Shielding his face from the flash, the standing Outlaw watched the warehouse disintegrate, then squatted beside the biker. But the biker was dead, drained of blood.
The Outlaw put the expended launcher tube on the biker's chest, folding his hands around it.
Then the Outlaw slipped away into the swirling smoke. Motorcycles roared to life, moved on out.
16
Wind tangled his hair with his beard. Horse surveyed the devastation and death. The warehouse still burned. Smoke poured from the shell of buckled, scorched sheet steel. Gutted hulks of cars smoldered in the parking lot, wisps of acrid matter drifting from blackened interiors.
At the entrance to the parking lot, Horse looked down at Charlie's annihilated squad. The four Outlaws were sprawled amongst the wreckage of their motorcycles. Their ripped bodies had stiffened in the postures of death: hands knotted over spilled viscera, faces contorted in agony as if they still screamed. A pool of oil, gasoline and coagulated blood added background color to the group.
Twenty feet to one side, a dead man embraced the tube of the expended LAAW rocket.
"Last thing he did," Stonewall said.
Without commenting, Horse strolled on. He looked down at the scabs, bones, greasy meat that had once been an Outlaw. He observed closely the eight-inch barrel of the revolver lying in ash.
"That was Banzai," he said. "I gotta talk to Turk."
Stonewall called to a group of bikers standing near the burning warehouse. "Turk! Horse here wants to talk to you."
The balding giant plodded over to his commander. Turk carried a riot shotgun slung over his back. Only two 12-gauge cartridges remained in the bandolier that crossed his chest.
"Where were you?" Horse asked him.
"I was over there." Turk pointed to a seawall on the far side of the airline terminal. "Hanging my ass over the water, covering the big door and the side facing the water."
"Did any of them get away?"
"Nothing got out. Banzai had us surround the place. Guys on the other side, guys on these sides, me covering that end. We kept shooting until the rocket hit it. And bang, it went up."
"They're not even shit now," Stonewall said, looking at the warehouse.
"Just smoke," said Turk.
"It ain't funny!" Horse's eyes were fit to kill. "We lost twelve brothers. You understand? Those locals took twelve of us with them."
Turk backed away as Horse brought up his MAC-10. "Horse, easy man. I was here. It was bad, man, it was bad! But we won. We offed them. Take it easy."
Turning his back on Turk, Horse walked to the warehouse. He shielded his face against the heat and moved closer to the red hot wall of the warehouse. He snatched up a cartridge casing and an odd bit of metal from the concrete.
"What's that?" Stonewall called to him.
"A .308 casing and a belt link for an M-60."
"No wonder they ripped our dudes up. They had a goddamned machine gun. Where the fuck did they..."
"From Chief. He had one of the M-60's. These were the locals who got the Chief. And all of Chief's men. And the Monk. And the twelve men here. Heroes. Thinking they're going to save the day, screw up our plan, protect the wife and punk kids..."
Horse angrily threw the cartridge casing and belt link into the flames. He spoke to the rising column of smoke. "This is it, heroes. You killed my men, I killed you. But that payback ain't enough. Now I'll kill your people! All of your people!"
He laughed eerily, his gaunt addict's face cavernous like the skull in flames on his jacket's insignia.
* * *
"I wonder who they were?" Roger Davis said, rewrapping his shot-through forearm. He drew the strip of hotel sheet tight and tucked in the end. He tried to make a fist, but winced from the pain.
"Whoever they were," Chris told him, "they took out a lot of creeps."
From the roof of the hotel, the youths could see only the smoke from the burning terminal. But they had monitored the pursuit and battle on the captured walkie-talkie.
"If everyone had fought like them," Roger said as he looked into the distance, "the Outlaws wouldn't have lasted ten minutes. But everyone just did what they were told..."
"The Outlaws tricked everyone, people didn't know. Only people who didn't follow instructions got away. Like us. Like Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. Like those three guys."
"Wonder who they were... " He turned to Chris. "What'll you do if they spot us? If they try to take us?"
