Free Cody's Army by Jim Case

excited laugh interrupted her reverie.
    “There they are! Christus may be late but by Allah he has not let us down.”
    Tahia watched a commercial van glide from the opposite oncoming lane of traffic and ease to a stop, its rear end several feet
     behind the back of their van.
    “Everyone out,” ordered Ali. “Farouk has already taken care of the payment. We pick up what Christus has for us and get away
     as quickly as possible. Act naturally, but keep your eyes open.” He added as they began debarking from the van, “There is
     always the chance of trouble.”
    Rallis unholstered his pistol from its shoulder holster when he saw the van up ahead, the one that read Christus Imports on
     the side, pulling up back-to-back with a van parked at the curb amid the flow of crawling motor traffic and tourists.
    “This is it,” he hissed.
    The two detectives in the backseat unholstered their pistols.
    “Gutsy bastards,” one of them said. “We can’t very well turn the Acropolis hill into a shooting gallery.”
    “We can’t let them get away, either,” the other man in back pointed out with no enthusiasm.
    “What should we do, Inspector?” Giorgios asked from behind the steering wheel.
    A half block ahead, Christus and Apodaka were debarking from their van, while three young Arab men and an Arab woman stepped
     from the van that had been parked, waiting.
    “We can’t very well let them escape, either. Pull in, fast. Get ready, men. This won’t be easy. I’ll radio in backup. If we
     can just get the drop on them close up by surprise, we may be able to keep the lid on.”
    He did not think he sounded very convincing.
    Giorgios floored the car’s accelerator when a break in the crowd parted and sent the police vehicle zipping forward to close
     the distance on the two vans.
    Rallis reached for the dashboard transceiver to broadcast to the backup units to close in, a rage coursing through him that
     had nothing to do with his job of closing in on criminals.
    He hated these terrorist vermin for desecrating this sacred place that stood as a monument to the glory and genius of men;
     a shrine to lovers of beauty for more than 2,500 years: the Parthenon, the finest building of the ancient world; the Theater
     of Dionysus, dating to the fourth century B.C., where were first presented the plays of Sophocles and Euripides; the Temple
     of Athena Nike. All of it desecrated by animals who dealt in the slaughter of innocent civilians.
    Rallis and the three men in the car rocked backward under the forward momentum as the unmarked vehicle barreled forward.
    “Police!”
snarled Apodaka, and he pawed for his shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
    Tahia and Ali had reached into the back of Anton Christus’s van as Christus held one of the doors back for them. Tahia and
     Ali’s eyes had connected once across the box as they reached to take opposite ends of it in order to slide out the weapons
     and ammunition, but she had not been able to read what she saw in the brief look that passed between her and this man she
     loved so much.
    Then everything fell apart as Christus’s driver cried the alarm.
    She and Ali spun away from the truck, the box of weapons and ammo temporarily forgotten, reaching for their weapons.
    Christus, and Hallah and Najib, who had been holding open the back door of the other van, did the same.
    A sedan screeched to a stop, its tires shrieking on the pavement, nosed in toward the scene of these “laborers” transferring
     one box of “tools” from one of their trucks to another, the four doors of the sedan flapping open even before the car had
     braked to a full halt, four men from inside spilling out with pistols in their hands.
    The one who had to be in charge, an older man who hopped out from the front passenger seat, started to shout, “Stop where
     you are, all of you! You’re under—”
    Apodaka pulled off the first shot.
    The policemen scattered for cover behind the open doors of their