13

Every breath brought pain. Jake Newton flinched against an imagined kick, passed out again as a wave of pain crashed over his consciousness. He floated for a moment in peace, without fear, far away from his body. But he returned.

Forcing himself to consider the pain, he remained motionless, his eyes closed, his breathing slow. He listened. Voices spoke in Arabic. He heard the clank of metal, the sound of footsteps on concrete.

He eased an eye open. Specks of light gleamed through fabric. He lay in the back of a canvas-covered truck. It was not moving. Looking around him, he saw his blood puddling on the wood slats. His hands were tied in front of him. His slacks were filthy and bloody.

Pain ripped through his ribs and back as he tried the knots around his wrists. Then he strained to separate his ankles and felt the ropes binding his feet together.

They had taken him hostage. He remembered sitting in the car, watching the roof line of the warehouse through an infrared scope. Then the car windows burst inward. He never saw the terrorists who beat him. He only remembered the shock of steel smashing down on his skull again and again.

The kicking and beating on the concrete remained only a confusion of pain.

When would the questions begin? Would he survive the interrogation? Considering what the terrorists had already done to him, he could not expect to live through it.

The truck swayed on its springs. Jake lay utterly motionless as boots walked the truckbed. A heavy box dropped. The boots scuffed, hesitated. A boot toe smashed into the back of his head. Despite himself, he gasped.

Laughter rang out. The boots stomped away. He heard the boots drop to the concrete.

Jake waited to the count of one hundred before opening his eyes again. He turned slightly to look behind him. He saw the crates stacked there. But none of the terrorists.

Uprights of stamped sheet metal held up the truck's canvas canopy. Watching the tailgate, Jake reached to the nearest upright and dragged the knots binding his wrists over the sharp edge.

Blue light sparkled on flowing filth. The tinted flashlight in his left hand, his right gripping the Colt, Lyons followed the narrow walkway through the ancient sewer. Behind him, Gadgets held his silenced Beretta ready. Blancanales and Mohammed followed a few steps behind.

Things scurried in the darkness around them. Small stones fell from the crumbling walls. Ahead of them, they saw only total darkness.

The chill fetid air of the age-old sewer touched their faces like foul hands. Nerves and the exertion of walking with the weight of their armor and weapons forced Able Team to breathe deep the stench. After a minute, the noses went dead. But the thick, poisonous atmosphere tore at their throats, made their senses dull, their thoughts slow.

"Ironman," Gadgets whispered. "Stop. Kill the light."

Lyons flicked off the light and stood motionless in the absolute black. He stared forward, straining his eyes for a light.

"It's been a hundred paces," Blancanales hissed.

Only trickling water and the small noises of scuttling creatures broke the silence. Lyons heard his blood rushing through his arteries, the boom of his heart. Air rasped over the membranes of his throat.

"Zilch," Gadgets admitted.

Waving the light ahead of him, Lyons continued forward. A rush of air swept past him. Lyons turned off his flashlight. Mo-man's light died an instant later.

Clean air washed over his face like clear, cool water. Lyons gulped the delicious breeze as he thumbed his Colt's safety down two clicks to full autoburst. He heard other safeties snap off.

A pale white luminescence glowed from a wall ahead of them. Footsteps and clattering metal echoed. A blue light appeared, whipped about, then bobbed toward them. A second blue light came from the wall.

The white glow backlit four armed men. The first and last men held flashlights. They all carried autorifles.

Lyons eased himself flat. Behind him, a knee cracked. Metal touched stone. Able Team waited.

A voice spoke in Arabic; a man laughed. A third voice hissed the others quiet. Able Team waited until the blue light of the pointman revealed Lyons flat on his belly, the oval cylinder of the silenced Colt pointing up.

Silent .45 slugs threw the pointman into the stone ceiling. Bursts of 9mm fire zipped over Lyons's back, smacked into the chests and faces of the other terrorists. Slugs smashed into the metal of the AK rifles, ricocheted off the stones. As burst after burst twisted the terrorists, Lyons flicked his Colt's fire selector up to single shot and searched for a target.

Dropping his blue flashlight, the last silhouetted terrorist staggered back. Lyons sighted, sent a .45 hollowpoint into the gunman's chest. A burst of 9mm slugs caught the falling man, helped toss out an arm as if he waved goodbye. One slug whined off a wall in the distance.

Groaning came from the walkway. Lyons passed his flashlight back to Gadgets as he whispered, "When you hear me moving, count two, then put some light on them. I'll be up against the side wall."

Slipping an extra magazine from a belt pouch, Lyons held it ready in his left hand. He rose to his feet and groped through the darkness, his shoulder touching the wall as he stepped on corpses and rifles.

A rifle dragged on stone. Gadgets switched on the blue flashlight. It revealed a terrorist reaching for a rifle. Lyons stepped on the clawing hand. He fired a single shot into the dying man's head. He stepped over the others, put single shots into the heads of two others. The pointman did not need such mercy. He had no head.

Checking the corpses, Lyons took the flashlights. Gadgets and Mohammed searched through pockets and found radios. Blancanales reloaded his Beretta, went ahead to the side passage and watched for other terrorists. Mohammed slung his Uzi and took a Kalashnikov. They dumped the bodies into the flowing scum of the sewer.

Blancanales waved them forward. They rushed to the side tunnel. Peering around the corner, they saw a short passage jackhammered through stone and concrete. Light spilled from a rectangle cut above the passageway. A ladder went up the wall to it.

"I heard voices a second ago," Blancanales whispered.

"Think we can chance going in quiet?" Lyons asked.

Boots came down the aluminum rungs. The four Able men pressed themselves flat against the wall. They waited. They heard voices, then another set of boots descending. Blue light swept the walkway.

Two terrorists rounded the corner. The first carried a Kalashnikov and an RPG rocket launcher. The second had a rifle and carried a pack of rockets in fiberboard tubes. Blancanales and Gadgets reached out, put the muzzles of their Berettas against the heads of the terrorists and executed them.

"Shall we take the rockets?" Lyons asked his partners.

"No. There'll be more upstairs." Blancanales took a fragmentation grenade from his battle suit. "We go in loud, yes?"

"Grenades, then the Atchisson." Lyons unslung his full-auto assault shotgun. He checked the safety, tapped the magazine to test the seating, let the weapon hang from his right shoulder. He took out another box mag of 12-gauge shells and jammed it in the back pocket of his slacks.

"Give me a flash bomb," he said. "I've only got one."

"Here you go." Gadgets handed him the grenade. Originally designed for attacking hijackers who held airline passengers hostage, the grenade produced a flash and tremendous concussion that temporarily blinded and stunned but caused no wounds.

Lyons straightened the cotter safety pins. More voices came from the trapdoor. But they heard no feet on the stairs. Lyons glanced around the corner, saw no one.