Cairo Countdown at-5

by Dick Stivers

  Reaching across the gully to Mohammed, Gadgets hissed, “You listening to that Arabic station?”

  “Oh, yeah, man. Listening to the Raghead Rock… Hey! It’s a Red Alert! They know we’re out here! They’re scrambling trucks!”

  Gadgets laughed quietly.

  Several hundred yards away, Lyons heard shouting in the fortress. He saw sentries running along the walls.

  Reaching to key his hand radio, Blancanales whispered from his earphone, “There’s a truck coming out the gate. And a searchlight just came on! What do you have on that captured radio? What’s going on?”

  Mohammed whispered a translation to Gadgets. “The man’s sending a squad out to search the desert. Another squad’s setting an ambush on the road. They just got word that we’re on our way. Dig it! Someone’s told them we’re coming!”

  “But we’re already here…” Gadgets laughed quietly, keying his radio. “Things are changing. I think we’ll get our chance.”

  *

  The truck roared past a prone Blancanales. He saw the gates close. Raising himself to a crouch, he observed the truck stop a quarter-mile away. In the red glow of brake lights, he noted soldiers in black uniforms leave the truck. He counted ten flashlights. The flashlights were extinguished as the soldiers left the road and fanned out into the desert. The truck pulled away and continued toward the village.

  “Hey, Wizard,” Blancanales whispered into his radio, “I don’t know what your plan is, but the gate’s closed, and they just cut off our retreat. If they find the taxis, they’ll know…”

  “Hold on! Something else is going on…just a second… we’re listening in… Just wait…”

  The gates swung open again. More headlights appeared. Two trucks left the fortress in low gear, heading toward Blancanales. The first truck slowed, the second truck stopped only twenty feet away. Blancanales crabbed backward, putting more distance and brush between himself and the soldiers who would be coming out of the truck. He paused to send out a warning on his radio. “Pull out! They sent out two more truckloads of crazies. They’ll be combing the perimeter…”

  Lyons broke in on the frequency. “There are lights all over the place! It looks like…”

  To the east, parallel lines of white lights lighted the desert.

  17

  Surveying the fortress from the door of his office, Omar watched his soldiers rush to their posts. His faithful manned the Soviet 12.7mm machine guns guarding the approach to the gate. Other soldiers with rifles and rocket launchers crouched at the wall, looking down at the desert. Any American agents who dared attack his headquarters would meet death below the walls.

  “Commander!”

  Omar turned to his assistant. To insure instantaneous and accurate communications, Omar had stationed his communications technicians and their equipment in an outer room of his offices. Only a door separated him from the electronics linking him to Cairo, Tripoli, Damascus, Moscow. And Allah had rewarded his foresight tonight. Seconds after receiving warning of the gang of American assassins, he had alerted his officers and soldiers.

  The young Libyan who manned the radios slipped off his headphones, called out, “The squads are in position.”

  “Good.”

  A soldier ran into the offices. “Commander. The prisoner is conscious.”

  “Oh?” Omar smiled at the thought. Now he hoped the assassins came. The screams of their compatriot would greet them.

  Following the soldier into the night and the blowing dust, Omar hurried along the wide balcony in front of the offices. Once students and professors crowded the rooms and hallways of this fortress, studying modern irrigation and biotechnical crop engineering. Grants from the United Nations had helped build the institute, helped pay the professors, helped provide scholarships to the students. With the rise of Omar’s power, his movement had taken the classrooms for barracks, the offices for their commanders. The United Nations still funded the institute.

  Rushing down the stone steps, Omar and a soldier went to the tiny room where they had thrown the American. He lay on the floor, his hands tied behind him, a loop of rope pulling his hands and feet together. Blood pooled on the tiles, bubbled around the man’s ruined mouth. Omar stood over the prisoner for a moment and listened to the man’s ragged breathing.

  He kicked the American in the stomach. The breathing caught, blood sprayed from the man’s mouth. But he did not move or groan. Omar kicked him in the face again and again. No movement.

  “The dog! He’ll die before we can take our amusement.”

  Omar kicked him a last time and started back to his office. He glanced at the number glowing on his digital watch. Any moment now, he would receive the coded message announcing the latest delivery, of gifts from the Soviets.

