by Dick Stivers
A minute and a half later, when the last round had quieted the last groan, Katz was the only one moving. He carried the canvas tool bag to the Minigun and quickly disassembled it and put it back in the bag. Then, easily throwing the eighty-five pounds of gear on his shoulder, he produced an Uzi and headed for the stairs.
No one tried to stop him.
Katz threw his bag of tools into the rented van and drove away. No one was remotely curious about an old tradesman leaving an old building.
*
July 14, 1012 hours, Houston, Texas
The commander of the Texas Harassment Initiation Team looked over his men. He was proud of them. He had recruited and trained them himself. He was about to prove that he was worth every cent of the three thousand dollars a week he had been paid. This unit was not about to fall on its face like some of the others had. He decided to make his summary of the briefing extremely short.
“Remember, A and B teams close in on the target. First, eliminate all the workers except the computer scientists — we’ll use drugs to debrief them later. Then let the specialists take what they need from both the electronic and paper files before you destroy and retreat.
“C and D teams, you have the more difficult job. Someone is going to try to stop us. You are to keep a quarter-mile circumference around Aand Bteams at all times, during the raid and during the travel to and from. The moment another force tries to hit Aand Bteams, you close in and eliminate. Is everything clear?”
No one said anything.
“Then get to your assigned cars and let’s put the show on the road.”
Houston is a city where no one moves without a car.
HIT had their office and training center outside the 610 circle, near Genoa Airport. They had their own cinder-block building and parking lot. In the lot the group leaders began directing the men to their assigned transportation.
The last man was out of the building and the first car was moving out of the gate of the parking compound when the machine gun on the roof opened fire.
Tracers zeroed in on the engine of the lead car, bringing it to a standstill in the middle of the exit gate. The tracers then probed the back of the car until they found the gas tank. The only two terrorists to escape the inferno were cut down within inches of the car.
From a rooftop over five hundred yards away another light machine gun opened fire. A three-round burst perforated every terrorist who tried to regain the door to the building. Soon the door was well blockaded by the bodies piled against it.
“Take out those gun emplacements!” The command was shouted from between two cars. It was easier to issue the command than it was to perform the feat. Every time a head showed, a three-round burst went through the vehicle and the body behind it.
The tracers continued to stream from the roof of the terrorist stronghold. Gas tank after gas tank ruptured into a geyser of flames. Soon commands could no longer be heard over the screams of the dying. Two minutes later, the only sound in the enclosed parking lot was the crackle of flames and the pings of stretching metal.
Gary Manning on the roof of the terrorist hideout gave the thumbs-up sign to David McCarter who had been doing the sharpshooting from the roof of the more distant building. McCarter grinned and waved.
Both quickly picked up their Heckler & Koch HK21E machine guns and began their retreat. McCarter used his paratroop training to jump from the low building, cradling the machine gun in his arms. He held it almost tenderly, thinking that he could have done the same high-accuracy job from twice the distance with that beautifully machined, twenty-two inch barrel. He laid the gun on the back seat of a rented Lincoln and peeled rubber to the front of the HIT building.
Manning came around the corner and put his Heckler & Koch HK21E on top of McCarter’s. He then threw a couple of jackets over the hardware and climbed into the front. The first siren could be heard faintly.
“Piece of cake,” Manning said as he moved sedately away from the building.
“Let’s go get us some Houston hospitality.” McCarter grinned.
18
July 14, 1050 hrs, Salt Lake City, Utah
A weary Carl Lyons sat at the back of the Stony Man executive jet.
Rosario Blancanales walked back toward him.
“Carl, Katz’s on the blower,” he said. “He’s got bad news.”
Lyons grumbled to himself all the way up the aisle of the plane. He collapsed into the copilot seat without acknowledging Jack Grimaldi. He snatched up the microphone and growled into it.
“Yeah, Katz.”
“I just came from a get-together in Seattle,” Katz said, his voice sounding scratchy through the descrambler. “Old Ma Jishin’s been gossiping on the telephone again. Time for all raids is now eleven hundred hours, local time.”
Lyons glanced at his watch. “That’s six minutes from now.”
“Right.”
Lyons glanced at Grimaldi, whose fingers were flying over his custom flight computer. He did not have to ask the question.
Grimaldi reported. “I can have you over Anderson Androids, the most probable target, in eleven minutes. Can we get a confirm?”
“You going to stand this can on its tail again?”
“Why not? It’s fun.”
Lyons spoke into the mike again. “Katz, we can reach the target about five minutes after hit time. We need a monitor on the police channels and a confirmation of the target.”
“I’ll arrange for the police to give it to you. That way they’ll be expecting some ‘experts.’ You have id if they ask?”
“I’ll dig it out. Thanks, Katz.”
“No problem. Out.”
Lyons went back to Pol and Gadgets.
“Let’s get ready. We’ll have to walk the rest of the way. Soft armament. The wolves are going to reach the sheep first. Try the gray jump suits and use body armor.”
All members of Able Team scrambled to equip themselves and be ready in time to jump.
