by Dick Stivers
"The Iranian had information on that Oshakkar. He's an American black-nationalist psycho working with the Iranians. Now I don't need her at all."
"Dead reporters make for bad press," Blancanales cautioned. "Ask your man to question the Iranian about what they intend to do with the woman. Where she will be. Maybe we can get her out somehow."
"Too late, boy scout. No good deed. That Iranian went to paradise. You want in on this? You two and me and my friends against Libyans and Iranians and Black Muslims who want to murder the President of the United States?"
Lyons and Blancanales nodded, without a word canceling their assignment and accepting a new mission.
9
"Things have changed..."
"What?"
His back to the freezing wind, Lyons squatted on the rooftop of a West Beirut tenement with a view of the city and mountains to the east. He spoke with Gadgets Schwarz, who still waited on the roof of the apartment house where Powell lived in East Beirut, kilometers away. The absence of concrete and steel blocking the signals enhanced the transmitting and receiving range of the hand radio.
"We're in on a..." Lyons caught himself. Despite the encoding circuits of the hand radio, he decided not to risk briefing his partner. The Agency had access to the same equipment Able Team used. If the Agency directors learned that Able Team — after talking with the renegade agent they had been sent to Beirut to kidnap or execute — had decided to disregard instructions and join the renegade in an unauthorized counter-terrorist operation, Able Team might become three men without a country, outlaws.
"We're in on something interesting, that's all I can say."
"So what does that mean?" Gadgets demanded, his voice angry. "I'm up here getting frostbite while you're doing interesting things around town. What's going on?"
"Stay there. Continue monitoring. Watch for unusual..."
"You giving me orders, Ironman? This team don't work like that."
"I can't tell you what's going on, Wizard. I can't. When we get back, I'll give you the news."
"What's happened? What's going on?"
"Things have changed. Things aren't like what we were told. Remember the shoot-out in the desert with the vatos, the Twenty-third Street gang? We had that Texan who swore by .45 Colts?"
"A trip down memory lane..." Gadgets considered the information. "Oh, yeah! He was cool, but wasn't his name..."
"Yeah, it was and still is."
"That wasn't in the briefing."
"No, it wasn't. Another thing that wasn't in the briefing. That Texan's been specializing in street warfare lately, and there is no chance — repeat, zero chance — that we would have taken him alive. So be cool..." Lyons used the Wizard's jive "...and let me slide until I can brief you."
"Okay, okay. Cool it is. You don't know how cool, like I'm freezing."
"We'll get it done and get back to you. Later."
Lyons trotted down eight flights of stairs to a devastated street, where Blancanales and Powell and a platoon of Shias waited. He started for Powell's Mercedes. "Ready to go," he said.
"We're walking from here," Powell said as he moved from the side of the Mercedes, crossed the sidewalk and threw open the door to a shuttered shop. The Shias went first, moving quickly through the midday darkness along a familiar path. Powell waved a flashlight for Blancanales and Lyons as he spoke.
"The Iranians can't expect me to trade myself for the girl. But they know I'll show, seeing how they gave me their address. So they'll have ambushes set. Problem is, they're operating in Shia territory. And we know the sector better than they do. So they're going to die."
"You got another way in?" Lyons asked.
"That's it, specialist. No way I'm going through any front doors again today. That scene with the Revolutionary Guards was me at my most stupid. I thought that phony Frenchy knew what was going on and she took me straight into the trap. Ain't going to happen again."
The line of men moved through fire-gutted storerooms. Doorways had been blasted through the concrete walls to create a corridor leading through the buildings. Sometimes they walked through total darkness, sometimes through gray light filtering through artillery-shattered ceilings and walls. Rats skittered in darkness around them.
"Why do you call that reporter a phony Frenchwoman?" Blancanales asked. "Do you think she's traveling with a false passport?"
"Call her phony because she's got a Canadian passport and she calls herself French. That's about as phony as they come."
"A Quebecois?"
