by Dick Stivers
Blancanales and Schwarz joined him in the post-battle reconnoiter. Lyons poked his head above the landing. Finding the hallway empty, he continued to the top of the stairs.
Carefully the three men moved from room to room. Corpses lay in poses of death in different rooms.
The three men descended the stairs, Lyons trailing his two companions. The screams of the kneecapped terrorist had turned to low moans.
Lyons leaned down to speak to the injured man.
"I have some questions that you're going to answer."
He did not need to say any more, he simply moved his hand toward what was left of the man's knee.
"Ask, for Christ's sake, ask me anything," gasped the terrorist.
"Where's Shillelagh?"
"Went to the basement when the shooting started. Stairs are in the kitchen."
Lyons leaned on the right leg slightly as he straightened up. He looked at Corporal Phillips, who sat in a corner of the room, eyes closed.
"Just the three of us, then," he said. Blancanales and Gadgets joined him as he moved into the kitchen. They saw a partly open door.
Blancanales and Gadgets took up positions on either side of the door. Lyons swung it open. When no fire came up the stairs, he gingerly headed down, one step at a time.
He reached the bottom of the stairs. The basement was empty. He called to Gadgets and Blancanales. They leaned into the doorway and went down the stairs.
"Nothing here," Lyons said. "Let's get some help for Phillips, then check in with Leo back at the embassy. And I'll deal with our kneecapped friend upstairs myself ..."
16
Lyons brought the Granada to a stop in front of the hotel on Sussex Gardens. The hotel was an old house that had been converted into a hotel just after the Second World War. It was what the English called a "bed and breakfast" — cheap but clean accommodation. It was here that the American specialists would connect with vital information. Leo's contact, Lieutenant Colonel Carlton, had come up with the likely whereabouts of a certain lady, thanks to more loose talk caught by the bugs.
The three men of Able Team climbed the hotel's steps and rang the front door bell. A woman in her late sixties opened the door.
"May I help you, gentlemen?"
Blancanales spoke. "We're looking for Lieutenant Colonel Carlton."
"Ah, you must be George's American friends. Do come in."
She led them to a small living room on the first floor in what was obviously the owner's apartment. Carlton was seated in one of the overstuffed armchairs. He rose when the woman came in with the three visitors.
"My mother, gentlemen," he said as she left. To Blancanales's unspoken question, Carlton continued, "I bought this place for her a couple of years ago. It provides a small income, and she enjoys mixing with all the tourists. As it was convenient, I thought that we could meet here, keeping you off the streets and out of trouble — if that's possible."
The three men hovered uncomfortably in the room. They were in their blacksuits.
"We shouldn't have to wait," continued Carlton. "Several of my men are taking turns watching the place from a cafe across the street. Her hideout is located in a long stretch of Westbourne Terrace. The building is four stories and contains several apartments. The top two floors are luxury flats, and we have established that Lady Carole secretly owns one of these."
The colonel's radio, on a table next to his chair, crackled to life.
"Colonel, a lady matching the target just entered the building," a voice said. "You may want to come and check this out."
"Right, gentlemen," Carlton said, standing up. "Shall we be off?"
* * *
Westbourne Terrace was one of the principal streets in Paddington. The stone building where Lady Carole maintained her lair was obviously well-cared for, the exterior free of the black soot that scarred so many of London's older buildings. The door was well-secured against any casual intruder. But these were no casual intruders. Carlton brought out two keys.
"Got these from the landlord earlier today," he whispered. He opened the door and they entered.
They avoided the elevator and worked their way up the stairs. With a click and a whir, the elevator started up and the warriors retreated into the shadows as the old cage-type elevator descended past them. The four men checked out the occupant. The woman did not resemble Lady Carole, and as the elevator sank down below the second floor, the four men returned to the stairs and climbed to the third floor.
Lyons cautiously poked his head around the corner of the corridor, quickly pulled it back. There were two men on either side of a doorway.
The two guards were alert, and one of them had seen Lyons's head. Footsteps sounded as the man came to investigate.
