could not continue forward. Lyons waited as the light swept up and down the gully. Waited for machine-gun fire or darkness.
Darkness came as the beam shifted to the fences.
The light revealed a scrap of plastic sheeting flapping on the wire. Lyons waited for his eyes to readjust, then slithered from the gully. Brush covered him as he continued. He keyed his hand radio. 'Pol. They got mines out here.'
'I've seen them. Was that light on you?'
'Not really. They're just jerking off up there.' Infinitely slowly, using the light from the fortress walls, Lyons eased through the dry brush. He came to a ridge of rocks and sand and tangled brush plowed aside by the bulldozing of the perimeter clearing. He remembered what Blancanales had taught him. He found a straw-thin twig and swept it ahead of him as he crawled forward. The twig would snag on any trip line without — he hoped — triggering the fuse. Every few feet, he paused to rake his fingers through the sand, searching for the iron of the hubcap-sized mines he had seen. Thorn-sharp dry weeds scratched his hand, rocks cut his knuckles. But scratches did not bother him. Crawling onto a land mine would.
The twig snagged on a line. Studying it in the dim light, Lyons saw a rusted wire. Not monofilament or a strand of almost invisible nylon string, but wire. He followed the wire.
Two Soviet antipersonnel mines stood on the ends of stakes. Rust covered the serrated cast-iron casings. Lyons had followed the wire to the first grenade. Another wire led from the second grenade in the opposite direction. The rust on the cast iron and the green corrosion on the trip-wires indicated months since the placement of the mines. All this astounded Lyons. A fortress of Muslim fanatics, the perimeters defended by mines, barbed wire, searchlights and machine guns, less than an hour's drive from downtown Cairo. What did the Egyptian police and military intelligence units do all day? Pose for tourist snapshots?
What if Able Team searched the remote deserts of the country — what would they find? Soviet air bases? The Lost Tribes of Israel? Martian colonies?
A buzz came through his earphones. 'Watch for trip lines,' Blancanales warned.
'I'm looking at one now. Strictly junk…'
'Which could blow you away.'
'I'm not going to deactivate them. We don't have the time.'
Blancanales bellied past a pair of Soviet bombs. Every few yards, he stopped to watch the sentries on the walls. Silhouetted against the night sky or lighted by the reflected glare of the searchlight, they paced aimlessly. Some stood in one place for minutes, smoking cigarettes or talking.
Examining the bare expanse of the minefield, Lyons saw no path to the fence. The small depressions where the sand had settled marked most of the mines. But crossing the no-man's-land would require slow, meticulous probing of every square foot of sand while the searchlight sought out intruders. After that, they faced the eight- foot-high tangle of barbed wire, then a second minefield before they reached the ten-foot-high clay walls.
Wind brought snatches of Arabic from the wall. Blancanales crept through the brush, blown dust and dry weeds masking his small sounds and movement. The searchlight swept erratically over the sand and brush. Blancanales sometimes went flat, motionless as the light passed over him, sometimes used the light to scan the sand for mines or trip lines.
He rounded the corner of the fortress. Now his eyes searched the south wall. Sentries paced the top of the wall. An unused searchlight stood on a pedestal. Floodlights illuminated gates of riveted sheet steel. On each side of the gates, walled sentry positions guarded the approach to the fortress. The muzzles of heavy machine guns protruded from the positions.
Finally, he came to asphalt. Tangles of barbed wire fenced both sides of the entry road, two lanes wide. Floodlights lighted the approach.
No good. No way in but the road. Blancanales thought of the assault on the fortress of Wei Ho. Only surprise and luck gave Able Team that victory. He remembered the image of Lyons, smeared with genipap body- blacking, his Atchisson bouncing on his back, sprinting into a cross fire, vaulting the gate as AK slugs whined past him. Lyons had made it because no sane man would have risked the gate. The next man over, a Xavante warrior brave beyond understanding, had taken AK hits in the chest and leg. But that was another action, another time…
No frontal attack this time. Blancanales believed God gave men only a certain amount of luck. Lucky once, twice, three times, great. Don't depend on it. He'd seen a lot of young men die who had thought they had good luck. Rushing the gate of the Muslim fortress with six men — even with rockets and grenades — would be to hope for infinite luck.
Keying his hand radio, he buzzed his partners.
'I'm at the gate. South wall. We got to rethink this. There's no way in.'
'I'm all the way to the east wall,' Lyons added. 'Don't see any way over the wall. Guess we have to go straight in…'
'Hey, Carl. No way. Maybe tomorrow night. Maybe we can borrow a helicopter from the air force.'
'That's too late. There's an American in there! He won't be alive tomorrow. The terrorists will cut him to pieces tonight. We go in…'
'Don't even think it!' Blancanales snapped back. 'It would be suicide. You think you're immortal? I'm looking at a steel gate. Two heavy-caliber machine guns. Sentries with rifles looking down on a road as naked as a baby's ass.'
'Relax, Pol,' Gadgets whispered, trying to calm him. 'We'll just have to sedate the wild man if he tries it.'
Lyons came on again. 'How about driving one of the taxis up to the gate? We could blast it open with rockets…'
'We don't know that the man's still alive. If he's already dead, we'd all die for nothing. The mission first. Even that poor son of a bitch in there would tell you that.'
After a long pause, Lyons agreed. 'All right. We're pulling back.'
Sprawled flat in the gully, Gadgets heard the microrecorder in his backpack click on. He felt the vibration of the tiny motors reeling the miniature cassette. Whispering into his hand radio, he told the others, 'Lay cool for a minute. Wizard's got a plan in gear…'
Reaching across the gully to Mohammed, Gadgets hissed, 'You listening to that Arabic station?'
'Oh, yeah, man. Listening to the Raghead Rock... Hey! It's a Red Alert! They know we're out here! They're scrambling trucks!'
Gadgets laughed quietly.
Several hundred yards away, Lyons heard shouting in the fortress. He saw sentries running along the walls.
Reaching to key his hand radio, Blancanales whispered from his earphone, 'There's a truck coming out the gate. And a searchlight just came on! What do you have on that captured radio? What's going on?'
Mohammed whispered a translation to Gadgets. 'The man's sending a squad out to search the desert. Another squad's setting an ambush on the road. They just got word that we're on our way. Dig it! Someone's told them we're coming!'
'But we're already here…' Gadgets laughed quietly, keying his radio. 'Things are changing. I think we'll get our chance.'
The truck roared past a prone Blancanales. He saw the gates close. Raising himself to a crouch, he observed the truck stop a quarter-mile away. In the red glow of brake lights, he noted soldiers in black uniforms leave the truck. He counted ten flashlights. The flashlights were extinguished as the soldiers left the road and fanned out into the desert. The truck pulled away and continued toward the village.
'Hey, Wizard,' Blancanales whispered into his radio, 'I don't know what your plan is, but the gate's closed, and they just cut off our retreat. If they find the taxis, they'll know...'
'Hold on! Something else is going on…just a second… we're listening in… Just wait…'
The gates swung open again. More headlights appeared. Two trucks left the fortress in low gear, heading
