11

Two blocks away, Flor Trujillo waited in the rented Ford, the engine idling, the front seat covered with radios.

A portable police-band radio scanned the department's communications, electronic noise and voices filling the interior of the car.

An encoded hand-radio provided for an instantaneous link to Able Team.

A second nonsecure walkie-talkie linked her to Detective Towers where he waited a few blocks to the west.

She watched the street around her. Nothing moved. Despite the warm night, no one sat on the porches or talked with neighbors. No children bicycled or played soccer in the brilliant blue white glare of the streetlights. When she parked, she had seen the curtains of the security-barred windows of several houses part as the residents peered out. But the people remained hidden in the safety of their homes.

From time to time, headlights streaked the boulevard. But no cars moved on the side street. Flor had set her rearview mirrors to provide overlapping views of the sidewalks and street behind her. As she waited for a signal from Able Team or Towers, she scanned her surroundings, her eyes always moving, from the neighborhood in front of her to the lawns and houses on the right and left, and to the images in the mirrors.

A chaos of voices erupted from the police-band scanner. Though Flor strained to understand, the police officers spoke in code words and numbers, only the urgency in their voices telling of what they faced. Then one voice said simply, "We're taking fire from the roof. Automatic-weapon fire! We're getting out of..."

A high-velocity shriek tore from the radio.

"They've got rockets! Someone up there's got..."

The band went blank for an instant, then other voices called out. Flor heard the word "ambush."

Turning down the radio's volume, she rolled down her window.

Autofire popped in the distance. She heard the tearing sound of a rocket and the crack of the explosion. Then came a sound only possible in that night of empty boulevards and unnatural quiet: the night screamed.

As police officers in a hundred squad cars all hit the same switch, sirens rose in one vast wail. The flooring of accelerators came next, by every officer — in uniform and plainclothes — who heard of the ambush.

Rolling up her window, Flor turned up the volume of the scanner. She heard a commander assigning response units. The commander ordered all other units to maintain their patrols. Flor keyed the Stony Man secure-circuit hand-radio.

"Able Team! This is Flor. Able Team!"

She waited for an answer. Then she keyed the transmit key again. "Able Team! Report. There has been..."

She heard autofire. This time not in the distance. The popping of automatic rifles came from the boulevard.

Slipping out her Detonics .45, she thumbed back the hammer to full cock. She slammed the rented Ford into gear and accelerated into the roar of the firefight.

Shoes scuffed on the asphalt roof. Lyons looked up to see Blancanales standing, his back arched, his hands gripping the hands closed around his throat. In the instant that Lyons evaluated the situation, two other forms appeared on the other side of the tangled concertina wire.

"Hijo de puta!" one voice spat out.

"Quien es?" another asked.

Then Lyons saw the silhouette of an AK-47 and heard the distinctive "clack" as a hand flicked the ComBloc weapon's safety to fire position.

In one smooth motion, Lyons swept out his re-engineered and silenced Colt Government Model, his thumb flipping the fire selector down to three-shot burst. He put the dash-dot-dash of the tritium night sights on the silhouette showing the AK.

A burst of .45-caliber hollowpoints sprayed the form's lungs and heart into the night. Lyons put the sights on the next form, squeezed off another burst. The three instantaneous impacts threw the silhouette back.

A muzzle flashed, the report of an assault rifle blasted the quiet. Lyons aimed above the flash, triggered a burst, saw the form hurled back. He emptied the last cartridge from the extended ten-round magazine into the falling gunman.

Gasping for breath, Blancanales fell back from the concertina barrier. A dead man hung in the coils, hundreds of razor-points stuck in his arms holding him upright.

As Lyons dropped out the empty magazine and slapped in another, he heard Gadgets's Beretta zip slugs into a stairwell housing on the LAYAC roof. Nine-millimeter subsonic slugs hammered stucco, one slapped flesh. In the blackness of the doorway, someone gasped. A rifle clattered to the roof.

"In we go!" Lyons called out to his partners.

Gadgets answered. "Ironman, what the..."

"Now! Through the wire!"

