"This ain't a bad time at all," he laughed. After breakfast, when there was no further sight and sound of bikers, he looted all the other houses on the street.
* * *
Glen Shepard couldn't find the boy. He searched all the rooms of the house, the garage, then the backyard. He didn't risk the street or the other houses on the block. He couldn't believe Jack would have been so stupid as to go into the street. Finally, Glen returned to the others.
"Anything on the walkie-talkie?" he asked, clambering into the attic.
"Glen," Ann seethed, "you talk about responsibility? What about me? What about these kids? One minute you're ready to kill that jerk, the next you're out trying to save him. Why don't you worry about your own child? You're so dumb — you think just because you're right, just because you're the true believer... " Her anger became sobbing.
"Okay, okay," he whispered, "you're right. Forget that punk. If they haven't got him yet, he can take care of himself. Because I tell you, just walking down there scares the shit out of me!"
He tried to make his voice sound patient, if not serene. "Roger, how's your arm?"
"It hurts."
"A month from now you'll have a scar to show your girl friends. Chris, what did you see?"
"Bikers. What's going on down below?"
"I think the radio will tell us more than anything we can see. What did you hear?"
"Something happened on the other side of the island. They said they caught a commando. They sent a bunch of bikers to bring him back to town, but they disappeared."
"The commandos?"
"No, the bikers!"
"All right! Help is on its way. This'll all be over soon. Oh, God. I want it over right now. Will you two keep watch for a while, listen to the walkie-talkie?"
"You're not going anywhere!" Ann told him. "You promised."
"Going to sleep! Only to sleep." He lay down beside his very pregnant wife and held her, one arm across her belly. "And you too, mother-to-be. Last night wasn't too restful for us. For the three of us."
* * *
Sunbathing on the flat roof of a two-story house, Jack smoked dope, drank vodka. He was rich. He had found jewelry, gold coins, rolls of ten-dollar bills, platinum wristwatches. After the island returned to normal, Jack would shuttle back and forth to the mainland, selling a few things at a time. Theft was not new to him. That was how he paid for his Hawaiian grass and his new surfboards. When he stole from tourists and burglarized homes, he disposed of the articles through connections in Los Angeles. He hoped his connection could raise the thousands of dollars the loot was worth.
Motorcycles passed. The Outlaws! Wow, if he were an Outlaw, he'd have it made. They got the best stuff. He got what was left. If he were an Outlaw, he'd play it smart. Take the island, get his share, then before the SWAT teams and Marines showed up, he'd steal a boat and sail away with the loot.
The sun warming his face, Jack worked it out. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry. Gold and diamonds. Sailing the Pacific, selling the booty when he needed money. Living like a pirate. Wow, what a life.
Another long hit of Hawaiian brought the dream to life in color. Girls' brown bodies stretched out on the deck of the pirate's yacht. Riding the winds and waves forever.
Asshole Outlaws. What would they do with their money? Buy motorcycles. Live in Beverley Hills and strip their Harleys on the carpet.
What if he could take it away from them? What if he could shoot an Outlaw, take the dead biker's loot? What if he could shoot Outlaw after Outlaw? Then he could buy the yacht. And he could leave the island a hero, the kid who wiped out the Outlaws. He'd stash the loot, then claim the glory. Sail away.
He sucked down a last hit and gulped some vodka. He staggered with the M-14 to the edge of the roof. The frame of the boxy house continued eighteen inches above the asphalt of the roof, like a very low railing. He saw a drain hole through the wall. Laying down on the asphalt, he peered through the four inch by four inch hole. It viewed the far end of the block. If he shot through the hole, he could kill any biker at the other end of the block, and they couldn't even see him! The shots would come from nowhere. When he killed two or three, he'd sneak down there, take whatever cash and jewelry they had, then come up here and repeat it. He would have his yacht!
Still on his belly, he tried to put the barrel of the M-14 through the hole. The front sight caught on the stucco. Jack twisted the rifle to force it through the hole. His fingers touched the trigger.
A burst ripped the quiet neighborhood, the rifle jumping in his hand, slamming back against his bicep. He tried to jerk his hand away, another wild burst sent slugs punching into houses and parked cars.
