by Walter Wager
All this flashed through his mind in an instant.
That was all the time he had.
The snowplow was almost upon him.
In another ten seconds, the Jeep and Takeshi Ito would be crushed.
He dropped the remote-control unit. Grabbing the flight bag that contained the silenced submachine gun and five extra thirty-two-round clips, Ito jerked open the door beside him and hurled himself out of the vehicle. He felt the heat radiating from the plow's motor as he rolled away.
Now the massive steel front of the thirty-five-thousand-pound machine smashed into the Jeep. With the garage walls confining the sound, the crash of metal against metal was deafening. And the plow didn't even slow down. It slammed ahead like a tank, driving the maimed Jeep back into the rear wall. There was a terrible grinding noise as the Jeep began to buckle. Within a few moments, it was a broken compacted wreck.
Pistol in hand, Malone turned off the engine and jumped down. As his feet touched the floor, he saw a crouching figure open a side door. The detective raised his weapon.
"Freeze!" he shouted.
When Ito spun, Malone saw the automatic weapon that the terrorist held. Malone took cover behind the big truck barely an instant before a scythe of g-millimeter slugs slashed the air where he'd stood. Then Takeshi Ito bolted through the doorway into the warehouse.
Seconds later, Malone warily peered out from behind the plow. Pistol in hand, he slowly scanned the garage for the shooter or other hostile gunmen. He saw none, but knew that meant nothing. There could be a dozen heavily armed fanatics in the building—perhaps just beyond that open portal.
"You okay, Frank?"
It was Arbolino. Framed in the space where the wide garage door to the street had been, the snow-spattered ESU lieutenant and four of his men eyed the devastation. Arbolino looked at the gasoline pouring from the mangled Jeep's fuel tank, the spreading puddle of oil and the sparks sputtering from the shattered burglar alarm. The threat of fire was obvious.
"This place could go anytime," Arbolino warned.
Frank Malone nodded.
"I only saw one of them," he said evenly. "Asian—and working a machine gun rigged with a silencer. He went that way."
Malone pointed at the exit that Ito had used.
"You coming?" he asked.
"As soon as I take care of something," Arbolino replied. He raised the walkie-talkie and told his teams covering the rear alley and the roof to start their assaults in twenty seconds with heavy firing. Malone understood the sound strategy at once. The noisy attacks would distract and divide the defenders. That would reduce the number of terrorist guns pouring bullets at the force breaking in from the garage.
"Get ready," Arbolino said to the men beside him.
They waited tensely in the silence. Then the shooting began. It continued for more than a dozen seconds before the ESU lieutenant spoke again.
"Let's do it!"
Arbolino and Malone were the first through the doorway. Neither wanted to be a hero; they were simply professionals doing their job. Since the days of the cavemen, the field commanders of small units automatically led the charge.
Takeshi Ito was waiting for them. Crouched on the first- floor landing, he stared down at the doorway intently. His finger was on the MAC-11's trigger, and his face was grim. He had heard the firing on the roof and in the back alley. He understood what it meant.
There was no way to escape.
He had to shoot it out, here, now.
For a moment he wondered how they had found him. Then he squeezed the trigger. The first burst punched half a dozen holes in the wall before four 9-millimeter slugs slammed into the bigger American's middle. They hammered Arbolino back reeling. The ESU lieutenant yelled in pain.
But he didn't die.
He didn't even bleed.
The heavy protective garb was damaged, but the slugs didn't get through to his flesh. As Arbolino staggered under the impact, Ito swung his machine gun to slay the second attacker. Since that man also wore body armor, logical Takeshi Ito raised the MAC-11's muzzle to aim for his throat.
Malone shot first.
He fired three rounds before Ito could chop his head off with the rapid-fire weapon.
One .38-caliber slug blasted a chunk of wood from the banister. The second broke the terrorist's left arm an inch above the elbow, and the third obliterated his left ear. Jolted by the searing pain, he wasn't even aware of the crimson fluid pouring from the wounds.
