Breaking the board, Lyons released the entire mass of debris. Gadgets grabbed Lyons's feet. Blancanales and a teenage contraclutched at the bank. Another contralost his footing and disappeared: Lyons saw him reappear, choking and sputtering, twenty meters past the fence. He immediately scrambled to the bank. Staying low, he swam back to the others, remaining hidden in the shadows.

One by one they ducked under the rushing black water. Lyons held the fence until the others had gone under, then dropped. The two lookouts went last.

Between the stream and the barracks were parked trucks and stacks of crated cargo. Grinning, Lyons passed the heavy pack of claymores to Gadgets. Then he tightly cinched the sling of his Konzak, binding the assault shotgun against his body, and slipped out his modified-for-silence Colt. Blancanales and Gadgets worked the actions of their silenced Beretta 93-R auto-pistols.

Lyons, followed by a contrawith a machete, dashed to a truck's trailer and went flat beside the wheels. Rainwater streaming from the truck's plastic-covered cargo poured over their muddy blacksuits. Lyons motioned for the contrato wait, then snaked toward the barracks. He crept across an open stretch of mud and hid behind another parked truck.

Looking across a two-lane asphalt road illuminated by mercury-arc lamps, he saw garages and workshops. Another asphalt lane separated the utility buildings from the barracks.

Where the road met the dock, a group of soldiers stood at a sandbagged machine-gun position. In the opposite direction, toward the gate of the complex, two soldiers paced the fence.

Lyons took the hand-radio from his belt, clicked down the transmit, and whispered, "We can't cross the road."

"Look for another way," Blancanales told him.

"There isn't... unless... Standby."

Staying flat in the mud, Lyons crawled alongside two heavy diesel trucks, a tractor, an ancient Chevrolet pickup and a ComBloc flatbed truck. Then he approached an old Dodge panel truck. He scanned the vehicles around him, scanned the road. He saw no one. Rising, he tried the door.