"I saw what they did to those old people. That's what they'll try and do with us. But in these jackets..." he pointed to the bloodstains on the denim "...with rifles and pistols and all the stuff that we took from their guys, oh man, we don't have any choices. We fight. That's all there is."
"Here they come!" Roger hissed. The roar of motorcycles announced the return of the Outlaws from the Pebbly Beach seaplane terminal.
Drawing their heads down as the Outlaws passed, both boys tightened their grip on their weapons: Chris holding the M-14, Roger a revolver in his left hand. They had counted only five bikers.
They looked up again, saw the bikers continue to the Casino. Chris grinned. "Not as many as there used to be."
* * *
Shirley pressed through the Ballroom's crowd. A child pulled at her sweatsuit. She leaned down, listened to the little girl, then took the girl's hand. She walked with her to the edge of the huge circle of residents in the center of the dance floor.
"Joe, Andy," she called out. Two wide-shouldered men turned. "This little girl — what's your name, honey?"
"Georgia, like the state."
"Well, gentlemen. Please escort Miss Georgia to the little girl's room. She's afraid to go with just her mother."
The shorter, stronger man glanced to the Outlaw guarding the exit door near the women's restroom. "I know the story. We'll take her over." Then he leaned close to Shirley: "Notice there's only one of them at each door now? What's happened outside?"
"I don't know. Something."
Joe smiled slightly, then he and the second man walked with the young girl across the expanse of dance floor.
Shirley continued on to Max Stevens. A teenage boy was speaking with Max.
"Why would they need gasoline? You think they're going to make a break for it in a boat? Maybe a plane?"
"Who knows? But thank you for reporting, try to hear something whenever you think it's safe. Shirley, just a minute. Mr. Andrews over here has been waiting to tell me — yes, Mr. Andrews?"
The elderly man in red silk smoking robe and leather slippers told his story:
"... I kept my legs up. He came into the restroom and walked along the toilet stalls checking to see which ones were empty. I had my legs up, and he went into the stall next to me. What he said, I listened to every word: 'Horse, this is your friend. Have you eliminated... good. The loss of your men is unfortunate. Horse, understand this, it is the threat of action against the hostages that keeps the authorities at a distance. You do not need an army to defend the island. The threat is your defense. After we board the submarine, the survival of these petty bourgeoisie' — that is what he said — 'the survival of these petty bourgeoisie is immaterial. We will have the gold, we will have our escape, do as you will... ' Then he said he'd talk with him again soon and he left. I waited until my legs couldn't goddamn take it any more, then I came out. He never saw me."
"Good. Good," Max told the elderly man. "Thank you."
An Outlaw had entered the Ballroom while the old man was speaking. The Outlaw went to one of the emergency fire hoses, opened the glass-doored compartment, and twisted the valve inside. A mere trickle of water dripped from the brass nozzle of the hose. Then he twisted the valve closed.
The Outlaw glanced at the sixteen hundred prisoners crowding the center of the Ballroom. A hideous smirk distorted his face. Then he left.
Fear struck Max like a wave.
* * *
The sun fell behind the mountains to the west of Avalon. Autumn chill was arriving with the dus
k shadows, and Chris and Roger Davis pulled their Outlaws jackets tight around them. A motorcycle passed on Crescent. Roger snuck a glance over the edge of the hotel's roof to the street below. The biker carried a five-gallon red and yellow can.
"More gasoline," Roger said.
"We got to tell Mr. Shepard. Maybe he can think of some way to warn... Keep listening, maybe..."
Chris took the stairs down to the third floor, and he went into one of the rooms. The bed squeaked in the room.
"Mr. Shepard, it's Chris."
Glen Shepard got to his feet wearing only his pants. But he held his sawed-off riot shotgun. Chris saw huge bruises on his ribs and chest.
"Roger and I, we've been listening to the walkie-talkie and watching the street." Chris motioned Glen to follow him. Glen picked up his Outlaws jacket and put it on as they went to the roof.
"We can't believe what we think is happening. They had a roll call on the radio, and hardly anybody answered. This Horse guy keeps calling names, and the bikers say, 'Haven't seen him in hours', 'Don't know where he went,' stuff like that. Then Horse starts screaming about 'payback for the brothers, burn these locals.' He sent his men out for gasoline. That's all they've been doing for hours."
