Cairo Countdown at-5

by Dick Stivers

  “What?”

  They looked down, saw a section of the concrete sidewalk hinge back. Black forms with pistols crept from the hole.

  Lyons keyed his hand radio. “Wizard! We got four ragheads coming up out of the ground. They’re moving in on the CIA boys. Where are you?”

  “Coming up out of the ground?” Gadgets asked, incredulous.

  “They’ve got a tunnel under the street,” Lyons told him. “They’re going to take the men in the car…”

  “Which car? Which street?”

  “Below us. It’s the car on the south corner of the hideout.”

  As Lyons spoke, Blancanales slipped out his silenced Beretta and folded down the left-hand grip. He leaned over the edge, bracing the 9mm autopistol against the wall. He sighted on the shadows three stories beneath them. “Can’t get… can’t get a line on them. They’re under an awning…”

  Tempered glass shattered. A man cried out. The dull smashes of other car windows breaking echoed in the early-morning darkness.

  “Too late,” Blancanales sighed.

  “It’s over, Wizard. Silenced pistols.”

  Blancanales jerked his autopistol up again, sighted straight down. “One’s alive! They’re taking one of the…”

  Two of the black-clothed forms dragged an American to the trapdoor. But the terrorists crouched too close to the struggling American.

  At the awkward angle from the roof, Blancanales could not fire without hitting the Agency man. Then the gunmen disappeared down the hole with the prisoner.

  Lyons knew what the American faced: merciless torture and mutilation. He keyed the transmit again. “Wizard, they took a man alive.”

  A breathless voice answered. “I’m on the corner, looking at them. Two of them. They’re ransacking the car. And that trapdoor’s still open. What do you say we get our associate back?”

  *

  His hands and ankles bound, the American rolled into a ball on the concrete, trying to protect his face and stomach from the kicks and rifle butts of the attackers. One terrorist slammed a boot into the prisoner’s back again and again, finally finding a kidney. The American arched back in agony.

  As kicks thudded into the prisoner’s gut, one warrior slammed the butt plate of his Soviet AK into the prisoner’s face, smashing the nose.

  Omar stopped his warriors. “He cannot die before we question him.”

  The American groaned. Blood bubbled from his broken face. The knot of Arabs gathered around the semiconscious prisoner. They laughed, jeered. Omar stooped and tried to grasp the American’s short hair but couldn’t. He grabbed the man’s ear, instead, jerking his head from the concrete.

  “Do you feel pain?” Omar asked in English. “Do you suffer? Wait. Soon you will know all the pain of the world. You will beg for death. Then I will give you more pain.”

  The elegant Egyptian stood. “Take him to the truck. We leave immediately!”

  *

  The taxis rolled to a silent stop. Lyons and Blancanales stepped out and sprinted for the corner. The two warriors searched the shadows of the street for Gadgets, saw him nowhere. Blancanales clicked his hand radio three times.

  “Too late, dudes,” Gadgets’s voice answered. “Had to do it myself.”

  They looked around the corner, saw Gadgets and Mohammed weave through trucks parked on the sidewalk. Motioning their taxis to follow, Lyons and Blancanales continued to the open trapdoor.

  Water trickled in the darkness below the pavement. The stink of sewage and old, old stones drifted up.

  Gadgets pointed to the corpse of a gunman sprawled in the gutter. “Look at his legs. Only his shoes are wet.”

  Lyons glanced up at his partners. “We go in?”

  Gadgets nodded.

  “No other way,” Blancanales agreed.

  They went to their taxis. Taking off their sports coats, they slipped on Kevlar-and-steel battle armor. Gadgets and Blancanales filled the front pouches with magazines for their Uzis. Grenades went in the side pockets. Lyons dropped a few grenades in his front pouches, slung a bandolier of Atchisson mags over his armor. All three men wore their silenced autopistols on web belts.

  Mohammed ran up. He now wore battle armor and a bandolier heavy with Uzi mags. He offered Lyons a flashlight.

  “I got one,” Lyons told him.

  “Ain’t got one like this. This is one of theirs. Look at the glass.”

  The lens had been tinted blue. “All right. Smart move.”

  “Just ‘cause I talk like an American, don’t mean I is stupid.”

