The Hostaged Island (11 page)

"Voice-graph analysis confirms voice of gang collaborator as that of John Severine, atomic theoretician and suspected Soviet agent. Capture of Severine considered highest priority..."

"But what about the people?" Lyons demanded of the recorded voice. "Didn't you Federals get the message?"

"Sssh!" Gadgets silenced him.

"...Concerning the peril of hostages, consensus here is that coordinated assault must be reserved for last resort. That is, if your team fails. Group here has confidence in your team. Group does not believe helicopters supposedly carrying gold to island but actually bringing airborne assault units would succeed. Solution to peril is infiltration, not external assault. Will stand by for communication."

Only their whispers and the tiny red point of the scanner/auto-recorder's power light revealed Able Team's presence in the lush hillside garden. After slipping from the warehouse under cover of the smoke and confusion, the three men — the older one, mature and mellow in his strength, the blond one, all action and intensity, but graceful, and the youngest, the tousled-haired thinking man, funny and resourceful and also very strong — had commandeered three motorcycles and retreated to the hills above the town as dusk fell. They hid behind a palatial home on the slope of Mount Ada. The terraced garden viewed Avalon, the bay, and the Casino.

They had monitored both the gang's communications and the private conversations of Horse with Severine, and they knew the full horror of the gang leader's intentions.

Though they had defeated the Outlaws at the seaplane terminal, Able Team felt no pride. They realized that Horse would take his revenge on the innocent townspeople and tourists of Avalon.

Lyons addressed his colleagues. "If I have to watch sixteen hundred innocent people die in flames, I tell you, I'm jumping off this hill. I'd rather die than see that gas bomb down there go up."

"Yeah," Gadgets nodded. "That's it. Jump off the hill."

"Hey, man," Lyons snapped back, "I know it's melodramatic, but that's how I feel. This gasoline trick, turning a whole building into a bomb, all those people..."

"Carl, I'm not being sarcastic," Gadgets said quickly. "There's a hang-glider shop in Avalon. I saw it when we were cruising..."

"Wizard! You are a wizard!" Lyons jumped to his feet, then gasped from the pain in his ribs. Clutching at the agony in his chest, he started down to the motorcycles. He looked back to them. "Come on, we got a flight to catch!"

Descending the hotel stairs silently, the Davis cousins heard Mrs. Shepard's voice. They glanced to each other. Chris reached for the fire door's handle, but Roger stopped him. "Let them be alone."

Glen Shepard soon pushed open the fire door, and was startled when he saw the boys there. His shotgun jerked up instinctively. He relaxed when he recognized them. "Ready to go?"

They nodded. "We got everything we need," Chris said as they descended the stairs.

They approached the fire door to the lobby. The hotel's timer-controlled lights were on. Glen gave instructions. "Act like rough-tough Outlaws, walk straight through."

They carried their weapons casually and crossed the bright lobby. Beyond the windows, the streetlights lit Crescent to daylight brilliance. They stepped through the service door and continued to the alley behind the hotel.

In the alley's darkness, Glen spoke to the youths once more: "All you two need to do is drive. Wait for my signal, then drive. We'll need a big truck and a fast car."

"How will you get into the Casino?"

"I'll go up Chimes Tower Road, then cut across the hills. When I'm ready to start down the hill, I'll signal you. You wait fifteen minutes, then drive for the Casino. Fire a few shots out the window to get their attention. They'll shoot at you.

"Two hundred yards from the Casino, wreck the truck so it blocks the road. Hit it with a molotov cocktail, run back to the car and split.

"Go up Marilla to Vieudelou, as if you're taking the road out of town. But turn onto La Mesa and park. Just like one of the neighborhood cars. They won't catch you, and I'll be in the Casino."

"You're just going to walk in?" Chris asked.

"Look at me! Outlaw jacket, dirty jeans, shotgun, two days' beard on my face, and I stink. I know I'll get in."

"What if..."

"What if nothing. It's the only way I can think of that any of us has any chance to do something and still live. Once I'm in, I'll do what I can."

Glen went to the alley mouth and looked up and down the side street. He whispered to the cousins. "Let's get in gear. We got to steal the truck and the car for you both. And a flashlight for me, a big one."

"Mr. Shepard, wait." Chris pulled Glen into a shadowy doorway. The teenager's eyes scanned the street for Outlaws. "Are you sure you don't want to wait for the police? Because... because you're going to die. I know you are."

Twisting away, Glen walked into the street. He glanced at the shop signs, started toward a hardware store. The cousins ran to catch up with him. Passing a mailbox, he pointed. The teenagers dropped in letters, then followed Glen Shepard through the dark, deserted street.

