"A limousine?"
"One. No trucks. No escort vehicles. Just a limo. Want us to zap them?"
"Hold on, we'll take a vote." Gadgets turned to his partners. "Can't question dead ones. I got another minimike back in the truck. How about Mr. Marine puts it on them and listens in?"
Lyons and Blancanales nodded agreement. Gadgets spoke to Powell again, directing him to take the miniature transmitter and receiver from his equipment and place the microphone in the limousine.
"Will do, specialist. You'll know when it's transmitting."
"No, I won't. It's on another frequency than the ones I have here. You've got to monitor. So go, get to it."
The voice of Dastgerdi came from the receiver's tiny speaker. Akbar summarized what he heard. "He is at the car. He's talking to his driver. He tells him they will go to the Iranian embassy in Damascus. The loyal army units have defeated the gang of deserters and Brotherhood fanatics who had the artillery battery. So be ready to go..."
"That's why the shellings quit," Gadgets commented.
" 'Are the electronics in the back?' 'Yes, sir.' He's not talking now; it sounds like he's opening the trunk... closing the trunk. He checked the electronics. His footsteps come to the seat, he sits down... A man comes to talk to him, they talk about the rockets going through Tripoli and meeting the ship from Nicaragua, they're talking weather and travel time..."
Their hand-radios buzzed again. Gadgets pointed to Blancanales; Blancanales nodded. As Gadgets listened to Akbar's whispered monologue and translation, Blancanales took Powell's report.
"It's a French diplomat. Some special representative from the Education Office."
"You planted the bug?"
"Most definitely, Pol. I'm listening to the French dipshit complaining to his driver about undisciplined Syrian soldiers. Didn't like us stopping them. Seems... says he'll complain to Colonel Dastgerdi himself. Is that interesting?"
"Continue monitoring," Blancanales told him. "We're monitoring a situation on this end. Radio us fast if something comes up."
"Will do."
Akbar looked at Gadgets. "He has left the car to go to the maps. I hear only noise now."
"That's all right." Gadgets concentrated, staring at a poster of the Ayatollah. "Oh, you old lunatic, I got a surprise for you. Oh, yeah!" Gadgets turned to his partners. "Time to go, dudes. We got a rude move to make!"
Long lines of military and civilian vehicles followed the curves of the highway through the mountains. Land Rovers, Japanese scout cars and Mercedes sedans risked head-on oblivion to pass the slow trucks and troop transports.
The Syrian army and air force had exterminated the last strongholds of the rebellion in the Shael mountains. With the end of the artillery and rocket barrages, the soldiers manning the checkpoints had finally released the hundreds of vehicles stalled by the war.
The document checks had not found the Americans. Via radio, Zhgenti had checked with the Syrian central command in the Bekaa. None of the officers at the major checkpoints reported the group of Americans. The Americans and their Shia militia allies had not stopped at a checkpoint or encountered a Syrian patrol. If Desmarais had told the truth, they remained somewhere in the Bekaa Valley, concealed by the storm and the chaos of the war.
Now Zhgenti raced east to Damascus. His unit, reinforced by Syrian soldiers and men from the Syrian intelligence service when political and military conditions allowed their reassignment, would take positions around the Iranian embassy, and there wait for the Americans to appear.
Despite his doubts, Zhgenti had finally agreed with Desmarais. The situation left him no choice. The Americans had outmaneuvered all the forces at his disposal Soviet, Palestinian and Lebanese. Somewhere in the Bekaa, the Americans and their Shia allies attacked an Iranian target. Logically, after the strike, they would retreat to the west, where the coast allowed for transportation to Cyprus and their return to the United States.
But logic did not guide the Americans, not the usual logic of military planners. The American terror team slipped past expected targets, where prepared defenses awaited, to hit where no one had expected. Where concentric lines of defense ensured complete security from attack, they seemed to rise from the earth to kill and destroy.
This had been their technique throughout the two years of operations. Zhgenti knew their record of successes. When the Egyptian wing of the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood, Soviet financed and armed, struck at a secret U.S. Air Force installation in Cairo, the American team had slashed through the cells of Islamic terror gangs. But they, did not pursue the scattered individuals. Instead, they raced far into the Egyptian desert to martyr an entire garrison of Islamic warriors. In another campaign, they had parachuted into the mountains of Nicaragua and devastated a terror training camp. Then, only a day or two later, they had reappeared in Los Angeles to exterminate a terror unit preparing a binary nerve gas attack on the city.
With those Americans, Zhgenti could only expect the unexpected. Therefore, he had accepted the suggestion from Desmarais that he anticipate the illogical and establish a watch at the Iranian embassy.
Actually, when Zhgenti considered it, a certain logic suggested that the Americans would attack the embassy. They had tracked Iranians from Beirut to Mexico, then exterminated them. Now they attacked an Iranian base in the Bekaa.
So why not attack the Iranian embassy, the source of funding and guidance for the fanatics?
When the Americans came, Zhgenti would be there, waiting.
As his limousine ascended the ramp to street level, Colonel Dastgerdi saw the man known to his associates in UNESCO as Jean Pierre Giraud stride from the darkness. Dastgerdi pushed the button of his intercom. "Driver, stop! That man comes with me."
"Yes, Colonel."
Throwing open the door, Dastgerdi greeted the man in French. But when the elegantly dressed United Nations functionary joined him in the Mercedes, Dastgerdi abandoned French and spoke in their native language, Russian.
"This is our night of victory, Comrade Suvorov," Dastgerdi announced, using the man's true name. "Another victory for the Special Forces of the Red Army!"
Suvorov feigned ignorance of Russian. He glanced to the bulletproof glass dividing their seats from the driver and continued in French. Dastgerdi laughed at his associate's concern.
"He cannot hear. The glass stops bullets and words. I am absolutely positive. Speak it is a time for celebration." The Colonel opened the built-in bar, removed a bottle of vodka and filled two glasses. "After years, we can speak. We have overcome the technological limitations of our nation's weapons, overcome the ignorance of the Syrians and the stupidity of the Iranians. The American President will receive the reward of our struggles. To the inauguration!"
They gulped down the Russian alcohol. The limousine passed through the concentric rings of fencing protecting the rocket-development base. Dastgerdi looked out at the landscape of rock and snow. He laughed. "Never again will I see this miserable place. Now I can become an officer again! Forget your French, Suvorov! Speak our language."
"Is difficult to abandon caution," Suvorov admitted. "Speaking French and English, but never our tongue. Never allowing ourselves even to dream in our language, but... but for victory, it is nothing."
As the Mercedes powered through the snow and ruts of the road to the highway, Dastgerdi poured two more shots of vodka. "To the defeat of the old men in Moscow and Washington. After the war, the Soviet army will rule all the world."
The other Soviet laughed. "But Syria and Iran and Iraq are not the world. We will gain the oil fields and the ports, three more socialist republics."
"And it will be a victory for the army. Not the old men, not the KGB, not the diplomats. We will gain power over the Central Committee and then nothing can stop us. Nothing!"