The injured arm throbbed fiercely, but that wasn't the worst of it. The whole left side of his head felt as if it was on fire. The hurt was almost dizzying, but he had too much pride and hate to collapse. He'd show them that Takeshi Ito wasn't finished yet.
He'd make them pay for what they had done to him. He'd make them pay in the only way left to him now. He would keep them from the transmitter—his transmitter—as long as he could. Every extra second would be a small victory. Every minute would ensure that more airliners crowded with imperialist racists would crash. He might not be alive to see it, but knowing that it was coming would make dying easier.
Screaming a Japanese Red Army slogan defiantly, Ito squeezed off another burst that passed only inches above Malone's head. Then the bleeding terrorist stumbled toward the stairs to the next floor. When he reached them, he turned and fired down toward the Americans to discourage pursuit. Suddenly he heard a metallic click that meant his weapon was out of ammunition. With his injured left arm hanging useless, he managed to snap out the empty clip and insert a full one.
Slowly and doggedly, he forced himself up the stairs— each step a mountain and a personal triumph. Though he was alone, wounded and ringed by enemies in a depraved foreign land, he was winning. Exhilarated by that knowledge, he shouted the militant slogan again.
The six policemen below heard him, but they didn't understand Japanese and they weren't interested in revolutionary rhetoric. Five of them were concentrating on how they could shoot him down with minimum risk to themselves. The sixth—a Harvard-educated captain—was thinking how useful it might be to interrogate this terrorist or others about the jamming equipment.
"If we can take a couple of them alive ..." Malone began.
"Sure" a sergeant replied briskly as he checked the shells in his 12-gauge shotgun. Malone recognized the tone of a pragmatic man humoring a stupid superior. He'd used it himself. The sergeant's attitude didn't surprise Frank Malone. He understood how the idea of trying to capture a fanatic armed with a machine gun might seem both naive and foolhardy.
But that was Malone's way.
That was how he had to do it.
"Cover me," he told Tony Arbolino and started up the stairs.
The ESU lieutenant did not wait on the ground floor. Gesturing for his men to follow, he was barely a yard behind Malone as the detective climbed to the next landing. Expecting terrorist bullets or bombs at any instant, Malone watched and listened tensely every step of the way.
He saw no one.
He heard nothing but the sounds of the other ESU teams pressing their diversionary attacks.
Where were the terrorists?
Now there was a different noise—from above. It sounded like a human in profound pain, Malone judged. But he knew that it could be a trick to lure the police into some murderous trap. Life-or-death time again, Frank Malone thought grimly.
Stop or advance? His instincts and the watch on his wrist made the decision. There was no time to spare. With his eyes sweeping back and forth for a gun muzzle or trip wire, Malone made his way to the end of the short corridor. When he looked up the stairwell, he saw Ito nearing the second-floor landing.
The terrorist's gait seemed unsteady. His left arm dangled limply, but his right hand still grasped the terrible little MAC-11. Malone had to act effectively and immediately to prevent him from using it. There was no margin for error, the twelve-hundred-rounds-per-minute weapon could totally dismember Frank Malone in a few seconds.
Aiming carefully, Malone f
ired. One bullet ruined Ito's right wrist, wrenching a scream from his throat and making him drop the machine gun. The next round shattered the electronics expert's right ankle like a blow from a sledgehammer. Whirling in agony, weaponless and disabled, Takeshi Ito began to fall.
We've got him—alive, Malone exulted silently.
As Ito crumpled, his cry changed abruptly. It was no longer one of shock and pain. Now it was an awful noise that Frank Malone had heard so many times—the sound of stomach-wrenching fear. Staub had probably told the man that Americans butchered captured revolutionaries, the detective reasoned.
But it wasn't any abstract lie that terrified Takeshi Ito.
He was afraid of something real and tangible.
Malone saw him struggle desperately to catch hold of the banister. He failed. From the instant he hit the stairs, he twisted and strained in a frantic effort to get up . . .to get away. Bleeding badly and half dazed by the agony of his wounds, he somehow rose to one knee.
