by Dick Stivers
"An ambush is not my purpose. I want your story, not your death."
"But wouldn't that be a story?"
"Why would your death be a story? You are nothing."
Powell looked at the young woman and laughed. "Out. You're coming with me. What happens to me, happens to you."
Taking his short Galil autorifle from the floor, he set it on the roof. He pulled off his coat, then buckled on a bandolier of ammunition and grenades. Now he looked no different than the Shia soldiers who had checked his pass at the roadblock. Desmarais raised her camera to photograph him.
"No!" He blocked the lens with his hands. He grabbed her sleeve and dragged her toward the tenement.
"But why not?" she protested.
"Don't you know American law? If an American citizen carries a rifle in a foreign army, he could lose his citizenship."
"But you are already breaking the law. You are a deserter from the Marines."
"Correction. I am AWOL. But that's only the brig. That's only a dishonorable discharge. If I get popped under the Neutrality Law, I can't go home."
"But still you serve with the militia. Why? What is the true reason?"
"Because..." Powell began as he watched every doorway. He stumbled over broken asphalt as his eyes looked everywhere — the windows, the balconies, the rooflines. Despite the cold, he felt the pistol grip of his Galil become slimy with his sweat. "Because I like the guys I'm with. They talk different, they act different, they eat different food, their Sunday is on Saturday, but you know, they're just like my people back home. Don't matter what the facts are, what's important is what it says in the Bible. 'Cept for them, it's the Koran."
"Interesting. I have never heard an American say anything like that. If you will give back my recorder, perhaps I'll interview you. There, that is the man's door."
"You don't want an interview with me, I'm nothing."
Powell glanced into a delivery van parked at the curb. He saw no one inside. He let the woman step into the stairwell first. Then he snapped a glance inside. Pausing on the stairs, she looked back at him.
"This is not a trap."
"We'll find out. Go on up to his door. Take a look."
She ran up the stairs. Powell stood in the doorway watching the street, watching her, listening. A musty smell, combined with the aroma of cooking food came to him. He heard her knock on a door and then call out in French.
"Je suis ici, Oshakkar. Avec I'autre Ame'ricain!" No answer. She called out again. "Oshakkar!"
A door squeaked. Boots rushed across concrete. Even as the woman screamed, Powell took two strides across the sidewalk and went low behind the bumper of the parked delivery van. He scanned the street, saw no one.
He heard men rushing down the stairs. In a squat, Powell pivoted and pointed his Galil at the doorway and the delivery van's back door flew open. He tried to block the door, felt the sheet-steel corner of the door gouge his left hand, then the door smashed into the side of his head and he went down.
Powell saw a blur of motion above him and boots jumped on his chest. He tried to point the short Galil, but a boot kicked it as he pulled the trigger, spraying a wild burst of high-velocity 5.56mm slugs whining off stones as the boot kicked again and other hands grabbed the rifle. Powell pulled the trigger again, emptying the 30-round magazine, then lashed out with the rifle, felt it hit. He released it and rolled away, coming up with his Colt Government Model.
Flat on his back in the street, he snap fired .45 ACP hardball into rushing forms, saw men go down. An AK muzzle flashed. ComBloc slugs tearing past his head, he fired, and a full-auto burst went wild, the muzzle sweeping in a circle as the gunner spun, slugs hammering steel, punching through other men. Powell scrambled for his own rifle.
Steel slammed the back of his head.
8
As the taxi coasted around the corner, bursts of autofire tore the street's quiet. Lyons saw passersby and vendors rushing for cover. Then he saw Powell, bearded, long-haired, roll backward on the asphalt. One militiaman kicked at the rifle in the ex-Marine's hands while another militiaman tried to twist the rifle away.
Lyons snatched his Konzak assault shotgun from the floor. Jerking back the cocking handle, he slid out the telescoping stock.
The taxi screeched to a stop, Pierre standing on the brakes, then he jammed the shift into reverse. The tires screamed and smoked as the cab hurtled backward.
"What are you doing?"
"Your work is done!" Pierre answered as he whipped the taxi through a circle and shifted again. "Those are Iranian Revolutionary Guards! They will kill him."