Motorcycles raced down the block. They jumped the curb. Boots kicked down the front door.
* * *
Chris woke Glen. "Mr. Shepard, there was some shooting. And then the Outlaws talked on the radios. They said, 'Some young kid with Acidhead's M-14.' Then that Stonewall said, 'We got a hero, alive.' Then Horse says, 'Bring him in. We'll make an example of him.' I think it was Jack they got."
"Me too," Glen agreed. "What do you think they'll do to him?" Glen slipped on the belt of shotgun cartridges. "That's not what I'm worrying about."
* * *
Horse put his .45 to Jack's blond hair. "I didn't — I didn't shoot at your guys," Jack pleaded. "I dropped it and it went off. I was up there hiding out and I dropped it."
Keeping the muzzle of the automatic against the boy's head, Horse glanced to Stonewall. The barrel-chested biker stood behind the teenager, holding the knapsack full of money and jewelry they'd found on the roof with Jack. Stonewall shrugged.
"Then how come you had the rifle?" Horse continued, "if you weren't going to shoot my men."
"I took it from a house. I wanted it."
"What house?" Jack told them.
* * *
Stonewall searched the attic himself. He found the blankets, the soda pop cans, the bloodstains where one of the people hiding up there had been wounded. He reported to Horse: "They're gone. We must have just missed them. These blankets are still warm. Man, just by two or three minutes."
"Search the neighborhood again," Horse ordered.
"They couldn't have gotten off the block." Stonewall turned and shouted to his men. "Burn it! Burn it all!"
"Okay, kid," Horse said to Jack. "You helped us. We missed them by just a couple of minutes. Now..."
"I told you. I didn't..."
"Punk! You want to live?"
Jack nodded.
"Now, punk, what I want you to do is help us some more. I'm going to take you to the Casino and put you in there with the rest of your people. We've been seeing some funny stuff going on in there. And I want you to tell me all about it. You're my Private Eye."
"What if..."
"What if what?"
"Nothing's going on."
"I told you, something's going on." Horse pulled out his knife. "Charlie, this kid don't learn. He's useless. Pull down his pants and hold him. I'm going to fix him."
Thrashing in Charlie's grip, Jack screamed and pleaded. Horse held the eight-inch blade of the Bowie near the boy's naked crotch. "Now, I told you something's going on. You're going to find out what it is. We'll give you an hour. You don't have something to tell us, we'll stand you up on the ballroom bandstand and cut that little thing off of you. Do you understand now?"
Jack nodded, pulled up his pants.
* * *
With tears streaming down their faces, Jack's mother and father hugged him. It was the first time in his life he could remember emotion from them. "We thought you were dead."
"So did I. They're killing people out there."
The residents crowding around Jack questioned him:
"Did you see the Davis boys?"
"Did you see any police?"
Max Stevens pushed in front of the others. "We want you to tell us everything you saw and heard. It's very important to us."
"Why?" Jack
asked. "What's going on?"
11
Descending Mount Black Jack on captured Harleys, Able Team returned to the dry streambed where they had concealed their equipment and other motorcycles. Lyons transferred his backpack and rifle case from the bike he'd seized after the campground ambush.
"I'm beginning to like this machine I've been riding," he told his partners. "It's a Harley classic. And the chrome and black lacquer sure go with my jacket, hey?"
"Topping off the tanks over here," Blancanales called out. "Don't dump any of the bikes without letting me siphon out..."
"Hey! They're at the airport," Gadgets yelled. He ran over to Blancanales and Lyons with a captured walkie-talkie. "Listen..."
The voices squawked back and forth. "... Eagle and the other two dudes are gone."
"What? They dead? What's..."
"Just gone. We searched the airport. There's no blood, nothing. Oh, yeah. One of the doors is broke. But there's nothing..."
"Get over to the radio station. Ironman went up there with three men to change the guard and all kinds of shit broke loose. One of them said you were coming up the hill. Then it went quiet, nothing on the radio. Get over there fast!"