  The Libyan radioman looked up from his electronics. “The shipment arrives in two minutes.”

  The missiles! More weapons for the Jihad. Weapons, if need be, to start World War III.

  *

  Sprawled flat in the sand, trapped between the lights of the fortress and the lines of lights in the desert, Lyons heard aircraft engines coming from the east. That explains it, he thought. There’s an airstrip out there.

  Gadgets’s voice came through his earphones. “Be cool, Ironman. Those lights aren’t for you. There’s a flight coming in.”

  “You hear the engines?” Lyons whispered into his radio.

  “Oh, man, we’re hearing everything. We got those crazies wired…”

  Blancanales interrupted. “The trucks are moving out, cutting to the east.”

  “That’s a squad to unload the plane,” Gadgets added.

  “This is it,” Lyons told them. “Those trucks are the ticket. Wizard, Pol, all you other guys circle around. We’ll ride right through those gates. Bring my gear. I’m on my way to wherever those trucks park.”

  “Moving!”

  Keeping his belly to the sand, Lyons slithered east. After a hundred feet, he crawled, keeping his back below the swaying brush. Stones tore his knees and hands. Only when the windstorm’s dust screened him from the sentries did he rise to a crouch. Behind him, the searchlights swept the perimeter, their beams brown smears against the night. Ahead, he saw the high beams of the trucks nearing the desert airstrip.

  Wing lights came from the sky. Prop noise roared. A black-painted cargo plane of a type Lyons did not recognize bounced over the sand. When the plane slowed to taxi speed, the airstrip’s lights went dark.

  Lyons jogged through the blackness. The wind whipped grit into his eyes. Blinking it away, wiping his eyes with his hands, he did not break pace. In front of him, working by the plane’s lights, the crew and the terrorist squad secured a ramp from a side door. The plane’s props turned at minimum rpm.

  Machine-gun fire! Lyons dropped flat, keyed his hand radio. “Wizard! Pol! What goes?”

  Heavy slugs tore the night. Muzzle-flashes sparked from the walls of the fortress. Gadgets and Blancanales and their three taxi drivers watched the terrorists spray fire into the desert hundreds of yards away from them. Mohammed listened to the captured walkie-talkie. “They think they see Americans, but…”

  An RPG shrieked, exploded. The autofire from the machine guns and Kalashnikovs died away.

  “Their man’s telling them to hold their fire. He’s trying to find out who saw what.”

  Blancanales laughed, answered Lyons, “They’re shooting at shadows.”

  “Get over here,” Lyons answered. “They’re unloading the plane. Move it!”

  They ran in a wide circle around the perimeter, the weight of their weapons slowing them. Again, machine-gun fire hammered at the desert, this time on the far side of the fortress. The autofire continued, then died away as officers brought their soldiers under control.

  Approaching the parked plane and trucks, Blancanales signaled the group to halt. He keyed his radio. “Ironman, where…”

  A shadow crouched beside them. “Good thing they don’t put sentries out here,” Lyons told
them. “Would’ve got you…”

  “Here is your equipment,” Zaki told him, passing Lyons his battle armor and bandolier. Abdul unslung the heavy Atchisson.

  Lyons slipped into his gear. He pressed closed the Velcro strips, belted the bandolier tight across his body. He slung the Atchisson over his back and pulled the sling tight. He gave the Armburst rocket to Abdul to carry.

  “Pol, Wizard, lighten up. We go in first with the pistols.” Lyons sketched out a plan in whispers. “The plane’s still got its engines going. I figure they’ll take off the second they get it unloaded. I say we get close, wait for the first chance, rush the ragheads in the back of the second truck. If we can do it without the driver of the first truck knowing, that’s the way through the gate. What do you say?”

  “And the taxi boys?” Blancanales asked.

  “Use them for backup. If things come apart, they put down the soldiers in the first truck. If absolutely necessary. That would totally blow it. Then it’d be down to crashing the gate.”

  “What about that plane?” Gadgets asked. “Shame to let it go.”

  “Can’t do it all,” Lyons answered. “Number one priority is to get through that gate.”

  “You’re still talking like a kamikaze,” Blancanales muttered.

