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“Yeah,” Lyons said. “They were at the last club, too, where Collins disappeared. Only I counted up three the last stop.”
“I know their vehicles,” Gadgets said, watching his monitor, the image being relayed from a minicam mounted on top of the van, the rolling command center handed off to Able Team courtesy of Hal Brognola’s Justice contacts in L.A. “I photoed them and the plates yesterday when they came out of the garage of the office complex.”
“So, go find them,” Lyons said, “and stick another of your famous tracking boxes so we can stay glued on their tails. I see a parking lot down the street, the direction they came from. Let’s rock and roll, Gadgets. I’m going in. Pol, keep the engine hot. The looks I just read on the goons’ faces…let’s just say I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Blancanales cleared his throat as he watched Lyons secure the mini-Uzi in a special rigging beneath his loose-fitting windbreaker, the Ironman’s .357 Magnum Colt Python snug in a shoulder holster on the opposite side with a clear bulge. Subtle wasn’t found in Lyons’s vocabulary. “Easy, big guy. We still haven’t been flashed the green light.”
Lyons shot Blancanales a cold grin, checked the load on his Colt Python, then slid the big piece back into shoulder leather. “Relax. I’ve got a few extra bucks on me to throw around. Maybe I’m just rolling in there to have a couple laughs, check out the girls. Let ’em know big daddy’s in town.”
Lyons was out the door, into the night. Schwarz rolled back the side door, gone to play his role as bug planter.
Now Blancanales felt a real heart palpitation, and it wasn’t the aftereffect of hot sauce and too many tacos. This wasn’t good, he thought. Hell’s bells, he could almost feel the angry energy, trailing Lyons as he crossed the street.
A human time bomb, looking for a place to blow.
No mistake, he could feel it all about to hit the fan, and maybe go straight to hell before the mission even got official status.
JACK ROSWELL DESPISED his current task, or, more to the point, the kind of flunkies he was hunting. The former air commando and black operative for the NSA had his orders from up top, and he would carry them out even if he couldn’t fathom the logic in the whole scheme from the very beginning. This whole mess, he thought, could have been avoided long ago. Now he had been cut loose, a stone-cold killer, on the march to silence wagging tongues.
As he weaved his way through the gaggle of suits and howling throngs of half-drunken lechers, Morton on his left flank, he wondered where it was all headed. It was the colonel’s show, just the same, from day one, and he had often considered broaching the subject. Such as why hire on a pack of twentysomething guys to do the dirty work of moving the prototype high-tech goodies around the globe? Such as why allow them access to classified files? Such as why let them run all around Los Angeles, having the Sodom and Gomorrah time of their lives, a couple of them coked up half the time, six figure salaries to a man? Flash, showing off, now flapping loose lips.
Worse still, the backbone, the real movers and shakers behind DYSAT, had the boot heel of the Justice Department stomping down on it, putting on the weight, ready to snap it in two. At last count, three of the pretty-boy executives were dead and accounted for, with three more that he knew of still running around, making little whispered noise about blowing the lid on the whole plan to one another. Well, the Feds had come running, and Roswell knew they were even right then in the neighborhood. No, it wasn’t all that difficult to spot the black van bristling with antennae, parked across the street for what it was.
Official G-men were on the prowl.
He hoped they came running, trying to close the net. With some cunning and a little brazenness, he could lead them outside, a dark alley maybe, where he could send a message to the Feds. When they came and picked up what was left of the bodies, he didn’t figure they’d just pack up their surveillance and leave town, tails tucked between their legs. No, they’d turn up the heat, but that was just fine with him. Things were reaching a critical mass anyway, and only a swift and decisive counterattack could save the DYSAT kingdom.
After dogging the marks around for days, where they wiled away their nights in gentlemen’s clubs, paid cash for quickies and huffed up blow in back rooms, he was starting to feel mean, and dirty. Midforties, he was somewhat surprised to find a craving for younger girls boiling in his loins, an urge he hadn’t known existed until now. But this was business, and he had no time to indulge any amount of seething lust.
He needed relief, though, and he was content enough to find it through the barrel of his sound-suppressed Beretta 92-F.
Maybe when this whole dirty business was cleaned up he could return to one of these clubs, peace of mind intact, and spend some of his hard-earned cash indulging the fire.
He spotted them beyond the next stage where three girls were gyrating the creamy goods to heavy metal thunder, in their faces. The swirling light show lit up their baby-smooth features, eyes glittering, and it angered Roswell to find the executives ready to laugh and lust the night away while prepared to stick it to DYSAT. They had secured a booth, nothing but Heineken and top-shelf booze for those guys.
Roswell gave Morton the nod. They knew the drill.
And they had their marks squeezed into the booth before they could wonder what the hell was happening.
