Katz smiled at the sarcasm. "Actually, yes."
Wind swirled sand. In the distance, the lights of the National Liberation Front stronghold blinked in the predawn darkness. Able Team and their "taxi drivers," changed from their street clothes to black night suits, now checked weapons and equipment by the glow of penlights. Lyons loaded Atchisson magazines. Blancanales inspected the rockets and launchers they had taken from dead Muslim terrorists. It would soon be the dawn of another terror-racked day for Mack Bolan's avengers.
They did not prefer their days to be ablaze with terror, any more than Mack Bolan, the rogue supercommander of the U.S. government's leading security enterprise, preferred execution to mercy.
But, like Mack Bolan, his three American freedom fighters known as Able Team knew well enough that somebody had to be true to the way things really were. Somebody had to go beyond mercy and face terror openly, fearlessly, immediately. Somebody had to realize there was no other choice.
Able Team was born of the same fires as Bolan's long-ago Death Squad. The same fires of Mack's own mythical immolation in New York's Central Park that brought The Executioner emerging from ashes as John Phoenix, the greatest counter-terrorist known to man. So Able Team went in blazing. Every time.
They were an extension of Mack's will and yet, out of love and out of duty, they acted entirely independently, unpredictably, for the patriotism of it, for the love known only to the selfless volunteer. It was a high path that shimmered with sacred fires.
They went in blazing, but their enemies cropped up everywhere, unendingly.
Their enemies were the children of the devil, whoever they may be, and there were many. The devil's ilk might be Americans, they might be Chinese, they might be Arab or Jew or Englishman or Congolese, they might be man or woman, very young or very old, but they all identified themselves in one way: their fanatical devotion to destruction for its own sake.
Such destroyers needed a stiff lesson. The lesson was Able Team. The avenging warriors taught the ancient law, that for every action — especially destructive action — there is as powerful a reaction. For every act — especially the act of taking innocent life, especially the act of destroying productive endeavor, especially the act of spilling the blood of the harmless and wrecking their lives with shock and horror — there is always an accounting.
Whether you are Jew or Arab or Christian or black man or preacherman or soldier, your life is in the care of Mack Bolan and his friends. But if you are of the devil's party, then the above does not apply…
Mohammed circulated among the others, tucking frag and flash-blast grenades into empty battle-armor pockets. Gadgets fitted an earphone to a captured Muslim walkie-talkie and gave it to Mohammed.
To protect their throats and lungs against the blowing sand, Zaki tore a dark shirt into strips and tied one of the strips over his mouth and nose. Wordlessly, the others took the makeshift bandannas.
On the crest of a brush-choked sand dune, Abdul watched the terrorist base through binoculars. His voice low, he called back to the others, "Sentries. Searchlights."
Lyons finished with the last box mag of 12-gauge rounds. He counted the magazines in his bandolier: fifteen plus one in the weapon — a total of one hundred twelve rounds. He tried walking. With the weight of the steel-and-Kevlar battle armor, an Arm-burst rocket, the Atchisson, the modified Colt and ammunition for both, every step became a conscious effort. And he had a two-mile march through sand to the base.
Oh, well, could be worse. He could be that American the fanatics had taken prisoner. Was the man still alive? Had the torture started?
Lyons slung the Atchisson and struggled up the dune to Abdul. "What do you see on the perimeter?"
"Look." Abdul passed the binoculars to Lyons.
A searchlight swept the desert, revealing a bulldozed flat ring of sand around barbed-wire fences. Fifty feet of sand separated the fences from the clay walls of the institute.
Lyons slid back down the sandbar and returned to the others.
"What are we up against?" Blancanales asked.
Lyons yawned. "Searchlights, cleared fields of fire, barbed wire, maybe a mine field, ten-foot mud walls, sentries, maybe an army of crazies inside and who knows what else."
"Standard stuff," Gadgets commented. He checked his radio and the radios of the others with a penlight.
In the momentary glows of the light, Zaki and Mohammed looked at the three American commandos, studying their faces for fear or false courage. Despite the odds against them, these Americans appeared at ease.
"But we have the element of surprise," Zaki said as if to bolster his own confidence.
"For now," Gadgets nodded. "But with luck, they'll be expecting us."
"Man, you're kidding!" Mohammed cried out.
"Don't sweat it," laughed Gadgets, "it's part of a plan."
"These dudes are loco," Mohammed muttered to Zaki and Abdul as they followed the hulking shadows of Able Team across the lunarlike desert. "Loco, loco, loco."
16
They crossed the open desert in a widely spaced skirmish line.
Starlight guided them through the brush dotting the sand. Lyons and Blancanales pressed ahead, scouting for traces of mines or sensors. Gadgets plodded behind with a load of Armburst rockets and a pack of electronics. He stayed close to Mohammed, who monitored the Arabic of the terrorist gang on a captured walkie-talkie.
"Nothing, man," he reported to Gadgets. "Some honcho just checked the guards. Nothing."
Avoiding an area of open sand, Blancanales pushed through weeds, the brittle twigs and dry leaves rasping on his battle armor's nylon. He saw something on the pale sand. He dropped to one knee, swept his eyes across the ground several times, straining to focus in the starlight. He saw several dark objects.
Rocks? No, too small and round. The triggers of some type of ComBloc antipersonnel mines? No, too many. Sensors? Again, too many.
He reached out, touched one, picked it up. A dry goat turd.
Laughing to himself, he continued forward. But the droppings reassured him. Goats wandered in herds. If the fanatics had mined the desert around their fortress, animals would avoid the area. A full half mile of sand and rocks and brush remained ahead of him. He scanned the night for his partners.
A hundred yards to one side, a black form moved through the darkness. In the blowing sand and shifting patterns of gray and black, only the form's relentless pace identified it as Lyons. Blancanales looked back, thought he saw a form against a gray blur of sand, then it dissolved. Forms appeared and disappeared everywhere in his vision.
Very spooky. Which was very good. If the guards had Starlite scopes or infrared viewers, the sandstorm and blowing weeds might make them doubt what they saw. Blancanales checked his watch. Another hour and a half to dawn. Maybe a full hour of night before the sky began to gray.
He squinted at the dust-blurred lights of the fortress. The wind and sand and night would help them get to the fences, but what then?
Lyons wove through the weeds, avoiding open areas that could be mined. His eyes never stopped moving, sweeping from side to side, not focusing, only watching for shapes or movement. He kept his thumb on the safety of his Atchisson, his index finger straight alongside the trigger guard. Cocked and locked. Clenching his fist would send a storm of steel into the night.
The phone plug buzzed in his ear. Gadgets's voice whispered, "Ironman, Politician. Anything interesting?"