"That's it. Loser imitation French. Same as the Maronites here. The Maronites think they're French. They don't speak Arabic. Always waiting for foreigners to come to their rescue, always willing to let foreigners die for their traditions, their privileges, their bigotry. The Crusaders, the Turks, the French, the Israelis, finally us Americans — we've all fought for those losers. And this is one American who ain't going to do it again."
"But the Christians fought the PLO," Lyons countered. "They can't be all bad if they kill those creeps."
Powell laughed. "The Shias fought them. The Druze fought them. The Americans, the Greek Orthodox, the atheists, the Syrians — they all fought the Palestinians. Even the PLO fought the PLO! But what do the Maronites do? They fight Palestinian women and children and old men. Against men with rifles, they call for the Syrians or the Israelis or the U.S. Marines."
One of the Shia militiamen waited for the Americans at the head of a flight of stairs leading down to a basement.
"Okay, my friends," Powell said, "time to take the shortcut!"
* * *
Powell introduced the militiamen. "This is Akbar. He used to go to school in California. We work together all the time."
"Even if the Agency's uptight," Akbar added. "The money's all right."
"But that's all over if we can't get my job back," Powell said as he pointed down to the flashlights waving in the darkness below.
The stairs led down into a series of connecting basements. Water from broken pipes created black lakes stinking of sewage. The pointman led the line of militiamen and Americans through corridors, along fallen girders, across rows of crates. Sudden splashes startled the men, and rifle safeties clicked off. In the light of their flashlights, they saw a swarm of rats swimming through a flooded section. The flashlight beams sparked red from the hundreds of eyes of rats waiting on the far side.
Finally the Shias and Americans came to a steel hatch.
"Ready for a bad scene?" Akbar asked Lyons and Blancanales.
"The Iranians are on the other side?"
"Not that kind of scene, this kind..." As he swung open the door, the Shia militiamen covered their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs.
The smell hit like the shock wave of an explosion. The two men of Able Team choked and coughed as a warm wind, stinking of a miasma so fetid it seemed poisonous, rushed at them. But the Shias went through the hatchway.
Choking, nauseated, the Americans followed. In the dim light, they saw an underground garage filled with black sewage. Daylight came through a few street-level grills. The line of men hurried along a catwalk to the opposite side. They reached another door, threw it open and rushed into the semidarkness of a tunnel filled with pipes and electrical cables. The cold air of the tunnel felt like spring water on their faces.
Powell pointed to the closed door behind them and explained: "The plumbing got blasted in a car bombing years ago. There's about a thousand refugees living in the abandoned offices. They fixed the water lines, but no one can get down there to fix the sewer lines. So they just let it go. Must be the world's biggest cesspool. Been fermenting for maybe five years. And gangs use it as a body dump. Adds to the stink."
"That... that was bad," Lyons said, laughing.
Blancanales finally got his breath back. "Is that our route of retreat if..."
"No way," Powell told them. "This tunnel will take us there. The Iranians probably have got an ambush right above us. We hit them, then walk out o
n street level."
"What about an ambush in this tunnel?" Blancanales asked.
The line of men slowed. The Americans heard whispers and quiet footsteps ahead. The flashlights went out except for one held by the first man.
"Probably not."
"Probably isn't good enough," Lyons said.
"You want point? Take it. Come on, specialist. We'll take point. First in line for the firefight."
Powell led Lyons forward. They moved by touch along the line of Shia militiamen. Ahead they saw the silhouette of a crouching man. As they approached he motioned them back and hissed a warning in Arabic. Powell translated for Lyons, "Akbar found a booby trap..."
By the glow of his flashlight, Akbar secured a safety, then cut a trip line. He examined the device and hissed back to Powell. "One of ours. An old one."
They continued through the silence and darkness, Powell and Lyons in line behind Akbar as he followed an old map. From time to time, sounds came from the street above them, the faint thuddings of tires on asphalt carrying through the meters of stone and concrete.