"Stop!" Lyons shouted, putting the 14-inch 'Urban Environment' barrel to the taxi driver's head. "Go back! He's an American. No one's..."
Staring into the 12-gauge muzzle of the Konzak, not watching the street, Pierre accelerated into a light pole. Steel screamed as the pole folded. The taxi went up the inclined pole, then fell as the pole broke. Spitting blood, Pierre pushed aside the muzzle of the Konzak autoshotgun and tried to aim a pistol at Lyons.
Blancanales threw an arm around the Phalangist's neck and jerked him back. Lyons grabbed the pistol. As Pierre clawed at the arm choking him, Lyons took two plastic loops from the pocket of his sports coat — disposable riot cuffs intended for Powell — and tried to cinch the taxi driver's hands together. Pierre clawed at Lyons's eyes. Lyons drove a fist into his gut. Pierre convulsed and in seconds, Lyons had the driver's hands linked together. Then he secured the man's hands to the steering wheel with the second riot cuff. Lyons jerked the keys from the ignition and ran from the taxi.
Sprinting past the corner and across the street, Lyons took cover in a fruit seller's doorway. He looked diagonally across the street to see Powell, on his hands and knees crabbing for his rifle. A militiaman in the uniform of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard brought down the steel butt of a folding-stock Kalashnikov on the back of the American's head.
Selective-fire Konzak gripped in his hands, Lyons charged the scene. Two Iranian militiamen lifted Powell. The ex-Marine slashed at their hands with a knife and they dropped him again. As the third Iranian swung his Kalashnikov like a club, trying to beat the struggling American into submission, a scream of rage turned them to face their doom.
"Die!" Lyons shouted, and he fired a wild scythe of full-auto 12-gauge, a storm of double O and Number Two steel rippilig through the three standing
Iranian militiamen, arms flailing backward, bones shattering, steel balls punching through ribs and lungs and hearts, skulls disintegrating in a splash of blood and brains and tissue; the Iranians were corpses before impact threw them back.
Lyons's neoprene soles slipped in gore and he went down, sliding into the curb feet first, his momentum throwing him over. He smashed into the stone wall of the tenement with his shoulder, and his arm exploded with pain.
An Iranian with a pistol stepped from the tenement doorway. Lyons rolled onto his back and tried to raise his Konzak, but it fell from his numbed hand. Grabbing for his autoshotgun with his left hand, Lyons looked up at the bearded, sneering militiaman in the uniform of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Iranian cocked the hammer of his pistol with his thumb and aimed between Lyons's eyes. In English, he pronounced a death sentence, "I send you back to the anus of Satan, American..."
With his left hand, Lyons pointed the Konzak and fired. The last shell in the autoshotgun tore away the Iranian's right leg at the knee, spinning him, the shot from the revolver going wild. Lyons, right arm numb and hanging dead at his side, dropped the Konzak from his left hand. He snatched the Colt Python from the hideaway holster at the small of his back and brought down the heavy revolver on the Iranian's head as he fell to the sidewalk. The Python's four-inch barrel came down again and again on the whining Iranian's face and skull until the broken-mouthed and bleeding man went slack.
"Powell!" Lyons called out. He pointed the pistol around him, looking for targets. Wounded and dying militiamen thrashed on the sidewalk. But no one stood. "Powell!
I'm on your side! Which side are you on?"
The ex-Marine had managed to find his Galil SAR. Dazed and smeared with blood, he struggled to change the magazine. He leaned back against the bumper of the van.
"Who are you? Are you... hey... specialist! Long time no see, thanks for stopping by."
"We got to talk to you. What exactly are you doing here?"
"Well, you know. Remember the last time we talked?" Powell dropped out the magazine of his Colt autopistol and slapped in another. "You said I should take a street-warfare class? Well, here I am. Taking graduate studies. But what are you doing here?"
"Agency sent us here to bring you back, dead or alive. We didn't know who you were. Now I don't know what to do. Gotta talk to you about what's going on."
Powell staggered to his feet. He looked into the van. This time he swung open the rear doors and surveyed the inside of the van, his Galil pointed, the safety off and his finger on the trigger.