That was when the booby trap he'd hidden beneath the worn carpet exploded. The blast hurled the short slim terrorist over the railing, and he tumbled down the stairwell. He wasn't screaming anymore.
Ito dropped like a sandbag. There was a loud thump as his body hit the ground floor. Two newly arrived patrolmen rushed forward, pointing their guns at his head. Aware that he might have a concealed weapon, they were ready to shoot if he made any threatening move.
He didn't move at all. He lay there facedown and utterly still. After a few seconds, one of the police reached down and warily turned over the apparently unconscious terrorist. With an ear destroyed, his nose broken by the impact of a two-story fall and his mouth distorted in a grimace of panic, he looked terrible.
He didn't seem to be breathing. Aiming his pistol between Ito's eyes, a black policeman bent down slowly to check the electronics expert's wrist for a pulse. Some twenty seconds later, the officer straightened up and shook his head.
The cunningly concealed bomb had killed the clever man who installed it. The bloody thing on the floor was a corpse. Takeshi Ito was dead.
34
BUT his powerful transmitter was still alive.
It had to be somewhere overhead, and it had to be stopped.
Malone pointed at the steps leading up to the third floor.
"There could be more booby traps," Arbolino warned.
"Bet on it," Malone replied harshly.
Arbolino frowned in concern.
"My guys aren't explosives experts, Frank," he said. "I think we better call the Bomb Squad."
"No time. We've got to knock out that jammer now."
"We could cut off the power in the basement," the ESU lieutenant suggested.
"That's probably booby trapped, too," Malone said, "and the odds are they've got a backup generator. No point in going downstairs. We've got to hit them from above."
Arbolino stiffened as he thought of the armed terrorists and hidden bombs to be challenged. Even in body armor, policemen would be maimed or killed.
"Way above." Frank Malone continued. "You said your best shooter's on the roof next door. Get on the radio and tell him to blast the antennas."
"At night in a snowstorm?"
"He can use a machine gun. Tell him, dammit!"
Arbolino took a walkie-talkie from one of his men, and warned the police on the roof opposite the "shooter" to take cover. Then he radioed the order for the marksman to attack the antennas with an automatic weapon. A husky sergeant handed the expert "shooter" a submachine gun, and repeated the lieutenant's command.
"I don't think it'll work, Sarge," the younger cop said.
"Don't think, Caplan. Shoot."
Some thirty yards away in the warehouse, Malone picked up the MAC-11 and flight bag that the terrorist had dropped.
"Call the Bomb Squad," he told Arbolino, then he ran down the stairs.
The "shooter" peered through the swirling snow, brushed the melting flakes from his face and took a deep breath of the cold air. Then he raised his weapon, squinted and began to fire.
His first short burst didn't hit anything. Sparks flew as his second struck one of the antennas. It bent under the impact but it didn't fall. Silently cursing the stupidity of his orders, he fired again.
The slugs broke off a piece of the antenna—a small piece. The next burst amputated a two-foot section. Four fifths of the antenna stood intact. Now the marksman was angry— angry at the impossible orders, at the goddam target that defied him, at himself.
"Shit!" he swore and squeezed the trigger again.
The top three feet of the mast drooped like a broken wing of a bird, but the main part of the antenna did not fall. Now the clip was empty. Furious, Caplan slammed in a fresh one.
When Malone reached the front door of the building, he found it locked. The ESU men had come in through a rear entrance. Malone shot the lock off, kicked in the door and charged up the stairs.
The "shooter" resumed firing. Now he aimed at the middle of the antenna, one . . . two . . . three bursts. More hits, more sparks like fireflies in the night. The battle had become personal to Caplan, the marksman and his pride against the goddam antenna.
He won.
After emptying two thirds of the clip, he saw his enemy lean over and drop to the roof.
"Nice shooting, Caplan," the sergeant encouraged.
The man with the machine gun wiped the snow from his face again.