Coming to an intersecting tunnel, Akbar switched off his flashlight. The men in line stopped as he listened. Lyons heard a coin jangle across steel and concrete. The flashlight beam returned and Akbar peered into the other tunnel. He compared the code stenciled onto the tunnel wall to the codes of the map, then continued.
The line followed. Now no traffic moved above them. They walked through an absence of sound, hearing only the sounds they made. Equipment clicking and knocking against rifles, every footstep, every breath echoed in the tunnel.
Akbar waved his light over the tunnel walls, noting stenciled codes. They passed another intersecting tunnel. Akbar ignored it. Then they came to a maintenance shaft. A point of light came through the manhole cover. In the darkness, the spot of light seared their eyes like a magnesium flare.
Squinting against the daylight, Akbar checked the maintenance shaft carefully. First he waved the flashlight beam into shadows and crevices. Finally he checked the rungs of the ladder. He pointed to a rung at face height. Lyons leaned close and saw a fine coating of dust on the rusting steel. Every rung had dust on it.
After another hundred steps they came to a narrower intersecting tunnel. Akbar and Powell checked the tunnel entrance carefully. They found nothing. Continuing, they followed the tunnel as it sloped upward.
A group of fighters had preceded them. Akbar found the dead where they had sprawled for years, their bones broken by high explosive and shrapnel, gnawed by rats. As the others crowded up behind him, Akbar pointed out the monofilament lines, the blast and scorch marks on the tunnel sides.
Apparently, a group of fighters — the skull fragments indicated five — had attempted to travel through the tunnel. They had encountered a clever booby trap. Set to be triggered by the first man, the monofilament ran back ten meters to a detonator that had fired two claymore-type charges. The blast had killed the entire line.
Someone had taken the serviceable rifles. Only one Kalashnikov remained among the old bones and rags, its sheet-metal receiver and magazine twisted together and pitted, the barrel bent, the wooden stock and fore grip torn away by point-blank shrapnel blast. Only bone fragments remained of the man that had held that rifle.
As Lyons walked carefully over the anonymous dead men — or women, no one would ever know — he saw bits of glittering shrapnel mixed with the bones and powdery rags. And the bones... he noticed that every bone had been scarred by thousands of rat teeth. Only the teeth of the dead lacked the marks, the hard enamel grinning from skulls and fragments of skulls and jaws.
Akbar moved slowly now, silently checking every possible position for a bomb, using his flashlight to examine every shadow and crevice. They passed panels of telephone circuits, unused for years. Akbar stopped to read the crumbling sticker on a panel door.
"This is the place," he announced quietly.
"Where are the Iranians?" Lyons asked, looking upward.
"If they're at the address they gave us, up there," Powell whispered. He continued to the end of the tunnel. An access ladder went straight up through a black rectangle. His flashlight showed the interior of a small room above them. "And I think they are because it's the same address the prisoner gave us. But who knows? Maybe they're up there, maybe not. Or they could be in a nearby building."
"What's above us?"
"A parking garage. It opens to the street and to the alley. There should be another garage across the alley. If there's an ambush, they'll expect us to come from the street. But we'll be coming up behind them — if they're on street level. Probably they're on the second and third floors, to be able to fire down."
"We'll go up first," Lyons volunteered, motioning toward Blancanales. "We've got the appropriate technology for this," he added, tapping his silenced auto-Colt.
Lyons and Blancanales slung their assault weapons over their backs and cinched the slings tight. With Lyons going first, they ascended the ladder into absolute darkness. Blancanales checked his silenced Beretta 93R and waited for his signal.
By touch, Lyons found an open area in a floor littered with broken concrete and bits of wire. Wires touching his head, scratching his face, he stood up in the darkness, listening, searching for light or form. Closing his eyes, he hoped for maximum dilation of his irises. But open or closed, his eyes saw only black.
He switched on a penlight. The glow revealed the gutted interior of a telephone circuit room. Deliberately destroyed with high-explosive charges, panels and wires filled the room. Torn cables hung from conduits.