Lyons brought up his silenced Colt. He saw the barrel of a gun precede the guard around the corner. The four men waited in silence for the rest of the man, a brief wait before he cautiously peeked around the corner. The Colt sighed, and the bullet all but tore the cautious head off.
Before the body had even hit the floor, the four invaders were around the corner and a slug from Gadgets's Colt had slammed into the second guard.
The door to a nearby apartment opened and a head looked out. Blancanales tracked onto the head, refraining from pulling the trigger.
A gray-haired man gazed horror-struck at the four men and retreated into the shelter of his apartment. Blancanales stuck a foot in the door, preventing it from closing completely. While the man appeared to be an innocent, Pol had to check him out. Quietly, the senior member of Able Team forced his way into the apartment.
"What are you doing?" the occupant demanded, terror in his voice.
"Just checking things out — nothing to worry about." Blancanales barged past the man and charged from room to room. In one of the upstairs bedrooms, he found the man's wife getting ready for bed. She screamed at the intruder, and Blancanales beat a hasty retreat — closely followed by a flying hairbrush. He returned downstairs.
"Sorry for the intrusion," he said to the old man. "You and your wife must stay inside, and away from the front door of your apartment."
To confirm the wisdom of the American's advice, sounds of pitched battle penetrated from down the hall.
Carl Lyons had gained entrance to Lady Carole's place by firing three .45s into the door latch. A shotgun had boomed at him from within, sending pellets crashing into the swinging door. Lyons dived low into the apartment, M-10 spraying as he went.
A second shotgun blast shredded the couch he hid behind. Its stuffing exploded into the air.
Lyons crawled to the end of the couch. He heard the sound of the shotgun being broken open.
Gadgets came in low, sending a spray from the Ingram toward the sound of the shotgun.
The gunner did not hear the smack of the bullets as they slammed into him. He heard nothing but the roar of the emptiness of death.
Gadgets rolled to the couch and took in the apartment as he did so.
The white, well-decorated room stretched thirty feet to the left. Stairs led to the apartment's second floor at the far end.
Silence filled the place, ominously. Blancanales peered cautiously around the door, gun-muzzle preceding his eye. He saw the splattered blood spots on the white carpet.
Lyons and Gadgets cautiously worked their way toward the stairs.
Blancanales joined Lieutenant Colonel Carlton and they moved to back up Schwarz and Lyons.
The two men in the lead stepped silently along the corridor at the top of the stairs. There were four doors in the hallway, two on the right, one on the left and the last at the end of the corridor. Lyons and Gadgets placed themselves on either side of the first door on the right.
Lyons slowly turned the handle. When no shots greeted him, he pushed open the door. It was a bathroom. Lyons entered and pushed aside the shower curtain. Nothing. The room was empty.
Blancanales and Carlton checked the door on the left. Pol pushed it open slightly. It slammed shut on him, b
ullets drilling through the white-painted wood. Splinters sprayed as Blancanales leaped back. Carlton groaned as if hit. Then he opened up with his Sterling, stitching a figure eight in the closed door.
Blancanales kicked open the door and dived in. His caution was unnecessary. On the floor beside him lay a moaning figure doubled up on the floor. The guy fought a losing battle to stuff entrails back inside a 9mm zipper across his stomach. The man stared at Blancanales, then his eyes glazed over and he fell silent.
The last door on the right was already partially open. Gadgets opened it the rest of the way. Silence met him, and he walked in unopposed. The room may have been a bedroom once, but it was a study now. Two filing cabinets stood along one wall, with a desk and chair in front of them. The place was meant for work and nothing else. It would have to be checked out thoroughly — later.
Lyons stared at the remaining door. Suddenly he snapped a new magazine into place and pulled the trigger. A three-round burst at the lock blew the door open.
Carlton moved to one side. Blancanales to the other. Gadgets rolled into the room. He was nearly cut apart by a stream of submachine-gun bullets.
The bullets tracked across the floor, trying to find the rolling figure.
