Rain of Doom at-16 Page 3

3

  In a chrome-and-plastic lounge of Orly international airport, Colonel Dastgerdi of the Syrian army waited. The casual sports clothes he wore had been purchased in a Madrid men's shop. His lightweight headphones lulled him with a Spanish pop ballad. Surreptitiously he watched the entrances, studying the face of every passenger who emerged from the terminal.

  Two days earlier he had flown from Managua to Madrid. After a few hours' delay, he continued to Paris, and there spent a night in a luxurious hotel, enjoying the French cuisine and an expensive Vietnamese prostitute. Recalling the pleasures of that evening, he consulted his wristwatch. In a few minutes he would be departing on another long flight. Destination: Damascus.

  A man approached, also wearing the lightweight headphones of a portable cassette player. His nondescript Semitic features and cheap clothing — a gray sport coat and gray slacks — made him appear like a poor, grubby, foreign laborer, one of thousands in Europe. The portable cassette player enhanced the image of the hardworking Arab returning home to the distant East with his savings and a few luxuries after a year's work in the West. Dastgerdi looked elsewhere as the man crossed the lounge and sat beside him.

  In Arabic the man asked, "What are you listening to?"

  Dastgerdi pulled the tape player from his coat pocket and ejected the cassette. "See?"

  The man took the cassette, looked at the label. "I don't read Spanish." Passing it back, he took another from his pocket. "You might like this. Play it when you are home."

  It was pocketed. Though the case bore the label of a Swedish singing group, the tape carried digital information that could be decoded only by an American desktop computer, like the one in Dastgerdi's Damascus office.

  A United Nations diplomat had purchased several of the small computers from an ordinary electronics shop in New York City. They were shipped as diplomatic papers to Moscow. Then Soviet technicians modified and reprogrammed them to serve as coding machines. Their outward appearance remained unchanged. Though the codes they created would not withstand the scrutiny of the American National Security Agency or the Soviet KGB, the codes did deny outsiders access to Dastgerdi's communications. And the cassettes, appearing to contain only music, would pass by customs inspectors without difficulty.

  "Any other information?" Dastgerdi asked.

  His companion glanced at the predominantly European passengers around them, who would be seeing only two Middle Easterners chatting about music before their respective flights. Then he spoke in a low voice.

  "Fascist contrashit the port. Choufi is dead, Gabriel is dead. But there has been no compromise of the mission. The Nicaraguans drove away the fascists and annihilated them in the mountains."

  The news seemed to disrupt Dastgerdi's equanimity; in fact, only by the strength of his years of training could he mask his rage and panic. With a false smile he asked, "They attacked, therefore they know. But how— if there has been no compromise? How did they know?"

  "The Nicaraguans say there are many attacks on the coast. The fascists kill Cubans and Soviets and Sandinista leaders. It was only bad luck for your men. If the fascists knew of your mission, they would have taken Choufi and Gabriel as prisoners, not killed them."

  Dastgerdi nodded. "True..."

  A public-address voice announced the departure of the flight to Syria. Dastgerdi rose, discreetly waved to the informant and disappeared into a crowd of embarking passengers.

  Despite their precautions and belief that they had not been noticed, the meeting of Dastgerdi and his informant had indeed been studied with interest. Across the lounge, a French counterintelligence agent noted the number and destination of Dastgerdi's flight and continued to watch his unidentified contact.

  As Dastgerdi flew to Damascus, the French counterintelligence office transmitted his information to an Agency contact in the United States.

  4

  Rock and roll blared from the television. Dancers kicked and spun as a singer postured. Colored images exploded through galactic space.

  Sprawled on the hotel bed, Gadgets Schwarz drained another can of beer, aimed the empty at Carl Lyons's head and threw. The can hit its target, bounced off, then disappeared out the window. Lyons leaned over the railing to watch it fall through the canyon between the high rises.

  Lyons dodged as Gadgets opened another beer and motioned to throw it through the window.

  "Don't! You'll kill someone down there!"

  "Never!" Gadgets gulped the beer, belched and continued, foam spilling down face and neck. "I'll never throw away a full beer!"

  He took a final slug, and tossed the empty. Lyons caught it in midair. He crushed it in his fist and sighted on his partner's face.

