The Hostaged Island (8 page)

Descending Mount Black Jack on captured Harleys, Able Team returned to the dry streambed where they had concealed their equipment and other motorcycles. Lyons transferred his backpack and rifle case from the bike he'd seized after the campground ambush.

"I'm beginning to like this machine I've been riding," he told his partners. "It's a Harley classic. And the chrome and black lacquer sure go with my jacket, hey?"

"Topping off the tanks over here," Blancanales called out. "Don't dump any of the bikes without letting me siphon out..."

"Hey! They're at the airport," Gadgets yelled. He ran over to Blancanales and Lyons with a captured walkie-talkie. "Listen..."

The voices squawked back and forth. "... Eagle and the other two dudes are gone."

"What? They dead? What's..."

"Just gone. We searched the airport. There's no blood, nothing. Oh, yeah. One of the doors is broke. But there's nothing..."

"Get over to the radio station. Ironman went up there with three men to change the guard and all kinds of shit broke loose. One of them said you were coming up the hill. Then it went quiet, nothing on the radio. Get over there fast!"

"Horse, it's the locals. They're running circles around us. They know the territory. They're making like the Viet Cong..."

"Dig this, Chief. You were the Marine. Get me a body count. Out!"

Opening his map of the island, Blancanales pointed to their position, then traced the route the bikers would take from the airport to the peak of Mount Black Jack. "They'll take the main road to the radio station turnoff, then go up the hill. They're four miles away from that turnoff, we're only a mile. I say we hit them there."

"What if it isn't right for an ambush?" Lyons asked.

"We let them go up the hill, then we find a better place, hit them on the way down."

"Let's move it!"

Moto-crossing, they left the canyon behind and found a wide hiking trail. Speeding until they dared go no faster, Able Team tore up the trail with their heavy semi-chopped Harleys, scraping fancy stone steps with their crankcases, rutting beds of rare California wild flowers.

They made it. Steep hillsides rose above the junction of the paved highway and the station's dirt road. The station's road cut along the south slope of canyon running east and west. Fifty feet up from the highway, a steel gate blocked the dirt road. Now it stood open, its lock shot away. Below the road, the hillside dropped ten feet to a streambed, the stream-bed ending at a grated culvert passing under the highway. For hundreds of yards north and south, the highway ran straight.

"Okay, Pol," Lyons said. "You're the Green Beret, retired. Call it."

Blancanales pointed to the ridge on which they stood. "You with the Mannlicher right here. You can hit anyone on the radio station's road, and if any of them make a break for town, hit them in the back."

He turned to Gadgets. "A quick booby trap on the gate..."

"A phosphorous grenade..."

"The gate's closed, they stop to open it, boom. The shooting starts. Lyons, let me take your Ingram. Let's go."

In two minutes they had set the ambush, Lyons on the ridge, Blancanales lower on the hillside, only a hundred feet from the road opposite him. Gadgets closed the gate. He pulled the pin from a white phosphorous grenade and placed it carefully on one of the gate's hinges, using the gate to hold the lever closed.

Lyons heard motorcycles. He whistled a warning. Gadgets sprinted through the brush and threw himself flat a few yards from Blancanales.

Chief had reached the gate already, and he waited for the stragglers to join him, his bike drawn up parallel to the gate. He carried an M-60 machine gun slung over his back like a rifle. In his Italian wraparound shades and Mohawk haircut, the road's dust swirling around him, he looked like a demon from hell.

Lyons watched him through the Mannlicher's scope, the biker's face and chest filling the image. Chief turned from side to side, counting his men.

Panning back and forth across the bikers, Lyons suddenly noted a hideous ornament on the forks of Chief's bike. The head of a man, the eyes wide and staring, had been wired to the handlebars.

"Ready to die, freak show?" Lyons whispered, his finger on the Mannlicher's trigger.

Chief kicked the gate open, then gunned his bike. Gadgets saw the grenade drop. But Chief accelerated away. In the six seconds before the grenade exploded, Chief would ride to safety. Gadgets sighted his Uzi on Chief. He fired. The biker spilled splashily.

All the bikers, the two pulling off the highway, the several near the gate, the others gunning their motorcycles up the road, turned their heads fast toward the Uzi-fire. The distraction served only to make them less ready for what followed. An exploding ball of white flame engulfed the road.

Five human forms were directly hit. Hundreds of droplets of white phosphorous splattered their bodies, each drop a searing point of flame that burned through cloth and leather and flesh. Not requiring oxygen to burn, the metallic fire would continue through their flesh to the bone and burn there until the metal consumed itself. But they died before that agony. Their motorcycles' gasoline was exploding. Screaming, the bikers inhaled gulps of fire into their lungs, died in seconds.