Lyons stepped through the door and gave the M-10 its head.
Silence descended on the room as the dust settled. They were in the upstairs master suite. Gadgets sheltered behind a divan. Lyons had thrown himself behind a tub chair.
Off to the left was the open door to the dressing room where the submachine-gun fire had come from. Signaling Blancanales and Carlton, Lyons covered the door as the two men stepped into the master suite and moved toward the dressing room.
Blancanales looked into the small room and saw flapping curtains. He checked it out. A fire escape.
He cursed.
17
Noisy chaos greeted the four men as they left the building. Police were everywhere, trying to control the curiosity seekers who had gathered at the sound of gunfire. Some of Carlton's men were helping the bobbies keep the crowd away.
Able Team stepped back as three of Carlton's men moved past them with a curt nod. The Americans recognized some of them as they headed up to secure the apartment from intruders.
Lyons paced away from the crowd with Carlton. "Where the hell do we look?" he said.
"We look in the alley that leads to Paddington Station, that's where," Carlton grinned. A glint of triumph showed in his eyes. The nearby railway station was the ideal bait for their prey.
Lyons waved to his partners. The three men jogged after the English soldier who knew the mean streets and alleyways of London like a coroner knows the arteries of a corpse.
They turned sharp right at the end of the street into an alley connecting with the wider pedestrian alleyway that ran behind the row of houses. In the main alleyway, about a hundred yards to the left of them, the pursuers saw the small, unmistakable figure of Lady Carole Essex. Unmistakable because she walked briskly, as if to avoid attention.
The pounding of boots on the pavement alerted her. She looked over her shoulder and broke into a run at the sight of the four men.
Lyons broke ahead of the sprinting group. He chased the woman as she darted into a side alley that dead-ended fifteen feet from her turn. He had her cornered.
He crouched, looked at his quarry to catch sight of any firearm in the darkness.
She showed no weapon. She had sunk to her knees on the grimy cobbles, leaning her head against the brick wall that blocked her way. She was whimpering.
Lyons rose and turned to address Schwarz and Blancanales. "She's mine," he said softly to his partners. "Leave her to me."
He entered the dead-end alleyway and stepped remorselessly toward the petite blond woman. She let out a scream.
He took a last long, quick step up to her. "Shut your cake hole, dammit," he told her. The muzzle of his Colt touched her forehead.
She choked off her scream, stared up at him like a terrified dog, the tears in her eyes catching the starlight. But this was no mongrel. This bitch was class.
"Why did you do it?" interrogated Lyons. "Why did you get them to take so many hostages?"
"I had nothing to do with it!" she yelled back at him. Her pretty face twisted into ugliness with fear and rage. She clutched her handbag to her chest like a crucifix. "It was the Irish that did it. Irish terrorists. I'm not Irish..."
Lyons shoved his weapon into her right cheekbone and pushed her face sideways against the bricks. Nerve endings in his flexed right forearm told him the venomous kiss of the Colt was only seconds away.
"Why?" he repeated. "Tell me why." His tone condemned her as surely as the hangman's grasp on the trapdoor lever. "Tell me. Now."
The woman's cowardly collapse before him enraged Lyons.
"Listen to me, woman. This gun in my hand — I call it my roadblocker, see? Nobody goes anywhere when I've got this thing pulled. So talk. It's all you've got left," and he pushed the barrel up under her top row of teeth, forcing her mouth into a grotesque leer.
She backed away from the muzzle as far as she could, which was less than half an inch. With the gun pointing at her palate, she gasped a defiant confession.
"If I'd killed them all, I'd have had the succession. I'd have been queen for a day, pretty boy. Maybe queen for a lifetime!"
"You're crazy," Lyons pressed. "Twenty dead people and the next in line would have been suspect number one."
"But I was going to be hit, too, jerk." She laughed crazily, saliva splashing from her immobilized mouth. "McGowan would have staged an attack on me as well."
