by Dick Stivers
The hard-muscled, good-humored young agent pointed to the complex of offices and inspections booths below them where the freeways of U.S. Highway 805 and Mexico Highway met at the border. The headlights and taillights of semitractor trailers carrying cargoes north and south streaked the freeways. Then he pointed to the lights of San Ysidro.
“And there’s where it’ll go. If you knew what the truck looked like, we could spot it at the border and follow it north. Eliminate any chance of a screw-up.”
“We don’t know what it looks like,” Gadgets told him. The Stony Man electronics wizard pointed to the captured longdistance transceiver. “We only have the radio. I could transmit and backscan to their signal when they answered, but they know the voice of their man. We could blow it.”
“Let’s wait until they show up at the drop,” Lyons advised.
“When exactly do you expect the delivery of the dope?” the patrol agent asked.
Flor spoke. “They didn’t say a time. The one in the truck said they were making good time north. Said they were a hundred miles south of the border.”
“A hundred miles?” Miles said. “When was this?”
“Two hours ago.”
“Hey, friends,” Agent Miles laughed. “Your people might be waiting for you. Trucks move fast on those Mexican highways.”
“The Drug Enforcement Agency’s already watching the address,” Flor countered. “I gave them the address when I requested the unmarked cars.”
“Those unmarked cars,” Gadgets asked, “will they look like cars? Or will they look like unmarked police cars?”
“No way, hombre,” Miles bantered. “They’ll look like people cars. Your associate…” Miles nodded to Flor “…has the right credentials. The DEA operates its own used-car lot. They use them once, then sell them off. They buy cars, sell cars, take trade-ins, and they go straight into the war on Dope International. Always good cars. We use them to put the snap on coyotes.”
The pilot of the National Guard helicopter returned to the border patrol’s base. Flor and Patrol Agent Miles went into the office to confirm, via border-patrol radio, the waiting unmarked cars and the surveillance of the drop address.
Able Team gave their equipment a final check as the helicopter’s rotors revved. When Flor returned from the office, she slipped her Kevlar Windbreaker over a denim jump suit. She put the fourth secure-frequency hand-radio in one of the Windbreaker’s pockets. As she strapped on a bandolier of Uzi mags, Lyons shouted to her over the rotorthrob, “We need someone to stay here to coordinate.”
“If you think you must, then you must,” Flor told him. “The three of us can take them without you.”
“I mean you,” Lyons told her.
“No!”
“You’re already wounded. No more talk. Pilot, up! Take it up!”
Lyons shoved her backward out the side door. Falling to the pavement only two feet below, she grabbed at the skid as the helicopter floated away.
Lyons looked down as Flor cursed him, her words unheard over the roar of the rotorblast.
*
A hundred feet above the parking lot of the Drug Enforcement Agency offices in San Diego, they saw a man in a suit run through the streetlights.
He stood in the rotorstorm as the helicopter touched down. Lyons jumped to the asphalt and helped Gadgets and Blancanales unload suitcases of weapons and electronic gear. Reaching the helicopter, the DEA officer stopped them.
“I just got a report from the stake-out cars,” he shouted to Able Team as the rotors turned above them. “The truck waited there for an hour or so. Then two carloads of Federals showed up and escorted the truck away.”
“What!” Lyons gasped.
“Yeah, Federals they said. Described them as…” the DEA field officer read from the report “…unmarked Dodge with blackwall tires, institutional white, no trim. Antennas for radio telephones and police-band communications. Four Caucasian males. Crew cuts, suits, no sideburns, mustaches or beards. Second car was a pickup truck with blackwalls, no trim, antennas for radio telephone and police bands. Two clean-cut Caucasians in suits. What does that sound like to you?”
“Federals,” Lyons agreed. “Or someone trying hard to look official. What do they mean, ‘escorted’? Did they arrest them or what?”
“No, nothing like that. They helped the Mexicans back out the truck, and now they’re all out on Otay Mesa Road. Our cars are keeping them in sight.”
“Where does the road go?”
“The airfield.”
