Rain of Doom

5

As the three members of Able Team stepped from the warmth of the hired van, a gust of wind hit them with freezing sleet. The driver gunned the engine impatiently as the Americans unloaded their trunks. Without a word, he reversed the van and drove away into the night.

Gadgets looked around at the shacks lining the muddy road. Even in the storm, the air stank of diesel and rotting fish. "Ain't Club Med."

Gripping his two heavy trunks of gear, Lyons staggered to the dock. An old coastal cruiser lurched in the storm chop, the dock creaking as the cruiser pulled the heavy mooring lines taut with every sway. A crewman in a yellow rain slicker saw him and waved a flashlight.

Voices shouted in Greek. Silhouettes moved across lighted ports. Lyons stopped at the head of the gangplank and put down his trunks. As he waited for his partners, his eyes scanned the cruiser.

On the deck, plastic tarps covered stacks of cargo. A hoist arm overhung the crates, its steel cables banging with every gust. Light came from two levels of cabins. Lyons saw men inside the lighted pilothouse. His eyes searched for anything — any detail, any motion — that meant a trap.

After landing in Nicosia, Cyprus, they had called Lebanon and spoken with Captain Powell, the Marine on detached duty with the Shia militias of West Beirut. They did not risk briefing him on their mission to the Bekaa over the phone, saying only that they would be "taking a drive together." A few weeks before, Powell had accompanied Able Team to Mexico as they pursued and exterminated a terror force of Iranian Revolutionary Guards. He would know why they called.

"Thought they had a hovercraft to Beirut," Gadgets commented. "Don't know if I want to go out in a storm in that bucket."

"The boat," Blancanales emphasized, "is not our number-one worry."

"Let's go." Lyons took his trunks. "If these guys try to take us, we'll take the boat."

In a car parked between two shacks across the road, Anne Desmarais watched Able Team board the cruiser.

Though the young woman's visa documents listed her occupation as a Canadian journalist based in Quebec, she served the KGB as agent and courier. Her role exploited her credentials as a Canadian journalist to travel freely throughout Central America, carrying messages for Stalinist guerrillas and gathering information for her Soviet masters. These KGB-financed travels also provided the background for her articles denouncing the imperialism and aggression of the United States, while their sale to Canadian and European newspapers provided a legitimate source of income to explain the thousands of U.S. dollars she received from the Soviets.

Desmarais had already encountered and identified Able Team through Captain Powell, the Marine officer working for the CIA in Beirut.

On a West Beirut boulevard a month before, a terrorist group had ambushed and annihilated a CIA unit investigating a meeting between Iranian Revolutionary Guards and a Libyan diplomat. Powell, a member of the ambushed unit, had survived only by luck. But his superiors in Washington did not accept that explanation. Powell had developed a close camaraderie with the Shia militias fighting for the reform of the Lebanese government. His superiors, suspicious of all non-Christian and non-Israeli contacts, assumed that Powell's loyalty had been bought by Syrian gold. He received a blunt order to return to Washington for debriefing. Powell knew his career with the Central Intelligence Agency had ended — unless he could prove himself innocent. He had to find the assassins...

Playing the role of an investigative journalist, Desmarais had approached Powell with the offer of a meeting with a member of the assassination squad, Oshakkar, an American Black Muslim fighting with the fanatics of the Islamic Amal gang. Oshakkar, a proponent of a heretical Islamic sect founded on racial hatred and the demand for a "New Africa" in the American South, wanted out of the gang and would trade information for dollars and a ticket to the United States.

Desmarais supported her story about Oshakkar with photos of the ambush taken from the point of view of the killers. The photos proved she had witnessed the slaughter of the CIA unit. She also had photos of the Iranian and Syrian leaders of the terrorist group. Powell agreed to meet with Oshakkar.

It was a trap. Iranian Revolutionary Guards kidnapped Desmarais. The gang of Iranians clubbed Powell unconscious with their Kalashnikov rifles, and he would have been captured had not Carl Lyons and his Konzak selective-fire assault shotgun intervened. Later, Powell had led a combined force of Able Team and Shia militiamen through the sewers and ruins of Beirut to rescue Desmarais.

