The first floors were easy-no one in sight, no booby traps, and no cats, rats, bats, goats, sheep, or other miscellaneous animals to make our presence known I crept up the dusty concrete stairs one by one, my black, knee-length Pakistani "pasha" tunic covering the carbon-covered, custom suppressed Heckler & Koch USP 9mm in its ballistic nylon thigh holster.  The rest of my outfit was basic black- from the thong sandals to the Maharishi-styled trousers, to the titanium-framed Emerson QCC6 combat floder cliped to my waistband next to the motorola beeper, to the lead-and-leather sap secured by a thick, black Ace bandage to the inside of my right wrist.

My beard was full- reaching almost halfway down my chest.  My mustache drooped Fu Manchu-like way below my upper lip.  My shoulder length hair, restrained by the thick black cotton band, was wild and crazy.  If anybody ever looked the part of Islamic fundamentalist rouge warrior- the kind of maniacal mujahideen you used to see on the TV news shows when they sent camera crews to Afghanistan- it was me.  Which is precisely why I volunteered as pointman on this little jaunt, prowling and growling up the unlit stairwell of a Cairo slum at O-dark-hundred to catch my quarry napping in his bedroll.
I wasn't alone, of course.  You do not meander into Islamic Cairo, home of some of the meanest Muslim fundamentalist sons of bitches in the world, without some fundamentally mean sons of bitches of your own to backstop your ass.  That's why, half a yard behind me, Senior Chief Nasty Nicky Grundle, his suppressed Heckler & Koch MP5K-PDW submachinegun at the ready, rested a huge paw on my shoulder.  A yard behind him, Master Chief Boatswain's Mate Howie Kaluha's well-muscled Hawaiian back (not to mention his well-maintained Kraut submachine gun) brought up the rear.

A few streets away, crusin in the limo- it was actually a baby blue Peugeot 504 station wagon, but in Cairo, as the saying goes, almost anything that runs can be considered a limo- Doc Tremblay, handle-bar-mustachioed master chief corpsman and sniper, waited, a Manurhin PPK/s loaded with seven rounds of .380 MagSafe frangible manstoppers tucked in his waistband and a disposable syringe filled with two hundred milligrams of Dr. Nostradamus's best Ketamine Love Potion Number 9 in his hand.  Behind the Peugeot's wheel sat Grandma Syde's favorit Peck's bad boy, Machinist's Mate First Class Stevie Wonde, on indefinite leave from his classified job at the Washington Navy Yard.  Wonder's Carrot-Colored hair was covered by a dark, knit fellahin cap, and his tight frame was hidden by a shapeless gallebiya.  He was however, wearing his trademark wraparound shooting glasses with lenses in the color named especially for him- bastard amber. Wedged under Wonder's right thigh was a nineties hush puppy- a suppressed Heckler & Koch 9mm USP semiautomatic- loaded with Doc Tremblay’s best handloaded, subsonic hollowpoint.  To his nightshirt-like garment was pinned a throwaway receiving device about the size of a pack o f gum.  When I pressed the Chiclets-sized button in my pocket, his gizmo would vibrate for thirty seconds.  The little tickle would tell him he had one minute to get his mick ass in gear and pick me and the rest of the team up.

There's more: while Nasty, Howie, and I crept up the stairs, Chief Gunners Mate (Guns) Duck Foot Dewey and Commander Tommy Tanaka were making their way up along a precarious path of irregular stone work, spindaly balconies, laundry lines, and drain pipes that ran along side the target's third-story dormer windows.  I knew I it would take every bit of their rock climbing  I know, I know- you're asking, what the fuck?  What the hell is going on?  What is Dickie doing back in the Third World when he should be back at Rouge Manor, just climbing out of the Jacuzzi clutching a tall, frosted glass of bombayon the rocks in one hand, and something warm, and wonderfully full-breasted in the other.

