He opened his briefcase and took out the modified Colt Government Model and two flash/ concussion grenades. Extra magazines of .45 ACP hollow points went in his pockets. Towers watched him straighten the grenade cotter pins. Lyons hooked the levers on his belt and pulled his buckle a notch tighter to hold the levers snug.
"Those things'll make trouble for us," Towers told him. Their bizarre-looking low-rider gang car eased through another police barricade.
Towers impersonated a video reporter's solemn monotone, "In yet another cynical attempt to circumvent the constitutional rights of the people of this city, the Los Angeles Police Department ordered a B-52 strike on Boyle Heights."
Lyons laughed, tapped the grenades. "Don't sweat it. These are deluxe models. They got silencers."
CROUCHING AT THE SLAT FENCE, Lyons peeped through. He saw a yard cluttered with car frames and body panels and greasy engine parts. Weeds grew three feet high. Plywood covered the window of the garage that stood at the back of the house. Aluminium foil papered one bedroom window, newspapers another. The window in the back door had been spray-painted red. He heard no sounds from inside the house.
"Can't make it through all that trash," Lyons muttered to the SWAT officer next to him.
"Neither can they," the officer added, pointing to three other SWAT officers who waited in the yard, watching for movement.
At the far end of the slat fence, Blancanales also peered at the building. He looked across to Lyons, shook his head, no. He crawled into the neighbour’s yard and peered through the rotted wood of the side fence. He gave Lyons a thumbs-up sign.
Lyons pushed aside vines to look into the other neighbour’s yard. A redwood fence overgrown with honeysuckle separated an immaculately landscaped garden from the junkyard next door. Lyons keyed his hand-radio.
"Politician. I can do it, But I need to dodge down one more yard before I go over the back fence. They could spot me here."
"This side, the garage blocks their view. I'll make it to the side of the house and wait for you. Moving."
Blancanales pressed the barrel latch on the front grip of his M-16/ M-203. He slid the 40mm barrel forward and chambered a round. He secured the action and set the safety.
"THAT TEAR GAS?" a SWAT officer asked him. "Multiple projectile," Blancanales told him. "Twenty-seven double-oughts."
"Could hurt someone."
"That's what it's for."
Blancanales tore aside chicken wire and irises, pushed through decayed wood into the adjoining backyard. He walked along the side of the garage. When he came to the corner, he crouched, then chanced a look through the chain link separating the yards.
A bedroom window blocked with aluminium foil overlooked the driveway where he crouched. Farther along the house, he saw a small bathroom window. Blancanales paused to plug the earphone into his radio, then continued on his belly.
Trash cans and geraniums screened him. He crept in the direction of the bedroom window. A three-foot-high chain link fence and four feet of space separated him from the window. He twisted onto his back in the high weeds. He lay there with the M-16 / M-203 over his chest, listening.
He heard footsteps crossing the house. They went to the window above Blancanales. He heard the rustle of the foil that papered the window. The footsteps returned to the other side.
Blancanales listened for several minutes. Again, he heard footsteps crossing and recrossing the house. His earphone buzzed. Lyons spoke.
"I'm on the other side, under the kitchen window. I'm going to crawl across the driveway to the kitchen door. What do you hear?"
Whispering into the radio, Blancanales watched the window above him. "I hear two people walking around inside. One walked to the front, the other's—the other one's going to the front too. Now's the time."
"Snake time. Over."
Blancanales keyed the hand-radio again. "Wizard, Mr. Wizard. You there?"
"Monitoring you. What do you need?"
"Just keep the PD back. Don't let them gas the place. We didn't bring gas masks."
"Got you. Doing it."
Footsteps paced the house. They stopped. Then steps crossed the house again. A voice shouted.
Auto fire ripped the quiet. Burst after burst punched from within through the walls of the house. A second weapon fired from inside, then footsteps pounded the floor. Slugs smashed the window above, showering Blancanales with glass and tinfoil. The weapons inside the house sprayed the entire area, lines of slugs breaking windows and chipping slabs of stucco off the walls of the neighbouring houses.