“Got to stop them!” Lyons said as he climbed into the helicopter. They heard him shouting to the pilots.
Blancanales, swinging their equipment back into the Huey, asked two questions of the field agent. “Those Federals. They show anybody any identification?”
The agent shook his head.
“And did the agency, I mean, the Central Intelligence Agency give you any calls this morning?”
“Are you kidding? The CIA would never call us. We’re only law enforcement. They’re above all laws.”
With a quick salute, Blancanales thanked the agent. Lyons leaned out the side door as the rotors revved to lift off. “Tell your people we’re on our way!”
“What?”
Stepping onto the skid, Lyons shouted directly into the agent’s ear. “Tell your follow cars we’re on our way!”
Then the asphalt fell away. Standing on the skid, Lyons looked down at the rooftops and lights of downtown San Diego. Blancanales buckled on his safety harness and extended a hand to his partner.
Inside, Lyons jerked the side door closed. He shouted to his partners over the noise of the rotors and fuselage vibration, “Odds are, those Harvard boys are escorting the truck to a plane.”
“Use the intercom,” Gadgets shouted back.
Lyons pointed forward to the pilots. Gadgets and Blancanales nodded. They leaned close to Lyons.
“This could not be a Langley game,” Gadgets told his partners. “The ‘crazy dust’. The gangs. The M-16 from Vietnam. That theater for hate movies. Please tell me I’m crazy even to think this is a CIA game. Please.”
“Maybe they could be Russians,” Blancanales suggested.
“With the Cuban Commies cooperating to break it up?” Gadgets countered. “That doesn’t help me at all. I want to believe those freaked-out right-wingers in Washington wouldn’t want to start a war between black people and white people.”
“Maybe it’s a propaganda operation that got out of control,” Blancanales said. “To make the Cubans and the Libyans and Russians look like psycho terrorists.”
“Forget that talk!” Lyons told them. “There’s two hundred kilos of ‘crazy dust’ in that truck. Towers said just one sniff of the stuff turns those punks into psycho killers. Two hundred kilos would make an army of psycho killers. An army from hell, ripping our country apart. We’re stopping the truck before they load the drug on a plane. If we wipe out a CIA operation, that’s their problem.”
His partners nodded. Resolved, they suited up for the fight. They put on their blood-crusted battle armor and loaded their weapons. For the three men of Able Team, the questions of responsibility for the terror and the weapons and the drug became meaningless. Whether the conspiracy originated in the Kremlin or Tripoli or within a secret clique of extremists within the United States government, their mission remained the same: protect the people of the United States.
18
Three sets of taillights streaked along the desert road. In the distance, across an expanse of empty desert, a cluster of lights and parallel lines of lights marked the location of the airfield. To the east, the horizon paled with the early false dawn of summer.
Lyons sat at the helicopter’s left side door. He had taken the twenty-inch barrel from the bullet-smashed Atchisson and replaced the short barrel of his own Atchisson. With his weapon loaded with a magazine of one-ounce armor-piercing slugs, he waited.
Blancanales sat at the right side door with his M-16/M-203 over-a
nd-under assault rifle-grenade launcher. He had loaded the grenade launcher with a high-explosive 40mm shell. A bandolier of high-explosive and phosphorous grenades crossed his black Kevlar-and-steel battle armor.
Gadgets stayed in the center, where he could pass ammunition and weapons to either side and also man the scrambled radio to the truck carrying the drugs. With the radio’s power on, he, too, waited.
“Hit the lights,” Lyons said into the intercom.
The pilot switched on the helicopter’s xenon spotlight. Sudden noon illuminated the two-lane road. Exactly as the DEA report had described, Able Team saw a white Dodge leading the truck. A pickup truck followed.
“Tell the follow cars to fall back,” Lyons said next.
Breaking in on the radio frequency of the cars that trailed the drug convoy, the pilot advised the officers of the interception. Lyons looked back. Far behind, he saw a set of headlights pull to the side of the road.
“Wizard… tell the scum what’s happening.”
Gadgets flipped up the transmit switch. “You in the truck. Stop. We are prepared to destroy if you continue. Stop or die.”