  Snapping back the actuator of his Atchisson, Lyons chambered a 12-gauge round of high-velocity double-ought and number two steel shot and flicked on the safety. He walked to the trapdoor, the weight of his armor and weapons and ammunition making every step a conscious effort.

  Gadgets slung two Armburst rocket launchers over his back.

  “Rockets?” Lyons asked, looking back.

  “Why not?” Gadgets shrugged. “Suppose we can’t find our way out… ?”

  The aluminum ladder swayed as Lyons descended into the Cairo underworld.

  13

  Every breath brought pain. Jake Newton flinched against an imagined kick, passed out again as a wave of pain crashed over his consciousness. He floated for a moment in peace, without fear, far away from his body. But he returned.

  Forcing himself to consider the pain, he remained motionless, his eyes closed, his breathing slow. He listened. Voices spoke in Arabic. He heard the clank of metal, the sound of footsteps on concrete.

  He eased an eye open. Specks of light gleamed through fabric. He lay in the back of a canvas-covered truck. It was not moving. Looking around him, he saw his blood puddling on the wood slats. His hands were tied in front of him. His slacks were filthy and bloody.

  Pain ripped through his ribs and back as he tried the knots around his wrists. Then he strained to separate his ankles and felt the ropes binding his feet together.

  They had taken him hostage. He remembered sitting in the car, watching the roof line of the warehouse through an infrared scope. Then the car windows burst inward. He never saw the terrorists who beat him. He only remembered the shock of steel smashing down on his skull again and again.

  The kicking and beating on the concrete remained only a confusion of pain.

  When would the questions begin? Would he survive the interrogation? Considering what the terrorists had already done to him, he could not expect to live through it.

  The truck swayed on its springs. Jake lay utterly motionless as boots walked the truckbed. A heavy box dropped. The boots scuffed, hesitated. A boot toe smashed into the back of his head. Despite himself, he gasped.

  Laughter rang out. The boots stomped away. He heard the boots drop to the concrete.

  Jake waited to the count of one hundred before opening his eyes again. He turned slightly to look behind him. He saw the crates stacked there. But none of the terrorists.

  Uprights of stamped sheet metal held up the truck’s canvas canopy. Watching the tailgate, Jake reached to the nearest upright and dragged the knots binding his wrists over the sharp edge.

  *

  Blue light sparkled on flowing filth. The tinted flashlight in his left hand, his right gripping the Colt, Lyons followed the narrow walkway through the ancient sewer. Behind him, Gadgets held his silenced Beretta ready. Blancanales and Mohammed followed a few steps behind.

  Things scurried in the darkness around them. Small stones fell from the crumbling walls. Ahead of them, they saw only total darkness.

  The chill fetid air of the age-old sewer touched their faces like foul hands. Nerves and the exertion of walking with the weight of their armor and weapons forced Able Team to breathe deep the stench. After a minute, the noses went dead. But the thick, poisonous atmosphere tore at their throats, made their senses dull, their thoughts slow.

  “Ironman,” Gadgets whispered. “Stop. Kill the light.”

  Lyons flicked off the light and stood
motionless in the absolute black. He stared forward, straining his eyes for a light.

  “It’s been a hundred paces,” Blancanales hissed.

  Only trickling water and the small noises of scuttling creatures broke the silence. Lyons heard his blood rushing through his arteries, the boom of his heart. Air rasped over the membranes of his throat.

  “Zilch,” Gadgets admitted.

  Waving the light ahead of him, Lyons continued forward. A rush of air swept past him. Lyons turned off his flashlight. Mo-man’s light died an instant later.

  Clean air washed over his face like clear, cool water. Lyons gulped the delicious breeze as he thumbed his Colt’s safety down two clicks to full autoburst. He heard other safeties snap off.

  A pale white luminescence glowed from a wall ahead of them. Footsteps and clattering metal echoed. A blue light appeared, whipped about, then bobbed toward them. A second blue light came from the wall.

  The white glow backlit four armed men. The first and last men held flashlights. They all carried autorifles.

  Lyons eased himself flat. Behind him, a knee cracked. Metal touched stone. Able Team waited.

  A voice spoke in Arabic; a man laughed. A third voice hissed the others quiet. Able Team waited until the blue light of the pointman revealed Lyons flat on his belly, the oval cylinder of the silenced Colt pointing up.

