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 Desmarais 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?"