Tower of Terror at-1

by Don Pendleton

The D.F. beeps came faster and faster, became a buzz. Lyons pointed to the curb. "Pull over! We must be within a hundred feet of them."

  Even as the driver swerved, the signal slowed. Looking back, Lyons saw traffic stop at a red light. The D.F. signal held a steady beep-beep-beep-beep. The lines of traffic at the light included a meat truck, an old Plymouth stationwagon, and a florist's van, in addition to the many passenger cars.

  "Make a U-turn!" Lyons shouted.

  "You want me to call for Bureau backup? We could use some more cars."

  "No!" Lyons punched Gadgets' code on the secure phone. "We reversed direction. We're coming up behind some trucks. Signal very strong." Then he punched Smith's code. "Smith, Smith!Park. Wait for us to pass."

  "Parking now. You got our man in sight?"

  "Maybe. Watch for us."

  The phone buzzed. "Hardman Three here. I'm on the Bowery, that's a block or two west of you. I'm continuing south."

  "Get Smith's cross street," Lyons told Gadgets. "He's parked. Try to get there and give him that D.F. receiver. I think we're bumper-to-bumper with them."

  The traffic light changed to green. Weaving the cab past slower vehicles, the driver brought them up behind the meat truck. Lyons stayed low in the seat. The D.F. signal shrieked.

  "Stay behind this truck," Lyons glanced out the window, but he could not see the florist's van or the old stationwagon. "Just keep it on the truck's bumper until something changes. Any chance you got a periscope in the trunk?"

  "No, sir. But I'll call for one..."

  "That was a joke!" Lyons exclaimed, wide-eyed. "You Bureau guys crack me up. What happens when you can't get exactly what you need, right away?"

  The cabbie-agent laughed. "Never happens. If we don't have it, we make a call. Like you guys. We called you."

  Lyons smiled coolly, slid lower in the taxi's back seat as the Plymouth came up on their left. A white-haired black man was driving. Newspapers and card-board filled the back of the car. Through the taxi's open window, Lyons heard Chinese phrases coming from the stationwagon. The old man repeated each Chinese phrase. Lyons glanced over, saw the old man look at a three-by-five flash card, then say a Chinese phrase.

  "I don't think that old man's with the FALN," Lyons told his driver. "Pull ahead of him, there's a flower-shop truck up there."

  "What about this truck?" The cabbie indicated the meat truck.

  "Keep it in the rearview mirror, we'll maybe follow it if it makes a turn."

  His driver whipped the taxi past the stationwagon. Ahead of them, the florist's van raced through the intersection to beat a yellow light. The shriek of the D.F. signal modulated, became a fading beep-beep-beep as the truck sped away.

  "That's the van!" Lyons grabbed the secure phone.

  "Want me to run the light?" the cabbie asked.

  "Stay back. I'm calling the others." In a second, he had Gadgets. "You've got a white and green florist's truck coming down on you. I didn't see the driver. There's no windows in the back of it. It's the truck we want."

  "I see it!" Gadgets shouted, then the line cut off.

  Suddenly Lyons' phone buzzed. "This is Smith. Your partner — he just pulled a screaming U-turn through four lanes of traffic. What's going on? What do you want me to do?"

  "He gave you a D.F. receiver?"

  "Yes, sir. I had a signal, but it's fading."

  "Stay where you are. I think Hardman Two is going to be doing some circles."

  "What if he takes one of the bridges into Brooklyn?"

  "If he does, Hardman Three is on him. You stay where you are." Lyons leaned forward to his driver. "Drive over toward East Side Drive. That'll put us right under the bridges, right?"

  "On my way."

  The D.F. signal became a distant beeping. Lyons buzzed Gadgets. "Where are you? You staying behind them?"

  "It's the truck, no doubt about it," Gadgets told him. "He's pulling turns and stops, trying to spot us."

  "Is he heading toward either of the bridges?"

  "Nope. Not yet. We just circled a block. Hey, he's going back up Allen. He's going north on Allen. Can you take him? He might have spotted my car."

  "Smith's still on Allen, where you left him. You fall back. What kind of car do you have?"

  "A Volkswagen beetle — with a Porsche engine and transmission. These feds have all the toys."