"Horse, it's the locals. They're running circles around us. They know the territory. They're making like the Viet Cong..."
"Dig this, Chief. You were the Marine. Get me a body count. Out!"
Opening his map of the island, Blancanales pointed to their position, then traced the route the bikers would take from the airport to the peak of Mount Black Jack. "They'll take the main road to the radio station turnoff, then go up the hill. They're four miles away from that turnoff, we're only a mile. I say we hit them there."
"What if it isn't right for an ambush?" Lyons asked.
"We let them go up the hill, then we find a better place, hit them on the way down."
"Let's move it!"
Moto-crossing, they left the canyon behind and found a wide hiking trail. Speeding until they dared go no faster, Able Team tore up the trail with their heavy semi-chopped Harleys, scraping fancy stone steps with their crankcases, rutting beds of rare California wild flowers.
They made it. Steep hillsides rose above the junction of the paved highway and the station's dirt road. The station's road cut along the south slope of canyon running east and west. Fifty feet up from the highway, a steel gate blocked the dirt road. Now it stood open, its lock shot away. Below the road, the hillside dropped ten feet to a streambed, the stream-bed ending at a grated culvert passing under the highway. For hundreds of yards north and south, the highway ran straight.
"Okay, Pol," Lyons said. "You're the Green Beret, retired. Call it."
Blancanales pointed to the ridge on which they stood. "You with the Mannlicher right here. You can hit anyone on the radio station's road, and if any of them make a break for town, hit them in the back."
He turned to Gadgets. "A quick booby trap on the gate..."
"A phosphorous grenade..."
"The gate's closed, they stop to open it, boom. The shooting starts. Lyons, let me take your Ingram. Let's go."
In two minutes they had set the ambush, Lyons on the ridge, Blancanales lower on the hillside, only a hundred feet from the road opposite him. Gadgets closed the gate. He pulled the pin from a white phosphorous grenade and placed it carefully on one of the gate's hinges, using the gate to hold the lever closed.
Lyons heard motorcycles. He whistled a warning. Gadgets sprinted through the brush and threw himself flat a few yards from Blancanales.
Chief had reached the gate already, and he waited for the stragglers to join him, his bike drawn up parallel to the gate. He carried an M-60 machine gun slung over his back like a rifle. In his Italian wraparound shades and Mohawk haircut, the road's dust swirling around him, he looked like a demon from hell.
Lyons watched him through the Mannlicher's scope, the biker's face and chest filling the image. Chief turned from side to side, counting his men.
Panning back and forth across the bikers, Lyons suddenly noted a hideous ornament on the forks of Chief's bike. The head of a man, the eyes wide and staring, had been wired to the handlebars.
"Ready to die, freak show?" Lyons whispered, his finger on the Mannlicher's trigger.
Chief kicked the gate open, then gunned his bike. Gadgets saw the grenade drop. But Chief accelerated away. In the six seconds before the grenade exploded, Chief would ride to safety. Gadgets sighted his Uzi on Chief. He fired. The biker spilled splashily.
All the bikers, the two pulling off the highway, the several near the gate, the others gunning their motorcycles up the road, turned their heads fast toward the Uzi-fire. The distraction served only to make them less ready for what followed. An exploding ball of white flame engulfed the road.
Five human forms were directly hit. Hundreds of droplets of white phosphorous splattered their bodies, each drop a searing point of flame that burned through cloth and leather and flesh. Not requiring oxygen to burn, the metallic fire would continue through their flesh to the bone and burn there until the metal consumed itself. But they died before that agony. Their motorcycles' gasoline was exploding. Screaming, the bikers inhaled gulps of fire into their lungs, died in seconds.
Dust and flame and smoke filled the scope's image, but Lyons still squeezed off a shot at the downed Chief. Then he opened his left eye, searching the road for targets, his right eye still at the eyepiece.
Automatic fire from Gadgets and Blancanales poured into the two bikers immediately behind the fallen Chief. The hillside beyond the bikers puffed into a sheet of dust as slugs punched through the two men. Other bullets tore through the sheet metal of the gas tanks.