Grogan had his bottle poised near his lips, eyes darting all around. “You guys…”
“Yeah, us guys,” Roswell said. “There’s good news and there’s bad news, ladies. Bad news—Collins, Hurley and Samuels found new employment…in hell. Good news—you guys have a chance to stay breathing, but only if you talk to us and give us everything you even think you think you know.”
Caldwell was the first to want to spill it. “Not a problem, guys, just let us explain…”
“Not here,” Roswell said. “Nice and quiet, we’ll all get up, one big happy family, out the back door.”
“We’ve got a problem. Twelve o’clock.”
Roswell followed Morton’s stare out to the party sea of lights and noise and AWOL husbands. In Roswell’s experienced estimation of human nature, separating what was what from who was who in the interest of self-preservation, the big guy was falling way short of trying to blend into the crowd as another rooster on the loose away from the wife and kids. For one thing, there were the twin bulges under the windbreaker, the first tipoff a hunter had walked in, trying to close the gap, quick and quiet. He didn’t quite have the look of a Fed, Roswell decided. There was something too cold and menacing to conclude he and Morton would simply hear the guy reading off their Miranda rights.
The big guy with icy eyes stuck to the Mr. Cool routine, just the same, ordering a beer at the bar, grinning around at the female amusement park. Once the bottle was settled in front of him, he picked up his march, shouldering his way through the suits.
Moving with purpose.
Roswell grabbed Caldwell by the arm. “Let’s go.”
LYONS WAS twelve to fifteen steps away from the hardmen when he was spotted. They were hauling the playboys out of the booth, the two buzz-cut thugs seeing him without seeing him. Tweedledee and Tweedledum had the eyes, too.
Which meant they would just as soon kill him as look at him.
He could have radioed Pol for backup, as he saw the foursome weaving through the crowd, angling for a gigantic bouncer guarding what Lyons supposed was the doorway to whore paradise. The Able Team leader decided to go solo, do it his way.
The hard way.
He deposited the beer on the edge of the bar, brushed past a scantily clad waitress who scowled and bleated an oath at his backside. They made the door, and Lyons saw Tweedledee slip a crisp bill into Godzilla’s hand, mouthing something in his direction.
Rolling on, as the foursome was swallowed up by the gloom beyond the door, Lyons already knew where this was headed. Godzilla was all evil eyes, watching as Lyons marched up to him. Getting tensed up to go on the muscle, Godzilla sizing the opposition.
“It’s a private party. Take a hike, Pops.”
Lyons gave Godzilla a quick measure. Late-twenty-something, all muscles, the kind of arrogance in his eyes that told Lyons he had never done much more most likely than toss a few drunks out the front door.
“You’re telling me this is members only, son?”
Godzilla was about to lose it, his eyes turning mean. “What part of ‘take a hike’ didn’t you understand, Pops?”
“How about none of it?”
It came from the heart to begin with, the tried-and-true warrior backed by experience, all the pain and disappointment a man could know, choke down and file away along the course of his life coming together in a critical instant to do the deed. It boiled down, essentially, to a man versus a punk. Physically it came from the legs, a coiled spring that cut loose up his lower back, up the spine, an explosion down the arm until his forearm shot up with all the force of an erupting land mine. Lyons saw the light nearly winking out as Godzilla was lifted an inch or so off his patent leathers, head snapping back on wilting rubber from the forearm pile driver to the jaw. Figure he’d spent a few more hours in the gym lately, pumping more iron than Lyons had his entire life, and he saw the need to follow up with a sweeping left hook. It damn near scared Lyons to hit the guy that hard, his fist driving through jawbone, head snapping sideways, out and back. For a second, Lyons wondered if he had decapitated Godzilla. When the man went thundering off the floor, down for the count, Lyons checked his pulse, found a weak beat. A scan of the party crowd and he found his luck was holding up for a change. They were too busy playing grab ass to notice the incident.
“Pops” Ironman Lyons freed his Colt Python, then hit the door.
CHAPTER THREE
Schwarz found the black Lexus parked in the shadows of some white-facaded structure gone to seed with weeds and vines. There was no gate around the lot, permitting quick and easy access, no valet he could find with a search of the naked eye. And the surging party mass along Sunset was too busy trooping in and out of all the rock, comedy and gentlemen’s clubs to pay one straggling shadow any mind.
Or so he hoped.
He was deep in the lot, but felt an unseen watcher hawkeyeing his back, radar from some invisible force homed in on his march, lining him up. He started to feel an itch between his shoulder blades as he gave the line of vehicles a long probing eye.
Nothing stirred.
