Five Rings of Fire at-11

by Dick Stivers

  A head soon poked around the corner of the cement ramp. The trio held their fire for a split second and the head jerked back out of sight. The man yelled.

  “They’re holding out at the top.”

  “I think the party’s over,” Pol quipped.

  “It’s just beginning,” Gadgets countered as an assault rifle was eased around the curve of the wall, bearing in on the three fighters. Slowly a head followed the rifle around the corner. Politician fired. He put a single shot into an eye.

  The sound of cars, their gas pedals pushed toward the floorboard, alerted the trio that trouble was arriving on four wheels.

  “Get to one side,” Pol instructed Babette. “They’ll try to ram our barricade.”

  Babette drew back from the edge of the ramp and then ran to the side where she could get the longest view of the floor below. She could not yet see the Riding Devils.

  Gadgets and Pol each took one of the remaining grenades. Babette, working in perfect tandem with the Able Team duo, shouted “Now!” the second she saw the front of the first car. Gadgets and Politician pulled the pins. They rolled the grenades down the ramps, then sprinted in opposite directions away from the ramps. The car taking the tighter turns was directly over a grenade when it went off. The force of the explosion lifted and twisted the vehicle, leaving it a bent, battered, flaming pile of rubbish that blocked entry from the floor below. The other car made it over the grenade. It charged on toward Able Team’s flimsy barricade.

  At the last possible moment, the driver of the car saw that there was no one behind the motorcycles.

  He swerved sharply to avoid hanging the car up on the bikes. The driver then began a wide sweep that would allow him to stop out of effective firing range or continue to hunt.

  Gadgets lined up his Beretta on the rear wheel. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a gun barrel emerging from the passenger window. Gadgets let himself collapse to the cold cement as heavy automatic fire blazed over his head.

  Blancanales, who had turned a different direction from Schwarz when they had retreated from the ramp, found himself removed from the battle, located behind his partner and at an even greater distance from the pair in the car. He tracked the car with his Ingram, but the range was doubtful and his aim was leading dangerously close to Gadgets. Politician held his fire and began to run toward the action.

  Car wheels screeched as the driver used the space on the empty top story to put the vehicle into a power turn and head it back toward Gadgets. The gunner in the car could no longer hit Gadgets without hanging most of his frame out the window. The danger for the Able Team member now lived with the machine that was speeding toward him.

  At the bottom of the ramp, the Riding Devils had used a car as a battering ram to remove the burning, beat-up auto. The gunners were now using the car as a shield to get a better angle on, and some protection from, the lone sniper who was preventing them from rushing the ramp. Babette was firing, but was having trouble finding targets. Overhead she heard a large helicopter. She glanced up but the bird had no markings. She turned her attention again to the ramp and opened up the head of a thug who was lining her up over the hood of the car. The man’s face was thumped into a bloody pulp.

  Instead of getting to his feet and trying to reach cover, Gadgets Schwarz switched the Beretta to full automatic and stitched a line of slugs across the windshield of the car. The instant the gun clicked empty, he rolled to his right as fast and hard as was humanly possible.

  The shots killed nothing, but they spiderwebbed the windshield, dropping visibility to nil. The car pulled away to the right as the driver, unable to see the target, veered away from the area where the automatic fire had come from. The skidding back end of the car missed the rolling Able Team member by inches.

  The car came to a stop about fifty feet from Gadgets. The door on the far side of the machine opened. The passenger and the driver both got out the same door. Schwarz could see their feet as he shoved another clip into his gun. Remaining prone, the warrior carefully lined up his sights on one of the ankles. Weapons were being swung to bear on him over the top of the car.

  Simultaneously, three gunners popped up over the car at the bottom of the ramp. Babette managed to take out one before her clip was empty. She retreated from the edge of the ramp, out of range of a hail of bullets. She slapped the last clip into the Ingram.

  Babette lay back from the ramp, waiting for the first head to appear above floor level. Her back was fanned by prop wash from the copter hovering overhead. She could not spare a second to look up; she could only hope it carried allies.

  Screams — chilling, almost unreal — sounded. They were screams of fear, not agony. They were followed by a series of explosions. Bloodied bits of human beings rose, then fell. Babette risked taking a quick glance. She looked up at the copter from which the grenades had been lobbed into the attackers, but it was already landing at the entry to the parking building. She moved her eyes back to the ramps, determined to stop any survivors from surfacing.

  Politician saw the two gunners from the car bringing their automatic rifles to bear on his partner. He fired on the run. The bullets stitched the car roof, nailing one of the gunners in the cheek, missing the other. Both of the bastards ducked low.

  Gadgets forced them to duck even lower. Before the goons could think about getting off more shots, he fired a burst at one man’s ankle and then the next man’s. The guncocks crashed to the ground. Two more bursts guaranteed they would never get up.

  Pol and Gadgets trotted back to the ramp to help Babette hold the fort. They could hear shooting from below.

  Ten minutes later, following a two-minute silence, Carl Lyons called.

  “Don’t shoot. I’m coming up.”

  The men greeted each other.

  Blancanales did the introductions. “Carl, meet Babette Pavlovski. Best backup gunner in the business.”

