by Dick Stivers
Jishin executed a roundhouse kick, followed by a snap punch toward the face, followed by a knee lift to the groin. She had never seen aikido effectively used against a determined triple attack. The roundhouse kick received the nudge that Jishin knew it would. She was braced to counter it. She used her counterforce to launch the blow toward the face. The small aikido fighter spun away from the blow, receiving the knee lift to the rump instead of the groin. She stumbled into the wall.
Jishin laughed and kicked the small rear end, sending her opponent slamming harder into the wall. Lao hit the plaster with a loud slapping sound, but instead of bouncing back into Jishin’s waiting hands, she spun away along the wall. Lao stopped about ten feet away, obviously dizzy and confused.
Jishin closed in rapidly, noting with satisfaction the cut over the scientist’s right eye. The terrorist promised herself that before she was through, she would use that cut to peel away the entire damned face. Jishin felt great; it was a relief to find someone who could put up even a bit of a fight.
Jishin’s punch was thrown too rapidly. Another tug at her sleeve and she spun from her own momentum. Suddenly Jishin’s back was to her opponent, who quickly planted a small foot on her rump and shoved the terrorist into the wall so hard she broke plaster with her face.
Jishin bounced off the wall straight at the small scientist. The terrorist’s fist shot out but it never connected; Lao deflected it up and outward, using the force picked up from her attacker to spin and plant a small fist in Jishin’s armpit. The shot would have rendered most fighters unconscious, but it merely made Jishin stagger back and plant her feet firmly, ready to be rushed, but waiting for her head to clear.
Lao did not make the mistake of rushing an experienced fighter simply because she was groggy. The aikido fighter waited, calm, composed, just out of reach. There was no attempt to escape or call for help. For the first time Jishin wondered if she could beat the diminutive woman who stood, eyeing her curiously.
There was more gunfire, but Jishin forced herself to concentrate on the job at hand. She had a killing to perform. There was no way she would allow her troops to discover that such a small person had even slowed her down. Jishin erupted with a savage yell and a high kick at Lao’s chest.
The kick was deflected with a small hard fist to the calf. Jishin found her leg painful to stand on. Even more painful was the way the small woman stood, patiently waiting to see what would happen next.
The door to the lab was splintered off the frame, falling flat on the floor. Nogi entered, closely followed by two of the experienced terrorists.
“Shoot her,” Jishin told her followers.
*
As soon as they hit the ground, the members of Able Team cut parachute harnesses and let the breeze play with the empty chutes. They took off toward the building from which emerged screams and the sound of gunfire.
Two of the perimeter guards had moved in to investigate the parachutes. There was no mistaking the fit figures in olive drabs from the terrorists in coveralls. The two terrorists stopped and steadied their M-16s on target.
Gadgets checked over his shoulder and saw the two dropping into firing position. He shouted the one word that he knew would bring instant reaction from his companions.
“Ambush!”
Instantly, the three running warriors dived for the ground. Hastily fired .223 tumblers swarmed over their heads, humming their sound of angry destruction. Gadgets did a shoulder roll to the left, coming back to his feet in a crouch, facing the enemy. Lyons and Pol landed in opposite ditches, eyes peeled for other terrorists.
Gadgets’s Uzi, without the folding shoulder stock, easily yanked free of the clip on his left thigh. He worked the first bullet into the chamber and acquired the target. Before the would-be assassins could readjust their aims to allow for the sudden scattering of their targets, a figure eight of 9mm manglers had blown them both backward onto the road. Able Team was on its way again before terrorist boot heels stopped scraping the pavement.
The three warriors took the front door into the reception area. One look at the minced body of the receptionist told them they were already late.
“I hope we can still save some of them,” Pol rumbled.