Okay, he was in, but something felt off-kilter, and he found himself planning his exit already. Still he had a job to do, but as he was forging toward the black Lexus, he couldn’t help but feel Lyons was on a headhunting tour inside the club, a sense of urgency to get back to the van burning him up. Three days of lurking all over town, watching their targets live it up like piggish royalty. For some reason he couldn’t quite pin down, he felt it was set to blow up in their faces.
Lyons wasn’t the patient sort.
Schwarz picked up the pace, feeling that heart palpitation Pol mentioned, wondering where the black SUV that carried at least two of the other thugs was parked. He’d settle for one out of two, at worst, even though Ironman wouldn’t appreciate a half-assed outing. It wasn’t that Schwarz intended to come up short on his task. Rather, he felt a strange anxiety, some omen hanging out there in the buzz and babble of nightlife. Speed and a quick retreat made more sense than wandering about, checking out vehicles, casting about the paranoid eye like some potential car thief in the neighborhood.
He made the Lexus, fixed the small magnetic tracking box under the starboard front fender. He was suddenly thinking of his choice side arm, the Beretta 93-R, when he sensed a presence behind him. It was pure combat instinct that sent Schwarz springing to his feet, propelling himself into a flying leap over the hood as the pistol sounded a cracking retort from behind, a bolt of hot lightning burning over his scalp. The round chipped off a fleck of stone above his head, the screaming ricochet flying off into the night. Smart money told him a cop would have at least identified himself.
That left the missing third goon.
Schwarz had the Beretta out, came up, glimpsed the thug in question and capped off a round to let the guy know he was no easy tag. He missed badly, a hasty shot with no time to line it up, winging it for effect, the thug dropping beneath the roof. The windshield of a Jaguar downrange absorbed his wild round, a neat hole punched through to give the missing driver some mystery to ponder over later.
Schwarz hit the pavement on his belly, somehow kept the wind from getting punched out of his lungs, adrenaline doing all the work as he knew there was less than a second to clean it up before he was the only mess left behind. It was nothing more than a flash, feet scampering up the opposite side, but Schwarz tapped off a 9 mm round that scored flesh and bone, chopped the guy off at the ankle. Even in the heat of battle, he gave the opposition some credit for not screaming out, the hardman hammering the ground, but holding on to dish it back and fight it out.
The microsecond of begrudging admiration ended in the next eye blink as the thug turned wildman, opened up to throw his own play back in his face. Rounds were whining off the asphalt, lead hornets buzzing and banging off the chassis. Schwarz hit the front end, the tire punched out in a thud followed by a long hiss of exhaling air, then he went for broke.
Schwarz made a snap decision to steal a page from the Ironman manual on combat tactics. It was akin to charging the hill, all balls and brazen defiance, but Schwarz knew there was no choice but to go for it.
The opposition was still blasting away on the blind-side when Schwarz threw himself onto the hood, rolling up the windshield as more wild rounds then came erupting through glass, the shooter trying to line him up, professional cool under pain and fire, the faceless hardman trailing all the racket of his weight slamming metal with screaming lead. He was up and sliding down the roof, skidding on his butt off the back end when the shadow shooter figured out the play too late. It could have been white-hot agony clogging up the works, keeping the fallen shooter from twisting to line him up. It could have been he’d burned out the clip by the time Schwarz was dropping off the trunk and going for it.
It didn’t matter either way in the end. Schwarz hit his feet, pumped a 9 mm sendoff between the shooter’s eyes just as the hardman was swinging the pistol his way.
The curtain might have dropped on one out of three, but Schwarz knew the real trouble had only just started. So much for high-tech intentions.
War had just been declared on Able Team.
Schwarz was scanning the vicinity, retracing his steps back through the lot. They were still laughing it up out there on Sunset, unaware death walked among them. Schwarz kept the Beretta out and leading the way. He was thinking of Lyons, some uncanny instinct tugging him toward the club. He pulled out his handheld radio, raised Blancanales and told him, “We’ve got problems.”
ROSWELL DECIDED the alley would mark the big guy’s final resting place. A deathtrap was in order, something quick and neat, since he’d just seen their pursuer slip through the doorway, a large revolver in his hand. Something had gone wrong, the fifty spot he’d laid on the bouncer wasted money. Just before hitting the far back door, Roswell thought he’d caught the sound of a falling body where the bouncer had stood guard.
Whoever the big guy was, he had a look about him that warned Roswell they were being tracked by a mad dog who wouldn’t rest until the choice beef was in its mouth. And now he wasn’t only moving with more purpose, but he was also kicking ass and taking names.
A quick scan of the wide alley, and Roswell nodded toward the garbage Dumpster behind, told Morton, “I’ll get his attention.”
