Able Team watched the action. Closing on a barricade of earth movers and semi-trucks with flatbed trailers loaded with telephone poles, the terrorist trucks hit their brakes, the semi fishtailing slightly, the pickups leaving the highway. As one of the pickups bounced along the shoulder, a terrorist stood up in the back and braced an RPG launcher on the cab roof.
The rocket flashed away.—The warhead splintered poles.
But the barricade held, even when other rockets blasted a semi's cab and a highway-patrol car.
Swerving across the sand, the pickups cut across the desert, looking for a route around the trailers, tractors, and flaming car and truck. They met machine-gun fire from the door gunners of the other troopships, forcing the pickups to wheel circles in the rocky chapparal.
Squads of Marines unloaded from the troopships to take positions on ridges overlooking the highway. Slugs from the Marine fire-teams kicked up dust around the weaving, bouncing trucks.
A lurch bucked a terrorist from the back of a truck. He rolled across the sand and rocks, came up still holding his Kalashnikov. Rifles and M-60s found him simultaneously, a barrage of high-velocity slugs ripping him to rags.
Surrounded, the trucks raced back to the semi. Unable to maneuver like the pickups, the driver of the semi slowed to a stop on the highway. Several gunmen jumped from the cab and the trailer, and took cover in a network of shallow gullies fanning out from a culvert. The semi and the highway's raised roadbed protected them on one side. They sprayed wild auto fire at the Marines taking positions two hundred yards away.
The squads held their fire as they closed in on the terrorists.
"From the other side!" Lyons pointed at the semi as he shouted to the captain. "Put us down on the far side of the truck."
Nodding, the captain spoke into the comm-line. The helicopter banked in a half-circle. One of the pickups protected the other side of the semi and trailer.
A terrorist rose to one knee with an RPG launcher on his shoulder. He aimed at the onrushing troopship.
Lyons leaned against his nylon safety strap and lined up the sights of his M-16 from the side door. He aimed for the terrorist's chest and sprayed him.
An instant before the terrorist jerked the launcher's trigger, twenty 5.56mm slugs punched into his chest, arms and gut, throwing him back. The launcher fell forward, the rocket exploding at the dead man's feet.
Flame and sand churned up and the low-flying helicopter lurched as it shot through the blast cloud. Lyons looked back. Nothing remained of the terrorist.
"Ready to get, you two?" Captain Powell shouted.
Blancanales snapped back his rifle's actuator and unhooked his safety strap. Lyons dropped the empty magazine from his rifle, then slammed in another.
"Cocked and locked!" Lyons shouted.
"Go!"
The helicopter hovered in the air. Lyons and Blancanales stood in the side doors, waiting for the skids to touch sand. Terrorist auto fire hammered the Huey's sheet metal. A round zipped through one door and out the other.
Lyons jumped the eight feet to the sand. He rolled on impact. Squinting against the dust and debris of the rotor storm, he saw Blancanales drop from the other side door, landing in a crouch. Lyons signalled Blancanales to cover him.
Running wide of the terrorists around the pickup, Lyons sprinted for the highway. Bullets zinged past him. He threw himself down in sand and rocks. A hundred yards away, terrorists left cover to cut him off. Lyons sighted on a head, saw it spray bone and brains as a slug from Blancanales's rifle killed the man. The other terrorists dropped flat. Lyons sprayed a burst over them.
Now Blancanales ran. Staying low, pointing his rifle like a pistol, he fired two-and three-round bursts to keep the terrorists down. A Hispanic teenager in a windbreaker rose above the chapparal, putting his rifle to his shoulder. Lyons put a three-round burst through the boy's chest. Then the ground exploded around the terrorists.
A machine-gun team from Able's helicopter put down M-60 fire on the two terrorists lying prone in the open. Firing from a slight rise, the Marine gunner chopped the bodies apart with 7.62mm NATO-slugs.
Blancanales advanced on the semi and took cover. He popped single shots at the few terrorists left firing from the pickup truck. One of the helicopter machine gunners turned his M-60 on the truck, slugs jackhammering the sheet metal and shattering the windows. Lyons sprinted to the highway.
As Lyons started up the banked shoulder of the road, a terrorist leaned from behind the semi cab, pointing an AK. Lyons dived. He heard slugs rip over him. He brought up his M-16, but did not aim at the terrorist's head or chest. He needed a prisoner.
