4

When Lyons called Stony Man from a scrambler-fitted pay phone in Philippe's French Dip Sandwich Cafe, April Rose switched him directly to Hal Brognola.

"Finally, you called in," the cigar-smoking big Fed said. "We got a job for you out there in Los Angeles."

"The crazy dope?"

"What?"

"The gangs that have gone berserk on some kind of super-PCP out here. I want in on the action."

"If you'll listen, I'll give you your assignment. It's related. There was a weapon found on one of the punks who got killed. A Colt Automatic Rifle, one of those abbreviated M-16s..."

"High-class weapon for a gang punk."

"Let me give you details. The CAR was an old one. Made in 1965. No bolt assist..."

"An XM-177E1? That's obsolete. A collector's item. Where'd they get that?"

"That's the question. Let me continue, Carl, please. The serial number had been ground off, but the FBI got a latent impression with X-ray macrophotography. We know where it came from. Vietnam. And you have to find out how the gang got it. Then we'll trace it back from there."

"What about Political and the Wizard?"

"They're packing now. They'll be on their way this afternoon."

"So they'll be here tonight, my time. And Flor Trujillo. Can she get in on this?"

"She out there? We called the DEA. They said she had the week off. If she wants the assignment, she can check the drug angle. But the source of that weapon is the number-one priority."

"What's her clearance? She told me we have some kind of interface arrangement in the works."

"That's the official term."

"But what's it mean?"

"Improvise. We never employed an 'interface' agent before. It's a gray area. But keep your personal relationship out of it, understand?"

"Don't know what you're talking about, Hal."

The Fed laughed. "Everybody else does."

"What does everyone else know? What's the gossip?"

"The details of your personal life go in your file. Along with your biography, your qualifications, your mission debriefings — it's our business to know everything about you. And about Miss Trujillo. And what we know about you two so far satisfies all our security criteria."

"So she's cleared?"

"You can talk with her."

"And what's her authorization?"

"There's the gray area. If she's working in liaison with your Team, she shares whatever authorization your Team has. If she's alone, she's subject to Drug Enforcement Agency procedures and regulations. Unless Stony Man has issued the mission directive. Then she has whatever authorization the mission carries."

"But she's with us on this one?"

"If she wants it. Looks like a straightforward PCP case to me."

"It isn't. I talked with a friend on the force. It's something new."

"It's a fact that Los Angeles gets all the new drugs first. But it isn't up to Stony Man to apprehend every garage chemist in the country."

"The police chemists and the university labs can't break the formula. And if they can't break it, how can some low-life doper make it?"

"Put Miss Trujillo to work. Perhaps she can answer that."

"So we've got official authorization now?"

"Highest. But be discreet, understand? We don't want to see you on the eleven o'clock news."

"Yes, sir. Not me, sir. Over and out, sir."

Crossing the sawdust-carpeted dining room, Lyons smiled at Flor. He saw that she had bought a stack of newspapers while he talked on the phone. She read an Extra printed in red ink on an international socialist publication. The nameplate at the top of the page bore a radiant red star flanked by the portraits of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

"Where'd you get that shit?"

"A newsstand."

"Only in America," Lyons commented as he pulled a stool to the wide linoleum-covered table.

"Listen to what they're writing." Flor read aloud from a front-page editorial. " 'Fascist Pig Junta Unleashed. In a mobilization and mass strike equaled only by the Nazi blitzkrieg of 1939, the self-described protectors of Los Angeles struck at defenseless black and brown families throughout Southern California. Elite SWAT teams and blue-uniformed storm troopers dragged innocent teenagers from their beds in coordinated predawn kidnappings… observers report torture… trucks crowded with chained and gagged teenagers departed for concentration camps...' "

"Stop!" Lyons hissed. "Stop talking that shit!"

Flor laughed. Lyons's anger faded as he watched her laugh, his eyes marveling at the smooth line of her throat, the perfect cafe-au-lait color of her flesh, the red-as-blood up gloss she wore. Her thin eyebrows, startling lines of black above her black eyes, feathered away without makeup or artificial shaping. She wore her hair tied back this morning, the smooth flow of her forehead and hair emphasizing the Andean blade of her nose. So beautiful, so deadly.

"Did your boss say he would accept this woman?" Flor touched the center of her cafe-au-lait chest. "Does he think I am qualified?"

Deadly. Lyons thought of Flor Trujillo as deadly. She stood five feet eight in her highest heels. At approximately one hundred twenty-five pounds, she appeared very slim despite her strength and conditioning. Naturally quick, training and self-discipline and ideological motivation made her a dangerous opponent to anyone on earth.

Deadly, his mind repeated. He had seen men twice her weight and inconceivably murderous reduced to smears of blood and bone fragments before they could raise a weapon in defense.