Rushing to the concertina barrier, Lyons reached through the tangle of steel razors. He grabbed the hair of the dead man and jerked him against the wire. Lyons dragged the corpse toward him, forcing the wire down with the dead man's weight. The wire sagged. Pulling his arm clear, Lyons put his foot on the corpse and compressed the coils.

"Now!"

Lyons ran over the dead man's back. Reengineered Colt pointed at the stairway housing, Lyons snatched up an AK from the roof. He glanced at the sights. The ComBloc weapon had the clip-on night sights in place.

A muzzle flashed from the door. As slugs tore past his head, Lyons triggered a three-round burst. He did not slow in his rush. He saw movement and slammed it with the AK. As the form fell back, Lyons flicked his Colt's fire selector up to single shot. He killed the gunman as the guy raised a shadowy autorifle.

Gadgets checked Blancanales. His Puerto Rican partner pulled himself up.

"Cover me!" Blancanales scanned the roof ahead of him for movement, then scrambled over the corpse.

"This is crazy!" Gadgets said to no one. But he followed his partners.

At the head of the stairway, Lyons emptied the captured AK into the chest of a punk on the landing below. Dropping the empty magazine, he searched through the tangle of dead punks in the stairway housing. He found a loaded Kalashnikov and an Uzi. Blancanales grabbed a bloody AK and snapped shots down the stairs.

Gadgets ran up behind them. "Ironman, you gone crazy? I got two mags for my Beretta, and we're going into a firefight?"

"If they've got this many sentries..." Lyons passed the Uzi to Gadgets as the punks returned autofire "...they've got something important down below."

"Like an army," Blancanales answered.

"Something as important as us living through this?" Gadgets asked.

Flipping over a dead punk, Lyons found a web belt hung with AK mag pouches. "Two magazines, plus whatever's in the rifles. And this..." He held up one of two grenades he found in a pouch.

Blancanales searched other corpses and came across a belt pouch with two Uzi mags. He passed the pouch to Gadgets. A burst of AK fire roared past him and feet hammered on the stairs.

A wide-eyed, screaming punk sprinted up the stairs, his Kalashnikov flashing. Lyons stepped back, waited an instant, then fired two rounds from his own Kalashnikov point-blank into the screaming punk's chest.

Flesh and fragments of bone exploded from his back as the punk slammed sideways into the stucco of the stairwell housing. He did not fall.

Staring around him, the punk saw Lyons and Blancanales. Screaming as he staggered forward, his face twisted with hatred, blood spraying from the two lung wounds, he swung his AK toward Blancanales.

Lyons put the muzzle of his captured Kalashnikov under the chin of the punk and fired. Impact lifted the bleeding, mortally wounded teenager off his feet, the blast tearing away the side of his head. But still he did not fall.

Screaming, his shattered jaw yawning, blood frothing from his mangled throat, the punk lurched forward again. Lyons grabbed the barrel of the punk's AK and jerked him off balance.

The punk staggered from the stairwell. Gadgets stepped up behind the punk and put his captured Uzi at the base of the punk's skull. A burst severed the brain from the spinal cord.

"Take his weapon," Lyons told Gadgets.

"This is insane! I'm not going down there! There could be a hundred of them!"

Lyons jerked the cotter pin from the first grenade. A storm of autofire came from below, then more feet hammered the stairs. Berserk punks screamed with chemical rage. Lyons let the safety lever flip away, counted to four, then gave the grenade an underhand toss.

Standing to the side of the roof door, he raised his AK. The first punk out the door took a through-and-through head wound from a Com-Bloc slug. Still screaming, he fell and kicked as his life spurted from his shattered skull.

A second punk ran from the stairwell as the grenade exploded below. Though the stairs and landing shielded the punk's body, steel fragments punched through the back of his head.

As if he did not feel the wounds, the punk continued advancing, streams of blood fountaining from his skull. Blancanales aimed at the punk's back and put a careful burst through the wounded punk's heart. Still screaming, with a vast wound where his heart had been, the punk continued on to the end of the roof. He hurtled into space.