They ran through the reception area without slowing, turning left to find themselves in a large, open office area. Four men and a woman in coveralls, held captive an office force of eleven. Lyons broke right, seeking an angle of fire. Pol and Gadgets dropped flat in the doorway. Gadgets’s Uzi spoke first, a three-round burst that took the legs out from under the terrorist closest to the captives. The stutter of the Uzi grabbed attention away from Lyons. Automatic rifles stopped zeroing in on the large blond man and swung back toward the doorway.
Politician’s M-203 spoke next. A single, carefully aimed shot entered a terrorist’s left eye and blossomed in a small fountain of gore from the crown of the head.
Terrorist bullets, fired in panic, began chopping up the doorway. That won Lyons time to flank the terrorists. He stood where they formed a row of targets, with the captives on one side and the doorway holding Pol and Gadgets on the other. The Atchisson Assault 12 shotgun spoke twice with booming authority.
The two goons closest to Lyons disintegrated from the waist up. They became a barrage of chunky red debris. The one farthest from Lyons remained recognizable as a human being, but she was just as dead.
“Dr. Lao, where is she?” Lyons barked at the terrified staff.
His commanding voice rallied several workers from their state of shock and bewilderment. Three hands pointed back past the reception area. “She’s in the end office, third hallway.”
“Thanks. Now, get out of here,” Pol commanded. He pointed to a fire exit at the end of the room.
Pol and Gadgets then followed Lyons who was already on his way toward the other side of the building.
The first corridor they encountered had a single terrorist guard at one end. She lounged against the wall at the mouth of the hall, her 16-gauge shotgun pointing down the passageway, keeping victims confined to their offices until they could be questioned. At that moment it was the wrong way for the shotgun to be pointing.
Gadgets sent three bullets through the terrorist’s brain. She died before she realized she was in trouble.
A half-gagged shout of pain came from the next hallway. Able Team rounded the corner on the run. Three terrorists were questioning a prisoner. Two had M-16s slung over their shoulders and were holding the arms of a man in a white coat. A third had the tip of a pump action, 12-gauge Marlin Glenfield pointed at the man’s face. A trickle of blood ran down the victim’s chin from where the muzzle had knocked out a tooth. The lab worker’s knees had buckled and much of his weight was being supported by the two who were holding his arms.
“Tell us again what you do here,” the holder of the shotgun was demanding.
The three terrorists were having so much fun, they did not hear the other armed force until Able Team was on them. Lyons thrust the warm barrel of the Atchisson under the questioner’s chin.
The two who were holding the victim let go and tried to swing the M-16s from their shoulders. It was a futile effort. Pol smashed his M-203 into the temple of one, killing him instantly as fragments of skull lacerated animal brain. Gadgets crushed the other’s windpipe with his fist, leaving the goon to roll on the floor, choking on his own tissue and blood.
Lyons’s shotgun was thrust under the chin so hard that the man was stretched to the tips of his toes. He tried bringing his shotgun around to bear on Lyons.
“Don’t lose your head,” Lyons told him.
The goon’s shotgun continued to swing. Lyons’s finger tightened on the trigger. He decorated the corridor with atomized head.
“Move,” Lyons instructed the saved man in the white coat. He ran for cover.
A cluster of whizzes sent Able Team diving for safety inside one of the offices.
“Reinforcements,” Lyons guessed. “You two find Lao. I’ll keep the lice of
f your asses.”
“Cover me,” Gadgets told him.
Lyons threw himself on his stomach and squirmed out the door. Before the hail of lead could drop to his level, he sent two blasts from the Atchisson back up the hall. He was rewarded with a chorus of screams from dying terrorists.
While Lyons fired Gadgets dashed across the hall and booted open the opposite office door. He glanced inside to make sure it was empty and then retreated back to the office where his teammates waited. Politician had an HE grenade with an impact detonator loaded into the launcher. As soon as Gadgets was out of the line of fire, he fired the grenade into the far wall of the opposite office.
Lyons sent two more discouraging messages up the hallway while both Gadgets and Pol crossed the corridor.
