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He reached into the stairwell housing and grabbed one of the dead punks. He jerked the corpse out of the doorway, then slammed the door closed. He pushed the corpse against the door to hold it closed.
He devised a booby trap. He jerked the pin from the grenade and put the grenade between the corpse holding the door closed and the door itself. When the punks shoved the door open, the grenade would explode, maiming or killing the nearest pursuers, perhaps killing a few on the stairs.
Lyons grinned sardonically at a thought. Can't chase if they got no legs.
"Ironman!" Gadgets called out. "Move it! Flor says there's action in the alley."
The boom of a .45 spurred Lyons. A loaded AK in each hand, he ran for the corpse-bridge through the razor wire. The .45 boomed twice again. Autofire from an M-16 answered. A final shot from Flor's Detonics .45 silenced the Colt rifle.
Hurtling the gap, steel razors slashing one leg, Lyons passed Blancanales and Gadgets. He ran to the edge of the roof and looked down.
The rented Ford spun rubber, fishtailing through the alley. The car lurched as it thumped over a corpse, then raced away. Autofire — this time from a Kalashnikov — popped from the doorways beneath Lyons. The glass of the Ford's rear windshield shattered.
Skidding around the corner, the Ford disappeared from his sight. He jerked his hand-radio from his belt. Gadgets's shout stopped him.
"She's around the corner. Waiting for us. So let's move it!"
The grenade booby trap exploded. Lyons followed Gadgets and Blancanales over the roofs.
Hearing the screams of the berserk punks, Lyons looked back. He saw a horror.
A punk pursued them. Lurching from side to side, moving oddly, the punk seemed to be only four feet tall. Then Lyons realized what he saw. The punk had lost both legs at the knees. Yet he did not fall. The punk continued forward, running on the stumps of his legs, an autorifle gripped in his hands.
Lyons carefully lined up the Kalashnikov's night-sight dots on the maimed, drug-enraged monster and shot the top of its head away.
Others came. Shrieking and screaming, they tried to thrash through the razor wire. The steel points slashed them but they did not notice. One of the punks found the gap and called out to the others.
Lyons fired again. He saw the guy's head explode. Then Lyons sprinted after his partners.
Gadgets covered the roof with his Uzi as Blancanales went down the fire escape. Lyons looked at the 9mm submachine gun in Gadgets's hands and shook his head.
"Forget that little popgun. Just go. I'll do what lean."
With a quick salute, Gadgets followed Blancanales. Lyons turned to the advancing gang. He took cover behind a fan housing. Easing the Kalashnikov's fire-selector lever to semiautomatic, he lined up the AK's glowing dots on the screaming mouth of a punk. The 7.62mm ComBloc slug punched through the mouth to explode the brain-stem. The punk dropped instantly.
Lyons methodically executed the next three punks. The drug gave them superhuman strength and rage but made them stupid. They did not take cover or advance in fire-teams. They only rushed at Lyons. And he killed them.
Snapping the magazine out of his second captured AK — the autorifle had no night sights — he shoved the magazine in his coat pocket. He slung the AK with night sights over his shoulder and ran to the ladder.
Without any attempt at silence, Lyons descended. He called out to his partners. "On my way down!"
A truck engine revved. Gears shifted. Lyons looked down as a five-ton truck marked LAYAC Farm Fresh Produce came from a garage. The truck gained speed. An autorifle extended from the passenger-side window, spraying fire wildly at the alley's shadows. Blancanales and Gadgets returned fire.
The truck swerved and bumped onto the side street where Flor waited. Lyons heard more auto-fire. Then the sound of the truck's engine faded.
Continuing to the alley, Lyons ran to where Flor waited. With Blancanales and Gadgets only a few steps behind him, Lyons jerked open the Ford's passenger front door.
"That truck, we got to..."
But no one waited in the driver's seat. Lyons looked into the front seat, called out, "Where's Flor?" Panic rose in his throat.
He scanned the street. He saw a door close. The muzzle of a Kalashnikov smashed through a window and fire flashed. Even as he returned fire, Lyons screamed out, "There! They took her in there!"
Fear and reason left Lyons's mind.
12
13
14
He devised a booby trap. He jerked the pin from the grenade and put the grenade between the corpse holding the door closed and the door itself. When the punks shoved the door open, the grenade would explode, maiming or killing the nearest pursuers, perhaps killing a few on the stairs.
Lyons grinned sardonically at a thought. Can't chase if they got no legs.
"Ironman!" Gadgets called out. "Move it! Flor says there's action in the alley."
The boom of a .45 spurred Lyons. A loaded AK in each hand, he ran for the corpse-bridge through the razor wire. The .45 boomed twice again. Autofire from an M-16 answered. A final shot from Flor's Detonics .45 silenced the Colt rifle.
Hurtling the gap, steel razors slashing one leg, Lyons passed Blancanales and Gadgets. He ran to the edge of the roof and looked down.
The rented Ford spun rubber, fishtailing through the alley. The car lurched as it thumped over a corpse, then raced away. Autofire — this time from a Kalashnikov — popped from the doorways beneath Lyons. The glass of the Ford's rear windshield shattered.
Skidding around the corner, the Ford disappeared from his sight. He jerked his hand-radio from his belt. Gadgets's shout stopped him.
"She's around the corner. Waiting for us. So let's move it!"
The grenade booby trap exploded. Lyons followed Gadgets and Blancanales over the roofs.
Hearing the screams of the berserk punks, Lyons looked back. He saw a horror.
A punk pursued them. Lurching from side to side, moving oddly, the punk seemed to be only four feet tall. Then Lyons realized what he saw. The punk had lost both legs at the knees. Yet he did not fall. The punk continued forward, running on the stumps of his legs, an autorifle gripped in his hands.
Lyons carefully lined up the Kalashnikov's night-sight dots on the maimed, drug-enraged monster and shot the top of its head away.
Others came. Shrieking and screaming, they tried to thrash through the razor wire. The steel points slashed them but they did not notice. One of the punks found the gap and called out to the others.
Lyons fired again. He saw the guy's head explode. Then Lyons sprinted after his partners.
Gadgets covered the roof with his Uzi as Blancanales went down the fire escape. Lyons looked at the 9mm submachine gun in Gadgets's hands and shook his head.
"Forget that little popgun. Just go. I'll do what lean."
With a quick salute, Gadgets followed Blancanales. Lyons turned to the advancing gang. He took cover behind a fan housing. Easing the Kalashnikov's fire-selector lever to semiautomatic, he lined up the AK's glowing dots on the screaming mouth of a punk. The 7.62mm ComBloc slug punched through the mouth to explode the brain-stem. The punk dropped instantly.
Lyons methodically executed the next three punks. The drug gave them superhuman strength and rage but made them stupid. They did not take cover or advance in fire-teams. They only rushed at Lyons. And he killed them.
Snapping the magazine out of his second captured AK — the autorifle had no night sights — he shoved the magazine in his coat pocket. He slung the AK with night sights over his shoulder and ran to the ladder.
Without any attempt at silence, Lyons descended. He called out to his partners. "On my way down!"
A truck engine revved. Gears shifted. Lyons looked down as a five-ton truck marked LAYAC Farm Fresh Produce came from a garage. The truck gained speed. An autorifle extended from the passenger-side window, spraying fire wildly at the alley's shadows. Blancanales and Gadgets returned fire.
The truck swerved and bumped onto the side street where Flor waited. Lyons heard more auto-fire. Then the sound of the truck's engine faded.
Continuing to the alley, Lyons ran to where Flor waited. With Blancanales and Gadgets only a few steps behind him, Lyons jerked open the Ford's passenger front door.
"That truck, we got to..."
But no one waited in the driver's seat. Lyons looked into the front seat, called out, "Where's Flor?" Panic rose in his throat.
He scanned the street. He saw a door close. The muzzle of a Kalashnikov smashed through a window and fire flashed. Even as he returned fire, Lyons screamed out, "There! They took her in there!"
Fear and reason left Lyons's mind.
12
As the truck hurtled through the streets of East Los Angeles, Abdul Shabaka plotted his next move. The LAYAC produce truck carried all his audiovisual equipment and his entire library of hate films that documented the history of white crimes against blacks and Indians and other non-whites. The film projectors, stereos, audio mixers and video machines would help establish another indoctrination center for young psychopaths and criminals in another city, away from here.
First, he and his squad of personal bodyguards would take shelter in the warehouse he had rented the year before. He'd never put his faith in the LAYAC organization. He only trusted himself. Therefore he had prepared for the day when LAYAC collapsed. He had rented the warehouse, he had modified the building to provide security and defense and had hidden weapons and ammunition inside the building.
But more important, he had a long-distance radio at the warehouse.
With the radio, he would transmit new instructions to his men driving north through Mexico.
Their truck carried another shipment of the drug. Not the few grams Shabaka had left with the gangs in the LAYAC offices, but hundreds of kilos of the chemical.
One kilo of the "crazy dust" created one hundred addicted Warriors of Allah and maintained their need for a month.
One hundred kilos of "crazy dust" created ten thousand fearless, relentless Warriors of Allah who would follow any order, commit any act ordered by their commander, Abdul Shabaka, the Modern Prophet and Leader of the Jihad against the American pigs.
Any crime, any atrocity, any horror.
Ten thousand warriors who knew no fear, who fought despite any wound, who killed without questions, who killed the blue-eyed pigs without mercy.