"Gasoline?" Glen asked. "How much gas does a motorcycle use?"
"It's not for the motorcycles."
Roger had the walkie-talkie pressed to his ear. "Listen..."
"Got it drained?" the radio said. "Still coming out. Down to drops now..."
"Put the cap back on. We can't wait all..."
"Mustn't have any water in the line."
"Cap it off! Upstairs, you guys there? Upstairs!"
"Stand-pipe's empty."
"Okay then. A little water in the pipes wouldn't matter, when that gas comes out of the fire hose and the fire sprinklers, a little water won't slow it down a bit. This is going to be one hot ballroom, hot time on the old town tonight..." Laughter.
Roger started to his feet. "Now we know."
"They took a car to the gas station, just kept going back and forth with cans," Chris told Glen Shepard. "They must have hundreds of gallons of it. Hundreds."
Glen nodded. "They said 'fire hose and the fire sprinklers.' They'll need a few gallons, that's for sure."
Chris spoke with panic in his voice. "They've turned the building into a bomb. My mom and dad are in there, Roger's mom, everybody in our family, everybody we know in town, all those people..."
"What can we do, Mr. Shepard?" Roger asked him.
Looking up at the darkening sky, Glen watched the gulls gliding on the wind. High above the dusk-shadowed town, the gulls still flew in sunlight, their wings white against the violet sky. He swept his eyes over the mountains, drinking in the thousand shades of green, brown, blue, the points of yellow wild flowers, the red flowers of hillside homes. What a beautiful island, he thought. He had moved to Catalina because it was a small town set in a desert paradise isolated by the ocean. He had wanted to walk with his children on the island's beaches and mountains, through its desert wilderness and gardens of tropical flowers. Now his child would walk without a father.
"How old are you two?" he asked the Davis cousins.
"Eighteen," Chris answered.
"Sixteen, seventeen next month," Roger told him.
"So you're drafted. I want you to write your parents letters, tell them what happened today, tell them that you loved and respected them, and that there was no one else to help. You had to."
"What're we going to do?" Roger asked.
Across the bay, the Casino's automatic lights came on. The light bathed the white building in brilliance. Chris and Roger saw Glen Shepard staring, turned to see what he watched. Chris spoke first: "We're going over there?"
"We have to. There's nobody else. I'll be back in a few minutes." Then Glen left to say goodbye to his wife.
17
"Voice-graph analysis confirms voice of gang collaborator as that of John Severine, atomic theoretician and suspected Soviet agent. Capture of Severine considered highest priority..."
"But what about the people?" Lyons demanded of the recorded voice. "Didn't you Federals get the message?"
"Sssh!" Gadgets silenced him.
"...Concerning the peril of hostages, consensus here is that coordinated assault must be reserved for last resort. That is, if your team fails. Group here has confidence in your team. Group does not believe helicopters supposedly carrying gold to island but actually bringing airborne assault units would succeed. Solution to peril is infiltration, not external assault. Will stand by for communication."
Only their whispers and the tiny red point of the scanner/auto-recorder's power light revealed Able Team's presence in the lush hillside garden. After slipping from the warehouse under cover of the smoke and confusion, the three men — the older one, mature and mellow in his strength, the blond one, all action and intensity, but graceful, and the youngest, the tousled-haired thinking man, funny and resourceful and also very strong — had commandeered three motorcycles and retreated to the hills above the town as dusk fell. They hid behind a palatial home on the slope of Mount Ada. The terraced garden viewed Avalon, the bay, and the Casino.
They had monitored both the gang's communications and the private conversations of Horse with Severine, and they knew the full horror of the gang leader's intentions.
Though they had defeated the Outlaws at the seaplane terminal, Able Team felt no pride. They realized that Horse would take his revenge on the innocent townspeople and tourists of Avalon.
Lyons addressed his colleagues. "If I have to watch sixteen hundred innocent people die in flames, I tell you, I'm jumping off this hill. I'd rather die than see that gas bomb down there go up."