Lyons sighted on the feet of the young gunman and fired a burst. The terrorist slammed to the asphalt, his Kalashnikov clattering away. The young guy screamed for what seemed like a minute, his cry of pain and shock rising and falling, becoming a choking wail.
Under the cab's chassis, Lyons saw another set of feet run up to the wounded man. The second terrorist went to one knee as he tried to help his wounded comrade. Lyons sighted on the knee and feet, fired again, then sprinted the last thirty feet to the truck.
The wounded kid had one foot gone. The other foot and ankle twisted at a right angle to his leg. The second man had a mass of flesh and splintered bone for a knee. His other leg—hit three times—flopped as he screamed and writhed. Lyons kicked away their rifles, jerked a pistol from one terrorist's holster and threw it aside. He leaned down to tear the shirt from the first terrorist. He knotted the shirt around the spurting stump of the young guy's ankle to slow the flow of blood. As he went to the second man—
"Down!" Blancanales yelled.
Lyons dropped flat.
A line of slugs punched into the truck's cab. Blancanales fired. The terrorist auto bursts stopped.
Marine sniper fire killed terrorist after terrorist.
Lyons and Blancanales lay flat on the asphalt, watching the battle around them end.
"It's all over," Blancanales said into his hand-radio.
Lyons gave his partner a punch in the shoulder. "We got the truck. And we got some prisoners. Mission accomplished."
A last terrorist popped up, a rocket launcher on his shoulder. He aimed at the trailer. Even as Lyons and Blancanales sighted their rifles on him, he fired. An instant later, the terrorist died, slugs from their rifles and unseen Marine snipers ripping him.
But the rocket roared through the sheet-metal siding of the trailer. Blancanales grabbed Lyons, half lifting him, half dragging him away from the truck. Lyons stumbled into a run. They dived for cover as the semi's tanks poured diesel fuel over the highway.
Blancanales saw flames rise from the truck. A gaping hole yawned in the side of the trailer. Blancanales grabbed his hand-radio.
"Marines! Pull back, get out of here! There's binary gas in there. That was a suicide shot." Captain Powell's voice answered. "What about you, mister?"
"Save your men, we're gone—"
Lyons interrupted him. "Nothing's happening." "What?"
"No gas, nothing."
"Maybe they missed the canisters."
All the weapon fire had stopped. Lyons broke cover and ran for the flaming trailer. Engulfed in flames, the two leg-shot terrorists screamed and thrashed. Lyons raced toward them. He reached into the flames. He grabbed one man.
Fire burned Lyons's hand. He lost his grip on the dying terrorist's uniform. He staggered back. Hearing no more screams, he abandoned the two terrorists to the flaming fuel. He ran to the trailer's doors.
Blancanales helped Lyons throw the doors open. Inside, daylight shone through the rocket holes. Lyons climbed into the trailer.
Near the doors, jackets and fast-food garbage littered the floor. The terrorists had left an empty ammunition crate and fibreboard RPG rocket packing tubes. At the far end of the trailer, fifty-five-gallon barrels lined the trailer walls. The rocket blast had torn open several barrels, spraying fluid over the interior of the trailer.
Lyons rea
d the stencilling on the sides of the barrels. Some said lubricating oil, others said detergent. Lyons scooped some of the fluid from a ripped-open barrel and smelled it.
Oil? He looked at the fluid, saw a faint shimmering. He smelled the handful of fluid again, then tasted it.
Oil-fouled water.
"They faked us."
WHITE EXTINGUISHING FOAM glistened on the semi. FBI and DEA pathologists snapped photos of the charred terrorists on the highway. Other agents transferred the contents of the trailer to a government truck. Marines policed the area, collecting weapons and ammunition. One Marine found a terrorist's foot, still in its shoe. He tossed it over to the pathologists.
Gadgets prepared a taped report for Stony Man. Blancanales and Lyons went through the pockets of the terrorists, finding only loose cartridges and folding knives. The terrorists did not wear uniforms, only street clothes: black slacks, khaki pants, T-shirts, windbreakers.
"They're all Hispanics," Lyons commented to Blancanales.
"The team we hit down south was multiracial," Blancanales added. "For L.A., I would've thought they'd have blacks and whites and Asians."
