Royal Flush at-10

by Dick Stivers

  Lyons remembered target practice at the LAPD training academy, the first day in the shooting booth when he thought he'd blown his chance to become a cop and make something of himself.

  As the dummy popped up before him, he started shooting at the head. For a fleeting instant he saw his father's face on the cardboard cutout. Lyons kept squeezing the trigger until there were no bullets left in the pistol. He continued to squeeze the trigger, again and again, until the weapons instructor tapped him on the shoulder and told him to quit it.

  From that day, he understood the degree to which he must contain the rage within him.

  As a member of Able Team he had demonstrated on occasion a volcanic nature that made his two colleagues shake their heads. Now he struggled to relax and empty his mind in a land far from home where once again he had acted like a raging storm.

  One battle was over. But the battle within him would never be done.

  Epilogue

  The military jet warmed up outside the hangar as the Americans shook hands with a small group of people.

  Leo Turrin, his head wrapped in bandages again to conceal his identity during the drive from London, looked forward to the bandages' removal on the plane, though they would have to go back on before he disembarked.

  "Right to the last you fed lies to Shillelagh, Mr. Sticker!" Lieutenant Colonel Carlton shouted above the whine of the aircraft's turbines. "You held out. You're a tough bugger! I have a souvenir for you, my friend."

  Leo accepted the odd device from the colonel. It looked like one-half of a telephone receiver. "What the hell is this?"

  "Turn on the switch, hold the large part to your throat, and whisper."

  "Like this? Oh, shit!" he exclaimed, in the distorted electronic voice that had tormented him in that room.

  "It's used by people who have lost the use of their own voice," the colonel said. "That's how she managed to protect her identity for so long — she dealt with most of her contacts over the telephone."

  Minutes later, the Americans gave a final wave to their British colleagues and boarded the waiting aircraft.

  The Air Force jet hammered through clouds. The green checkerboard grid of the British countryside had ended abruptly as a meandering white ribbon of foam marked the start of the English Channel.

  The plane streaked on a course due southeast.

  Only two men on the aircraft knew their destination: the pilot and Leo Turrin.

  Turrin had just finished his report on the Windsor Castle hit to Stony Man Farm. Now he pondered the information given in exchange.

  The destination data he had passed on to the pilot. Behind him he heard the lighthearted banter of the men of Able Team.

  He understood the relief the warriors felt at wrapping up this foreign mission successfully. He wondered if the men could stand the strain of their next ordeal. Turrin did not envy the trio as he thought of the hostile terrain of the Hindu Kush.

  Who in hell was The Dragon?

  White House liaison Hal Brognola, usually an eloquent man, had begun hedging and stuttering as he gave Turrin the mission data from the Farm. He had sounded preoccupied. Turrin was especially puzzled when the head Fed said Stony Man was having a bit of trouble.

  Leo was certain it was nothing that the gang at Stony Man Farm could not handle.

  At their first refueling stop in Rome, Turrin would inform the men of Hal's phone call. Then he'd switch to a commercial jet for Washington.

  The three Stony specialists would continue to New Delhi. There they'd meet with the contact man for a briefing on this next hit. Brognola's words rang in Turrin's ears: "Leo, I'm sorry to put Able Team on the spot, but we're after a man called The Dragon who runs a show from a fortress in the Hindu Kush. If Carl and the guys can stop him, then we'll cut off the arms supply to nearly every terrorist group there is. That's all I can say for now, except that I trust your discretion about when you choose to tell them."

  "Hey, Leo, get your head out of the clouds and c'mon over here!" Turrin twisted in his seat to see Gadgets Schwarz waving him over.

  The men were crowded around a tired Carl Lyons. The tall blond man, fatigue showing on his face, held a rectangular box.

  "Okay, let's see what she gave us," Schwarz said.

  "She? Who?" asked Leo.

  "She sent us this," Lyons said, lifting the box.

  "For cryin' out loud, Carl, who?" grated Leo. "What's in it? Open it up."

