by Dick Stivers
"Do it! Hit them!"
Blancanales sighted on a flashing muzzle. Triggering single shots, he put the first grenade into the orchard wall, the next one over the top. Then he walked the blasts of high explosive and white phosphorous along the wall, hitting the top, the trees behind and a gateway.
Visible in the gray light of burning phosphorous was a person with a rocket launcher. Blancanales sighted and held back the trigger. As the backblast flashed, the night exploded around the rocketman.
Then the rocket hit the trailer.
As the transport slammed through the roadside ditch, Lyons kept the Browning pointed at the autofire. Stone and flesh disintegrated where the .50-caliber slugs hit, rifles firing wild, a dying man staggering, other forms running. Behind Lyons, the Shias fired their PKM machine guns at the ambushers.
The driver steered the awkward troop transport through a wide circle and gunned the engine as he regained the asphalt. Lyons saw the Rover already returning to the killzone where the overturned truck and semitrailer lay in the road. Holding down the firing button of the Browning, Lyons provided cover for Powell by raking the length of the orchard wall.
Using the maneuverability of the Land Rover, the Shia driver swerved under the line of .50-caliber tracers.
Powell heard a sound like jet engines as the .50-caliber slugs passed an arm's reach above his head. He reflexively dropped to a crouch.
"Crazy Shia! Cool it — I'm no martyr man!"
The driver whipped through an orchard gate and sped along the other side of the wall sheltering the fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood. Powell fired straight ahead as the Rover caught the line of militiamen and Syrian deserters in its headlights.
The fanatics spun from the wall and died as they raised their Kalashnikovs, Powell using the full-auto grenade launcher to its maximum lethal effect.
Flashing through clouds of choking acetate smoke and the fumes of phosphorous, Powell rode the bucking Land Rover like a stand-up rodeo star. He never released the grips of the MK-19. The Rover hit wounded and dead militiamen, the small vehicle going airborne, crashing back. A slug zipped past Powell as the Rover passed the last ambusher.
From the transport, Lyons watched Powell's wild counterattack and held his fire. Now no rifle fire came from the wall or the orchard. The strange gray light of phosphorous illuminated the length of the wall. Burning wounded screamed and pleaded.
Flames rose from the trailer. On its side, it had been hit twice, one blast tearing off the back wheels, the other scattering boxes of contraband everywhere.
A man ran from the wrecked diesel truck and fired into a ditch. The headlights of the troop transport revealed one of the Shia drivers finishing off a Syrian deserter. Another Shia waved from the shelter of the overturned cab.
Lyons did not see his partners.
As the transport braked to a stop, Lyons leaped off the tailgate. He looked for the trapdoor of the mobile bunker. He found the open rectangle. Below the trapdoor, he saw an MK-19 grenade launcher without the tripod.
"Wizard! Politician!"
"You okay?" Blancanales called.
"Yeah! What about you?"
"AMU shook up," Gadgets jived. "Get that truck backed up here. We got luggage to offload. Where's that crazy Commie bitch? Tell me she's dead."
"I don't have her!" Lyons shouted back. "She was in there."
"She was. El Senor Politico played the gentleman and boosted her out. You see her?"
"No!" Lyons ran to Hussein and told him to back up the transport. As the others transferred gear from the wrecked trailer, Lyons searched the area for Desmarais.
Beyond the orchard wall, the Rover cruised, still searching for ambushers. All firing had stopped. But Lyons moved cautiously, knowing any number of riflemen could still be watching.
He rushed to the blast-twisted trailer. Shielded by the wheels and open doors, he searched for Desmarais.
He waved a flashlight over the wheels. Not there. Edging around the door, he checked in the spilled boxes of the contraband. The rocket had hit the rear of the trailer, the blast shredding the contraband and blowing out the cargo doors, which had twisted on their hinges. Boxes of toothpaste and breakfast cereal littered the road.
But no Desmarais.
