old Boering's heading back to L.A. — to a hotel room full of cops.'
'What good does it do anyone to have you guys held captive here with us?' Mustav asked.
'We carried bugs. Lyons and his partners will find us now.'
'You mean they didn't check you?' Kelly questioned.
'God, yeah. Boering's a suspicious man. He checked us twice, but this guy — Gadgets or something — planted a couple of bugs on the car for Boering to find. He thinks this Gadgets is dead. He expected somebody to bug the car so he had an ambush waiting. I don't know if he made it or not.'
'If they had an ambush waiting for him,' Mustav said, 'he's probably dead.'
'Don't bet on it,' Jackson said. 'Earlier, this Gadgets and another guy, Pol, were waiting for Babette to come back to the team. So was a motorcycle gang of thirty or forty men. Babette and the two made it to the parking building. They killed off about half the gang before Lyons and some tactical squad came in and mopped up.'
'Okay, so they're good, and tough,' Mustav conceded. 'How are they going to find us if they scanned you twice for bugs?'
'We were each given one to carry. They had on-and-off switches, something this Gadgets guy devised. Whenever Boering reached for the bug sniffer, we turned the bugs off. I thought we'd be searched here. I tossed my bug into the sand.'
By this time Jackson's eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He could see sand had been piled up in one area.
'Mind telling me about the sand castle you're building?'
'We've burrowed below the sandbags in three places,' Mustav explained. 'We've been going in and out of here for hours. We wait until one of the guards is distracted, then someone slips out. They'll see the digging in the morning, but we don't figure we'll last much longer than that if we don't do something.'
'Sounds positive.'
'Listen, Sam. When they brought us here, no one covered their faces. We could identify any of those guys. They know it. We know it.'
'I don't think they'll do anything until they get us out of here,' Sam said. 'I think they really want us to go Commie. It'll look good for their system and look like shit on ours. They paid me good money, and I don't think they did it just to kill me.'
'We're waiting for them to settle in and get bored,' Mustav told the boxer. 'Your arrival stirred things up. Soon as it settles we'll start slipping out again one at a time. The first time they see anybody, we charge.'
'That's suicide,' Sam said.
'So is just sitting here waiting,' Kelly countered.
'Why not wait for those dudes to come?' Jackson asked.
'No,' Mustav said, his voice firm, his mind made up. 'The plan goes ahead.'
'Okay,' Jackson said. 'You really figure all those guys out there are Ku Klux Klan?'
'Seem to be,' Kelly answered. 'Except for a couple of the young ones. They don't fit the mold. Everybody noticed.'
'Something still stinks,' Jackson said. 'It just doesn't make sense. Any Klansman I've ever heard of would rather kiss a black than help a Commie. No matter how I pile this, I get a load of shit.'
'Either some of these guys are KKK or they're damn good at faking it,' Kelly said. 'Or, maybe most are KKK and they don't know there's any Communist involvement. Listen, if these guys are genuine KKK, they'd rather associate with us sub-humans than Communists.'
Mustav picked up on the idea. 'We can continue to try and sneak out of here. At the same time, let's pick the most likely candidate and tell him that Sam and his group are Americans. If he goes through the roof, we'll know they're the real thing.'
The threesome planned and plotted some more. Mustav then passed the word around that the singing could stop.
Sam Jackson listened as the voices died out and silence took over. The big boxer had a small plan of his own. He could hardly wait for the gunmen outside to settle down. Then he'd make his move.
Anatoli Rustov did not receive his briefing from the captain of the Soviet spy ship; the instructions came directly from Portisch, the Party representative on board.
'We will go directly up to that little tub and raise hell,' Portisch said. 'Simply fly straight east. The bulk of the ship will cut off their radar. They won't be able to hear you over the noise of our speakers. The captain will make sure that there is plenty of noise. He wishes to return to Russia some day.
'When you approach the land radar, we have two small planes set to attract the attention of all the radars — they'll look like they are going to crash. When you get to the desert region you'll get the homing signal. It will sound like two radio amateurs chattering. There's gasoline at the pickup point, but you shouldn't need it.
'Pick up the athletes and get out of there quickly. At dawn there will be an airborne attack on the camp. If you're still there, you can expect to be eliminated.'
'Is all that clear?'
'Yes, sir,' Rustov answered.
'Good. On the way out, be careful. If you're spotted, run for it. Once you set down on this ship they won't touch you. A chase, by the way, would make good press. Five of their top athletes are leaving their country just before the Games. And the mighty U.S.A. is reduced to chasing them to try and stop them...'
'I'll get them here,' Rustov vowed.
'Excellent, comrade. With people like you serving our nation, there can be no doubt we will soon rule these soft imperialists.'
14
Gadgets Schwarz would have run right into the guard if the goon hadn't fired the cigarette. But the sentry had given away his position with the flick of a match, and Gadgets, who had one ear wired into the directional finder as he homed in on the squealers, backed off. The guard was only ten feet away.
Moving away from the guard, Gadgets went back to his teammates. The three men of Able Team and Babette Pavlovski flopped into the sand and wormed their way back over the nearest dune.
'See anything besides the sentry?' Blancanales asked.
'Barbed wire and camouflage netting,' Gadgets answered.
'We'll have to go in soft at first,' Pol stated.
'You know what I think about going in soft,' Lyons muttered. The warrior was aching for action. 'I'll go in,' he volunteered.
'Take Babette with you,' Politician directed. 'She's the one all the athletes will recognize. Gadgets can monitor the radio and I'll take the combo, in case we hit heavy action.''
All agreed. Lyons shucked most of his heavy gear and began to crawl over the dune. Gadgets put a hand on Babette's arm before she could follow.
'Take a knife,' he said.
She shook her head and whispered. 'Where I was brought up, young girls are all taught to wear this.' She guided his hand to her forearm. Strapped in a leather sheath was an old-fashioned ice pick. 'It's the only way to say no to a Russian soldier.'
She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and was gone.
Lyons crawled rapidly toward the glow of the cigarette. He paused under an accordion roll of barbed wire, trusting its lines to break his outline against the sand. A light tap on his boot told him where Babette was.
Lyons and Babette began a slow circling of the enclosure. Iron posts, driven deep into the sand, supported both the overhead netting and the rolls of razor-sharp wire. The rolls had been laid into a trench and the sand had been allowed to drift back in to cover the bottom foot of the rolls. It was not much of an anchor, but enough to slow someone making a run for it from inside.
