marks. The house had been burned; only the stone walls remained. She continued toward the distant fires.

Rows of headlights appeared: a convoy. She ran to the center of the road and waved. The first pair of lights veered to the side. A covered scout car stopped beside her.

As the convoy continued, Syrian soldiers pointed Kalashnikov rifles at her. She put up her hands and repeated "Journalist" in Arabic and French as they searched her for weapons. They found only her camera. The officer in charge questioned her.

"What are you doing here? Show me your papers."

"Here — documents issued by your government. My name is Anne Desmarais. I am a journalist from Canada. I..."

"Anne Desmarais!" The officer reached into the car for a radio microphone. He spoke fluidly in what Desmarais recognized as Russian.

"Are you looking for me?"

"Not us. Them..." The officer nodded toward the taillights of the convoy.

One of the trucks slowed, then wheeled through a wide turn.

"Who are they?"

The Syrian did not answer.

As the truck braked to a stop, the cab door flew open and Zhgenti stepped out. He held his Uzi.

"My wandering Canadian," he said in his Russian-accented French. He raised the Uzi submachine gun. "How wonderful to see you again. Step away from the officer, please."

"No! I found them! I found them! The Americans. I thought you were all dead. I saw the van burning, but I found the Americans. Don't shoot!"

"Are you lying? It would be better for you to die quickly now than to anger me again."

"No! They are there." She pointed. "I found them, but they captured me. Then someone ambushed them and I escaped and I stopped this car to report the Americans. Two of them may be dead. They are wearing Syrian and Soviet uniforms and using Syrian cars and trucks."

"Soviet uniforms?" Zhgenti set the Uzi's safety. Grabbing Desmarais's arm, he dragged her to the cab of the truck. "We will see..."

"Who are these Syrians?" she asked as they accelerated away.

"It is unimportant. They are convenient. They also hate Americans. Did you... have fun with the Americans?"

"No!"

Zhgenti leered. "Tell me the truth. You persuaded them to let you go, yes?"

The overturned and burning trailer appeared. "No! There! See? There was an ambush. That's how I escaped."

After an inspection of the wrecked truck and trailer, Zhgenti returned to Desmarais. "You have saved your life. Now we must pursue the Americans. What did they tell you? Where are they going?"

She remembered what the Shia militiaman had told her. "Damascus. This way, this road was only a detour, because of fighting somewhere else."

Nodding, Zhgenti studied a map. "Damascus... I do not believe their goal is Damascus. There must be somewhere else they intend..."

"They may be searching for a group of Iranians who are making rockets. Somewhere in the Bekaa, Iranian Revolutionary Guards are making rockets to attack America. Perhaps the place is on the road to Damascus. Look at your map. If they were going anywhere else, they would have gone north or south on these other highways. But they did not."

"Oh, yes... and there is only one road to Damascus. Good. I will have the Syrians radio ahead for their soldiers to watch for these Americans in Soviet uniforms. The roadblocks will stop them. There is no doubt we will find them."

The convoy of Syrian troop transports moved through the night, pursuing Able Team.