On the sidewalk, Lyons rose to a crouch. He moved his right arm. Nothing broken or dislocated. He felt sensation returning. He went to the doorway of the tenement and listened. He heard only the ringing of his ears.
"Ironman!" Blancanales shouted as he ran up. The Politician carried an AK and wore a bandolier of ComBloc mags across his sports coat. He tossed Lyons a black nylon bandolier, loaded with box magazines of 12-gauge shells. "Where's Powell?"
"Right here, secret agent," Powell replied. "Where's the other guy, the Wizard?"
"Over on the East side," Blancanales told him. He went to the doorway and peered in, then snapped his head back. He dropped down to one knee, then looked in again.
Powell called in. "Hey, mademoiselle? You there?" No one answered. "I had this reporter woman with me. She went up and knocked on this Oshakkar guy's door and then it all went very crazy."
On the sidewalk, the Iranian groaned and tried to move. Blancanales dashed across the doorway and examined the Iranian's destroyed leg. The ex-Green Beret medic pulled the belt from the pants of a corpse and applied a tourniquet above the blood-spurting tangle of flesh and cartilage and shattered bone. "He'll lose his leg, but he'll live."
"For a while." Lyons clenched and opened his fist. He swung his arm in circles, grimacing against the pain. Finally, his right hand functioning again, he buckled on the bandolier and reloaded his Konzak. "Let's go find that girl."
Powell scanned the street. People peered at the Americans from the cover of their doorways and shuttered windows. "She's either dead or gone, but let's go see. We gotta do this quick. I don't know which militia will show up to check out this shoot-out."
One at a time they dodged through the doorway.
No autofire came. With Lyons and Blancanales covering him, Powell sprinted to the top of the stairs, then they followed. The door to one room stood open. The door had been kicked open.
Inside, an elderly Muslim man in pajamas lay on the floor, a vast pool of blood around his slashed throat.
"I think they used this apartment to wait in," Powell told the others. "That apartment is Oshakkar's." He pointed to another door.
Blancanales checked the door for obvious booby traps. Then the others stood back while he kicked it open.
No one had remained in the one-room apartment. They saw only old furniture and murals. The murals were spread over all four walls, portraying scenes of idealized African men and women with Kalashnikov rifles standing triumphant on fields of dead pigs bleeding from thousands of bullet holes. The pigs had white skin and blue eyes. Some pigs wore the camouflage uniforms of the army, others the blue uniforms of police. Spray-painted slogans declared Victory To New Africa! The Nation Of Black Islam!
Blancanales, careful for booby traps, checked a closet and the drawers of a cabinet. He found only a dog-eared and stained magazine behind the cabinet. Every page had full-color photos of white women in scenes of torture and rape.
"Nothing. Except this." Blancanales dropped the magazine and wiped off his hand.
"Then where's the woman?" Lyons asked.
Powell laughed. "That imitation-French bitch reporter? Forget her. She came for a story and she found it. We got places to go, people to see."
On the sidewalk again, Lyons and Blancanales grabbed the moaning Iranian and dragged him toward the taxi. They heard a shot. Looking around the corner, they saw two teenage militiamen in jeans and leather coats, Kalashnikovs slung over their backs, unloading cameras and electronics from the taxi.
The riot cuffs still secured Pierre's dead hands to the steering wheel. Blood and brains had sprayed the windshield. The militia punks had put a bullet through the head of the handcuffed driver before looting Able Team's equipment.
Blancanales aimed his AK and fired, dropping both punks with ComBloc 7.62mm slugs through their brains. "We need another car."
Powell pointed at the van. "It has the keys in the ignition. Load up and follow me."
"Where?" Lyons asked.
"To my friends."
* * *
Posters of the Imam Moussa Sadr stared down from the walls. Shia militiamen — some in the mismatched fatigues of the irregulars, others in the OD uniforms of the Lebanese army — watched the Americans enter. They greeted Powell and stared at Lyons and Blancanales. Lyons received special attention. Clotted blood and filth stained his tailored sports coat and slacks. All the militiamen noted the unusual assault weapon the blond, blue-eyed American carried.
