by Dick Stivers
Shabaka’s killers remained secret, insulated from all possible betrayal.
Then came the phone call. Against Silva’s orders, without Shabaka’s knowledge, one of Silva’s lieutenants had given an automatic rifle to a gang of punks. The capture of the rifle meant that a law-enforcement task force would investigate the entire LAYAC structure.
As the end of Shabaka’s operation neared, he had no regrets. He had trained a hundred black and Chicano punks. He had indoctrinated them in the hatred and murder of whites. Though he now could not train the thousand he wanted, the experiment had succeeded. He had sent out the three kill-squads to test the combination of drugs and indoctrination. The test had been a complete success.
Now, he would release all one hundred of the chemically enraged zombie warriors. As the terror seized Los Angeles, he would escape.
10
Neon gave life to a night without laughter or joy. Lyons cruised through East Los Angeles, surveying the dark, silent residential streets, the shops on the deserted boulevards.
Families did not brave the streets. No one sat at the tables of restaurants and cafes. A theater had turned off its marquee lights. Supermarkets had closed their doors.
Few cars moved on the streets, only cruising gang cars and infrequent police black-and-whites on patrol.
Groups of Chicano punks loitered on street corners. Latin disco rhythms and loud voices came from oversized portable stereos. Others stood near the open doors of their cars, their auto stereos blasting. The groups stared at the passing Ford, eyes on every street squinting to look inside the dark interior of the car.
As they approached the LAYAC address, Lyons knew that any one of the hundred gang punks could be a loco with a concealed walkie-talkie or a dime for a pay phone. Gang boys could be watching from the rooftops of the apartments.
Flor rode beside Lyons. In the back seat of the rented car, Towers worked a cassette player. The voices from the Parker Center interrogation room filled the interior of the car.
“The blacks and vatos are soldiers, right, for enforcing dope deals? So when they wanted the rifle, I traded it…”
“You mean the Colt Automatic Rifle,” a police interrogator interrupted.
“Yeah. The little machine gun. They gave me a kilo of coke for it.”
“A kilo? What’re you talking about?”
“Yeah. A kilo. They ripped it off some rich lawyer in Beverly Hills.”
“The punks didn’t want it?”
“Nah, man, they said it was nothing…”
Towers punched the stop button. “You hear that? The punks didn’t want the cocaine. Listen to this…”
The recorded voice of Ruiz continued. “They were high on something else.”
“What? Heroin?”
“They didn’t act stoned. They acted insane.”
“That’s one interesting part,” Towers told them, clicking off the player again. “After he traded the rifle for the cocaine, he arranged a phony burglary of the warehouse to suggest that the punks stole the rifle. But that was set for tonight. The FBI traced the rifle too quick. And then someone in the Bureau leaked it to that crazy Communist television station. And the boss of LAYAC, this Silva guy, found out about it and went after our boy Ruiz.”
Lyons thought for a moment. He glanced in the rearview mirror to see the lights of the car that Blancanales drove. As Lyons eased through a slow left-hand turn on the deserted avenue, he asked Towers, “Why did Ruiz have the rifle in the first place?”
“He said there was a ‘heat wave,’ ” Towers answered. “Right after that problem with the gas, remember? If you know what I mean?”
“Flor was in on that,” Lyons told him. “You can talk about it.”
“Good. Trying to keep all that classified info and authorization and clearance jazz straight makes my head spin. Right after your people wiped out that gang, the Feds put LAYAC under the microscope.”
“Then why didn’t they…”
“Because they didn’t get the chance! The investigation had only got started, they put in a day or two of questioning, then the Feds get calls from every politician in the country. All of them concerned about LAYAC’s good name. But in those two days of ‘heat,’ they had an arms shipment come in before the politicians pulled the plug on the investigation. Ruiz was the only one that didn’t have Federals parked outside his door. He picked up the rifles and stored them until Silva and that Shabaka could divide up the boxes.”
“Who brought in the weapons?” Lyons asked.
“Some Mexican trucking company. One of LAYAC’s companies.”
“Convenient.”
“That’s what LAYAC seems to be all about. But listen to this…”
The voices of the interrogators and Ruiz spoke again. “What was that?”
“The third phase.”
” What does that mean ?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t supposed to hear that. A weird spade called Shabaka said it to one of his assistants. Said the rifles could stay in the warehouse until the third phase.”
“But the third phase of what?” The interrogator pressed.
“The gee-had. That’s the word he used. Gee-had. Whatever that means.”
Lyons knew the word too well. “Jihad. The Holy War. Hashish and Commie lies weren’t enough, so they came up with a superdope.”
“There, that place.” Towers pointed at an apartment house decorated with spray-painted gang script. A group of young men in identical khaki pants and sleeveless white T-shirts lounged on the steps. Other knots of gang punks stood on the sidewalks and leaned against cars. They drank from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags.
“Public drinking and intoxication,” Lyons commented. He glanced back to his ex-partner. “What do you say we just take them away?”
“No, thanks. I want to spend my pension.”
“Two against twenty. We got them outnumbered.”