Blancanales held his assault rifle/grenade launcher by the pistol grip and the magazine, with his left forefinger on the M-203 trigger. He was concerned for Lyons. He tensed to leap for the shattered window.
Suddenly an arm came through the window. The shirt-sleeves had bloodstains past the elbow. Blancanales watched the hand grasp the window frame, then a blond young woman climbed out, pushing through the remaining glass shards. She wriggled upward to reach for the guttering of the roof. Her shoulder supported a slung AK-47 with folding stock.
Don't look down girl, Blancanales thought, looking up at her. Don't look and you're a prisoner.
The blonde looked down. She saw Blancanales beneath her. As she struggled to lower the AK and point it at him, Blancanales pulled both triggers.
A simultaneous blast and full-auto burst caught her in the pit of her stomach. The storm of high-velocity 5.56mm slugs and the twenty-seven .30 calibre lead balls tore through her body at an extreme angle, severing her spine where her neck met her shoulders. She died even as the impact tumbled her out of the window.
Blancanales stepped over her body and squatted at the side of the house. Another set of feet pounded across the house to the window. A young man with dark features and curly black hair leaned from it.
"Rosemarie! Where—"
Blancanales thrust the M-16 / M-203 up under the guy's chin, the muzzle throwing back his head. Stunned, the guy fell back. But Blancanales's vertical launch of the rifle did not have the force to shock him unconscious. As Blancanales leaped up and scrambled through the window with a powerful push of his arms, the man reached for his AK.
Blancanales advanced fast enough to sight on the reaching arm and fire a burst. The young man screamed incoherently as he rolled on the floor, clutching his suddenly boneless arm. Blancanales stepped over him and began to loop plastic handcuffs around his ankles and wrists. The man contorted with agony when Blancanales touched the shattered arm.
"Ironman!" Blancanales shouted. His radio's ear-phone buzzed incessantly. He ignored it, shouted. "Ironman, where are you?"
"I'm okay, I'm all right," Lyons shouted back.
Jerking the Beretta 93-R from his shoulder holster, Blancanales left his auto rifle under piles of newspapers and crept through the house. He kicked doors open, moving fast but cautiously. He did not stop to check the closets or bathroom or front bedroom. Lyons might need help.
Slipping into the kitchen, Blancanales saw a bullet riddled wall. A breeze swirled through the holes, carrying away the dust of broken gypsum and stucco. He continued to the back door and stepped out.
Lyons got up off the asphalt driveway, brushing stucco and wood chips from his coat and hair. Immediately Blancanales saw what had happened. When the terrorists spotted Lyons, they had simply fired low through the wall. Lyons had dropped on his back to sink beneath the house's concrete foundation, which had sheltered him from the wild auto-bursts. Gouges and holes in the asphalt driveway indicated about sixty shots.
"You know what it's like to have bullets passing about one inch past your nose?" Lyons asked him. "Don't answer. I'll tell you—"
"Joke later. I got two, there might be more."
With their pistols, they searched the house. The wounded man was still screaming in the back bed room. They ignored him. They checked the front rooms, the closets, finally the bathroom. They found , the family.
A teenaged boy, a matronly woman, and a preteen girl
lay in the bathtub, their hands tied behind them, their throats slashed. Lyons could only stare at this horror, one of the regular horrors in the barrios of his native city.
"The teenager must be the gang punk," Blancanales guessed. He too knew Los Angeles. "He's the one who supposedly killed the other gang kid with the rocket last night. I guess that's his mother and sister."
"Looks like the crazies considered his action a breach of discipline. Unreliable, die. Witnesses too."
Their hand-radios buzzed again. "Hey! This is the Wizard! You two all right?"
"We got them," Blancanales replied. "One prisoner—"
"The boys in blue are coming in."
Lyons spoke into his hand-radio, his voice neutral, slow. "Keep them out for another few minutes. They don't want to be involved in what's about to happen.