  Gadgets dived from the bed. The nightstand fell. The lamp crashed. Lyons held his throw and maneuvered for an unobstructed line of fire.

  Dodging around the bed, he prepared to throw. A blast of beer foam sprayed him. Gadgets jumped up, shaking a beer can and jetting foam. Holding another can in his left hand, he lifted the pop-top with his teeth. A can in each hand, he drove Lyons from the room.

  "And don't come back without your own six-pack!"

  After Lyons threw it, the crumpled can ricocheted off the closing door. He heard Gadgets shriek as the can scored. "Got him!"

  "Deescalate, jokers," Blancanales said from a doorway across the corridor. "You'll have the police up here."

  Wiping beer from his face and sport shirt, Lyons crossed to Blancanales. "He's having a one-man party in there. Any news from D.C.?"

  "The interrogation's continuing." Blancanales looked up and down the corridor, saw no one. "Go ahead, take the day off. Get a six-pack. Get six six-packs. They'll call when they know where we're going."

  "Lebanon?"

  "Wherever that Iranian went."

  "Yeah, wherever that is. Later."

  Lyons returned to his room as the phone rang. The desk clerk told him: "A Mr. Randall and a Mr. Lloyd are here. Shall I send them up?"

  Lyons recalled the two men from a manufacturing shop in Baltimore — an Agency shop for the manufacture and maintenance of special weapons. "Put Randall on the phone."

  A moment later a voice came over the receiver. "Hey, man. You're living in style here."

  "All day. Maybe tonight. Then we're gone."

  "Yeah, I know. I got some going-away presents for you."

  "The Company send them?"

  Randall heard the suspicion in Carl Lyons's voice. "Lloyd and me only work forthem, you know? We used to work withAndrzej. There's a difference. You know what I mean?"

  "Come on up. You want drinks, food? Tell the desk to send up whatever you want."

  "There in a flash."

  Lyons keyed the numbers for his partners' rooms, told them some Company guys were coming up to visit, and to listen for any problems.

  A knock sounded within minutes. Lyons took his Colt Python from his suitcase, set it on the dresser and covered it with a shirt. Then he opened the door.

  Randall was a wiry, conservatively dressed, middle-aged black with short hair and a mischievous smile. In both hands he carried a large, plainly wrapped box. Behind him, a beer-bellied Anglo with thinning blond hair stood with a long, flat box under his arm. Unlike Randall, Lloyd wore work clothes — boots, jeans, plaid shirt, denim jacket.

  "Glad we caught you before you left," Randall told Lyons, handing over the box. "Here's your surprise."

  Lyons almost dropped it. "What is this? Feels like..."

  "Kalashnikov mags. With a total of three hundred rounds of 7.62mm ComBloc ammunition. Hand-loaded with absolutely exact charges and hollowpoints for accuracy and impact that you got to see to believe."

  "Hollowpoints?"

  "Wipeouts," Lloyd said.

  "Wish you had time to come down to the shop." Randall opened the box, removed one of the curving magazines, thumbed out a cartridge. Holding up the stubby ComBloc round, he pointed to the bullet. "You fire this little thing into a ten-pound block of wet clay — which happens to have
a mass and texture remarkably similar to meat — and you got ten pounds of clay everywhere but where it was."

  "But I don't use an AK," Lyons told them.

  "You will where you're going," Randall countered.

  "Where's that?"

  Randall looked at Lloyd; they laughed.

  "Really, I don't know. Do you?"

  "If you don't," said Lloyd, "we can't tell you. Maybe you don't have clearance. Company policy. But here's something for when you get there."

  He opened the long box to reveal a battered, scuffed Kalashnikov.

  Lifting it, Randall pulled out the magazine and jerked back the cocking handle several times. "Looks like shit," he said. "But it's special. Check it out."

  Pulling back the cocking handle once more to confirm the empty chamber, Lyons touched the trigger. It snapped without the usual long travel. He tried the other mechanisms. The safety-selector lever moved without the standard AK "clack." The magazine release had no sharp edges. The rear tangent sight had been delicately filed to a perfect fit. The meter scale had been touched up with white. A second flip-up sight with two small white dots had been added. Lyons cupped his hand over the sight and saw the glow of tritium dots. He examined the front sight. The protective ring had been cut to wings to allow faster aiming. A small flip-up sight completed the night-sight modification.

