Texas Showdown at-3

by Don Pendleton

  She wiped away her tears. "I know I'm good. I'm crying because they didn't pay attention. I thought working an international resort would be classy, but it was just a beer bar."

  Four toughs in black shirts and pants, the uniform of the local gangs, lounged against a car. When they saw the three foreigners approaching, the gang boys stopped talking and stared. One tough put his hand under his shirt.

  Pardee's right hand went toward his left underarm as he stepped toward the four youths. Then motion blurred on the near side of them. Blancanales lunged to grab that fifth punk, but it was too late. The girl shrieked.

  The fifth punk jerked her head back by her hair, put an eight-inch blade to her throat. "Drop dat pistol, fat man!"

  Pardee pointed a .45 Auto-Colt at the four gang boys. He turned, pointed the pistol at the fifth. The punk ducked behind the girl, shielding himself. He peeked out at Pardee as he pressed the knife against the girl's throat.

  "Drop it or she die here!"

  Thumbing down the hammer, Pardee glanced at Blancanales, then slowly stooped down and surrendered the Colt to the asphalt. One of the gang boys ran forward and kicked Pardee in the gut. Pardee did not even look at the gang boy. He kept his eyes on the punk with the knife.

  Two toughs shoved Blancanales against a car and went through his pockets. The others slammed at Pardee with their fists, hitting him in the body, then in the face, their fists sounding like slaps. Still he kept his eyes on the punk with the knife.

  Blancanales muttered into the tiny microphone set in his coat lapel. "Lyons, Gadgets. Trouble. Real trouble. Other side of the club."

  "Shut that mouth, white man," a tough screamed at him. Blancanales blocked a punch with his elbow.

  "Thanks for the money, man, thanks for the gun, and man, thanks for the blonde!" shrieked the punk who was pointing the surrendered .45 at Pardee's head. "You know what we gonna do? We all gonna screw her, then..."

  The tough holding the knife to the girl's throat stepped close to Pardee, leered into his face:

  "...we gonna take her across town and sell her..."

  Pardee glanced at the .45 only a foot from his head. He smiled, looked over to Blancanales. Pol studied the pistol for an instant. The punk had thumbed its hammer back only to half-cock.

  In a motion too fast to see, Pardee snatched the knife from the punk with the girl. The tough with the pistol jerked the trigger, but there was no shot. Pardee kicked and punched. Toughs slammed backward into cars. The auto-pistol clattered to the asphalt.

  Blancanales smashed the hoodlums on either side of him, then sprinted for the girl. Even as he kicked the punk who had threatened the singer, the girl punched the punk in the throat, knocking him down and out. Blancanales pulled the enraged girl away.

  Turning, Blancanales saw Pardee lean over the two thrashing, choking gang boys that he had kicked and punched. The choking ended in strange gaspings. When Pardee stood, his hands and coat sleeves were glistening with blood. The eight-inch blade of his knife dripped red.

  "Down!" Carl Lyons shouted from the far end of the parking lot. "Get down!"

  One of the toughs had a snub-nosed revolver. Blancanales shoved the girl down, threw himself on top of her.

  The rip-roar of the Magnum's bullet passed over them. Blancanales heard glass falling as the bullet, punching through the tough boy, continued on through parked cars.

  Pardee stooped down to Blancanales. "Get Christie out of here. We'll meet at the hotel. Go!"

  "Craig..." the blond singer called out "...are you okay?"

  "We're going to the car, come on." Blancanales jerked Christie to her feet, then half-dragged her across the parking lot.

  Behind them popped six small-caliber shots. Blancanales saw Pardee empty the .22 snub-nose at the club's side exit. Someone ducked back inside and slammed the door closed. Pardee wiped the revolver of prints and dropped it. Then he cut the throats of the two toughs that Blancanales had sent sprawling against the car.

  Carl Lyons caught Christie's arm, took her stubbornly held guitar case. "Are you hurt, lady?"

  "I'm okay! Who are you?"

  "He's a friend. We've got to get you out of here. Where's your car?" Blancanales' voice pulsed with urgency.

  "We came in Craig's."

  "Then we'll take mine. He'll follow us."

  Blancanales had the doors to his rented sedan open in an instant. Lyons and Gadgets helped the singer into the car, then sprinted for their car.

