Rain of Doom

7

Anne Desmarais rode through the streets of Beirut in a taxi. She listened to a radio announcer reporting the continuing progress of the new coalition to restore peace in Lebanon. The station cut to a telephone interview with a spokesman in Damascus who assured the public that the decrees had the full support of Syria.

Desmarais looked for the changes. At checkpoints, her eyes scanned the faces and uniforms of the soldiers. The new government coalition had moved to restore the authority of the Lebanese army by replacing the Falangist militias with Christians in army uniforms. Shia militiamen, shaved, their hair trimmed to official length, now wore army uniforms.

In the ruined no-man's-land that had been the Green Line, the piles of sand and rock blocking boulevards had been removed. The people walked around the tangles of wire and mines that divided their neighborhoods.

In West Beirut, schools and shops had reopened. Many merchants still operated behind walls of sandbags, but others had replaced the glass in their windows so that shoppers could see displays. Repairmen worked on streetlights and telephone lines without fear of snipers.

A victory for world socialism, the young Canadian woman thought. Defeat the American dogs of imperialism and peace comes. Only after the Lebanese drove out the Americans and embraced their Soviet and Syrian brothers in world revolution did social harmony return to this ancient land.

Now only the Zionists remained to be defeated, Desmarais thought. If the united Arab peoples drove the Jews out of south Lebanon, then continued in their relentless jihad of holy revenge and destroyed the cursed Zionist entity and restored the Palestinians to their rightful homes...

"Listen to this!" Interrupting her daydreaming, the taxi driver turned up the radio. "Those Syrians are making war on themselves. As if there has not been enough killing. Heaven help us all if those animals..."

"It is the Americans or the Israelis," she told him in her Quebecois French. "They started it somehow..."

"What did you say? The Americans? The Israelis? Impossible! How could they be involved? Those Syrians need no foreigners to kill one another. They will do it for any reason, they..."

"I paid you to drive! Not lecture. I know the truth. Now, drive!"

"Yes, mademoiselle. Of course."

They rode in silence to the street where Sayed Ahamed maintained the headquarters of his militia forces in a shell-shattered hotel. Despite the "normalization," concrete barriers still blocked both ends. The thick concrete cubes forced vehicles to snake through several tight turns to approach the hotel. Positions with machine guns and rocket launchers surveyed the street. And without exception, no vehicles were permitted to park on the street. There would be no car bombs here.

Stopping at the first militia checkpoint, the driver turned off the engine and handed a teenage soldier the key to the trunk. Other militiamen searched the interior of the taxi and slid mirrors underneath to check for explosives.

An officer questioned the driver, then Desmarais. "He says you are a journalist. Present your credentials."

She handed him her passport and a government form listing her news syndicate, her nationality, blood type and next of kin. The officer examined the signatures and seals of the documents, then stepped into a sandbag bunker. While he telephoned his commander, the militiamen completed their search by looking under the car seats.

One of the teenagers put a hand under her coat and frisked her for weapons. She slapped him away and all the other militiamen laughed.

The officer returned. "Commander Ahamed tells you to hurry. Urgent business."

Shells exploded in the mountains east of the city. The soldiers walked to the shelter of sandbags. The street cleared of pedestrians.

As the officer returned her papers, he cursed. "Unholy Syrian dogs, eating Communist shit, copulating with the Soviets — go, woman! Get to safety! The dying starts again soon."

The driver gunned the engine and whipped through the course of concrete cubes. He sped to the doors of the hotel. "Out! Move! I have a family. I cannot wait!"

"But I paid for the trip back to my hotel!"

"Here! Take the money!" The driver threw a handful of bills at her.

Desmarais collected the crumpled money from the seat. The driver ran around the taxi and dragged her out. She screamed and slapped him; he pushed her to the sidewalk and sped away.

As the shells crashed in the mountains, Desmarais counted the Lebanese pounds. The taxi driver had shortchanged her! Even as he had panicked, he had made a few pounds, returning not half the money but only an approximate sum.

"You cheated me, you bastard!" she shouted at the retreating taxi.

Inside the hotel, guards searched her politely and professionally. They waved metal detectors over her body. They checked her camera kit, the lens of her camera, the batteries in her cassette recorder.

A militiaman picked up a telephone and keyed a number. He announced Desmarais, giving her physical description and document numbers.

Very thorough, she noted. She would include the information in her next report.

"Come with me, please," a young militia officer requested in perfect French. They stopped at an elevator door.

"Does it actually operate?" Desmarais asked.

"Certainly. What interesting French you speak! You cannot be from Africa?"

"No!" she snapped. "Quebec!"

"Oh, the state in America."

"No, Canada." She studied his face. "You are very young to be an officer. Are you a hero?"

"Oh, no. But I am very... exacting. I studied to be a doctor. My commander recognized my abilities and assigned me to this post. I must be an officer to instruct the soldiers, so I am an officer. It is only a matter of convenience."

"But soon you will return to your studies. You must be glad."

"How can I return? The war, you understand."

"But the war is over. The Council has unified the city and reorganized the army..."

"There can be no peace while the Syrian dogs and their masters occupy our country."

"The Syrians are friends of Lebanon. They came only to help and rebuild what the Zionists and CIA..."

The young man cut her off with laughter. The elevator opened, and he escorted her past militiamen with automatic rifles to a suite crowded with typewriters and files.

"She will take you to our commander," the officer said, pointing out a secretary. "I will wait here — but there he is now!"

Two men strode from a doorway. Desmarais saw Sayed Ahamed and another man she knew as Akbar, an English-speaking Shia who worked closely with Powell the Marine. Akbar had traveled with Desmarais and Powell to Mexico.