“Why gray?” Gadgets asked as he put on the jump suit over the custom-made flak suit with its heating-cooling system.
Lyons was selecting id folders from an attache case full. He passed two out to his teammates and pocketed one himself.
“Just a hunch. The most probable target is one of these modern ultrasecure places with no windows.”
“Got you,” Pol answered. “Good thinking.”
“I’m packing extra Gerber Mark l’s,” Gadgets remarked.
“We may need C-4. Pack lots,” Lyons told Gadgets. “Also dig out those infrared flashlights and the goggles that go with them.”
“Those damn things must weigh five pounds,” Pol complained.
“I’m going to carry an Ingram,” Gadgets said.
“No .45s! Uzis with disintegrating ammo and flash suppressors for everyone,” Lyons barked. “Move it. We must be about there. Silenced Beretta 93-Rs in the shoulder rigs. Stun grenades only.”
Grimaldi stuck his head around the door to the flight deck. “Probable target confirmed. I dump you in 150 seconds from… now. Good luck.”
Able Team nodded. Their mental clocks were counting down as they scrambled into the parachutes.
*
Officer Pat Malone and his partner, Officer Inez Gallic, were the first to answer the report of explosions and gunfire in a new industrial park, east of the University of Utah. It was in one of the new buildings, Anderson Androids Ltd.
The terrorist techniques had been crude, but effective. They had gone to the only entry — it consisted of an outside door, a very small entrance hall, and two electronic doors that led farther into the building — opened the outer door and tossed in a large bundle of explosive. They had then ducked back out and braced the outer doors. The force of the explosion in the small foyer had blown both of the security doors right off their hinges, but the outside doors, which had been braced, were still functional.
Now the terrorists had automatic rifles covering the only entrance to the building. There were not eve
n any windows that could be broken for entry. The building was nothing more than a very fancy concrete box. Those inside were completely dependent on artificial lighting, and air-conditioning.
Inez finished on the radio to headquarters and walked back to where Malone was covering the entrance to the building with his service revolver.
“SWAT on its way?” Malone asked.
His partner shook her head. “Federal specialists be here in another four minutes. Reinforcements are putting up a containment net, but we’re to stay out of the building.”
“Suits me.”
The sky was suddenly filled with the scream of a black jet. The jet, much larger than a fighter, sizzled over the horizon from a low altitude and then began to climb straight up over the industrial park. The engines suddenly flamed out. The plane slowed until it hung motionless in the sky, only about fifteen hundred feet over the building.
“God!” the female cop exclaimed. “It’s going to crash right about here.”
Just when the plane was almost still, three black forms appeared by the tail. Then the plane lost its grip on the sky. It slipped to one side and came rushing at the earth, left wing first.
Officers Pat Malone and Inez Gallis threw themselves flat on the carefully manicured lawn of the building they were watching. Then they rolled on their side to watch the plane fall toward them.
Slowly, slowly, the left wing began to drag and the nose came forward. Then, with a puff of smoke, the two engines burst into ignition. The plane continued its earthward course, pushed by two huge turbojets attached to the body just behind the wings.
Suddenly the nose began to lift. The plane bottomed out of its dive and screamed away less than fifty feet from the tops of the buildings.
“I didn’t see that,” Malone said. His voice shook.
Then he remembered the three black forms. He looked back at the spot where the plane had hung motionless in the sky and was surprised to see that three parachutes were already beginning to billow open.
“That isn’t really possible, is it?” Inez asked.
“I’m sure it’s not,” Malone confirmed.
The three jumpers landed perfectly on the soft sod of the company lawn. A tall blond man unsnapped his chute and ran toward the two police officers. They waited, still not quite believing what they were seeing.
The man stood well over six feet tall. He had a shock of blond hair peeking out from under a gray watch cap. His fatigues were gray and there was gray skin cover smeared carelessly on his face. A deadly looking Uzi with a flash suppressor rode on his right thigh in a quick-release clip.
“Malone and Gallic?” The voice was clipped, the words impatient.
“Yes,” Malone answered.
“You were told to expect us.”
Malone grinned. “Didn’t expect anything quite so dramatic. Where’s the rest of the crew?”
Carl Lyons gestured to the other two jumpers. Like their leader, they had unsnapped their chutes and let the wind have them. They were consulting a piece of paper and finding a particular spot on the cement wall at one side of the building.
“Just the three of you?”
Cold eyes ignored the question.
“You may need backup,” Lyons said. “You might find terrorists coming out this door. I would advise placing yourself against the wall and shooting anyone who comes out the door with a weapon in his or her hand.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t kid,” Lyons replied.
He then turned his back on the two cops and began to walk around the building. At the next corner Lyons found the power lines leading into the building. He emptied a clip from the Uzi into the connectors. The power lines fell free, crackling their charge into the grass.
“Can either of you throw a grenade?” Lyons asked the cops when he came back.
Gallic nodded. “I was pretty good in the army.”
Lyons pulled two concussion grenades off his webbing.