He flicked off the transmit. As he waited for an answer, he called out to his partners, “Is that straight talk? Did I tell them?”
An electronically resynthesized voice answered. “Whoever you are, you are interfering in the operations of the United States government. You are hereby directed to desist from your pursuit and communication, under penalty of law.”
“You got identification?” Gadgets asked.
“If we must present identification, we will arrest you.”
“How do I know I’m not talking to a wetback with a Harvard accent?”
Lyons and Blancanales laughed at Gadgets’s jive. Then slugs hammered the underside of the Huey. The pilot wrenched the controls to the side.
The sudden banking threw Lyons against his safety harness. Hanging against the straps, he saw the lights of Tijuana and San Diego fall away. The turquoise of the eastern horizon appeared as the pilot righted the troopship. Gadgets’s voice came on the intercom. “There’s the answer. War.”
Lyons spoke into the intercom. “Pilot, take us in on their right side. Quick flyby.”
“What do you intend to do, sir?”
“Stop them.”
“They fired at us. I don’t know if I’m authorized to risk any further damage to National Guard equipment…”
“Pilot,” Lyons interrupted with a question. “Were you trained for combat?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, here it is. Take us in.”
“You’ve got the authorization?”
“Most definitely,” Blancanales answered. “You got the message from Washington, correct?”
“Stop the talk!” Lyons shouted. “Take us in!”
“But, sir, you want me to attack civilian vehicles?”
“Flyboy, if you don’t want to do it, get out…”
Banking again, the Huey swept down on the road. At a hundred ten miles an hour, the chopper gained on the speeding vehicles. Muzzle-flash sparked from the back window of the pickup.
As Lyons sighted on the pickup, the helicopter leaped in altitude, climbing to two hundred feet. Lyons yelled into his intercom, “What is your problem?”
“I’m sorry, sir. But my superiors will prosecute me.”
Lyons turned to Gadgets. “Put a pistol to the back of his head.” As Gadgets went forward with his Beretta 93-R in his hand, Lyons spoke again to the pilot.
“You are now at pistol point, pilot. Your superiors can’t hold you responsible for your actions.”
A laugh answered. “Yes, sir. I’m no longer responsible. You should have taken me hostage sooner. Here we go.”
The helicopter dropped. It skimmed the desert brush. Lyons sighted on the pickup. A shadow inside pointed a rifle out the side window.
Lyons put a slug through the passenger door The truck veered across the road, then swerved straight. Lyons hit the cab again. The driver stomped on the brakes, the pickup skidding sideways. Lyons pivoted in his seat to fire once more, but the helicopter left the truck far behind.
Autofire flashed from the white Dodge sedan. Slugs slammed the aluminum of the Huey. Lyons saw rifles firing from the passenger window. He sighted on the car and fired one slug, then another. The rifle fire stopped. He spoke into the intercom. “Pilot, other side of the road. Politician, high explosive into the truck’s cab.”
“Cargo truck or pickup?” asked Blancanales as the helicopter gained altitude.
“Pickup.”
A streak of fire flashed past the helicopter. The pilot threw the Huey into a violent turn. Leaning against his safety harness, Lyons looked back.
The pickup truck accelerated to close the distance with the cargo truck. In the graying light, he saw a form in the back of the pickup.
Lyons spoke to Blancanales through the intercom. “A man in back’s got a rocket launcher. Hit him, Pol. Pilot, take us in.”
“Against rockets?” the pilot protested.
“Think of this as advanced combat training. No grades, no scores. Just pass or fail.”
The pilot took the helicopter in again, this time on the left-hand side of the road. As an evasive maneuver, he bounced the troopship, rising and falling in altitude from two hundred feet to fifty feet. Blancanales struggled to aim his grenade launcher at the pickup.
The two-velocity 40mm grenade went far beyond the vehicle and exploded in the desert.
As Blancanales reloaded, Lyons screamed into the intercom, “Quit the yo-yo routine!”
“But…”
“But nothing. Take it in and hold it so my partner can make his shot.”
“There’s another helicopter!”