Though beaten and raped by the Iranians, Desmarais said she wanted to continue "on the story." She told Powell and Able Team she had overheard a conversation in Spanish between a Libyan and a Nicaraguan in which they mentioned a meeting place in Mexico. Offering this information, she persuaded Powell to allow her to accompany him and Able Team to Mexico.

In Mexico City, a KGB squad alerted by Desmarais seized her and Powell and Blancanales. But Gadgets Schwarz had planted a miniature transmitter on Desmarais. Monitoring the transmission, Gadgets heard and recorded a conversation between Desmarais and Cultural Attache Illovich of the Soviet embassy as they plotted the deaths of Powell and Able Team.

With the assistance of an elite antiterrorist force of the Mexican army, Able Team captured Desmarais and Illovich. However, a Mexican officer refused to allow any executions. Able Team compromised by forcing Illovich to cooperate in the pursuit. Then, to prevent the Soviet and Canadian from betraying the Americans to the terrorists, Able Team transported the prisoners north into the Mexican deserts. There they allowed Illovich and Desmarais to escape.

Desmarais became one of the few Soviet agents to encounter Able Team and survive. Now, in Cyprus, she proved her value to the KGB. She flipped on a radio transmitter and reported in French, "Yankee travelers confirmed. Repeat, Yankee travelers confirmed. They depart on their voyage. Please arrange for transfer."

A voice answered. "Received. Transfer dispatched."

Switching off the radio, Desmarais watched with satisfaction as the cruiser moved away from the dock. The Americans would never reach Lebanon.

Two hundred kilometers of the Mediterranean Sea separate Cyprus from Lebanon. Somewhere in that stretch, their voyage would end.

Lyons saw the flashing light. Standing alone in the storm, a plastic tarp draped over him, he saw the light flash in repeating sequences of dots and dashes. The distant boat broke through the ocean swells, the light appearing in the darkness, then disappearing as the boat carrying Lyons dropped into a trough.

Though he could not decipher it, he recognized the flashing as a code. He turned to the steamed windows of the passenger cabin, saw the blurry forms of his partners. Blancanales and Gadgets had their shipping trunks open. He saw the vague outlines of Blancanales's M-16/M-203 disassembled on the white sheet of the bed. Gadgets was leaning over his trunk, organizing weapons and gear.

Lyons opened the door and leaned inside. "There's a ship signaling."

"What are the Greeks doing?" Blancanales asked. His hands moved in a blur, reassembling his weapon.

"I'll check."

Outside again, he heard voices coming from the pilothouse. Lyons looked up and saw shadows moving on the fogged windows. Reaching under his coat, he checked his modified-for-silence Colt Government Model. The awkward pistol rode under his left arm in a customized shoulder holster. In the small of his back, he wore his standard Colt Python, loaded with X-head hollowpoints.

Half-hidden by the cargo tarp, Lyons crept up the companionway to the pilothouse. The swaying and bucking of the cruiser as it broke through the swells threw him against the steel wall. But his shoulder striking the ship made only one more creak in the cacophony of rattling and shuddering and crashing sounds. Lyons moved slowly to the top of the companionway, then pressed his back against the pilothouse.

The Greeks were speaking. One voice originated in the pilothouse, another from a radio. The radio voice issued commands. The other argued and cursed, but finally went quiet. In the darkness of the ocean, Lyons saw that the distant light no longer flashed.

He heard the Greek crew talking inside the pilothouse. Then someone crossed the floor and the door banged open.

Two men in raincoats hurried down the companionway, one carrying a pistol, the other a shotgun sawed off to a pistol grip with eighteen inches of barrel.

Lyons's hand went to the pocket radio in his coat.

He pressed the transmit key in a rapid series of clicks: the team code for alert.

Below him, the Greek with the pistol entered the cabin. The man with the shotgun followed. Lyons waited. He heard nothing — no shots, no fighting, nothing. Finally, his hand-radio buzzed.

"What goes with these bozos?" Gadgets jived. "Don't they know to knock? Rude dudes!"

"You got them?"

Blancanales answered. "The one that speaks English says a ship is threatening them. They're to hand us over or get sunk. Is it coming?"

