Dick Stivers - Cairo Countdown

Barking continued on the opposite side of the roof. The four men spread out along the fence of planks and barbed wire. They knew the security fence would have gates. The group inside the building would have provided for rooftop escape.

Blancanales went slowly, feeling ahead of him for booby traps or noise-making trash. He peered up at the barbed wire, then moved along, fingers sweeping over the gritty surface. He found a bottle, then another, set them far to the side. His fingers found something soft, coarse, like burlap. He felt the shape of it. A dead rat.

He set the stiff, sun-dried rodent where he could find it, resumed his search for the gate. He located a loop of chain and a lock that secured a rectangle of old lumber set between two planks. Crawling backward, he picked up the rat, went back to Gadgets.

"Gate's down there," Blancanales whispered, his mouth close enough to touch Gadgets's hair. "It's got a lock."

"On my way. Two clicks on the radio when you want me to open the gate."

Blancanales continued to Lyons and Mohammed. "The Wizard'll open the gate."

The creaking of a door stopped his whisper. Footsteps crossed the roof. The three men froze in their crouches as the footsteps passed on the other side of the low wall. While the dogs continued barking, the sentry walked a circuit of the other rooftop. A voice shouted in Arabic at the dogs. The dogs trailed off, then one dog barked again, then all the dogs joined in. The sentry shouted once more. A bottle broke. The dogs scattered, finally went quiet.

The footsteps returned to the stairwell, and the door creaked closed. Footsteps went down stairs.

"Give the Wizard two clicks," Blancanales whispered. "I'll toss the next distraction."

Lyons keyed his hand radio twice. Blancanales threw the rat to the far side of the other building's roof. The dogs broke into another fury of barking. Paws scratched on tar as they ran to investigate the bait, snarling and yelping. When they found it, the noise got nastier.

"What the hell did you throw?" Lyons asked.

"A dead rat. The dogs are fighting with each other to rip it up. Now's the time…"

The footsteps ran up the stairs. The door opened. Lyons and Blancanales thumbed back the hammers of their autopistols, then eased up.

In the light from the open door, they saw a bearded middle-aged man rush at the dogs. An Uzi hung from his shoulder. Lyons and Blancanales braced their pistols on the wall to sight on the bearded sentry's chest.

"Wait till he's in there with the dogs…" Blancanales whispered to Lyons.

The sentry waved a flashlight at the dogs, started kicking them. Dogs yelped, ran away whining. The flashlight found a ragged scrap of rat. The sentry poked at it with his foot.

"Sighting in…" Lyons hissed. "Hit him!"

Slugs zipped through the air, a 9mm slug slapping the sentry's jacket, a .45 ACP hollowpoint slamming him back into the crisscrossed barbed wire behind him. Two more slugs bounced him off the wire. He fell flat on the black asphalt, did not move as the dogs ran circles around him, sniffing at the blood.

Lyons spoke into his radio. "Wizard! You through that gate?"

"It's open. What about the dogs?"

"We'll do it." Lyons turned to Blancanales. "Gate's open, but first we waste those dogs. There's no other way. We have to do it. Survival of whoever's fittest to take the grief."

Methodically, Blancanales executed the dogs, his underpowered 9mm subsonic slugs striking with less sound than a slap. Lyons watched over the phosphor dots of his Colt's sights. What he saw was more cruel, somehow, than the killing of men. And more sad. Able Team killed only the bad, and often, sadly, the bad were dumb.

"Goddamn it," Blancanales cursed. He jammed a new mag into the Beretta.

"Forget it, just forget it," Lyons whispered to him, knowing what his friend felt. "We had to. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was them or us. Now let's move it."

As the three men dashed for the gate, other men sprinted up the stairs to the roof. Flashlight beams swept the rooftop and the barbed wire, catching the two Americans and the Egyptian.

Kalashnikov fire ripped the night.

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.