  Gadgets laughed quietly. “Hey, Pol, pray for luck.”

  “Let’s go,” Lyons said as he crouchwalked toward the trucks.

  It took a moment to shift loads. Gadgets’s radios and electronics, the rockets, the Kalashnikovs and ammunition went to Abdul, Mohammed and Zaki. Then they trotted after Lyons.

  A hundred yards from the trucks and plane, Lyons went to his hands and knees. With the scrub brush concealing him, he scrambled forward until he heard the voices of the soldiers loading the trucks. He went even flatter to snake through the blowing sand and weeds.

  Raising his head, he saw soldiers passing long crates from man to man down the ramp to the trucks. A soldier paced the airstrip, staring out at the desert. Lyons waited for Gadgets and Blancanales to catch up with him. They continued forward.

  Now they moved even more slowly, carefully, pushing brush and windblown weeds aside with a care previously devoted to trip lines. They came to a ridge of sand and rocks scraped off the desert when the airstrip had been created. Lyons eased his head up.

  Only twenty feet away, the sentry paced. His eyes swept the desert to the south. The distant popping of autofire came from the fortress. The sentry glanced to the west, then called out to the truck. A soldier with a radio shouted an answer. The sentry resumed his pacing.

  At the plane, the soldiers jumped off the cargo ramp. The flight crew pulled the ramp inside the plane. Two soldiers slid the last crate into the back of the second truck. The other soldiers crowded into the first truck. The sentry ran to join the others.

  A hundred feet of open ground separated Able Team from the second truck.

  “We got to chance it,” Lyons hissed. He slipped out his silenced Colt.

  Blancanales’s hand caught his arm. “Wait a second.”

  The plane’s engines roared, the props fanning a vast cloud of dust as the plane taxied away from the trucks. A swirling wall of impenetrable darkness swept over Able Team.

  Breaking from cover, they sprinted for the truck, the dust concealing them, the engine noise covering the sound of their boots.

  Squinting through the prop-storm, Lyons saw the taillights of the truck. He saw the form of the sentry, his Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, climbing into the truck. Lyons stepped up behind him, waited until the man got up. Lyons raised his left hand for help.

  Gripping Lyons’s hand, the terrorist pulled him up. A .45 slug smashed through his face, sprayed his brains over the soldiers sitting on the crates. Lyons leveled the Colt, fired a hollowpoint slug into the chest of each astounded terrorist, one-two-three, shock slamming their bodies back. They fell to the floor, two still moving, blood-choked noises coming from their throats. One struggled to pull a pistol from a belt holster. Lyons shot all three in the head, jammed another magazine into his pistol. Only ten seconds had passed.

  The truck’s diesel engine revved. Lyons turned as a breathless Blancanales and Gadgets climbed in. They reached back, pulled up the three panting taxi drivers and their heavy loads of weapons. Crowding the back of the truck, the men unslung their weapons and checked loads.

  The truck accelerated away.

  “Did it, man!” Gadgets grinned. “You did it!”

  Another form rushed from the swirling dust. The AK-47 in one hand, he grabbed the side of the truck and jumped up to the bed. Blancanales and Lyons shot him simultaneously. He flopped back, dead before he disappeared into the dust that clouded behind the truck.

  “Don’t celebrate yet,” Lyons hissed. “The trip’s just starting.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Gadgets replied. He hinged down the grips of an Armburst missile to arm the weapon. He held it ready.

  Bouncing and swaying as the truck turned onto the desert road and back to the fortress, the six men readied their weapons. Lyons pulled the magazine out of his Atchisson, ejected the round from the chamber, then checked the action for sand. He blew out the receiver, snapped back the actuator several times, finally reloaded the full-auto assault shotgun. He slapped the pockets of his battle armor to count grenades. He slipped box mags of 12-gauge rounds into each thigh pocket of his blacksuit.

  Blancanales, Gadgets and the taxi men all had Uzis. Looping the Uzis’ slings over their backs, they strapped the cocked and locked 9mm submachine guns against their chests. They checked captured AKs, stripped more ammunition from the dead men on the floor of the truck. Mohammed took a roll of heavy tape from one of his pockets and taped banana magazines of 7.62mmx39 ComBloc ammo end to end. Quickly, all of the AKs had sixty-round loads.