“Get your partner to hold the door. Toss both these in and get the door shut when I give you the sign.”
He left them standing waiting at the only door to the building. Gallic stood where she could see up the side of the building. Malone stood where he could grab the door.
“Now!” yelled his partner.
He yanked the door open and two grenades sizzled past him into the small entrance area. He let go of the door and ran along the front of the building. Automatic fire from inside was so late that it succeeded only in bouncing from the heavy glass of the closing door.
Then the two grenades blasted the door back open. From the side of the building came the sharp crack of another explosion. Malone held his position, revolver trained on the exit. He was relieved to see a riot truck screaming up to the building.
“What’s happening?” he yelled to Inez.
“They blasted a hole in the side of the building. I never saw people move so fast. They were all inside before the rubble stopped falling.”
Malone shook his head. Only three of them. They were going to have to move faster than bullets. How the hell were they going to get the hostages out in the dark?
*
The inside of the building was not dark. As soon as the power was cut, the emergency generator had cut in. Between batteries and the latest technology, the power pickup had been so smooth that it was not even noticeable.
Able Team came into a large storeroom as Gadgets had planned. Even here, one emergency light bulb burned.
“Kill it,” Lyons ordered.
Gadgets unscrewed the light bulb and spit on the base. He then balanced a quarter over the bulb and screwed it back into the socket.
“That should kill the local fuse,” he reported.
The three warriors put on the infrared goggles. When Pol turned on his infrared flashlight, it showed the door quite plainly.
They moved cautiously out of the storage room.
“More light to the left,” Lyons said. “Gadgets, find that emergency generator and take it out.”
“It doesn’t show on the sketchy building plan that we were sent. I’ll stick with you until we find the elevators. The stairs to the basement are close to the elevator well.”
The three warriors started to jog down a corridor toward the center of the building.
Suddenly two terrorists appeared around a corner. They were dragging a struggling woman between them. Politician was closest to the two goons. The stick in his hand whistled and bounced off the temple of one. He dropped.
The second terrorist spun, bringing his M-16 up as he turned. He was far too slow. The stick bounced back over the head of the victim and poked the terrorist in the throat. He fell back unable to even call out. Politician followed through by grabbing the other end of the jo in his left hand and pressing the stick across the terrorist’s windpipe. In a moment he was backed up against the corridor wall, fighting to take the crushing pressure from his air supply.
“Where is the main force?” Politician asked.
“Go to hell,” he choked.
“I can tell you that,” the woman said.
As soon as she spoke, Lyons’s Beretta let out a quiet gasp. The terrorist under Pol’s stick acquired a hole in his temple. He folded like a deck chair.
“When these creeps hit, everyone headed for the top floor and barricaded the doors. These killers are still trying to get through the barricade. I hid on this floor. I was trying to sneak out to telephone the police, but they were watching the emergency door as well as the main one.”
“I thought there was only one door,” Gadgets said.
She shook her head. “There’s one that looks like a cement block. It only opens from the inside.”
“Pol, let’s start picking off enemy,” Lyons said. “Gadgets, get those lights.”
Gadgets turned to the woman. “Can you find the emergency generator?”
She nodded.
“Let’s go.”
Ga
dgets and the woman went down a flight of metal stairs. Lyons and Politician turned around to go up. Suddenly an explosion washed down the steps, nearly knocking them off their feet.
“The terrorists are on the third floor now,” Lyons said grimly. He started to take the stairs quickly, in spite of the noise he made.
*
Gadgets and the woman reached a subbasement. She threw her light weight into opening the heavy door at the foot of the stairs and almost got herself killed. A hail of bullets deflected from the partly open door and whined around the concrete stairwell.
Gadgets leaped down the last four stairs and slammed his weight against the door to close it. Then he quickly pulled the pin from a concussion grenade and opened the door just enough to toss it in.
The muffled whump of the grenade started opening the heavy door. Gadgets helped it open farther. He already had the Uzi out of its clip and ready. Two terrorists did a brief death shuffle as a figure-eight burst finished the job the stun grenade had begun.
“You sure move fast,” the woman breathed.
Gadgets grinned as he quickly disabled the emergency generator.
“As soon as the power was cut off, they must have sent these two to protect the generator. They’re very efficient,” the woman mused.
Gadgets adjusted the infrared goggles. They were uncomfortable, but necessary. Then with the Uzi in one hand and the infrared projector in the other, he instructed the woman. “Grab my belt. I’ll lead you to a way out. If I start shooting or someone starts shooting at us, hit the floor. I’ll come back for you.”
“Ahh, okay.” Some of her confidence seemed to have gone with the light.
He pushed on the heavy door. A bright light hit the infrared goggles, almost blinding him because of the built-in amplification. He rolled away from the door as bullets dug at the doorframe.
“This the only entrance to the generator room?” Gadgets asked the woman.
“Yeah,” she confirmed in a shaky voice.
*
Lyons and Politician were half a flight from the blasted door when the emergency light went out. Two terror goons had been left behind to prevent victims from escaping the top floor. Lyons continued up the stairs.
