Rain of Doom

13

"High tech this ain't," Gadgets muttered as he pounded nails with a wrench, snow and a 100 KPH wind numbing his hands.

In the back of the troop transport, Gadgets nailed the tripod of an MK-19 full-auto grenade launcher to the plank deck of the truck. Americans and Shia militiamen crowded the back of the transport. Stacked boxes and cases of ammunition stood against the slatted sides.

The American and Shia crew had emptied the gear and ammunition from the wrecked trailer. The Browning .50-caliber machine gun had been damaged so they had left it in the trailer to burn. But they had salvaged the MK-19 and its tripod.

They had also salvaged contraband. Placed on top of the ammunition cases, the boxes of designer jeans and toothpaste and cheap electronics concealed the U.S. Army codes stenciled on the green ammunition cases.

As the two Syrian army vehicles continued east, the American electronics specialist secured the MK-19 tripod. He pounded the nails into the planks, then bent them over the feet of the tripod. To test his work, he kicked the tripod. Two legs held, but one broke free.

"Where's my power drill? Where's my electric wrench?" Gadgets clutched at the collar of his Soviet coat." Where's my electric blanket?"

"Calm down, Wizard," Blancanales told him. Watching the desolate winter landscape of fields and rocky foothills, he held his M-16/M-203 ready, the ripple grip of the grenade launcher braced on the top side slat. "All we got to do is hit those Iranians, and we're on our way back."

"Got to find them, got to study them, then we hit them, then we get to split this winter wonderland."

"Weren't we in the Caribbean just a few days ago, riding the surf?"

"Oh, yeah, and now it's a skiing adventure. Give me that box — that one."

"The jeans?"

"Yeah, that one."

Blancanales watched as his partner hacked open the box with a K-bar knife, then cut a pair of jeans into strips.

Gadgets used the strips to lash the legs of the tripod to the nails. Then he jerked the heavy MK-19 across the truck and mounted it on the tripod. The full-auto grenade launcher now pointed behind the truck. Gadgets sat behind it and swiveled it, sighting on the storm clouds, then on a distant hilltop.

He fired a single grenade. After a few seconds, they saw a pinpoint flash.

"Save the ammunition, Wizard," Lyons called from his post near the Browning. Wrapped in blankets, he sat between boxes. Only his eyes showed between his Soviet fur hat and scarf. "I think we'll need it."

"I pronounce this weapon in working order. Anyone chases us, they got very serious problems. No doubt about it."

Blancanales pointed ahead. "Another traffic jam."

Gadgets and Lyons stood and looked. A few kilometers ahead, a long line of taillights curved through the darkness. The diffused glare of headlights illuminated a pass through the foothills.

Beyond the pass, the clouds flashed with the reflected light of high explosive. Soviet artillery rockets streaked through the air, arching in several directions as forces exchanged barrages.

The Rover point car slowed and their hand-radios buzzed.

"We're not going that way," Powell told them.

"Second the motion," Gadgets answered.

"There's a road that might lead to the village," Powell told them. "But it'll be rough. Coming up."

After another kilometer, the Rover led the troop transport off the highway. They lurched and swayed along a dirt track of frozen ruts. Holes and jutting rocks slammed the transport from side to side. The dirt road led higher into the foothills.

They came to the ridge. Below them stretched a panorama of war.

Shellfire lit the hills. Streaking rockets splashed fire on targets. Intermittently, tracers streaked down from jet aircraft that remained unseen in the night sky.

A sound like prolonged distant thunder came to them.

"Somebody tell me that I don't have to go down there," Gadgets wished out loud.

"Not only are you going down there," Powell said as he high-stepped through the snow, "but you're walking down there. We can't risk headlights. So one of us walks ahead with a flashlight."

Zhgenti cursed in Russian as he and Desmarais returned to the convoy of Syrian troop transports. They had inspected all the vehicles in the long line of waiting trucks and tanks and troop transports. Desmarais had not seen the Americans.

Nor had the Americans in Soviet uniforms attempted to pass the roadblock. Desmarais had described them and their two remaining vehicles in detail. The Syrian officers repeated that they had not allowed the Americans to pass.

By long-distance radio, Zhgenti then spoke with a KGB superior in the Soviet embassy. The officer noted the information and assured Zhgenti that the Syrians would dispatch helicopters to search for the two vehicles. But in the confusion and wreckage of the insurrection...

"Excuses!" Zhgenti kicked rocks. "They send me to Beirut to kill Americans and the Americans are already gone. I come into this mishmash to kill Americans, and the Americans hide in Soviet uniforms. I get their descriptions and have the Syrians block the roads and the Americans disappear. I call for assistance and they tell me it will be difficult. Difficult! Of course it is difficult; the Americans are paid to make it difficult; they use all their wits to make it difficult!"

"If you cannot find them in Lebanon," Desmarais suggested, "perhaps you could wait for them in Damascus."

"I don't believe they will go there. Security is too tight. They must pass too many document checks. To leave Lebanon, they will go out through Beirut."

"But the Shia said Damascus."

"So? You should know that lies are cheap."

"But he had no reason to lie. And my question surprised him. Sometimes people tell the truth when surprised."

"Do you?"

"The Americans know the Syrians and the Iranians worked together on this. Perhaps they want to attack the Iranians. It would be possible to station men outside the Iranian embassy, would it not?"

"Yes, possible. But the Americans will not go there!"

"It is possible. And where else will you look? Out there?" Desmarais swept the night with an arm. "They could be anywhere. Even with helicopters, how could you find them? I tell you, those fascist goons calculate what is impossible and then do it. I say continue the search, post men in Beirut to watch, but also post men in Damascus. The Americans will do what you do not expect, that is certain."