He had the urge to lie to her. To tell her Stony Man had rejected her. That her foreign birth made her an unacceptable security risk. And why not another lie? That he had resigned in protest. No more killing. No more blood and horror.

He wanted to walk away from her. Get in the rented car and floor it. Follow a compass bearing away from this terrorized city. A city defended by men and women who could not even expect the respect of the citizens. Who had to hide their careers from their neighbors. Why should he continue? Why should he risk this woman? Why should he risk his love in a nightmare world of high-velocity mutilation?

"Don't just make moon eyes at me," she whispered. "What did your Colonel Phoenix say?"

He told the truth. "We're in it."

5

A puzzle of human parts lay on the fiberglass slab. As morgue attendants and pathologists worked at other tables, Detective Towers identified the mixed limbs and organs to Lyons and Flor.

"That's two girls. Found them in the same bedroom. They and these others came from the sorority house…"

Lyons glanced at the hacked corpses, looked away. He had seen it all before. Flor had not. She stared, her face slack with incomprehension. She seemed transfixed by the horror.

Towers continued along the aisle, pointing to each table as he walked through the morgue. "This is the Valencia family. Punks got them on the freeway. There was a baby, too. But it's not here. What could be scraped off the freeway, the pathologists sent straight through to cremation. And down here's some punks. What kind of shotgun did you plan to demonstrate out at the range?"

" An Atchisson…"

"Here's a demonstration of a SPAS-12. What do you think?"

Five naked teenagers lay on tables. Old knife scars and jailhouse tattoos marked their bodies. Two had feet mangled by blasts of birdshot. Blasts to their chests had killed them. A third teenager showed a hideous wound to his ribs, which had also torn away his right biceps. A point-blank shot to the center of his chest had killed him. The other two had lost their heads.

"Very effective. But an Atchisson has a box magazine," Lyons said. "Whoever shot these shits ended up with an empty weapon. Count the hits. Eight shots. Maybe he had a round in the chamber. That would've been nine rounds. Against five punks. What if they'd been six?"

"You want the story on what happened?"

"That's why I'm here."

"Look at their hands and legs. See the cuts? They smashed through a plate-glass window. The cuts didn't slow them down."

Lyons picked up one teenager's arm and examined a line of welted scar tissue on his forearm and inner elbow area. "This one was an addict. Maybe he didn't feel it."

"Maybe not. The old man told them to stop. I tell you, that old guy had nerve. He turned on the porch and entry lights by remote control. That silhouetted all of them. He waited until they shot back before cutting loose. He shot the first two in the feet. Didn't stop them. Those punks just ripped the house up with pistols and those automatic rifles. The old man gets hurt, but he holds his ground. Finally, he got them all. They wouldn't stop. He said they kept screaming, 'Die, whitey! Die, whitey!' The ones with the ripped-up feet, they walked on the stumps. The one with the ripped arm, he took the weapon in his left hand and rushed the old man. After that, he didn't mess around. He put his fancy laser sight — one of those Aimpoints — on their heads and he put them out. How's that for a horror story?"

"Horror story? This little scum fest had a happy ending. What if he'd only had a .38 Special?"

"You're a real cheery guy, you know that, Carl? I mean, people might think you're not a lover of mankind."

"I love people! But not everyone loves me. That's why I carry a Colt Python. For special occasions, I carry the Python and a .45 and my Atchisson. Now was this the gang with the drug?"

Towers nodded. "That's another story. We'll go talk to the doctors."

Turning to call Flor, Lyons saw the young Hispanic woman staring at the murdered Valencias: the shotgun-blasted Raoul, the raped-and-hacked Maria, the stabbed-and-shot young boys. Swaying slightly on her feet, she grabbed the edge of an examining table to steady herself.

Lyons went to her and held her. Her breath caught, then steadied as she stopped a sob. As Lyons held her, he saw her tears fall onto the polished fiberglass of the examining table, the tears beading to sparkling jewels of sorrow.

A uniformed sergeant stood in the waiting room of Intensive Care, guarding the entry to the ward. Towers showed his identification to the officer.

"And who are they?" the sergeant demanded.

"Federals."

"I'll have to call for a clearance before they can go in." The sergeant reached for an interhouse phone.

Lyons shook his head. "We don't have to see the man. All we want is information. Could a doctor come out to brief us?"

"I'll call for an okay," the sergeant told him.

As the sergeant talked on the phone, Lyons asked Towers, "We are on the same side, aren't we?"

"Usually," Towers answered. "Of course, if I told who you really are..." the graying, balding detective glanced to both sides; no one could hear his words "...he'd call for his mama."

"What are you talking about?" Lyons demanded. "Cops don't have mothers. They make us at Smith & Wesson."