Believe me, if there'd been time, I'd have been asking myself the same question.  And as soon as I get a couple of minutes, I'll tell you everything.  But at the present, there is no time for anything but the matter at hand.  To wit: scratching and snatching then whopping and popping. Translation: our mission was to sit around and scratch our asses until the time was right, then snatch one Mahmoud Azziz abu Yasin, Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist asshole, from his beddy-bye.  Whereupon id whoop him upside his head with my handy dandy sap, knock him cold, and hussle his ass down to the Peugeot, where Doc would pop him with that two hundred milligrams of Dr. N's Ketamine right into his upper deltoid, which would drug the shit out of ol' Mahmuod for a few precious hours.

Sounds easy. A clockwork op.  Guess again.  Snatch-and-grabs (or, as the Brits call 'em, cosh-and-carrys) are precarious, risky operations.  Probs and stats? Bad.  Goatfuck likelihood? High.
GF factor 1: your operating in a hostile environment with no back-up.
GF factor 2: your government will disavowyour actions if you're caught.
GF factor 3: if the locals get their hands on you, the odds are that you'll end up being dragged behind a car or truck for a few hours while they cut off significant pieces of your anatomy joint by joint.

So, you ask, how did I feel right now?  Brief answer: I felt as happy as un grand porc en merde, although you probably couldn't get something the width of a hairpin up my sphincter because the pucker factor was off the charts. Above me something moved.  My hand went up.  We stopped.  I gave signals, and Nasty pressed himself against the stairwell wall, giving him the greatest field of fire. his free hand grasped my shoulder.  That way I'd know where he was at all times.  Knowing where everybody is at all times is an important element of operations like these.  It's all together possible to kill your own man if hes out of position by as much as a few inches.  I know- because it has happened in training. I kept moving in the steady pace I'd set two floors below, progressing inch by inch, the fingers on my left hand sweeping carefully, caressing the stair treads and risers as carefully as if they were virgin pussy.  These fundamentalist assholes were SUCs- smart, unpredictable, and cunning.  And they fucking owned this part of town- even government troops stayed away from this particular neigborhood unless they were deployed by the hundreds.

My fingers discovered something- a single strand of monofilament ran six inches above the stair tread, attached to the wall on one side and threaded through the filigree iron railing on the other.  I drew the line in carefully.  It was attached to a series of small, empty tin cans.  What I had discovered was the same sort of simple, effective intrusion device I'd first seen in Vietnam.  Some big-footed American trips the wire, and the cans go clank-clack, and Mr.Charlie shoots you dead before you know what's happened. The hair on my neck stood up.  If there was one, there'll be another.  These things always ran in pairs- or even triples.  I stopped and let my fingers do the walking. Bingo- monofilament number two was three steps above number one.  And wire number three ran at chest level, two feet above that.

Each had to be disposed of.  First, I made sure Nasty and Howie knew what, when, where, and how.  Then I flipped the Emerson out of my waistband, and as Nasty took the two cans into his big hands one by one, I clipped the line.  Then set them all on the landing below us.  We repeated the sequence for the next two without incident.
Two apartments were on the third floor.  From our surveillance, I knew Azziz lived with his mother and younger brother behind door number one- the one on the left that looked out on the back alley.  Across the hallway were the bodyguards.  Two at a time they accompanied Azziz whenever he left the house. We had two options: the first was to break in and do our job without alerting the watchdogs.  The second involved breaking into both apartments simultaneously, allowing Howie to wax the bodyguards while Nasty, Tommy, Duck Foot, and I silenced mom and baby bro, grabbed Azziz, and skipped.  I preferred option one. Inshallah, It was not to be.

The ever present Mr. Murphy of Murphy's Law fame had accompanied us on this little adventure.  As I came up to the third landing, the right-hand door opened, spilling light down the stairwell.  A shaggy-haired kid in sweats peered out his face quizzical. I froze, hoping he wouldn't see me. The expression in his eyed said otherwise.  Nasty didn't need to be coaxed- a quiet brrp from his HK and a three round burst took the kid down before he could react.  You could hear the hollowpoint, frangible rounds impact, cracking bone and cartilage in the tango's chest.

