Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (34 page)

Jaybird lived less than a mile away. He wasn’t going to bring his bike out until he knew more what had happened to the murder case. He thought of the papers, but the paperboy automatically stopped the paper if two piled up by the door.

Lam left his apartment, pulled the door shut. It wouldn’t latch. He looked carefully around, saw no motorcycles, or cars that didn’t look like they belonged. He went out the back drive, then through an alley, and paused at the far end watching and waiting. After five minutes he figured that no one was following him. He jogged on to Jaybird’s house and caught him in the shower.

“Got a heavy date,” Jaybird said through the steam. “What the hell you doing here?”

Lam helped himself to one of Jaybird’s beers, and spelled out the trashing as soon as Jaybird turned off the shower.

“Hey, I didn’t do it. I got an alibi.” Jaybird frowned. “Must be something you’re not telling me. Give, buddy. Who did you get so mad that they trashed everything you own?”

Lam told Jaybird the whole thing from the afternoon at the motorcycle dealership and the ride and the stomping.

“Man, you are in deep shit. You try to turn in these guys and they all say you did it. In the meantime they know you’re a witness because you saw it and ran. Hey, I know how they found you. Your license plate. You had a permanent plate on when we saw your bike at the parking lot. They traced you by the plate.”

“They remembered my plate? I don’t remember theirs.”

“They might have got it from the dealership. Point is they know where you live. So now you live here. I scrunch you down when we come out of the parking lot every day and when we go to work in the mornings. First
we get some help and clean up your place. I’ll make some phone calls. We work on it tonight. We’ll all have hideouts. Three of them won’t bother six or seven of us.”

“What about your heavy date?”

“Hell, she’s just a bimbo. I can get out of it.”

Lam rubbed his face with one hand and frowned. “Hell, I don’t want to get anybody else involved.”

“We won’t tell our guys why you got trashed. They won’t ask. You know our guys. They’ll pitch in. We’re a team.”

That night five SEALs worked in Lam’s apartment. They stood up the bookcase and put back the books that weren’t ruined. Jaybird brought a garbage can from his place and they carried it time after time to the Dumpster, filled with ruined clothes, dishes, pictures-anything they could lift.

“Whoever the hell did this has got to answer to me,” Canzoneri said. “I’d like to get him one-on-one for about ten minutes.”

Jaybird had been right, Lam thought. Not one of the other three SEALs asked why Lam’s place had been attacked. By midnight they had a semblance of order. The bed could be used. They propped up one side with a wooden box and turned over the mattress. It had been slashed only on one side. They found one shirt and one pair of pants the trashers had missed. The rest of Lam’s clothes went into the garbage can and then into the Dumpster at the side of the complex.

“They must know that you’re home,” Jaybird said. “Bet they have somebody watching right now. Say we all fade out, and drive off. We wave at Lam here on the porch. Then we sneak back through the alley and set up a watch in the shadows. Plenty of hiding spots around here. Hey, we’re good at an ambush like this. Bet the farm they will storm the place again once they know we’re gone. They want your ass, now that your place is trashed.”

“You don’t have to do this, guys,” Lam said.

“Hell you say,” Bradford barked. “You’d do it for us.”

A half hour later they quit, had beers Jaybird had brought, and made some noise leaving. Lam turned off
the lights, closed the door as well as he could, and sat there in a broken chair with his. 32 automatic in his hand waiting. He could imagine the four guys slipping up on his apartment.

Outside, Jaybird settled down with his back against the wall, one apartment down, in a small alcove that was totally dark. He watched the steps leading to the second-floor unit and waited. He was about twenty feet from the stairs with an open field. Jaybird knew where two of the other SEALs were, but he hadn’t spotted Bradford. The guy was getting good.

An hour after the SEALs had left the apartment, two late model cars wheeled into the parking lot easing along on a recon. They turned at the end of the narrow lot and came back. Both parked near the steps. One man left the car. He was dressed in black bike leathers but without any insignia. Only his face showed white. He went up the steps three at a time and knocked on the door. Three more men eased out of the cars and moved to the bottom of the steps.

A moment after he knocked, the big man with red hair at Lam’s door kicked it hard, popping it open. He stormed in. From ten feet away, Lam turned on the lights and leveled the. 32 at the man’s head.