"A doctor's on the way," the sergeant told them.

Towers whispered again. "He knows!"

Flor, still pale and silent from the horror of the morgue, watched the ex-partners joking with one another. Towers pronounced in a low voice, "Today, in recognition of years of dedication to public service in Los Angeles and the world, Los Angeles police officers ended the career of Carl Lyons, ex-police officer, ex-detective, ex-specialist in counterterrorism, with a quick hypo of Thorazine and the award of a Kevlar straitjacket. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you are now safe from this madman, who thought he could make a difference. Said his longtime friend and compatriot in the self-righteous nonsense of criminal suppression, Detective Bill Towers, 'I'm moving to the Arctic Circle.' 'Why do that?' this announcer asked. Detective Towers, a twenty-year veteran of futile opposition to the People's Liberation Mob of San Quentin, said, 'I heard you can train polar bears to eat creeps.'"

Shouts outside the waiting room announced two long-haired and bearded news technicians. One carried a shoulder-slung tape recorder and six-foot-long boom microphone. The other carried a small video camera and portable video recorder.

The cameraman flicked on the video recorder's power and put the camera to his shoulder. Turning his back, Lyons grabbed Flor. He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her near. In the reflection of a blacked-out window in the door of Intensive Care, Lyons watched as Towers rushed at the cameraman.

Three men, two hospital administrators in light blue jackets and a slight wavy-haired man in a corduroy casual suit, crowded through the waiting-room entry. The administrators attempted to block the door, but the third man, protesting in a nasal shriek, pressed through. "Continue this harassment of the press and you can expect to see me in court! Do you understand me? The truth must be told! You cannot restrain the free expression of the truth!"

Towers held up his hands to block the lens. But the cameraman swiveled in another direction. Focusing the zoom lens, the cameraman video-recorded the commentator's shrill protests and gestures. Towers rushed past the technicians. The sound man put the microphone over the three men.

The commentator faced the camera. "This is Mark Lannon outside the Intensive Care Ward of USC Medical Center, where the Los Angeles Police Department holds incommunicado one of the officers responsible for the slaughter of five young brown and black teenagers who committed the crime of entering a white neighborhood."

At the entry to the waiting room, Towers took a fingernail-trim set from his pocket. He jammed the nail file into the keyed light switch.

The high-pitched voice of Mark Lannon continued. "Witnesses to the atrocity report the officer went mad with blood lust and attacked his partners in murder. The Los Angeles Police Department refuses to confirm or contradict the statements of on-the-spot witnesses. However, this reporter has gained additional information on the incident..."

The lights went out in the windowless room. In total darkness, Lannon's voice protested. "This is deliberate! This is criminal harassment of the press! This is fascist suppression... Ugh…"

His voice cut off as a fist slapped skin. Metal crashed. Someone screamed in pain as fists beat flesh. A penlight revealed the form of the cameraman on the floor. A leg wearing gray cotton-polyester and a soft leather neoprene shoe — the color of the slacks Lyons wore and the style of shoe he preferred — place-kicked the video camera into the air. The light flicked out. Plastic shattered as a heel crashed down again and again. The light flashed on again to reveal the smashed video recorder. A hand tore a videocassette from the destroyed machine.

From the side of the room came the sound of glass breaking. Another shriek tore the darkness. The penlight beam showed a hand lifting the sound man from the floor by his beard. A knee in gray slacks crushed his nose.

The door to the Intensive Care Ward opened, light flooding the waiting room. In a blur of indistinct motion, several forms rushed into the ward. Others rushed out the other door.

At the waiting room entry, one of the administrators rekeyed the light switch, then continued out to the corridor.

Alone in the waiting room, surrounded by smashed equipment, Mark Lannon and his technicians groaned on the floor.

Lyons and Towers and Flor glanced back through the ward door as it closed.

"You just met the correspondents from our local Communist news station," Towers told Lyons and Flor.

"Wonder what those Commies are doing on the floor?" Lyons asked. "Think it's a public orgy?"

The uniformed sergeant laughed first. Then four officers and ex-officers all shared a long laugh.

A doctor watched for a moment before asking, "What happened out there?"

Lyons turned to the doctor. "The lights went out and… I think they fell down, but I don't know…"

"We were so busy getting in here," Towers added. "Didn't see what happened…"

"Who wanted to talk about the officer?"

Their laughter stopped.

"What's his condition?" Towers asked.

"He'll be staying for observation, but we think he's improving. We tried the standard sedative and antipsychotic drugs but finally we resorted to the expediency of changing his blood, which proved to be helpful."

"You changed his blood?"