  "Don't get a speeding ticket. Off." Lyons keyed Smith's code. "Smith! They're coming your way, get ready to move. You got the description? A green and white florist's truck, no windows in back."

  "Yes, sir! Behind him already. Keeping a half-block distance behind him. He turned east, he's on Delancy. He could be headed for the Williamsburg Bridge. I'm on Delancy. He's turned again. South now."

  "Don't turn. We'll be there in a minute. Stay near the bridge, he might be doing a last loop or two before going over the river."

  "Parked and waiting, sir. Signal's holding steady."

  The phone buzzed when Lyons broke the connection. "Hardman Three here. I think the signal's holding steady. I mean, I'm moving east, but I don't think itis moving at all."

  "He was on Delancy. He turned south." Lyons glanced at his pocket street map of Manhattan. "Get out to Grand, and head west. I'll be one street north, criss-crossing. Off."

  Smith buzzed him. "He passed me! But there's no signal from the van. Do I follow?"

  "Get behind him! Stay with him until we can figure this out."

  "Moving!"

  Lyons turned up the volume on the minimike. The faint traffic and truck sounds were gone. Now, nothing. He listened, the speaker pressed to his ear.

  Clang! The metallic sound made him almost drop it. He held the minimike's receiver away from him, turned down the volume. He heard what sounded like steel on concrete. Footsteps. Then more sounds of steel. The sounds faded to almost nothing. Lyons buzzed Gadgets.

  "You monitoring the minimikes?"

  "Too faint for me. You get something?"

  "I think the boy dropped him someplace, then took off. He passed Smith, on Delancy, but he had no signal. Nothing. Smith followed him over the Williamsburg Bridge. I don't know where they are now."

  "Let's pull some circles around that block. On my way up."

  "Head toward the Williamsburg Bridge," Lyons told his driver. "You have some equipment with you in this cab?"

  "Yes, sir. Two Uzis, ammunition. Four Army-issue tear gas grenades. Two walkie-talkies. First aid kit. If there's anything else that you need..."

  "I know, you can call." Lyons punched the code for Smith. "Where are you now?"

  "He's taking me for a scenic tour of Brooklyn. He turns once in a while. Nothing serious. I'm staying a block back."

  "Here's what I want you to do. Call one of your feds. With a civilian car, civilian clothes. New York identification. Have the fed crash into the truck. A fender bender. I don't want that boy driving around anymore. I want him out of the game. Maybe he has an outstanding warrant on him, could you arrange that?"

  "Yes, sir. No problem."

  "Then do it. Off."

  They drove through a neighborhood of old tenements and garages. Lyons monitored both the D.F. receiver and the minimike. Faint, very faint noises came from the minimike. But the D.F. beeps came strong.

  "Circle this block," he told the cabbie-agent. The D.F. signal wavered, then came back strong as they completed the circle.

  "Sounds like he's in one of those buildings," the cabbie commented.

  Lyons scanned the doorways and windows of the tenements. One city block, all the buildings four or five stories high, each tenement floor having four to ten apartments: there were hundreds of rooms to search. "Yeah, but where?"

  * * *

  In the sealed back of the van, Blancanales had lost all sense of direction and distance as the boy wove through the streets of the city. But he knew the D.F. unit and minimike would help his partners follow him; as long as he had those micro-electronic units, he was not alone.

  The van skidded th
rough a high-speed right turn, swerved wide, then whipped right again. The speed threw Blancanales against the side of the van. His hands mashed flowers as he braced himself for the next turn. But the van accelerated, hit a driveway ramp at more than forty miles an hour and went airborne. Blancanales hit the roof of the van, then the floor, hard.

  Skidding threw him forward. He hit the back of the driver's seat. Before he could right himself, the side door slammed open. Two men wearing black ski masks grabbed him, pulled him from the van.

  He went from the dark interior of the van to the dark interior of a garage. A third man in a ski mask threw the van door closed, then dragged down a heavy steel door as the van screeched away. The exchange took less than ten seconds.

  One holding each arm, the ski-masked FALN soldiers hurried Blancanales through the dark garage reeking of oil and gasoline. He could see cars and trucks with the hoods up. The third FALN soldier ran past them and leaned into a car.