“Cooley, isn’t it?” Lam said. “You’re the fucking redhead in the murderous trio. Don’t say a damn word. Just lean out the door and wave for your guys to come on up. You do anything else and I shoot you in the balls-you got that, sucker?”

Cooley’s widened eyes came back to normal. He nodded slowly and backed up to the door. Without looking out, he waved the others up.

Jaybird came out of his crouch and charged the twenty feet, slammed a shoulder block into the first man on the second step, smashing him off the wood and into the swatch of green grass. Jaybird immediately bounced to his feet and planted a kick into the man’s midsection, stopping his try at getting up. This was Downfield, Jaybird figured from Lam’s description. He surged up to his knees and Jaybird powered his own knee up hard, slamming into
Downfield’s chin, pitching him to the side. He struggled to his hands and knees and then came to his feet. He charged Jaybird.

Jaybird sidestepped the charge, pounded his fist as hard as he could downward on the back of Downfield’s neck, and saw the thin man sprawl on the grass on his belly. Jaybird dropped hard on his back, splashing half the air out of his lungs. Then Jaybird lifted Downfield’s head by his hair and slammed it into the hard ground three times.

At the same time Jaybird attacked Downfield, the other two SEALs hit the second pair of leather-wearing bikers.

Bradford tackled the one who had to be a health nut. He was trim and lean in his black leathers. Bradford rolled him over and pounded one fist into his jaw, slamming his head to one side.

“What the fuck you doing?” the man bellowed. Bradford hit him in the throat, not hard enough to crush his larynx but enough to keep him from talking for at least a day.

“I hear you like to trash apartments, you bastard.” Bradford hit the prone man again in the face, breaking his nose and splattering blood all over his face and the grass. Bradford rolled him over on his back and sat on him.

Canzoneri caught his man as he tried to run up the steps. The SEAL grabbed the runner’s back foot and twisted it, spinning the biker over the rail and landing hard on his shoulders. Canzoneri was on top of him a second later. He pinned the big man to the grass like a wrestler. “Who the hell are you?” Canzoneri asked.

“Who the fuck wants to know?” the black-leather-clad man snorted. Canzoneri rolled him over and pounded two hard fists into the biker’s belly, doubling him over. Canzoneri cocked his fist and then slammed his elbow into the biker’s cheek, breaking cheekbones and maybe his jaw. The biker collapsed, holding his face and keening in pain.

In the apartment, Lam motioned Cooley to turn around. “Okay, badass, lace your hands on top of your head before I get impatient and shoot you in your balls just for the fun of it. I don’t like people messing with my things. You
owe me twelve thousand dollars. You ready to pay up?”

“Eat shit, Lampedusa.”

Lam slammed the butt of the pistol into Cooley’s right kidney. The biker bellowed in pain and bent over almost double. As he did, Lam slammed the weapon into the kidney on the other side and Cooley fell to the floor whimpering and pulling his legs up into a fetal ball.

“So talk to me, asshole. You killed the old man, and you think you can intimidate me? Hell, I can tell the DA so much you three will join each other in a triple party in the gas oven. Twelve thousand you owe me for my apartment furnishings. You remember that?”

Cooley looked up at Lam and tried to sneer. It never quite got there. “Lampedusa, you bastard. I’ll get you for this.” Lam hit the seated man so fast with a pair of jabs that he never saw them coming. His hands went to his eyes just as Lam jolted him with a wild right-hand roundhouse that landed on his jaw and slammed him into the carpet. Lam looked outside, saw the three bikers on the ground. He went back and kicked Cooley until he stood up.

Below in the parking lot, the fight was over. The three would-be trashers were down and not moving. Bradford snorted and pulled his KA-BAR. Jaybird shook his head, but Bradford just grinned. He ran to the cars and slashed the tires on both rigs until they had eight flat tires.

Jaybird found a hose at the front of the apartments. He turned it on and hosed down the three bikers until they sputtered back to consciousness.

“Get in your cars and get the hell out of here,” Jaybird told each of them, not raising his voice. “If you come back here, the next time we’ll kill you. That’s our job, killing assholes like you. One more time your face is in this lot and you’re stone-cold dead assholes. Now move.