"Then we upped the antipsychotics until his convulsions and rages stopped. Drastic, but the treatment seems effective. The residual amounts may trigger repeated seizures. I believe the continuing treatment will be rest and calm until we can identify the chemical that initiated his attacks. Then we can attempt to neutralize whatever traces of the chemical remain in his body."

"Have any idea what the drug was?" Lyons asked.

"A drug? I don't know that this chemical is a drug. It seems to activate areas of the brain usually unaffected by drugs. It creates rages. Like a drug, it makes the individual unaware of pain, but that may be a side effect of the rage. The police department's chemists already have a sample," the doctor said. He was enthusiastic. "And we've sent pathologists to the morgue to take samples of the five teenagers' brains. I'm really quite excited about this. I've already outlined a paper I plan to publish. This is all very, very extraordinary."

Lyons nodded. "Yeah, it sure is."

On another floor of the hospital, in a private room guarded by an LAPD officer in the white uniform of a nurse, Lou Stevens rested after minor surgery. The white-uniformed woman — an officer with black-belt degrees in both karate and judo — admitted Towers, Lyons and Flor after they presented their identification.

"He's awake," she whispered before opening the door. "He wants to talk. He's very shook up by what happened."

"No doubt," Towers answered. He knocked before opening the door.

In the sun-bright white room, Lou Stevens sat up in the cranked-up hospital bed. Newspapers with bold headlines covered the blanket. He looked up from reading as they entered.

"Mr. Stevens, how are you?" Towers shook hands with the white-haired electrical engineer. "Doctor told me you didn't even need general anesthesia."

"I don't even need to be in the hospital. The bullet went through the wall before it hit me. Doctor showed me the fragments he took out of my leg. I got bigger pieces of metal than that still in me from the Philippines."

"World War II?" Towers asked.

"Signal Corps."

"Is that how you got your start in electronics?"

"Electronics?" Stevens laughed. "That's what I thought. Wanted to go to trade school or college, but I didn't think I'd ever have that much time or money. So I enlisted. Thought I'd do a four-year course in the Army, learning about radios. What I did was unroll wire for field telephones while everybody shot at me. Japs thought I was a soldier. Our side thought I was a Jap infiltrator. Soon enough I learned to dig with my nose while I ran with my legs. Sort of a human plow. Except never more than three inches off the ground. Something like a torpedo through the dirt."

All of them laughed. Towers took the opportunity to introduce Lyons and Flor. "This is my friend Carl Stone. He's with federal law enforcement. And Angelica Lopez. She's Federal, also. They'd like to talk to you about what happened last night."

Stevens tapped one of the newspaper stories.

"I'll tell you. It was awful. But what I see in the papers… I had my daughter and her husband in the next room. My month-old grandson. I gave those… those… delinquents a chance. I told them. And they started shooting. That machine gun they had, it just ripped the place apart. So I shot the first two in the feet. But good God, they didn't stop…"

"Did they seem to feel the pain?" Lyons asked gently.

"They started screaming, but… but they only really screamed when I told them to get out. They screamed, but it wasn't… it wasn't like pain. 'Die, whitey, die, you white…' They used words I won't repeat in the presence of a young lady. I shot the first two in the feet and they went down. The one with the machine gun started shooting everywhere. So I shot him. The ones with pistols saw me and shot. That's when I got wounded. I fell down.

"They rushed me with those pistols. I was on the floor, and I put the little red dot right on their faces. Shot them.

"Goddamn glad for all the time I've spent on the range shooting skeet. Those two fall down, and I see the one on the ground trying to get that little machine gun. He's wounded and bleeding like… like… like terrible casualties I saw in the Philippines. But he's still trying to get the machine gun. I had to shoot him.

"And the other two. One of them, his foot is gone. And he stands up and tries to run at me. Not away. At me, with a machete. 'Die, whitey,' he screamed. I shot him. The other one, he takes a pistol off the floor. I shot him, too."

For a moment, the grandfather stared into space. He shook his head at the remembered images. "It was so awful. It was so goddamn awful."

Lyons put his hand on Stevens's shoulder. "You saved your family. Those punks weren't there to steal. They were completely doped out of their minds and looking to kill."

"I know, I know. But I'll never be able to forget what… what I had to do."

Towers spoke then. "Sir, you gave us the only break we've had so far. We've got a start on that crazy drug, and we've got the weapon and the bodies. Without that, we'd have nothing to work on. It's a start. You can be proud of that."

"Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but I've got to live with it. I'll see what I did for the rest of my life. I'll never forget."

A knock sounded on the door. Towers glanced to Lyons and Flor. The two Federals turned their backs to the door. Towers asked, "Who's there?"

"Urgent message for Mr. Lou Stevens!"

"He's resting," Towers answered.

"Who's the message from?" Stevens called out.