  Lyons spoke as he removed the box top and revealed tissue paper within. "The queen got them from the estate of the old Earl of Kintail — you remember that kid? Well, his father was a pilot during the Battle of Britain. It was a custom. The aces collected these from their dead comrades and treasured them. A way of honoring their courage, I guess."

  "So what's in the damn box?" Leo seethed.

  Lyons opened the tissue paper. He held up four silk scarves.

  "For a queen," Lyons said, looking around at his friends, "that woman is a real prince."

  A bonus for Able Team readers:

  Early Fire

  Deep background on Able Team's mentor, featuring Mack Bolan in Vietnam

  Mack Bolan was tired.

  It had been one hell of a night.

  He and Sniper Team Able had penetrated deep into Vietcong-held territory. The mission had been a success. Two VC chieftains and two string pullers from up north had gone down. The kills had been quick, four head shots as the targets stood around a fire. Then Bolan and the team had begun their withdrawal.

  There was a skirmish with another band of VC coming in from patrol. But Sniper Team Able came through all right.

  Long months in Vietnam had honed their survival instincts. They had even begun to think like the Vietcong.

  Now five men trudged wearily into the Special Forces base camp at Cam Lo.

  Zitka and Bloodbrother, the scouts; Gadgets Schwarz and Rosario Blancanales, the flank men, and Bolan.

  Sergeant Mack Bolan.

  The leader of Sniper Team Able.

  Zitka and Bloodbrother gave Bolan the thumbs-up sign and joined Gadgets and Pol on their way to some much-needed sack time.

  Bolan was covered in sweat even though it was a relatively clear, cool night. This was rice country and the paddies were almost dry. They were like mud flats. The combination of the boot-sucking terrain and the dikes sapped their strength, making each forward movement laborious. All this, compounded by the tension inherent in a mission behind enemy lines, had made for an exhausting trek.

  The CO's orderly spotted Bolan from across the compound and hurried over, his face anxious.

  "Sarge, Lieutenant Colonel Crawford wants to see you. Right away."

  Bolan nodded. "I was headed that way, Corporal."

  So the old man was waiting for him. That was no surprise. The colonel always waited up, like a father worried about a son who stayed out late.

  The young "penetration specialist" smiled at the thought. The colonel could never take the place of Sam Bolan, back in the States. But Crawford had been observing Bolan's progress and had taken Bolan as a green recruit and taught him what he needed to know to survive in this damn war. Not only to survive, but to give his best.

  Bolan walked by a private with an M-16 pulling guard duty at the door of the HQ Quonset, and went inside.

  A thin-faced E-3 sat at a desk in the outer office pushing papers.

  Bolan nodded to him and raised an eyebrow, jerking a thumb at the closed door of the colonel's office.

  The sergeant shook his head and started to say something.

  Before he could get a word out, the door burst open.

  The prettiest whirlwind Bolan had ever seen exploded out of the colonel's office and ran smack into him.

  The woman looked about twenty-three with a shock of chestnut hair and a face that was startlingly attractive. She wore fatigues and from her shoulder hung a camera and a compact tape recorder. Piercingly blue eyes stared in anger at Bolan, then dropped to the black lettering on an O.D. gre
en name tag on his tiger-striped camou fatigues.

  "Sergeant Mack Bolan?"

  "That's right."

  "The one they've started to call the Executioner?"

  Scorn dripped from her words.

  Bolan shrugged, suddenly wary.

  "I've been called that."

  Colonel Crawford appeared in the doorway of his office at that moment. He ignored the woman and returned Bolan's salute.

  "Come in, Sergeant. Welcome back. Come in and report."

  With hands on hips that shapeless fatigues could not disguise, the woman persisted in questioning Bolan.

  "A successful mission, Sergeant?"

  A live wire, thought Bolan.

  Feline fury flashed in her eyes.

  "That's classified, lady. Excuse me."

  "How many babies did you kill? How many women and old men?"