Inside the trailer, a fire had ravaged everything. She could not hide there. He glanced at the roof and saw only the gaping hole where the armor-smashing warhead had torn the aluminum like paper. Flames and smoke poured from the ragged hole.
Sitting on a box, his back to the trailer to minimize his exposure, Lyons swept the road with the light. The sliding trailer had scraped much of the asphalt clean of snow and ice. But near the shoulder, Lyons saw shoe prints, a woman's size. The trail disappeared into the gray distance.
In those street shoes, with only her coat for shelter from the storm, Desmarais would not live long. If she did not freeze to death, she faced a long walk through a war. A young, attractive foreign woman walking among thousands of desperate soldiers, at the mercy of Syrians and Libyans and Palestinians and Soviets — who could say what her chances were?
The others heard Lyons laughing as he returned.
"What's so funny?" Gadgets asked.
"She escaped."
* * *
Running through the falling snow, she heard the distant firing stop. She hoped the Arab nationalist force had annihilated the Americans and their mercenaries, but she could not put her freedom at risk. She continued running, glancing back every few seconds.
The Puerto Rican one was the smooth-talking death-squad goon who fought for the fascist monsters holding his island nation in peonage. Whatever his name was, the Puerto Rican one had pushed her through the trapdoor, and afterward, she had crawled to a ditch, lain in the snow and watched the fight. As the Americans fired grenades, desperate to forestall their inevitable defeat, she had crawled out of the cross fire.
Then a rocket had streaked over her to deliver a second devastating blast to the Americans. She paused in her crawl, waiting for more fire from the goons in the trailer. But no fire came. Evidently the rocket had killed them.
Hundreds of meters away, the other truck and the Land Rover turned. As they fired, she laughed over the deaths of the two goons in the trailer. She climbed from the ditch and ran on the road, leaving the dead Americans far behind.
But she still had the other two Americans — Powell and that other goon, the blond Nazi — to fear. If they caught her, she could expect only death.
She ran through a pink semidarkness. Ahead of her, red light glowed from the overhanging clouds. She glanced at her watch and saw that four hours remained until morning. The false dawn cast a diffuse pink light on the swirling snow, the glistening road, the forlorn orchards. The pink light allowed her to maintain an easy run.
The highway met a side road. Studying the snow and ice on the asphalt, she saw the recent tire tracks of several vehicles. The last tires to turn here had been double truck tires like those of a cargo trailer. She remembered the truck slowing to turn.
Seeing no lights on the other road, she continued along the highway. She watched for farmhouses or villages. Seeing one house, she approached the door only to see the broken windows and the soot marks. The house had been burned; only the stone walls remained. She continued toward the distant fires.
Rows of headlights appeared: a convoy. She ran to the center of the road and waved. The first pair of lights veered to the side. A covered scout car stopped beside her.
As the convoy continued, Syrian soldiers pointed Kalashnikov rifles at her. She put up her hands and repeated "Journalist" in Arabic and French as they searched her for weapons. They found only her camera. The officer in charge questioned her.
"What are you doing here? Show me your papers."
"Here — documents issued by your government. My name is Anne Desmarais. I am a journalist from Canada. I..."
"Anne Desmarais!" The officer reached into the car for a radio microphone. He spoke fluidly in what Desm
arais recognized as Russian.
"Are you looking for me?"
"Not us. Them..." The officer nodded toward the taillights of the convoy.
One of the trucks slowed, then wheeled through a wide turn.
"Who are they?"
The Syrian did not answer.
As the truck braked to a stop, the cab door flew open and Zhgenti stepped out. He held his Uzi.
"My wandering Canadian," he said in his Russian-accented French. He raised the Uzi submachine gun. "How wonderful to see you again. Step away from the officer, please."
"No! I found them! I found them! The Americans. I thought you were all dead. I saw the van burning, but I found the Americans. Don't shoot!"
"Are you lying? It would be better for you to die quickly now than to anger me again."
