Dark, lifeless farms and fields lay on both sides of the road. But no one had fought there. They drove on through the deserted but peaceful area. Lyons watched the quiet houses, his hands holding the blanket, not the grips of the Browning .50-caliber. The Shia militiamen kept watch also, but they kept their hands on their machine guns.

The peace ended with a roar like a thousand freight trains screaming through the night. Lyons grabbed the Browning. But the Able Team convoy was not the target.

Above, rockets arched through the clouds, then streaked down somewhere to the north. The overhanging storm clouds reflected flashes, the black clouds suddenly a somber red. A rolling, resounding thunder came.

"Katyushas," one of the Shias told Lyons. Then his hand-radio buzzed.

"You cowboys ever seen a rocket barrage before?" Powell asked. "That's what's happening. Guess the opposition monitors the Syrian radios, too."

Gadgets spoke next. "So glad you made that detour."

"And we're going to make another one," Powell emphasized. "Put some distance between us and them."

Another wave of rockets screamed through the night. Seconds later came the sheet thunder of the explosions.

Approaching another intersection, the Rover turned south. Headlights appeared. Lyons saw Powell salute. A clanking line of Soviet BMT armored personnel carriers escorted by T-62 tanks passed. Playing the role of a Soviet, Lyons also saluted the passing armored column. A blond tank commander, standing in the turret hatch, returned Lyons's salute.

The Rover continued south. They passed farms and walled orchards. Looking back, Lyons saw a horizon of orange flame. A mass of black smoke rose into the clouds. Exploding munitions shot the smoke with dashes of color.

Destruction far away had a strange beauty...

Then the war came to them, the MK-19 of the Rover firing, high-explosive grenades popping, white phosphorous splashing chemical fire at three running figures. In the instant the three died, Lyons saw mismatched fatigues and street clothes. The figures carried Kalashnikov rifles and an RPG launcher. Shrapnel tore their bodies, throwing them back. The searing white points of phosphorous illuminated the rocky ditch where they fell.

Rifles flashed from an orchard wall. As the transport accelerated, Lyons swung the Browning around and hammered the wall, not sighting on the muzzle-flashes, but at the midpoint of the wall. Stone and packed earth flew as the steel-cored slugs broke the wall apart to kill the riflemen crouched behind it.

A rocket launcher sprayed backblast. Lyons saw the RPG warhead end-on as the secondary propellent flashed. But the rocket had been fired too high. The warhead screamed past Lyons as he sighted the Browning and answered the rocketman with armor-piercing slugs.

But another rocketman sighted on the huge target of the truck and semitrailer. At a range of less than a hundred meters, he could not miss.

Lyons looked back as the rocket streaked into the trailer.

12

The blast slammed Gadgets back into the sandbag wall. As the explosion rang in his ears, he felt the trailer lurch, and the floor fall out from under him.

Metal scratched against asphalt, a woman screamed, things crashed in the darkness, the trailer fell sideways on the road. As the trailer's aluminum side scraped against the road's asphalt, Gadgets felt himself falling through space, then hit the sandbags again with a thud. A scraping noise seemed an overwhelming assault on his ears.

Then it stopped.

In the silence, Gadgets heard his heart hammering; the hammering became the sound of auto weapons. Slugs hit the trailer. He found the disposable penlight in his pocket.

Be prepared, he thought as he shone the light over the now upended mobile bunker.

"Wizard! We're hit! Help me with Desmarais!"

"No shit? We're hit? Think maybe we ought to get a second opinion? Wow, looks like we're hit..."

Ammunition cases lay against the wall. The heavy Browning machine gun and MK-19 now stood horizontal on their pedestals.

All the stacked weapons and equipment had shifted to the one wall that had become the floor. In the clutter, Blancanales struggled to disentangle himself from Desmarais.

Gadgets saw the trapdoor to the bunker far above his head. Before, they had entered by stepping under the trailer then climbing up through the floor. Now they had a problem.

Another flashlight came on. By the glow of Blancanales's flashlight, Gadgets freed a shipping trunk. He made steps by stacking the trunk and ammunition boxes under the trapdoor.

Swinging open the trapdoor, he saw falling snow and darkness. A hundred meters away, autoweapons flashed. The diesel cab lay on its side at the roadside. From behind the shelter of the cab, the Shia drivers returned the fire of ambushers.

A rocket streaked from the darkness. The Shias went flat, and the rocket missed the overturned truck by a hand's width.

"Oh, man. This is serious! Pol! You ready to get out of here?"

Pulling out his belt knife, Blancanales cut the plastic handcuffs linking Desmarais's hands together. He pushed her toward the pile of cases. "Up and out, miss."

Desmarais crawled through and fell with a scream. Autofire hit the trailer. Gadgets ducked.

"They got that exit zeroed!"

"Where's your rifle?" Blancanales searched through the tangled gear to assemble his own equipment.

"Forget the popguns! We got artillery..."

Releasing the clamping lever locking the MK-19 to the pedestal, Gadgets jerked the full-auto grenade launcher free. Groaning with the weight, he had to lower it. He disconnected the box of 40mm grenades. With the linked belt of grenades swinging loose, he picked up the launcher and passed it to Blancanales. Blancanales managed to shove the grenade launcher over the edge of the trapdoor and hook it in place with the swivel-tilt assembly. Gadgets untangled the belt of grenades.

"Do it! Hit them!"

Blancanales sighted on a flashing muzzle. Triggering single shots, he put the first grenade into the orchard wall, the next one over the top. Then he walked the blasts of high explosive and white phosphorous along the wall, hitting the top, the trees behind and a gateway.

Visible in the gray light of burning phosphorous was a person with a rocket launcher. Blancanales sighted and held back the trigger. As the backblast flashed, the night exploded around the rocketman.

Then the rocket hit the trailer.

As the transport slammed through the roadside ditch, Lyons kept the Browning pointed at the autofire. Stone and flesh disintegrated where the .50-caliber slugs hit, rifles firing wild, a dying man staggering, other forms running. Behind Lyons, the Shias fired their PKM machine guns at the ambushers.

The driver steered the awkward troop transport through a wide circle and gunned the engine as he regained the asphalt. Lyons saw the Rover already returning to the killzone where the overturned truck and semitrailer lay in the road. Holding down the firing button of the Browning, Lyons provided cover for Powell by raking the length of the orchard wall.

Using the maneuverability of the Land Rover, the Shia driver swerved under the line of .50-caliber tracers.

Powell heard a sound like jet engines as the .50-caliber slugs passed an arm's reach above his head. He reflexively dropped to a crouch.

"Crazy Shia! Cool it — I'm no martyr man!"

The driver whipped through an orchard gate and sped along the other side of the wall sheltering the fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood. Powell fired straight ahead as the Rover caught the line of militiamen and Syrian deserters in its headlights.

The fanatics spun from the wall and died as they raised their Kalashnikovs, Powell using the full-auto grenade launcher to its maximum lethal effect.