"Will do, over." Gadgets buzzed off. "Interrogation?" Blancanales asked.
Lyons nodded. They went into the back bedroom and stood over the bleeding terrorist. Lyons saw a sheath knife at the young man's belt. He took it. Blood crusted the handle.
Throwing the prisoner over on his face, Lyons cut the plastic band around his wrists. "Hold him down, Pol."
Blancanales hesitated, looking from the wounded, crying prisoner to the knife in Lyons's hand. The ex-Green Beret looked into his partner's face, saw calm eyes that were beyond hate or compassion.
"No time for drugs or qualified interrogators, Pol. There's more of them out there somewhere. They came to Los Angeles to murder every man, woman and child in the city. And he knows where the gang is."
"Do what we got to do."
Lyons looked down at the prisoner. "Where are the others?"
The terrorist looked up at them, his eyes wide with pain. But he smiled. "I say nothing until you bring lawyer. I know laws of your country. I want lawyer. I no talk until I get rights."
"Where are the others?" Lyons repeated.
The Palestinian pursed his lips to spit at them. Lyons stepped on the shattered arm.
SUNSET FLASHED from the thousand-faceted glass towers of downtown Los Angeles. In the clear spring evening, Blancanales searched the windows and roof-lines of the warehouses and sweatshop tenements surrounding the complex of garages.
From his position seven stories above the street, he spotted concealed FBI and LAPD teams watching the garages. He saw the officers freeze in their places as a terrorist crossed a garage roof. Blancanales stepped back into shadow and keyed his hand-radio. "One man. I say we do it. I'm ready."
Five floors below him, Lyons lay on top of several filing cabinets, watching the terrorist pace the flat tarred roof. The wide-shouldered Hispanic raised binoculars to scan the windows and fire escapes of the buildings overlooking the garages. The motion raised his shirt to reveal an auto pistol in his waistband. Lyons spoke into his hand-radio.
"Want me to hit him?"
"Whenever you're ready. Wizard, you monitoring?"
Gadgets spoke from the back of the FBI taxicab on the street. "You guys do what you want. I'll watch this door."
Sighting through the four-inch-wide space at the top of the windows that backed the filing cabinets, Lyons put a silent burst of .45 ACP hollow points into the terrorist's chest and head. Lyons buzzed Blancanales. "All right, Politician."
"I'm ready."
"Then go."
Easing to the edge again, Blancanales peered down to the rooftop. He saw the terrorist sitting on the tar roof, the binoculars beside him. The terrorist stared up at Blancanales. Blancanales whipped his head back, hissed in his radio. "Get with it! He's looking at me, I think he saw me."
"I doubt it. He's dead.
"You already hit him?"
"You said to...
"Okay, I'm going down." Blancanales clipped his hand-radio to the belt of his battle suit. He gave the knot of the rope a last check, then threw the coil over the edge.
It dropped to the roof below. He snapped the hook of his rappelling harness onto the rope and walked backward off the ledge.
Bouncing smoothly down the brick-and-concrete face of the old office building, Blancanales counted the floors. As he passed the fourth row of windows, he kicked hard and let go of the rope. He arced over the tangle of barbed wire and landed on the soft asphalt of the roof. He stepped out of his harness and crept across to the motionless terrorist.
The terrorist stared sightlessly at the darkening sky. A vent pipe behind him kept him upright. Blood drained from wounds to his chest and head.
Blancanales took the pistol from the dead man's belt. He inspected the automatic, a Parkerized Browning High-Power with a defaced serial number. He put the loaded pistol in his thigh pocket. He searched the terrorist for any other weapons, but found only a knife.
He dragged the dead man across the roof to a sky-light and wedged the body into a space between the skylight housing and a fan unit. Then Blancanales crossed the roof to the access door. He listened. Far below him, he heard voices and a power drill, but no steps on the stairs.
Lyons rappelled down the building, swinging over the wire. Like Blancanales, he wore a black battle-suit that carried his gear and weapons. Within seconds, he joined Blancanales at the door. They both looked up to see a SWAT officer pull up their rope.