"True." Zhgenti waved away clouds of diesel smoke as they passed an idling truck. "Canadian, I am glad I let you live. You are sometimes useful. But do not try my patience again."

Artillery shells screamed down, high explosives momentarily lighting the snow-covered hills.

But without effect. The shells struck nothing, but broke rocks and pitted the snow. Twice Powell had called for halts. With the engines off, no one speaking or moving, they had listened for other forces in the area. They had heard nothing — no clanking tanks, no trucks, no rifles — only the continuing explosions of the untargeted artillery fire.

"Think they know we're out here," Gadgets wondered, "but they just don't know where?"

They heard the crunch of boots in snow. Lyons returned to the transport and passed the flashlight to Gadgets. "Your turn. Stay cool."

"Oh, yeah, man. Supercool. Walk point in the dark with a flashlight."

Wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, Gadgets jumped into the snow, snapped on the flashlight and preceded the Rover.

A handkerchief over the glass reduced the beam to a soft white glow. Walking fast, Gadgets held his hand over the top of the light as he waved the flashlight back and forth over the road. The Rover and Mercedes troop transport advanced behind him.

"There are no mines under this snow," Gadgets said to himself. "There are no Arab legions waiting to ambush me. There are no artillery spotters working this territory. I'm out here all by myself. Alone in the snow."

A light winked. Gadgets dropped.

"No, I ain't... I ain't alone."

The Rover and truck stopped. Gadgets saw the light reappear over the curve of a low hill. He whispered to Powell, "We got something up ahead."

Gadgets heard his hand-radio clicking. "On my way, Wizard," Lyons told him. Seconds later, fur-hatted, his Atchisson-modelled Konzak assault shotgun in his hands, Lyons crouched beside Gadgets. "Where?"

"There."

Without speaking, they moved off the road and cut up the slope of the hill. Far in the distance, three shells exploded. A flare burst into searing light, illuminating a hilltop. More shells resounded. Lyons and Gadgets continued, using the faint light to avoid rocks.

At the crest, the distant flare light revealed another road. The road wove across the gray landscape to what appeared to be a sandbag bunker. A light came from inside.

Beyond the bunker, they saw three distinct sets of perimeter lights on three lines of chain link and concertina circling a cluster of buildings.

"We have arrived." Gadgets said into his hand-radio.

"The village?" Powell asked.

"Anyplace else around here got three concentric perimeters? And bunkers and all that?"

"There's a checkpoint on the road," Lyons said into his own radio. "Sandbagged. No one outside. Got to take them before we can go past."

"I'll send up Akbar and Politician."

Lyons looked at the Konzak he carried. "Nah, bring up the trucks. They won't see them and I want to change gear."

They jogged back through the snow to the road. Two minutes later, the Rover and the Mercedes, without headlights, in low gear, silently pulled up.

"This is it, right?" Blancanales handed Lyons the American-made Kalashnikov and the bandolier of magazines.

"Yeah, we might have to walk in, and this Konzak's a giveaway."

"What about my over-and-under?" Blancanales slapped the black ripple grip of his M-16/M-203.

"The Konzak doesn't shoot high-ex forty. Just keep that out of sight. Who knows what'll happen down there?"

"I got an idea what'll happen," Gadgets answered.

"Then let's go do it to them." Lyons cinched up his bandolier of ComBloc mags and led the line of men across the snow. Akbar jogged alongside Gadgets.

"So what's the scam, man? You hotshots got a plan?"

"Where'd you learn to talk that jive, foreigner?" Gadgets asked.

"In da bunkers. Me and Powell. And some spade Marines. Nothing but shit screaming down out of the sky — boom, boom, ka-boom. Lotsa time to talk, I tell you. I taught them the poetry of the Koran, they taught me to speak American."

"Quiet!" Lyons snarled.

They filed down the slope to the road. A kilometer away, shells burst in the lighted village, a building collapsing in a ball of dust. In a seemingly random pattern, other shells hit within the perimeters, in the open fields, and on the mountain slopes kilometers away.

The flashes of light illuminated the hillside, and the four men descended quickly. Lyons stopped at the road and noticed the smooth surface of snow.

"Nothing in or out tonight," he whispered to Blancanales.

"They have helicopters."

"Yeah, but the rockets won't travel by helicopter. And I don't see an airfield here."

"True."

Easing down into a roadside ditch, Lyons found himself standing on ice. He led the others toward the Syrian bunker. Their boots slipped on the frozen mud and ice, and sometimes the ice cracked under their weight. Lyons cautioned them with a hiss as they neared the Syrians.

A shell landed a hundred meters away. They went flat in the ditch, their ears ringing with the one explosion as they waited for others. Bits of ice and rocks fell. Then silence.

Then voices came from the checkpoint's bunker. Akbar provided a whispered summary: "One of them thinks it's the Israelis. Another says it can't be, because no one's been hit. Yet another is complaining because they should have left already."

"What? Should have left already?"

"Yes, that is what they say."

Lyons slung his weapon across his back. Taking out his modified-for-silence Colt, he eased back the slide to chamber the first .45 hollowpoint from the 10-round extended magazine.

"I go first. Wizard, back me up with your Beretta. We got to move quick."

And he moved, silently moving from the ditch to the bunker.

As Gadgets followed, he felt his hand-radio buzz. But he did not stop.

Behind him in the ditch, Blancanales pressed his transmit key and whispered, "What goes on?"

Powell spoke quickly. "A car or truck is coming. Don't get caught in the open."

Looking across the snow and ruts of the road, Blancanales saw his partners standing against the dark sandbags of the bunker, utterly exposed.