Ten thousand Warriors of Allah who would lay waste the cities of the white pigs.
Blancanales radioed Detective Towers. "They've got Flor. We're going into the LAYAC offices to get her back."
Lyons interrupted his partner with a shout into the radio. "Warn all those cops on the way, pistols aren't enough. Shotguns and automatic weapons only."
"What're you talking about?" Towers responded. "What's happening there? I thought you were going in quiet."
"Too late for that!" Blancanales barked. "You heard the warning, compadre. And tell the other police. Use shotguns and aim for the head. Over."
Lyons slapsealed the Velcro closures of his Kevlar-and-steel trauma-plate battle armor, then buckled on a bandolier of box magazines for his Atchisson. He took up the Atchisson with the fourteen-inch barrel.
Due to the good fortune of the police academy demonstration that morning, the Ford's trunk contained two Atchisson assault shotguns. Blancanales would carry the second full-auto shotgun.
"Got no bandolier for you, Pol," Lyons told Blancanales. "Dump all these extra mags in your pouches."
Blancanales suited up fast. "What are the loads? Double-ought? Jungle mix?"
"Ask Konzaki. He put them all together for the show at the academy. Whatever the loads are, they'll kill punks. Here's the Crowd-killing Device. Gadgets! Ready to go?"
In his battle armor and weapons, Gadgets looked like a walking gun shop. He carried his Uzi and the Uzi he had captured on the roof. He also carried Blancanales's M-16/M-203 hybrid over-and-under assault rifle and grenade launcher. A bandolier of 40mm grenades crossed bandoliers of thirty-round Uzi magazines. He hurried to select grenades from the suitcases he and Blancanales had brought from Stony Man.
"White light shock-stun, right? But no frag or phosphorous?" he said.
"Damn right!" Lyons told him. "Don't want to waste Flor. You ready to go?"
"Here, take these." Gadgets pushed the anti-terrorist grenades on Lyons. Designed to blind and stun airline hijackers without killing passengers, the grenades produced a blinding flash and deafening blast but no shrapnel.
Lyons jammed the grenades in his armor's pouches. He jerked back his Atchisson's actuator to feed the first 12-gauge round. "Time to go! She's in there..."
"She's been in there two minutes," Gadgets said, glancing at his watch. "If she's dead, she's dead. But if we go in there before we're ready, we're dead, too."
"I'm ready now!"
Lyons left the cover of the Ford. A form leaned from a first-floor window to aim an AK. Firing the Atchisson from his hip as he ran, Lyons sprayed the window with a three-blast burst of number two and double-ought steel shot, the high-velocity projectiles raking the window from side to side. The AK gunner's left hand and face disintegrated as the window exploded inward.
Lyons sprinted to the window. Pulling a shock-stun grenade from a thigh pocket, he lobbed it in.
Blancanales ran to the building and waited with Lyons — both men covering their ears — for the few heartbeats until the grenade's fuse triggered the white flash.
The deafening boom fractured the air. Kicking through the door, Lyons held his Atchisson ready.
In the pale blue light from the side street, he saw a tangle of bodies on the floor. Broken plaster, books, spilled papers covered the semiconscious wounded. He did not see Flor.
Moving fast, Lyons kicked punks over, checking each of them. Blancanales stood in the doorway, his riot-length Atchisson covering the office and the inner door. Lyons pointed to the inner door, shouted, "Whitelight!"
Blancanales aimed at the doorknob and lock. A single round from the 12-gauge removed the entire assembly. Fire from an AK answered. A shock-stun grenade in his hand, Lyons pointed at the center of the door. Blancanales aimed again. Two blasts opened a hole six inches by twelve inches.
Gunners on the other side of the door sprayed wild automatic fire. Lyons let the safety lever flip from the shock-stun, waited to the count of four, then snapped the grenade through the hole in the door.
The blast threw the door across the office. Lyons dodged through the doorway. In the swirling plaster dust, he saw a Chicano sprawled against the wall with a Kalashnikov in his hands. Lyons kicked the Chicano's throat. Through the leather and neoprene of his shoe, he felt the cartilage crush.
Blancanales saw movement on the office floor. A hand lifted an AK by the pistol grip. Whipping around the twenty-inch barrel of his Atchisson, Blancanales jerked the trigger.
Unfamiliar with the assault shotgun, Blancanales inadvertently advanced the fire selector to full-auto as he triggered the blast. The shotgun roared with a burst of point-blank fire.
Andrzej Konzaki, the Stony Man weaponsmith, had loaded that magazine to impress the onlookers of the police academy demonstration with the destructive firepower of the assault weapon. The magazine alternated jungle mix — number two and double-ought steel shot — with slugs. Fired at point-blank distance into a human body, the four rounds, two of steel shot and two of one-ounce slugs, exploded the torso and head, tore through the dying punk in a storm of projectiles to strike the linoleum-and-concrete-slab floor of the office, and finally ricocheted, spraying high-velocity steel and lead fragments in all directions.
Gore splashed the office. Konzaki's weapon and ammunition succeeded in highly impressing Rosario Blancanales, ex-Green Beret and veteran of several wars. For a moment he stared at the mass of glistening meat and blood that had been a body. He had never seen an infantry weapon — other than a grenade launcher or a LAAW rocket — create such mayhem. He dropped out the empty magazine and jammed in another.
In the corridor, Lyons kicked over gasping, bleeding gang boys. One had a Kalashnikov, another an M-16, a third a .38 pistol. Lyons went flat against the wall and peered through the dust that grayed the corridor.
The corridor led through the old apartment buildings, passing from one building to the next, connecting offices and meeting rooms. Several doors opened onto it.
A form dashed from an office. Lyons raised his Atchisson, but Blancanales fired first, a blast of steel shot throwing the punk down. Lyons looked to Blancanales and raised a shock-stun grenade in his hand. Blancanales nodded. He braced his Atchisson to cover his partner.
Lyons ran forward, one shoulder against the wall, his eyes searching the doorways for any movement. At the first doorway, as the wounded punk tried to rise on shattered, blood-spurting legs, Lyons tossed the shock-stun inside.
With a growl, a wide-eyed punk stomped from the office, his M-16 spraying fire. Lyons stayed to the side and slammed his arm down on the weapon's barrel and black plastic foregrip. Slugs from the M-16 killed the wounded punk on the floor, then the blastflash of the grenade threw the hyped-up homeboy across the corridor. Lyons snatched the pistol grip of his slung Atchisson and pointed the fourteen-inch barrel at the punk's head. When the muzzle flashed, the head ceased to exist.
Looking into the office, Lyons saw a form thrashing in the clutter of spilled papers and books. The young black man wore a black jacket vivid with the gang logo, The Headhunters, and a severed head dripping blood. Glitter made the staring eyes of the head sparkle. The gang punk reached for a weapon.
Lyons stomped on the Headhunter's hand, breaking the wrist under his heel. The punk snatched at a pistol with his left hand.
The heel of Lyons's shoe came down again, this time on the punk's solar plexus. Though the stomp propelled the air from the teenager's lungs, he did not feel the pain. His hand closed around the pistol grip. Lyons kicked the pistol away.
Lyons put the muzzle of the Atchisson into the soft hollow of the punk's throat, where his neck met his collarbones and chest. Lyons asked one question, "Where's the woman?"
The Headhunter sucked down a breath and attacked Lyons, flailing at him with his broken hand and his good fist. Lyons pushed the muzzle into the punk's throat. "Where's the woman?"
Clawing at Lyons, the punk thrashed against the muzzle of the full-auto shotgun. Lurching from the floor, the punk grabbed at Lyons's right hand gripping the Atchisson.
The blast sent the Headhunter into the void to forever hunt for his head.
The torso flopped and quivered on the floor as Lyons went to the door. He took another shock-stun from his battle armor's pouches.
"They're rushing..." Blancanales called out, the booming of his Atchisson cutting his words short.
A storm of autofire swept the corridor. Five-point-fifty-six-millimeter and 7.62 ComBloc slugs ricocheted and whined from the walls and floors as Blancanales sprayed the line of onrushing gang punks with his Atchisson.
The shock of a bullet impact knocked Blancanales back. Lyons saw his partner fall, once more called out, "Whitelight!"
Throwing the shock-stun grenade at the mob of punks, Lyons jerked another seven-round magazine from his bandolier. Holding his Atchisson in one hand, he shielded his left ear with his other hand and turned away.
The boom-flash silenced the autorifles for an instant. His head ringing, Lyons leaned from the protection of the doorway and emptied his Atchisson into the downed crowd of chemically hyped punks.
High-velocity steel exploded skulls, ripped away arms and feet. Lyons took cover again, dropped out the empty mag, jammed in the next. He flipped the fire selector up to semiauto and searched for targets.
A punk in a blood-splashed purple jacket rose to his knees. He swung a Kalashnikov to his shoulder as Lyons put fifty steel balls through his chest at 1400 feet per second.
Another Chicano clawed his way from under a dead comrade and pointed a .45 automatic. High-velocity steel ripped away his arm and head.
A wounded punk pushed himself up from the bloody floor. He lurched upright and swung a machete. Lyons set the Atchisson's sight on the teenager's forehead. Brains sprayed.