From the stairwell they heard a bestial, inhuman sound. A sound like a dog's growl, but broken with gasps and choking. They saw a hand clutching a Kalashnikov, then the third punk crawled from the stairwell.

A hundred grenade fragments had shattered and ripped both legs. Dangling by only ligaments and a few strands of flesh, the legs flopped and twisted behind the punk. But obviously he did not feel the horrible wounds.

Clawing at the asphalt of the roof, he looked around for the attackers. Blancanales dispatched him to darkness with a burst to the back of his head.

The autofire from below slacked off. Absolutely astounded by what he had seen, Gadgets stared down at the finally dead teenager. Then the ex-Green Beret turned to Lyons.

"I'm not going down there. I don't care what the fuck you say, Lyons. Call down an airstrike, call for tanks, call for the Marines, but I'm not going down there!"

Blancanales changed mags on his captured AK. "Second the motion. Motion carried. We retreat. Period. Follow me."

"All right, all right," Lyons finally agreed. He took his hand-radio from his belt. "I need my Atchisson, anyway. Flor," he said into his hand-radio, "we got some heavy action here. We need our weapons."

In the alley behind the apartments, skidding tires answered his call.

"Now that's a quick response," Gadgets commented.

"Go!" Lyons shouted to his partners. "I'll cover."

Gadgets and Blancanales, both holding captured autoweapons, dashed to the corpse spanning the wire. They jumped through the gap, then took positions to cover Lyons.

Sporadic autofire came from the stairwell. Lyons held his fire. He stuck a finger through the ring of the second grenade, then stopped.

He reached into the stairwell housing and grabbed one of the dead punks. He jerked the corpse out of the doorway, then slammed the door closed. He pushed the corpse against the door to hold it closed.

He devised a booby trap. He jerked the pin from the grenade and put the grenade between the corpse holding the door closed and the door itself. When the punks shoved the door open, the grenade would explode, maiming or killing the nearest pursuers, perhaps killing a few on the stairs.

Lyons grinned sardonically at a thought. Can't chase if they got no legs.

"Ironman!" Gadgets called out. "Move it! Flor says there's action in the alley."

The boom of a .45 spurred Lyons. A loaded AK in each hand, he ran for the corpse-bridge through the razor wire. The .45 boomed twice again. Autofire from an M-16 answered. A final shot from Flor's Detonics .45 silenced the Colt rifle.

Hurtling the gap, steel razors slashing one leg, Lyons passed Blancanales and Gadgets. He ran to the edge of the roof and looked down.

The rented Ford spun rubber, fishtailing through the alley. The car lurched as it thumped over a corpse, then raced away. Autofire — this time from a Kalashnikov — popped from the doorways beneath Lyons. The glass of the Ford's rear windshield shattered.

Skidding around the corner, the Ford disappeared from his sight. He jerked his hand-radio from his belt. Gadgets's shout stopped him.

"She's around the corner. Waiting for us. So let's move it!"

The grenade booby trap exploded. Lyons followed Gadgets and Blancanales over the roofs.

Hearing the screams of the berserk punks, Lyons looked back. He saw a horror.

A punk pursued them. Lurching from side to side, moving oddly, the punk seemed to be only four feet tall. Then Lyons realized what he saw. The punk had lost both legs at the knees. Yet he did not fall. The punk continued forward, running on the stumps of his legs, an autorifle gripped in his hands.

Lyons carefully lined up the Kalashnikov's night-sight dots on the maimed, drug-enraged monster and shot the top of its head away.

Others came. Shrieking and screaming, they tried to thrash through the razor wire. The steel points slashed them but they did not notice. One of the punks found the gap and called out to the others.

Lyons fired again. He saw the guy's head explode. Then Lyons sprinted after his partners.

Gadgets covered the roof with his Uzi as Blancanales went down the fire escape. Lyons looked at the 9mm submachine gun in Gadgets's hands and shook his head.

"Forget that little popgun. Just go. I'll do what lean."