Jaybird ran up the steps and found Lam pushing the last of the quartet of raiders out the door. Jaybird angled him down the steps, tripping him on the last one so Cooley’s face skidded on the concrete walk.

“You better get in your car while you still can,” Jaybird said. He repeated the warning about killing them if they
came back. Cooley looked as if he could barely control his pain. He glared at Jaybird, then crawled into the nearest car. Both rigs’ engines started and they moved a half dozen feet and stopped. The drivers got out and looked at the tires. They swore and got back inside. Jaybird lay the barrel of his hideout. 38 on the first driver’s open window ledge. “You boys better drive, or you won’t ever be able to drive again.”

Both cars moved with caution toward the exit. Each had flapping rubber on the flat tires before they got to the street. Five miles an hour would be their top speed.

The five SEALs sat on the steps talking in hushed tones.

“Those four won’t bother you anymore,” Bradford said.

Jaybird shook his head. “Oh, I think they just might. I’ll rig a flash-bang grenade to go off if the apartment door is opened. Then Lam stays at my place.”

“Let’s give it a try,” Lam said.

Two days later Lam felt safe enough to ride his bike to the SEAL parking lot. Nobody would mess with it there. That night he came away from a hard day of training and headed for Jaybird’s. He always went a different route so he could check to see if anyone was following him. This time he was two blocks from Jaybird’s when he saw the same new yellow Mazda turn when he turned. It was the third turn the Mazda had made with him.

Lam speeded up, darted down an alley, came out on the other side. The Mazda driver had guessed which way Lam would turn and was half a block behind him. What next? He could always pull in at the Coronado police station; the Mazda wouldn’t turn in there he was sure. But the thought of talking with cops scared him. He turned toward the ramp leading to the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge. He knew a spot in National City where he could lose whoever drove that Mazda. If he could get there before the driver rear-ended him. He gunned onto the entry ramp and accelerated. All he needed was a three-minute lead time. If he could get it. The damn yellow Mazda was fifty yards behind him and gaining.

Lam kept watching over his shoulder. The Mazda was getting involved with traffic and couldn’t gain on him. Soon they hit the slowdown on the bridge and Lam wove in and out between cars and gained fifteen car lengths on the yellow Mazda. Then he came off the bridge and swept down the 5 South freeway, where he blasted up to ninety miles an hour and left the Mazda eating exhaust. He slipped onto an off ramp, cut his speed to make the corner, and headed for a section of woods and water and a bit of wilderness right there on the outskirts of National City. He’d ridden a rented trail bike there before.

The Mazda’s driver spotted him on the off ramp and followed. The guys in the car must be sure now of the kill. Lam rode as far into the woods as he could and hid his bike, then circled back so he could watch the Mazda. It parked at the edge of the woods but nobody got out. They must be talking. Then three men stepped out and he recognized Cooley’s red hair. One of the other men in black leathers limped and the third one had a bandage on his nose. Three of the same bikers they had pounded around before.

The three bikers hurried into the woods where they’d seen his bike vanish. Lam waited until they were well inside the growth, then he sprinted out to their car and reached for his KA-BAR knife. It wasn’t there. He used a stick and let all the air out of all four tires, then ran back into the woods. He slipped up on the three men as they tried to track him. By following the tire trail in the woods, they soon found his bike. Lam grabbed his. 32
hideout pistol off his left ankle and fired one shot over their heads. In the thick woods it sounded like a rifle shot. The three bikers ducked and scattered.

“You three guys are dead, you know that?” Lam bellowed at them. “I know where you are. You’re on my turf now, hotshots. Who wants to die first?”

Lam kept quiet then and moved up on the nearest biker. He was Cooley, and he had backed up against a foot-thick tree and pulled out a switchblade, waving it in front of him. At least he didn’t yell anything and give away his position. He didn’t have time to. Lam went around him and came up in back of the tree. He slid his belt off, bent low, and whipped the buckle around the tree a foot off the ground, catching it on the far side of the tree and cinching it up tight before Cooley knew what had happened.

“Hey, bastard. What the hell you doing? Let me go.”

Lam reached around the tree and slammed his fist into Cooley’s right hand that held the blade. Cooley screeched in pain and dropped the weapon.