"No! They are there." She pointed. "I found them, but they captured me. Then someone ambushed them and I escaped and I stopped this car to report the Americans. Two of them may be dead. They are wearing Syrian and Soviet uniforms and using Syrian cars and trucks."
"Soviet uniforms?" Zhgenti set the Uzi's safety. Grabbing Desmarais's arm, he dragged her to the cab of the truck. "We will see..."
"Who are these Syrians?" she asked as they accelerated away.
"It is unimportant. They are convenient. They also hate Americans. Did you... have fun with the Americans?"
"No!"
Zhgenti leered. "Tell me the truth. You persuaded them to let you go, yes?"
The overturned and burning trailer appeared. "No! There! See? There was an ambush. That's how I escaped."
After an inspection of the wrecked truck and trailer, Zhgenti returned to Desmarais. "You have saved your life. Now we must pursue the Americans. What did they tell you? Where are they going?"
She remembered what the Shia militiaman had told her. "Damascus. This way, this road was only a detour, because of fighting somewhere else."
Nodding, Zhgenti studied a map. "Damascus... I do not believe their goal is Damascus. There must be somewhere else they intend..."
"They may be searching for a group of Iranians who are making rockets. Somewhere in the Bekaa, Iranian Revolutionary Guards are making rockets to attack America. Perhaps the place is on the road to Damascus. Look at your map. If they were going anywhere else, they would have gone north or south on these other highways. But they did not."
"Oh, yes... and there is only one road to Damascus. Good. I will have the Syrians radio ahead for their soldiers to watch for these Americans in Soviet uniforms. The roadblocks will stop them. There is no doubt we will find them."
The convoy of Syrian troop transports moved through the night, pursuing Able Team.
13
"High tech this ain't," Gadgets muttered as he pounded nails with a wrench, snow and a 100 KPH wind numbing his hands.
In the back of the troop transport, Gadgets nailed the tripod of an MK-19 full-auto grenade launcher to the plank deck of the truck. Americans and Shia militiamen crowded the back of the transport. Stacked boxes and cases of ammunition stood against the slatted sides.
The American and Shia crew had emptied the gear and ammunition from the wrecked trailer. The Browning .50-caliber machine gun had been damaged so they had left it in the trailer to burn. But they had salvaged the MK-19 and its tripod.
They had also salvaged contraband. Placed on top of the ammunition cases, the boxes of designer jeans and toothpaste and cheap electronics concealed the U.S. Army codes stenciled on the green ammunition cases.
As the two Syrian army vehicles continued east, the American electronics specialist secured the MK-19 tripod. He pounded the nails into the planks, then bent them over the feet of the tripod. To test his work, he kicked the tripod. Two legs held, but one broke free.
"Where's my power drill? Where's my electric wrench?" Gadgets clutched at the collar of his Soviet coat." Where's my electric blanket?"
"Calm down, Wizard," Blancanales told him. Watching the desolate winter landscape of fields and rocky foothills, he held his M-16/M-203 ready, the ripple grip of the grenade launcher braced on the top side slat. "All we got to do is hit those Iranians, and we're on our way back."
"Got to find them, got to study them, then we hit them, then we get to split this winter wonderland."
"Weren't we in the Caribbean just a few days ago, riding the surf?"
"Oh, yeah, and now it's a skiing adventure. Give me that box — that one."
"The jeans?"
"Yeah, that one."
Blancanales watched as his partner hacked open the box with a K-bar knife, then cut a pair of jeans into strips.
Gadgets used the strips to lash the legs of the tripod to the nails. Then he jerked the heavy MK-19 across the truck and mounted it on the tripod. The full-auto grenade launcher now pointed behind the truck. Gadgets sat behind it and swiveled it, sighting on the storm clouds, then on a distant hilltop.
He fired a single grenade. After a few seconds, they saw a pinpoint flash.
"Save the ammunition, Wizard," Lyons called from his post near the Browning. Wrapped in blankets, he sat between boxes. Only his eyes showed between his Soviet fur hat and scarf. "I think we'll need it."