Dust and flame and smoke filled the scope's image, but Lyons still squeezed off a shot at the downed Chief. Then he opened his left eye, searching the road for targets, his right eye still at the eyepiece.

Automatic fire from Gadgets and Blancanales poured into the two bikers immediately behind the fallen Chief. The hillside beyond the bikers puffed into a sheet of dust as slugs punched through the two men. Other bullets tore through the sheet metal of the gas tanks.

Seeing the annihilation of the patrol, the last two Outlaws spun their motorcycles, throwing dust and rocks as their rear wheels skittered on the dirt road. Lyons put the Mannlicher's cross hairs in the center of the "Outlaws Forever" insignia on a biker's jacket. His shot snapped the man's spine.

Whipping back the bolt, Carl Lyons put the next slug into the second biker's head.

On the road, a biker lay under his motorcycle. Through the scope, Lyons saw blood streaming from wounds in Chief's head and chest. One arm flopped, broken a few inches below the shoulder. He struggled against the weight of the motorcycle with one arm. He was trying to reach for the belt-fed M-60. Lyons put the cross hairs on the man's forehead. But he didn't shoot.

He jerked back the bolt, caught the unfired Accelerator. Searching through the pouches of his bandolier, he found the .308 tracers. Lyons loaded up, then snapped the tracer through the struggling biker's gas tank. Immediately a churning ball of flame rose above Chief. His screams continued for thirty seconds.

Then there was silence.

"Lyons!" Blancanales shouted. "You see anything moving?"

Motorcycle tires burned, filling the narrow canyon mouth with acrid rubber smoke. Around the gate, a brushfire spread up the slope. By the time he had gazed over the blackened scene of bone and scorched flesh, Lyons could see nothing that was living. He searched the rock and brush of the stream-bed.

He saw the barrel of an M-60. The muzzle flashed. Lyons flew backward, his body exploding with pain.

Streams of .308 slugs suddenly shrieking over them, Gadgets and Blancanales sprayed back with 9mm Parabellum. The machinegunner fell behind his rock for an instant, then popped out a few yards away, still firing his belt-fed M-60.

Slugs marched across the hillside, chopping brush, making the earth around Blancanales jump. "Lyons!" Blancanales screamed. "Hit him, hit him!"

There was no rifle fire, no answer from the ridge.

Burst after burst searched for Blancanales. Desperate, he screamed again, but this time without words, his voice shuddering with faked agony. He screamed until his throat ached, then let his wail die to a whimper. "Arm... my arm... it's... off." After a second, he wailed again. "My arm — oh God oh God oh God..."

"Rosario!" Gadgets cried.

Another long burst searched for Gadgets. He rolled clear, crawled toward Blancanales. Hissed words stopped him: "Lay cool! I'm all right, see? It's Lyons up there we got to worry about. Radio!"

Keying his hand-radio, Gadgets got no reply. "Lyons! Answer. Answer! Lyons..."

No reply.

Gadgets crawled back to Blancanales. "We got to bring this show to a close."

"Frag him? Or phosphorous?"

"We need that M-60 of his."

"Frags." Blancanales took a fragmentation grenade from the battle rig under his Outlaws jacket. He straightened the cotter pin, saying: "Wanted to save these for tonight, when we..."

"There won't be any tonight for us if we don't use them now." Gadgets braced himself to throw. "On three. Yours to the right, mine on the left. Pull. Now, one and two and three!"

The surviving biker, dizzy from blood loss, saw the arms heave the grenades. He snapped a burst at the hidden men as the grenades arced toward him. One grenade hit a rock and bounced over him. The other landed exactly three feet in front of him.

He snatched up the grenade and threw it back. He struggled to crawl a few feet, the exposed bones of his right leg scraping on rocks, the pain beyond imagination.

Then an explosion of thousands of steel razors shredded his legs and punched tiny holes in the back of his head. The rush of even greater pain lifted him into darkness. The grenade he had thrown had exploded in midair, and fragments of steel wire were showering even Gadgets and Blancanales.

The grenade sent tiny slivers into their backs. Blancanales felt blood on his hands. He looked at his hands and saw bits of wire in the flesh. Gadgets had tiny cuts also.

The wounds did not stop them. They fired into their target's twisted, mangled body, the bursts of 9mm slugs throwing him over. Gadgets put a burst into the guy's haircut, spraying it and everything else rosily over the creek bed.

"Think he's dead?" Blancanales joked.

"Might be. Let's go make sure."