"Yeah, I see it out there. I'm going up top. I'll take it over. Come up when you can."

"Got it."

Dropping his black plastic camouflage, Lyons slipped out his silenced Colt and snapped back the slide to chamber the first hollowpoint of the extended 10-round magazine. Then he swung down the left-hand grip lever. Throwing the door open, he grasped the selective-fire Colt with both hands and stepped inside.

A crewman at the wheel stared at the American without moving. The Greek at the radio made his final mistake in reaching for the tiny automatic on the table.

Three .45-caliber hollowpoints smashed through his chest and throat, a mist of blood spraying from his mouth. He fell back against the shelves of maps and technical manuals, his hands rising toward his wounds but never touching the blood-spurting holes. Dead, he fell forward, his legs kicking in a last spasm.

Stepping to the radio table, Lyons took the 9mm pistol and pocketed it. The other Greek kept his hands on the wheel, but stared, fascinated and sickened by the sudden death of the radioman.

A voice came from the radio in Greek, barking short commands. Lyons didn't touch the radio. The voice continued, rising to a shout.

As the white brilliance of a searchlight swept the cruiser, Blancanales rushed into the pilothouse with the M-16/M-203 and the American-made Kalashnikov. A bandolier of 5.56mm mags and 40mm grenades crossed his chest.

"Take all this." Blancanales passed the Kalashnikov and a handful of ComBloc mags to Lyons. "I'm going to try to bluff them off."

Glass exploded. Wind and freezing rain filled the interior of the pilothouse, then the machine gun on the other craft flashed again. A tracer streaked through one shattered window and out another.

Lyons snapped back the cocking handle of the Kalashnikov. "Forget the talk, Pol. Put a grenade into that."

Rounds from Gadgets's CAR assault rifle pinged off the searchlight, shattering the lens. The light flashed and dimmed to black. The machine gun, either a U.S. .50-caliber or a Soviet 12.7mm weapon, answered with a burst. The cruiser shuddered with the impacts, the heavy slugs tearing through steel like paper. Lyons motioned for the Greek on the floor to stay there. Then he flipped up the night sights of the Kalashnikov, aimed and fired.

He could not see where the slugs hit. Fighting the lurching of the cruiser, he held the three tritium glowing dots on line with the flashing muzzle of the attacker's weapon. A ricochet sparked from the pedestal-mounted weapon. Lyons snapped off a series of 2— and 3-shot bursts. Then the heavy weapon of his attacker whipped upward, dying hands firing a long, wild burst into the sky.

Blancanales fired across the thirty meters of water to the faint lights of the other craft's wheelhouse. The searing chemical flame of white phosphorous sprayed the side of the shadowy craft, burning away the darkness, revealing a motor yacht. Wood and plastic flamed.

"Hit them again!" Lyons shouted. He sighted above the fire. His bursts of ComBloc-caliber hollowpoints raked the windows of the yacht.

Autorifle muzzles flashed as gunmen returned the fire. Slugs hammered the steel cruiser, ricochets zinging through the pilothouse. Blancanales fired again and white light illuminated the interior of the yacht. Lyons sighted on a silhouette and fired a burst.

Against the white fire, the twisted silhouette became a man with an arm bending at a new joint, then a casualty as he fell into the ocean. The yacht veered away, white light and flames visible through the back windows. A form climbed a ladder to the top, where the machine gun spun on its mount. Lyons and Gadgets fired simultaneously, the storm-sway throwing off their aim. The climber finally fell backward to the rear deck.

Blancanales fired again and scored with high explosive. Shrapnel ripped the interior of the wheel-house, killing or wounding everyone inside. The yacht pitched and heaved as it circled, the controls jammed in a right turn. Flames leaped from the shattered windows, the wind whipping away black smoke.

"We'll get the survivors..." Blancanales motioned for the Greek helmsman to slow the cruiser and turn back.

On the yacht, two men struggled with an inflated raft. Lyons sighted on them, lining up the three tritium dots, and fired. One man fell, the other staggered backward off the yacht. The wind threw the torn and deflated raft into the water.

"What survivors?" Lyons asked.

Able Team's cruiser continued eastward, leaving the flaming hulk behind.