  The words slashed at him like an invisible bayonet, but he kept his face emotionless and his mouth shut.

  "I, uh, see you've met Miss Desmond," Colonel Crawford said dryly.

  "We haven't been formally introduced," grunted Bolan.

  The woman stuck her hand out. "I'm not afraid of a little blood, Sergeant. Jill Desmond. I'm a..."

  "Journalist," Bolan finished for her.

  His fingers closed over her hand. The gesture was brief, cool.

  "Miss Desmond's here for a close-up of the war," the colonel said. "I've told her what they told her in Saigon. Our operations in this area are highly sensitive."

  "I'll bet they are," snapped Jill Desmond. "That's why I'm here. I've had enough brass to get this far, Colonel. What makes you think I'll stop now? This is where the real dirty work goes on, out here in the boonies. And I'm not going back until I've seen it for myself, so I can tell the people back home what it's really like. They deserve to know."

  "I'm not denying that, Miss Desmond..." the Colonel began.

  "You're not trying to cover up the crimes of men like Sergeant Bolan here, are you?" She glanced at Bolan. "There's a reason they call you the Executioner, isn't there, Sergeant?"

  Bolan studied the woman's face. She seemed intelligent, but you sure couldn't tell it by the accusations, the lack of understanding, the naivete.

  "I'm going to find out the truth about this war." Jill Desmond bristled. "Not the whitewashed official version you people are peddling." She swung around to face the colonel again. "Then I'm going to tell everyone who'll listen just what a barbaric, immoral thing this war really is."

  She flicked one more morally outraged glance at Bolan, then stalked out of the Quonset.

  "If we were barbaric murderers," Crawford grunted as he and Bolan stepped into his inner office, "I wonder what makes her think she'd be safe?"

  "She doesn't know the jungle yet," agreed Bolan. "But she cares. She's all right."

  "Yeah, but she makes it harder for us to do our job," the colonel reminded him. "Speaking of which, have a seat and report."

  Bone weary, Bolan settled into a chair across the desk from the colonel, who nodded as Bolan related the kills in the village and the firefight in the jungle afterward.

  "Good work, son," he said when Bolan finished. The corners of the CO's mouth drew back in a grimace. "You must be damn tired."

  "I could use some sleep," said Bolan, shrugging.

  "Wish I didn't have to tell you this after a mission like that, but there's no ducking a bad job, I always say."

  Bolan waited, trying to ignore a foreboding in his gut.

  "Sir?"

  "I can't send Jill Desmond back to Saigon, much as I'd like to," Crawford growled. "I've got orders from the top to cooperate with her."

  "She must have a lot of pull back home."

  "Enough. Anyway, she's here for as long as she wants to stay. And while she's here, I've got to have somebody I can trust keep an eye on her."

  Bolan's mouth tightened.

  A baby-sitter.

  The colonel wanted him to baby-sit the live-wire journalist who had a mad-on for anything military.

  "I, uh, could think of better choices for the job than me, sir."

  The CO chuckled.

  "I'll bet you can, but I can't. The lady doesn't seem to like you, Sergeant, and I don't blame you for not liking her, but if anybody can keep her alive while she's out here, it's you."

  "Is that an order, sir?"

  "It's an order."

  Bolan stood.

  "Then I guess I'd better catch up with her and get her locked up somewhere for the night."

  "Just don't let her know that she's locked up." Lieutenant Colonel Crawford chuckled. "She was mad enough when I told her I was going to assign someone to keep an eye on her while she's here."

  Bolan's mouth quirked.

  It might have been a smile. He saluted and started to turn when Crawford stopped him.

  "Sergeant, you might tell her what the Viet civilians call you. Sergeant Mercy fits you just as well as the Executioner."

  "She wouldn't understand," Bolan said simply.

  He reached for the doorknob. It was jerked open before he could grasp it.

  "Well, what is it, Corporal?" the colonel barked at the orderly who barreled into the room. "You'd better have a damned good reason for not knocking!"