With a quick salute, Gadgets followed Blancanales. Lyons turned to the advancing gang. He took cover behind a fan housing. Easing the Kalashnikov's fire-selector lever to semiautomatic, he lined up the AK's glowing dots on the screaming mouth of a punk. The 7.62mm ComBloc slug punched through the mouth to explode the brain-stem. The punk dropped instantly.

Lyons methodically executed the next three punks. The drug gave them superhuman strength and rage but made them stupid. They did not take cover or advance in fire-teams. They only rushed at Lyons. And he killed them.

Snapping the magazine out of his second captured AK — the autorifle had no night sights — he shoved the magazine in his coat pocket. He slung the AK with night sights over his shoulder and ran to the ladder.

Without any attempt at silence, Lyons descended. He called out to his partners. "On my way down!"

A truck engine revved. Gears shifted. Lyons looked down as a five-ton truck marked LAYAC Farm Fresh Produce came from a garage. The truck gained speed. An autorifle extended from the passenger-side window, spraying fire wildly at the alley's shadows. Blancanales and Gadgets returned fire.

The truck swerved and bumped onto the side street where Flor waited. Lyons heard more auto-fire. Then the sound of the truck's engine faded.

Continuing to the alley, Lyons ran to where Flor waited. With Blancanales and Gadgets only a few steps behind him, Lyons jerked open the Ford's passenger front door.

"That truck, we got to..."

But no one waited in the driver's seat. Lyons looked into the front seat, called out, "Where's Flor?" Panic rose in his throat.

He scanned the street. He saw a door close. The muzzle of a Kalashnikov smashed through a window and fire flashed. Even as he returned fire, Lyons screamed out, "There! They took her in there!"

Fear and reason left Lyons's mind.

12

As the truck hurtled through the streets of East Los Angeles, Abdul Shabaka plotted his next move. The LAYAC produce truck carried all his audiovisual equipment and his entire library of hate films that documented the history of white crimes against blacks and Indians and other non-whites. The film projectors, stereos, audio mixers and video machines would help establish another indoctrination center for young psychopaths and criminals in another city, away from here.

First, he and his squad of personal bodyguards would take shelter in the warehouse he had rented the year before. He'd never put his faith in the LAYAC organization. He only trusted himself. Therefore he had prepared for the day when LAYAC collapsed. He had rented the warehouse, he had modified the building to provide security and defense and had hidden weapons and ammunition inside the building.

But more important, he had a long-distance radio at the warehouse.

With the radio, he would transmit new instructions to his men driving north through Mexico.

Their truck carried another shipment of the drug. Not the few grams Shabaka had left with the gangs in the LAYAC offices, but hundreds of kilos of the chemical.

One kilo of the "crazy dust" created one hundred addicted Warriors of Allah and maintained their need for a month.

One hundred kilos of "crazy dust" created ten thousand fearless, relentless Warriors of Allah who would follow any order, commit any act ordered by their commander, Abdul Shabaka, the Modern Prophet and Leader of the Jihad against the American pigs.

Any crime, any atrocity, any horror.

Ten thousand warriors who knew no fear, who fought despite any wound, who killed without questions, who killed the blue-eyed pigs without mercy.

Ten thousand Warriors of Allah who would lay waste the cities of the white pigs.

Sirens approached. The scanner on the front seat of the rented Ford monitored the radio chaos of the approaching squad cars.

Blancanales radioed Detective Towers. "They've got Flor. We're going into the LAYAC offices to get her back."

Lyons interrupted his partner with a shout into the radio. "Warn all those cops on the way, pistols aren't enough. Shotguns and automatic weapons only."

"What're you talking about?" Towers responded. "What's happening there? I thought you were going in quiet."

"Too late for that!" Blancanales barked. "You heard the warning, compadre. And tell the other police. Use shotguns and aim for the head. Over."

Lyons slapsealed the Velcro closures of his Kevlar-and-steel trauma-plate battle armor, then buckled on a bandolier of box magazines for his Atchisson. He took up the Atchisson with the fourteen-inch barrel.

