I waved the next pair forward. Ray and Jefferson ran across a debris-littered floor to take up position on the far wall.
Ackroyd and the Librarian advanced to the door. They and Mears and Chung were supposed to flank the entrance while Darius and I hit the street. If the Pasdaran guards thought there was anything unusual about a fidayin patrol emerging from a mostly-deserted apartment building — and in Tehran, there really wasn't — they would be too circumspect to say so. They were scared spitless of us too. A reputation for craziness is a wonderful thing.
But it doesn't make you bulletproof.
In spite of everything we'd drilled in, little Harvey walked bolt upright, as though he was heading back to roust some boisterous teens from the stacks. As he reached the front of the foyer a guy in a sweater popped right out on the sidewalk in front of him, screamed something with Allah in it, and cut loose with an Uzi from the hip.
The glass blew in around us like a crystal razor snowstorm. Harvey's right leg snapped out from under him. He pitched onto his face.
Ackroyd pointed a finger. The gunman vanished.
I raised my AKM. The doorway filled up with bodies and bearded screaming faces. I held down the trigger and gave them something to scream about. They fell back from the door.
The echoes of gunfire seemed to keep on rebounding off the foyer wall as the Iranians fell back to regroup. I scuttled to Harvey, bent over him. I rolled him onto his back. His face was pale, his pants leg wet with blood. The blood wasn't just blasting out, though. That meant the femoral hadn't been hit, which meant he was not going to bleed to death in the next thirty seconds or anything. Which meant the best immediate action was -
"Ackroyd!" I yelled. "Pop him out!"
The detective pointed. Harvey vanished, gone to the medevac tent back at Desert One.
"Jesus!" Ackroyd said. "Which way do we go now? Up the stairs?"
"We don't want to get trapped on the roof," I said. "Out the back — into the alley."
Darius hit the back door first and stopped dead. Locked. "Out of my way, diaper head," Billy Ray growled. He walked into the door and right on through without slowing.
The night air was cool and full of the sounds of angry voices. There was a mob out on Roosevelt, between us and the Embassy, howling for infidel blood. It must have assembled in the time it took us to get down the stairs.
Real coincidental, wasn't it?
No time to think about that now. The mob had nerved itself to risk the fate of their writhing, moaning brethren blocking the front entrance and swarmed in, trampling them in their lust to catch us. I gave them another whole magazine through the foyer to reveal to them the error of their ways.
"Come on," I said. "Next building. We need to get some space between us and them."
Another heavy steel door faced our alley from the next brick building — they take security seriously in these ceiling fan countries. Not seriously enough to keep Billy Ray out when he was this motivated, though. As we crowded into the darkness of a short hallway filled with musty storeroom smells we heard the baying of the pack flood into the alley at our backs.
There was an interval of running, hearts drumming, as we crashed through doors, dashed up short flights of stairs and down alleys. And then we had space to try to force some stinking alley air back into our lungs while Billy unlimbered the radio.
Damsel was crying. Chung had his arm around her. He was standing tall, taller than his inches.
"What happened?" Ackroyd demanded. He grabbed the front of my blouse. "What the fuck happened?"
"Calm down," I said. "Something went wrong."
"Something? We're blown. Harvey may be dead. All you can call that is something?"
"I call it war. He's a casualty. We need to work on not joining him. And he's not going to die — they'll patch him up at Desert One."
"Right."
Ray handed me the microphone. "Archangel One, Archangel One, this is Stud Six. Archangel One, we need the Sword of the Lord in one hell of a hurry."
"Stud Six, this is Archange l One," a voice came crackling back. "You're going to have to wait for it. Maximum sorry, over."
"Angel One, what the hell are you talking about? Roosevelt Avenue is full of angry mob. We've got one man down. We need the streets swept. Over."
"Stud Six, I say again: you're gonna have to wait, over."
"Archangel, we have no time."
"Orders, Stud Six. They had an accident back at Desert One. Chopper crashed into a C-130. Be advised we can take no action without clearing it through the man upstairs."
For some reason I was very particularly struck by the fact that our line to the President ran through Battle and Brzezinski. I had little time to ponder the thought, because just then a vehicle cruised past the end of the alley. A light-colored Volkswagen Thing. At the wheel sat a tall man in a Panama hat and tropical suit.
He turned his big head to stare at me. He still wore his sunglasses, like a traffic cop. He drove on.
A moment later the pack came swarming around the corner. I dropped the microphone and grabbed for my AKM.
"You were right!" I yelled to Ackroyd. "We're screwed, blued, and tattooed."
Not many of the charging Iranians had guns — just a mob, not the Guard yet, thank God. But they had clubs and fists and stones and — yes — swords. And numbers, of course. We can't forget those.
I had too many of my own people between me and the mob to fire effectively. I switched the selector to single shot and poised, waiting for a shot.
Chance put Ray and Ackroyd at the front. The detective reacted more coolly than I imagined he could. He just started aiming that finger and picking off the rushing rioters, pop-pop-pop. Every time he pointed, one vanished.
Unfortunately, he didn't have a full-auto teleport. They swarmed us.
That was where young Billy came into his own. He caught the first man to reach him by the face. Bones crunched, blood flowed. Billy hurled him back against his buddies.
The youthful Wolverine became a whirling dervish of fists and feet. He stove in skulls against the brick walls, ripped limbs from sockets, popped out eyes. He rammed his hand into a big bearded man's chest, pulled his heart out, and showed it to him, like something from a bad chop-socky flick. Ackroyd, who'd fallen back, overwhelmed, turned away and puked.
Someone swung a length of pipe overhand at Billy's head. He threw up an arm to block. His ulna cracked with a sound like a gunshot.
He grabbed the pipe-wielder by the loose front of his shirt and head-butted him. When he let the Iranian go the man's eyes were rolled up as if to stare at the deep dent in his own head.
I stepped forward past the indisposed Ackroyd, jammed my Kalashnikov into the gut of the next man up, blew him down. Then I hosed the alley.
The survivors of Ray's fury turned and fled. As they departed the alley, their better-armed and smarter — or luckier — comrades leaned around the wall and began to rip fire at us.
Billy Ray said, "Fuck," and stepped back. Blood started from his shoulder where a round had taken him.
"I can handle this," Chung said.
"Paul, they're too far away to punch," I called over my shoulder. I was busting caps desperately now, not concerned with hitting anything, just trying to get the bad guys to pull their heads back.
"I've gone beyond that, now," he said. "She's made me a new man."
"Paul, what are you talking about?" Lady Black asked.
"Watch." And he raised a few inches off the ground, and took off down the alley like an F-4 on afterburner.
Now, keep in mind, he couldn't do this. 1t would be like me suddenly discovering that I could dead lift a tank, or shoot fire from my fingertips. He'd had his ace for years; all he could do was get lighter than air and float, or glide slowly down. He had no powered flight.