"This is it, right?" Blancanales handed Lyons the American-made Kalashnikov and the bandolier of magazines.
"Yeah, we might have to walk in, and this Konzak's a giveaway."
"What about my over-and-under?" Blancanales slapped the black ripple grip of his M-16/M-203.
"The Konzak doesn't shoot high-ex forty. Just keep that out of sight. Who knows what'll happen down there?"
"I got an idea what'll happen," Gadgets answered.
"Then let's go do it to them." Lyons cinched up his bandolier of ComBloc mags and led the line of men across the snow. Akbar jogged alongside Gadgets.
"So what's the scam, man? You hotshots got a plan?"
"Where'd you learn to talk that jive, foreigner?" Gadgets asked.
"In da bunkers. Me and Powell. And some spade Marines. Nothing but shit screaming down out of the sky boom, boom, ka-boom. Lotsa time to talk, I tell you. I taught them the poetry of the Koran, they taught me to speak American."
"Quiet!" Lyons snarled.
They filed down the slope to the road. A kilometer away, shells burst in the lighted village, a building collapsing in a ball of dust. In a seemingly random pattern, other shells hit within the perimeters, in the open fields, and on the mountain slopes kilometers away.
The flashes of light illuminated the hillside, and the four men descended quickly. Lyons stopped at the road and noticed the smooth surface of snow.
"Nothing in or out tonight," he whispered to Blancanales.
"They have helicopters."
"Yeah, but the rockets won't travel by helicopter. And I don't see an airfield here."
"True."
Easing down into a roadside ditch, Lyons found himself standing on ice. He led the others toward the Syrian bunker. Their boots slipped on the frozen mud and ice, and sometimes the ice cracked under their weight. Lyons cautioned them with a hiss as they neared the Syrians.
A shell landed a hundred meters away. They went flat in the ditch, their ears ringing with the one explosion as they waited for others. Bits of ice and rocks fell. Then silence.
Then voices came from the checkpoint's bunker. Akbar provided a whispered summary: "One of them thinks it's the Israelis. Another says it can't be, because no one's been hit. Yet another is complaining because they should have left already."
"What? Should have left already?"
"Yes, that is what they say."
Lyons slung his weapon across his back. Taking out his modified-for-silence Colt, he eased back the slide to chamber the first .45 hollowpoint from the 10-round extended magazine.
"I go first. Wizard, back me up with your Beretta. We got to move quick."
And he moved, silently moving from the ditch to the bunker.
As Gadgets followed, he felt his hand-radio buzz. But he did not stop.
Behind him in the ditch, Blancanales pressed his transmit key and whispered, "What goes on?"
Powell spoke quickly. "A car or truck is coming. Don't get caught in the open."
Looking across the snow and ruts of the road, Blancanales saw his partners standing against the dark sandbags of the bunker, utterly exposed.
14
Colonel Dastgerdi went from office to office on a final tour of inspection. His electric lantern illuminated the empty rooms and crated equipment where his technicians had assembled and tested his designs. At any moment the shelling would stop and the call would come announcing the elimination of the rebellious factions. And the trucks would depart, the technicians and workers and soldiers for Damascus, the rockets for the Lebanese seaport of Tripoli.
Only the empty rooms and the echoing underground factory would remain. Dastgerdi had already arranged for the Islamic Amal militia to take the village as a base and weapons depot. After the terror rocketing of the inauguration of the President of the United States, the Islamic Amal would suffer the first counterstrikes by American forces. Then as the momentum of strike and counterstrike accelerated, as the Americans discovered the innumerable details linking Iran and Syria to the assassination of their President and hundreds of officials and spectators, the war would cross the borders into Syria and on to Iran as the revenge-blinded Americans attacked the nations they believed responsible.
Shining his battery light on an office wall, Dastgerdi saw a poster of the scowling Ayatollah Khomeini. Cemented in place with plastic, then painted repeatedly with clear plastic, the poster was there to stay. The face of Khomeini, along with the cut-out newspaper photos of the terror bombing of the Marine Peacekeeping Headquarters in Beirut, had become part of the wall.
The Farsi scrawl that translated as "Death to America" had also been painted over with plastic.
If American commandos invaded this place, they would see what they expected. Dastgerdi had ordered posters and photos and slogans to be displayed on all the walls of the village. If the Americans brought video cameras, the world would see.
So much planning and work...
Dastgerdi descended the steel spiral staircase to the underground factory, heard the noise of tools and the voices of all his personnel. Everyone was waiting for the trucks to leave.
The call would come any minute...
Steadying himself against the wall of sandbags, Lyons looked through the firing slot and into the muzzle of a 12.7mm Degtyarev machine gun. But the weapon was unmanned.
The Syrians stood around a fire, arguing and gesturing, warming their hands. One man searched a crumpled carton for a last cigarette and found nothing. Cursing, he threw the wadded pack into the fire.
They wore blankets over their coats. The blankets covered their Kalashnikov rifles.
Under his coat, Lyons felt the buzzer of his hand-radio. Gadgets nudged him. Easing away from the firing slot, Lyons reached into his coat for his radio. Gadgets shook his head and passed him an earphone. Lyons plugged it into his ear. Gadgets clicked the transmit key.
"You got a truck coming..." Blancanales started.
"No," Powell interrupted. "It's a Zil limo."
Lyons chanced a whisper. "How far?"
"Two kilometers maybe. Going slow."
"Move it," Lyons told them. "We'll take that limo into the base."
Lyons snapped down the left-hand grip lever of his Colt. Lyons pointed to himself and then at the bunker. Gadgets nodded.
Lyons crept under the machine-gun slot, then stood. He brushed off his Soviet coat and pulled his AK around so that the automatic rifle crossed his gut. He pat-checked his Colt's extra 10-round magazine in his coat pocket. Taking a deep breath of the frigid air, he walked into the bunker, the Colt held down against his coat, his thumb on the safety-fire selector.
The Syrians were startled; one soldier snapped a salute. Lyons brought up the Colt smoothly, his left hand taking the lever midway in the arch, his left thumb locking into the oversize trigger guard and his right thumb sweeping down the fire selector two clicks.
A 3-shot burst hit the saluting Syrian in the face, the hollowpoint slugs exploding through his skull, bone and blood, and fingers spraying the other soldiers. Lyons continued forward, pointing the pistol at the staring eyes and gaping mouth of another soldier. A 3-shot burst took his head off above the jaw.
A third Syrian finally reacted, throwing aside his blanket, reaching for the pistol-grip of a Kalashnikov. Lyons continued forward, his left leg snapping a kick to the groin of his opponent. Gasping, the soldier fell, his hand trying to find his rifle. Lyons fired down into the top of the man's head.
Pivoting, his arms straightened, he fired the last .45-caliber slug at the last Syrian as the panicking soldier grabbed for his rifle. The slug snapped the Syrian's head sideways, gouging a bloody track from his left cheek through his ear.
The slide of the Colt locked back. His gashed face contorting with a scream of panic and rage, the Syrian swung his Kalashnikov around.
A burst of three subsonic 9mm slugs took out his left eye. Another burst punched into his temple. Lyons drove a kick into the rifle in the Syrian's hands, and Gadgets stepped close and fired a point-blank burst from his Beretta through the Syrian's forehead.