  Headlights blinded Blancanales. He felt hands pat him down, slip into his pockets. Hands took his Browning double-action, then his wallet, his keys, pocket change. They found the minimike, took it.

  Handcuffs locked his wrists together. The soldiers searched him again. They jerked his suitcoat back and down. Ripping open his shirt, they slid their hands over his dark-skinned chest, both shoulders, his back.

  They found the D.F. antenna. Pinned to his shirt collar, the hair-fine wire ran down his body to the plastic-cased transmitter clipped to the elastic of his underwear. They tore the antenna and D.F. unit from him.

  One of the FALN soldiers motioned, and the light died: Blancanales felt a hood slip over his head.

  8

  Whipping in behind the yellow cab, Gadgets ran from his supercharged Volkswagen and jumped into the cab's back seat. He carried his khaki canvas satchel. But Lyons wasn't in the taxi.

  "Where's my partner?" Gadgets asked the cabbie-agent.

  "Which one?"

  "HardmanOne."

  "He went in." The cabbie-agent glanced to the block of tenements.

  "What!"

  "He took a hand-radio, checked his pistol, told me to wait here, told me to tell you that things had changed. Here's the other radio, if you want to quiz him."

  "I got one." Gadgets pulled a hand-radio from his satchel, but didn't key it. He checked the other units first. He clicked on his D.F. and minimike receivers. The D.F. signal gave a steady beeping. The minimike receiver was silent.

  "Hmmmmm." Gadgets took another unit from his bag. He twisted a dial, waited. Silence.

  "Problems?" Taximan asked.

  Gadgets held up the unit. "This is a super minimike receiver. If that minimike was still on our man, we would be getting a heartbeat. But if we aren't..."

  "Trouble, huh?"

  "Well, if he's in bad trouble, it's too late to help. But more likely they gave him a skin search. Stripped him and checked him for electronics. Those people aren't dumb. However, they're not as sharp as Able Team."

  The hand-radio buzzed. "Taxi! Hardman Three there yet?"

  "I'm here. Where are you?"

  "Watching two friends watch you. You bring anything interesting with you?"

  "All kinds of tricks."

  "Sit tight for a minute. Give the hand-radio to the cab driver. I'm pulling a one-man ambush, and I might need some help..."

  * * *

  Lyons whispered the instructions to the cabbie-agent, then waited. A hundred feet across the tarred tin roof of the tenement, two Latins leaned over the edge, watching the street five floors below. One of the men spoke into a walkie-talkie.

  That was Lyons' signal. He crawled from his cover behind a crumbling roll of roofing paper. Thirty feet away, near a fan housing, there was an ice chest that the men must have parked there. A few cola cans lay around it. He crossed the thirty feet and took cover behind the fan housing. He crouched, waiting, his .357 in his hand.

  Slow, even footsteps crossed the roof. Lyons heard someone remove the ice chest lid, pop the top of a can. Then the man came into view as he went to the edge of the roof. He glanced down into the alley. He jerked back, called out, "Juan! The taxi!"

  The other man ran across the roof, and he too looked down. Lyons waited until both men's backs were to him; then he made his move. He came up behind the first man and smashed him in the head with the magnum. The man fell limp, landing on his back.

  As the neighboring man turned, Lyons threw a low round-house kick into his knees, grabbed him by the collar, and crushed his nose in with his elbow. Lyons threw the man down on top of the first.

  Lyons looped plastic handcuffs around the wrists of the top man, threw him to the side. The other man twisted, suddenly pushing Lyons back. As the man reached to his waist for a pistol, Lyons pinned him with a knee, leaning all his weight on the man's arm, and simultaneously hammering him on the top of the head with the four-inch barrel of his magnum.

  Stunned, the man went slack long enough for Lyons to flip him over, slip plastic handcuffs around his wrists and jerk the plastic loop tight.

  Searching them quickly, he found two .38 pistols, a sheath knife, a walkie-talkie. Neither man carried identification. Lyons looked over the edge of the roof; within seconds he saw the taxi cruising through the alley. He buzzed them on his hand-radio.

  "Hardman Three up, please."

