Blancanales jogged from the ditch. The four men worked quickly, pulling the bodies from the limousine, wiping blood from the interior.

"Think the Agency would want their papers and identification?" Lyons asked his partners.

"Perhaps we don't want them to know what we're doing," Blancanales commented. "That one's a colonel. The other one could be an ambassador. Perhaps this will lead to a diplomatic crisis."

"Oh, no!" Gadgets faked fear. "Think the Agency would stop sending us out to do their shitwork?"

Lyons laughed. "I'll bag up all the documents. Wizard..." Lyons pointed to the approaching Land Rover and troop transport truck.

Finding a briefcase in the limo, Lyons stripped the dead Soviets of identification. He emptied their pockets into the briefcase, taking their handwritten notes, their wallets and appointment books, even their keys and coins. He took the gold-stars-and-red-stripes insignia off the colonel's coat collar and fitted the insignia onto his own coat.

"What a low-life," Powell commented as he approached. "Stealing from the dead."

Lyons ignored the jive. "Get some of your men to drag these somewhere. There's four more inside the bunker. Before they cover up the bodies, I want them to use grenades to blow off the hands and faces of these Soviets. I don't want them ever identified."

"Comprendo totolo,"Powell answered in Texmex, then continued in English. "Let the Commies have some missing in action." He switched to Arabic and issued instructions to his Shia militiamen allies. They dragged the bloody corpses over the hill.

Gadgets jumped off the back of the transport with a heavy canvas bag in each hand.

"You ready to go in?" Lyons asked.

Artillery shells exploded less than a kilometer away. The men flinched. Gadgets shook his head. "I'm never ready for this, but I got my kit together so let's go so we can get out of this shit."

"Any Cubans operate with the Soviets?" Blancanales asked Powell.

"In Syria? Never heard any Spanish, but that doesn't mean anything."

"Then I'm a Cuban."

"In the limo," Lyons told his partners. He turned to Akbar, but he did not need to speak.

"You Americans are crazy." The young Shia took the driver's seat. He set the dead Syrian's transit documents on the dash above the steering wheel. Blancanales took the passenger-side front seat.

As he got into the back, Lyons called to Powell. "It might happen fast. Be ready to move when we come out."

"Yes, Colonel Ironmannokski." Powell gave him a mock salute. "If you come out..."

15

A white flash, then a concussion came as a shell exploded along the wire surrounding the village. Rocks clanged on the Zil. Akbar switched on a radio mounted under the dashboard and spun through channels of static.

Two hundred meters ahead was the outer gate, a squat bunker and watchtower providing security for the entrance. Lights on poles flooded the gates with day-bright glare. But no soldiers stood guard. No soldiers moved in the watchtower.

Rockets screamed overhead. All four men looked up, as if they could see the fire arcs of the rockets through the Zil's roof. Seconds later, they heard the distant explosions.

"It's jobs like this," Gadgets commented quietly, "that make me think about quitting government work. Sometimes it's just too, too much."

No one else spoke. Akbar guided the Zil through the ruts and drifting snow. The headlights revealed the sandbags and heavy machine guns of the bunker. But no soldiers.

Akbar stopped at the gate. No challenging voice came from the bunker. They waited. Akbar rolled down his window and called in Arabic.

No one came out. Lyons rolled down his window. He saw no one. Then he leaned over the front seat and pressed on the horn. Only Gadgets spoke. "Too weird."

Soldiers appeared. Wrapped in blankets, flashlights in their hands, they looked at the Soviet limousine. Lyons rolled up his window as Akbar motioned the soldiers over to check his documents.

One soldier dashed to the window, held a flashlight on the signatures and stamps of the documents, then waved the light over the faces of the passengers. Starting to the gate, he shouted.

Another soldier appeared. They rolled the gate open and waved the limo through. As Akbar shifted, a roar crossed the sky. Voices were raised. The soldiers ran for the bunker, leaving the gate open. The roar faded into the distance.

"A jet," Akbar told the others. "They said, 'Israeli jet' and ran away."

"Was it Israeli?" Blancanales asked.

Akbar pointed to the lighted fences, the lighted watchtowers, the lights coming from the low buildings of the village. "This would not still be here."

"It does look like a neon bull's-eye," Gadgets added. "There's no way they could..."

"Quit the speculation," Lyons interrupted. "We're through the first gate..."

"And the second." Akbar pointed. "It is open."

The gate in the second fence, in the center of the minefields, stood open. Akbar accelerated, speeding over the hundred meters of gravel and snow to the inner gate. No soldiers manned the positions at the entry to the village.

An orange-white flash erupted from the frozen earth of the minefield, the scream of the artillery shell simultaneous with the explosion. Lyons looked back and saw dirt and stone falling everywhere around the smoking crater. Other explosions popped as the falling debris triggered antipersonnel mines.

As Blancanales pointed out directions, Akbar wove through the narrow streets of the village. He circled a block of collapsing stone houses, then stopped.

Blancanales oriented his partners. "That way and to the left is the gate. The ramps to what the Agency analysts think is an underground structure is to the right and down two long blocks. There's several houses and shops that are used for administration and technical workshops all along the street."

"Take this..." Gadgets passed one of his canvas bags to Lyons "...and don't drop it."

"You got enough in here to blow this place away?"

"No way. Just minitransmitters and recorders. And radio-pops and det-cord and a kilo or two of plastique."

"Then how are you going to do it?"

"Use your head," Gadgets answered. "Solid-fuel rockets. High-explosive warheads. Why should I carry in the bang when the bang's already here?"

"Ready to go?" Blancanales asked his partners. "Your equipment ready, Wizard?"

Lyons and Gadgets answered by stepping into the blowing snow. Standing in the dark and narrow street, they listened. The distant rumbling of artillery continued. But in the village — the abandoned houses, the shell-shattered shops — they heard nothing: no voices, no movement.

They walked from the limousine. Playing the role of Soviet officers, they made no effort at concealment, walking in the center of the narrow street. Lyons continued to the corner and then stood and looked in all directions, scanning the wide central street for Syrians. Akbar stopped beside him.

"If we run into Syrians," Lyons told the Shia, "we'll just walk past. Unless they're alone, or unless they look like the commander, then we take them, put questions to them."

"Just act natural," Gadgets added. "We're Soviets, we own the place."

Akbar shook his head. "Americans, crazy..."

They turned right, passing boarded-over doorways and windows. Walls of sandbags blocked narrow passages between collapsing buildings. Other than flapping sheets of plastic, nothing moved.

A hundred meters away were lights over a retaining wall of cast concrete, which satellite photos and prisoner information identified as part of a ramp leading to an underground complex. But neither the satellite nor the prisoners had provided information on the interior. Rouhani, the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured in Mexico, did not have the intelligence or memory to sketch the complex. And the Syrian official, Choufi, captured in Nicaragua, had never actually entered the underground area.