"We can't tell you," Randall said, laughing. "I mean, if you don't know..."

"Lebanon?" Blancanales asked.

"I thought you didn't know," Randall responded.

"What is this game?" Lyons demanded. "On the plane, back home, over the phone, no one makes any sense. We had this clerk jerk briefing us, and he wouldn't give us straight answers. What goes on? I have to know..."

Lloyd answered. "The Agency is strange. If you understand that, you're on your way to understanding the problem."

"Yeah, yeah. I know all about it, but..."

"Then why are you asking?" Randall countered.

The phone interrupted the joking. Lyons took the call, listened for a good many seconds without saying a word before hanging up. "We're on our way."

"Where?" Gadgets and Blancanales asked in unison.

Lyons grinned. "Can't tell you."

"The Bekaa..." Now it was Grimaldi who operated the slide projector. He punched a button and an aerial photograph of a village appeared on the screen.

Taken by a low-orbit spy satellite, the picture showed an abandoned village surrounded by rocky, untended fields. A road wound through foothills to the outermost of a series of concentric perimeters. An open area between the first and second perimeters had evenly spaced depressions in the soil — mines. Guardhouses set at intervals along the second perimeter provided interlocking fields of fire. A band of bare soil separated the second perimeter from the innermost. Grimaldi glanced to his briefing papers, then pointed to each ring of wire and machine-gun emplacements.

"This one is razor wire eight feet high. This is a minefield — and that's for sure. Look at this." He pointed to what appeared to be a large crater where one mine had exploded. "The second perimeter is chain link and razor wire. These are sandbagged bunkers and towers overlooking the minefield. And they've got guard dogs between the guard positions and the last perimeter, which is a stone wall topped with razor wire and broken glass set in..."

Lyons interrupted. "How can they be positive about the dogs?"

"Where's the superzoom?" Grimaldi fumbled with the controls, finally hit a lever. "Look for yourself." The image expanded, the outer perimeters going offscreen, the mosaic of rooftops becoming blocks of gray and black, the head and arms of a sentry appearing on the top of the wall. Grimaldi pointed to a form on the earth: a dog.

"That's positive," Lyons agreed.

"Your folders have prints of all this," Grimaldi continued. "We've done everything conceivable to make your infiltration possible..."

"Infiltration?" Gadgets asked, amazed. "You think we're supermen?"

"Or invisible?" Lyons asked.

"Or expendable?" Blancanales asked.

"Expendable invisible men, we ain't," Gadgets emphasized. "No way."

"There isn't any other way," Grimaldi told them. He pressed the button, flipping back to the slide showing the position of the base. "Here's the village. Only a few kilometers from the Syrian border. Here... here... and here — missile sites. The Israeli air force can't knock out the missiles because the sites are crewed by Soviets. And there's hundreds of antiaircraft positions along the Marjayoun-Baalbek highway. So we can't have the Israelis send in planes and bomb it."

"We'll be going in by helicopter?" Blancanales asked.

"No, you'll be in cars."

Lyons groaned.

"Listen!" Grimaldi pointed to the mountains east of Beirut. "Contract agents will transport you from the coast. The Agency prepared all the identity documents you'll need to get through the checkpoints outside Beirut. Then you'll only have to worry about checkpoints along the highway. All these villages along here are controlled by the Islamic Amal and the Iranians and Libyans..."

"Hey, Ironman," Gadgets turned abruptly to Lyons. "Think I could pass as an Iranian?"

"No."

"Neither can you."

"When you get to the village nearest the base," Grimaldi continued, "then you march cross-country."

Blancanales shook his head. "When we get there? Ifwe get there."

"That's the plan?" Lyons asked, incredulous. "We make like tourists and drive in, then hike to the base and blow it away? That's the plan the Agency took weeks to create?"

"Not quite — there's more." Grimaldi read from a memo. " 'The team must make penetration of objective. Disposition of threat will remain uncertain without team observation of weapons, organization and sponsorship prior to termination of threat.' "

"Oh..." Lyons nodded. "We take notes, too. Maybe we can get an interview with the Number One Ayatollah. Wizard, did you bring your camera?"

"See what happens when you mouth off at Agency clerks?" Gadgets asked Lyons. "They bring us jive missions like this. Wish that George dude was here now. Send him on this insane joyride."

Lyons looked at his partners. He signaled a thumbs-down opinion of the Agency plan. But then he said, "Tell them we didn't like it, but we'll do it. We'll do the best we can. Follow our instructions to the letter. Do or die. Stiff upper lip. Hip, hip."

Blancanales spoke next. "Any last-minute developments on Dastgerdi?"

"French security people confirmed that Dastgerdi passed through Paris on his return to the Middle East. Oh, yeah. Here's another detail the Agency people want you to watch for. Dastgerdi's coordinating this project, keeping the Iranians and Syrians together. And the Soviets, the Agency assumes. But there's one more thing they want you to watch for. It seems a courier passed information to Dastgerdi in a passenger lounge in the Paris airport. But listen to this: the courier didn't come from the Soviet Union. The courier came from and returned to Baghdad, the capital of Iraq."

"What do the Iraqis have to do with this?" Blancanales asked. "They're at war with the Iranians. The Iraqis wouldn't work with the Iranians."

"It's a mystery," Grimaldi agreed. "Maybe it'll make your trip more interesting."

"Yeah..." Lyons laughed bitterly "...interesting."

As the three members of Able Team stepped from the warmth of the hired van, a gust of wind hit them with freezing sleet. The driver gunned the engine impatiently as the Americans unloaded their trunks. Without a word, he reversed the van and drove away into the night.

Gadgets looked around at the shacks lining the muddy road. Even in the storm, the air stank of diesel and rotting fish. "Ain't Club Med."

Gripping his two heavy trunks of gear, Lyons staggered to the dock. An old coastal cruiser lurched in the storm chop, the dock creaking as the cruiser pulled the heavy mooring lines taut with every sway. A crewman in a yellow rain slicker saw him and waved a flashlight.

Voices shouted in Greek. Silhouettes moved across lighted ports. Lyons stopped at the head of the gangplank and put down his trunks. As he waited for his partners, his eyes scanned the cruiser.

On the deck, plastic tarps covered stacks of cargo. A hoist arm overhung the crates, its steel cables banging with every gust. Light came from two levels of cabins. Lyons saw men inside the lighted pilothouse. His eyes searched for anything — any detail, any motion — that meant a trap.

After landing in Nicosia, Cyprus, they had called Lebanon and spoken with Captain Powell, the Marine on detached duty with the Shia militias of West Beirut. They did not risk briefing him on their mission to the Bekaa over the phone, saying only that they would be "taking a drive together." A few weeks before, Powell had accompanied Able Team to Mexico as they pursued and exterminated a terror force of Iranian Revolutionary Guards. He would know why they called.

"Thought they had a hovercraft to Beirut," Gadgets commented. "Don't know if I want to go out in a storm in that bucket."