  "Like a Galil..."

  "You got it."

  Lyons closed and opened the folding steel stock. It locked and unlocked without wobbling. He cocked the rifle again, sighted on a distant roof, squeezed off an imaginary shot at a pigeon. "Perfect."

  He tried the rifle in his hands, jerking it repeatedly to his shoulder. It felt right. He closed the steel stock and studied it.

  "It's longer — it's the right size," Lyons raved. "Where'd you get this?"

  "We made it," Randall answered. "Feel how it's heavier? That's 'cause we used good steel. And, man, it shoots fine. Superfine. At a hundred yards, most AKs can't quite keep a group in the black. This one shoots two-inch groups, even with the folding stock. How's that?"

  Lyons phoned his partners. "Want to meet some friends of Konzaki's?"

  They arrived at the same time as the room service cart. Blocking the view of the bellboy, Blancanales wheeled in the ice and beer and sandwiches. Gadgets tipped the bellboy with a handful of foreign coins and an American dollar.

  In the room, they popped beers while Lyons made introductions. The American-made Kalashnikov became the center of conversation. But the talk soon turned to Able Team's assignment.

  "We can't tell you," Randall said, laughing. "I mean, if you don't know..."

  "Lebanon?" Blancanales asked.

  "I thought you didn't know," Randall responded.

  "What is this game?" Lyons demanded. "On the plane, back home, over the phone, no one makes any sense. We had this clerk jerk briefing us, and he wouldn't give us straight answers. What goes on? I have to know..."

  Lloyd answered. "The Agency is strange. If you understand that, you're on your way to understanding the problem."

  "Yeah, yeah. I know all about it, but..."

  "Then why are you asking?" Randall countered.

  The phone interrupted the joking. Lyons took the call, listened for a good many seconds without saying a word before hanging up. "We're on our way."

  "Where?" Gadgets and Blancanales asked in unison.

  Lyons grinned. "Can't tell you."

  * * *

  "The Bekaa..." Now it was Grimaldi who operated the slide projector. He punched a button and an aerial photograph of a village appeared on the screen.

  Taken by a low-orbit spy satellite, the picture showed an abandoned village surrounded by rocky, untended fields. A road wound through foothills to the outermost of a series of concentric perimeters. An open area between the first and second perimeters had evenly spaced depressions in the soil — mines. Guardhouses set at intervals along the second perimeter provided interlocking fields of fire. A band of bare soil separated the second perimeter from the innermost. Grimaldi glanced to his briefing papers, then pointed to each ring of wire and machine-gun emplacements.

  "This one is razor wire eight feet high. This is a minefield — and that's for sure. Look at this." He pointed to what appeared to be a large crater where one mine had exploded. "The second perimeter is chain link and razor wire. These are sandbagged bunkers and towers overlooking the minefield. And they've got guard dogs between the guard positions and the last perimeter, which is a stone wall topped with razor wire and broken glass set in..."

  Lyons interrupted. "How can they be positive about the dogs?"

  "Where's the superzoom?" Grimaldi fumbled with the controls, finally hit a lever. "Look for yourself." The image expanded, the outer perimeters going offscreen, the mosaic of rooftops becoming blocks of gray and black, the head and arms of a sentry appearing on the top of the wall. Grimaldi pointed to a form on the earth: a dog.

  "That's positive," Lyons agreed.

  "Your folders have prints of all this," Grimaldi continued. "We've done everything conceivable to make your infiltration possible..."

  "Infiltration?" Gadgets asked, amazed. "You think we're supermen?"

  "Or invisible?" Lyons asked.

  "Or expendable?" Blancanales asked.

  "Expendable invisible men, we ain't," Gadgets emphasized. "No way."

  "There isn't any other way," Grimaldi told them. He pressed the button, flipping back to the slide showing the position of the base. "Here's the village. Only a few kilometers from the Syrian border. Here... here... and here — missile sites. The Israeli air force can't knock out the missiles because the sites are crewed by Soviets. And there's hundreds of antiaircraft positions along the Marjayoun-Baalbek highway. So we can't have the Israelis send in planes and bomb it."