Lyons pulled another magazine out of his gear, then went to Blancanales's side. The stocky Puerto Rican got to his feet. He looked to his battle armor. A bullet had torn through the Kevlar to punch through an Atchisson magazine. But the steel trauma plate had finally stopped the slug.
Blancanales gave Lyons a thumbs-up. But when he tried to reload his Atchisson, he found the lower receiver deformed by a bullet. A ComBloc slug had punched through the magazine well and smashed the interior mechanisms.
Another gang surged into the corridor. Lyons raised his Atchisson and rushed them, firing from the hip, every blast from the 12-gauge assault shotgun slamming a crazed punk back.
Slinging the inoperative Atchisson over his shoulder, Blancanales grabbed a blood-slick Kalashnikov from the floor. He went to Lyons's side, firing two— and three-shot bursts into the shoulder-to-shoulder mass of teenage monsters.
Lyons's weapon went empty. He knelt on one knee to reload. He dropped out the spent magazine and jammed in the next. But the magazine did not snap into the weapon. Lyons pushed it but felt no snap that would indicate correct seating. Pulling out the mag, he saw flesh and a bit of bone fouling the top 12-gauge shell.
As Lyons struggled to clean the fouled magazine and reload the Atchisson, Blancanales saw one punk charge ahead, a machete raised high. Snap-sighting on the rabid teenager's chest, Blancanales fired. A single round staggered the punk, but he did not fall. The Kalashnikov rifle empty, Blancanales saw the punk continuing forward, the machete still raised high.
Blancanales took the captured Kalashnikov by the barrel and rushed the oncoming punk. With all his strength, Blancanales swung the rifle.
The blow crushed the punk's skull. But the spot-welds joining the cheap pot-metal components of the ComBloc weapon broke. Left with only the Kalashnikov's barrel in his hands, Blancanales looked for another weapon as a second punk came at them with a revolver flashing.
A .38 slug ripped past his ear as Blancanales grabbed a machete from the corridor's gore-splashed floor. Then Lyons's Atchisson boomed. The punk with the pistol fell. But the wall of drug-crazed blood-lusting human animals did not stop.
"Down!" Gadgets screamed to his partners.
Falling to their faces in the blood, Lyons and Blancanales heard the M-203 grenade launcher fire.
The first two punks lurched as a blast of twenty-seven double-ought balls slammed into them. But the low-velocity projectiles from a 40mm buckshot round did not stop them. Blood spurting from their faces and chests, their comrades pushing the dying punks forward, they continued on.
Lyons fired his Atchisson as a continuous line of 9mm slugs ripped into the mob. Gadgets fired an Uzi in each hand, holding the triggers back, brass raining around him. Finally, the Israeli submachine guns went silent.
From his prone position, Lyons saw an M-16 rising. He did not aim. He fired wild, saw blood spray the ceiling. Then his weapon's action locked back.
Punks still came. Blancanales rose to one knee. He had picked up a machete. He slashed with it. A punk's hand and pistol hit the wall. Another pointed a shotgun and fired, but the blast went into the back of the one-handed punk.
Intestines exploded. Blancanales pushed the dying punk aside and hacked again and again as the shotgunner pumped the Remington's slide.
The arms and shotgun fell. The maimed punk thrashed at Blancanales with the stumps of his arms. Then Lyons shoved his partner aside and put the muzzle of the fourteen-inch barrel of the Atchisson under the screaming gang boy's chin.
Blast flipped the corpse backward. Lyons semiautoed blasts into another running punk, then killed the crawling wounded.
Blood-soaked, flesh glistening on their battle armor, the three men of Able Team remained alive in the corridor of slaughter.
Gadgets splashed through the blood to his partners. The reloaded Uzis swung from his shoulders.
He gripped the M-16/M-203. Eyes wide with horror, his breath coming in panic pants, Gadgets kept repeating, "This is heavy, this is heavy, I mean, I came to the party late, and I don't know about this scene. Definitely number one thousand. Maybe one million."
"If they rush us again," Blancanales told Lyons, "we are overrun."
Lyons slammed another magazine into his Atchisson. "We haven't found Flor."
They heard footsteps and the firing of shotguns and pistols. Lyons looked to his partners.
"Here they come…"
First, he and his squad of personal bodyguards would take shelter in the warehouse he had rented the year before. He'd never put his faith in the LAYAC organization. He only trusted himself. Therefore he had prepared for the day when LAYAC collapsed. He had rented the warehouse, he had modified the building to provide security and defense and had hidden weapons and ammunition inside the building.
But more important, he had a long-distance radio at the warehouse.
With the radio, he would transmit new instructions to his men driving north through Mexico.
Their truck carried another shipment of the drug. Not the few grams Shabaka had left with the gangs in the LAYAC offices, but hundreds of kilos of the chemical.
One kilo of the "crazy dust" created one hundred addicted Warriors of Allah and maintained their need for a month.
One hundred kilos of "crazy dust" created ten thousand fearless, relentless Warriors of Allah who would follow any order, commit any act ordered by their commander, Abdul Shabaka, the Modern Prophet and Leader of the Jihad against the American pigs.
Any crime, any atrocity, any horror.
Ten thousand warriors who knew no fear, who fought despite any wound, who killed without questions, who killed the blue-eyed pigs without mercy.
Ten thousand Warriors of Allah who would lay waste the cities of the white pigs.
* * *
Sirens approached. The scanner on the front seat of the rented Ford monitored the radio chaos of the approaching squad cars.Blancanales radioed Detective Towers. "They've got Flor. We're going into the LAYAC offices to get her back."
Lyons interrupted his partner with a shout into the radio. "Warn all those cops on the way, pistols aren't enough. Shotguns and automatic weapons only."
"What're you talking about?" Towers responded. "What's happening there? I thought you were going in quiet."
"Too late for that!" Blancanales barked. "You heard the warning, compadre. And tell the other police. Use shotguns and aim for the head. Over."
Lyons slapsealed the Velcro closures of his Kevlar-and-steel trauma-plate battle armor, then buckled on a bandolier of box magazines for his Atchisson. He took up the Atchisson with the fourteen-inch barrel.
Due to the good fortune of the police academy demonstration that morning, the Ford's trunk contained two Atchisson assault shotguns. Blancanales would carry the second full-auto shotgun.
"Got no bandolier for you, Pol," Lyons told Blancanales. "Dump all these extra mags in your pouches."
Blancanales suited up fast. "What are the loads? Double-ought? Jungle mix?"
"Ask Konzaki. He put them all together for the show at the academy. Whatever the loads are, they'll kill punks. Here's the Crowd-killing Device. Gadgets! Ready to go?"
In his battle armor and weapons, Gadgets looked like a walking gun shop. He carried his Uzi and the Uzi he had captured on the roof. He also carried Blancanales's M-16/M-203 hybrid over-and-under assault rifle and grenade launcher. A bandolier of 40mm grenades crossed bandoliers of thirty-round Uzi magazines. He hurried to select grenades from the suitcases he and Blancanales had brought from Stony Man.
"White light shock-stun, right? But no frag or phosphorous?" he said.
"Damn right!" Lyons told him. "Don't want to waste Flor. You ready to go?"
"Here, take these." Gadgets pushed the anti-terrorist grenades on Lyons. Designed to blind and stun airline hijackers without killing passengers, the grenades produced a blinding flash and deafening blast but no shrapnel.
Lyons jammed the grenades in his armor's pouches. He jerked back his Atchisson's actuator to feed the first 12-gauge round. "Time to go! She's in there..."
"She's been in there two minutes," Gadgets said, glancing at his watch. "If she's dead, she's dead. But if we go in there before we're ready, we're dead, too."
"I'm ready now!"
Lyons left the cover of the Ford. A form leaned from a first-floor window to aim an AK. Firing the Atchisson from his hip as he ran, Lyons sprayed the window with a three-blast burst of number two and double-ought steel shot, the high-velocity projectiles raking the window from side to side. The AK gunner's left hand and face disintegrated as the window exploded inward.
Lyons sprinted to the window. Pulling a shock-stun grenade from a thigh pocket, he lobbed it in.
Blancanales ran to the building and waited with Lyons — both men covering their ears — for the few heartbeats until the grenade's fuse triggered the white flash.
The deafening boom fractured the air. Kicking through the door, Lyons held his Atchisson ready.
In the pale blue light from the side street, he saw a tangle of bodies on the floor. Broken plaster, books, spilled papers covered the semiconscious wounded. He did not see Flor.
Moving fast, Lyons kicked punks over, checking each of them. Blancanales stood in the doorway, his riot-length Atchisson covering the office and the inner door. Lyons pointed to the inner door, shouted, "Whitelight!"
Blancanales aimed at the doorknob and lock. A single round from the 12-gauge removed the entire assembly. Fire from an AK answered. A shock-stun grenade in his hand, Lyons pointed at the center of the door. Blancanales aimed again. Two blasts opened a hole six inches by twelve inches.
Gunners on the other side of the door sprayed wild automatic fire. Lyons let the safety lever flip from the shock-stun, waited to the count of four, then snapped the grenade through the hole in the door.
The blast threw the door across the office. Lyons dodged through the doorway. In the swirling plaster dust, he saw a Chicano sprawled against the wall with a Kalashnikov in his hands. Lyons kicked the Chicano's throat. Through the leather and neoprene of his shoe, he felt the cartilage crush.