“You do it. I want to see if the Feds taught you any special survival skills. Like how to reincarnate.”
Laughing, Lyons coasted past the punks. He made a right turn, then he keyed his hand-radio. “That’s the place. I see an alley back here. Garages.”
“A whole lot of mean-looking dudes out front,” Gadgets answered. “I don’t know about getting in and out quiet. You want to rethink this?”
“Yeah, they got M-16s and grenades in there,” Lyons said. “What happens when a hundred doped-up punks with automatic rifles go berserk?”
“That informer said the M-zipteens are upstairs?” Gadgets asked.
“That’s where that organization has all the offices. Upstairs.”
Lyons continued to the next block and parked in the darkness under a tree. In the rearview mirror, he watched the second rental car cruise past the alley.
Blancanales spoke through the radio, “The roof. We’ll go up one of those other apartments, drop down into the office.”
“Second the motion,” said Gadgets’s voice. “I don’t want any firefights with that crowd on the street. I didn’t pack that much ammunition.”
Lyons turned to Flor and Towers. “My partners and I are going in. Bill, you stand by in one car. Flor, you drive the other one. We have a problem — things’ll happen fast.”
“This is for information only, yes?” Flor asked.
“We find those weapons, we’ll call for the police.”
“No heroes? Tell me, no heroes.”
“Not me,” Lyons assured her.
Two minutes later, Flor guided her car through the wide commercial alley. Lights illuminated rear entries and garages and parked cars. On the higher floors, balconies jutted from the back walls of the apartments.
The car rolled to a stop near a dumpster head-high with trash and garbage. The three men of Able Team slipped out into the alley’s shadows.
The car eased away. At the end of the alley, it disappeared into the night. Surrounded by the trash and rotting filth, Able Team scanned the alley for movement. They carried no ass
ault weapons. Their sports coats concealed their radios and shoulder-holstered autopistols. Gadgets carried a few hand tools and electronic devices in an airline bag.
Without a word, Lyons led them through the alley’s darkness. He pointed to a derelict car sitting on four flat tires, then to the steel ladders and platforms of a fire escape above the alley.
The apartments’ fire escapes doubled as balconies. Flowerpots and planter boxes covered the landings. Blancanales and Gadgets nodded. Lyons stepped up and onto the top of the derelict car. He tested the ladder, then went up quickly, his neoprene-soled shoes silent on the rungs.
Glancing into the lighted interior of the second-floor apartment as he passed, he saw a family gathered around a color television. A news commentator pointed to a map of Los Angeles. Lyons continued. In the next apartment, two young girls — perhaps ten years old — danced to a North American rock-and-roll standard sung in Spanish.
Lyons stopped at the top of the fire-escape ladder. He eased his head up over the wall and scanned the rooftop. The black silhouettes of vent pipes and antennas stood against the distant lights of downtown’s high-rise towers.
The diffuse gray light reflected from the polluted night sky revealed a tar roof littered with trash and beer cans. Lyons snaked over the top. Crouching in a shadow, he unhooked his hand-radio from his belt.
“You two. I’m on top. Waiting for you.” Lyons looked around. “Flor. You monitoring?”
“Monitoring,” she answered.
“Mr. Detective see anything out front?”
“Zero. Will tell you if.”
The steel ladder vibrated with steps. In seconds, Blancanales swung over the wall, followed by Gadgets.
Motionless in the shadows, they listened. City noises and snatches of music came from the streets below. A ventilator fan grated in its housing, ejecting the smells of cooking oils and mildewed apartments into the warm night air.
Moving again, Lyons crouch-walked toward the roof of the adjoining building. He felt his way past the guy wires of antennas, his eyes continuously sweeping the shadows and forms ahead of him for the motions of a sentry. He heard only the faint cracking of dust and grit under his shoes.
At the edge of the roof, he waited again as two shadows followed him. They peered over the low wall to the next building.
A loud stereo played beneath them. The tar of the roof, still warm from the summer sun, throbbed with the disco beat.
The bricks of the two apartment buildings met. There was no airspace or easement between the walls. Scanning the next roof, they saw another expanse of shadows and gray half darkness. They saw no motion on the next building or on the roof of the LAYAC building beyond.
“Electronic security?” Lyons hissed to Gadgets.
“You can hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Listen…”
Straining their ears, Lyons and Blancanales listened. A motorcycle passed on the avenue, the staccato popping fading. Quiet returned. They heard a high-pitched whine. Then a low rider’s loud muffler blasted the avenue.
“Ultra High Frequency motion sensor,” Gadgets whispered as he searched through his bag of gear. “Plus they’ll have pressure sensors. And someone standing guard. Look around for some pigeon shit.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They have motion sensors. If pigeons fly around up here, they have false alarms…”
“Pigeons don’t fly at night.”
“Use your imagination. Find some bat shit.”
A dog barked, once, twice, then went quiet.
The UHF whine cut off. They saw the silhouette of a man moving on the LAYAC roof.
“That makes it easy,” Gadgets whispered.
Lyons tapped Blancanales and Gadgets. “Berettas… I’m going ahead. You follow.”