  A long scream tore apart the night. Blancanales looked back to the bodies. He saw Pardee, knife in one hand, something gory in the other, standing over the wailing, writhing punk who had threatened Christie. The scream choked off as Pardee jammed the handful of gore into the punk's mouth. Then he lifted the punk's head by the hair and grinned his death's-head smile into the face of the dying gang boy.

  The knife flashed twice. Blood arced from the hood's yawning throat.

  Blancanales threw the rented car into gear, burned rubber. A last look into the rearview mirror showed Pardee pause in the center of the parking lot to survey the scene, then scoop up his Colt from the asphalt and run to his car.

  Taking directions from Christie, Blancanales wove through the avenues of Kingston. Lyons and Gadgets followed in their rented car. Pardee was waiting for them at the hotel. He greeted Lyons with a grin and a handshake.

  "Good shooting, pal. Two inches to the left of the sternum at one hundred feet. And by street light. Ex-cell-ent!"

  "Thanks. Practice makes perfect."

  "Marchardo! You see the expression on that punk's face when he pulls the trigger and nothing? Punk didn't know the difference between cocked and half-cocked." Pardee continued on to Christie. "Are you all right, love?"

  "I'm okay. What about you? You're the one they kicked."

  "We don't have time to talk. My friend here..." he nodded to Lyons "...had to kill one of those punks. You know how the law is. I'm sending you back to the States. Or anywhere you want to go right now. We can't stay in Jamaica."

  "I'll go with you. I don't want to go back alone."

  "Okay, Los Angeles. You always wanted to go to L.A., so now you're going. Upstairs and pack! I'll join you in California next weekend."

  Christie ran into the hotel. Pardee watched her, a look of love on his face. He turned to the three men.

  "Okay, gentlemen. You got work." Pardee offered his hand to Gadgets. Then he noticed the blood that had clotted on his jacket sleeves. He grinned at Blancanales: "Another good suit hits the shitcan."

  5

  Dawnlight revealed the desert blurring beneath them, rocks and low brush flashing past at three hundred miles per hour. The pilot maintained an altitude of one hundred feet. To the east, rip-saw peaks stood black against a horizon the color of sheet flame. Six hours out of Jamaica, this was their first sight of Texas. They had seen the distant glows of towns' lights during the night. But now, in the first minutes of daylight, there was nothing. They skimmed over total isolation. Only the black line of a highway miles off marked the desert.

  "So — you worked for the airlines after your discharge..." Pardee continued his questioning. For the hours of the flight, the plush leather and hardwood interior of the Beechcraft jetprop had served as an interrogation room. Before take-off, Pardee had collected their weapons and searched them. In the air, he asked them for their backgrounds, in detail. And then he questioned each detail.

  "For a while, yeah," Gadgets answered. "But they let me go. Either the Feds bothered them, or they decided not to risk me fragging a pilot. They never told me straight."

  "If you fragged your captain in Nam, how come they hired you in the first place?"

  The nature of his role damn near made Hermann Gadgets Schwarz spit.

  "I didn't tell them. I had a medical discharge. I had my Purple Heart. I mean, it was 'Hire the Vet' time. Until the investigators came along. Then they found out."

  "What was the name of your captain? The one you wasted."

  "Sisson.
Captain Sissy, I called him. Always having us running around topside, to string antennas and put up new radar dishes — but he wouldn't even go for his own food. One time we took a hit on top that took away our gear, and he orders three men up to fix it. To fix it right then. Rockets, mortars, 130mm shells coming down, and he sends them up. 'Wouldn't ask you to do anything I wouldn't do.' Bang, we get hit again. He sends me up to check on them. Nothing but rags and meat. Couldn't even tell who was who. I go down and give him the bad news, he hears it, then he sends me topside to the officers' mess. He has me fetch coffee. The sky's falling, we're dying all over, and I'm trying not to spill his coffee." Schwarz was alive to the possibilities of the story. In fact he knew many like it. "That's when I decided to do him. My contribution to the war effort."

  "How'd you do it?" Pardee pressed.

  The invention burned on. "Told a recon I knew that I wanted Chicom 82mm mortar. Then I put an electric Claymore's blasting cap on the fuse, and hid it just a little bit inside one of the sandbags topside. He went topside, I popped him, then I pulled the wires clear. I jammed them in my pocket as I went to help him. I tied off what was left of his legs and arm but he bled to death before he got to triage. His replacement had a more realistic attitude."