Blancanales saw movement on the office floor. A hand lifted an AK by the pistol grip. Whipping around the twenty-inch barrel of his Atchisson, Blancanales jerked the trigger.
Unfamiliar with the assault shotgun, Blancanales inadvertently advanced the fire selector to full-auto as he triggered the blast. The shotgun roared with a burst of point-blank fire.
Andrzej Konzaki, the Stony Man weaponsmith, had loaded that magazine to impress the onlookers of the police academy demonstration with the destructive firepower of the assault weapon. The magazine alternated jungle mix — number two and double-ought steel shot — with slugs. Fired at point-blank distance into a human body, the four rounds, two of steel shot and two of one-ounce slugs, exploded the torso and head, tore through the dying punk in a storm of projectiles to strike the linoleum-and-concrete-slab floor of the office, and finally ricocheted, spraying high-velocity steel and lead fragments in all directions.
Gore splashed the office. Konzaki's weapon and ammunition succeeded in highly impressing Rosario Blancanales, ex-Green Beret and veteran of several wars. For a moment he stared at the mass of glistening meat and blood that had been a body. He had never seen an infantry weapon — other than a grenade launcher or a LAAW rocket — create such mayhem. He dropped out the empty magazine and jammed in another.
In the corridor, Lyons kicked over gasping, bleeding gang boys. One had a Kalashnikov, another an M-16, a third a .38 pistol. Lyons went flat against the wall and peered through the dust that grayed the corridor.
The corridor led through the old apartment buildings, passing from one building to the next, connecting offices and meeting rooms. Several doors opened onto it.
A form dashed from an office. Lyons raised his Atchisson, but Blancanales fired first, a blast of steel shot throwing the punk down. Lyons looked to Blancanales and raised a shock-stun grenade in his hand. Blancanales nodded. He braced his Atchisson to cover his partner.
Lyons ran forward, one shoulder against the wall, his eyes searching the doorways for any movement. At the first doorway, as the wounded punk tried to rise on shattered, blood-spurting legs, Lyons tossed the shock-stun inside.
With a growl, a wide-eyed punk stomped from the office, his M-16 spraying fire. Lyons stayed to the side and slammed his arm down on the weapon's barrel and black plastic foregrip. Slugs from the M-16 killed the wounded punk on the floor, then the blastflash of the grenade threw the hyped-up homeboy across the corridor. Lyons snatched the pistol grip of his slung Atchisson and pointed the fourteen-inch barrel at the punk's head. When the muzzle flashed, the head ceased to exist.
Looking into the office, Lyons saw a form thrashing in the clutter of spilled papers and books. The young black man wore a black jacket vivid with the gang logo, The Headhunters, and a severed head dripping blood. Glitter made the staring eyes of the head sparkle. The gang punk reached for a weapon.
Lyons stomped on the Headhunter's hand, breaking the wrist under his heel. The punk snatched at a pistol with his left hand.
The heel of Lyons's shoe came down again, this time on the punk's solar plexus. Though the stomp propelled the air from the teenager's lungs, he did not feel the pain. His hand closed around the pistol grip. Lyons kicked the pistol away.
Lyons put the muzzle of the Atchisson into the soft hollow of the punk's throat, where his neck met his collarbones and chest. Lyons asked one question, "Where's the woman?"
The Headhunter sucked down a breath and attacked Lyons, flailing at him with his broken hand and his good fist. Lyons pushed the muzzle into the punk's throat. "Where's the woman?"
Clawing at Lyons, the punk thrashed against the muzzle of the full-auto shotgun. Lurching from the floor, the punk grabbed at Lyons's right hand gripping the Atchisson.
The blast sent the Headhunter into the void to forever hunt for his head.
The torso flopped and quivered on the floor as Lyons went to the door. He took another shock-stun from his battle armor's pouches.
"They're rushing..." Blancanales called out, the booming of his Atchisson cutting his words short.
A storm of autofire swept the corridor. Five-point-fifty-six-millimeter and 7.62 ComBloc slugs ricocheted and whined from the walls and floors as Blancanales sprayed the line of onrushing gang punks with his Atchisson.
The shock of a bullet impact knocked Blancanales back. Lyons saw his partner fall, once more called out, "Whitelight!"
Throwing the shock-stun grenade at the mob of punks, Lyons jerked another seven-round magazine from his bandolier. Holding his Atchisson in one hand, he shielded his left ear with his other hand and turned away.
The boom-flash silenced the autorifles for an instant. His head ringing, Lyons leaned from the protection of the doorway and emptied his Atchisson into the downed crowd of chemically hyped punks.
High-velocity steel exploded skulls, ripped away arms and feet. Lyons took cover again, dropped out the empty mag, jammed in the next. He flipped the fire selector up to semiauto and searched for targets.
A punk in a blood-splashed purple jacket rose to his knees. He swung a Kalashnikov to his shoulder as Lyons put fifty steel balls through his chest at 1400 feet per second.
Another Chicano clawed his way from under a dead comrade and pointed a .45 automatic. High-velocity steel ripped away his arm and head.
A wounded punk pushed himself up from the bloody floor. He lurched upright and swung a machete. Lyons set the Atchisson's sight on the teenager's forehead. Brains sprayed.
Lyons pulled another magazine out of his gear, then went to Blancanales's side. The stocky Puerto Rican got to his feet. He looked to his battle armor. A bullet had torn through the Kevlar to punch through an Atchisson magazine. But the steel trauma plate had finally stopped the slug.
Blancanales gave Lyons a thumbs-up. But when he tried to reload his Atchisson, he found the lower receiver deformed by a bullet. A ComBloc slug had punched through the magazine well and smashed the interior mechanisms.
Another gang surged into the corridor. Lyons raised his Atchisson and rushed them, firing from the hip, every blast from the 12-gauge assault shotgun slamming a crazed punk back.
Slinging the inoperative Atchisson over his shoulder, Blancanales grabbed a blood-slick Kalashnikov from the floor. He went to Lyons's side, firing two— and three-shot bursts into the shoulder-to-shoulder mass of teenage monsters.
Lyons's weapon went empty. He knelt on one knee to reload. He dropped out the spent magazine and jammed in the next. But the magazine did not snap into the weapon. Lyons pushed it but felt no snap that would indicate correct seating. Pulling out the mag, he saw flesh and a bit of bone fouling the top 12-gauge shell.
As Lyons struggled to clean the fouled magazine and reload the Atchisson, Blancanales saw one punk charge ahead, a machete raised high. Snap-sighting on the rabid teenager's chest, Blancanales fired. A single round staggered the punk, but he did not fall. The Kalashnikov rifle empty, Blancanales saw the punk continuing forward, the machete still raised high.
Blancanales took the captured Kalashnikov by the barrel and rushed the oncoming punk. With all his strength, Blancanales swung the rifle.
The blow crushed the punk's skull. But the spot-welds joining the cheap pot-metal components of the ComBloc weapon broke. Left with only the Kalashnikov's barrel in his hands, Blancanales looked for another weapon as a second punk came at them with a revolver flashing.
A .38 slug ripped past his ear as Blancanales grabbed a machete from the corridor's gore-splashed floor. Then Lyons's Atchisson boomed. The punk with the pistol fell. But the wall of drug-crazed blood-lusting human animals did not stop.
"Down!" Gadgets screamed to his partners.
Falling to their faces in the blood, Lyons and Blancanales heard the M-203 grenade launcher fire.
The first two punks lurched as a blast of twenty-seven double-ought balls slammed into them. But the low-velocity projectiles from a 40mm buckshot round did not stop them. Blood spurting from their faces and chests, their comrades pushing the dying punks forward, they continued on.
Lyons fired his Atchisson as a continuous line of 9mm slugs ripped into the mob. Gadgets fired an Uzi in each hand, holding the triggers back, brass raining around him. Finally, the Israeli submachine guns went silent.
From his prone position, Lyons saw an M-16 rising. He did not aim. He fired wild, saw blood spray the ceiling. Then his weapon's action locked back.
Punks still came. Blancanales rose to one knee. He had picked up a machete. He slashed with it. A punk's hand and pistol hit the wall. Another pointed a shotgun and fired, but the blast went into the back of the one-handed punk.
Intestines exploded. Blancanales pushed the dying punk aside and hacked again and again as the shotgunner pumped the Remington's slide.
The arms and shotgun fell. The maimed punk thrashed at Blancanales with the stumps of his arms. Then Lyons shoved his partner aside and put the muzzle of the fourteen-inch barrel of the Atchisson under the screaming gang boy's chin.
Blast flipped the corpse backward. Lyons semiautoed blasts into another running punk, then killed the crawling wounded.
Blood-soaked, flesh glistening on their battle armor, the three men of Able Team remained alive in the corridor of slaughter.
Gadgets splashed through the blood to his partners. The reloaded Uzis swung from his shoulders.
He gripped the M-16/M-203. Eyes wide with horror, his breath coming in panic pants, Gadgets kept repeating, "This is heavy, this is heavy, I mean, I came to the party late, and I don't know about this scene. Definitely number one thousand. Maybe one million."
"If they rush us again," Blancanales told Lyons, "we are overrun."
Lyons slammed another magazine into his Atchisson. "We haven't found Flor."
They heard footsteps and the firing of shotguns and pistols. Lyons looked to his partners.
