"This is the place," he announced quietly.

"Where are the Iranians?" Lyons asked, looking upward.

"If they're at the address they gave us, up there," Powell whispered. He continued to the end of the tunnel. An access ladder went straight up through a black rectangle. His flashlight showed the interior of a small room above them. "And I think they are because it's the same address the prisoner gave us. But who knows? Maybe they're up there, maybe not. Or they could be in a nearby building."

"What's above us?"

"A parking garage. It opens to the street and to the alley. There should be another garage across the alley. If there's an ambush, they'll expect us to come from the street. But we'll be coming up behind them — if they're on street level. Probably they're on the second and third floors, to be able to fire down."

"We'll go up first," Lyons volunteered, motioning toward Blancanales. "We've got the appropriate technology for this," he added, tapping his silenced auto-Colt.

Lyons and Blancanales slung their assault weapons over their backs and cinched the slings tight. With Lyons going first, they ascended the ladder into absolute darkness. Blancanales checked his silenced Beretta 93R and waited for his signal.

By touch, Lyons found an open area in a floor littered with broken concrete and bits of wire. Wires touching his head, scratching his face, he stood up in the darkness, listening, searching for light or form. Closing his eyes, he hoped for maximum dilation of his irises. But open or closed, his eyes saw only black.

He switched on a penlight. The glow revealed the gutted interior of a telephone circuit room. Deliberately destroyed with high-explosive charges, panels and wires filled the room. Torn cables hung from conduits.

Years before, someone — perhaps one of the five dead found in the tunnel — had blocked the door with a length of steel pipe jammed like a crossbar between the two panels bracketing the door. The lock and door handle had been shot out. Scratched paint showed that an attempt had been made to force the door open. But the attempt had failed. Judging by the bones in the tunnel and the rust on the shot-out lock, the room had not been opened for years.

Lyons listened at the door. He heard nothing. He returned to the tunnel entry and hissed to Blancanales. His partner joined him in seconds.

"Might be a dead end," Lyons whispered.

"We'll know when we open the door."

Slowly and silently they raised the length of steel pipe. Blancanales stood by to jam it back into place. The door was hinged to open inward, and Lyons slowly eased the door open a hand's width.

Rats squealed and skittered, claws scratching at the door. Concrete and trash spilled through the opening. A rat hurtled into the small room, squeaking, running wildly through the wires and metal fragments until it dropped through the trapdoor. Below, they heard the Shias curse and stomp.

Points of light appeared at the very top of the opening. Dust swirled in the faint light. Lyons and Blancanales smelled the stink of rotting garbage and generations of rat filth. More trash and debris fell through as Lyons continued opening the door. He ignored the rats leaping against his body and scratching over his boots. He could hear the Shias in the tunnel as they continued to stomp on rats.

Ahead of him, Lyons saw a wall of trash. Through the years, trash and debris had been piled against the door, covering it completely. Faint daylight glowed through the top layer of papers and filth.

Now they heard sounds outside — the jangling and crashing of a truck on the street came to them, but no voices.

Moving the square steel box of a wiring panel to the doorway, Lyons stood up and tried to look over the top of the wall of trash. As rats skittered and ran on the other side, he gently cleared a hole through the papers and rotting garbage. He saw a street-level garage. He continued clearing aside the trash.

Autofire hammered.

Lyons fell back as Blancanales attempted to close the door against an avalanche of trash and filth. But the debris blocked the door.

On the other side the bursts of automatic-rifle fire continued.

But they heard no slugs hitting the trash or door. They waited, listening.

"They're not shooting at us," Blancanales told Lyons.

Standing on the box again, Lyons looked outside. He saw no one. Another burst shattered the quiet, the autofire echoing in the garage. Lyons heard no ricochets or voices, or the sound of running. He dug through the trash and broken concrete, then crawled into the light.

Scanning the area, he saw debris from years of explosions and fighting littering the garage. Burned-out wrecks blocked the alley exit. Two new Japanese panel trucks sat parked on his left. Then he heard voices coming from a flight of steel-and-concrete stairs.

A dead militiaman sprawled on the stairs, blood draining from wounds. He wore the fatigues of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. A rifle fired, the noise coming from somewhere above the dead man.

"Pol! Get the others! It's clear."

Lyons scrambled out. He pulled out his auto-Colt, checking to see that it was cocked and locked, and ran across the garage to the stairs. He looked up and quickly dodged back as an autorifle fired.

But no slugs came at him. He looked at the dead man. The Iranian had been shot in the back.

Looking across the garage, Lyons saw Blancanales lead the line of men out of the trash pile. Blancanales and Powell ran across the garage to join him. Akbar directed the platoon of Shia militiamen to cover the street and alley exits.

Lyons went up. At the first landing he went flat on the concrete and looked up the next flight of stairs. He saw an open fire exit with the door gone, but the low angle denied him a view of the corridor beyond. He heard voices, then kicks against a door. A rifle fired once.

He went up the next flight of stairs on his hands and knees. Stairs squeaked behind him as weight stressed the steel framework. He looked back, saw Blancanales. Lyons continued to the top.

Peering into the corridor, Lyons saw two Iranian militiamen fire their Kalashnikov rifles at a closed door, punching the door and the walls on each side with lines of 7.62mm ComBloc. Then they ran at the door and kicked it. A rifle inside fired one bullet out, splintered wood and plastic flying from the door. The Iranians scrambled for cover.

Lyons braced his silent Colt on the top stair. Thumbing the fire-selector down one click to semiautomatic, he sighted on the head of the Iranian farthest from him and squeezed the trigger.

The Iranian moved. As he raised his rifle to his shoulder, the .45-caliber hollowpoint slammed into his left cheek at three hundred meters per second, the upward trajectory of the impact-flattened slug tearing away his eyes and half his face. The force spun him back several steps; he was still alive, blood and fluids spraying from his opened skull.

A second slug caught the other Iranian low in the back of the head, killing him instantly as the expanding hollowpoint liberated a devastating shock force of kinetic energy to explode his skull.

Motioning Blancanales and Powell up, Lyons ran through the corridor. He continued past the door to the lobby of the office building. Rusting steel grills covered the long-ago-shattered plate-glass windows. Moldy papers, rifled files and charred furniture littered the lobby. Vandals had spray painted Arabic slogans on the gray marble walls. Everything not burned had been smashed. Only twisted metal and broken glass remained of what had been an abstract sculpture of colored glass rising from the lobby to the mezzanine.

Nothing moved on the mezzanine level. Lyons saw no one on the stairs. He heard nothing in the building.