Two quick kicks enlarged the hole in the opposite wall and made it easy to climb through. Pol and Gadgets found themselves in a lab oh the third corridor.
The two warriors ran for the door.
Gadgets tossed a fragmentation grenade up the third corridor to discourage two terrorists. As soon as the blast came, he and Pol raced the other way to the last doorway in the hall. There was no door left to worry about.
Pol jumped into the room, crouched, ready for action.
By the time Gadgets was through the doorway, terrorists were pouring lead down the hallway after him. The Uzi sent half a clip back up the hall. Those terrorists who were able retreated to the shelter of the cross corridor.
*
When Jishin told the terrorists to shoot Lao, the computer expert sized up the three additional menaces that had entered her lab. The one in the lead had a seamed face that had met too many blades. He carried an ugly submachine gun, a Japanese-made SCK model 65. The other two had Army-surplus M-16s. She knew she must act quickly or be shot.
The hands wrapped around the SCK were callused from karate. That gave Lao her inspiration. She spoke quickly in Japanese before the terrorists could obey the command.
“This frail old lady needs bullets to help her. I had just kicked her ass when you interrupted.”
The plaster on Jishin’s face was incontrovertible proof of Lao’s words. Two men quickly turned to hide their grins. The cut-up one did not bother. He laughed out loud. Jishin’s eyes narrowed with humiliation and fury.
“Maybe women are too soft to become true karateka,” the scarred one muttered.
Jishin’s voice was like ice. “Perhaps our worthy karate senseiwould condescend to demonstrate to this student?”
Nogi sobered immediately. He had gone too far and his leader would not forgive this loss of face. But Nogi’s own dignity would not let him back down at that point. He handed his weapon to Jishin.
“I will try, though if she has given you difficulties, I will need the blessings of the gods to preserve my own skin,” he said.
Jishin laughed at him, confirming the knowledge that there would be no forgiveness from her. He knew she would not kill him as long as she needed him to train these stupid, long-nosed recruits, but the knowledge brought him no comfort at all.
Nogi, karate instructor and trainer of killers, advanced almost casually on his prey. He looked as if he was still getting ready to fight when his foot flashed out like a bolt of lightning. The kick was intended to make a field goal with Lao’s head.
Lao bent away from the kick and her small hands grabbed the extended ankle. Then she moved in a large circle. Her left foot described a graceful arc ending in Nogi’s exposed crotch.
Jishin decided that losing the karate instructor was a small price to pay for getting Lao out of the way. She brought up the SCK, but pride prevented her from pulling the trigger. She had to regain face by pulverizing that little woman.
In the moment that Jishin hesitated, the decision slipped through her fingers.
Two men in combat fatigues burst through the doorway. One turned back to cover their tails while the other faced the room, bringing his automatic weapon to bear on the two startled terrorists with the M-16s. Jishin felt a momentary pang of envy that someone opposing her should be able to command such fine warriors.
Jishin had the SCK in firing position. She was already targeted on the intruder.
As Jishin squeezed the trigger to cut up the interlopers with 9mm parabellums, she was jolted forward, causing the deadly blast to chew up flooring. The wooden stool, which Lao had been sitting on when Jishin broke into the lab, bounced off her back and clattered around her feet.
The two terrorists with the M-16s brought them up with well-trained precision. Well-trained precision was too slow. Blancanales already had a figure eight of .223 tumblers chewing into them and throwing them onto their backs. Dying fingers sent sporadic bursts into the ceiling.
Gadgets’s Uzi sent another batch of death chattering up the hallway, teaching caution to the terrorist reinforcement.
Throwing the stool had taken Lao’s attention off Nogi. In spite of the pain he was suffering, he got off the floor and hit her with a quick ax-hand across the upper vertebrae. It was not sufficient to kill the small woman, but it rendered her almost unconscious. Nogi held her for a shield against Politician’s firepower.
When Jishin recovered her balance, she snatched up the stool and heaved it backward through the lab’s window.