  They locked eyes. They locked hands.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  *

  He was six feet tall with wide shoulders, a barrel chest, narrow hips. His white hair gave him the look of maturity; he did not look old. His complexion had a flushed, just-scrubbed appearance. His blue eyes carried little expression, but they had the ability to send chills through anyone who dared to stare into them. He talked to three young men who stood uncomfortably before him.

  “There were how many of you?” he asked in a cold, clipped voice.

  The three glanced around the room, each more than willing to allow the other to answer.

  After several silent seconds, the eldest, a thirty-year-old still fighting a losing war against acne, answered. ” ‘Bout thirty-five of us went there.”

  “And only three of you survived?” The white-haired man’s tone indicated that no amount of convincing would make him believe such a failure had occurred.

  “Well… a couple of the guys may have surrendered,” one of the Riding Devils confessed.

  The third, still-silent member of the bikers was busy putting a small pinch of powder between his thumb and first finger. Then he inhaled the powder, snorting deeply.

  “I suppose you were all enjoying the dust,” the white-haired man said. “How much dust?”

  “Not enough to get real high, Mr. Boering. Just enough to make sure no one got chicken shit.”

  “Just enough? Just enough. I want one goddamn woman taken care of… you send three Devil Riders…”

  “Riding Devils,” the sniffer corrected.

  Klaus Boering ignored him. “I even supply the guns. But three is not enough to take care of one woman! So you send thirty-five and only three of you come back.”

  “She had two bodyguards. Then some sort of SWAT squad came,” one of the bikers tried to explain.

  “Oh,” Boering sneered sarcastically. “Thirty-five of you went after one woman. Turns out she had two bodyguards. It was obviously a trap. How lucky you are to have escaped!”

  The three shifted nervously, spending most of t
heir time looking down at their feet, at the floor. They didn’t know how to deal with Boering. The white-haired man was obviously furious over their inability to get the job done. He waved at them as if he were shooing chickens.

  “Goodbye. Good-goddamn-bye. I have no more work for you. Get out. Close the door when you leave.”

  The three turned and shuffled out; too defeated to protest their treatment. As soon as they had left, Boering picked up the telephone and dialed.

  “Georgi, this is Klaus. I want the special team made operational immediately… I know they’re for special use only. This is a special use.

  “Listen. A small squad of one, two, three, maybe a couple more are protecting that damn defector. They just killed thirty or more goons to do it. The special team is the best. Use them. Take out Pavlovski and everyone around her.

  “How’s the other operation going? Are the athletes away clear? Good. If you hear from Frazer, give him my congratulations.”

  He signed off and hung up the telephone.

  Soon he could forget about Pavlovski’s bodyguards.

  They would be dead.

  He was sure of that.

  7

  “Welcome to my office,” Carl Lyons said, laughing as his Able Team partners examined the trailer on campus.

  “It’s more spacious than Brognola’s,” Blancanales said. “How’d you swing this?”

  “I phoned Archer, told him I wanted one of those portable offices used by construction companies and he got it. Magic.”

  “Presto. This is a bit better than the huts we’re used to using in the jungles,” Gadgets noted.

  “How’s the arm?” Politician asked Lyons.

  The blond warrior looked surprised. “I’d forgotten about it,” he said with a shrug. Lyons never gave small pain anything more than small consideration.

  The trio settled down on some heavy, scarred chairs.

  “How long do you figure it’ll take Babette to round up the black athletes?” Gadgets asked.

  “They’ve got to come from other areas where they’re staying,” Pol said. “Unfortunately they’re not all together. Doesn’t really matter, though. We need the time for planning.”

  The three men outlined a plan, each pitching in with suggestions, questions, until one solid block of strategy had been mapped out.

  “I’m going to need squealers — miniature transmitters that send a constant signal — and tracking gear,” Gadgets interjected at one point in the session.

  “FBI or cops have them?” Lyons asked.

  “Not exactly what I want,” he replied, “but something close enough. I can modify them. I’ll need some tuning crystals, too.”

  Lyons went to make a phone call. When he returned he told Schwarz, “They’ll have what you need in a half hour. Be delivered here.”

  The discussion continued until there was a knock at the door of the trailer office. Babette Pavlovski let herself in. She was followed by eight blacks.

  “That was quick,” Gadgets said.

  “We’re quick,” one of the athletes informed him.

  The only athlete the members of Able Team recognized was Sam Jackson, the U.S. amateur heavyweight boxing champion. Jackson was a huge man with huge fists. The fists hung at his sides, lightly closed. Over the past few years he had earned the nickname “Lightning” for the fast way those fists burned, punished opponents.

  “So you’re Lighting Sam Jackson,” Pol said. “You’re supposed to have the quickest hands in boxing.”

  “What do you mean, ‘supposed to’?”

  Jackson moved close to Blancanales, shadow boxing, his fists a blur. The Able Team warriors were more than impressed.

  “Yeah,” fired Lyons to Pol. “What do you mean, ‘supposed to’?”

  Everyone sat down. Silence filled the room.

  Lyons, not wanting to waste valuable time, broke the quiet.