Due to the good fortune of the police academy demonstration that morning, the Ford's trunk contained two Atchisson assault shotguns. Blancanales would carry the second full-auto shotgun.

"Got no bandolier for you, Pol," Lyons told Blancanales. "Dump all these extra mags in your pouches."

Blancanales suited up fast. "What are the loads? Double-ought? Jungle mix?"

"Ask Konzaki. He put them all together for the show at the academy. Whatever the loads are, they'll kill punks. Here's the Crowd-killing Device. Gadgets! Ready to go?"

In his battle armor and weapons, Gadgets looked like a walking gun shop. He carried his Uzi and the Uzi he had captured on the roof. He also carried Blancanales's M-16/M-203 hybrid over-and-under assault rifle and grenade launcher. A bandolier of 40mm grenades crossed bandoliers of thirty-round Uzi magazines. He hurried to select grenades from the suitcases he and Blancanales had brought from Stony Man.

"White light shock-stun, right? But no frag or phosphorous?" he said.

"Damn right!" Lyons told him. "Don't want to waste Flor. You ready to go?"

"Here, take these." Gadgets pushed the anti-terrorist grenades on Lyons. Designed to blind and stun airline hijackers without killing passengers, the grenades produced a blinding flash and deafening blast but no shrapnel.

Lyons jammed the grenades in his armor's pouches. He jerked back his Atchisson's actuator to feed the first 12-gauge round. "Time to go! She's in there..."

"She's been in there two minutes," Gadgets said, glancing at his watch. "If she's dead, she's dead. But if we go in there before we're ready, we're dead, too."

"I'm ready now!"

Lyons left the cover of the Ford. A form leaned from a first-floor window to aim an AK. Firing the Atchisson from his hip as he ran, Lyons sprayed the window with a three-blast burst of number two and double-ought steel shot, the high-velocity projectiles raking the window from side to side. The AK gunner's left hand and face disintegrated as the window exploded inward.

Lyons sprinted to the window. Pulling a shock-stun grenade from a thigh pocket, he lobbed it in.

Blancanales ran to the building and waited with Lyons — both men covering their ears — for the few heartbeats until the grenade's fuse triggered the white flash.

The deafening boom fractured the air. Kicking through the door, Lyons held his Atchisson ready.

In the pale blue light from the side street, he saw a tangle of bodies on the floor. Broken plaster, books, spilled papers covered the semiconscious wounded. He did not see Flor.

Moving fast, Lyons kicked punks over, checking each of them. Blancanales stood in the doorway, his riot-length Atchisson covering the office and the inner door. Lyons pointed to the inner door, shouted, "Whitelight!"

Blancanales aimed at the doorknob and lock. A single round from the 12-gauge removed the entire assembly. Fire from an AK answered. A shock-stun grenade in his hand, Lyons pointed at the center of the door. Blancanales aimed again. Two blasts opened a hole six inches by twelve inches.

Gunners on the other side of the door sprayed wild automatic fire. Lyons let the safety lever flip from the shock-stun, waited to the count of four, then snapped the grenade through the hole in the door.

The blast threw the door across the office. Lyons dodged through the doorway. In the swirling plaster dust, he saw a Chicano sprawled against the wall with a Kalashnikov in his hands. Lyons kicked the Chicano's throat. Through the leather and neoprene of his shoe, he felt the cartilage crush.

Blancanales saw movement on the office floor. A hand lifted an AK by the pistol grip. Whipping around the twenty-inch barrel of his Atchisson, Blancanales jerked the trigger.

Unfamiliar with the assault shotgun, Blancanales inadvertently advanced the fire selector to full-auto as he triggered the blast. The shotgun roared with a burst of point-blank fire.

Andrzej Konzaki, the Stony Man weaponsmith, had loaded that magazine to impress the onlookers of the police academy demonstration with the destructive firepower of the assault weapon. The magazine alternated jungle mix — number two and double-ought steel shot — with slugs. Fired at point-blank distance into a human body, the four rounds, two of steel shot and two of one-ounce slugs, exploded the torso and head, tore through the dying punk in a storm of projectiles to strike the linoleum-and-concrete-slab floor of the office, and finally ricocheted, spraying high-velocity steel and lead fragments in all directions.