"Here they come…"
13
As black-and-white units screeched to tire-smoking stops in front of the apartments, Detective Bill Towers assembled the police officers into improvised fire-teams. Though the department had issued additional shotguns to the units patrolling the city, not every officer had one of the riot weapons.
Towers took Lyons's warning seriously. If that ex-cop said the men needed shotguns and automatic weapons, Towers knew Lyons meant it.
An incident immediately proved Lyons's warning true.
As Towers sent a two-man unit to the side street with an order to seal off the side exits and the alley, the officer behind the steering wheel called out, "Behind you!"
Turning, Towers saw a teenager in jeans, sneakers and a gang jacket run from the front door of the ground floor LAYAC offices. The teenager held a machete high as he sprinted for Towers, screaming hate jargon, "Die, you white genocidal Nazi running dog!"
"Halt or I'll fire!" Towers shouted out as he pulled his .38 pistol loaded with department-approved solid-point ammunition. "Halt..."
The command did not stop the punk. Towers sighted over the four-inch barrel of his Smith & Wesson and double-actioned six slugs into the punk's chest.
The slugs did not stop the youth. Blood spurting from his chest, he crossed the sidewalk and street in a few steps. He swung the machete at Towers. Towers sidestepped.
As the machete skipped off the sheet metal of the black-and-white, the officer in the driver's seat fired his service revolver point-blank into the gut of the punk. Slugs exited the punk's back and broke the plate-glass windows of the LAYAC offices.
But the punk did not fall. Retreating from the bloody teenage psychopath, Towers pulled the backup pistol he carried — in violation of department regulations — in a holster at the small of his back: a Colt Commander. Loaded with hollow-points — again in violation of department policy — the large-caliber autopistol went on line with the punk's chest as he rushed to kill Towers.
Towers snapped two shots. The first hollow-point slammed the punk back, exploding through his chest to destroy his heart and the knot of arteries between the lungs. The second slug went high and struck the dying punk in the nose. His head exploded with the shock-force of the impact.
Even when the medically dead zombie finally fell, the legs and arms continued to thrash, the machete still gripped in its right fist, the metal of the blade clanking and sparking on the asphalt as if the punk's arm had a nervous system independent of the destroyed brain.
Towers stared down at the thrashing corpse, astounded. Officers from other cars ran to the corpse. The driver of the squad car announced in a shaky voice, "Holy shit! You saw it. Towers put six through the chest. I put another four through its gut. And it still took two forty-fives to put it down!"
"Everyone with a shotgun over here!" Towers yelled, assembling officers.
As they gathered, Towers continued directing black-and-white units to surround the apartments. Inside, the battle continued. Directing his men, Towers heard the hammering of autofire, the booming of shotguns inside the buildings. He addressed the officers around him. "There're three men fighting in there. The crazies captured an officer and those three men went in to save the officer. We're going in to help. Everyone got their pockets full of ammo?"
"We shoot to kill?" an officer called out. "Do we try to arrest them?"
"This is war!" Towers shouted back. "Look at that one in the street and tell me if you're going to read them their rights!"
The group rushed into the battle.
"I'll circle around and try the alley," the sound man told Lannon.
"Do it. Get past those pigs. We'll put this on the morning news. Smear those Nazi pigs."
They wove through the side streets, down one street, then two right turns, finally approaching on a tree-darkened street where no police squad cars parked. Lannon directed his crew with whispers. "Get the equipment together. We're going to sneak in there. If they see us, they'll pull some pigshit jive about the scene of a crime or whatever. Once we got the pictures, they can only subpoena the tapes."
"Right on!" the cameraman agreed.
After checking their video gear and sound-recording equipment, the three newsmen slipped into the shadows. They heard intermittent gunfire as they neared the alley behind the LAYAC buildings.
Headlights swept from the avenue. The three counterculture activists hurried into the darkness beside a trash dumpster. When Lannon saw two uniformed officers setting out flares to halt all traffic, he said to his cameraman, "Get some tape of that!"
Then he turned to his sound recordist. "Get all the noise and shooting. Maybe we can loop and dub it later on, make it sound like World War III."
A furious exchange of fire somewhere inside the building startled them. The sound man turned on his deck and held out a microphone to the sound of the firefight. "Won't need to overdub that…"
Another set of headlights flashed, this time in the alley. Lannon saw a lowered Chevy boulevard cruiser turn from one of the garages. He slapped the shoulders of his technicians. "There's some of the LAYAC brothers. We'll do an interview with them. Get some real shit on the pigs."
Stepping from the concealing shadows, Lannon waved his arms for the Chevy to stop. His technicians took their places in the alley. The cameraman switched on his sungun spotlight, the sound recordist extended a long microphone.
"Hey, comrades!" Lannon called out. "What's happening in there? We're from K-Marx. What's the truth?"
The Chevy stopped. Going to the driver's window, Lannon leaned in. What he saw sent him quickly staggering back.
A gang punk with a demented grin waved a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun at him. The punk lowered his aim and fired.
At a distance of ten feet, the spray of birdshot destroyed Mark Lannon's legs. In a tangle of shattered bones and muscle sinew, Lannon sat on the alley's asphalt. He watched as the Chevy's doors flew open. Punks crowded from the doors, machetes and pistols and automatic rifles in their hands.
Dropping his video gear, the cameraman ran. A burst of AK fire killed him. The sound man put up his hands in surrender. Several punks advanced on him while the others went to Lannon.
"I'm with you, I'm a comrade in struggle," the sound man pleaded, tears running down his bushy beard. "Here's my Communist Party card. I'm with you. I'll show you my card, I'm a paid-up member of the..."
As he reached for his wallet, a punk stepped forward and chopped off the sound man's arm with a machete. The sound man's face contorted with a scream that only rattled in his throat.
Machetes and pistols and point-blank gunfire dismembered the Communist sound man.
Mark Lannon suffered longer. With his white skin, stylish hair and neatly trimmed mustache, the reporter personified the typical bourgeois white man to the drug-enraged crowd of young black and Chicano gang boys.
Machetes flashed in the dark alley. First, the punks cut away Lannon's shattered legs. Then his fingers and hands. As the white man's screams echoed in the filthy corridor behind the buildings, the punks methodically reduced him to a flopping torso with a screaming head.
Cross fire of shotguns and department-approved .38 pistols drove the street gang back to their vehicle. Bleeding, their throats filling with blood even as they screamed defiance at the officers, the punks attempted to escape in their supercharged Chevy.
Officers fired shotguns and rifles into the engine, point-blank into the driver's head, then at the rear tires. The Chevy careered across the side street and into a tree.
Flames exploded. Orange light from the rising flames lighted the alley. Then the officers found the dead cameraman and the butchered sound recordist.
A wailing cry lead them to the thing lying in blood and a clutter of human parts. Only when they saw the arms and legs did the officers realize the flopping, bleeding meat had been a human being.
After another few seconds of pain and blind, silent anguish, Mark Lannon, the K-Marx man of the people, The Voice of Socialist Truth, finally went silent.
Towers rushed through one doorway and fell flat, expecting autofire. But he heard only the gunfire in the other rooms. Scrambling over the floor, he scanned the large room.
Black Nationalist posters plastered one wall. The three other walls had been painted stark white. He could not understand the purpose of the white walls until he saw the projection ports.
The room had been a theater with multiple projectors. Marks on the wall indicated mountings for now-gone speakers for a total-surround sound system. Wires and cables dangled from conduits around the walls.
His examination of the theater was interrupted by firing outside the door. Bracing his Colt Commander in both hands, Towers waited for a gang to appear. He heard a voice call out, "Police! Freeze, whoever you are!"
"We're on your side!"
"You're the Federals?"
"That's us — the Super-Feds…"
Towers recognized the voice of the Wizard, the electronics specialist who worked with Carl Lyons. He went to the door and announced himself. "Detective Towers coming out!"
Only then did he emerge. He saw the three men with automatic weapons and military gear standing with a group of his uniformed officers. He could not identify Lyons.
Blood crusted all three men. Blood concealed their features and hair color. Finally, Towers heard a voice that identified his ex-partner. "What about the woman? Any of you see her?"
"No," Towers told Lyons. "We came in through the front. Where were you?"
"We went in through the side. There's a first-floor hallway connecting all this together. We got hit by banzai charges of scumbags."
"Yeah, tell us about it. We met a few of them ourselves."
The blood-masked man that Towers could recognize only by voice stared urgently at him. "Flor has to be somewhere. We've got to search every room in this place. Did any of them get away? Other than that one truck?"
"Could they have her in the truck?" Towers asked.
"No chance," another of the Able Team soldiers answered. Towers recognized the sonorous voice as the voice of Lyons's Puerto Rican partner. "That truck went muy rapido. They wouldn't have taken the time to grab her. And I don't think they could have grabbed her. Not without leaving bodies."
An officer returned from checking the corridor. He said nothing.
"So what's down there?" one of the other officers demanded of him.
The officer lifted one of his feet and pointed at it. Blood glistened on his shoe. He had stepped in blood deeper than his shoe tops. "Does that tell you what's down there?"
As other cops went to stare at the carnage, Lyons called them back. "We're still looking for our partner. We got to find her."
"Sure, bad man, we're on it." Towers spoke into his walkie-talkie and directed his other officers to check every room and hallway. "If we don't find her here, we'll question the headman of LAYAC. We grabbed him down in the marina. He tried to get away in his yacht."