  “Babette tells us Old Lady Russia would embrace you people with open arms. What’s the draw?”

  “Babette should mind her own business,” one of the athletes piped in.

  “American athletes are my business,” Babette said. “Since I defected — something that had nothing whatsoever to do with the Soviet Union — I have been hounded by Soviet scum. They feel my defection is a taint on communism.”

  Lyons broke in to repeat his question. “What’s the draw?”

  “There’s no discrimination over there,” a female athlete said.

  “We’d be supported by the state,” another said.

  “We’d get better training,” said another.

  “Bullshit,” said Lyons. “They’re not luring you over there with a nickel-and-dime draw of no discrimination, state support, better training. Don’t feed me that shit. I just ate. What’s the draw?”

  Again silence filled the room. The athletes looked at one another. Tension hung heavy. No one wanted to be the first to speak. Finally, Lightning Sam Jackson opened up.

  “Draw’s different for each of us,” he said.

  “What’s being offered to Sam Jackson?” Blancanales asked.

  Jackson looked pained. He was a man clearly more confident dodging punches than questions.

  “Money, man. What else? Old Boering told me they’d get me money and I could keep my amateur status.”

  Once Jackson had opened up, the rest began to spill their stories, reluctantly at first, freely later.

  When they seemed to have run out of steam, Pol told them about the kidnapping. He passed around the note he had found in the blond man’s pocket. He urged them to keep the situation to themselves.

  “Maybe Russia would be better,” one athlete, shocked at the news of the kidnapping, said.

  “That is Russia,” Pol told them. “Those were Russian agents we killed at the airport. That’s your sample of Russia. Kill, capture…”

  “No way,” Jackson said as he finished reading the letter. “The Klan hates Commies. There’s no way those bigoted bastards would help the Russians.”

  “They’d help the South Africans, though,” Pol reminded him. “And how hard would it be to set them up for this? The South Africans could really benefit from recognition by the Olympic Committee, but not enough to make it worth the Klan’s while to get involved this deep. More than the Klan’s involved.”

  “What was the shooting around here all about?” Jackson asked.

  Lyons gave it to them straight. “This morning three dudes from a local motorcycle gang walked into the women’s gymnasium and shot at Babette. They killed Tracy Shaw.”

  That news brought the first strong emotional reaction from the group. That news hit home.

  “We’re telling the press that the gang members were shooting at each other and that a stray bullet caught Tracy,” Lyons said. “I’ll tell you that the gunmen were using weapons that are manufactured in East Germany and don’t often reach the West. We’re also telling the press that the same motorcycle gang, the Riding Devils, came here to finish the war that started this morning.”

  “And what are you telling us?” another athlete asked. “The truth, I hope.”

  “The entire gang rounded up any weapons it could find and came to finish the job on Babette. The FBI had planned to get a substitute Babette over here, but the real one arrived first. The bikers attacked her but they didn’t succeed with anything other than getting themselves wiped out.”

  There were a few weak smiles around the room. Babette was well liked and highly respected among the athletes. When she had selected the ones she wanted present at the meeting, she had picked athletes who were leaders, who could sway other athletes’ opinions if unity among the blacks was needed.

  Knuckles rapped on the door. Two men carrying three attache cases entered the room.

  “Lyons?” one asked.

  Lyons nodded.

  The men placed the attache cases on an empty desk. Lyons was required to sign a form, and then the men left.

  Gadgets got up and seated himself at the desk. He opened
the attache cases. One case held tools, a second had two directional receivers, the third a large assortment of the squealers he had requested along with a batch of spare parts carefully mounted in foam rubber.

  The Able Team wizard began dismantling the first small broadcasting unit.

  “Any more questions?” Lyons asked the group.

  “Yeah,” one replied. “Why are you telling us all this?”

  “I want something.”

  “That much we figured, but I’m beginning to suspect it’s more than an oath of allegiance.”

  Lyons told them what he wanted. It took some time and discussion. While they batted ideas back and forth, clarifying points, Babette went over to help Gadgets.

  One by one the black athletes agreed to the plan and left the stuffy trailer to walk in the late-afternoon sun.

  When the last athlete was gone, Gadgets wiped the perspiration from his face and turned to Babette. “Where did you learn to solder like that?”

  Sadness gripped her tone. “In Czechoslovakia, an athlete must start gymnastics so young. When I was nine I objected to such a strenuous life. I was always practicing or doing schoolwork. I never had time to play. I became bitter, and my performance dropped. Czech authorities knew I might act this way and they had a cure — putting me to work in a factory, twelve hours a day, six days a week. In the factory I soldered small electronic components. In the factory I learned to love the athletic life.

  “It took me eleven months to be accepted back into the athletic program. When I was accepted, I became the hardest-working member of the gymnastics team.”

  Gadgets was held by her story; he was held because she was a fascinating woman. She could solder and soldier with the best, on top of coaching the U.S. team. She had placed her life on the line and yet she radiated warmth, a sense of humor, a love of life.

  They stood looking at each other for seconds and would have remained that way if they had not been interrupted by a knock at the door. Gadgets was closest to the door. He opened it and was greeted by the grinning face of Petra Dix, the West Coast’s famous face on television news.