Lyons crept over the roof to a fan housing. He stood up with the bulk of the housing behind him. He watched the far building, looking for movement. Then he hissed to the others.
He saw them approach, slinking through the antennas and vents. A tangle of razor wire, two coils high, stopped all three of them.
They spread out along the barrier of concertina razors. They knew the group inside the building would have provided for rooftop escape. The razor fence would have gates.
Blancanales went slowly, feeling ahead of him for security sensors or trash that might make noise. He peered up at the barbed wire, then moved along, fingers sweeping over the gritty tar. He found a bottle, then another; he set them far to the side.
Suddenly a shape directly in front of him blocked his view.
Hands seized him, pulled him into the tangle of steel razors.
11
Two blocks away, Flor Trujillo waited in the rented Ford, the engine idling, the front seat covered with radios.
A portable police-band radio scanned the department’s communications, electronic noise and voices filling the interior of the car.
An encoded hand-radio provided for an instantaneous link to Able Team.
A second nonsecure walkie-talkie linked her to Detective Towers where he waited a few blocks to the west.
She watched the street around her. Nothing moved. Despite the warm night, no one sat on the porches or talked with neighbors. No children bicycled or played soccer in the brilliant blue white glare of the streetlights. When she parked, she had seen the curtains of the security-barred windows of several houses part as the residents peered out. But the people remained hidden in the safety of their homes.
From time to time, headlights streaked the boulevard. But no cars moved on the side street. Flor had set her rearview mirrors to provide overlapping views of the sidewalks and street behind her. As she waited for a signal from Able Team or Towers, she scanned her surroundings, her eyes always moving, from the neighborhood in front of her to the lawns and houses on the right and left, and to the images in the mirrors.
A chaos of voices erupted from the police-band scanner. Though Flor strained to understand, the police officers spoke in code words and numbers, only the urgency in their voices telling of what they faced. Then one voice said simply, “We’re taking fire from the roof. Automatic-weapon fire! We’re getting out of…”
A high-velocity shriek tore from the radio.
“They’ve got rockets! Someone up there’s got…”
The band went blank for an instant, then other voices called out. Flor heard the word “ambush.”
Turning down the radio’s volume, she rolled down her window.
Autofire popped in the distance. She heard the tearing sound of a rocket and the crack of the explosion. Then came a sound only possible in that night of empty boulevards and unnatural quiet: the night screamed.
As police officers in a hundred squad cars all hit the same switch, sirens rose in one vast wail. The flooring of accelerators came next, by every officer — in uniform and plainclothes — who heard of the ambush.
Rolling up her window, Flor turned up the volume of the scanner. She heard a commander assigning response units. The commander ordered all other units to maintain their patrols. Flor keyed the Stony Man secure-circuit hand-radio.
“Able Team! This is Flor. Able Team!”
She waited for an answer. Then she keyed the transmit key again. “Able Team! Report. There has been…”
She heard autofire. This time not in the distance. The popping of automatic rifles came from the boulevard.
Slipping out her Detonics .45, she thumbed back the hammer to full cock. She slammed the rented Ford into gear and accelerated into the roar of the firefight.
*
Shoes scuffed on the asphalt roof. Lyons looked up to see Blancanales standing, his back arched, his hands gripping the hands closed around his throat. In the instant that Lyons evaluated the situation, two other forms appeared on the other side of the tangled concertina wire.
“Hijo de puta!” one voice spat out.
“Quien es?” another asked.
Then Lyons saw th
e silhouette of an AK-47 and heard the distinctive “clack” as a hand flicked the ComBloc weapon’s safety to fire position.
In one smooth motion, Lyons swept out his re-engineered and silenced Colt Government Model, his thumb flipping the fire selector down to three-shot burst. He put the dash-dot-dash of the tritium night sights on the silhouette showing the AK.
A burst of .45-caliber hollowpoints sprayed the form’s lungs and heart into the night. Lyons put the sights on the next form, squeezed off another burst. The three instantaneous impacts threw the silhouette back.
A muzzle flashed, the report of an assault rifle blasted the quiet. Lyons aimed above the flash, triggered a burst, saw the form hurled back. He emptied the last cartridge from the extended ten-round magazine into the falling gunman.
Gasping for breath, Blancanales fell back from the concertina barrier. A dead man hung in the coils, hundreds of razor-points stuck in his arms holding him upright.
As Lyons dropped out the empty magazine and slapped in another, he heard Gadgets’s Beretta zip slugs into a stairwell housing on the LAYAC roof. Nine-millimeter subsonic slugs hammered stucco, one slapped flesh. In the blackness of the doorway, someone gasped. A rifle clattered to the roof.
“In we go!” Lyons called out to his partners.
Gadgets answered. “Ironman, what the…”
“Now! Through the wire!”
Rushing to the concertina barrier, Lyons reached through the tangle of steel razors. He grabbed the hair of the dead man and jerked him against the wire. Lyons dragged the corpse toward him, forcing the wire down with the dead man’s weight. The wire sagged. Pulling his arm clear, Lyons put his foot on the corpse and compressed the coils.