  "I was in Operation Pegasus," Pardee commented. "Never saw a more fucked-up place than Khe Sanh. When did you say you met Mr. Marchardo?"

  Blancanales interrupted. "Pardee, can't you lighten up? Luther and I go back years and years."

  Luther. Luther Schwarz.

  "Gentlemen," Pardee told them, looking at each of them. He smiled his death's-head grin. "You answer all the questions I ask you. Or you take a walk. Do we understand each other?"

  "No problem here," Lyons told him.

  "Thank you, Mr. Morgan."

  Carl Morgan.

  Outside, the jagged spines of mountains towered on both sides. Air turbulence shook the Beechcraft.

  "When did you meet Mr. Marchardo?"

  Gadgets looked to Blancanales. "When was it? A couple of years ago. The time the coast guard played tracer-tag with that yacht full of hippie dopers..."

  "Oh, man..." Blancanales laughed.

  "Were you there, Mr. Morgan?"

  "No."

  "How long have youworked with your friends?"

  "This year."

  "Tell me all about it."

  "Sometimes we're on boats. Sometimes we fly. Sometimes I get a G-3. Sometimes it's a Mattie Mattel. Always I got my Python. What else you interested in?"

  "Who you really are."

  Lyons didn't answer for a second. Gadgets looked out the window, watched the morning sun light the rocks. If Lyons couldn't handle this questioning...

  "I'm past that." Lyons spoke like an old man.

  "What?" Pardee looked piercingly at Lyons. "Just give me a straight answer."

  "I'm Carl Morgan. I've got a phony passport and a Colt Python with a magnaported six-inch barrel. Issue me a rifle, I'll carry it. What else can I tell you?"

  "You and me just might get along, Morgan," Pardee said. "Last night, I asked your pal for references. He said he couldn't talk about it. But you two will. I want the names of people you worked for. You're on the payroll, but until I check you out, you don't get weapons, briefings, nothing. Understand?"

  "No problem here," Lyons told him.

  "I understand," Gadgets agreed.

  The intercom interrupted them. "One minute until landing. One minute."

  The three men of Able Team looked out as the base flashed beneath them. They saw rows of steel prefab buildings, asphalt streets, gravel assembly areas, and a two-lane highway. The highway cut through the rocky hills around the camp, continued past the camp to a mansion set on the peak of a distant hill. Two fences surrounded the base. A blockhouse guarded the only gate.

  "There is something you should know," Pardee cut off their sight-seeing. "Texas has a whole different attitude about private property. Somebody goes someplace, and they ain't supposed to be there, that's trespassing. And like the sign on the fence down there says, 'Trespassers Will Be Shot.' " The Beechcraft's wheels touched the landing strip.

  * * *

  Below his office window in La Paz, waves of flowers rolled across the red clay tiles of the restaurant roof. Parrots squawked on the patio. The flowers attracted hummingbirds.

  Bob Paxton turned from his desk to watch the emerald-green birds flit through the flowers. Once, when ravens had raided the nests of the tiny birds, eating the eggs and chicks, Paxton had taken his silenced Ruger .22 and dropped the ravens, one by one.

  Now he held the Ruger under his desk. The footsteps on the creaky stairs continued to his door. Before the visitor knocked, Paxton crossed the office, his feet silent on the tiles except for the slight squeak of the ankle on his plastic leg.

  Knock. "Senor Paxton, this is Lieutenant Navarro."

  Paxton slipped the Ruger in his belt at the small of his back. He opened the door for the young lieutenant. The two men presented a contrast in military traditions: Paxton, the ex-gunnery sergeant with his beer belly and cocaine habit; Navarro, slim and formal in his tailored polyester. Yet Navarro respected the boozy retired non-com. Unlike Navarro, Paxton had distinguished himself in combat. Navarro knew he would never have the opportunity.

  "How can I help you, Lieutenant?"

  The young Latin handed him a folder. Paxton glanced through the eight-by-ten black-and-white blow-ups.

  "I need to know the names and nationalities."

  "I don't know about these three, I'll have to check my files," said Paxton. "But this man..." He limped to his desk, spread out the photos. "I can tell you who he is, right now."

  Paxton put his finger on the glossy black-and-white photo of Hal Brognola.