  One of his prisoners, blood streaming from his nose, struggled to his feet and tried to run. Lyons kicked his feet out from under him, put a foot on the back of the man's neck, pressed his face into the tar roof. Lyons took two plastic handcuffs from his pocket, then dropped down on the struggling man's legs and looped his ankles together.

  The other man was not yet conscious. He bled from several cuts under his hair where Lyons had pistol-whipped him. Lyons cuffed that man's ankles together also. Then he returned to the conscious prisoner.

  He flipped him over and put the six-inch blade of the sheath knife against the man's throat:

  "Where are the others?" Lyons shouted at him.

  The prisoner put his head back and yelled: "Viva Puerto Rico libre."

  "What're you talkingabout? All day long I've been meeting Puerto Ricans who are trying to die for Puerto Rico. What's the point of a free Puerto Rico if you're dead?"

  The man spat at him. Behind Lyons, someone clapped. He spun, pointing the knife. Gadgets stood there grinning, his satchel hanging from one shoulder.

  "Do you want to continue your political discussion, or can we get to work?"

  "Yeah, yeah. These jerks. So — you get anything?"

  Gadgets nodded, took a few steps away from the prisoners, motioned for Lyons to come over.

  "Sure did. The D.F. is across the alley there, somewhere on the first floor. I got a narrow-beam scanner that works like a flashlight — except in reverse, see."

  "Don't tell me about it. Let's get going. You think you can get any information out of these two?"

  Gadgets shook his head. He slipped a unit out of the canvas bag and went over to the edge of the roof. He pointed it down to the alley, moving it slowly from side to side. The unit beeped. Gadgets sighted down the unit like a pistol, then turned to Lyons and called him over.

  "There, right there." Gadgets pointed. "Looks like thirty or forty feet from that steel door, straight into the building. That's where the D.F. is. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything."

  Gadgets glanced to the walkie-talkie Lyons had taken from the FALN sentries. He grinned, told Lyons: "I got a plan."

  * * *

  Lyons went down the stairs two at a time, the bulging pockets of his light suit coat knocking against his hips with every step. After Gadgets had detailed his plan, Lyons took both of the captured .38 pistols, extra plastic handcuffs, the sheath knife, and his hand-radio. If he could get into the building across the alley before the FALN soldiers inside checked with the sentries he had just immobilized, then he had a chance of taking them by surprise over there. But he had to move fast. The extra fifteen pounds in his pockets
didn't help.

  He walked swiftly through the lobby, alert for FALN soldiers. They could be anywhere. On the street he hurried through the late-afternoon strollers and shoppers. Anyone around him could be a sentry. Any of them might have a pistol and instructions to shoot, then warn the group. If they spotted Lyons as a law officer, he had no defense. He wouldn't see the bullet coming.

  Around the corner, he glanced into the alley. The steel door was the third entry from him. He continued along the avenue. The third business from the corner was an auto repair shop.

  The first business was a cafe. Above the cafe were apartments. No one at the lunch counter looked at him as he passed. The next business was a wholesale auto parts distributor. The door was closed, the windows barred.

  At the auto repair shop, he glanced at the steel roll-away door. Padlocked.

  He saw wet tire tracks crossing the driveway. The tracks started at the trickle of filthy water in the gutter, continued to the steel door. The car had driven from the street, into the garage. Lyons glanced to the street's asphalt. There were no streaks from wet tires leaving the driveway.

  Above the garage, the windows on the second and third floors were bricked in. But the fourth and fifth floors had windows. One window had an iron railing interwoven with flowering vines. A fire escape zigzagged down the face of the building. The lowest rung of the steel ladder was more than ten feet above Lyons.

  He noted all this in three seconds as he walked past. Then he backed up and stared at the fire escape.

  The ladder hung only three and a half or four feet above his reach. He climbed onto the iron security grill of a shop's back window and reached up for the ladder. He couldn't quite make it. He braced himself, jumped for it.

  He missed the grip, fell hard to the asphalt. Getting up before he could feel the hurt, he grabbed the iron grill again, swung up one foot.

  A pistol jammed against his head. He hung there, both hands on the ironwork, one foot on the window's brick edging, waiting for the bullet to crash through his skull. There were footsteps behind him.

  "Don't resist, officer," a quiet, melodic voice cautioned him. "Step down from the window. You're coming with us."