'A mullah…' Mohammed whispered.
Lyons's voice spoke from their hand radios. 'Wizard, Pol. Sentries. Hold where you are. We'll clear those street doors for you.'
Someone in the room heard Blancanales's radio. From the street, Gadgets saw a sports coat fly open, then heard the slap of a suppressed slug hitting flesh. Then silence.
Blancanales leaned out of the window. He waved to Gadgets.
Gadgets clicked an acknowledgment to Lyons. Above him, Blancanales signaled for Gadgets to wait.
Yellow sputters from a kerosene lantern lighted the room. The old mullah sprawled against the wall. A Kalashnikov rifle lay beyond the reach of his dead hand. Blancanales crept across the room, the floorboards creaking under his weight. He heard footsteps outside the door.
A voice called quietly in Arabic. Blancanales froze. He swore at his ignorance of the language. If he could understand the words, if he could fake an answer…
Knuckles tapped the door. Two knocks, three knocks. The door's handle rattled. Blancanales tiptoed behind the door. A band of light from the other room expanded as the door opened. A teenager with a cap over his curly hair leaned into the room. The boy saw the feet of the old man and entered.
Blancanales sent a slug through the base of the boy's skull. He looked into the lighted room. Parts of a field-stripped AK covered a table. He saw an RPG-7 rocket launcher propped against the wall. He entered the room, the Beretta ready, pivoted slowly to scan every corner.
Screams! Running feet! Weapons clattered, doors flew open. Voices called to one another.
Blancanales grabbed his hand radio. 'Lyons! Lyons! They...'
A robed man shoved back through the door that the others had fled through. His eyes went wide when he saw the American with the pistol. Blancanales put a burst in the man's face.
He peered through the door and saw a long hallway. At one end, a white-robed man clutched an AK. Wide-eyed with fear, the old man stared around him, shrieked at the sight of Blancanales, dashed down a flight of steel stairs.
A silent .45-caliber slug slammed into the ceiling of the hallway. As a body thumped down stairs, Blancanales heard shrieking and the clanging of steel on steel. He rushed to the stairway, stayed out of the line of fire. Blood dripped from the whitewashed walls.
'Ironman! You okay?'
'Yeah, yeah. I even got a prisoner. I tell you, this is strictly amateur night…'
Blancanales buzzed Gadgets. 'Action in here. What's going on out there?'
'Nothing. Absolute zero. What happened?'
'Tell you later.'
Stepping over corpses as he rushed down the stairs, Blancanales saw Lyons standing over the mullah, one foot on the old man's throat, the modified Colt Government Model pointed at his face. The mullah choked, thrashed, raised a clawlike hand for mercy. The other arm lay limp at his side, the shoulder shattered, blood from the gaping wound soaking his white robe.
'With losers like these against us,' Lyons sneered, 'we'll be going home tonight. He had me. In his sights. And look…'
He pointed the Colt at the AK. The autorifle had no magazine in place. 'Tried to shoot me with an empty gun. Abdul. Watch this lowlife.'
The breathless taxi driver stood over the prisoner as Lyons looped plastic handcuffs around the old man's wrists and cinched them tight. He fitted two of the plastic locking strips end to end and bound the prisoner's ankles. Finally, he tore a shirt from one of the dead teenagers and wadded it into the mullah's mouth.
Silenced autopistol pointed, Lyons followed the passage toward the street. At the far end, a single bare bulb illuminated the long narrow passage. They stopped at a door. Lyons nodded at the light, looked at the Beretta that Blancanales held. Blancanales sighted on the bulb and popped it with a slug.
In the darkness, a fine line of light outlined the door. Lyons crouched beside the door. Blancanales flattened himself against the wall near the handle. Lyons jerked the door open, dodged back behind the cover of the wall.
No shots came. They heard no movement. Keeping his head low, at less than knee height, below the point where a terrorist inside would aim a burst of autofire, Lyons stuck his head out for a look, saw a garage cluttered with auto parts and tools and jerked his head back.
'Don't see anyone…'
'Doesn't mean they don't see you,' Blancanales whispered. He took out his hand radio to buzz Gadget. 'Wizard. Hit that door, make noise, a distraction. On the count of three.'
'Got it. One, two…'
On three, bursts of silent 9mm slugs hammered into the ceiling and rear wall of the garage, a fender crashing down, glass breaking, plaster falling. Lyons slid belly-down through the doorway.
He saw no one. Staying on the floor, Lyons braced the Colt with both hands. Rolling on his back, he peered into every corner of the garage.
Gadgets knocked on the heavy doors, hissed, 'The kid on the motorbike's coming.' Then Lyons's hand radio buzzed. He did not stop to answer it as he pulled the crossbar from the doors.
Blancanales leaned through the doorway. 'Wizard says the kid on the motorcycle's coming. Thinks you should let him in…'
'Already…' Lyons cut off his answer as the two-stroke roar of the motor scooter became deafening. He stayed behind the door as he pulled it open. The teenager rode in on his Japanese bike.
Three pistols and an Uzi greeted him, Gadgets and Mohammed rushing in a step behind the teenage terrorist. Lyons shoved the door closed. In seconds, they had the boy gagged and bound.
'Back to the stairway?' said Lyons.
Rejoining Abdul, Lyons and Blancanales looked up the stairway to the tenement apartments.
Blancanales shook his head. 'I don't want to chance it. There could be a hundred of them up there. Waiting with AKs.'
'Second the motion,' Lyons agreed. 'Maybe they control the entire building, maybe not. There could be children, old people on the upper floors. Depends on what raghead here tells us.'
As Blancanales surveyed the stairway, he took a mental body count. 'Five. Plus three more upstairs…'
'And two more there.' Lyons pointed toward the alley. He held up his suppressed autopistol. 'Colt seven, Beretta three. Winner and still champion…'
Stepping past the door, Blancanales looked down at the sentry. One slug had smashed the left arm where it met the shoulder. The arm dangled by tendons and strands of muscle. Only the jaw and a scrap of scalp remained of the head. Blancanales exhaled slowly.
'That's an example of burst fire,' Lyons told him. 'Point-blank.'
'Let's get this old man into the garage.' Blancanales handed his Beretta and an extra fifteen-round magazine to Abdul and left him at the stairs.
They dragged the mullah over the stones. In the garage, Mohammed questioned the mullah. The old man babbled, nodded his head, cried.
'If we let him live,' Mohammed told them, 'he'll tell us everything, take us to the others.'
'He doesn't want to be a martyr?' Lyons sneered.
'That's only for soldiers,' Mohammed grinned. 'This old man, when he dies, he knows where he goes.'
'Do they have more SAM-7 missiles?' Lyons asked. Blancanales spoke simultaneously.
'How do they get their information about the planes?'
Mohammed translated their questions, listened to the old man whine and cry. 'He wants you to stop the pain in his shoulder.'
Lyons looked at the two prisoners, then motioned Blancanales and Gadgets to the passage door. There, Lyons glanced down to the stairway to check on Abdul. He watched the passage as the three men talked in whispers.