"Wait here," Powell told Lyons and Blancanales. "I'll talk to my friend."
The Marine continued into another office where clerks typed at desks. Another clerk cranked a mimeograph machine. Powell went to a secretary and explained his visit.
Lyons grinned to all the militiamen. He turned to Blancanales and said quietly, "Daniel in the lions' den. Or maybe it's Lyons in the..."
A middle-aged, scarred militiaman interrupted with a question in broken, accented English. "You kill... massacre Revolutionary Guards?"
"Here goes..." Then Lyons answered in distinct, short phrases. "Did not kill all. One lives."
The militiaman nodded, laughed. He told others what the American had said. A young man spoke quickly to the older man. The young man pointed to the Americans, then outside. The older man asked another question. "Why not kill all?"
"Information. Interrogate. Now others question him."
"Yes, question, then kill. You Marine?"
"Only soldiers," Blancanales answered.
"But Americans, yes? Good. You kill Revolutionary Guard. We kill Guard. We kill Syrians, Russians, PLO."
"But why do you kill them?" Blancanales asked.
"Marines friends. Revolutionary Guard kill Marines. We kill Revolutionary Guards."
Lyons nodded. "That's straightforward. Can't argue with that logic. In fact, I nominate that man for United States secretary of state."
Powell had returned. The scarred fighter pointed to Lyons and questioned Powell in Arabic. Powell answered and the man jumped up and grabbed Lyons. Before Lyons reacted, the man embraced
Lyons and then slapped him on the back. All the others in the room laughed and cheered. Powell pulled the two Americans toward the inner office.
"What did you say?" Lyons asked, amazed.
"It's what you said, nominating Sergeant Azghar for secretary of state. All that old dude talks about is how the United States doesn't know its way around. How the U.S. should get smart. You most definitely made his day. Fact is, Azghar's got it right. The secretary of state don't know shit about Lebanon, and he ain't willing to learn."
Sayed Ahamed greeted them with embraces and handshakes. Today he wore a tailored suit and gold rings. Pomade glistened on his wavy hair. A French cigarette streamed smoke into the air as he gestured.
"Friends of my friend! He told me of his good fortune. Your clothes! I hope they are not ruined."
"I'm sorry, I didn't have time to change."
"To come here? Do not think you must be formal. I am dressed like this because of the negotiations. If I go in u
niform, they think I'm a warlord. I must look like one of the despicable politicians to talk peace."
Both Blancanales and Lyons noticed the fatigues and web gear hanging on a coatrack. A Kalashnikov leaned against the wall.
"But you did not come here to listen to my complaints..." Ahamed lowered his voice. "The Iranians know Powell is my friend. They sent a message about the woman. They want him, not her. If he goes alone and unarmed, they'll let her go, they say."
Lyons looked at Powell. "You'll never come back. And neither will she."
"She has nothing to do with it. I need information, and she can lead me to a man who's got it."
"We'll question that prisoner, hear what he knows."
"Already happening," Powell told them. "They'll bring the information up real quick."
"We'll question him ourselves."
"No you won't, specialist. You may be a tough guy, but you just don't want to be involved in what's happening to that Iranian. Take my word for it. Ahamed's men do not like those Revolutionary Guards. Especially Iranians in partnership with Libyans."
"Libyans?" Blancanales asked.
Powell briefed them on the suspected plot between the Libyans and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. "And Clayton got killed checking out that conspiracy. If I don't break it, I'm out of work. And the hit happens. Don't know who'll do it, don't know when or where, but that Libyan was looking at the President when he said, 'The sword rises.' "
"The President?" Lyons asked.
"Of the U.S. of A." Powell emphasized.
Powell reacted to the sound of footsteps outside and swung the door open as a militiaman raised his hand to knock. The militiaman relayed a report. Both Ahamed and Powell questioned the militiaman in Arabic.
Powell considered the information, nodding. "Good deal, we got our ticket. They won't know what hit them."
"What about the woman?" Blancanales asked. "Was the offer to trade her sincere? Will she still be alive?"