He switched on a penlight. The glow revealed the gutted interior of a telephone circuit room. Deliberately destroyed with high-explosive charges, panels and wires filled the room. Torn cables hung from conduits.
Years before, someone perhaps one of the five dead found in the tunnel had blocked the door with a length of steel pipe jammed like a crossbar between the two panels bracketing the door. The lock and door handle had been shot out. Scratched paint showed that an attempt had been made to force the door open. But the attempt had failed. Judging by the bones in the tunnel and the rust on the shot-out lock, the room had not been opened for years.
Lyons listened at the door. He heard nothing. He returned to the tunnel entry and hissed to Blancanales. His partner joined him in seconds.
"Might be a dead end," Lyons whispered.
"We'll know when we open the door."
Slowly and silently they raised the length of steel pipe. Blancanales stood by to jam it back into place. The door was hinged to open inward, and Lyons slowly eased the door open a hand's width.
Rats squealed and skittered, claws scratching at the door. Concrete and trash spilled through the opening. A rat hurtled into the small room, squeaking, running wildly through the wires and metal fragments until it dropped through the trapdoor. Below, they heard the Shias curse and stomp.
Points of light appeared at the very top of the opening. Dust swirled in the faint light. Lyons and Blancanales smelled the stink of rotting garbage and generations of rat filth. More trash and debris fell through as Lyons continued opening the door. He ignored the rats leaping against his body and scratching over his boots. He could hear the Shias in the tunnel as they continued to stomp on rats.
Ahead of him, Lyons saw a wall of trash. Through the years, trash and debris had been piled against the door, covering it completely. Faint daylight glowed through the top layer of papers and filth.
Now they heard sounds outside the jangling and crashing of a truck on the street came to them, but no voices.
Moving the square steel box of a wiring panel to the doorway, Lyons stood up and tried to look over the top of the wall of trash. As rats skittered and ran on the other side, he gently cleared a hole through the papers and rotting garbage. He saw a street-level garage. He continued clearing aside the trash.
Autofire hammered.
10
Lyons fell back as Blancanales attempted to close the door against an avalanche of trash and filth. But the debris blocked the door.
On the other side the bursts of automatic-rifle fire continued.
But they heard no slugs hitting the trash or door. They waited, listening.
"They're not shooting at us," Blancanales told Lyons.
Standing on the box again, Lyons looked outside. He saw no one. Another burst shattered the quiet, the autofire echoing in the garage. Lyons heard no ricochets or voices, or the sound of running. He dug through the trash and broken concrete, then crawled into the light.
Scanning the area, he saw debris from years of explosions and fighting littering the garage. Burned-out wrecks blocked the alley exit. Two new Japanese panel trucks sat parked on his left. Then he heard voices coming from a flight of steel-and-concrete stairs.
A dead militiaman sprawled on the stairs, blood draining from wounds. He wore the fatigues of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. A rifle fired, the noise coming from somewhere above the dead man.
"Pol! Get the others! It's clear."
Lyons scrambled out. He pulled out his auto-Colt, checking to see that it was cocked and locked, and ran across the garage to the stairs. He looked up and quickly dodged back as an autorifle fired.
But no slugs came at him. He looked at the dead man. The Iranian had been shot in the back.
Looking across the garage, Lyons saw Blancanales lead the line of men out of the trash pile. Blancanales and Powell ran across the garage to join him. Akbar directed the platoon of Shia militiamen to cover the street and alley exits.
Lyons went up. At the first landing he went flat on the concrete and looked up the next flight of stairs. He saw an open fire exit with the door gone, but the low angle denied him a view of the corridor beyond. He heard voices, then kicks against a door. A rifle fired once.
He went up the next flight of stairs on his hands and knees. Stairs squeaked behind him as weight stressed the steel framework. He looked back, saw Blancanales. Lyons continued to the top.
Peering into the corridor, Lyons saw two Iranian militiamen fire their Kalashnikov rifles at a closed door, punching the door and the walls on each side with lines of 7.62mm ComBloc. Then they ran at the door and kicked it. A rifle inside fired one bullet out, splintered wood and plastic flying from the door. The Iranians scrambled for cover.
Lyons braced his silent Colt on the top stair. Thumbing the fire-selector down one click to semiautomatic, he sighted on the head of the Iranian farthest from him and squeezed the trigger.
The Iranian moved. As he raised his rifle to his shoulder, the .45-caliber hollowpoint slammed into his left cheek at three hundred meters per second, the upward trajectory of the impact-flattened slug tearing away his eyes and half his face. The force spun him back several steps; he was still alive, blood and fluids spraying from his opened skull.
A second slug caught the other Iranian low in the back of the head, killing him instantly as the expanding hollowpoint liberated a devastating shock force of kinetic energy to explode his skull.
Motioning Blancanales and Powell up, Lyons ran through the corridor. He continued past the door to the lobby of the office building. Rusting steel grills covered the long-ago-shattered plate-glass windows. Moldy papers, rifled files and charred furniture littered the lobby. Vandals had spray painted Arabic slogans on the gray marble walls. Everything not burned had been smashed. Only twisted metal and broken glass remained of what had been an abstract sculpture of colored glass rising from the lobby to the mezzanine.
Nothing moved on the mezzanine level. Lyons saw no one on the stairs. He heard nothing in the building.
Lyons turned at the sound of footsteps. Blancanales and Powell stood on each side of the bullet-splintered door. Shia militiamen ran past the door. With the universal hand signals learned by fighting alongside soldiers of many languages, Lyons pointed to where he stood, indicating the interior of the high lobby in a wide sweep of his arm. The Shias nodded. One man squatted against the walls and watched the lobby, his AK rifle ready. The other Shia ran down the stairs to the garage.
Lyons returned to the door. Powell glanced at the two dead Iranians, then at the splintered door.
"Who's in there?" Powell asked in a whisper.
Lyons shrugged.
"Mademoiselle!" Powell shouted in his most nasal Texas accent. "Is that you shooting in there? What is going on?"
"Who is it? Is that you, American? Tell me your name!" a female voice demanded, the voice cracking. "Tell me, identify who you are!"
"This is you-know-who come to rescue you. Mr. Nothing."
"Captain Powell!" the woman shouted. They heard sheet metal squeaking. A weight shifted, then crashed. The door opened and Anne Desmarais looked out. Her face bore the marks and blood of a beating. She held a Kalashnikov. When she saw them, she tried to open the door completely. It banged against metal. She struggled with the door and sobbed. "Oh, finally. Thank you, oh my God I prayed..."
Blancanales spoke slowly, soothingly. "Do you have the door blocked, miss? Do you need us to push the door open? Set that rifle's safety so we don't have an accident. Do you know how to set the safety? That lever on the right side, push it all the way up. That one, good. Step back, we'll push the door open."