  "We'll be going in by helicopter?" Blancanales asked.

  "No, you'll be in cars."

  Lyons groaned.

  "Listen!" Grimaldi pointed to the mountains east of Beirut. "Contract agents will transport you from the coast. The Agency prepared all the identity documents you'll need to get through the checkpoints outside Beirut. Then you'll only have to worry about checkpoints along the highway. All these villages along here are controlled by the Islamic Amal and the Iranians and Libyans..."

  "Hey, Ironman," Gadgets turned abruptly to Lyons. "Think I could pass as an Iranian?"

  "No."

  "Neither can you."

  "When you get to the village nearest the base," Grimaldi continued, "then you march cross-country."

  Blancanales shook his head. "When we get there? Ifwe get there."

  "That's the plan?" Lyons asked, incredulous. "We make like tourists and drive in, then hike to the base and blow it away? That's the plan the Agency took weeks to create?"

  "Not quite — there's more." Grimaldi read from a memo. " 'The team must make penetration of objective. Disposition of threat will remain uncertain without team observation of weapons, organization and sponsorship prior to termination of threat.' "

  "Oh..." Lyons nodded. "We take notes, too. Maybe we can get an interview with the Number One Ayatollah. Wizard, did you bring your camera?"

  "See what happens when you mouth off at Agency clerks?" Gadgets asked Lyons. "They bring us jive missions like this. Wish that George dude was here now. Send him on this insane joyride."

  Lyons looked at his partners. He signaled a thumbs-down opinion of the Agency plan. But then he said, "Tell them we didn't like it, but we'll do it. We'll do the best we can. Follow our instructions to the letter. Do or die. Stiff upper lip. Hip, hip."

  Blancanales spoke next. "Any last-minute developments on Dastgerdi?"

  "French security people confirmed that Dastgerdi passed through Paris on his return to the Middle East. Oh, yeah. Here's another detail the Agency people want you to watch for. Dastgerdi's coordinating this project, keeping the Iranians and Syrians together. And the Soviets, the Agency assumes. But there's one more thing they want you to watc
h for. It seems a courier passed information to Dastgerdi in a passenger lounge in the Paris airport. But listen to this: the courier didn't come from the Soviet Union. The courier came from and returned to Baghdad, the capital of Iraq."

  "What do the Iraqis have to do with this?" Blancanales asked. "They're at war with the Iranians. The Iraqis wouldn't work with the Iranians."

  "It's a mystery," Grimaldi agreed. "Maybe it'll make your trip more interesting."

  "Yeah..." Lyons laughed bitterly "...interesting."

  5

  As the three members of Able Team stepped from the warmth of the hired van, a gust of wind hit them with freezing sleet. The driver gunned the engine impatiently as the Americans unloaded their trunks. Without a word, he reversed the van and drove away into the night.

  Gadgets looked around at the shacks lining the muddy road. Even in the storm, the air stank of diesel and rotting fish. "Ain't Club Med."

  Gripping his two heavy trunks of gear, Lyons staggered to the dock. An old coastal cruiser lurched in the storm chop, the dock creaking as the cruiser pulled the heavy mooring lines taut with every sway. A crewman in a yellow rain slicker saw him and waved a flashlight.

  Voices shouted in Greek. Silhouettes moved across lighted ports. Lyons stopped at the head of the gangplank and put down his trunks. As he waited for his partners, his eyes scanned the cruiser.

  On the deck, plastic tarps covered stacks of cargo. A hoist arm overhung the crates, its steel cables banging with every gust. Light came from two levels of cabins. Lyons saw men inside the lighted pilothouse. His eyes searched for anything — any detail, any motion — that meant a trap.

  After landing in Nicosia, Cyprus, they had called Lebanon and spoken with Captain Powell, the Marine on detached duty with the Shia militias of West Beirut. They did not risk briefing him on their mission to the Bekaa over the phone, saying only that they would be "taking a drive together." A few weeks before, Powell had accompanied Able Team to Mexico as they pursued and exterminated a terror force of Iranian Revolutionary Guards. He would know why they called.