Breaking cover, they zigzagged down the hillside. They crouched beside the biker's almost headless body.

"Take the M-60, I'll check his bike for belts of .308." Blancanales ran up the embankment to a big downed Suzuki. He searched through the saddlebags and found two belts of two hundred and fifty .308 cartridges. He slung them around his shoulders, then slid back down to the creek bed.

He heard motorcycles. "Gadgets. They're coming."

They looked up the hillside for cover. Too far. They saw the culvert. They glanced to each other, and without a word ran through the rocks and sand mounds to the shelter of the highway's overhang. Above them, motorcycles screeched to a stop.

"Oh, sweet Jesus!" a voice cried. "Someone's out here with a flame thrower."

"Chief!" another biker called out. "Chief, where are you?"

Shotgun blasts chopped brush, kicked up dust on the hillside opposite the ambush site. The casings clattered on the rocks in front of Gadgets and Blancanales. They heard four or five or six more motorcycles arrive.

"It's all over here," a voice announced. "Look at them all, all burned to death." More shotgun blasts of frustration peppered the hillside.

Gadgets pulled the third phosphorous grenade from his battle rig. He whispered to Blancanales. "My last one."

"Make it a good throw. No bounce back."

Gadgets jerked the pin, held down the lever.

He took three steps, then turned and looked up at the gathered bikers.

"Hi guys," he said. Then he lobbed up the white phosphorous, jumped the hell back to cover.

"Kick it!!"

White molten metal showered the creek bed. There was screaming. Falling bikes. Exploding gas tanks. The conflagration, and the cries of agony, continued noisily for quite some time. A lot of smoke. A lot of smell. A lot of slow, sure death.

Blancanales had his hand-radio to his mouth. "Lyons, come in. Lyons! Lyons!"

No answer.

In the Casino's ballroom, the hostages' prison, Max Stevens had organized a cadre of resisters. Persuading, explaining, sometimes preaching, he turned angry islanders into leaders, fearful residents into spies.

"I've got to do something," a father told Max and the group of conspirators. "When they dragged that last girl out, they looked at my daughters and said, 'We'll be back for them.' In the name of God, they're only twelve and fourteen years old! I'm going to grab one of their guns, I don't care what happens, they won't take my girls."

Max spoke calmly, slowly. "Since we circled up, they haven't taken another girl, have they?" After the Outlaws had stalked through the crowd of hostages several times, each time dragging away teenage girls, Max had suggested the hostages form a tight circle, men and women and teenage boys on the outside, children and teenage girls inside. Later, when two Outlaws came in, they saw an unbroken wall of men and women facing them. They had turned and left.

"When do we hit them?" another father asked. "They hurt my girl every way there is. It's us against them. If the police were coming, they'd be here already."

"That's not true!" Max explained. "If there's a ransom to be paid, remember it's Sunday. The police will have to open banks. If they're negotiating for something, that could take days. SWAT teams could hit those scum any second now, or tonight, or tomorrow. If we fight at the wrong time, the police will bust in here and only find dead people.

"If we hit at the right time, we're helping the police. We'll hit those creatures when we hear shooting — we'll shoot them, knife them, take their weapons.

"I promise you, the police won't get a chance to take any Outlaws prisoner. Prisoners sell their memoirs to publishers, make movie deals. No, we have to wait, but when we hit, they all die."

"Does that mean we wait a year?" the red-eyed parent demanded. "How about four hundred and forty-four days? I'd rather die."

"It won't be long," Max told the man, then spoke to the others. "Things are happening outside. People are fighting: Shirley, tell them what you've learned."

A middle-aged woman in a jogging suit spoke. "Whenever I see one of them with a walkie-talkie, I get one of my people to go up to the creep and ask for something — food, water, medicine, magazines, anything. Two of my spies heard the bikers yelling at their radios about heroes, kill them, make an example. One time when I went up, I heard, 'His rifle's gone, the ammunition too.' That's a word for word quote. The punk got real agitated, punched me, but it was worth it." She touched her blackening eye.

"They're all getting agitated," another man said. "They're not so cocky. Something's got them scared."

A tourist came up to Shirley. He was a middle-aged man in a suit. Gray hair streaked his temples. "Can I talk to your leader?"

"Leader?" she asked, confused. "Leader of what? Who do you mean?"

"I'm Mike Carst." The stately tourist shook hands with her. "Of the RayShine Corporation. Who is the man who limps?"

"You mean Max?" She didn't really trust the tourists. The group had decided not to involve nonresidents in their planning and organization. The tourists had no stake in the community: they would not weigh the value of their lives against the lives of the island's families; to save themselves, they might betray the island people; or a tourist might even be an Outlaw spy.