Turning away, Desmarais laid her credentials on the secretary's desk. She tossed her head slightly, causing her shoulder-length black hair to fall forward, screening her face. Commander Ahamed and Akbar continued into the corridor.

But Akbar had recognized her. He told his commander, "That woman in there. She says she is a Canadian journalist. But she works for the Soviets."

"That one? Who comes to interview me?"

"Kill her. Arrange her death. In America, we would have executed her, except for the Mexicans. The Mexicans would not allow it, even though she spies for the Soviets."

"I will consider it. Could she be looking for the Americans?"

"Question her. It does not matter if she survives."

"I will consider it. Good fortune on your attack — go. I will deal with the woman."

"Gentlemen," Powell began." Here we have a convoy of very common, nondescript, semiarmored vehicles carrying sufficient firepower to surprise and overwhelm all checkpoints without armored or aircraft support."

Like a television used-car salesman, Powell moved along a line of a Land Rover, a Mercedes troop truck and a semitruck and trailer. "These two, the Rover and the Mercedes, are standard transportation for the Syrian army, and are still marked accordingly. However, the .50-caliber machine gun and the fully automatic grenade launcher are not stock. They..."

"An MK-19?" Lyons interrupted. "Forty millimeter?"

"Four hundred rounds per minute, range of sixteen hundred meters. Very special, just for you. This Mercedes — you see them everywhere. And that truck and trailer — Akbar and his uncles ship tons of contraband a week into Damascus, using exactly that truck. The militias, the Syrian army soldiers, the border guards all know that truck because they always wait for it with their palms out for their cut of the cash."

"Smuggling?" Gadgets asked. "Like what?"

"Well, take a look." Powell opened the doors at the rear of the truck.

Stacked from the deck to the roof, from side panel to side panel, were boxes of familiar mass-market products: detergents, hand soaps, toothpaste, designer jeans, kitchen and household appliances and junk food. Like blocks in a Chinese puzzle, the boxes had been fitted into the trailer to utilize every cubic centimeter.

"There it is," Powell jived. "The answer to the Peoples' Revolution. Syria can't get it from the Soviets, so they get it from the United States and Europe, via Lebanon. Via Akbar's family. Via about ten thousand different smugglers. It comes in by boat, like the one you dudes came on, then moves through Beirut to Damascus, then to Iraq and Iran, even into Russia and Afghanistan. Sometimes the trucks carry stuff like this, other times it's video recorders and tvs and videocassettes. Sometimes it's refrigerators and air conditioners."

"Where will we ride?" Blancanales asked.

"Inside, up front."

"Will that trash stop bullets?" Lyons pointed at the boxes. "I'm not going to hide in there waiting for an AK slug to punch through."

"That 'trash' is not what it seems. The first layer is merchandise, for payoffs and giveaways. Then there's a layer of steel, then sandbags. Won't stop artillery or rockets, but you'll be safe from rifles and machine guns and lightweight shrapnel."

"I don't like it," Lyons told him. "It isn't my style to hide out while other people take point for me. It's my mission; I'll take the risks."

Powell grinned. "I can understand that. I know you. But I didn't know you would be on the mission when I came up with this concept. I thought it would be the standard-issue agent out of Washington. You know, 'Where's my limo? Where's my hotel? Why don't these dirty people speak English?' That kind of clown. However, you could get into it. Watch this."

He banged on the trailer and stepped back. Where meter-high black lettering had been painted on the side, panels opened and the barrel of an automatic rifle emerged. A militiaman peered out at the Americans.

Powell led them to the cab. Above the roof, machine-gun barrels appeared. The gunports on the sides and front made the trailer into a moving bunker.

"Boom-boom!" A fighter called out. "Kill Syrians!"

Lyons laughed. "Motivated!"

"That's very good for us," Blancanales commented. "But what about the driver? He'll be totally exposed."

Opening the driver's door, Powell pointed to steel plates reinforcing the doors and firewall and flipped down sun visors made of steel. Other plates flipped up over the side windows and windshield, forming a slit only a hand's width wide.

"Won't stop a rocket," Powell told them. "But it stops bullets and shrapnel."

"Okay," Gadgets said, grinning. "Supercool. But what about the tires?"

"They're flat-proof. They've got solid inner cores."

"Oh, man!" Gadgets kicked a tire. "You got it covered! How'd you do this in a week?"

Powell shook his head. "Didn't do it in a week. Remember, this war's been going on for ten years. Akbar's family has been running toothpaste and disco jeans into Syria since '78. How do you think Shias could afford to send a son to the University of California?"

"Free enterprise," Blancanales said, nodding. "But aren't they risking their connections if they take an American kill squad into Syrian territory?"

"Pol," said the Marine captain, using the Puerto Rican's code name. "These people think you guys are okay. Because you're coming here to fight for them, to get the Syrians out of their country so that it won't be one more Soviet slave state. No one's talking any phony peacekeeping missions, none of you are helping those fascist Maronites. You're here to fight the enemies of Lebanon. Don't you worry about them losing their connections. They're worried about losing their country. The people here will do anything to make this a success."

A man ran from the stairwell toward them. Akbar talked quickly with Powell.

Then Powell told Able Team, "That Commie bitch Desmarais is here. And guess what the Shia security saw in her passport? Entry and exit stamps for the U.S. of A. via La Guardia, then Cyprus, then Beirut. Anybody you know been to New York and Cyprus on their way here?"

Able Team glanced at one another. Gadgets answered for his partners. "Just us tourists."