"Outlaws!" Gadgets hissed.

Stepping through the door of the ManBird Hang-Glider shop, lock-pick still in his hand, Lyons froze. Gadgets eased up his Uzi. Blancanales pushed the Uzi down, slipped out the silent Beretta.

Across the street, three Outlaws — two of them carrying shotguns, the third an M-14 rifle — crept up to a one-ton delivery truck. One Outlaw scanned the street, sawed-off riot shotgun in his hands, then tried the truck's door. Locked.

Glass shattered. On the curb side, an Outlaw opened the door, then slid across to the driver's seat. The truck's hood popped open.

Slow and silent as a shadow, Blancanales stepped back into the hang-glider shop's doorway. Taking a marksman stance, he held the Beretta in both hands and sighted on the third Outlaw. Blancanales flicked the burst selector down to single-shot.

The biker stepped behind the truck, spoke with the Outlaw sitting in the cab. The Outlaw carrying the riot shotgun slung the weapon over his shoulder and reached under the hood of the truck. The Outlaw in the driver's seat got out, closed the truck door softly, glanced toward the beach.

Blancanales pointed the Beretta at the center of this biker's forehead. He looked past the biker. He would fire when the third Outlaw was in the open. He would kill all three before they knew what hit them.

It was then that he realized that this Outlaw was only a teenager. Shaved, wearing a clean shirt under his Outlaw jacket, the boy wore filthy Levi's that bagged around his slim legs. He also wore clean tennis shoes.

"Kill them," Gadgets whispered.

The teenage Outlaw was crossing the street. He went to a curbside tree only two steps from Blancanales. The teenager leaned back against the truck and watched the street. His back was to the doorway where Able Team hid.

Silently, Blancanales stepped up behind the teenager, cupped his left hand over the boy's mouth, put the Beretta's suppressor behind his ear. Blancanales whispered to the boy: "I'm the police. Are you an Outlaw?"

The boy shook his head, no. Blancanales took his hand off the teenager's mouth, then grabbed the M-14 he held.

"Are they Outlaws?"

"No," Chris Davis gulped.

Turning, Chris found himself face to face with what looked like a hard-eyed biker. "Glen! Roger!" Chris screamed as he punched the biker again and again. The biker locked an arm around Chris' throat. Blancanales thought, I'm getting too old for these fun and games. He held the teenager tight as the boy struggled and called out: "Run! Run for it! They got..."

Throwing himself behind a parked car, Glen jerked the riot shotgun from his shoulder and pointed it at the shadows and dark doorways across the street. Blancanales commanded: "Don't shoot! We're police! We got Outlaw jackets just like you. Nobody shoot!"

He stepped from the darkness, his arm locked around Chris' neck. He went to the center of the street, then released Chris. He returned the M-14 to Chris and, slipping a long-barreled automatic into his belt, removed his Outlaws jacket.

He wore a roll-necked black nylon uniform that was criss-crossed with equipment belts and magazine bandoliers. This man had no badge and Glen had never seen the uniform before, but whoever he was, he was official. Glen put the shotgun down on the sidewalk and shook hands with the black-clad officer: "Thank God you're here. What took you so long?"

Shoving through the massed citizens of Avalon, Max Stevens assembled his resistance workers. He jerked a man away from his wife and teenage children. "Go to the other side, we're meeting. It's an emergency!" He didn't stop to answer the man's questions.

Stumbling over a sleeping mother, Max grabbed the arm of a worker gossiping with one of her spies. "Forget that, it's too late! Go to the meeting..." He pointed across the crowd, then hurried on to the next worker and the next and next. He saw Mike Carst and called out: "Mr. Carst! Join us please. This is imperative."

Limping into the center of the assembled group, Max raised his hands for quiet.

"This morning, we agreed we would be in great danger if we attempted to escape. We agreed we would wait until the police attacked. But things have changed. Regardless of what we do now, we are at all times in great danger. Whether or not the ransom is paid, they plan to kill us all right here."

A hundred voices questioned him simultaneously. He shouted: "Quiet! Quiet! We have no choice now. We must act. We must rush those doors, or else we all die. They have filled the emergency fire sprinklers with gasoline — this entire building is a bomb. We are the explosive. They're going to hose us down and ignite us. The building, us — we all blow together — biggest bomb ever..."

Max had noticed that the man next to Mike Carst was the one he'd seen murder the Secret Service agent. That was the man who'd spoken by radio with the Outlaws, who did not care too much about the "petty bourgeoisie" of Catalina. Max decided to channel the fury of his fellow citizens toward the traitor, to distract them.