An officer reported. "We got civilians coming down the fire escapes. There're apartments up there that have got nothing to do with the gangs."
"Well, help them down. 'Protect and serve,' officer. Get to it."
As the three men of Able Team started for the avenue, Towers spoke into his walkie-talkie again. "We got three Federals coming out. Do the city a favor and hose them off before they get in one of our cars."
Towers took Lyons's warning seriously. If that ex-cop said the men needed shotguns and automatic weapons, Towers knew Lyons meant it.
An incident immediately proved Lyons's warning true.
As Towers sent a two-man unit to the side street with an order to seal off the side exits and the alley, the officer behind the steering wheel called out, "Behind you!"
Turning, Towers saw a teenager in jeans, sneakers and a gang jacket run from the front door of the ground floor LAYAC offices. The teenager held a machete high as he sprinted for Towers, screaming hate jargon, "Die, you white genocidal Nazi running dog!"
"Halt or I'll fire!" Towers shouted out as he pulled his .38 pistol loaded with department-approved solid-point ammunition. "Halt..."
The command did not stop the punk. Towers sighted over the four-inch barrel of his Smith & Wesson and double-actioned six slugs into the punk's chest.
The slugs did not stop the youth. Blood spurting from his chest, he crossed the sidewalk and street in a few steps. He swung the machete at Towers. Towers sidestepped.
As the machete skipped off the sheet metal of the black-and-white, the officer in the driver's seat fired his service revolver point-blank into the gut of the punk. Slugs exited the punk's back and broke the plate-glass windows of the LAYAC offices.
But the punk did not fall. Retreating from the bloody teenage psychopath, Towers pulled the backup pistol he carried — in violation of department regulations — in a holster at the small of his back: a Colt Commander. Loaded with hollow-points — again in violation of department policy — the large-caliber autopistol went on line with the punk's chest as he rushed to kill Towers.
Towers snapped two shots. The first hollow-point slammed the punk back, exploding through his chest to destroy his heart and the knot of arteries between the lungs. The second slug went high and struck the dying punk in the nose. His head exploded with the shock-force of the impact.
Even when the medically dead zombie finally fell, the legs and arms continued to thrash, the machete still gripped in its right fist, the metal of the blade clanking and sparking on the asphalt as if the punk's arm had a nervous system independent of the destroyed brain.
Towers stared down at the thrashing corpse, astounded. Officers from other cars ran to the corpse. The driver of the squad car announced in a shaky voice, "Holy shit! You saw it. Towers put six through the chest. I put another four through its gut. And it still took two forty-fives to put it down!"
"Everyone with a shotgun over here!" Towers yelled, assembling officers.
As they gathered, Towers continued directing black-and-white units to surround the apartments. Inside, the battle continued. Directing his men, Towers heard the hammering of autofire, the booming of shotguns inside the buildings. He addressed the officers around him. "There're three men fighting in there. The crazies captured an officer and those three men went in to save the officer. We're going in to help. Everyone got their pockets full of ammo?"
"We shoot to kill?" an officer called out. "Do we try to arrest them?"
"This is war!" Towers shouted back. "Look at that one in the street and tell me if you're going to read them their rights!"
The group rushed into the battle.
* * *
Monitoring the police communications on their scanner, reporter Mark Lannon and his technicians sped to the battle at the LAYAC offices. When the sound man driving the van saw the flashing lights of the police cars blocking the avenue, he swerved onto a side street."I'll circle around and try the alley," the sound man told Lannon.
"Do it. Get past those pigs. We'll put this on the morning news. Smear those Nazi pigs."
They wove through the side streets, down one street, then two right turns, finally approaching on a tree-darkened street where no police squad cars parked. Lannon directed his crew with whispers. "Get the equipment together. We're going to sneak in there. If they see us, they'll pull some pigshit jive about the scene of a crime or whatever. Once we got the pictures, they can only subpoena the tapes."
"Right on!" the cameraman agreed.
After checking their video gear and sound-recording equipment, the three newsmen slipped into the shadows. They heard intermittent gunfire as they neared the alley behind the LAYAC buildings.
Headlights swept from the avenue. The three counterculture activists hurried into the darkness beside a trash dumpster. When Lannon saw two uniformed officers setting out flares to halt all traffic, he said to his cameraman, "Get some tape of that!"
Then he turned to his sound recordist. "Get all the noise and shooting. Maybe we can loop and dub it later on, make it sound like World War III."
A furious exchange of fire somewhere inside the building startled them. The sound man turned on his deck and held out a microphone to the sound of the firefight. "Won't need to overdub that…"
Another set of headlights flashed, this time in the alley. Lannon saw a lowered Chevy boulevard cruiser turn from one of the garages. He slapped the shoulders of his technicians. "There's some of the LAYAC brothers. We'll do an interview with them. Get some real shit on the pigs."
Stepping from the concealing shadows, Lannon waved his arms for the Chevy to stop. His technicians took their places in the alley. The cameraman switched on his sungun spotlight, the sound recordist extended a long microphone.
"Hey, comrades!" Lannon called out. "What's happening in there? We're from K-Marx. What's the truth?"
The Chevy stopped. Going to the driver's window, Lannon leaned in. What he saw sent him quickly staggering back.
A gang punk with a demented grin waved a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun at him. The punk lowered his aim and fired.
At a distance of ten feet, the spray of birdshot destroyed Mark Lannon's legs. In a tangle of shattered bones and muscle sinew, Lannon sat on the alley's asphalt. He watched as the Chevy's doors flew open. Punks crowded from the doors, machetes and pistols and automatic rifles in their hands.
Dropping his video gear, the cameraman ran. A burst of AK fire killed him. The sound man put up his hands in surrender. Several punks advanced on him while the others went to Lannon.
"I'm with you, I'm a comrade in struggle," the sound man pleaded, tears running down his bushy beard. "Here's my Communist Party card. I'm with you. I'll show you my card, I'm a paid-up member of the..."
As he reached for his wallet, a punk stepped forward and chopped off the sound man's arm with a machete. The sound man's face contorted with a scream that only rattled in his throat.
Machetes and pistols and point-blank gunfire dismembered the Communist sound man.
Mark Lannon suffered longer. With his white skin, stylish hair and neatly trimmed mustache, the reporter personified the typical bourgeois white man to the drug-enraged crowd of young black and Chicano gang boys.
Machetes flashed in the dark alley. First, the punks cut away Lannon's shattered legs. Then his fingers and hands. As the white man's screams echoed in the filthy corridor behind the buildings, the punks methodically reduced him to a flopping torso with a screaming head.
Cross fire of shotguns and department-approved .38 pistols drove the street gang back to their vehicle. Bleeding, their throats filling with blood even as they screamed defiance at the officers, the punks attempted to escape in their supercharged Chevy.
Officers fired shotguns and rifles into the engine, point-blank into the driver's head, then at the rear tires. The Chevy careered across the side street and into a tree.
Flames exploded. Orange light from the rising flames lighted the alley. Then the officers found the dead cameraman and the butchered sound recordist.
A wailing cry lead them to the thing lying in blood and a clutter of human parts. Only when they saw the arms and legs did the officers realize the flopping, bleeding meat had been a human being.
After another few seconds of pain and blind, silent anguish, Mark Lannon, the K-Marx man of the people, The Voice of Socialist Truth, finally went silent.
* * *
Storming through the offices and hallways of the LAYAC complex, Towers and his men killed everything that moved. There seemed to be no end to the punks in the building. They came from doorways, they came down the stairs, they rose from the heaps of dead to fight again. This was the crucial battle.Towers rushed through one doorway and fell flat, expecting autofire. But he heard only the gunfire in the other rooms. Scrambling over the floor, he scanned the large room.
Black Nationalist posters plastered one wall. The three other walls had been painted stark white. He could not understand the purpose of the white walls until he saw the projection ports.
The room had been a theater with multiple projectors. Marks on the wall indicated mountings for now-gone speakers for a total-surround sound system. Wires and cables dangled from conduits around the walls.
His examination of the theater was interrupted by firing outside the door. Bracing his Colt Commander in both hands, Towers waited for a gang to appear. He heard a voice call out, "Police! Freeze, whoever you are!"
"We're on your side!"
"You're the Federals?"
"That's us — the Super-Feds…"
Towers recognized the voice of the Wizard, the electronics specialist who worked with Carl Lyons. He went to the door and announced himself. "Detective Towers coming out!"
Only then did he emerge. He saw the three men with automatic weapons and military gear standing with a group of his uniformed officers. He could not identify Lyons.
Blood crusted all three men. Blood concealed their features and hair color. Finally, Towers heard a voice that identified his ex-partner. "What about the woman? Any of you see her?"
"No," Towers told Lyons. "We came in through the front. Where were you?"
"We went in through the side. There's a first-floor hallway connecting all this together. We got hit by banzai charges of scumbags."
"Yeah, tell us about it. We met a few of them ourselves."
The blood-masked man that Towers could recognize only by voice stared urgently at him. "Flor has to be somewhere. We've got to search every room in this place. Did any of them get away? Other than that one truck?"
"Could they have her in the truck?" Towers asked.
"No chance," another of the Able Team soldiers answered. Towers recognized the sonorous voice as the voice of Lyons's Puerto Rican partner. "That truck went muy rapido. They wouldn't have taken the time to grab her. And I don't think they could have grabbed her. Not without leaving bodies."