  Silent .45 slugs threw the pointman into the stone ceiling. Bursts of 9mm fire zipped over Lyons’s back, smacked into the chests and faces of the other terrorists. Slugs smashed into the metal of the AK rifles, ricocheted off the stones. As burst after burst twisted the terrorists, Lyons flicked his Colt’s fire selector up to single shot and searched for a target.

  Dropping his blue flashlight, the last silhouetted terrorist staggered back. Lyons sighted, sent a .45 hollowpoint into the gunman’s chest. A burst of 9mm slugs caught the falling man, helped toss out an arm as if he waved goodbye. One slug whined off a wall in the distance.

  Groaning came from the walkway. Lyons passed his flashlight back to Gadgets as he whispered, “When you hear me moving, count two, then put some light on them. I’ll be up against the side wall.”

  Slipping an extra magazine from a belt pouch, Lyons held it ready in his left hand. He rose to his feet and groped through the darkness, his shoulder touching the wall as he stepped on corpses and rifles.

  A rifle dragged on stone. Gadgets switched on the blue flashlight. It revealed a terrorist reaching for a rifle. Lyons stepped on the clawing hand. He fired a single shot into the dying man’s head. He stepped over the others, put single shots into the heads of two others. The pointman did not need such mercy. He had no head.

  Checking the corpses, Lyons took the flashlights. Gadgets and Mohammed searched through pockets and found radios. Blancanales reloaded his Beretta, went ahead to the side passage and watched for other terrorists. Mohammed slung his Uzi and took a Kalashnikov. They dumped the bodies into the flowing scum of the sewer.

  Blancanales waved them forward. They rushed to the side tunnel. Peering around the corner, they saw a short passage jackhammered through stone and concrete. Light spilled from a rectangle cut above the passageway. A ladder went up the wall to it.

  “I heard voices a second ago,” Blancanales whispered.

  “Think we can chance going in quiet?” Lyons asked.

  Boots came down the aluminum rungs. The four Able men pressed themselves flat against the wall. They waited. They heard voices, then another set of boots descending. Blue light swept the walkway.

  Two terrorists rounded the corner. The first carried a Kalashnikov and an RPG rocket launcher. The second had a rifle and carried a pack of rockets in fiberboard tubes. Blancanales and Gadgets reached out, put the muzzles of their Berettas against the heads of the terrorists and executed them.

  “Shall we take the rockets?” Lyons asked his partners.

  “No. There’ll be more upstairs.” Blancanales took a fragmentation grenade from his battle suit. “We go in loud, yes?”

  “Grenades, then the Atchisson.” Lyons unslung his full-auto assault shotgun. He checked the safety, tapped the magazine to test the seating, let the weapon hang from his right shoulder. He took out another box mag of 12-gauge shells and jammed it in the back pocket of his slacks.

  “Give me a flash bomb,” he said. “I’ve only got one.”

  “Here you go.” Gadgets handed him the grenade. Originally designed for attacking hijackers who held airline passengers hostage, the grenade produced a flash and tremendous concussion that temporarily blinded and stunned but caused no wounds.

  Lyons straightened the cotter safety pins. More voices came from the trapdoor. But they heard no feet on the stairs. Lyons glanced around the corner, saw no one.

  “On my way.” He crept forward, the crunching of his shoes on the walkway’s sand the only sound. Motioning Mohammed forward, Gadgets indicated that he and Blancanales would wait at the corner. Mohammed nodded and followed Lyons.

  At the foot of the ladder, Lyons jerked the cotter pins from the grenades and held down the levers. A grenade in each hand, he put a foot on the first rung, then shifted his weight slowly. He went up the ladder silently. Below him, Mohammed eased down the safety of his captured AK.

  Voices called out. Lyons hurried up the last three rungs, looked up.

  Trucks crowded the interior of the cavernous warehouse. Arabs in modern clothes and traditional robes, armed with Soviet AKs and rocket launchers, rushed from truck to truck. They loaded long crates and boxes. Another group of terrorists in dark clothes rushed up a flight of wooden stairs to a second floor. The second floor overlooked the main work and storage area like a mezzanine. A supervisor’s windows opened into the warehouse. A corridor went back to other offices. A long flight of stairs led to the roof.