"He's a spy of the Outlaws!" he yelled, pointing at the startled individual. "He has a radio in his pocket. Grab him. Make him tell us what the Outlaws plan to do! Grab him!"

John Severine struggled to escape. But thirty men and women had seized him. He punched at them and kicked. But they were hammering him with fists, and they knocked him to the floor and held him down.

"Here's the radio! He was a spy!"

They dragged the bloodied, dazed Severine to Max. Watching from the side, young Jack Webster saw Max take a Colt automatic from under his jacket and slam the traitor across the face. His nose spurted blood.

"Spy! Murderer! You would have burned us alive, now tell us when they plan to do it! When!"

Jack Webster broke from the crowd and ran for the exit. Behind him, he heard Max call to him: "Stop. Jack, stop."

He ran to the lone Outlaw guarding the exit. He screamed: "Help me, they're going to kill me. They're going to rush you and break out. Tell Horse I've got names. I've got names!"

A cool, moist breeze from the bay made the plastic of the hang-glider's wings snap and ripple. In his roll-necked blacksuit, Lyons gripped the crossbar. He glanced up at the aluminum struts.

"You don't have to do this," Gadgets told Lyons. "It was my idea. Look at you, man, you can hardly breathe..."

"On my way. Stand back."

"Let Pol give you some local for your ribs..."

"Forget that. Half hour from now, I'll be relaxing in a hot tub. Take some pain killers yourself and relax! Hey, Politician," Lyons called.

On his belly at the edge of the clearing, Blancanales was watching the Outlaws below. Spread-eagled out on either side of him, Glen Shepard and the two teenagers listened as Blancanales pointed out their targets. He left them, went to Lyons.

"So is it clear?"

"Sure you don't want me or Gadgets to make the jump?"

"Either of you ever hang-glided?" he asked. "I have. Take my word for it, this isn't a beginner's hill. Do they know their targets?"

"Yes," confirmed Blancanales. "I'll take Glen Shepard, the teenagers will go with Gadgets. We'll leave them on the hillside, and they'll cover the road when we rush the Casino. Glen Shepard had Advanced Infantry school. He'll use the Starlite.

"They'll hold their fire until the shooting starts. They'll kill everything with an Outlaws jacket. Those three are motivated fighters — they hate those psychos. Told me if we wanted to take prisoners, we'd have to go it alone."

"And Severine won't be dressed like a biker," pointed out Lyons, still testing his grip. "So we've got a chance to take him. Gadgets, what about the Feds?"

"LAPD assault teams are in the helicopters, ready to go. Just incase."

"Great."

"Good luck, mister," one of the teenagers called out.

Lyons waved, smiling at the man with the broken teeth who seemed to be responsible for the boys.

He quickly checked the gear strapped to him — his shoulder-holstered Magnum, the silenced Beretta, the Ingram, and his combat knife. Then he began his sprint against the light breeze. Lyons did not stop running until his feet pedalled in the air.

Airborne! Soaring, the wind rushing against him, he kept his eyes on the center of the Casino roof three hundred feet below him. Crosswind carried him sideways. He leaned into the wind, pain searing his ribs. He ignored it, braced for the impact as the roof rushed up at him at remarkable speed.

He landed, very gently, and tried to run but had to double over with the agony that tore at his ribs. He hit the roof with his shoulder. He lay there gasping for a moment, the glider akimbo above him. Forcing himself to his feet, he carried the clumsy hang-glider to the turret, lashed the crossbar to one of the terra cotta columns to keep it out of the way, and pulled his combat knife.

Beer cans and cigarette butts littered the turret. Lyons smelled urine. Stepping carefully through the trash, he tried the access door. The knob turned.

Steel stairs led down. Dim fluorescent lights illuminated a cavernous area crowded with huge air conditioning and heating units. Creeping down the stairs, he smelled gasoline. He scanned the maintenance area. In an aisle between machines, he saw piled gasoline cans. A voice squawked from a walkie-talkie.

Moving silently but fast, Lyons approached the noise. He peeked around a machine and saw the shoulder of an Outlaws jacket. The walkie-talkie lay on a crate. A tank eight feet high bore the stenciled identification: EMERGENCY RESERVOIR/FIRE SPRINKLERS/BALLROOM. A ladder leaned against the tank.

He came up behind the Outlaw slowly, holding his knife low. Then he saw that the jacket was hung over an empty chair. Lyons heard boots behind him.

As the machete came down, Lyons stepped aside, guiding the long blade past him with a touch of the combat knife. He whirled and literally stepped into the biker, jamming his knee into the man's down-thrusting arm, breaking the elbow backward. Simultaneously he chopped him in the throat with his left hand, then grabbed him and threw him down on the back of his head.

