Dick Stivers: Deathbites

Grimaldi grinned. "Had the J603s replaced with a pair of J57-55s. They're both Pratt and Whitney's, but these afterburning turbos have more than twice the thrust. I've been looking for an excuse to see what this tour bus will do.

"You boys willing to hit silk?" Grimaldi asked.

"Lot safer than going joyriding with you," Lyons grunted back.

Grimaldi laughed and then spoke into the microphone. "Revised ETA for Elwood. I repeat, for Smyrna, not Hartfield, twenty-three minutes from now."

"Where are you landing?" Brognola demanded.

"I'm not landing, just dumping the freeloaders," Grimaldi replied.

"From a jet!"

"If you speak nice, I'll give them parachutes."

Brognola squawked but his faith in his men quickly overcame his skepticism. He knew they would need every second and every bit of concentration to do the job.

"Good luck," he said. "Signing off."

Already Lyons could detect a slight tremor in the plane. Grimaldi's casual manner was gone as he focused his full powers of concentration on keeping the quivering plane under control.

"Listen carefully," he told Lyons. "We have no time to go over this. I can't leave the controls or try to communicate again.

"I've been wanting to try this jump thing ever since I started flying this baby. You'll find chutes in the rear port locker. Get into them fast. When I cut all the power, get the door open. It opens inward. Be careful, it'll try to pull you out, even though I'll depressurize first.

"Then I'm going to pull the nose way up and this baby is going to stall. At that point, you'll be right over target. The three of you have eight seconds to get out before this baby tries backing up. Do it."

Lyons slapped Grimaldi on the shoulder.

"See you at the airport," he said. Then he made his way back to Pol and Gadgets. "Scramble," he told them. "Gather up any ammunition and weapons you can carry. We jump in ten minutes."

Politician and Gadgets looked at each other. Lyons kept right on going and started pulling parachutes from the rear locker.

"He means it," Gadgets concluded.

He and Pol scrambled in their special flak jackets and started filling pockets with gun clips. Each warrior strapped on a web belt that held more gear. Lyons checked his Colt Python, which he holstered without its sound suppressor on his right hip. He slung the Atchisson Assault shotgun across his back before strapping on the parachute.

Politician grabbed the M-203, a combination M-16 and M-79 grenade launcher. He stored the grenades in a chest pouch. He looked and saw that Lyons had removed the sound suppressor from his Colt. Pol did the same thing with his 93-R before putting it in a breakaway rig on his left shoulder.

Gadgets had an Uzi clipped to his left leg and a 93-R under his left arm. He left the silencer on his weapon. He had radio gear strapped to his chest and a parachute on his back.

Lyons checked all the fastenings for Gadgets.

"What's coming down?" Politician asked. He was checking Lyons's chute to make sure it was on properly.

"Place called Elwood Electronics," Lyons answered. "Grimaldi's computer says come down in a vacant field a quarter mile away and head due west. It may be under terrorist attack by the time we get there. We've got to try and find some scientist named Lao. Brognola wants her delivered to Stony Man."

"How do we identify her?" Pol asked.

"Beats me," Lyons answered. He was inspecting Pol's harness by that time.

The engines wound down from a scream to silence. They immediately went to work on the door, pulling it in and sliding it back.

"Remember," Lyons shouted over the noise, "all of us out in eight seconds. Pol first, Gadgets, then me."

Just then the plane nosed upward and lost speed. The three fighters had to hang on to bulkheads and seats to keep from being shoved to the rear, past the opening.

Lyons slapped Politician on the shoulder. Pol was already holding on to both sides of the doorway. One hard pull and he was gone. Gadgets placed both hands on the tail side of the opening and peeled himself through. He was barely clear of the opening when Lyons pushed off from a seat with both feet and dived through the door after him. Lyons pulled his rip cord almost immediately. He knew the other two would delay for several seconds, using the variation in timing to spread themselves out.

As his shroud lines began to play out, Lyons glanced at the plane. It was motionless above him, almost standing on its tail. Then suddenly it slipped to one side and twisted, falling like a broken toy. Soon it was well below the jumpers. As the wind speed increased, the nose began to lead the rest of the plane. Then the two huge tail jets flamed in and the machine was in a power dive. From above it looked as though the mad air jockey had managed to pull the black bird out of its dive with only a few hundred feet to spare.

July 8, 1530 hours, Smyrna, Georgia

The attack on Elwood Industries went off like the well-planned military campaign that it was. The only thing that separated it from actual war was the fact that heavily armed, well-trained thugs were going up against unarmed civilians.

At precisely 1530, three trucks stopped on the three access roads to Elwood Industries and set up roadblocks. Men in coveralls halted traffic and told drivers there would be a half-hour delay while a crew located a large gas leak.

At 1532, a man and a woman in a stolen telephone-company truck went down an access hatch and cut the lines to Elwood Industries and all the neighboring plants. When an off-duty security guard stopped to pass the time of day, the man and woman took turns practicing their karate blows. Then they stuffed the body into the access space and replaced the hatch cover.

The Elwood building was surrounded precisely on schedule, at 1540. Two minutes later, three teams of four men each went into the building by its three different entrances.

At the front entrance, the receptionist's smile died when she saw the two M-16s and the double-barreled shotgun carried by the three terrorists who followed Aya Jishin. Jishin's hands were empty, but that did not make her look any less menacing than the others.

"Where do I find Lao?" Jishin demanded.

The receptionist turned white.

Jishin grabbed her arm, held it over the edge of the desk and broke it with a single blow.

"Where?" Jishin asked.

"The end of corridor three on the right," the receptionist screamed.

"That's better," Jishin said and strode out of the reception area, leaving her henchmen to kill the receptionist.

The one with the shotgun blasted her face into gory bits.

Jishin found corridor three and marched grimly to the end. Gunshots sounded elsewhere in the building. Doors in corridor three began to open and heads poked out of doorways.

"Get back in your offices," Jishin shouted.

A fat balding man stepped out in front of the striding terrorist.

"What's this all about?" he demanded.

"Just do as you're told," Jishin ordered.

The man did not move.

"I demand an immediate answer."

Jishin had been forced to come to a halt by the fat form blocking her way.

"What do you do here that you can demand anything?" Jishin countered in her hoarse voice.

The man grinned in the knowledge of his own power. "I'm the vice-president and the comptroller here. And who do you think you are?"

"Then you aren't a researcher?"

"You seem slow to get the message."

"Then we don't need you," Jishin told him. Her fists blurred and the fat man screamed.

For a moment the only sound that could be heard in the corridor was the whack, whack, whack of fists smashing meat. The vice-president and comptroller slid down the wall, leaving a streak of red. He died in a large heap on the floor.