"Then that's the way it's gonna be," Lyons said without emotion. "You're going to be hit too…"
"No!" she screamed, cringing. "Don't do it! I beg of you!"
"Lady," Lyons said once again, "I don't have the time."
As his finger pressed on the trigger, Lady Carole shoved the barrel from her mouth with the handbag. Desperately, insanely, she rummaged in the bag for her handgun. Lyons eased up on the finger pressure. He let her find what she sought.
The woman pulled a small caliber piece from the bag and pointed it at her assailant.
Just as she pulled the trigger, Lyons's Colt boomed. The point-blank explosion thrust the woman's small gun under her disintegrating chin, where it discharged in turn.
Lyons's blast had taken her face away, but her own shot creased what remained of her forehead and took off her hair.
Lyons looked aghast as the dead woman's wig flew from the pulpy head to reveal a hairless skull covered in scabs and sores.
The faceless nonbeing lay crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the wall. The woman had been fearfully sick before she died. Cancerous lesions of the skull stood exposed to Lyons as he backed away from the remains.
His partners joined him. The mouth of the small alley filled with curious soldiers and police.
"Good diagnosis, good treatment, Doctor Lyons," Gadgets joked without smiling.
"And in the best tradition of British socialism," observed Blancanales, "she got it free."
18
It was not over for Carl Lyons. The shooting of the Shillelagh woman had disturbed his whole being.
Asleep at the U.S. Embassy four hours after the hit, he thrashed about wildly on the bed. Suddenly he awoke in a sweat. The action on foreign soil — maybe killing the woman — had set it off again.
He was scared. And he knew damn well what caused him such fear. A recurring nightmare haunted his sleep since his woman — hiswoman — had met her death. The dreams filled him with horror, especially since the nightmare was different each time. Each hideous experience was a variation on the death of Flor Trujillo…
This time he knew the gunman would follow Flor to the airport, that there would be yet another death. In the dream, he leaned against a row of lockers and scanned the crowd.
He saw Flor as she approached the metal detector at the entrance to the waiting area. She was beautiful. Not sick, not crazy, not
violent. Just a totally beautiful woman. She joined the group of travelers already in the line. She was last. Lyons watched. From time to time she craned her neck to look through a huge plate-glass window at the planes on the tarmac.
Lyons could see the runway area through the window. The brightly painted Ecuatoriana Airlines jet looked like a Chinese paper bird in his dream. He saw the fuel attendant remove the nozzle of the hose from the plane's fueling port.
Then it was Flor's turn to go through the detector. Once Flor left the departure area, she would be safe.
The gunshot thundered in the confines of the glassed-in corridor. The slug lifted Flor onto her toes.
Even in death she was spectacular. Her exquisitely sculpted calves stood out fiercely as she rose on tiptoe. Thigh muscles strained against white cotton walking shorts. Well-shaped buttocks clenched.
Lyons watched her back arch slightly, her arms upraised as purse, passport, documents flew out of her hands.
Then she crumpled to the floor. He rushed from cover, panning his revolver across the hallway.
Nothing moved. People lay flat the entire length of the corridor. Slowly he let his arm fall as he stepped backward to where Flor lay.
She was lying on her side on the grooved rubber mat of the departure-lounge entrance.
Lyons knelt beside the inert form. He turned the body onto its back. He looked at her fine Hispanic features. He saw her full lips, cherry red with blood, touched with a hint of a smile.
Something slammed into his gut so hard that Lyons thought he was hit. Then he recognized the pain for what it was.
Lyons, awake now, moaned to think of Flor. The woman was the only person with whom he had shared his soul. Lyons hurt inside for his mother also, dead for ten years. She had known nothing of the good life, nor had she expected it. Lyons cried inside for his drunken father who achieved with his loins what he had failed to achieve in a wayward and vagrant life, and thus presented Carl to the world.
Finally, Lyons wept for himself, the lonely adolescent, the sad teenager who closely guarded his every step upward, afraid it would be taken away from him. He did everything right, followed all the rules. That was why he had become a policeman.