I bolted the last two yard and caught him before he hit the ground, took him by the shoulders, and dragged the body out onto the landing.  Howie moved into the bodyguard’s flat, his HK in close-quarters-battle ready mode, his round brown face impassive.  He knew what we had to do. Nasty and I took the left-hand door.  I hit it hard enough with my foot to pop it of the hinges. Inside I went left.  Nasty went right.  There was motion at the window in front of me Duck Foot and Tommy T coming through the shutters, right on the busted-door cue.  From somewhere a woman screamed- the cry was cut off.  Now it was moving so fast that things happened in fast-time sequence.  I hit the left-side bedroom door.  Azziz rolled over, grabbing for something under the mattress.  "Fuck you-" I wrestled his hand from under the mattress, breaking a finger or two in the process, and slid the pistol he'd been trying for out of reach.  Then I swatted him back against the wall, covered him with my body, and applied a liberal helping of leather sap behind his ear.  He went spongy.

I grabbed the roll of surgical tape in my pocket; we trussed Azziz's hands and feet quicker than any cowpokes ever hog-tied a dogie, then flipped him onto the floor facedown. We did a quick sweep of the room.  I turned the mattress.  There was a pistol there.  And a heavy, thick brown envelop.  I grabbed it and looked inside- it was stuffed with English fifty-pound notes and a few documents.  It went into my big inside pocket.  Then I plucked the tango from the floor and threw him over my shoulder.  It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.  "Go-go-go."

Tommy bolted towards the landing.  I followed him, my left hand fumbling for the transmitter in my pocket.  I finally got it, squeezed it hard, and- smaaaak- caught the edge of the bedroom door right in the piddle of my forehead at full speed.  I bounced backwards, Azziz'z weight pulling me off my feet.  His head hit the floor with a thunk as I sat down hard, stunned.  Bad juju, Dickie.

"Skipper, Skipper?" Tommy wheeled, grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. "What?  What?" I shook my head.  It didn't help I saw nothing but stars.  Then I came to my senses.  We were behind fucking schedule.  "Go- move!  I'm okay, I'm okay!"  My lip was split, my nose was bleeding.  But what the fuck- no pain, no... pain. I ran back through the living room.  I saw two doors leading to the hallway- double vision is one sign of a concussion.  Fuck me- I picked the one on the right and managed to stagger through without hitting myself again. Howie was already on the landing an urgent expression on his pockmarked, copper-colored face.  "We're clear." he said, his head inclined towards the other flat.  "Were behind sked, Skipper."

I already knew whose fault it was- mine.  I motioned for him to get his ass in gear.  "Go-go-go-" Howie charged down the stairs to run interference.  I followed him unsteadily, keeping as close as I could with Azziz's inert form bouncing on my shoulder like the proverbial sack of shit.  I misteped the ground- floor landing and turned my ankle but I kept moving.  I love pain-it makes me realize I'm still alive. I came out the front door and discovered empty street.  More bad juju.  Doom on me.  Where the hell was Wonder?  I looked up and down.  Nada.  Nothing.  You can never find a fucking taxi when you need one.  I hit the call button again, praying as I did so.

There is a technical phrase for our condition: it is known as goatfucked.  Think of it as a painting, entitled Five Assholed and a Tango Waiting fot Shit to Happen.  Fuck that.  Inaction breeds failure.  "Move out." There was a single streetlight about 150 feet to my left, casting nasty shadows.  Five hundred feet behind that the narrow unpaved street came to a dead end.  Somewhere close by, a pack of dogs howled.  I started jogging to my right.  Hobbling towards an intersection I knew wonder would have to pass.  I heard the growl of Duck Foot's and Tommy T's motorbikes.  They roared passed me, spitting dirt as they took point.  The rest of the team fanned out in a rough diamond pattern around me.  At least we'd die together.