Gore splashed the office. Konzaki's weapon and ammunition succeeded in highly impressing Rosario Blancanales, ex-Green Beret and veteran of several wars. For a moment he stared at the mass of glistening meat and blood that had been a body. He had never seen an infantry weapon — other than a grenade launcher or a LAAW rocket — create such mayhem. He dropped out the empty magazine and jammed in another.

In the corridor, Lyons kicked over gasping, bleeding gang boys. One had a Kalashnikov, another an M-16, a third a .38 pistol. Lyons went flat against the wall and peered through the dust that grayed the corridor.

The corridor led through the old apartment buildings, passing from one building to the next, connecting offices and meeting rooms. Several doors opened onto it.

A form dashed from an office. Lyons raised his Atchisson, but Blancanales fired first, a blast of steel shot throwing the punk down. Lyons looked to Blancanales and raised a shock-stun grenade in his hand. Blancanales nodded. He braced his Atchisson to cover his partner.

Lyons ran forward, one shoulder against the wall, his eyes searching the doorways for any movement. At the first doorway, as the wounded punk tried to rise on shattered, blood-spurting legs, Lyons tossed the shock-stun inside.

With a growl, a wide-eyed punk stomped from the office, his M-16 spraying fire. Lyons stayed to the side and slammed his arm down on the weapon's barrel and black plastic foregrip. Slugs from the M-16 killed the wounded punk on the floor, then the blastflash of the grenade threw the hyped-up homeboy across the corridor. Lyons snatched the pistol grip of his slung Atchisson and pointed the fourteen-inch barrel at the punk's head. When the muzzle flashed, the head ceased to exist.

Looking into the office, Lyons saw a form thrashing in the clutter of spilled papers and books. The young black man wore a black jacket vivid with the gang logo, The Headhunters, and a severed head dripping blood. Glitter made the staring eyes of the head sparkle. The gang punk reached for a weapon.

Lyons stomped on the Headhunter's hand, breaking the wrist under his heel. The punk snatched at a pistol with his left hand.

The heel of Lyons's shoe came down again, this time on the punk's solar plexus. Though the stomp propelled the air from the teenager's lungs, he did not feel the pain. His hand closed around the pistol grip. Lyons kicked the pistol away.

Lyons put the muzzle of the Atchisson into the soft hollow of the punk's throat, where his neck met his collarbones and chest. Lyons asked one question, "Where's the woman?"

The Headhunter sucked down a breath and attacked Lyons, flailing at him with his broken hand and his good fist. Lyons pushed the muzzle into the punk's throat. "Where's the woman?"

Clawing at Lyons, the punk thrashed against the muzzle of the full-auto shotgun. Lurching from the floor, the punk grabbed at Lyons's right hand gripping the Atchisson.

The blast sent the Headhunter into the void to forever hunt for his head.

The torso flopped and quivered on the floor as Lyons went to the door. He took another shock-stun from his battle armor's pouches.

"They're rushing..." Blancanales called out, the booming of his Atchisson cutting his words short.

A storm of autofire swept the corridor. Five-point-fifty-six-millimeter and 7.62 ComBloc slugs ricocheted and whined from the walls and floors as Blancanales sprayed the line of onrushing gang punks with his Atchisson.

The shock of a bullet impact knocked Blancanales back. Lyons saw his partner fall, once more called out, "Whitelight!"

Throwing the shock-stun grenade at the mob of punks, Lyons jerked another seven-round magazine from his bandolier. Holding his Atchisson in one hand, he shielded his left ear with his other hand and turned away.

The boom-flash silenced the autorifles for an instant. His head ringing, Lyons leaned from the protection of the doorway and emptied his Atchisson into the downed crowd of chemically hyped punks.

High-velocity steel exploded skulls, ripped away arms and feet. Lyons took cover again, dropped out the empty mag, jammed in the next. He flipped the fire selector up to semiauto and searched for targets.