"That one? Who comes to interview me?"

"Kill her. Arrange her death. In America, we would have executed her, except for the Mexicans. The Mexicans would not allow it, even though she spies for the Soviets."

"I will consider it. Could she be looking for the Americans?"

"Question her. It does not matter if she survives."

"I will consider it. Good fortune on your attack — go. I will deal with the woman."

"Gentlemen," Powell began." Here we have a convoy of very common, nondescript, semiarmored vehicles carrying sufficient firepower to surprise and overwhelm all checkpoints without armored or aircraft support."

Like a television used-car salesman, Powell moved along a line of a Land Rover, a Mercedes troop truck and a semitruck and trailer. "These two, the Rover and the Mercedes, are standard transportation for the Syrian army, and are still marked accordingly. However, the .50-caliber machine gun and the fully automatic grenade launcher are not stock. They..."

"An MK-19?" Lyons interrupted. "Forty millimeter?"

"Four hundred rounds per minute, range of sixteen hundred meters. Very special, just for you. This Mercedes — you see them everywhere. And that truck and trailer — Akbar and his uncles ship tons of contraband a week into Damascus, using exactly that truck. The militias, the Syrian army soldiers, the border guards all know that truck because they always wait for it with their palms out for their cut of the cash."

"Smuggling?" Gadgets asked. "Like what?"

"Well, take a look." Powell opened the doors at the rear of the truck.

Stacked from the deck to the roof, from side panel to side panel, were boxes of familiar mass-market products: detergents, hand soaps, toothpaste, designer jeans, kitchen and household appliances and junk food. Like blocks in a Chinese puzzle, the boxes had been fitted into the trailer to utilize every cubic centimeter.

"There it is," Powell jived. "The answer to the Peoples' Revolution. Syria can't get it from the Soviets, so they get it from the United States and Europe, via Lebanon. Via Akbar's family. Via about ten thousand different smugglers. It comes in by boat, like the one you dudes came on, then moves through Beirut to Damascus, then to Iraq and Iran, even into Russia and Afghanistan. Sometimes the trucks carry stuff like this, other times it's video recorders and tvs and videocassettes. Sometimes it's refrigerators and air conditioners."

"Where will we ride?" Blancanales asked.

"Inside, up front."

"Will that trash stop bullets?" Lyons pointed at the boxes. "I'm not going to hide in there waiting for an AK slug to punch through."

"That 'trash' is not what it seems. The first layer is merchandise, for payoffs and giveaways. Then there's a layer of steel, then sandbags. Won't stop artillery or rockets, but you'll be safe from rifles and machine guns and lightweight shrapnel."

"I don't like it," Lyons told him. "It isn't my style to hide out while other people take point for me. It's my mission; I'll take the risks."

Powell grinned. "I can understand that. I know you. But I didn't know you would be on the mission when I came up with this concept. I thought it would be the standard-issue agent out of Washington. You know, 'Where's my limo? Where's my hotel? Why don't these dirty people speak English?' That kind of clown. However, you could get into it. Watch this."

He banged on the trailer and stepped back. Where meter-high black lettering had been painted on the side, panels opened and the barrel of an automatic rifle emerged. A militiaman peered out at the Americans.

Powell led them to the cab. Above the roof, machine-gun barrels appeared. The gunports on the sides and front made the trailer into a moving bunker.

"Boom-boom!" A fighter called out. "Kill Syrians!"

Lyons laughed. "Motivated!"

"That's very good for us," Blancanales commented. "But what about the driver? He'll be totally exposed."

Opening the driver's door, Powell pointed to steel plates reinforcing the doors and firewall and flipped down sun visors made of steel. Other plates flipped up over the side windows and windshield, forming a slit only a hand's width wide.

"Won't stop a rocket," Powell told them. "But it stops bullets and shrapnel."

"Okay," Gadgets said, grinning. "Supercool. But what about the tires?"

"They're flat-proof. They've got solid inner cores."

"Oh, man!" Gadgets kicked a tire. "You got it covered! How'd you do this in a week?"

Powell shook his head. "Didn't do it in a week. Remember, this war's been going on for ten years. Akbar's family has been running toothpaste and disco jeans into Syria since '78. How do you think Shias could afford to send a son to the University of California?"

"Free enterprise," Blancanales said, nodding. "But aren't they risking their connections if they take an American kill squad into Syrian territory?"

"Pol," said the Marine captain, using the Puerto Rican's code name. "These people think you guys are okay. Because you're coming here to fight for them, to get the Syrians out of their country so that it won't be one more Soviet slave state. No one's talking any phony peacekeeping missions, none of you are helping those fascist Maronites. You're here to fight the enemies of Lebanon. Don't you worry about them losing their connections. They're worried about losing their country. The people here will do anything to make this a success."

A man ran from the stairwell toward them. Akbar talked quickly with Powell.

Then Powell told Able Team, "That Commie bitch Desmarais is here. And guess what the Shia security saw in her passport? Entry and exit stamps for the U.S. of A. via La Guardia, then Cyprus, then Beirut. Anybody you know been to New York and Cyprus on their way here?"

Able Team glanced at one another. Gadgets answered for his partners. "Just us tourists."

8

Surrounded by cars of bodyguards, Sayed Ahamed and Anne Desmarais toured the hills of Beirut. The intermittent shellfire had cleared the roads of traffic. Only military vehicles braved the danger.

But few shells fell near the city or the surrounding villages. The unidentified forces fighting with artillery and small arms along the Beirut-Damascus highway did not fire at the Lebanese militias. They bombarded other unknown forces. Shells and rockets screamed across the dark sky.

As the war came, the weather changed. The chill, bright afternoon had faded as the onrushing storm front darkened the sky. For hours since leaving headquarters, they had driven through the cold winds, interviewing field officers and lookouts. Sometimes they talked with peasants. But they learned nothing of the fighting. Now snow flurries swirled around the limousine. Desmarais looked out at a landscape of grays and black touched by smears of green and startling white.

Rockets streaked into a distant mountain amid a flash of red. But no rockets threatened the line of cars carrying Ahamed and the Canadian journalist back to Beirut.

"But there must be some information on the fighting," Desmarais insisted to Ahamed.

"The Syrian radio reports nothing. The telephones are dead. My officers have attempted even to contact the extremist groups in the Bekaa. But there seems to be a jamming operation in progress. Many voices, many noises on all the radio frequencies. Total chaos. Even though the fighting is in my country, I know nothing."

"Not even rumors?"

"There are always rumors!" The debonair militia chieftain laughed. "Rumors are nothing, less than nothing, for the stories confuse the people and obscure the truth."

"But what of the stories of the Zionist gangs attacking the Syrian positions?"

"Is this a question for your newspaper? Or a joke? What Zionist gangs? Do you mean the Israelis? Why would the Israelis attack the Syrians?"