by Dick Stivers
"Where are they waiting? Is it a house? A warehouse?"
"They only… they gave me that map."
Blancanales heard paper rustling. He saw Jefferson returning his sawed-off shotgun to its shopping-bag camouflage. From astride Prescott, Blancanales shook his head.
"You're staying here, Floyd."
"What? You'll need me. There'll be an army of goons waiting for you."
"No."
"Ask the other guys. They know I'm qualified."
"I'm not saying you're not qualified. You proved yourself the first night. But you're staying here. Don't argue. No compromises. You stay."
"Sheeee—it, man! I'm the one they tried to kill. And Marquez was my friend. He got me started when I left college. I owe it to him—"
"And what if a bullet takes you? Mr. Holt wanted to have you testify to Congress, right? Now you've got something to talk about. You stay here, then you go to Congress, then you go to court when Prescott goes on trial. It's your duty. Let us do ours."
"Sheee—it…"
Senor Rivera spoke. "Floyd, I would feel much safer if you stay. We only have a knife. You have a gun. Please stay. You are brave, but I have only a knife to defend my wife and daughters. Por favor."
"Of course, sir. I will. I understand. Okay, Rosario? I stay."
Blancanales nodded, resumed his interrogation of Prescott by seizing the back of his shirt collar and pulling tight as he leaned forward to speak into Prescott's ear. "Now, how many men?"
"I saw… five or six or eight. Many men in a room. They had those machine guns made in Israel. Like the Secret Service carries."
"Good." Blancanales stood. He glared down at Prescott. "Up. We're going—"
"No! They'll torture me. They'll—"
"Forget what they'll do. Think about what we'll do."
Gallucci cursed as he watched the broad-shouldered Hispanic escort Prescott from the hotel. The man took the car keys from Prescott and opened the driver's door. He checked the interior before shoving Prescott inside. Then the Hispanic went to the passenger side and opened the door.
The receiver in Gallucci's car blared out noise again, the slamming of the doors, the jingling of keys, voices.
"What's this radio for?" a deep voice demanded.
"Captain Madrano gave it to me. In case I got lost, I could contact them."
Squeaks. Then the rustling of papers. Then a slam as the "specialist" closed the glove-compartment door. The minimike transmitted only muffled sounds and the vibrations of the car's starter.
Almost two blocks away, Gallucci punched the dashboard in anger. He had no doubt Prescott had broken. He would lead the "specialists" directly to Captain Madrano. Gallucci had to set the contingency plans in motion. Warn Madrano. Get the standby hit team in motion. Then wipe out Prescott and the "specialists."
Prescott would cooperate with the Justice Department. He had to die. All of them had to die: Prescott, the "specialists," the Riveras, that high-yellow nigger Floyd Jefferson.
The situation had to be sterilized.
He pressed the transmit key of the walkie-talkie. "Calling my friend, this is the federali…"
Only static answered him. He repeated his transmission. "Calling my friend, this is the federali. Come in, important message about the girls…"
Out of range! The walkie-talkie's signal could not penetrate the steel and concrete of central Los Angeles and cross the ten or twelve miles to Captain Madrano's squad.
Starting the engine of his federal vehicle, Gallucci considered tailing Prescott and his captor. No. They might rendezvous with a squad of "specialists," or they might interrogate Prescott before attempting to arrest the Salvadorans. Gallucci's first move must be to warn Madrano and get the hit team in motion.
Gallucci waited until Prescott's Dodge pulled into the traffic of occasional cars and trucks speeding through skid row. Then he left his bureau Dodge and ran across a parking lot to a pay phone.
The Sheraton switchboard answered.
"Good morning, Sheraton Hotel."
"Room 615, please." Gallucci told the operator. He listened as the phone rang eight times.
The operator returned to the line. "There's no answer, sir. Would you like to leave a message?"
Gallucci dropped the phone and ran back to his car. Accelerating, he raced to the freeway. He had to get within the signal range of Captain Madrano's radio. Only then could Gallucci warn the Salvadoran.
Only then could they set the contingency plan of ambush and sterilization in motion.