  Lyons could not see the American prisoner. He did see a middle-aged Egyptian in elegant evening clothes talking with terrorists. The terrorists bowed as they left the Egyptian.

  Letting the levers flip off the grenades, Lyons counted to three, threw the frag toward the elegant Egyptian. The grenade bounced across the concrete. Terrorists turned toward the trapdoor in the floor. Lyons tossed the other grenade, the concussion-flash, then ducked and put his hands over his ears.

  An instant after the one-two blast, Lyons went through the trapdoor with his Atchisson in his hands. He scrambled across the floor, crabbed himself under the nearest truck. Jerking the pins from two more grenades — a frag and a flash-blast — Lyons tumbled them under trucks to the other side of the warehouse. He sprayed three shots from his Atchisson at the legs of running terrorists, then cupped his hands over his ears again.

  Shock rang in his head. Screaming came from everywhere. Rolling from under the truck, Lyons searched for targets. Lifting an AK, an Arab in a keffiyeh staggered away from a truck. A 12-gauge blast shredded his heart and lungs. On the second floor, the black-clad terrorists fired AK rifles at the trapdoor. Sighting over the Atchisson’s fourteen-inch barrel, Lyons snapped single shots into three men. The assault weapon’s action locked back.

  Dropping the empty magazine, he grabbed the mag in his back pocket. An autorifle fired behind him, slugs roared past his ear. He rolled as three terrorists with AK rifles rushed him, one firing his rifle point-blank into Lyons’s chest.

  Inside the steel insert and Kevlar of his battle armor the slug’s impact felt like a kick. It did not stop his roll. Under the truck again, he jammed the magazine into the Atchisson and slapped the action release with his left hand as he aimed one-handed at the legs of the Arabs.

  One terrorist crouched, pointing his AK, as Lyons fired. The fifty high-velocity steel balls tore away the guy’s head and the leg of a man behind him. A second blast of steel ripped away the feet of the third man.

  Crawling under the driveshaft and springs, Lyons crouched on the far side. He saw Mohammed emerging from the trapdoor, AK in one hand. A terrorist on the second floor rose from cover, pointing his Kalashnikov. The Atchisson ripped
him with steel.

  Slugs chipped the concrete. Mohammed scurried from the hole, saw Lyons, sprinted a few steps and then dived. An Arab looked from behind a truck, saw Lyons and Mohammed, ducked back. Expecting a rifle barrel or grenade, Lyons sighted on the place where the head had appeared and waited. Beside him, Mohammed snapped two— and three-shot bursts from his Uzi.

  The cone point of an RPG appeared in the Atchisson’s sights. Lyons fired. The launcher and an arm flew, then the missile streaked straight up.

  “Under the truck!” Lyons shouted at Mohammed.

  Metal and bits of concrete showered around them, then whole blocks of concrete and planks fell. Mohammed crawled out and continued to the far side. The sound of boots approached him. He fired his Uzi one-handed, kicked the thrashing terrorist aside. Lyons jerked open a bandolier pouch, found another magazine of seven 12-gauge shells and followed Mohammed out.

  The muzzle of an AK appeared in a truck window. Lyons fired through the door’s steel, saw blood spray the windshield. He changed mags, looked for more targets.

  Autofire hammered the trucks on both sides of them. Glass shattered, a tire blew out. Lyons saw a prone terrorist swing his autorifle toward them. Lyons’s snapped shot went low, the double-ought and number two skipping off the concrete, punching into the rifleman’s head and torso. The terrorist arced back, flopped down dead.

  They heard shouts. The shooting went intermittent then stopped.

  Mohammed called over. “The head man’s organizing a retreat! That’s what he’s talking.”

  Truck engines roared. Lyons crouch walked to the front of the trucks shielding them. He snapped a glance over the hood, had to duck down as slugs hammered sheet metal and sprayed the plastic and glass of the already shattered windshield.

  Chains clanked and pulleys squeaked as a cargo door rose. The street was revealed. Lyons shifted position, tried to sight on whomever operated the pulley and chain to raise the door. Slugs from three autorifles slammed into the truck protecting him.

  Searching through his battle armor’s pockets, he found three grenades. As he pulled the cotter pin from the first, he heard gears grind, an engine roar. He threw the grenade blind, wrenched the pin from the next, threw it.