Dick Stivers - Five Rings of Fire

He reached into the gym bag he had strapped around himself and pulled out two grenades. He let both spoons go and threw one, then the other. The first exploded from its landing pad on the floor, the second burst while it was still in the air.

As the double blast rocked the area, Politician beat a hasty retreat. A quick glance over his shoulder told him that not all the Riding Devils had been leveled by the grenades.

The Able Team warrior brought up the Ingram. It spat one bullet then locked open. Empty clip. There was no time to change clips. No time to draw the Beretta. He turned his will to live into speed. He ran.

Gadgets Schwarz peered around the side of a car he had just taken shelter behind. Two bursts from an Ingram whizzed by him. Looking to one side, he saw Babette sitting on the ramp. She had just fired the machine pistol. A biker was lying under his fallen bike, his weapon still aimed in Gadgets's direction, his face bloodied, eaten by bullets. Gadgets nodded thanks to the female sharpshooter. He then leaned forward and saw Politician running for his life.

The lead biker was set to fire when Gadgets, in a careful two-handed firing stance, let go a single shot. The bullet sailed perfectly, nailing the biker in the hollow of the throat. He went down in a heap, the bike crashing on top of him, crushing the bones of a man already dead.

Blancanales headed for the safety of a parked car. Gadgets held his ground, prepared to meet the two remaining Devils. The bikers had guns raised and were coasting toward him. Thumbing the selector to triple shot, he quickly took care of the biker on the left, dropping him with a solid punch to the chest. Gadgets feinted a move toward the parked cars on the right, then dived to the left. Bullets flew past, inches from his arm. As his body bounced off the garage floor, he fired the Beretta. The bullets connected with deadly results. The man clutched at the remnants of his face. In seconds he was dead.

Gadgets rolled back behind the car. Pol, also behind the shield provided by a car, changed clips. The enemy gave them no time to breathe.

A barrage of bullets announced the arrival of the ground troops who had been scattered around the lawns of the campus.

Blancanales punched a bullet into the eye of one of the bikers attacking on foot. He continued to fire at maximum distance for the Ingram. Two more fell. The rest scattered behind cars. By the time the Devils had defensive positions, Pol and Gadgets were on the offensive.

They borrowed bikes from two of the fallen bikers with the promise of repayment sometime after never.

Gadgets throttled up to where Babette was waiting.

He stopped, giving Pol time to catch up. Gadgets motioned for Babette to swing on the pillion. The feisty woman stayed put, waiting. Gadgets then heard what she was waiting for: more mounted bikers were moving inside.

"To the top," Gadgets screamed.

Pol nodded and took off.

About a minute later the first level was filled with the deafening drone of motorcycles. The bikers raced around the corner of the ramp. Babette sprayed them with the rest of the Ingram's clip then ran and leaped onto the seat behind Gadgets. There were screams of agony as the dead and wounded fell and bikes collided with flesh and bone. Gadgets let the bike loose, leaving carnage and a patch of rubber behind. They drove to the open top-story of the building. Pol was waiting for them at the head of the ramp.

"Babette bought us some time," Gadget explained.

Babette, her arms wrapped snugly around Gadgets, took a long look at both men.

"Okay," she said. "I've let you tackle me off a bicycle, almost get me killed, take me on this terror mission. Do I get your names?"

"How impolite," Pol said, laughing. "I should have introduced myself between streams of gunfire. Rosario Blancanales. Politician to friends."

"Hermann Schwarz at your service. But since you've got your arms around me, call me Gadgets."

The two men took a calm second out of a stormy battle to drink in the beauty of Babette Pavlovski. The phony wig had fallen off her head during the battle, leaving her short, blond hair looking wild. Her face was shiny with perspiration, but there was a classic beauty that no amount of dishevelment could conceal. And to boot she could fight. Like a soldier.

Pol broke the momentary silence.

"Did you get through to Ironman?"

"No. I lost the radio. Shot out of my hand."

"Then we hold out here until help arrives," Blancanales concluded. "And with this much noise shaking the garage, someone's bound to arrive soon."

"If they come up here," Gadgets said, "they've got to come up these ramps. We should be able to hold them. How much ammo's left?"

A combined count logged four clips for the Ingrams, including the fresh clips in the guns, and seven 15-bullet clips for the Berettas. They also had two grenades.

"We're fine," Pol joked. "We've got six more bullets than there are yahoos out there."

They could hear the thunder made by the Riding Devils biking across the level below them.

"These two bikes are the only cover we've got," Gadgets said. The two men dropped the machines on their sides. The trio flattened out behind them, using the sparse cover to best advantage.

A head soon poked around the corner of the cement ramp. The trio held their fire for a split second and the head jerked back out of sight. The man yelled.

"They're holding out at the top."

"I think the party's over," Pol quipped.

"It's just beginning," Gadgets countered as an assault rifle was eased around the curve of the wall, bearing in on the three fighters. Slowly a head followed the rifle around the corner. Politician fired. He put a single shot into an eye.

The sound of cars, their gas pedals pushed toward the floorboard, alerted the trio that trouble was arriving on four wheels.

"Get to one side," Pol instructed Babette. "They'll try to ram our barricade."

Babette drew back from the edge of the ramp and then ran to the side where she could get the longest view of the floor below. She could not yet see the Riding Devils.

Gadgets and Pol each took one of the remaining grenades. Babette, working in perfect tandem with the Able Team duo, shouted "Now!" the second she saw the front of the first car. Gadgets and Politician pulled the pins. They rolled the grenades down the ramps, then sprinted in opposite directions away from the ramps. The car taking the tighter turns was directly over a grenade when it went off. The force of the explosion lifted and twisted the vehicle, leaving it a bent, battered, flaming pile of rubbish that blocked entry from the floor below. The other car made it over the grenade. It charged on toward Able Team's flimsy barricade.

At the last possible moment, the driver of the car saw that there was no one behind the motorcycles.

He swerved sharply to avoid hanging the car up on the bikes. The driver then began a wide sweep that would allow him to stop out of effective firing range or continue to hunt.

Gadgets lined up his Beretta on the rear wheel. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a gun barrel emerging from the passenger window. Gadgets let himself collapse to the cold cement as heavy automatic fire blazed over his head.

Blancanales, who had turned a different direction from Schwarz when they had retreated from the ramp, found himself removed from the battle, located behind his partner and at an even greater distance from the pair in the car. He tracked the car with his Ingram, but the range was doubtful and his aim was leading dangerously close to Gadgets. Politician held his fire and began to run toward the action.

Car wheels screeched as the driver used the space on the empty top story to put the vehicle into a power turn and head it back toward Gadgets. The gunner in the car could no longer hit Gadgets without hanging most of his frame out the window. The danger for the Able Team member now lived with the machine that was speeding toward him.