Able Team sped south on the Harbor Freeway, Blancanales and Prescott in the first car, Gadgets and Lyons following in the second. Lyons radioed Blancanales.
"When we get off, we give that car a complete search, agreed?"
"I searched it," Blancanales's voice answered. "It's a rental. Found only Prescott's briefcase and the walkie-talkie."
"A complete search," Lyons stressed. "The trunk, under the hood, the underside—"
"Visual and electronic," Gadgets added.
"Looking at this map," Blancanales responded, "we'll be there maybe four minutes after we leave the freeway. We're parking and then going in on foot, correct? Even if they have a D.F. on the car, they won't know it's us or even where we park. We might be late already. I don't know if we want to risk the extra ten or fifteen minutes."
"You want our arrival announced?" Lyons asked.
Gadgets took the hand-radio from Lyons. He spoke as he maintained a one-handed seventy miles per hour, steering smoothly to glide from one lane to another through the light traffic.
"Pol, dig it. Prescott said these Nazis pay in gold. We know they use good equipment. That trick with the shielded and pulse-switched D.F. on the motor home proved it. They could have anything on that car—"
Lyons leaned to the hand-radio and added, "What about a radio-triggered bomb as a backup? Prescott goes softhearted and tries to take the Riveras away— Bang. If we can use electronic force multiplication, why not them?"
"Maybe…" Blancanales admitted.
"You're in the car, Political." Gadgets laughed. "Give it some thought…"
Blancanales sighed through the encoding and decoding electronics of the hand-radio. "You talked me into it. We'll do a quick search."
Heading west on Century Boulevard, Gallucci pressed the transmit key of the walkie-talkie again. "This is el federal. Can you hear me?"
Words finally answered, static-blurred but audible. "Yes…we wait."
"They took Prescott."
"What?"
"They—took—Prescott."
"Who?"
"The 'specialists.' I watched them march him to the car. They may be coming."
"You said the 'specialists'? The ones who guard the Communist reporter?"
"They took Prescott. They know about you." Static, then cursing in Spanish. "They come?"
"I don't know. If not now, soon. Time to send out your second squad. And you should get ready." Static and laughter. "We will be ready."
In only a few minutes, Captain Madrano had reorganized his men into an ambush. He also dispatched four men to liquidate the Riveras.
Then the Salvadoran soldiers waited, concealed in the urban desolation of what had been a suburban neighborhood before bureaucrats and vandals ran wild.
Overgrown hedges and the blackened ruins of stucco houses concealed the soldiers. In the always-gray overcast of the Los Angeles night, they had both vision and concealment. Anyone arriving in an automobile would be an easy target.
The first car appeared. Captain Madrano recognized the rental Dodge Prescott had driven to the Sheraton. He shouted the command to his men:
"Fire!"
Ten Uzi submachine guns ripped the Dodge in one long maelstrom of 9mm death.
31
Leaving the freeway, Able Team had pulled into a closed service station. Security lights bathed the asphalt surrounding the sheet-metal garage in blue white glare. Wire mesh covered all the windows of the garage and stati
on office. A body shop adjoined the gas station. Behind the chain link and razor-wire enclosing the smashed or primer-red cars, guard dogs paced.
Gadgets parked behind the blue Dodge Prescott was driving and surveyed the area, the wire-mesh station windows, the guard dogs, the boulevard of boarded-over windows and abandoned cars.
"Not a good neighborhood," he said to Lyons.
"Understatement of the year," Lyons told him. "You're in cannibal territory here."
Gadgets laughed as he took his counter electronics wand from his equipment case. "You got a weird sense of humor, Ironman. Do all cops make jokes like that?"
"Who's joking? The world we live in, I only tell the truth. People don't believe it, so they laugh."
"The district sure looks bad," Gadgets countered as they left the car, "but it can't be that bad."
"Hey, Wizard, this is Lennox. There really is a gang here called 'The Cannibals.' When I was with the LAPD, we never were able to get an informer into the club. Seems the initiation rite is—"
"You're jiving!" Gadgets passed the wand under Prescott's car.
"No jive," Lyons insisted.
Blancanales passed the car keys to Lyons. "You telling more cop jokes?"