"He must be the mayor, correct?" Mike Carst continued.

"No, he sells houses. He has a number of ice cream accounts too."

"He appears very military."

"His wife told me he used to be a sergeant in the army. He was in a war and he got hurt. He's lived here ever since. Knows everybody. But he's not a leader of anything. He's just talking to people, keeping them calm."

"I'd like to talk to him. It's very important."

"I don't think an appointment is necessary," Shirley said.

Max was limping up to them. Max recognized the stranger as one of the men guarded by the murdered Secret Service agent.

"Mike Carst, sir." The stranger shook hands with Max. "And your name?"

"Max. You don't live on the island, do you?"

"No, Max. I'm only a visitor."

"Mr. Carst thinks you're some kind of leader," Shirley told Max.

"A leader? Me?"

Carst took Max's arm, led him away from Shirley to an open area where they wouldn't be overheard. "Putting the charade aside, I have information for you and your people. In turn, I need your help."

"What is the information?"

"One of the men in my party has a radio. He appears to be communicating at hourly intervals with someone outside. If you have your people watch this man... if they could possibly overhear a transmission — both our groups would benefit. Do we have an agreement?"

"Why are you and the Secret Service on the island?" Max asked.

"Secret Service?" Carst smiled.

"Agreed, then," Max told him. "From now on, you don't talk to me. You must point the man out to Shirley. She'll organize the surveillance. A pleasure doing business with you. Goodbye."

Max moved on to the Websters, Jack's parents. Mr. Webster grabbed Max by the arm. His voice quavered: "Jack here, he's just told us something. He's not a bad kid, really. He's troubled, but..."

"What is it, Webster?" glared Max.

"They're going to tear him apart limb from limb, they're going to castrate him for God's sake, up on that stage over there unless he spies for them. Unless he tells them everything that's going on in here, everything we've planned. He just told us. It's not the kid's fault..."

Max interrupted. "Don't sweat it. Relax. So he'll do exactly what they told him to do." He turned to the stricken youth. "Jack will give them all sorts of information, won't you, lad? You're going to feed them everything we want them to hear."

Climbing up the thick trunk of the carob tree, Glen Shepard walked along a branch. He stepped off of it onto the roof of the house. He pushed through the leaves and branches that shaded the roof. He stood at the rear of the house, concealed by the lush foliage. He was armed with his Colt, and he wore a biker's jacket. Between him and the front of the house, there was thirty feet of open roof.

Smoke billowed at the far end of the block. From where he stood, he saw only the smoke. He heard shouts, a few shots. But to observe the Outlaws, he would have to cross the open roof to where his view was unobstructed.

To his left, the direction of the Outlaws, there was no cover. To his right, a neighbor's row of tall cedars screened that side. He had to chance it.

He crawled to that side of the roof ridge. Motorcycles passed. He froze, waited until the motorcycles stopped at the far end of the block, then he continued. Any Outlaw who happened to glance up to the roof could see him. He hurried to the front, then looked.

At the end of the block, the two-story house in which they had hidden was burning. Outlaws watched the house, shotguns and assault rifles ready. Carrying red and yellow cans of gasoline, other Outlaws ran to the next house.

Glen crabbed back to the tree and thrashed through the branches. He scampered along the branch until it merged with the trunk, then hopped the last six feet and started for the back door.

"Hey, brother. See any of those hero locos?"

Reaching for the Magnum under his leather jacket, Glen turned. A Latin-featured Outlaw with a Fu Manchu mustache and a chromed Nazi helmet lounged in the yard, an M-14 rifle cradled in his hands. Seeing Glen's face, the biker realized his mistake. He brought up the rifle. Glen jerked the Colt Lawman from his belt.

The revolver's hammer snagged on Glen's shirt. Even before he heard the shot, he knew he was about to die.

His head exploding, the biker flew aside, his dead finger sending a burst into the carob's trunk and the next-door house. Window glass fell. Glen disentangled the Colt from his shirt, pointed the Magnum everywhere in the yard, looking for any other bikers. Shooting continued elsewhere in the neighborhood. Glen went to the back door, looked inside the house.

Chris Davis gagged, the auto-loading shotgun on the floor beside him. Glen jerked him to his feet, put the shotgun in his hands.

"Great timing, kid. But get sick later, I need you to cover the driveway."

Wiping his mouth, Chris nodded. He lifted the auto-loader and went to a window over the driveway.

Glen dashed outside, stripped the biker's jacket, weapons and ammunition. He had no radio. Seeing the helmet, Glen spilled out the blood and took possession of it also.

