Lyons's neoprene soles slipped in gore and he went down, sliding into the curb feet first, his momentum throwing him over. He smashed into the stone wall of the tenement with his shoulder, and his arm exploded with pain.

An Iranian with a pistol stepped from the tenement doorway. Lyons rolled onto his back and tried to raise his Konzak, but it fell from his numbed hand. Grabbing for his autoshotgun with his left hand, Lyons looked up at the bearded, sneering militiaman in the uniform of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Iranian cocked the hammer of his pistol with his thumb and aimed between Lyons's eyes. In English, he pronounced a death sentence, "I send you back to the anus of Satan, American..."

With his left hand, Lyons pointed the Konzak and fired. The last shell in the autoshotgun tore away the Iranian's right leg at the knee, spinning him, the shot from the revolver going wild. Lyons, right arm numb and hanging dead at his side, dropped the Konzak from his left hand. He snatched the Colt Python from the hideaway holster at the small of his back and brought down the heavy revolver on the Iranian's head as he fell to the sidewalk. The Python's four-inch barrel came down again and again on the whining Iranian's face and skull until the broken-mouthed and bleeding man went slack.

"Powell!" Lyons called out. He pointed the pistol around him, looking for targets. Wounded and dying militiamen thrashed on the sidewalk. But no one stood. "Powell! I'm on your side! Which side are you on?"

The ex-Marine had managed to find his Galil SAR. Dazed and smeared with blood, he struggled to change the magazine. He leaned back against the bumper of the van.

"Who are you? Are you... hey... specialist! Long time no see, thanks for stopping by."

"We got to talk to you. What exactly are you doing here?"

"Well, you know. Remember the last time we talked?" Powell dropped out the magazine of his Colt autopistol and slapped in another. "You said I should take a street-warfare class? Well, here I am. Taking graduate studies. But what are you doing here?"

"Agency sent us here to bring you back, dead or alive. We didn't know who you were. Now I don't know what to do. Gotta talk to you about what's going on."

Powell staggered to his feet. He looked into the van. This time he swung open the rear doors and surveyed the inside of the van, his Galil pointed, the safety off and his finger on the trigger.

On the sidewalk, Lyons rose to a crouch. He moved his right arm. Nothing broken or dislocated. He felt sensation returning. He went to the doorway of the tenement and listened. He heard only the ringing of his ears.

"Ironman!" Blancanales shouted as he ran up. The Politician carried an AK and wore a bandolier of ComBloc mags across his sports coat. He tossed Lyons a black nylon bandolier, loaded with box magazines of 12-gauge shells. "Where's Powell?"

"Right here, secret agent," Powell replied. "Where's the other guy, the Wizard?"

"Over on the East side," Blancanales told him. He went to the doorway and peered in, then snapped his head back. He dropped down to one knee, then looked in again.

Powell called in. "Hey, mademoiselle? You there?" No one answered. "I had this reporter woman with me. She went up and knocked on this Oshakkar guy's door and then it all went very crazy."

On the sidewalk, the Iranian groaned and tried to move. Blancanales dashed across the doorway and examined the Iranian's destroyed leg. The ex-Green Beret medic pulled the belt from the pants of a corpse and applied a tourniquet above the blood-spurting tangle of flesh and cartilage and shattered bone. "He'll lose his leg, but he'll live."

"For a while." Lyons clenched and opened his fist. He swung his arm in circles, grimacing against the pain. Finally, his right hand functioning again, he buckled on the bandolier and reloaded his Konzak. "Let's go find that girl."

Powell scanned the street. People peered at the Americans from the cover of their doorways and shuttered windows. "She's either dead or gone, but let's go see. We gotta do this quick. I don't know which militia will show up to check out this shoot-out."

One at a time they dodged through the doorway.

No autofire came. With Lyons and Blancanales covering him, Powell sprinted to the top of the stairs, then they followed. The door to one room stood open. The door had been kicked open.

Inside, an elderly Muslim man in pajamas lay on the floor, a vast pool of blood around his slashed throat.

"I think they used this apartment to wait in," Powell told the others. "That apartment is Oshakkar's." He pointed to another door.

Blancanales checked the door for obvious booby traps. Then the others stood back while he kicked it open.

No one had remained in the one-room apartment. They saw only old furniture and murals. The murals were spread over all four walls, portraying scenes of idealized African men and women with Kalashnikov rifles standing triumphant on fields of dead pigs bleeding from thousands of bullet holes. The pigs had white skin and blue eyes. Some pigs wore the camouflage uniforms of the army, others the blue uniforms of police. Spray-painted slogans declared Victory To New Africa! The Nation Of Black Islam!

Blancanales, careful for booby traps, checked a closet and the drawers of a cabinet. He found only a dog-eared and stained magazine behind the cabinet. Every page had full-color photos of white women in scenes of torture and rape.

"Nothing. Except this." Blancanales dropped the magazine and wiped off his hand.

"Then where's the woman?" Lyons asked.

Powell laughed. "That imitation-French bitch reporter? Forget her. She came for a story and she found it. We got places to go, people to see."

On the sidewalk again, Lyons and Blancanales grabbed the moaning Iranian and dragged him toward the taxi. They heard a shot. Looking around the corner, they saw two teenage militiamen in jeans and leather coats, Kalashnikovs slung over their backs, unloading cameras and electronics from the taxi.

The riot cuffs still secured Pierre's dead hands to the steering wheel. Blood and brains had sprayed the windshield. The militia punks had put a bullet through the head of the handcuffed driver before looting Able Team's equipment.

Blancanales aimed his AK and fired, dropping both punks with ComBloc 7.62mm slugs through their brains. "We need another car."

Powell pointed at the van. "It has the keys in the ignition. Load up and follow me."

"Where?" Lyons asked.

"To my friends."

Posters of the Imam Moussa Sadr stared down from the walls. Shia militiamen — some in the mismatched fatigues of the irregulars, others in the OD uniforms of the Lebanese army — watched the Americans enter. They greeted Powell and stared at Lyons and Blancanales. Lyons received special attention. Clotted blood and filth stained his tailored sports coat and slacks. All the militiamen noted the unusual assault weapon the blond, blue-eyed American carried.

"Wait here," Powell told Lyons and Blancanales. "I'll talk to my friend."

The Marine continued into another office where clerks typed at desks. Another clerk cranked a mimeograph machine. Powell went to a secretary and explained his visit.

Lyons grinned to all the militiamen. He turned to Blancanales and said quietly, "Daniel in the lions' den. Or maybe it's Lyons in the..."

A middle-aged, scarred militiaman interrupted with a question in broken, accented English. "You kill... massacre Revolutionary Guards?"

"Here goes..." Then Lyons answered in distinct, short phrases. "Did not kill all. One lives."

The militiaman nodded, laughed. He told others what the American had said. A young man spoke quickly to the older man. The young man pointed to the Americans, then outside. The older man asked another question. "Why not kill all?"