Lyons collapsed against the emergency reservoir, panting for breath, fire in his ribs twisting his body.

The Outlaw was struggling to pull a pistol with his flopping arm. Lyons lunged forward and stomped the man in the throat. The Outlaw's face turned blue. The double attack on his throat had killed him.

"Mack!" the walkie-talkie called. "Turn on the pump and get down here. These people are rushing us."

Lyons keyed the radio. "Doing it!"

Finding the valve and pump, he closed the valve, then jimmied off the conduit connected to the pump motor, cut the wires. Defused the bomb.

He put on the Outlaws jacket and rushed down to the ballroom.

Creeping down the dark hillside, the teenagers in position behind him, Gadgets heard a buzz in his earphone. For silence, he had plugged this plastic earphone into the Outlaw walkie-talkie he carried. The voice screamed in his ear:

"Mack! Turn on the pump and get down here. These people are rushing us." A voice answered, "Doing it!"

The voice of Horse blared. "Everyone to the ballroom. They think they're going to rush the doors."

Across the road, the three Outlaws guarding the Casino entry rushed inside. Gadgets keyed his hand-radio. "Now, Politician. We got to get up to the ballroom, now! Lyons didn't make it..."

Both of them broke from the brush, sprinted to the entry.

Throwing the doors open, Horse entered, Stonewall on his right, Turk on his left. Other Outlaws followed. The bayonet of his shotgun fixed, Stonewall sneered at the wall of townspeople. The crowd closed ranks, a shoulder-to-shoulder wall of men and women facing the bikers.

Other doors flew open, bikers entering, weapons ready. The murmuring crowd fell quiet. Fifty feet of open floor separated the ranks of the prisoners from the Outlaws near the doors.

"Back, sheep," Horse shouted. "You miserable creatures. Which one of you is Max Stevens?"

No one answered.

"Which one of you?"

Horse went to the emergency fire hose and pulled it from its compartment. He motioned a biker over. "Turn on the valve when I tell you."

Horse walked toward the people, the hose unfolding from the rack. "Okay, Mr. Leader of the Sheep, whoever you are — come out or I spray everyone here with gasoline. Then whump! Up you all go!"

In the crowd, Mrs. Stevens gasped. She held her husband. The friends and neighbors around Max, the resistance workers he had organized, all looked to him.

"You see?" his wife cried. "You see what..."

"Quiet, Carol." He kissed her as she cried, and he slipped the pistol and spare magazine to her. Then he pushed through the crowd.

His fisherman friend tried to stop him. "Max, give us the word!" he whispered hoarsely. "We'll make our break right now!"

Twisting away from his friend, Max stepped into the open and walked toward his death. He stopped ten feet from Horse.

Horse's heroin-ravaged face sneered. "Hero! Remember me? I'm George Delaney. I lived here. Assholes like you chased me out, sent me to prison. Now I'm going to torch you. And in a while, I'll burn the rest of them."

Signaling the biker at the valve, Horse pointed the brass fire nozzle at Max Stevens. After seconds, Horse looked at the nozzle, shook it. Some gasoline splashed out, splattering Horse as it trickled onto the floor.

"Turn it, open it up!" Horse shouted.

"It is!"

Gasoline drained from the hose. The stream never got farther than a few inches from the nozzle. Gasoline puddled around Horse.

"Fuck this!" He pulled his .45 auto from the holster, pulled back the hammer, screaming: "Going to spray your brains, hero, all over the..."

"NO!" Carol Stevens screamed. She raised her husband's pistol, fired, the slug almost missing Horse, only nicking his left arm. Horse spun in terror, firing his pistol down into the puddle of gas.

Framed in flames, he shrieked and wailed as a sheet of heat enveloped him. He dropped his pistol, slapping at his flaming body. Stonewall reached for him and tried to pull him free of the burning gasoline, but he fell back, his own hands flaming. He too dropped his gun.

Behind the bikers, a submachinegun ripped. Biker after biker fell. Other Outlaws ran. Horse hopped about the ballroom floor, flaming, shrieking. Stonewall was slapping out the flames on his hands. He reached for his shotgun on the floor.

But the people of Catalina Island took him. Hundreds of hands beat him, clawed him. He managed to fight back and with his tremendous strength he broke free. His face was pulpy and bleeding. He reached for his pistol. It wasn't there. He staggered backward from the advancing people. Then he ran from them.

Other bikers were not so fortunate. Fists beat them. When they fell, shoes and high heels and bare feet stomped them. Blood and pulverized flesh splashed around their broken bodies.

