"Tried to suck the information from him!" Zhgenti hissed with anger, his eyes narrowing to slits. "I was here. I looked and I saw a whore thrown out of a limousine. The whore was you. Is that how you gain your information? Servicing Arabs in the backs of their limousines? Like a Soho street girl? I should send you to work for the English. But we need you now. Go..."
"For what?"
"Take orders, whore!" Zhgenti never allowed his voice to rise above a whisper. He sounded like a snake. He looked like a snake. Desmarais did not dare interrupt him again. "You go to your room. Get warm clothing. And whatever other whore things you need to pass as a journalist. You failed and now we must go to the Bekaa to look for the Americans. Go! Now, or I put a bullet in your head. And not my big bullet. I will give you one that will splatter your brains!"
Desmarais stumbled to an elevator, pounded the button. She had no doubt that Zhgenti would do as he threatened. As she waited, she looked back. Zhgenti pushed through the hotel doors.
She saw the two vans waiting in the traffic circle, the broad faces of Soviets in them. Other passengers appeared to be Palestinian contract soldiers. The spray-painted sides of the vans identified them as newsmen in English, French, Arabic and Farsi. But she knew they could not be television technicians. Zhgenti did not travel for news. He traveled to kill.
The elevator took her to her floor. Running to her room, she quickly packed her overnight bag with underwear and shirts and film.
In her warmest trench coat, she ran back to the elevator, summoned it. Her overnight bag bounced against her, clinking against the camera under her coat. She glanced at herself in a mirror as she waited. With a scarf protecting her throat and a fur hat on her head, she certainly looked the role of the young woman journalist.
Only four years before, she had been a struggling writer of romance novels, typing and retyping manuscripts, hoping for a sale but earning only rejections.
Desperate to make the right connections, she had left Quebec for a job in Toronto as a copy editor at a romance publisher, correcting the manuscripts of other struggling writers. But she never sold her writing until she wrote a column for a leftist newsletter.
Her editorials denouncing acid rain as an imperialist plot of American transnational corporations earned a call from a man with an accent. He asked her to continue writing her anti-American tirades.
Checks came. Then airline tickets with a typed list of names and addresses. She churned out controversial interviews and stories that appeared on the op-ed pages of some of the best newspapers. After she'd had a year of excellent sales, a representative of the Soviet Union approached her with an offer too good to refuse. She had no objections to working for the Soviets.
She loathed Americans and the United States.
9
Wearing the uniform of a Soviet advisor to the Syrian army, Carl Lyons rode in the open back of the Mercedes troop transport with two Shia militiamen in Syrian uniforms. Akbar and Hussein, in the cab, also wore Syrian uniforms. Syrian army regulation gloves, coats, wool scarves and blankets protected them from the snowstorm. The truck also matched the vehicles of the Syrian forces.
They rode in silence, their weapons in their hands. Beside Lyons, a Browning .50-caliber machine gun stood ready on its pedestal, a belt of armor-piercing cartridges in place. An M-79 grenade launcher and a bandolier of 40mm grenades hung from the pedestal. Black plastic secured with a neoprene snap cord concealed both weapons: Syrian forces did not employ the American-made weapons.
The disguises would be the key to passing through most checkpoints. But if questioned, Hussein carried perfect forgeries of military travel orders.
A hundred meters ahead, Powell and two other Shias rode point in the Land Rover. Powell wore a Soviet uniform; the Shias wore Syrian uniforms and carried military documents. Plastic covered the MK-19 40mm grenade launcher mounted in the back of the Rover, where loaded RPGs stood ready. Powell needed only to twist off the safety-cap wires, cock the launcher and fire the rockets.
Last in the convoy, Blancanales and Gadgets enjoyed the warmth of the trailer as they manned a second set of heavy weapons, another Browning .50-caliber and another MK-19. But these launchers and other weapons would be used only if their documents and disguises failed.
A Shia vehicle passed them without a word. The militiamen stared at the passing Syrians and Soviets with open hatred. Their officer waved; he was the only one who knew that Shias drove the Rover and trucks.
Continuing east, the convoy left all life behind. Their headlights revealed abandoned vehicles and deserted villages. Far away in the storm and night, the incomprehensible war continued. Rockets and shellfire flashed on distant positions. Flares seared the storm clouds.
Able Team's three hand-radios buzzed. Powell spoke to the other Americans through a fourth NSA unit. "Gentlemen, we are now in it. I am monitoring the frequencies on a Syrian army radio, and I am hearing very scary things. There are at least three different army factions calling one another traitors and usurpers. They are fighting one another and — here's the joke — they are also engaging with forces of the Muslim Brotherhood. I guessed the political factionalism. But the Muslim Brotherhood is something else. Last time the Brotherhood rebelled, they seized and defended the city of Hama against battalions of the best Syrian troops. The Syrians destroyed the city. A total slaughter. Maybe twenty thousand, thirty thousand people killed: no one will ever know. If the Brotherhood is back, they're back in force and they're out for revenge.
"I tell you," Powell continued, "the Brotherhood's more than I planned on. Why don't you three reconsider this mission. If you want to go on, okay. But it ain't too late to go back. We could wait for the politics and religion to get straight."
Lyons answered immediately. "We can't. If those missiles get out, we'll have to search every ship and every plane between here and the White House to find them. I say we go."
"How long a wait are you proposing?" Blancanales asked Powell.
"Could be a few days, could be a few weeks before..."
"Forget it!" Lyons interrupted.
"Why stop?" Gadgets asked. "Look at all those fireworks! It's the Fourth of July everywhere."
"We can't risk a delay of weeks," Blancanales concluded. "A few hours, a day perhaps..."
"Then it's unanimous." Powell sighed. "I hoped you cowboys would exercise discretion, as they say. We just might be going into a four-way free-fire zone."
The others waited for Gadgets' jive line, but the electronics wizard said nothing. He just held down the transmit key and laughed.
In the back of the troop truck, Lyons lost patience with his partner and pocketed the radio. He glanced at the two Shia militiamen riding with him. In the darkness, he could not see their faces. Blankets over their legs and feet, they watched the distant firefights. Both held Soviet PKM belt-fed machine guns, the muzzles pointing through the slats of the truck. Their rifles, folding-stock Kalashnikovs, hung from the inner slats, clattering with every bump in the road.
Four-way free-fire zone, Lyons thought. Then he realized why Gadgets laughed. Able Team always went into uncontrolled zones. In New York City or El Salvador or the Bekaa, always the same...
The two militiamen started. Lyons heard the sound also. The not-so-distant thunking of mortar tubes. They had ten to twenty seconds before the mortars hit.
Lyons slipped his Konzak sling over his head and cinched the shotgun diagonally across his back. Standing in the freezing wind, he pulled the plastic sheet off the Browning and secured it to the pedestal with the neoprene snap cord. Ahead, he saw Powell swiveling the MK-19, looking for a target.