"It won't work," he said. "There are still three standing, and half my ammo's gone."
"I've got plenty," Malone announced as he strode onto the roof.
Caplan pointed at another antenna.
"Fine," Malone agreed. They fired together at the lower part of the metal mast. Defying the cold wind and endless snow, they poured slugs at the second antenna. Battered and shattered by four bursts, it fell.
"That one next," the detective proposed.
"I'm dry," Caplan said and tapped his empty machine gun.
Studying the marksman's weapon, Malone saw that it wouldn't take the 9-millimeter bullets in Ito's clips. Malone looked into the dead terrorist's flight bag. There were only two full magazines left, and two totally undamaged antennas to kill.
It took one and a half clips to knock down the third one.
MAC-11 clips carne in two sizes. These were the bigger ones with thirty-two rounds, and Malone estimated that he had about sixteen or seventeen bullets left. He had tried to count the shots when he began firing this final magazine, but he wasn't sure. There might be only fourteen or fifteen rounds remaining. Whichever number was correct, it would be almost impossible to wreck the last mast with so little ammunition.
But he had to—immediately.
They had done the "almost impossible" in finding the jammer and these antennas in a major blizzard, and Frank Malone wasn't going to let Venom and his gunmen and their booby traps defeat him now.
Then he thought about the booby traps.
Maybe.
It was logical, and his only hope.
If the bastards had booby trapped the inside of the warehouse, it was possible that they'd rigged the antennas with explosive devices to protect them.
Antipersonnel weapons to delay or slay intruders.
That would fit vicious and methodical Willi Staub's pattern.
Malone stared at the last antenna, but the December night and heavy snowfall drastically limited what he could see. He walked five yards to the left to try from another angle. It wasn't any better.
Right or wrong, he had to shoot now.
Where would the terrorists put it? Somewhere very low on the mast, he reasoned. Of course, that would explain why the earlier bursts hadn't found the charges. If there were any, he thought grimly as he raised Takeshi Ito's weapon.
Now he noticed that Caplan was standing a few feet away with a regulation policeman's .38-caliber pistol in his right hand. Still angry, the "shooter" wasn't giving up either.
They began firing. It was extremely difficult to limit the MA
C-11 to very short bursts, but Malone tried. They scored a dozen hits, but there was no explosion. Then Malone heard the sound that announced that his last clip was exhausted.
Maybe there was no booby trap anywhere.
There had to be.
Malone drew his own .38 from its shoulder holster. How many rounds had he fired at Ito? Five? No, six. He pulled out the chamber and reloaded.
The two stubborn policemen resumed firing.
And the booby trap blew up.
The antenna swayed, hung in the wind for several seconds and dropped. The goddam jamming machine was dead.
Now the planes, including TWA 22 Heavy, had a chance.
With his heart pounding, Frank Malone reached out and shook hands with the marksman. Then Malone slid his pistol into its holster, took off the bulky flak jacket and the battle helmet and ran down to the street.
He kept running until he reached the ESU van.
"Come on," he said to the Coast Guard pilot.
When the van reached the helicopter ninety seconds later, Frank Malone told the copilot to turn on his radio. Malone had to be sure.
"It's been on for five minutes," Babbitt answered. "I've been trying to reach our base."
"Trying?" the detective asked.
"And getting nowhere," the young copilot complained.
"But the jamming stopped a couple of minutes ago."
"For ten seconds. Then it started up again."
So it wasn't over.
The son of a bitch had a backup transmitter.
That would be typical of methodical murderous Willi Staub, and exactly what Malone should have expected.
"They've got another jammer," Malone told the Coast Guard fliers, "and we have to find it right away. I'm coming with you."
Ernesto Saldana pointed at the broken rotor blade.
"I don't know if we can even get the bird up with that damage," he said. "And if we do, it's going to be real hairy with a busted blade in this kind of storm."
"Your extra weight won't help," Babbitt told the detective.
"I'm sure you guys are right," Malone said. "Where do I sit?"
