In the glare of the taxi's headlights, the terrorist's horrible burns made the onlookers gasp. The rocket flame had melted his eyes and features, reduced his flesh to cooked meat covered with the ashes of his shirt and coat. He waved his hands above him, groping for light, not yet understanding his loss of vision.
"To the hospital!" Blancanales called out to the two drivers.
Abdul shouted out in Arabic to the onlookers. Several men in the crowd helped lift the burned terrorist from the asphalt and gently carry him to Blancanales's taxi. They eased him onto the back seat.
Blancanales jumped into the front as Zaki gunned the engine. Zaki leaned on the horn. Abdul and Lyons followed in their taxi. They heard approaching sirens as they left the flames of the scene behind.
"Two prisoners," Blancanales radioed Gadgets.
"That man isn't going to live," Lyons added. "If we're going to get anything out of him, it's got to be quick."
Zaki turned to Blancanales. "The colonel anticipated prisoners. There is a place ready."
"Take us there."
After five minutes of speeding through the labyrinth of Cairo's streets, Blancanales saw Mohammed and Gadgets pushing up a rolling steel door. The roar of engines, the clanging of hammers on steel filled the area with noise. Blancanales looked around at the narrow street of auto and welding shops, saw white flashes of torches lighting the interiors, then his taxi followed Gadgets into a warehouse. Lyons and Abdul screeched to a stop behind them a second later. Mohammed pulled down the door.
Bare light bulbs lit the oily, soot-fouled interior. While their drivers checked the shadows and corners of the building for any possible intruders, Able Team pulled the burned terrorist from the taxi.
"How'd this happen to him?" Lyons asked.
"Remember when they trained you with the RPG-7, they told you to keep clear of the backblast?" Gadgets reminded him. "When I shot the one with the RPG, this one must've caught the backblast."
"He caught part of it," Blancanales corrected. "The driver got most of it. Killed him."
"That's why Stony Man sent us those German rockets," Gadgets added. "You can fire an Armburst out of your coat pocket..."
"Get some morphine, Gadgets," Blancanales interrupted as he leaned over the charred terrorist. "Trunk of my cab. Lyons, we aren't going to get anything out of this guy. He's in shock and dying. Listen to his breathing. I'd say his mouth and throat are burned bad. Maybe his lungs."
"Don't give him the morphine yet… Abdul! Over here."
"Yes, sir."
Lyons went to their taxi, pulled the semiconscious teenage terrorist from the car floor. He and Abdul sat the punk down on oil-black concrete away from the other prisoner. Lyons slapped the terrorist, grabbed him by the hair, pounded his head against the taxi's fender. The boy's eyes opened.
"Tell him he is a prisoner. Tell him if he cooperates, he lives. If he doesn't, we torture him until he does."
Abdul translated. The boy shook his head. Abdul spoke to him, the boy answering with a few words. He closed his eyes, mumbled words.
"He's praying. He says he fights for Allah. The Brotherhood preaches that if their fighters die, they ascend to heaven to stand at the right hand of Allah."
"So he wants to be a martyr?"
Abdul nodded.
"Ask him what kind of martyrdom he wants."
Hearing the translated words of the American in front of him, the boy cried out, struggled against the plastic handcuffs looped around his wrists and ankles. Lyons slammed a fist into the terrorist's ribs, doubling him over. The boy's breathing came in sobs as Lyons grabbed him by the arms and dragged him around the taxi.
"Tell him he'll talk, or we'll do thisto him…"
As Abdul translated again, Lyons dumped the boy next to the other prisoner, shoved the boy's face to the blinded, disfigured, dying man.
The boy screamed, thrashed. Lyons held him by the hair and the shirt collar, kept his face only inches from the horror.
"Will he talk now? Ask him!"
The boy nodded.
A gate of corrugated steel ten feet high slid aside for the limousines and escort car. In the blue white glare of mercury arc lights, crew-cut young Americans in uniforms without insignia, M-16 rifles in their hands, watched the Lincolns enter. While the others stayed back, one soldier advanced to the first limousine and motioned for the driver to roll down the window. The soldier glanced at the driver and bodyguard in the front seat, then at the CIA passengers. He repeated the procedure with the second limousine, waving a flashlight over the faces of Katz, Sadek and Parks. The limousines continued to the hangars. The escort car, a mid-seventies Dodge with a full-powered engine and heavy-duty suspension, parked near the soldiers.
Katz glanced back, saw soldiers searching the interior and trunk of the Dodge. The three CIA soldiers left the car and stood to one side.
"We're on full alert," Parks explained. "Marines will search these cars when we park. Can't be too careful."
"Someone was not careful last night," Katz commented.
"And he died."
"True. But the death of Mr. Hershey does not solve the failure of the security of this facility."
"It took the Muslims a year to infiltrate our operation. It'll take time to find..."
"Mr. Parks," Katz corrected him, "you don't have time."
The limousines came to a stop. Parks opened the door. He stepped into the cool wind and squinting against the blowing dust, held the door open for Katz and Sadek.
"I know I don't have the time. I know it. But you can't expect me to take over the station one night and break a major terrorist operation the next day. Let's see what the electronics crew came up with…"
As the three men crossed the asphalt to the door of the hangar's office, Katz, limping slightly as always, touched the tiny hearing aid behind his ear. He smiled at what he heard.
Technicians saluted Parks as he entered the office. "We found no micro-transmitters or corn-line interceptions, sir. We found nothing at all."
A street of whitewashed shops glowed with the soft colors of a theater's neon. Crowding around the entrance, teenagers waved tickets at a fat man. Other teenagers left the theater, boys punching and shoving one another. Abdul and Lyons rolled through the intersection.
Lyons pointed to the crowd. "What's going on there? Politics?"
Abdul glanced at the marquee. "Bruce Lee."
Smiling, Lyons checked his modified Colt. He undid his belt, secured several mag pouches. His hand radio buzzed. It was Schwarz.
"News from Katz, Ironman. Air force technicians have swept the hangars, telephone lines, the perimeter. No electronics."
"Talk show's over," Lyons said. "We're at the alley. On our way in…"
Abdul parked the taxi. Then he slid an Uzi from under his seat and followed Lyons into a narrow alley. Lights behind sooty windows cast no illumination into the narrow corridor of shadow and filth. Above them, voices screamed from tenements. Radio songs in the strange chromatic scale of Arabia drifted down. Lyons pulled back the hammer of his .45, held the silenced autopistol ready.
He heard Abdul's steps behind him. Lyons slowed as he came to a tangle of trash. A faint light revealed a twisted length of steel jutting from a building. At six feet above the paving stones, it posed no danger to Egyptians. Lyons memorized the position of the hazard. If he had to run out of the alley, he didn't want the angle iron to take off the top of his head.
"Two more doors," Abdul whispered.
Silently, Lyons slid out his hand radio. Abdul went to the door. Lyons clicked the radio's transmit key, once, then three times. He repeated the code, heard Blancanales and Gadgets acknowledge with clicks. He returned the radio to the flap pocket and checked the Atchisson slung on his back. No tangles, no hang-ups.