"I pronounce this weapon in working order. Anyone chases us, they got very serious problems. No doubt about it."
Blancanales pointed ahead. "Another traffic jam."
Gadgets and Lyons stood and looked. A few kilometers ahead, a long line of taillights curved through the darkness. The diffused glare of headlights illuminated a pass through the foothills.
Beyond the pass, the clouds flashed with the reflected light of high explosive. Soviet artillery rockets streaked through the air, arching in several directions as forces exchanged barrages.
The Rover point car slowed and their hand-radios buzzed.
"We're not going that way," Powell told them.
"Second the motion," Gadgets answered.
"There's a road that might lead to the village," Powell told them. "But it'll be rough. Coming up."
After another kilometer, the Rover led the troop transport off the highway. They lurched and swayed along a dirt track of frozen ruts. Holes and jutting rocks slammed the transport from side to side. The dirt road led higher into the foothills.
They came to the ridge. Below them stretched a panorama of war.
Shellfire lit the hills. Streaking rockets splashed fire on targets. Intermittently, tracers streaked down from jet aircraft that remained unseen in the night sky.
A sound like prolonged distant thunder came to them.
"Somebody tell me that I don't have to go down there," Gadgets wished out loud.
"Not only are you going down there," Powell said as he high-stepped through the snow, "but you're walking down there. We can't risk headlights. So one of us walks ahead with a flashlight."
* * *
Zhgenti cursed in Russian as he and Desmarais returned to the convoy of Syrian troop transports. They had inspected all the vehicles in the long line of waiting trucks and tanks and troop transports. Desmarais had not seen the Americans.
Nor had the Americans in Soviet uniforms attempted to pass the roadblock. Desmarais had described them and their two remaining vehicles in detail. The Syrian officers repeated that they had not allowed the Americans to pass.
By long-distance radio, Zhgenti then spoke with a KGB superior in the Soviet embassy. The officer noted the information and assured Zhgenti that the Syrians would dispatch helicopters to search for the two vehicles. But in the confusion and wreckage of the insurrection...
"Excuses!" Zhgenti kicked rocks. "They send me to Beirut to kill Americans and the Americans are already gone. I come into this mishmash to kill Americans, and the Americans hide in Soviet uniforms. I get their descriptions and have the Syrians block the roads and the Americans disappear. I call for assistance and they tell me it will be difficult. Difficult! Of course it is difficult; the Americans are paid to make it difficult; they use all their wits to make it difficult!"
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"If you cannot find them in Lebanon," Desmarais suggested, "perhaps you could wait for them in Damascus."
"I don't believe they will go there. Security is too tight. They must pass too many document checks. To leave Lebanon, they will go out through Beirut."
"But the Shia said Damascus."
"So? You should know that lies are cheap."
"But he had no reason to lie. And my question surprised him. Sometimes people tell the truth when surprised."
"Do you?"
"The Americans know the Syrians and the Iranians worked together on this. Perhaps they want to attack the Iranians. It would be possible to station men outside the Iranian embassy, would it not?"
"Yes, possible. But the Americans will not go there!"
"It is possible. And where else will you look? Out there?" Desmarais swept the night with an arm. "They could be anywhere. Even with helicopters, how could you find them? I tell you, those fascist goons calculate what is impossible and then do it. I say continue the search, post men in Beirut to watch, but also post men in Damascus. The Americans will do what you do not expect, that is certain."
"True." Zhgenti waved away clouds of diesel smoke as they passed an idling truck. "Canadian, I am glad I let you live. You are sometimes useful. But do not try my patience again."
* * *
Artillery shells screamed down, high explosives momentarily lighting the snow-covered hills.
But without effect. The shells struck nothing, but broke rocks and pitted the snow. Twice Powell had called for halts. With the engines off, no one speaking or moving, they had listened for other forces in the area. They had heard nothing — no clanking tanks, no trucks, no rifles — only the continuing explosions of the untargeted artillery fire.
"Think they know we're out here," Gadgets wondered, "but they just don't know where?"