  6

  A closed van waited only steps from the jetprop. Scanning the scene as they left the plane, they saw the concrete landing strip, strips of landing lights, the steel prefab hangars at the far end. Double chain link fences topped with razor wire encircled the area.

  "Move it!" Pardee shouted. "No tourism! In the truck."

  Sitting on the floor of the van, Blancanales felt the air compress as Pardee slammed the van doors shut on them. "Reminds me of prison."

  Gadgets touched his ear, pointed to the walls of the van. Blancanales and Lyons nodded. "Way I see it," Gadgets said clearly, "they run a tight operation. And I'm glad. Most of the gangs down South don't get busted from the outside, it's always a Fed or an informer on the inside. So a tight operation is all right with me."

  The van took them first to an infirmary. Again, in the few steps between the van and the door of the prefab infirmary, they saw almost nothing of the base: chain link fencing topped by razor wire, and a blacktop road.

  "Strip down," an orderly told them. He gave them each a deep plastic tray. "All your clothes and personal things in the trays. And I mean everything. Rings, dogtags, all of it."

  "When do we get it back?" Lyons asked. "And where's our luggage?"

  "Hey, man," the bone-thin blond orderly drawled in his southern accent. "Until you clear Security, that's the least of your worries."

  Naked, they waited until a doctor took them one by one into an examination room. A middle-aged man with the gray skin and ravaged body of an alcoholic, the doctor did not introduce himself nor question them on their medical histories. Speaking only in monosyllables, he took full-body photographs of them, complete X rays, then blood samples.

  Next, the orderly gave them each day-glow orange fatigues and tennis shoes, and hurried them back to the van.

  "Dig these jazzy uniforms," Gadgets sighed.

  "Camouflage," Lyons said. "For an invasion of Las Vegas."

  Another short ride and the van dropped them at their barrack. The building sat at the edge of the base. It looked like a prison unit. Two electric gates and a glass-walled guard booth completed the impression created by the chain link fence and razor wire.

  A man standing six-foot-eight stomped from the barrack d
oor. "Stop rubbernecking, new meat. In here!"

  They filed through. The interior was one large room. Two rows of ten steel bunk beds ran the length of the barrack. Though there were scuffs in the linoleum and chips in the paint of the steel beds, the place had the smell of a new house trailer, just months old. The sheet steel walls had the original enamel. Not one of the windows was cracked.

  "I am Sergeant Cooke," the three-hundred-pound soldier told them. "Until Captain Pardee is positive on your identities, you stay here. When you clear Security, you will join the other men. Until then, you sweat. Here are the supplies you need for the next few days."

  He pointed to a table. There were three identical piles of sheets, pillowcases, blankets, soaps, razors.

  "I suggest you make your bunks now. Tonight you might not have it left in you." Sergeant Cooke threw back his immense shoulders, glared at each of them for an instant, and added: "I'm taking you out for a long walk."

  * * *

  Ten miles into the rocky foothills, Sergeant Cooke collapsed. He floundered in the dust, trying to stand, but got no further than his hands and knees. He fell onto his back, gasping, his face gray and streaming with sweat.

  Blancanales sat at the side of the trail, watching Sergeant Cooke struggle. Gadgets looked down at the huge man. Lyons squinted into the afternoon glare. He shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon.

  "You think they're training over there?" Lyons pointed to the east. "Every once in a while, I hear booms. Thought I saw a helicopter."

  "Take a break, Morgan," Blancanales told him.

  "We got a problem here with the D.I. Looks like heatstroke to me."

  "Textbook case," Gadgets agreed.

  "What's with you guys?" Sergeant Cooke croaked. "Pardee hire you straight out of the Special Forces?"

  Gadgets flashed a grin to Blancanales and Lyons. "Sort of."

  The second day, Sergeant Cooke rode a 1200cc dirt bike while Able Team double-timed.

  * * *

  High above the rocks and red dust of the Texas desert, Tate Monroe surveyed the maneuvers of his mercenary army from the helicopter of its commander, Colonel Furst. Monroe leaned against the nylon safety webbing to peer down at the other helicopters circling beneath them. In the brilliant sunlight, his hair looked like strands of ceramic, the skin of his tropics-scarred face like translucent plastic molded over a skull. He wore antique sunglasses, round black lenses on a wire frame. The round lenses looked like black eye sockets.