Rain of Doom

6

As the eastern horizon grayed with the first minutes of day, the coastal cruiser eased up to a jetty and bumped to a stop against a pier of timbers and old tires. Workers left a fire and extended a long gangplank to the deck. The surviving Greek crewmen secured the gangplank as the first man wheeled aboard a pushcart.

Lyons saw trucks on the beach. Militiamen with rifles slung over their backs crowded around another fire. Beyond the beach, Lyons saw only gray, snow-splotched hills.

Blancanales spoke quietly to one of the Greeks. "There'll be no problems if you just let us walk away."

"No problems, no more problems. We have enough problems."

The Greek looked at the machine-gunned pilothouse. Along one side of the cruiser, innumerable slugs of various calibers had punched through the steel bulkheads and doors. Seeing a laborer with a pushcart, the Greek jerked up one of Able Team's heavy trunks.

"Here. Take to beach. Hurry."

The Greek pointed to the other trunks and suitcases, then the pushcart. The worker — dressed in thick winter clothes with a heavy wool cap pulled down low on his face so that only his beard and eyes showed — put the trunk on the pushcart, grunting with the labor. But when the Greek crewman walked away, the worker looked up at Lyons.

"What you got in here, specialist?" The worker asked. "Dirty tricks?"

Lyons recognized the voice. "Powell!"

"Hey, it's the Marine," Gadgets said, his voice low. "Looks like tough times since you quit the Agency."

"I'm back on the payroll. But I ain't here to lift weights. Get your stuff on the cart so we can move. Looks like something happened to this boat."

"We'll tell you when we're out of here."

They muscled the pushcart up the plank. As they wove through the stream of workers unloading the cargo, Powell kept his face down. Lyons waited until they neared the trucks before explaining.

"We got intercepted. They told the crew to hand us over. We took the boat and wasted the other one."

"Any idea who it was?"

"Maybe Soviets. Probably Agency. Only the Agency knew we'd be on the boat."

"Any prisoners left to question?"

Lyons laughed quickly and cynically. "Any more jokes? Let's talk business. We called you because we're ditching our Agency connections. We're on our way into the Bekaa..."

Now Powell laughed. "Hey, crazy guy. I'm your contact man."

"What! Why didn't they tell us that?"

"Washington called weeks ago and told me to start prepping for a shot into the Bekaa. But they wouldn't say with who or when. Knew it had to be something to do with the Iranies we wasted in Mexico and I asked about you all, but the Agency kept saying it was Need to Know Only. They finally called me yesterday and told me a team would be coming in. But until you called from Nicosia, I didn't know it would be you."

"Those clerks..." Lyons sneered.

"If I'd known it was the Three Cowboys of the Apocalypse, I could've mounted a real production. Let's get your gear into the truck." Powell threw open the doors to a panel van. "But the real problem is the Syrian situation. I don't know if we'll be able to get into the Bekaa now. We should've done this a week ago. Now, I don't know..."

"Syria?" Blancanales asked as he lifted cases. "What now?"

"Something's gone wrong with Hafez Assad, the president of Syria. He was scheduled to appear in Damascus and he didn't. Maybe he had another heart attack. Maybe he died. Army units loyal to him circled the city and took positions on the highways. This isn't for sure, but there are reports of his troops fighting with the Defense Forces, which are the troops of his brother, who figures he's next in line to be president."

"What is it? A royal family?" Lyons asked. He got into the van and sat on a trunk. "One prince fighting another for the throne?"

"Not royalty, just a gang of warlords."

"What's the difference?" Lyons snapped back.

"A few hundred years. Maybe Hafez is dead, maybe not," Powell said, helping Gadgets. "The fighting's going on but it might not be Hafez Assad against Rifaat Assad. That's the problem. If it's not the Assads fighting, who is it? Might be Ali Haidar, the brother-in-law of Rifaat. Maybe he's decided to be president."

"A brother-in-law?" Lyons shook his head at the politics. "What about the sister? Maybe she wants to be the queen?"

"Who knows what she wants? It could be the Muslim Brotherhood again. Or maybe the Shias or..."

Blancanales interrupted. "How does all this affect the mission?"

His hands on the truck's doors, Powell stopped. He looked to the east. "Listen..."

On the highway, over the sound of tires on the wet asphalt, they heard artillery. Powell leaned forward to Hussein and spoke in Arabic. The Lebanese driver passed him a battery-powered am radio. Powell spun through the dial, listening to snatches of Arabic and French and English. Some stations programmed rock and roll, others the music of traditional Islamic society. Powell listened to one announcer intone a solemn monologue in Arabic.

After a minute, Gadgets asked, "So what's he saying?"

"Another storm's coming. More snow."

"What about Syria?" Lyons asked.

"This radio can't bring in the Damascus stations. When we get to Akbar's, I'll listen in on what's coming out of Syria. That'll be interesting."

"I thought Syria was a controlled society," Blancanales commented. "If there were a coup in progress, would the regime allow news broadcasts?"

Powell laughed. "Who's talking about news? It's the jive line that I got to hear. Or the absence of jive. The music changes for a coup. If Hafez is dead, it'll either be upper music or downer music. If it's a serious coup, there'll be patriotic songs, military marches. If it's a veryserious coup, you might hear shooting on the radio. Heard that one time. Deejay's rapping right along, playing pop rock and bebopping, then it's a Shootout in Studio RKO."