Years before, someone — perhaps one of the five dead found in the tunnel — had blocked the door with a length of steel pipe jammed like a crossbar between the two panels bracketing the door. The lock and door handle had been shot out. Scratched paint showed that an attempt had been made to force the door open. But the attempt had failed. Judging by the bones in the tunnel and the rust on the shot-out lock, the room had not been opened for years.
Lyons listened at the door. He heard nothing. He returned to the tunnel entry and hissed to Blancanales. His partner joined him in seconds.
"Might be a dead end," Lyons whispered.
"We'll know when we open the door."
Slowly and silently they raised the length of steel pipe. Blancanales stood by to jam it back into place. The door was hinged to open inward, and Lyons slowly eased the door open a hand's width.
Rats squealed and skittered, claws scratching at the door. Concrete and trash spilled through the opening. A rat hurtled into the small room, squeaking, running wildly through the wires and metal fragments until it dropped through the trapdoor. Below, they heard the Shias curse and stomp.
Points of light appeared at the very top of the opening. Dust swirled in the faint light. Lyons and Blancanales smelled the stink of rotting garbage and generations of rat filth. More trash and debris fell through as Lyons continued opening the door. He ignored the rats leaping against his body and scratching over his boots. He could hear the Shias in the tunnel as they continued to stomp on rats.
Ahead of him, Lyons saw a wall of trash. Through the years, trash and debris had been piled against the door, covering it completely. Faint daylight glowed through the top layer of papers and filth.
Now they heard sounds outside — the jangling and crashing of a truck on the street came to them, but no voices.
Moving the square steel box of a wiring panel to the doorway, Lyons stood up and tried to look over the top of the wall of trash. As rats skittered and ran on the other side, he gently cleared a hole through the papers and rotting garbage. He saw a street-level garage. He continued clearing aside the trash.
Autofire hammered.
10
Lyons fell back as Blancanales attempted to close the door against an avalanche of trash and filth. But the debris blocked the door.
On the other side the bursts of automatic-rifle fire continued.
But they heard no slugs hitting the trash
or door. They waited, listening.
"They're not shooting at us," Blancanales told Lyons.
Standing on the box again, Lyons looked outside. He saw no one. Another burst shattered the quiet, the autofire echoing in the garage. Lyons heard no ricochets or voices, or the sound of running. He dug through the trash and broken concrete, then crawled into the light.
Scanning the area, he saw debris from years of explosions and fighting littering the garage. Burned-out wrecks blocked the alley exit. Two new Japanese panel trucks sat parked on his left. Then he heard voices coming from a flight of steel-and-concrete stairs.
A dead militiaman sprawled on the stairs, blood draining from wounds. He wore the fatigues of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. A rifle fired, the noise coming from somewhere above the dead man.
"Pol! Get the others! It's clear."
Lyons scrambled out. He pulled out his auto-Colt, checking to see that it was cocked and locked, and ran across the garage to the stairs. He looked up and quickly dodged back as an autorifle fired.
But no slugs came at him. He looked at the dead man. The Iranian had been shot in the back.
Looking across the garage, Lyons saw Blancanales lead the line of men out of the trash pile. Blancanales and Powell ran across the garage to join him. Akbar directed the platoon of Shia militiamen to cover the street and alley exits.
Lyons went up. At the first landing he went flat on the concrete and looked up the next flight of stairs. He saw an open fire exit with the door gone, but the low angle denied him a view of the corridor beyond. He heard voices, then kicks against a door. A rifle fired once.
He went up the next flight of stairs on his hands and knees. Stairs squeaked behind him as weight stressed the steel framework. He looked back, saw Blancanales. Lyons continued to the top.
Peering into the corridor, Lyons saw two Iranian militiamen fire their Kalashnikov rifles at a closed door, punching the door and the walls on each side with lines of 7.62mm ComBloc. Then they ran at the door and kicked it. A rifle inside fired one bullet out, splintered wood and plastic flying from the door. The Iranians scrambled for cover.