Captain Powell strode up to them. "What's the body count on your terrorists? You get them all?"
"This was a decoy operation," Lyons told him. "I don't think any of these losers are the creeps we're chasing."
With his boot, Lyons turned the bullet-shattered head of a young man. His face showed fistfight scars. Lyons crouched, looked closer.
"Hey, specialist," Captain Powell joked. "Interrogating that one is a waste of time."
Two tiny tattooed teardrops marked the left cheek of the corpse. Lyons picked up the dead man's hand and studied it. On the back of the hand, in the space between the thumb and the first finger, he saw another tattoo: a tiny Christian cross. Both tattoos had been done in blue.
Searching the body more closely, Lyons found a third tattoo. On the dead punk's neck, in the stylized script of a street-gang's graffiti, he saw the inscription: 23rd.
"Wrong, Captain. I recommend you take a street-warfare class. Because this vato just told me where we're going next."
THE FBI HELICOPTER LIFTED AWAY as Able Team jogged to the waiting unmarked car.
Across the street, a group of Chicano teenagers in undershirts and khaki pants, some of them wearing stocking caps despite the midday sun, watched the helicopter soar from the vacant lot. They drank beer, shared cigarettes. The teenagers watched the three men with attaché cases get into the waiting car.
Spray-painted gang symbols marked every building and street sign on the block.
"The chief sends his regards," Detective Bill Towers of the LAPD told Lyons as they left the side street to merge with the traffic of Whittier Boulevard. "Of course, he doesn't know anything about you. Never saw you. Never heard of you. Never wants to hear of you. But he wishes you luck."
"How're things going for you?" Lyons asked the middle-aged officer. "Notice you're not wearing your uniform. Is that just for today? Or did you make the grade?"
"Detective Towers now."
"You with us today?"
"Yup."
"Who else?"
"I don't know the FBI. They're not my kind of people."
"We got no federal backup? I thought—"
"Chief won't do it. As it is, he's risking his head sending two of us."
"Two of you? We ask for backup and we get two men?"
"Hey, we're both gang detail," said Detective Towers of the same police force that had trained Carl Lyons. "We know the boys. The Bureau's giving you your backup. We're giving you the names and addresses. It's the most we can do. Christ, do you know what's going on in this city? You're asking us to help you wipe out some lower life forms, when we can't even make arrests."
Detective Towers drove through side streets. "We come up to a jerk who's gone berserk, we can't even administer tear gas without a class action suit. 'PCP Psychos of the Slums Versus the People of California.' A billion dollars punitive damages for restricting a doper ax-murderer's right to self-expression."
Lyons laughed. Blancanales leaned forward, asked Towers, "How long you guys known each other?"
"We were partners for a while," Lyons answered.
"Still get the nightmares," Towers taunted.
"You both sound exactly alike," grunted Blancanales. "Same humour. Or is it that all cops sound alike?"
"What do you mean, humour? Who's joking?" Towers continued. "I'm telling the truth. Just the facts, ma'am."
Another turn brought them to an industrial area. Parked cars and pickups lined the street. A group of workers clustered around a catering truck. Detective Towers right-turned into a parking lot. He honked his horn. A rolling door cranked up, its steel squealing on wheels. Towers continued into the windowless plant, then pulled the parking brake and turned off the engine.
Men and cars waited. Agents dressed as cabdrivers sat in taxis. Others wore delivery-company uniforms to match their panel vans. Two others were dressed as nondescript citizens with economy cars. Three others sat on the hoods of two customized cruiser cars. Those agents, Hispanics, looked young; they wore the khaki pants and T-shirt uniform of the local gangs. The windows of their cars had been tinted almost black.
"See? You got backup, Carl." Towers pointed to the agents around them.
"Great. Fantastic. Starting right now, Towers, don't use my name, all right?" Lyons turned to Gadgets and Blancanales. "Standard nicknames? Politician, Wizard?"
"And what's your name?" Towers asked.
"He's Hardman One," Blancanales told him. Towers laughed. "You work Vice, now? Sounds like a porno movie."
"How about Ironman, then?" Blancanales suggested.
"Ironman's okay," Lyons told them. "Time to work.''