  "It's Miss Desmond, sir," the corporal said, shakily. "The reporter."

  "I know who she is. What about her?"

  Bolan had that foreboding in his gut again.

  "She's taken a jeep, sir. No one expected her to try something like that. It was parked behind the motor pool. They worked on it today. Uh, gave it a tune-up and everything. C Company was supposed to pick it up first thing in the morning."

  Crawford slammed his fist on the desk top.

  "Damn. What do you mean she stole a jeep?"

  The corporal cowered. "She was gone before anybody knew it. She headed west."

  "West? Toward Three Click Fork?"

  The corporal nodded again.

  Bolan sighed as he thought of Three Click Fork, three kilometers from the camp where an old supply road branched north and south.

  Where the heaviest concentration of VC activity in the area was reported to be building up.

  That was the intel from all the recon patrols.

  A bad place for an unarmed, just-off-the-plane reporter who also happened to be a woman.

  A terrible place.

  "Sergeant?"

  Bolan glanced at the colonel and nodded.

  "On my way, sir."

  Bolan stalked out into the jungle night.

  So Jill Desmond wanted to know what war was really all about.

  The Executioner hoped she wouldn't find out. The hard way.

  * * *

  Soldiers.

  They were all alike, Jill Desmond thought as she piloted the bucking jeep along the road leading away from Cam Lo base camp.

  They were like juvenile college boys in a fraternity with their secret handshakes and rituals.

  They didn't want to let anybody in on what really happened, least of all an uppity woman who had "no right" to be there.

  Well, Lieutenant Colonel Crawford and his bloodthirsty Sergeant Bolan were wrong if they thought they could keep the truth from her.

  She was young, yes, but she was also damn good at her job.

  She was more than willing to wade through any kind of shit to get the story she was after.

  The camp was one kilometer behind her.

  The twin beams of the jeep's headlights cut through the curtain of night, revealing the deeply rutted road.

  She jerked the wheel savagely and geared down as the vehicle bounced over the crater-pocked roadway. With each depression in the half-paved track the jeep threatened to head into the jungle.

  This wasn't any worse than the road she had driven over in the hills of Kentucky when she interviewed the leader of that cult. He had been a little scary with those burning eyes, that long beard, the shotgun in gnarled hands.

  Then there had been the Black Panther sh
e had ventured into Watts to find. She had gone to places where a white woman had no business. She had asked the questions nobody asked, and she had survived.

  She had flourished.

  Guts.

  That was all it took. If you had guts, you could go anywhere, do anything.

  There were no sounds of war in the jungle night as she drove through its velvet blackness.

  She would find the people who lived in this area. She would ask questions. The truth would be told.

  The people back home were starting to wake up to what the truth about Vietnam really was. The human suffering. Napalm. The fat cats.

  War was always good for business. Young men were dying in a rich man's war 10,000 miles away from home. Most of them had no idea why they were there, fighting a people who had done nothing to them. They weren't heroes, they were pawns in the wrong place at the wrong time. The first real rumbles of protest were beginning to be heard.

  The truth would fuel those protests, and that knowledge made her job simple.

  Find the truth.

  Get it to the people.

  Cam Lo was two clicks behind her.

  Men like Mack Bolan had free rein to kill and maim and torture, and their superior officers hung medals on their chests for it.

  Somebody had to put a stop to it before this backward little country was overrun with self-styled Executioners.

  The glow of the headlights washed over Three Click Fork.

  Jill Desmond stopped the jeep.

  A frown marred the smoothness of her forehead.

  She had pored over maps of the area before coming out here and had expected this fork, but she wasn't sure which way she should turn.

  There were villages in both directions.

  She tromped on the gas and spun the wheel to the right. The vehicle headed north down the narrow road.

  As she drove, she tried to recall the smattering of Vietnamese she knew. Many of the villagers, especially the elders, knew English, she'd been told. She was sure she would be able to communicate with them.

  The truth has a way of breaking down most barriers, including languages.