“What?” Lyons leaned far out from the side door to look back. A helicopter approached, flying at head height across the desert. It cut over the road, then banked. Lyons leaned across the Huey to look through the opposite side door.
The border patrol helicopter closed on the convoy of trucks and passenger car. Lyons shouted into the intercom, “Who’s in that helicopter? Tell them the shits have a rocket launcher!”
“It’s your partner, that knock-out looker…”
“Patch me through to her…”
The intercom line buzzed with static, then Lyons heard Flor’s voice cursing him. “You macho son of a bitch, who the fuck you think you are to push me out of my operation? Channel is closed!”
The frequency went dead. Lyons shouted again, “Tell them about the rocket…”
As the helicopter neared the pickup truck, an autorifle flashing from the side door, the rocket launcher shot flame.
The launchflash lighted the helicopter. In a frozen instant, in the milliseconds before the RPG hit its target, Lyons saw Flor leaning from the helicopter, a rifle in her hands. Then, at an altitude of ten feet above the sand, the helicopter exploded. It hit the sand and disintegrated in a maelstrom of flame and twisting metal.
“Oh, Flor…” Lyons gasped. He unsnapped his safety harness and scrambled across the Huey, the Atchisson in his hand clattering on the aluminum floor.
In the opposite door, Blancanales beside him, he looked back to see a column of sooty flame rising from the desert. As their speed took them away from the crash, Lyons leaned farther from the side, hoping the impossible, hoping to see Flor run from the mass of fire and junk metal.
No one left the wreckage.
Blancanales grabbed one of Lyons’s bandoliers and pulled him back into the helicopter. He shouted into his friend’s face, “They’re dead, Ironman. She’s dead. And if you don’t get with it, we’ll be dead, and that insane drug will hit the streets. Back to your position.”
Stunned, his mind reeling with the loss, Lyons obeyed. He returned to his safety harness and snapped himself in. Blancanales watched him for a moment. Lyons made no effort to put on his intercom headphones and mike. Blancanales shouted to him, taking over the leadership. “Ironman! Put on your headset
! Pilot, get ready to go in again.”
“But…”
“But nothing. Do as you’re told or you’ll be shot. Take it in so I can hit that rocket launcher. Wizard, if our pilot hesitates again, put a bullet in his head and then we’ll give the copilot a try.”
“Hey, weekend warrior,” Gadgets jived, but not joking, his voice hard and angry. “‘You heard it. You’re going to die either way.”
Confronted by the threats, the pilot took the helicopter down to the road. Now the two-lane road cut ruler-straight across the desert. Only a mile away, they saw the lights of the airfield. Sighting over the grenade launcher, Blancanales directed the pilot, “Down, down, hold it…” As he squeezed the M-16/M-203’s second trigger, Blancanales shouted into the intercom. “Now take it up, now!”
As the 40mm grenade arced to the truck, the suited Anglo in the back of the pickup fired the RPG. The rocket streaked under the helicopter. Then the rocket man died in a flash of high explosive.
Out of control, the pickup left the road. Overturning in a spray of dust, the truck rolled. Blancanales looked back to see flame billow. He glanced at Lyons.
Slumping against the safety webbing, Lyons leaned his face in his hands. Blancanales reloaded his grenade launcher. He took the 40mm casing and bounced it off Lyons.
“Get with it, Ironman. Cry for her later. You’re still on duty.”
Without looking up, Lyons shook his head. Blancanales unsnapped his safety belt and went over to his friend. He grabbed a strut for a handhold and kicked Lyons.
Lyons did not notice. Blancanales kicked him again and again as he shouted down into his friend’s ear.
“She’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do to make her live again! You’re alive, and you’re on mission and it isn’t done yet! A lot of people are going to die if we don’t stop that truck. Now…”
A hand like steel clamped on Blancanales’s ankle. Lyons looked up to his partner and nodded. He said nothing. He pointed down and nodded. Blancanales squatted for an instant and embraced his friend. Neither man spoke. Then Blancanales crouch-walked across the Huey and strapped himself into his seat.