"Stay here," Glen told Chris. He dropped the jacket and helmet beside the teenager. "Put those on." Then he ran into the living room, where his wife and Roger watched the street.

"We couldn't warn you!" Ann told him.

"Chris took care of him. Pack up, we're moving again."

"What's going on up there?" Roger asked.

"They're burning the block. We've got to find someplace to hide where they won't look, won't even suspect..."

"Where?" Ann asked.

"I don't know," he told them. "I don't know."

Running up the hillside, Blancanales saw Carl's body sprawled just below the ridge. "Oh, no! Lyons, Lyons."

Blancanales ripped the compact first-aid kit from his battle rig, and popped open the plastic lid as he fell to his knees beside Lyons. Something sagged under the bullet-torn Outlaws jacket. Hoping to God he wouldn't see spilled intestines, Blancanales opened the jacket.

The .308 slug had sliced across Lyons' ribs, cutting the nylon strap of the bandolier of cartridges for the Mannlicher. It was the bandolier that made the bulge in the jacket. Blancanales tore open Lyons' shirt, looking for the wound. A long, bloody gash marked the path of the slug. But only at one small point did the white of a rib show. There were no other bullet wounds. Lyons groaned.

"Ah, you crazy bastard, you're alive!" Blancanales half-lifted his friend from the dirt and dry grass of the slope.

"Let me go, Latin lover," Lyons groaned. "Oh... does my head hurt."

Blancanales took a squeeze bottle of alcohol from his kit and doused the long wound as Lyons lay back. The ex-cop jerked up, his eyes wide with pain. He shoved the squeeze bottle away, then touched the back of his head, his hand coming away bloody.

They both glanced up the hillside and saw one particular rock. Some of Lyons' hair and blood smeared the jutting stone. "What luck," Lyons griped. "One rock on the hill, and I hit my head on it."

"Don't knock your luck. It's not every day you get machine-gunned and walk away from it." He finished his fast job of local bandaging.

"I'm not walking anywhere, I hurt. Do I hurt..."

The older man jerked Lyons to his feet. He handed him the Mannlicher and bandolier of cartridges. "March or die, Lyons. The cavalry's on the way, and we're the Indians."

They returned slowly to the ridge to where they had left their motorcycles. Blancanales radioed ahead: "Good news, Gadgets. There's three of us yet."

Lyons looked back at the ambush. Tires were still burning. Charred bodies littered the highway and road. He counted corpses.

"Sixteen. Decent score."

Already at the motorcycles, Gadgets lashed the black plastic-wrapped M-60 to his bike's chromed roll bar. As he saw Blancanales and Lyons approaching, he told them: "We got a new development."

He switched on the scanner/auto-recorder's play back: "This is Brognola, Stony Man Farm. I have received information from a joint FBI/CIA investigation. Details suggest one of the theoreticians may be a Soviet agent planted in American atomic energy program back in the late fifties. Repeat, Soviet long-term agent, a mole. Investigation is ongoing.

"There is not yet conclusive evidence that he is in fact an enemy agent," the familiar voice continued, undetected by the Outlaws because of scrambling. "However, on his return from the West Coast, he was to be transferred to a non-military study group. His name is John Severine. His photo, description, and biographical details are in the folder on the theoreticians. We attempted to match the voice you recorded to his lecture tapes. However, it is not possible to conclusively confirm or eliminate Severine is the voice due to electronic degradation of voice as received. Request brief broadcast of voice without scrambler or screech. Voicegraph then possible.

"FBI/CIA investigators urge capture of Severine. It is imperative he does not escape.

"Presence of Severine on the island, and his possible complicity in seizure, precludes fulfillment of one point in ransom demands. By highest authority, under no circumstances will nuclear submarine make delivery of the released felons and twenty million dollars in gold. Diesel submarine will make delivery. Severine is very knowledgeable of nuclear submarines. He can be expected to recognize the substitution, and this may affect fate of hostages. Highest authority accepts responsibility.

"Coordinated assault impossible while gang surrounds hostages. LAPD units are on standby, full alert. You disperse Outlaws, then call for units. Also, Outlaw radio conversations have been monitored by private craft beyond three-mile limit. Media are now aware of crisis. Please resolve at earliest possible time. Out." The emphasis was clear.

"A Soviet agent teamed up with a bike gang?" Lyons shook his head. "Far out. Only in California," he added, gazing over the hills. The three men stood in the early afternoon sun, refueling their confidence for the higher stakes yet to come. They were battle weary, battle sore, that was the truth.