Close Quarters

“Stay out of this!” Lyons exclaimed with a new flush to his face. He leaned close to Harland’s ear before continuing. “Now listen to me and listen good, you little son of a bitch. I don’t know what sort of game you’re playing but whatever it is you’ve got about five seconds to come clean or I swear I’ll snap your arm in two.”

“What is happening here?” Schwarz said.

Lyons looked at him and replied, “You want to know what’s happening? Our friends down in Paraguay just got hit by Hezbollah terrorists and nearly all of them bought the farm. One of them was injured.”

Lyons turned his attention back to Harland, who could barely talk fast enough, his voice little more than a high-pitched squeal of outrage mixed with pain. “Let…me…go!”

“I’ll let you go,” Lyons said. “I’ll let you go right out that window if you don’t talk and talk now!”

“Hezbollah?” Blancanales inquired.

“Yeah. And there’s a lot more to the story, but I’ll fill you in on the rest of it later. For now our orders are to turn two-face here over to the U.S. Marshals as soon as they arrive. But they weren’t very specific about what condition he has to be in. Only that he’s still breathing.” Lyons directed the last statement to Harland. “And if he doesn’t fess up here in the next few seconds he’s going to be breathing through a straw.”

“Okay! Let me go— You’re breaking my arm!” Harland wailed, and then began sobbing. “Please…”

Lyons released his hold, got Harland to his feet and tossed him into the chair he’d occupied a minute earlier. He then folded his arms. “We’re listening. Spill it, shithead.”

“Yeah, Harland,” Schwarz said. “What’s this all about?”

“I swear I didn’t want to do it!” Harland said, rubbing his arm as he stared daggers at Lyons. The ice-cold blue eyes staring back caused Harland to look at the floor. “They told me if I didn’t play along they’d kill me.”

“Who told you that?” Blancanales asked.

“Those…those bastards,” Harland confessed. He looked at Lyons. “You’re right, they are terrorists. They didn’t tell me which group they were with. The guy who talked to me spoke English but he had an accent. I couldn’t figure it out at first but after talking to him awhile I deduced he had to be Arab, Muslim or something. Somewhere from the Middle East, I was pretty sure of that.”

“How could you tell?” Lyons demanded.

“I hold a Masters Degree in liberal arts. I’ve been to many countries. I know Middle Easterners when I see them.”

“And this story you gave the Embassy about you being blindfolded,” Schwarz said. “About not seeing anything other than the camp and the two men who captured you. Was all of that just bullshit?”

“It was a lie. Part of the story they told me to tell.”

“Oh, Christopher,” Blancanales said in a voice heavy with disappointment. He shook his head. “You should’ve told us the truth from the beginning. This has only made things much more complicated.”

“They said if I didn’t cooperate they’d kill my friends!”

“Your friends may already be dead, genius,” Lyons replied. “Did you ever think about that? Terrorists aren’t typically interested in taking hostages unless it’s distinctly advantageous to their goals.”

“So you’re being tracked?” Schwarz asked.

Harland kept his eyes to the floor as he nodded slowly.

“How?”

Harland reached slowly to the watch on his wrist and removed it. He handed it to Blancanales, who then passed it immediately to Schwarz after a cursory glance. Schwarz reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a small leather case. He flipped open the soft lid and after a moment carefully selected a miniature flat-tip screwdriver. He carefully pried the lid off the back and inspected the contents. After a minute and a grunt of satisfaction, Schwarz replaced the screwdriver, withdrew another implement and began working at the innards. He soon came away with a small chip held between the tiny three-pronged extractor.

“Very interesting,” Schwarz said, staring at the chip.

“What is it?” Blancanales asked.

“Microtransmitter, I’d guess. Hard to tell for certain without the proper testing equipment here, but I’d say it probably has about a ten-mile range if it transmits low-band. More likely it’s GPS-enabled, in which case it has an almost limitless range.”

“So they know where we’re at?” Lyons asked.

“Hard to tell,” Schwarz replied. “But I can tell you this is advanced electronics. High-grade stuff, amigo, not something you can get just anywhere.”

“Grand,” Lyons replied.

“What else do you know?” Blancanales asked. “You need to tell us everything you heard and saw. There are other men risking their lives to help your friends. You owe them that much.”

Harland nodded and began to spill it all to them. He told them about how they first encountered the terrorists, described the leader’s mode of dress and the other things he saw. He included every nuance of the conversation he had with the leader and some of the foreign words he’d heard used between the leader and his men. He also gave them the details of the story they had forced him to memorize several times over. When he’d finished, he sat back in the chair with utter exhaustion, the tears streaming down his cheeks unabated.

While Blancanales rose to get Harland a rag for his face, Lyons considered the information. He would wait until they’d dumped Harland on the U.S. Marshals Service before he told them of their new mission parameters.

Lyons had cringed when Price and Brognola informed him Able Team would be taking a trip out of the country. He’d listened with rising anger as they’d relayed the story of how a man named Hemmati had contacted the CIA with an incredible tale of a possible coup at the highest levels of Iranian government. He could remember the anger reaching the boiling point when they’d revealed McCarter and the rest had been ambushed while meeting their NSA contact, and how Rafael Encizo had been injured—although Lyons understood the tough Cuban would be okay.

“I’d normally send Phoenix Force on this,” Brognola had said, “but with what they’re juggling down there, I don’t think it’s tactically sound.”

“I get it,” Lyons had said. “I may not like it but we’re the better choice for this kind of mission. We’re also smaller and better suited for the urban environment.”

Price had directed, “You’ll take a civilian hop to the city of Sulaimaniyah, near the Iran-Iraq border. From there, you’ll have a CIA contact who’ll arrange for a HALO jump into the Elburz Mountains. There’s a deep-cover ops team that will pick you up there and get you into the city.”

“Once you reach Tehran you’ll coordinate with Hemmati,” Brognola’d told him. “He’ll be your guide and sole contact outside of the two Company men. Your job is to take custody, help Hemmati’s people and then get your collective asses out of there with Hemmati in one piece.”

“You know what?” Lyons had replied. “Pol and Gadgets were right. Florida’s looking better all the time.”

CHAPTER SIX

Asunción, Paraguay

Rafael Encizo sat surrounded by his friends at the medical facility attached to the U.S. Embassy. The staff physician had given him a clean bill of health, save for a mild concussion. He’d agreed to waive the standard twenty-four-hour observation window with McCarter’s solemn promise Encizo wouldn’t engage in any “excitement or strenuous physical activity” for the next three days. McCarter hated to be short a team member but it was a promise he intended to keep.

“I feel fine,” Encizo protested after the doctor left the group to arrange for the Cuban’s release.

“You’re grounded, mate,” McCarter said. “Simple as that and we’re not going to argue about it. I can’t bloody well have you suddenly go down in the middle of a hot zone, then we got two more that have to carry you out. It’s too dangerous.”

“I suppose it’s pointless trying to get you to change your mind.”

“It is.”

“Fine, we’ll do it your way,” Encizo said with a frown. “But I don’t know what I can bring to the table sitting around the hotel room.”

“I’m sure Russell could use your help,” Hawkins offered.

“Yeah,” Encizo said. “Great.”

“Cheer up, Rafe,” Manning said. “It could’ve been much worse.”