Artillery shells screamed down, high explosives momentarily lighting the snow-covered hills.

But without effect. The shells struck nothing, but broke rocks and pitted the snow. Twice Powell had called for halts. With the engines off, no one speaking or moving, they had listened for other forces in the area. They had heard nothing — no clanking tanks, no trucks, no rifles — only the continuing explosions of the untargeted artillery fire.

"Think they know we're out here," Gadgets wondered, "but they just don't know where?"

They heard the crunch of boots in snow. Lyons returned to the transport and passed the flashlight to Gadgets. "Your turn. Stay cool."

"Oh, yeah, man. Supercool. Walk point in the dark with a flashlight."

Wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, Gadgets jumped into the snow, snapped on the flashlight and preceded the Rover.

A handkerchief over the glass reduced the beam to a soft white glow. Walking fast, Gadgets held his hand over the top of the light as he waved the flashlight back and forth over the road. The Rover and Mercedes troop transport advanced behind him.

"There are no mines under this snow," Gadgets said to himself. "There are no Arab legions waiting to ambush me. There are no artillery spotters working this territory. I'm out here all by myself. Alone in the snow."

A light winked. Gadgets dropped.

"No, I ain't... I ain't alone."

The Rover and truck stopped. Gadgets saw the light reappear over the curve of a low hill. He whispered to Powell, "We got something up ahead."

Gadgets heard his hand-radio clicking. "On my way, Wizard," Lyons told him. Seconds later, fur-hatted, his Atchisson-modelled Konzak assault shotgun in his hands, Lyons crouched beside Gadgets. "Where?"

"There."

Without speaking, they moved off the road and cut up the slope of the hill. Far in the distance, three shells exploded. A flare burst into searing light, illuminating a hilltop. More shells resounded. Lyons and Gadgets continued, using the faint light to avoid rocks.

At the crest, the distant flare light revealed another road. The road wove across the gray landscape to what appeared to be a sandbag bunker. A light came from inside.

Beyond the bunker, they saw three distinct sets of perimeter lights on three lines of chain link and concertina circling a cluster of buildings.

"We have arrived." Gadgets said into his hand-radio.

"The village?" Powell asked.

"Anyplace else around here got three concentric perimeters? And bunkers and all that?"

"There's a checkpoint on the road," Lyons said into his own radio. "Sandbagged. No one outside. Got to take them before we can go past."

"I'll send up Akbar and Politician."

Lyons looked at the Konzak he carried. "Nah, bring up the trucks. They won't see them and I want to change gear."

They jogged back through the snow to the road. Two minutes later, the Rover and the Mercedes, without headlights, in low gear, silently pulled up.

"This is it, right?" Blancanales handed Lyons the American-made Kalashnikov and the bandolier of magazines.

"Yeah, we might have to walk in, and this Konzak's a giveaway."

"What about my over-and-under?" Blancanales slapped the black ripple grip of his M-16/M-203.

"The Konzak doesn't shoot high-ex forty. Just keep that out of sight. Who knows what'll happen down there?"

"I got an idea what'll happen," Gadgets answered.

"Then let's go do it to them." Lyons cinched up his bandolier of ComBloc mags and led the line of men across the snow. Akbar jogged alongside Gadgets.

"So what's the scam, man? You hotshots got a plan?"

"Where'd you learn to talk that jive, foreigner?" Gadgets asked.

"In da bunkers. Me and Powell. And some spade Marines. Nothing but shit screaming down out of the sky — boom, boom, ka-boom. Lotsa time to talk, I tell you. I taught them the poetry of the Koran, they taught me to speak American."

"Quiet!" Lyons snarled.

They filed down the slope to the road. A kilometer away, shells burst in the lighted village, a building collapsing in a ball of dust. In a seemingly random pattern, other shells hit within the perimeters, in the open fields, and on the mountain slopes kilometers away.

The flashes of light illuminated the hillside, and the four men descended quickly. Lyons stopped at the road and noticed the smooth surface of snow.

"Nothing in or out tonight," he whispered to Blancanales.

"They have helicopters."

"Yeah, but the rockets won't travel by helicopter. And I don't see an airfield here."

"True."

Easing down into a roadside ditch, Lyons found himself standing on ice. He led the others toward the Syrian bunker. Their boots slipped on the frozen mud and ice, and sometimes the ice cracked under their weight. Lyons cautioned them with a hiss as they neared the Syrians.

A shell landed a hundred meters away. They went flat in the ditch, their ears ringing with the one explosion as they waited for others. Bits of ice and rocks fell. Then silence.

Then voices came from the checkpoint's bunker. Akbar provided a whispered summary: "One of them thinks it's the Israelis. Another says it can't be, because no one's been hit. Yet another is complaining because they should have left already."

"What? Should have left already?"

"Yes, that is what they say."

Lyons slung his weapon across his back. Taking out his modified-for-silence Colt, he eased back the slide to chamber the first .45 hollowpoint from the 10-round extended magazine.

"I go first. Wizard, back me up with your Beretta. We got to move quick."

And he moved, silently moving from the ditch to the bunker.

As Gadgets followed, he felt his hand-radio buzz. But he did not stop.

Behind him in the ditch, Blancanales pressed his transmit key and whispered, "What goes on?"

Powell spoke quickly. "A car or truck is coming. Don't get caught in the open."

Looking across the snow and ruts of the road, Blancanales saw his partners standing against the dark sandbags of the bunker, utterly exposed.

14

Colonel Dastgerdi went from office to office on a final tour of inspection. His electric lantern illuminated the empty rooms and crated equipment where his technicians had assembled and tested his designs. At any moment the shelling would stop and the call would come announcing the elimination of the rebellious factions. And the trucks would depart, the technicians and workers and soldiers for Damascus, the rockets for the Lebanese seaport of Tripoli.

Only the empty rooms and the echoing underground factory would remain. Dastgerdi had already arranged for the Islamic Amal militia to take the village as a base and weapons depot. After the terror rocketing of the inauguration of the President of the United States, the Islamic Amal would suffer the first counterstrikes by American forces. Then as the momentum of strike and counterstrike accelerated, as the Americans discovered the innumerable details linking Iran and Syria to the assassination of their President and hundreds of officials and spectators, the war would cross the borders into Syria and on to Iran as the revenge-blinded Americans attacked the nations they believed responsible.

Shining his battery light on an office wall, Dastgerdi saw a poster of the scowling Ayatollah Khomeini. Cemented in place with plastic, then painted repeatedly with clear plastic, the poster was there to stay. The face of Khomeini, along with the cut-out newspaper photos of the terror bombing of the Marine Peacekeeping Headquarters in Beirut, had become part of the wall.

The Farsi scrawl that translated as "Death to America" had also been painted over with plastic.

If American commandos invaded this place, they would see what they expected. Dastgerdi had ordered posters and photos and slogans to be displayed on all the walls of the village. If the Americans brought video cameras, the world would see.