Opening the trunk, Lyons threw the keys back to Blancanales. "No jokes," Lyons continued. "To join the gang, a punk had to murder somebody and then eat them. No jive. I am serious."
"Man, I can't believe that." Gadgets laughed. "Your arm wound's infecting your head. How is your arm, by the way."
Lyons went flat on his back and directed a flashlight beam at the undercarriage of the car. "It's cool," he said.
Gadgets searched the interior of the trunk with a flashlight and the counter electronic wand; slamming the trunk closed, he opened the rear passenger-side door.
The wand buzzed. Gadgets swept it over the rear seat and over Prescott. The tone faded. He waved it toward the dashboard. The tone became loud. Then Blancanales opened the glove compartment. Gadgets touched the wand to the walkie-talkie. The device shrieked.
Blancanales and Gadgets glanced to one another. Gadgets signalled his partners to be silent with a finger over his lips. He pointed to the walkie-talkie, then sat in the seat and disassembled it. Lyons continued searching the undercarriage.
Headlights swept the gas station. A lowered Olds-mobile pulled up beside Able Team's cars. A tape unit blasted soul music. Red light illuminated the interior of the Olds.
Two black men—one man in a purple satin turban, the other with a vast cloud of ratted "natural" hair-looked over at the three men in the Dodge. The music cut off.
"Well, say, honkies, What you doin' on our side a' town?"
"We're just tourists," Blancanales answered. "Reading a road map."
"Got any money?" the driver—the man with the cloud of ratted hair—demanded.
Gadgets looked up as he deactivated the mini mike, shook his head. Slowly, Blancanales reached under his coat.
"Keep your hand where it is, mother!" the driver shouted. The second man threw open the Olds's passenger-side door.
Lyons stood up with his silenced Colt held at assault height, his right hand braced against his gut, his left hand gripping the Colt's fold-down lever.
Glass exploded as he swept the interior of the Olds-mobile with bursts of silent .45 ACP hollowpoints. The first burst exploded the driver's head. Hunks of hairy skull plastered the inside of the shattered windshield. The second burst caught the man in the turban as he twisted in the seat to point a sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun. The three slugs tore away his left arm and his jaw. A horrible whine bubbled from his devastated face as his right hand spasmed, pulling both triggers of the shotgun. His left leg disintegrated in the flash.
In motion as the first man died, Blancanales put his Beretta 93-R on line. He ripped the front seat with bursts of subsonic 9mm steel-cored slugs, ending the agony of the half-faced, maimed felon. Blancanales "killed" the headless driver again, the corpse jumping and twitching as it fell to tangle with the mangled corpse of his partner in terror.
Lyons fired two bursts into the back seat. He glanced inside, saw only the two dead men.
"Time to go!" he shouted to his partners.
Already in motion, Gadgets ran to the other car. Able Team accelerated with smoking tires. In seconds, they left the scene of sudden death far behind. They continued west on Century Boulevard. Gadgets looked over to Lyons. He broke the silence.
"One question, Ironman."
"What?"
Gadgets followed the taillights of the rental Dodge as it turned off the boulevard. Several blocks short of the location marked on the map, the two cars stopped.
Fire-gutted and vandalized houses lined the streets. Many houses had been moved from the lots, leaving only foundations where families had lived.
Blancanales threw Prescott into the back seat and cuffed his wrists and ankles behind him, linking the cuffs to pull Prescott's ankles up to his wrists.
The three warriors of Able Team assembled their weapons, and slipped into their Kevlar and steel-plate battle armor. Bandoliers crisscrossed the black armor.
The laughter of only a minute ago had gone. Now they talked quietly as they armed themselves.
"Prescott didn't have any prearranged signal," Blancanales told the others. "Not even a code on the walkie-talkie—"
"So he wouldn't freak the family," Gadgets added.
"Right," Blancanales agreed. "He was to drive up slow and the Blancos would take them. So they'll be waiting curbside. What I thought is we could drive up with the high beams on to blind them. Second car stays a block back, no lights. When they step out, I'll floor it."
"I'll ride shotgun," Lyons volunteered. "In the back seat, with the Atchisson, I'll have 180 degrees field of fire to the rear. Forget the windows and roof posts. I'll put down everything in the street."