Pol noticed her maneuvers peripherally, but he was also absorbing the drama between Nogi and Lao. The problem of getting the small research scientist away from the two karatekawas not an easy one. He decided to eliminate the terrorist in the open first. As he brought the M-203 to bear on Jishin, she dropped the empty SCK and made a headfirst dive out the window. He swung the weapon back on the male.
The man was a wily fighter. Although he was larger than his semiconscious victim, he kept dodging and weaving behind her, never offering a clear target for as much as a half second. As he did so, he edged toward the broken window.
Politician let go of his weapon and made his own headfirst dive across a laboratory table. Nogi had the choice of abandoning his hostage, or finding himself in a melee with an aikido expert and a warrior of unknown abilities.
Nogi shoved his hostage into Politician’s flight path, and joined his leader in trying to earn his wings from a first-floor window.
Politician could not change the course of his headfirst dive. He could only sweep Lao to him and roll so that he landed on his back with the woman on top of him. She was small, but she was an incredibly compact bundle of human being. The impact knocked the wind out of Politician.
Lao had been surprised to see the savvy, white-haired warrior react with such total disregard for his own safety. She lay sprawled on top of Politician, collecting her wits.
Gadgets fired his Uzi.
“They’re pushing a steel bench up the hall ahead of them,” he called to Pol.
*
As Politician and Gadgets vanished along their newly created cross corridor, Lyons waited until a terrorist looked around the corner and then opened the goon’s head with a choice selection of double-ought and number-two lead balls. With the terrorists at the head of the hall taken care of, Lyons walked to the back wall of the office and put his fist through it.
It took only seconds to punch and kick an opening through the plasterboard into the adjacent office. Two karate front kicks took one of the two-by-four studs out of his way. He stepped through and opened a door to the first corridor.
The corridor served the rarified and protected areas where the company computer worked. Several technicians were being forced at gunpoint to make the computer disgorge information for the benefit of terrorists who would rather destroy than build.
Lyons’s right hand went to his hip and came back filled with Colt Python. He stood in the doorway to the computer room and let the Python sting each head whose body held a gun. Four terrorists had their tapes erased in three seconds. Only the last reacted swiftly enough to get a shot off — it went harmlessly into the ceiling.
The bewildered technicians stood motionless, staring at head-smashed terrorists.
Lyons stood looking at the ceiling, where the blast from the dying terrorist’s gun had removed an acoustic tile. There was a four-foot crawl space above the tiles. Before the computer technicians could recover their wits, the large blond man who had just exterminated their captors leaped onto a high-speed tape-drive cabinet. From there he pushed a couple of sound tiles out of the way and disappeared into the ceiling. He said nothing to them.
When Lyons reached an end wall, he carefully removed a ceiling tile and looked down. He was over the cross corridor. Twenty feet along, four terrorists were peering down the second hallway.
Lyons pulled a frag from his web belt, held it to the count of three and tossed it into the midst of the four.
“What’s…” began one man as the grenade fell past his eyes. That was as far as any of them got.
Lyons leaped from the crawl space and advanced toward the third corridor, Atchisson in debating position.
*
When Gadgets announced that the terrorists were coming up the hall behind a shield, Lao rolled off Pol and the Able Team warrior leaped to his feet.
Lao Ti had given herself up for dead the moment Jishin had broken into the laboratory. As all effective warriors must do, she considered each second of life a postponement of the inevitable. Now these two strange fighters had bought her an entirely new existence. Suddenly life seemed to sparkle as it never had before. Although for twenty-eight of her thirty-two years she had been trained in the warriors’ way, never before had her life been so close to being over. The newlife was a gloriously bright and profound thing. She savored it deeply.
Blancanales was too preoccupied with the sounds of gunfire and the advancing enemy to really appreciate the situation, but he was very aware of what was happening in Lao’s mind. It was an experience he had felt after many close encounters with death, but it was a feeling that was impossible to share.