  Squatting, Lyons searched through the pockets of the dead men. He found Soviet frag grenades. Shaped like stubby beer cans, the grenades had fuse assemblies protruding from the top. Lyons straightened all the cotter pins, passed some to Blancanales and Gadgets. “When we’re inside, all at once.”

  Brakes squealed as the trucks stopped at the gate. In the back of the second truck, sitting on crates of highly explosive SAM-7 missiles, they waited. Weapons hung by slings from every man — rockets, AK autorifles, Uzis.

  Voices shouted in Arabic. The gates clanked open. As the seconds slipped away, Able Team and their three colleagues waited — silent, alone with their thoughts.

  Blancanales looked to the east and saw a gray smear through the blowing sand. He crossed himself.

  Lurching into motion again, the truck entered the fortress.

  18

  As the steel gates creaked closed, autofire shattered the quiet. Voices shouted in Arabic. The reflexes of the six men in the back of the truck threw them into action. The taxi drivers hit the floor, Gadgets and Blancanales jolted for the tailgate. Lyons waved them back. They realized no slugs had hit the truck. The gunners on the walls were not directing the fire at the commandos inside the fortress. Lyons looked up and saw terrorists on the walls firing out at the desert’s night shadows and wisps of blowing sand. An officer scanned the perimeter with an infrared viewer.

  “This is it,” Lyons told the others. He pointed to the 12.7mm heavy machine guns. “Wizard, Mo-man. Rockets.”

  Lyons jerked the safety pin from the first Soviet fragmentation grenade. He bounced it off the east wall, pulled another pin, threw that grenade to the west as Blancanales and Zaki did the same.

  Then the Armburst rockets shriekroared, their counter-mass blowing free in a flurry of plastic chips. The machine-gun positions with their stacks of cartridge boxes and three-man crews disappeared in sprays of flame before the direction of the rockets was apparent. Grenade explosions swept the wall top, left only blood and broken stone. Lyons leaped from the tailgate. Throwing down the spent rocket tubes, Gadgets and Mohammed followed him. Blancanales, Zaki and Abdul shouldered launchers, fired rockets from the truck at the terrori
st soldiers crowding the south wall of the fortress. Frenzied autofire swept the desert in search of the attackers.

  Fanning out from the truck, Lyons, Gadgets and Mohammed saw a central courtyard jammed with vehicles. Headlights and strings of electric bulbs lighted the courtyard.

  Clouds of dust and smoke descended from the blasted walls and enveloped the intruders, concealing them as the source of an attack that could only be coming from where it was predicted to come from — out in the desert. Soldiers ran everywhere — between the trucks, along the walls, from the doorways of the rooms lining the courtyard. None fired at the intruders in their midst. Some ran right past Lyons and Gadgets.

  Mohammed raised his AK. Lyons motioned him to hold his fire. Lyons let his Atchisson hang on its sling and slipped out his silenced Colt. The others jumped from the truck. Blancanales held the last Armburst, Abdul a loaded RPG-7 launcher and a bandolier of rockets.

  Lyons called out to them, “Up the stairs! To the wall!”

  Gunmen directed continuous autofire at imaginary Americans attacking from the desert. Terrorists ran to the south wall, searched through the smoking debris. Running up the stone steps, Lyons saw a young African stare at his face.

  Recruited in a village in Angola by Cuban cadres, Soyo Neta had marched in the guerrilla bands raiding Namibian farms, slaughtered villagers while serving in the Expeditionary Forces of Libya, then worked as a sniper in Beirut, earning seventy-five American dollars a day murdering Christians who strayed into his field of fire. For years, Cubans, Libyans, Palestinians, East German instructors and officers had preached the destruction of the United States. Now he faced an American. Fear twisting his gut, bile rising in his throat, the African mercenary lifted his AK.

  A .45 slug slammed through his chest, destroying his heart and left lung. He staggered back, his vision going dark, all the slogans and chants and prayers of his Soviet/Muslim indoctrination in terror spinning through his panicked mind. His lips formed a last word, but his dead lungs had no breath as he fell into the void.