"Yeah," Gadgets nodded. "That's it. Jump off the hill."
"Hey, man," Lyons snapped back, "I know it's melodramatic, but that's how I feel. This gasoline trick, turning a whole building into a bomb, all those people..."
"Carl, I'm not being sarcastic," Gadgets said quickly. "There's a hang-glider shop in Avalon. I saw it when we were cruising..."
"Wizard! You are a wizard!" Lyons jumped to his feet, then gasped from the pain in his ribs. Clutching at the agony in his chest, he started down to the motorcycles. He looked back to them. "Come on, we got a flight to catch!"
* * *
Descending the hotel stairs silently, the Davis cousins heard Mrs. Shepard's voice. They glanced to each other. Chris reached for the fire door's handle, but Roger stopped him. "Let them be alone."
Glen Shepard soon pushed open the fire door, and was startled when he saw the boys there. His shotgun jerked up instinctively. He relaxed when he recognized them. "Ready to go?"
They nodded. "We got everything we need," Chris said as they descended the stairs.
They approached the fire door to the lobby. The hotel's timer-controlled lights were on. Glen gave instructions. "Act like rough-tough Outlaws, walk straight through."
They carried their weapons casually and crossed the bright lobby. Beyond the windows, the streetlights lit Crescent to daylight brilliance. They stepped through the service door and continued to the alley behind the hotel.
In the alley's darkness, Glen spoke to the youths once more: "All you two need to do is drive. Wait for my signal, then drive. We'll need a big truck and a fast car."
"How will you get into the Casino?"
"I'll go up Chimes Tower Road, then cut across the hills. When I'm ready to start down the hill, I'll signal you. You wait fifteen minutes, then drive for the Casino. Fire a few shots out the window to get their attention. They'll shoot at you.
"Two hundred yards from the Casino, wreck the truck so it blocks the road. Hit it with a molotov cocktail, run back to the car and split.
"Go up Marilla to Vieudelou, as if you're taking the road out of town. But turn onto La Mesa and park. Just like one of the neighborhood cars. They won't catch you, and I'll be in the Casino."
"You're just going to walk in?" Chris asked.
"What if..."
"What if nothing. It's the only way I can think of that any of us has any chance to do something and still live. Once I'm in, I'll do what I can."
Glen went to the alley mouth and looked up and down the side street. He whispered to the cousins. "Let's get in gear. We got to steal the truck and the car for you both. And a flashlight for me, a big one."
"Mr. Shepard, wait." Chris pulled Glen into a shadowy doorway. The teenager's eyes scanned the street for Outlaws. "Are you sure you don't want to wait for the police? Because... because you're going to die. I know you are."
Twisting away, Glen walked into the street. He glanced at the shop signs, started toward a hardware store. The cousins ran to catch up with him. Passing a mailbox, he pointed. The teenagers dropped in letters, then followed Glen Shepard through the dark, deserted street.
"Outlaws!" Gadgets hissed.
* * *
Stepping through the door of the ManBird Hang-Glider shop, lock-pick still in his hand, Lyons froze. Gadgets eased up his Uzi. Blancanales pushed the Uzi down, slipped out the silent Beretta.
Across the street, three Outlaws — two of them carrying shotguns, the third an M-14 rifle — crept up to a one-ton delivery truck. One Outlaw scanned the street, sawed-off riot shotgun in his hands, then tried the truck's door. Locked.
Glass shattered. On the curb side, an Outlaw opened the door, then slid across to the driver's seat. The truck's hood popped open.
Slow and silent as a shadow, Blancanales stepped back into the hang-glider shop's doorway. Taking a marksman stance, he held the Beretta in both hands and sighted on the third Outlaw. Blancanales flicked the burst selector down to single-shot.
The biker stepped behind the truck, spoke with the Outlaw sitting in the cab. The Outlaw carrying the riot shotgun slung the weapon over his shoulder and reached under the hood of the truck. The Outlaw in the driver's seat got out, closed the truck door softly, glanced toward the beach.
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