Seeing the annihilation of the patrol, the last two Outlaws spun their motorcycles, throwing dust and rocks as their rear wheels skittered on the dirt road. Lyons put the Mannlicher's cross hairs in the center of the "Outlaws Forever" insignia on a biker's jacket. His shot snapped the man's spine.
Whipping back the bolt, Carl Lyons put the next slug into the second biker's head.
On the road, a biker lay under his motorcycle. Through the scope, Lyons saw blood streaming from wounds in Chief's head and chest. One arm flopped, broken a few inches below the shoulder. He struggled against the weight of the motorcycle with one arm. He was trying to reach for the belt-fed M-60. Lyons put the cross hairs on the man's forehead. But he didn't shoot.
He jerked back the bolt, caught the unfired Accelerator. Searching through the pouches of his bandolier, he found the .308 tracers. Lyons loaded up, then snapped the tracer through the struggling biker's gas tank. Immediately a churning ball of flame rose above Chief. His screams continued for thirty seconds.
Then there was silence.
"Lyons!" Blancanales shouted. "You see anything moving?"
Motorcycle tires burned, filling the narrow canyon mouth with acrid rubber smoke. Around the gate, a brushfire spread up the slope. By the time he had gazed over the blackened scene of bone and scorched flesh, Lyons could see nothing that was living. He searched the rock and brush of the stream-bed.
He saw the barrel of an M-60. The muzzle flashed. Lyons flew backward, his body exploding with pain.
Streams of .308 slugs suddenly shrieking over them, Gadgets and Blancanales sprayed back with 9mm Parabellum. The machinegunner fell behind his rock for an instant, then popped out a few yards away, still firing his belt-fed M-60.
Slugs marched across the hillside, chopping brush, making the earth around Blancanales jump. "Lyons!" Blancanales screamed. "Hit him, hit him!"
There was no rifle fire, no answer from the ridge.
Burst after burst searched for Blancanales. Desperate, he screamed again, but this time without words, his voice shuddering with faked agony. He screamed until his throat ached, then let his wail die to a whimper. "Arm... my arm... it's... off." After a second, he wailed again. "My arm — oh God oh God oh God..."
"Rosario!" Gadgets cried.
Another long burst searched fo
r Gadgets. He rolled clear, crawled toward Blancanales. Hissed words stopped him: "Lay cool! I'm all right, see? It's Lyons up there we got to worry about. Radio!"
Keying his hand-radio, Gadgets got no reply. "Lyons! Answer. Answer! Lyons..."
No reply.
Gadgets crawled back to Blancanales. "We got to bring this show to a close."
"Frag him? Or phosphorous?"
"We need that M-60 of his."
"Frags." Blancanales took a fragmentation grenade from the battle rig under his Outlaws jacket. He straightened the cotter pin, saying: "Wanted to save these for tonight, when we..."
"There won't be any tonight for us if we don't use them now." Gadgets braced himself to throw. "On three. Yours to the right, mine on the left. Pull. Now, one and two and three!"
The surviving biker, dizzy from blood loss, saw the arms heave the grenades. He snapped a burst at the hidden men as the grenades arced toward him. One grenade hit a rock and bounced over him. The other landed exactly three feet in front of him.
He snatched up the grenade and threw it back. He struggled to crawl a few feet, the exposed bones of his right leg scraping on rocks, the pain beyond imagination.
Then an explosion of thousands of steel razors shredded his legs and punched tiny holes in the back of his head. The rush of even greater pain lifted him into darkness. The grenade he had thrown had exploded in midair, and fragments of steel wire were showering even Gadgets and Blancanales.
The grenade sent tiny slivers into their backs. Blancanales felt blood on his hands. He looked at his hands and saw bits of wire in the flesh. Gadgets had tiny cuts also.
The wounds did not stop them. They fired into their target's twisted, mangled body, the bursts of 9mm slugs throwing him over. Gadgets put a burst into the guy's haircut, spraying it and everything else rosily over the creek bed.
"Think he's dead?" Blancanales joked.
"Might be. Let's go make sure."
Breaking cover, they zigzagged down the hillside. They crouched beside the biker's almost headless body.
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