An officer returned from checking the corridor. He said nothing.
"So what's down there?" one of the other officers demanded of him.
The officer lifted one of his feet and pointed at it. Blood glistened on his shoe. He had stepped in blood deeper than his shoe tops. "Does that tell you what's down there?"
As other cops went to stare at the carnage, Lyons called them back. "We're still looking for our partner. We got to find her."
"Sure, bad man, we're on it." Towers spoke into his walkie-talkie and directed his other officers to check every room and hallway. "If we don't find her here, we'll question the headman of LAYAC. We grabbed him down in the marina. He tried to get away in his yacht."
An officer reported. "We got civilians coming down the fire escapes. There're apartments up there that have got nothing to do with the gangs."
"Well, help them down. 'Protect and serve,' officer. Get to it."
As the three men of Able Team started for the avenue, Towers spoke into his walkie-talkie again. "We got three Federals coming out. Do the city a favor and hose them off before they get in one of our cars."
14
Flor Trujillo rode on the bumper of the five-ton truck speeding from East Los Angeles. The wind whipping her hair, she gripped the latch of the roll-up aluminum cargo door.
As her hands became tired, every bump and lurch threatened her with a high-speed encounter with asphalt. She watched for a police car, hoping to signal for assistance.
But the only patrol cars she saw flashed past in the opposite direction. Lights flashing, sirens screaming, the black-and-white units went to help the officers caught in the ambush she had overheard on the scanner.
So she held on. Few other cars traveled the streets and boulevards of the city. She saw the driver of one car do a double take at the sight of her — a young Hispanic woman in a wind-flagged green dress and high heels — riding the cargo truck's bumper.
Then the truck went onto the freeway. Gripping the latch, she eased herself into a crouch as the evening air tore at her hair and skirt. Behind her, she saw only two or three distant pairs of headlights. On this night after the slaughter of the Valencia family, no one risked the freeways.
A few minutes before, she had seen the truck swerve from the alley behind the LAYAC building. The truck had lurched for a moment as the driver clashed the gears. On impulse, she dashed from the rented Ford and stepped up on the bumper. She wished she had taken a hand-radio. With only her Detonics and a few extra magazines, she sped to a destination unknown.
She felt movement inside the truck. Pressing her ear against the roll-up aluminum, she heard voices and footsteps. The vibrations and noises of the speeding truck made the words incomprehensible. But now she knew she faced more opponents than only the driver and the gunman in the truck's cab.
Without slowing, the truck swerved onto an off ramp. The truck's body clattered and shook as the tires seized the asphalt, the acrid smoke of burning rubber swirling around Flor. The truck whipped through a right turn, then accelerated again.
Before Flor could catch sight of a boulevard street sign, the truck whipped through another right turn and sped through a gray district of wrecking yards and industrial buildings. She saw only empty streets and desolate parking lots under the blue white light of the mercury-arc street-lamps.
Finally the truck slowed. Flor heard the cab door open and footsteps run from the truck to the building. Steel clanked against a steel door.
Now came the danger. She knew she must somehow slip away from the truck without betraying herself. In the isolation of a manufacturing area, with only her autopistol against the rifles of the gang punks who guarded the truck, she had no doubt of the outcome of a pursuit and firefight.
She peered around the side of the truck. She snapped her head back instantly when she saw the punk at the warehouse door looking at the truck. The truck lurched into motion and turned to enter the warehouse.
Desperate, Flor considered her options.
Run and be seen and pursued.
Stay on the bumper and be seen as she rode into the garage.
She could not run, and she could not remain immobile. Her desperation forced her into the only possible action…
Gripping the edge of the bumper with one down-stretched hand, she released her other hand's grip on the latch. Then she grabbed the bumper with both hands, and thrust a foot underneath it.
She hung below the bumper by her hands and one foot, her back only inches from the asphalt. Reaching into the undercarriage of the truck, she gripped the gritty steel of the chassis. She lost her high-heeled shoe as she struggled to maintain her toehold. She let her other shoe fall away as she moved her other leg.
The truck paused. Hanging underneath the truck, she heard the punk at the garage door shout out, "A la derecha. Poquito a la derecha."
With a lurch, the truck continued into the warehouse. She heard the steel door crash down. The punk jumped onto the bumper and released the truck's cargo latch.
Footsteps and voices inside the truck became feet and legs as a gang crowded out from it. She heard ghetto English and Spanish. Another voice spoke in softly accented English. Flor could not identify the accent as the man talked.
"To your positions, my warriors. Though we will be secure here, we must remain on guard. Soon we go to another city and continue Allah's work."
The punks answered. "Sure thing, brother… Waste those white devils."
Hanging by her hands and ankles, Flor waited for the gang to disperse. Only after the footsteps of the punks and their leaders receded did she ease herself down to the oily concrete of the warehouse floor. Crawling a few feet, she pressed herself against the double tires for concealment. She watched the activity in the warehouse.
Work lights in the high ceiling lighted the interior. The driver had parked the truck in the center of the building. Open concrete extended on all sides. A few boxes and crates and tables lined the walls. But she saw no open doors. Flor could not hope to snake from under the truck and dash out to the street.
The truck had carried her into a trap.
She could do nothing but wait.
Across the concrete space, she saw a stoop-shouldered black man in a dark blue suit. He wore his hair conservatively short. Glasses framed in black plastic gave him the look of an accountant. He directed two gang punks in blue nylon jackets and dirty jeans to open a wooden crate.
The punks crowbarred away the crate's lid. They carefully lifted out a block of Styrofoam and put it on a table. Then the black man took a knife from the punks and cut the tape that secured the Styrofoam.
When the packaging fell away, Flor saw a shortwave radio. The black man attached antenna leads to the back of the radio and handed a coil of wire to one of the punks. The punk took the wire up a flight of stairs to the roof. The other youth ran an extension cord to the radio.
Hiding only a few steps away, Flor heard every word the black man said.
"This is Shabaka. Calling the truck. Shabaka calling the truck…"
The black man repeated his call for minutes. Finally a voice responded. The monotonic, strangely disembodied voice alerted Flor to the electronic code guarding the conversation.
Like the hand-radios Able Team used, the longdistance radio employed encoding circuits to electronically scramble and unscramble every conversation. Only those with the radio sets could understand the transmissions. Any technician or amateur radio enthusiast monitoring the transmissions would hear only bursts of static.
"This is the truck," came the reply. "We're a hundred miles south of the border. No problems, we're making good time."
"The Los Angeles delivery is canceled."
"What?"
"The Los Angeles delivery is canceled. We will take the delivery in Escondido instead. Do you understand?"
"It won't be going to L.A. We're going to drop it Escondido instead."
"This address is outside of the city. Are you ready to copy down the address?"
"Right. I got a pencil. Go ahead."
Flor memorized the address and the time of the delivery as Shabaka dictated it to his truck crew Shabaka switched off the radio.
As the punks put the radio in the truck above her, Flor racked her imagination for a way to escape. With the information on the place and time of the delivery, Able Team had the opportunity to follow the conspiracy to its source. Whatever the cargo — weapons, terrorists, cash or drugs — the cargo and drivers and truck would provide another lead in breaking the puzzle of the gang siege that terrorized Los Angeles.
But Flor knew she must escape silently, secretly. If Shabaka suspected he had been overheard by a federal agent, he would change the location of the delivery.
How could she escape? She had seen the punks lock both the big cargo door and the office door.
If she left the darkness under the truck, she risked an instant firefight.
If she stayed under the truck and waited, she chanced the punks discovering her.
Flor decided to take the greatest risk, to wait until the punks and their leader left the garage, then drop away from the truck when the opportunity came.
She prayed that the truck would slow for a moment at some point on the route to the town on the Mexican border. Hitting the asphalt at a high speed would not be pleasant…
A voice interrupted her thoughts.
"What's that under the truck?" one punk asked another.
A Kalashnikov rifle gripped in his right hand, a black punk got down on his hands and knees to peer under the cargo truck.
Flor shot him in the face. She scrambled from under the truck and grabbed the AK from his still-twitching hand. Snapping down the safety lever to semiauto, Flor put a single shot through the chest of the other punk as he struggled to unsling the AK on his shoulder.
A brown-skinned youth ran down the stairs. Flor put a ComBloc slug through the center of his chest.
Running around the truck, she came face to face with another Chicano punk. Without raising the Kalashnikov in her hands, she jerked the trigger twice, the first slug smashing through his crotch, the second slug striking him in the top of his head as he doubled over in agony.
Without the strange drug supplied by Shabaka, the punks knew fear. They struggled to aim their rifles with shaking hands as a barefooted young woman in a shimmering dress ran through their midst, killing them.
A sentry at the door turned at the sound of the shots and raised his rifle. He saw the woman with the Kalashnikov. Sighting, he fired his M-16.
Another punk chose that moment to rush the woman. Swinging a machete, he attacked. Flor blocked the blade with the barrel of the Soviet autorifle, then the punk's head exploded with the impact of a 5.56mm slug.
Dodging from the mist of brains and blood, Flor saw another youth rushing her. She threw herself sideways, felt her shoulder hit a truck tire. A blast deafened her and showered her with chips of enamel paint from the truck. Kicking out, she tripped the charging punk.
Flor extended the rifle with one hand. With the muzzle against his face, she fired. The flash illuminated an expression of surprise and confusion as the slug smashed through the youth's eye socket.
