9
Stepping through the gate in the barbed-wire barrier, Gadgets heard boots hammer the stairs. As he raised his radio to warn his partners, autofire shattered the silence. He fell flat on the roof and slipped out his Beretta.
Gunmen ran across the roof firing Kalashnikovs and Uzis. Gadgets saw the shadowy forms of his partners disappear behind the cover of the brick walls. The gunmen advanced, firing continuously, slugs sparking with the brick, chips of bricks and mortar flying. The barbed-wire fence jerked and swayed as bullets hit the wire, splintered the supports. Gadgets crawled to the cover of a roof fan. He leveled the Beretta.
Shouts in Arabic stopped the rifle fire. A gunman looked over the low wall dividing the roofs of the two apartment buildings. His head jerked back as a silent .45-caliber slug smashed through his face, his skull exploding as bursts of slugs pierced the darkness.
A gunman set down his Uzi and dug into the thigh pocket of his military-style pants. Over the night-glowing sights of his silenced autopistol, Gadgets watched the gunman's silhouette make the motion of pulling a grenade's safety pin. The silhouette stepped forward, an arm arcing back for the throw.
Three 9mm steel-cored slugs ripped through his shoulder and head. The dying man dropped the grenade as he staggered backward and collapsed. The Muslim terrorists turned to their fallen comrade. One man shouted to the others. Their weapons went silent for an instant as the gunmen dived away.
Thousands of steel fragments shredded them in mid-motion. A pause followed the blast, then the moans and cries began. Gadgets crept backward, retreating from the rooftop.
Lyons and Blancanales leaped through the gate, called out, 'Wizard!'
'Where are you?'
'Here!'
'Move it!' Lyons rushed past him, the modified Colt Government Model held out at arm's length, firing round after round as he found targets in the tangle of wounded terrorists.
'Hey!' Gadgets shouted. 'Time to get out of here.'
Then Blancanales ran past, his Beretta showering brass on Gadgets. Taximan Mohammed followed, Uzi in hand, the bag of thirty-round magazines swinging on his right arm.
Gadgets saw Lyons change Colt mags, snap a shot into the head of a wounded man, take the man's Uzi. Then he was firing bursts down the stairs.
Gadgets ran to join his partners.
At the head of the stairway, Lyons emptied the Uzi into the terrorists on the landing below. Dropping the empty magazine, he returned to the dead gunmen sprawled on the roof to find another loaded Uzi, then another. Blancanales grabbed a bloody AK, snapped shots down the stairs.
'There's no ammunition,' Lyons shouted to Blancanales. 'We surprised them; so they grabbed their rifles and ran up here. Check the sentries…'
Ripping open the pockets of one man, Blancanales found a grenade. He flipped over other corpses and found a belt pouch with two Uzi mags.
'Sixty rounds, plus whatever's in the guns. And this…' He held up the grenade.
A gunman lurched up, lashing at Blancanales with a knife. Lyons pointed the Uzi at the wounded man. Blancanales kicked the terrorist in the gut, doubling him over, then kicked him in the back of the head. The man arced back in wide-eyed agony. Blancanales grabbed the knife, stomped down on the terrorist's throat twice. Blood frothed.
'Ready to go?' Blancanales asked, slipping the knife under his belt. He hooked a finger through the safety pin ring of the grenade.
Lyons nodded. Mohammed and Gadgets ran up, Mohammed snatching a glance downstairs. He snapped off a burst. A death-scream ripped the night.
'There's one for Maha'alot,' they heard the 'Egyptian' say, his expression grim, out of character for the comic taxi driver he claimed to be. Then his manic grin returned. 'Let's go, cowboys. Corral full of snakes down there.'
Jerking the pin out of the grenade, Blancanales let the lever fly free and threw the frag down the stairway. The heavy thud puffed dust.
Lyons and Blancanales disappeared into the swirling cloud, their feet quick but silent on the blood-splashed stairs. Gadgets braced his Beretta against a railing as he watched for targets. Mohammed waited a second, then crept down the stairs.
The stairs opened to a hallway. Blancanales glanced in one direction, snatched his head back as slugs shrieked past. Lyons searched the several corpses at the foot of the stairs, looped the sling of a second Uzi over his left shoulder, pocketed several Uzi magazines. He snapped out a loaded banana mag for an AK and tossed it to Blancanales.
Pointing in the direction of the autofire, Blancanales shouted, 'I'll draw fire, you hit them.'
'Forget that! I'll get Muslim volunteers.'
'What?'
'Mo-man, help me here!'
With the help of the taxi driver, he lifted a dead terrorist upright and heaved the standing corpse forward.
Autofire from both ends of the hall ripped past the body, one jerking an arm, another spraying gore from its chest. Squatting low, Blancanales sighted on a scarf-wrapped head and punched a 7.62mm hole through the woman's head. She flew back, still alive, her hands clutching at the wound in her skull. Hands grabbed her to drag her out of the line of fire. Blancanales waited until the man exposed a shoulder, then put a slug through his body. The man rolled into the open, and a second slug smashed through his head.
Lyons lay on the floor, squinting through the Uzi's peep-sight, watching a doorway. He saw an exposed arm. He waited. An AK muzzle appeared, then eyes looking for a target. Lyons flicked the trigger, two 9mm rounds pocking the man's forehead. Brains splashed plaster, a rifle held in a dead hand clattered on the hallway tiles.
'Mo-man,' Lyons called out. 'Another volunteer!'
The 'Egyptian' struggled with the deadweight of a second bloody corpse, finally dropping it. 'This one crawls…' He shoved the corpse over the smooth tiles with his foot.
Blancanales and Lyons watched both ends of the hall. No terrorists showed themselves.
An arm appeared from a doorway, Lyons fired, but…
'Grenade!' Lyons screamed.
Blancanales and Mohammed ducked down. Lyons saw the olive-drab cylinder hit the tiles, bounce down the stairway alcove. He ducked, cupped his hands over his ears.
Plaster fell from the ceiling and walls, dust clouded up the stairwell. Lyons dashed for the door from where the grenade had come, screaming like a dying man, an Uzi in each hand.
A teenage girl, a mad smile on her face, looked into his eyes, took bursts in the face and chest as Lyons rushed her. He kicked the dying girl aside, sprayed fire into another terrorist behind her.
Lyons surveyed the room. Nothing moved. Stacks of heavy crates lined the walls; words stenciled in Russian and Arabic identified the contents. He saw a curtained closet, glanced under the curtains, saw sandaled feet. He fired a burst. An old man fell out, screaming, holding a gut wound. Lyons fired once into the mullah's head.
Firing continued in the hallway. Lyons let the Uzi hang by its strap to key his hand radio. 'This room's clear. Can you break out?'
'We got two rifles at the other end, we'd risk...'
'Don't. I'll try something.'
'What?'
'I'll tell you when I know.'
Throwing back the lids of the shipping crates, Lyons found Kalashnikov rifles in one case, hundreds of AK magazines in another, then a crate of RPG rockets and launchers. Wasting precious seconds, he continued
