Dick Stivers - Into the Maze

He jerked the rope three times. Above him on the roof, his partners pulled in the slack. The rope now stretched taut from the top of the window to the desk. Lyons grabbed the rope, twisting it and jumping on it to try the knots.

A moment later, Gadgets slid through the window. Lyons cut the rope harness from his partner and freed him from the safety rope. If the taut line had failed as Gadgets slid down, the safety would have stopped his fall. They threw the safety rope back through the window. On the roof, Blancanales and the Mexican commandos pulled it up.

"Anything?" Gadgets whispered.

"Nothing yet. Heard voices. But I know they didn't hear me."

"Positive?"

"No one's shooting at us."

Blancanales slid down next. They cut away his harness, then sent the safety rope up again. They unslung their weapons and listened to the firing coming from the stairwells. The booms of shock-flash grenades punctuated the firefight of the sham attack. Able Team each carried four of the antiterrorist stun grenades. As they waited, they jammed valved hearing protectors in their ears.

A Mexican commando came down. Able Team left him to supervise the entry of the other soldiers. Lyons went first with his silenced Colt. Gadgets stood behind him with a shock-flash ready.

Easing the office door open, Lyons saw men in uniforms and street clothes rushing through the corridor. Some of the gunmen wore the gray uniform of the International, others the OD fatigues of the Mexican army. He saw traffic cops in their dark pants and sky-blue shirts. But most of the gunmen wore the uniform he had seen in actions in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Guatemala City: expensive European casual suits, tailored and pressed.

But the airborne assault had ruined the styling of the International soldiers. Blood from superficial wounds stained their Italian fashions. They had torn their slacks and sports coats, wrinkled their silk shirts, scuffed their shoes.

Lyons turned to Gadgets and whispered, "Fragmentation."

Gadgets returned the shock-flash grenade to his combat harness. Lyons unhooked two Italian MU-50G controlled-effect grenades from his gear. He pointed to the right and held up the two small grenades. He pointed to the left and held up two fingers. Gadgets nodded and took two MU-50G grenades from his bandolier. They nodded to each other and pulled the safety pins.

"One... two..." Lyons counted, "three!"

They threw the grenades in opposite directions and slammed the door shut. Gadgets laughed. "Designer grenades for designer dudes!''

The chain-blast came an instant later. Lyons charged out first, Atchisson leveled, Gadgets one step behind him. Blancanales and a Mexican commando cut to the right.

Only emergency lamps provided light. The storm of high-velocity steel beads had broken all the fluorescent tubes. Lyons and Gadgets rushed over the dead and wounded. Pointing his CAR with one hand, Gadgets fired 5.56mm execution shots into any gunman who still lived. Lyons did not waste his 12-gauge shells.

At the door to the executive suite, Lyons fired a single blast through the lock and the door flew open. Submachine guns fired, slugs splintering the door, punching through the thin office walls. Gadgets dropped flat on the carpet and tossed in a shock-flash.

The white blast silenced the weapons. Dashing into the twilight of the office, they saw men and women sprawled around computer terminals. Shattered video displays smoked with phosphor powder. Flashlight in his left hand, the Atchisson's pistol-grip in his right, Lyons checked the stunned fascists while Gadgets watched the door.

He counted five men and three women. But no General Mendez. No Colonel Gunther.

"Call for some soldiers," Lyons told his partner as they went to the office door. "We can't stop to tie these Nazis up."

"Gringo putos!"

A woman shot Lyons in the back.

Lyons spun and the woman fired her revolver again, a .38-caliber slug roaring past his ear. One blast from the Atchisson tore apart her heart and lungs, throwing her body over. Dying, she tried to scream, her eyes fluttering, her hands opening and closing reflexively as liters of her blood drained from the vast through-and-through wound.

Gadgets picked the deformed hollowpoint out of Lyons's Kevlar and gave it to him. "Teach you to turn your back on a woman."

Plaster flew from the walls. Gadgets staggered, and Lyons felt a slash across his gut and right forearm. An autoweapon in the corridor fired burst after burst at the doorway. As Lyons went down backward, his arm screaming with pain, he brought up the Atchisson.

An International gunman, ammunition bandoliers belted across his sports coat, ran through the door. He fired an M-16 wildly, spraying the office at waist height. Squinting against the muzzle-flash above him, Lyons snap-fired a single blast.

Steel shot smashed the plastic-and-aluminum autorifle to scrap, tearing away the gunman's hand, ripping through his chest. He fell back into another fascist attacker. Lyons aimed the Atchisson and fired again, slamming the dead men back some more. The corpses fell in the corridor.

Autofire searched for Lyons, hammering the door, shattering plastic computer components on the desk tops. Gadgets groaned, then rolled across the floor to the doorway. He found a fragmentation grenade in his web gear. Pulling the pin, he let the safety lever flip off. He counted away the delay.

A fascist dashed across the doorway, an autorifle in his hands flashing. Roaring over Gadgets's head, the slugs swept the office. Gadgets tossed the grenade into the corridor and scrambled back as slugs whined off the doorframe. Burst after burst killed the carpet where he had sprawled only a second before.

The grenade stopped the firing. Blinded, a hundred wounds spurting blood, the gunman staggered to the office door. He held the wall and screamed with shock and despair. Lyons pointed his Atchisson at the dying fascist but did not fire. He crawled to help Gadgets as the screaming man died on his feet and fell.

"I'm hit..."

"Where?" His Atchisson pointed at the door, Lyons searched for blood on Gadgets with his left hand.

"There!" Gadgets gasped as Lyons touched the Kevlar over the left side of his chest.

Blood oozed through a tear in the battle armor. Though the steel trauma plate set in his armor protected him from a straight-on shot to his chest, a 5.56mm bullet had hit Gadgets from the side. Kevlar could not stop full-velocity rifle bullets. Lyons fumbled with the Velcro closure strips.

"Hey, let me take care of me." Gadgets pulled open his battle armor. "And you take care of you. Now your other arm's bleeding."

Checking himself, Lyons saw where a bullet had slashed across his battle armor, cutting a path across the black nylon exterior. The bullet had continued into his right arm. He pushed the sleeve up, saw two bloody holes where the bullet had entered and exited just below the inside of his elbow. Pain came when he made a fist, but his hand still functioned. The shallow wound had not severed any tendons.

"No doubt about it," Gadgets said, trying to twist his face into a grin. He pointed to a small hole in his ribs. "I'm shot."

Black uniformed commandos ran into the suite. For an instant, Lyons and Gadgets looked into the bores of the Mexicans' M-16 rifles, then a commando went to one knee beside the North Americans.

The Mexican tore open a field-dressing packet and pressed a bandage to the wound. Gadgets pushed the dressing aside. He probed at the wound with his fingers.

Blancanales joined them. "You hit? Where?"

"I'll live. I'm okay, I think. Nothing broken. Not gargling blood. Ughh — there it is. Found it. The wall and the Kevlar almost stopped it."

"Stay here," Lyons told him. "Pol, let's go."