"Well, this is where your interrogation has brought us," murmured Blancanales, looking across the darkening rooftops.
"So here we go. . . " Lyons slipped his modified Colt from his web-belt holster. Crouching, he eased the door open slightly. He held the silenced Colt Government Model straight up.
A Kalashnikov came at his face. For a long instant, he looked into the muzzle of the automatic rifle, even as he rolled back, bringing the Colt down to point at the chest of a moon-faced Hispanic woman.
"Carlos? ¿Donde. .?"
Her eyes gazed too long at the black-clad commando rolling at her feet. Her hand grabbed for the pistol grip of her AK. Lyons silently snapped a hollow point into her sternum, shocking her back. She bounced off the frame of the door, staggered forward, her eyes wild, unbelieving. She dropped.
Feet scuffed on the stairs. Lyons grabbed the dead woman and jerked her out of the doorway. Blancanales grabbed an arm to help drag her aside. Lyons closed the door and stood to one side. Feet came to the door.
A young man walked out, an AK slung over his shoulder, looking neither to the right or left. Lyons shot him in the back of his head. The terrorist fell flat. Lyons had done his job again. Who else would do it? Who else could do it? His enemies were hard-core, and Lyons responded to that fact in the way he knew best. Justice by fire, as a model not of judgment but of execution. Carl Lyons, like his fellow avengers forged in the caldron of Mack Bolan's war everlasting, was truly a man of the hour.
They waited. The sounds below them continued, the power drill, a hammer on wood, voices. They heard no other feet on the stairs.
Lyons slipped through the door and looked down the stairwell. A flight of steel steps cut through the framework of girders and braces that supported the roof. The stairs went to a platform against the wall, then the stairs continued along the wall to the floor.
When they descended, Lyons and Blancanales would be exposed every step of the way.
Lyons motioned his partner forward, pointed down. Blancanales flattened himself beside Lyons. Creeping down the first several steps, they watched the activity below them.
Men and women worked on a row of twelve commercial vehicles. Some were trucks, others vans. The open trucks carried full flatbeds of fifty-five-gallon drums. Hoses linked the drums in two series, one series red drums, the second blue. The two hoses met at a pump. An electronic supply-shop van contained only two drums and a pump. The flatbed truck immediately below Lyons and Blancanales carried a load of ten drums, five of each color.
Holes had been cut in the sheet-metal roofs of the vans. A nozzle protruded from the roof of one van. The flatbed truck had a nozzle standing six feet above the top of the cab.
They watched the work in progress. Chicano teen
agers did the drilling and wiring and assembly of the pump and nozzle units. The terrorists—Europeans, an African, an Arab, Hispanics—directed the work. The leaders, two Europeans and an Arab, stood at a workbench checking details on a map. They called other terrorists to them and issued instructions. The terrorists then relayed the instructions to the workers.
Across the huge garage, a terrorist fitted a young Chicano girl into a plastic suit. She put on a gas mask, then plodded over to the others. She modelled the suit, raising her arms, touching her toes, then climbing into the cab of a truck. She took off the gas mask to let the others try it on.
As the two men of Able Team watched, the leaders rolled up their map. They walked through the maze of trucks and shipping crates, shaking hands with the Chicanos and other terrorists. One of the three, the Arab, stood up on the flatbed truck and began to speak in Spanish.
Lyons turned to Blancanales for a translation. Blancanales hissed a few words at a time.
"A glory for the International Revolution. . . an act of solidarity with the Socialist Peoples of the World . . . cut the throat of Zionism . . . revenge for Vietnam. . . revenge El Salvador. . . smash the Golden Arches. . . "
"What?"
"My little joke," whispered Blancanales. "It's the standard speech. Seems it's going to happen some-time tonight."
"Why the speech now?"
The Arab concluded his speech to applause and shouted slogans. The two European leaders called to him in Russian. He gave the group a final closed-fist salute, then jumped off the truck and hurried after the other two. They went to a new Mercedes sedan.
Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Page 22