Roswell needed this nailed down, five seconds ago, then get on his way back to the colonel’s office. A long night of grilling two more of DYSAT’s loudmouths was going to prove a task grim enough. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth was on the menu, on hold for the moment, but the last thing Roswell needed was some armed bulldog chasing them all over Los Angeles, growling and biting at their heels.
Enough. Time to make a stand.
Roswell grabbed Caldwell by the scruff of his neck, then jammed the muzzle of his sound-suppressed Beretta against the base of Grogan’s skull. “Both of you. Slow. Turn around. Any squawking, any sudden cute moves, I just as soon shoot you both and leave you for the garbagemen in the morning.”
THE STINK of sweat and stale sex in his nose, Lyons advanced down the long hallway, tuning out all the moaning and mewing from behind closed doors on the way. Moments ago, he’d spotted his quarry going out the back door. Colt Python leading the march, Lyons made the door, listened to the silence beyond. If they were gone, he could only hope Pol had a visual, Gadgets delivering the tracking presents. If they were waiting…
Lyons shouldered his way out the door. Two steps beyond and into the alley, he heard, “Hey, over here!”
It was too easy, and the old saying about something looking too good to be true saved his life. He was lurching back just as the first two or three rounds were barking his way. Lyons had the setup mentally gauged, as slugs tattooed the doorway in a flash of sparking steel. Tweedledee was using the DYSAT playboys as human armor, with Tweedledum down the alley, looking to wrap this up, no fuss.
Screw it, Lyons thought, crouching, swinging around the big hand cannon. He was lining up Tweedledee’s leg when the howling of men in anguish raked the air. The Beretta was blown out of Tweedledee’s hand in a burst of crimson, then Lyons made out his back-door cavalry.
Schwarz.
Maybe it was the sight of watching his comrade in kidnapping going down as his head was cracked open by one well-placed round from Schwarz’s Beretta. But Tweedledum’s head popped over the edge of the garbage Dumpster, eyes bugged, and Lyons pulled the trigger, erasing the picture of confusion forever.
The playboys were grabbing air, hopping around, snapping out the questions. Lyons was already on his radio, rounding up Blancanales. “Pol, get your ass in the alley.”
Schwarz was sporting a wry grin, stepping up to the DYSAT executives. “Good thing I was thinking about you.”
Lyons matched the look as Blancanales roared the van into the alley. “Something just told you your old pal would need a helping hand, huh?”
“You know, Carl, you ever think about cutting back on the red meat?”
“WHERE TO?” Blancanales asked as he headed the van west on Sunset.
“Find Santa Monica Boulevard,” Lyons answered. “That will get us in the general vicinity of Century City. I think it’s time we paid their boss a visit. Assuming he keeps longer work hours than the hired help.”
Lyons was scrunched up beside Gadgets, and their two songbirds were in back. The plastic cuffs had already been snapped on their wrists, and Lyons read the fear on their expressions as they sat on the floor.
“Right, you two are in a world of hurt.”
“Are you cops?”
“Not exactly. Right now we’re the only thing that stands between a bunch of guys like the ones we left back there in the alley, and your permanent retirement from DYSAT.”
“You want us to talk about what we know?”
“You sound like a smart young man.”
“What’s in it for us?”
Lyons chuckled. “Now you’re sounding not so smart. All I’m telling you on a deal, is that it depends on what we hear. Bottom line, that’s not my call to make.”
He was about to unleash the flurry of questions when the phone with its secured line beeped from its hookup on the console. Schwarz fielded the call. Lyons waited, heard Gadgets grunting.
“Yeah…uh-huh…right…just a second…”
“It’s Hal,” Schwarz said, his hand over the mouthpiece. “He said we have a green light—sort of.”
“What the hell’s sort of?”
“There’s conditions. What do you want me to tell him about our situation?”
“The truth.”
THE TRUTH SENT Brognola digging out the packet of antacid tablets. He washed three of them down with coffee, then moved deeper across the Computer Room. Akira Tokaido and Hunt Wethers stopped their cyber sleuthing on pertinent background data on the key DYSAT players long enough to catch the grim update on Able Team.
“Carl says it was self-defense,” Brognola said. “Schwarz says his guy came in, likewise blasting.”
“The bad guys know they’re targeted,” Kurtzman said from his workstation. “Maybe that’s good. Now that the opening guns have sounded, the top dogs will get nervous, maybe try and pack up their toys, whatever the latest shipment, and bull ahead.”
“Or pull up the drawbridge,” Price stated.
“I don’t think it’s exactly what the President had in mind,” Tokaido put in, “when he alluded to turning up the heat a notch. But we all know Carl can get a little antsy.”
“Well, antsy or whatever, the heat is on, people,” Brognola said. “The only question is who burns first.”
“And the DYSAT lab facility in Idaho?” Wethers asked. “Is it still hands off?”