Rolling, she gained the cover of a few crates and cardboard boxes against one wall. She shoved through the boxes as slugs pocked the wall around her.
She clicked the Kalashnikov's fire selector down to full-auto and sighted on a muzzle-flash. A burst sent a punk staggering backward.
A dead guy sprawled only an arm's reach away. Flor grabbed his shirt and pulled him into the boxes. From the corpse, she took a web belt hung with AK mags and a .357 Magnum pistol. She took one of the magazines out and held it ready as she searched for targets.
As her hands became tired, every bump and lurch threatened her with a high-speed encounter with asphalt. She watched for a police car, hoping to signal for assistance.
But the only patrol cars she saw flashed past in the opposite direction. Lights flashing, sirens screaming, the black-and-white units went to help the officers caught in the ambush she had overheard on the scanner.
So she held on. Few other cars traveled the streets and boulevards of the city. She saw the driver of one car do a double take at the sight of her — a young Hispanic woman in a wind-flagged green dress and high heels — riding the cargo truck's bumper.
Then the truck went onto the freeway. Gripping the latch, she eased herself into a crouch as the evening air tore at her hair and skirt. Behind her, she saw only two or three distant pairs of headlights. On this night after the slaughter of the Valencia family, no one risked the freeways.
A few minutes before, she had seen the truck swerve from the alley behind the LAYAC building. The truck had lurched for a moment as the driver clashed the gears. On impulse, she dashed from the rented Ford and stepped up on the bumper. She wished she had taken a hand-radio. With only her Detonics and a few extra magazines, she sped to a destination unknown.
She felt movement inside the truck. Pressing her ear against the roll-up aluminum, she heard voices and footsteps. The vibrations and noises of the speeding truck made the words incomprehensible. But now she knew she faced more opponents than only the driver and the gunman in the truck's cab.
Without slowing, the truck swerved onto an off ramp. The truck's body clattered and shook as the tires seized the asphalt, the acrid smoke of burning rubber swirling around Flor. The truck whipped through a right turn, then accelerated again.
Before Flor could catch sight of a boulevard street sign, the truck whipped through another right turn and sped through a gray district of wrecking yards and industrial buildings. She saw only empty streets and desolate parking lots under the blue white light of the mercury-arc street-lamps.
Finally the truck slowed. Flor heard the cab door open and footsteps run from the truck to the building. Steel clanked against a steel door.
Now came the danger. She knew she must somehow slip away from the truck without betraying herself. In the isolation of a manufacturing area, with only her autopistol against the rifles of the gang punks who guarded the truck, she had no doubt of the outcome of a pursuit and firefight.
She peered around the side of the truck. She snapped her head back instantly when she saw the punk at the warehouse door looking at the truck. The truck lurched into motion and turned to enter the warehouse.
Desperate, Flor considered her options.
Run and be seen and pursued.
Stay on the bumper and be seen as she rode into the garage.
She could not run, and she could not remain immobile. Her desperation forced her into the only possible action…
Gripping the edge of the bumper with one down-stretched hand, she released her other hand's grip on the latch. Then she grabbed the bumper with both hands, and thrust a foot underneath it.
She hung below the bumper by her hands and one foot, her back only inches from the asphalt. Reaching into the undercarriage of the truck, she gripped the gritty steel of the chassis. She lost her high-heeled shoe as she struggled to maintain her toehold. She let her other shoe fall away as she moved her other leg.
The truck paused. Hanging underneath the truck, she heard the punk at the garage door shout out, "A la derecha. Poquito a la derecha."
With a lurch, the truck continued into the warehouse. She heard the steel door crash down. The punk jumped onto the bumper and released the truck's cargo latch.
Footsteps and voices inside the truck became feet and legs as a gang crowded out from it. She heard ghetto English and Spanish. Another voice spoke in softly accented English. Flor could not identify the accent as the man talked.
"To your positions, my warriors. Though we will be secure here, we must remain on guard. Soon we go to another city and continue Allah's work."
The punks answered. "Sure thing, brother… Waste those white devils."
Hanging by her hands and ankles, Flor waited for the gang to disperse. Only after the footsteps of the punks and their leaders receded did she ease herself down to the oily concrete of the warehouse floor. Crawling a few feet, she pressed herself against the double tires for concealment. She watched the activity in the warehouse.
Work lights in the high ceiling lighted the interior. The driver had parked the truck in the center of the building. Open concrete extended on all sides. A few boxes and crates and tables lined the walls. But she saw no open doors. Flor could not hope to snake from under the truck and dash out to the street.
The truck had carried her into a trap.
She could do nothing but wait.
Across the concrete space, she saw a stoop-shouldered black man in a dark blue suit. He wore his hair conservatively short. Glasses framed in black plastic gave him the look of an accountant. He directed two gang punks in blue nylon jackets and dirty jeans to open a wooden crate.
The punks crowbarred away the crate's lid. They carefully lifted out a block of Styrofoam and put it on a table. Then the black man took a knife from the punks and cut the tape that secured the Styrofoam.
When the packaging fell away, Flor saw a shortwave radio. The black man attached antenna leads to the back of the radio and handed a coil of wire to one of the punks. The punk took the wire up a flight of stairs to the roof. The other youth ran an extension cord to the radio.
Hiding only a few steps away, Flor heard every word the black man said.
"This is Shabaka. Calling the truck. Shabaka calling the truck…"
The black man repeated his call for minutes. Finally a voice responded. The monotonic, strangely disembodied voice alerted Flor to the electronic code guarding the conversation.
Like the hand-radios Able Team used, the longdistance radio employed encoding circuits to electronically scramble and unscramble every conversation. Only those with the radio sets could understand the transmissions. Any technician or amateur radio enthusiast monitoring the transmissions would hear only bursts of static.
"This is the truck," came the reply. "We're a hundred miles south of the border. No problems, we're making good time."
"The Los Angeles delivery is canceled."
"What?"
"The Los Angeles delivery is canceled. We will take the delivery in Escondido instead. Do you understand?"
"It won't be going to L.A. We're going to drop it Escondido instead."
"This address is outside of the city. Are you ready to copy down the address?"
"Right. I got a pencil. Go ahead."
Flor memorized the address and the time of the delivery as Shabaka dictated it to his truck crew Shabaka switched off the radio.
As the punks put the radio in the truck above her, Flor racked her imagination for a way to escape. With the information on the place and time of the delivery, Able Team had the opportunity to follow the conspiracy to its source. Whatever the cargo — weapons, terrorists, cash or drugs — the cargo and drivers and truck would provide another lead in breaking the puzzle of the gang siege that terrorized Los Angeles.
But Flor knew she must escape silently, secretly. If Shabaka suspected he had been overheard by a federal agent, he would change the location of the delivery.
How could she escape? She had seen the punks lock both the big cargo door and the office door.
If she left the darkness under the truck, she risked an instant firefight.
If she stayed under the truck and waited, she chanced the punks discovering her.
Flor decided to take the greatest risk, to wait until the punks and their leader left the garage, then drop away from the truck when the opportunity came.
She prayed that the truck would slow for a moment at some point on the route to the town on the Mexican border. Hitting the asphalt at a high speed would not be pleasant…
A voice interrupted her thoughts.
"What's that under the truck?" one punk asked another.
A Kalashnikov rifle gripped in his right hand, a black punk got down on his hands and knees to peer under the cargo truck.
Flor shot him in the face. She scrambled from under the truck and grabbed the AK from his still-twitching hand. Snapping down the safety lever to semiauto, Flor put a single shot through the chest of the other punk as he struggled to unsling the AK on his shoulder.
A brown-skinned youth ran down the stairs. Flor put a ComBloc slug through the center of his chest.
Running around the truck, she came face to face with another Chicano punk. Without raising the Kalashnikov in her hands, she jerked the trigger twice, the first slug smashing through his crotch, the second slug striking him in the top of his head as he doubled over in agony.
Without the strange drug supplied by Shabaka, the punks knew fear. They struggled to aim their rifles with shaking hands as a barefooted young woman in a shimmering dress ran through their midst, killing them.
A sentry at the door turned at the sound of the shots and raised his rifle. He saw the woman with the Kalashnikov. Sighting, he fired his M-16.
Another punk chose that moment to rush the woman. Swinging a machete, he attacked. Flor blocked the blade with the barrel of the Soviet autorifle, then the punk's head exploded with the impact of a 5.56mm slug.
Dodging from the mist of brains and blood, Flor saw another youth rushing her. She threw herself sideways, felt her shoulder hit a truck tire. A blast deafened her and showered her with chips of enamel paint from the truck. Kicking out, she tripped the charging punk.
Flor extended the rifle with one hand. With the muzzle against his face, she fired. The flash illuminated an expression of surprise and confusion as the slug smashed through the youth's eye socket.
Rolling, she gained the cover of a few crates and cardboard boxes against one wall. She shoved through the boxes as slugs pocked the wall around her.
She clicked the Kalashnikov's fire selector down to full-auto and sighted on a muzzle-flash. A burst sent a punk staggering backward.
A dead guy sprawled only an arm's reach away. Flor grabbed his shirt and pulled him into the boxes. From the corpse, she took a web belt hung with AK mags and a .357 Magnum pistol. She took one of the magazines out and held it ready as she searched for targets.