The political speculation helped pass the time in the back of the closed van. The travelers heard traffic noise and distant shellfire outside. After an hour and three stops at checkpoints, the van descended a steep ramp and a steel door clanked shut behind it.

Opening the doors, they stepped into an underground parking garage. Bare lights ten meters above their heads illuminated stacks of open shipping crates.

Thousands of automatic rifles, squad automatic weapons, heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers and mortars filled the stacked crates. Tons of ammunition — in original boxes and boxes that once held cooking oil or detergent or stereo components — were piled nearby.

"Superior firepower," Lyons commented.

"There's a war right there," Gadgets added.

"You got it," Powell told them. "That's Amal weapons. The government's organizing a national reconciliation, so Amal retired all the second-string boys."

"Second string?" Gadgets asked. "You mean there's more out there?"

"Yeah, the trusted units, the ones directly under the command of the Shia leadership — the ones that take orders and maintain discipline — are still out there, loaded and locked. Waiting for the government to break down or fuck up or the Syrians to invade."

"Amal, huh?" Lyons's eyes narrowed. "We're going to the Bekaa to waste an Amal camp. We ought to start with a demo job here."

Powell shook his head. "You got to get the names straight. Could lead to real serious difficulties. This is Amal. They're okay. I work with them. They broke the fascist Maronites and forced the government to start counting the Shias as people. It's IslamicAmal out in the Bekaa. They're the ones working with the Iranians. Amal fights the Islamic Amal all the time, along with the Iranians and the Libyans and Palestinians. Sometimes Syrians, too."

"How do you keep the politics straight?" Blancanales asked.

"You don't!" Powell laughed. "You can't! It's insane." He reached into the van, removed his short-barreled Galil and slung it over his shoulder. "The rule is, They Shoot, You Shoot. Simple, easy to remember. Let's go look at the transportation we're making for your tour of the beautiful Bekaa Valley, heartland of Lebanon."

The Marine captain led Able Team along the wall of weapons and munitions. The racks of weapons continued the length of the garage. The end of the garage had been knocked out with jackhammers or explosives to connect with the garage of the next building. There, men worked on vehicles: a Land Rover, a Mercedes troop truck, and semitrucks and trailer.

Militiamen with wrenches and welding torches looked up at the four Americans. Powell rushed over to them, shaking hands, embracing them, looking at the work. Able Team waited three steps away.

Blancanales studied the Marine. Powell wore dirty slacks and an old sweater. His shaggy hair covered his ears and collar, merging with his beard. Though his skin and hair color did not quite match the tones of the Lebanese, he looked like one of them, standing there in the group, talking in Arabic and joking, the militiamen pointing to the vehicles and answering the American's questions.

Now he understood why the Agency had doubted Powell's loyalty. Captain Powell, USMC, had gone native. Some point after months of friendships and shared dangers, after days of working in street Arabic and then making formal reports in bureaucratic English, Powell had ceased to be an American officer working liaison with foreign militias and had become a soldier among friends. He had continued typing reports and answering questions and making evaluations of political shifts in the Shia militias, but his superiors had noted the shift in perspective. No longer did he stand outside, observing and reporting. After the change, he stood inside and attempted to explain.

In Southeast Asia, Blancanales had seen Green Berets go native. Month after month, soldiers had lived in remote hamlets without seeing any Americans but the Green Berets in their small units. They lived with Montagnards or Cambodians or Laotians, eating their food, caring for their children, fighting their enemies. Only radios had maintained the link to the American command. When uniforms rotted or wore out, the Americans wore the traditional handmade clothing of the people. When the last of their rations was gone, the Americans turned to local foods. Finally months of loneliness and isolation and the flirting of village girls made them overcome the official prohibition, and they took local women.

Once Blancanales had marched to a hamlet with a squad of men and a mission to execute. Looking for the U.S. Special Forces sergeant in charge of the tribal militia, he had been approached by a man taller and heavier than the others. Under the Montagnard clothing and sandals, the PAVN web gear, the sun-darkened skin, Blancanales somehow recognized the sergeant. He had briefed the sergeant on the objective, and the sergeant had conferred with the village men. Squatting, the sergeant scratched a map and two trails in the dirt, saying, "We'll go this way and you'll take the other trail." When the sergeant said "we," he meant himself and the Montagnards, not himself and Blancanales's squad of Americans.

The transformation of Captain Powell from CIA liaison officer to American with the Shias had alarmed his officers in the Agency. They doubted his loyalty. And Blancanales understood why. Powell's superiors in the Agency were graduates of the conservative Ivy League universities, men prejudiced by generation after generation of wealth and privilege, who often stepped from the conference rooms of the Agency to the boardrooms of multinational corporations. They could never understand why an American of a Godfearing Texas heritage, a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps, would accept the customs and politics of an oppressed non-Christian people in a war-ravaged nation.

Calling to Able Team, Powell broke Blancanales's line of thought and confirmed his conclusions. Powell motioned them into the circle of Shia militiamen mechanics.

"Hey, meet my friends. You know Akbar — he went to Mexico with us. And this is..."

After making introductions, Powell guided the Americans away.

"We're not finished yet on the transportation, so I'm taking you for a meal and some sleep, if you want it. We'll all be going in tonight; it's all arranged, so don't you all even think about it. I know how you cowboys operate and it'll be ready. We got it all under control."

When Powell said "we," Blancanales knew the Marine did not mean "we Americans." Blancanales understood.