Disguised agents gathered around them. Using their code names, Able Team introduced themselves to the agents. They looked over the cars and special equipment. All the agents had questions. Lyons finally interrupted the confusion.
"Gentlemen!" He pointed to Detective Towers, used only his first name. "Bill there has the basic information for you. Neighbourhood maps, names, addresses. Criminal records, gang charts. Three of you will chauffeur me and my associates around. Others will be tail units and observers. If we don't put you in motion, wait. Just wait for a call. Maybe we won't even need all of you. And one last thing. This is life and death. We can't brief you on all the details, it's classified. But remember, it's life and death multiplied by between ten and twenty million times. If we can't kill the problem, it goes public."
Lyons and Towers ducked into a heavily Customized low-rider car. They sat in the back, screened from view by the tinted windows. Blancanales took a taxi, Gadgets a panel van. Gadgets stowed his radio and electronic gear in the van, then threw in an M-16/M-203 rifle/ grenade launcher.
The agent masquerading as a gang punk turned it Lyons. "All right, Señor Ironman ¿Dónde vamos?"
"This address—"
CARS AND TRUCKS CROWDED THE CURBS. Lyons saw LAPD black-and-whites, a fire-department car, a van from the coroner's office, and mobile news units of several television stations. Neighbours stood on their lawns and porches, watching the officials and sightseers gawk at the house.
A stripped car rusted on the house's lawn. The RPG had hit near the corner of the house, to the side and below the window of the front bedroom. A police officer and a fire-department investigator looked through the three-foot-wide hole. They continued through the house to the backyard.
The low-rider agent cruised slowly past. Even with the smoked windows, Lyons stayed low in the seat, only his eyes and the top of his head above the chrome window trim. Towers briefed him.
"Call goes out this morning, 'Shots into house.' Units didn't even bother checking it out. These gangs shoot at each other all night long. Then someone in the neighbourhood describes a rocket blast, so finally a unit gets interested. One of the guys who shows up is a Nam vet. He knows what it is right off. Someone shot a rocket through
the house, and the target was sleeping on the other side of the wall. Biggest piece the coroner's office found was an arm. Next we get your call from the desert—"
"What did you tell the media?"
"Told them it was a gas explosion. I should tell you that we know who did it. We even got the house staked out. But I can't figure how it ties in with the crazies from down south."
"Neither can I. But we'll find out."
Their driver followed their instructions to another neighbourhood. They left a boulevard, went down a side street, turned again. Police barricades blocked the next street. Towers reached from the window of the customized car to show his department identification to the officers manning the roadblock.
"Giving the brass a firsthand view," he told them.
"When do we bust that bimbo in the house?" one officer asked.
"Who knows? We're waiting on permission from the Supreme Court."
Laughing, the officers pulled aside the barricades. Their driver eased ahead. The car rounded the corner and again they slowly cruised. The street appeared normal, but no one sat on their porches, no children played in the yards. Front doors stood open. Inside the houses, Lyons saw the gaudy rectangles of color televisions, blaring their commercials at nobody. In one window, he saw the silhouette of a SWAT rifleman.
"There," Towers pointed to a rundown stucco house with several cars parked in the driveway. They slowed. Lyons gazed at the one-story dwelling. Someone in the living room secretively pulled aside a blanket curtaining the window to watch them pass.
Lyons glanced down each side of the bungalow, saw the rickety fences and overgrown bushes. He caught a glimpse of a slat fence at the back property line.
"The PD got a monitor on the phone?" Lyons asked.
Towers nodded. "Nothing in or out. Maybe they've got a radio."
Lyons leaned forward to the low-rider agent. "Take it around to the other side of the block." Then he keyed his hand-radio. "Politician, I'm in front of the house."
"I'm on the other side. I figure we'll go in over the back fence."
"More or less. There in a flash." Lyons clipped the radio to his belt. He checked the Python he wore in his shoulder holster, touched the two speed-loaders in his left-hand jacket pocket. It was war in the city again, where real life was at its most, heavily peopled and most dangerous, where real death came at its most corrosively pointless and, in situations such as those that Able Team had been created to deal with, at its most unavoidable. Lyons had faced this many times and felt the same way many times. He wanted to make a difference, to make life possible for good people. And sometimes he felt he did make a difference, that he had, in Mack Bolan's words, extended the limits of the possible.
Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Page 21