On the balcony ringing the Casino, Lyons ran through the Outlaws, firing point-blank bursts from his Ingram into their backs and into their guts. Ahead of him he saw an Outlaw aiming his shotgun at the crowd inside the ballroom.

Ten feet from the outlaw, Lyons fired. Only one 9mm slug hit the biker, snapping his wrist. Staggering back, the Outlaw slid his left hand down to his shotgun's trigger. Lyons pulled his Python, popped a shot through the biker's chest, the hollow-point slug throwing the dying biker actually backwards through the air.

Running past the fallen Outlaw, Lyons fired a second shot through the man's forehead, then blasted another Outlaw running for the stairs.

His shoulder suddenly in fragments, Stonewall tumbled down the stairs. But he got up, ran, his dead arm swinging by tendons and stubborn strands of muscle.

"Lyons!" A voice shouted to him. Blancanales ran to him, G-3 in his hands. "Take off that jacket!"

"Oh, yeah." Lyons ripped off the stinking denim as Blancanales fired burst after burst, the powerful auto-rifle slamming Outlaws into walls, throwing one over the balcony railing.

Methodically sweeping the balcony with his Uzi, Gadgets killed. An Outlaw was running from a group of citizens. Gadgets snapped two shots through the panicked biker's spine, then stepped over him to fire again. He moved on, putting a burst through a crawling biker's head, snapping a shot through the face of a biker reloading a shotgun. He emptied the last two rounds of the magazine through the dying shotgunner's head.

Calmly dropping the Uzi's magazine, Gadgets put it in his pocket, snapped in another, continued his search for living Outlaws. There were more than seventy when this day dawned. Not anymore.

On the hillside overlooking the Casino's entrance, Glen Shepard squinted through the strange electronics of the Starlite scope. Hearing the firing and screaming high above him on the balcony, he glanced up. But he could see nothing that happened.

A biker ran from the entry and jumped on a motorcycle. Shotgun blasts from Chris and Roger Davis, twenty yards to Glen's side, ripped the biker. Then Glen saw Stonewall run from the Casino.

"Don't shoot him!" Glen shouted to the teenagers. "He's Stonewall..."

Looking to Chris, Roger asked: "He doesn't want us to shoot him? What's going on?"

"That's the psycho who killed the old people," Chris said, sighting the M-14 on the biker's chest. "He wants him for himself."

A .308 slug snapped Stonewall's knee backward, throwing him against the steps of the Casino. Chris lowered his M-14 to watch. Twenty yards from them. Glen chambered another .308 accelerator and fired into Stonewall's other leg. Then his thigh. Then his hip. Then his uninjured arm.

On the balcony, Able Team moved through the carnage. They saw Outlaws with their heads stomped flat by the islanders. Groups of islanders were beginning to form around Able Team, touching them, shaking their hands, a hundred voices thanking them.

Lyons saw a man run. Preparing to sprint after him, a full thirty-round magazine in his Ingram, he shouted: "Stop! Whoever you are, stop or I'll fire!"

"Don't!" A middle-aged man called from near Lyons. "It's a local boy." The man limped up to Lyons; he had a Colt Hardballer in the waistband of his slacks.

"Why's he running?" Lyons asked.

"Because he's afraid," he said, his voice sad. "And he'd better keep running, all the way to the mainland. Where they don't know him."

"Who are you?"

"Max Stevens," said the man, shaking hands with Lyons, smiling broadly. "I sell things, including homes. Despite what you see, Catalina is almost paradise..."

Shotgun blasts came from the street below the balcony. Lyons ran back to Gadgets and Blancanales. They had a bloody-faced John Severine, Soviet agent, in their grip.

"More Outlaws!" Lyons shouted, running down the stairs. He raced down flight after flight, only slowing when he came to the Casino entry. Ingram ready, he glanced outside.

Glen Shepard stood over a screaming biker. Behind Glen, the teenage boys turned their faces away from what they saw. Firing at point-blank range, Glen blew away pieces of Stonewall's body.

The legless Outlaw thrashed on the steps. Pointing the sawed-off shotgun again, Glen blew off Stonewall's left hand and forearm.

Lyons aimed his Ingram at the head of the suffering man. Glen shouted, "Don't. Let him die. I wish I could kill him a hundred times." He squatted down in front of the truncated criminal. "Hey, animal. You looked for me all day. I watched you butcher those old people. But I killed your psycho Outlaws, and I got you. Me, a restaurant manager, a guy who punches a time clock, I killed you. You hear me?"

Breath wheezing from Stonewall's throat, he died. Glen kicked the corpse. He looked down on the jacket's evil insignia.

"Forever Outlaws." Glen spat on the flaming skull.

Lyons looked down at the dead psychopath. "Forever came tonight."