"They'll scramble to chase us," Blancanales continued. "But I'll kill the lights after about a block and wait—"
"And I'll come up behind them with the Beretta," Gadgets told them. "Man! Wish I had a cassette tape of the girls and the mother and father talking in Spanish. Would have been perfect with that mini-mike. El ultimo perfecto."
"Too bad." By touch, Lyons checked the number of tiny MU-50G grenades in the thigh pockets of his night-black fatigues. "But it ain't a perfect world."
Blancanales put his hands on his partners' shoulders. He spoke in sober, sincerely felt words. "But we're doing what we can, right? For a better world?"
"Don't get ideological," Gadgets told him with a straight face. "I'm only doing this for a pension. Doing what they tell me, punching that time card, till the day I can retire to a life of luxury."
The three men laughed at Gadgets's standard put-on.
A roar of auto-fire stopped their laughter.
IN THE GRAY LUMINESCENSE of the Los Angeles night, the bullet-torn Dodge lurched to a stop on flattened tires. Slugs from the Uzis of the Guerreros Blancos continued to hammer the pocked doors. Ricochets slammed into the stucco of the deserted houses across the street. Captain Madrano emptied his second magazine of cartridges into the driver's door, then reloaded his scorching hot Uzi.
Surveying the street, Madrano watched as his soldiers continued raking the wrecked Dodge. He had fired a total of sixty rounds into the car. Certainly, he and his soldiers had killed the "specialists from Washington" riding inside. He shouted out to his men:
"!Alto! !Alto!"
The auto-fire died away. Madrano motioned for his lieutenant to check the hulk.
Zigzagging as they had taught him at Fort Bragg, the lieutenant dashed into the street. He looked into the Dodge, then flicked on a flashlight. After searching the interior with the beam, he called out to the captain:
"El federal!"
Captain Madrano left his concealment. The stink of gasoline swirled in the cool night. The flashlight's beam illuminated a sickening mass of flesh and torn clothing. Spilled intestines reeked of excrement. Vinyl and auto glass and foa
m plastic mixed with the gore.
What remained of the head had the face of Agent Gallucci.
Confused, not believing what had happened, Captain Madrano backed away from the car. The stink of gasoline choked him. He looked down at the asphalt. Gasoline and blood flowed from the bullet-patterned automobile. The captain grabbed the flashlight from his lieutenant and looked in again.
No corpses sprawled in the back of the Dodge. And only one body—not actually a body any longer, actually a tangled spill of body parts—covered the front seat.
Agent Gallucci.
Captain Madrano had killed Colonel Quesada's most effective North American. A North American who operated within the same agencies threatening the Families of El Salvador with investigation and indictment and slander. Though Colonel Quesada had forgiven his blunder in the mountains south of San Jose, because of the friendship of their families and their intermingled bloodlines, how could Madrano beg forgiveness for this?
Shining the flashlight down on the horror that had been a valuable informer, Madrano prepared his explanation to his father's friend. He prepared his defense as a playwright imagines a scene, the dialogue flying back and forth between the characters, the hand gestures, the drama of emphasizing his words with soft words, then shouts, then silence.
No problem. I can explain it. The North American misunderstood or disregarded instructions.
Captain Madrano had always explained away his failures and mistakes. The students looked alike. The house numbers had been tampered with. One street looked like another. The man with the pistol and uniform had not looked like a real policeman. I'll be more careful next time. Please do not shame my father and my family because of this insignificant and forgettable error. Please, for the honor of the army, forgive me…
If the other squad succeeds in executing the Communist family, Captain Madrano thought, all will be well. He could hear his impassioned speech to Colonel Quesada: "Gallucci's blunder was unfortunate, but the Communists died. True, it was a quick death. It was not the justice I wanted to give them. But it is a step onward to victory of the fatherland!"
For two minutes, the men of the death squad stood in the street and waited as Captain Madrano stood motionless at the wreck, staring down at his error, mentally rehearsing the scene in which he would win the forgiveness of Colonel Quesada. The men glanced at their watches. They looked around at the darkness.
