Dick Stivers - Army of Devils

As Lyons struggled to clean the fouled magazine and reload the Atchisson, Blancanales saw one punk charge ahead, a machete raised high. Snap-sighting on the rabid teenager's chest, Blancanales fired. A single round staggered the punk, but he did not fall. The Kalashnikov rifle empty, Blancanales saw the punk continuing forward, the machete still raised high.

Blancanales took the captured Kalashnikov by the barrel and rushed the oncoming punk. With all his strength, Blancanales swung the rifle.

The blow crushed the punk's skull. But the spot-welds joining the cheap pot-metal components of the ComBloc weapon broke. Left with only the Kalashnikov's barrel in his hands, Blancanales looked for another weapon as a second punk came at them with a revolver flashing.

A .38 slug ripped past his ear as Blancanales grabbed a machete from the corridor's gore-splashed floor. Then Lyons's Atchisson boomed. The punk with the pistol fell. But the wall of drug-crazed blood-lusting human animals did not stop.

" Down !" Gadgets screamed to his partners.

Falling to their faces in the blood, Lyons and Blancanales heard the M-203 grenade launcher fire.

The first two punks lurched as a blast of twenty-seven double-ought balls slammed into them. But the low-velocity projectiles from a 40mm buckshot round did not stop them. Blood spurting from their faces and chests, their comrades pushing the dying punks forward, they continued on.

Lyons fired his Atchisson as a continuous line of 9mm slugs ripped into the mob. Gadgets fired an Uzi in each hand, holding the triggers back, brass raining around him. Finally, the Israeli submachine guns went silent.

From his prone position, Lyons saw an M-16 rising. He did not aim. He fired wild, saw blood spray the ceiling. Then his weapon's action locked back.

Punks still came. Blancanales rose to one knee. He had picked up a machete. He slashed with it. A punk's hand and pistol hit the wall. Another pointed a shotgun and fired, but the blast went into the back of the one-handed punk.

Intestines exploded. Blancanales pushed the dying punk aside and hacked again and again as the shotgunner pumped the Remington's slide.

The arms and shotgun fell. The maimed punk thrashed at Blancanales with the stumps of his arms. Then Lyons shoved his partner aside and put the muzzle of the fourteen-inch barrel of the Atchisson under the screaming gang boy's chin.

Blast flipped the corpse backward. Lyons semiautoed blasts into another running punk, then killed the crawling wounded.

Blood-soaked, flesh glistening on their battle armor, the three men of Able Team remained alive in the corridor of slaughter.

Gadgets splashed through the blood to his partners. The reloaded Uzis swung from his shoulders.

He gripped the M-16/M-203. Eyes wide with horror, his breath coming in panic pants, Gadgets kept repeating, "This is heavy, this is heavy, I mean, I came to the party late, and I don't know about this scene. Definitely number one thousand. Maybe one million."

"If they rush us again," Blancanales told Lyons, "we are overrun."

Lyons slammed another magazine into his Atchisson. "We haven't found Flor."

They heard footsteps and the firing of shotguns and pistols. Lyons looked to his partners.

"Here they come…"

As black-and-white units screeched to tire-smoking stops in front of the apartments, Detective Bill Towers assembled the police officers into improvised fire-teams. Though the department had issued additional shotguns to the units patrolling the city, not every officer had one of the riot weapons.

Towers took Lyons's warning seriously. If that ex-cop said the men needed shotguns and automatic weapons, Towers knew Lyons meant it.

An incident immediately proved Lyons's warning true.

As Towers sent a two-man unit to the side street with an order to seal off the side exits and the alley, the officer behind the steering wheel called out, "Behind you!"

Turning, Towers saw a teenager in jeans, sneakers and a gang jacket run from the front door of the ground floor LAYAC offices. The teenager held a machete high as he sprinted for Towers, screaming hate jargon, "Die, you white genocidal Nazi running dog!"

"Halt or I'll fire!" Towers shouted out as he pulled his .38 pistol loaded with department-approved solid-point ammunition. "Halt..."

The command did not stop the punk. Towers sighted over the four-inch barrel of his Smith & Wesson and double-actioned six slugs into the punk's chest.

The slugs did not stop the youth. Blood spurting from his chest, he crossed the sidewalk and street in a few steps. He swung the machete at Towers. Towers sidestepped.

As the machete skipped off the sheet metal of the black-and-white, the officer in the driver's seat fired his service revolver point-blank into the gut of the punk. Slugs exited the punk's back and broke the plate-glass windows of the LAYAC offices.

But the punk did not fall. Retreating from the bloody teenage psychopath, Towers pulled the backup pistol he carried — in violation of department regulations — in a holster at the small of his back: a Colt Commander. Loaded with hollow-points — again in violation of department policy — the large-caliber autopistol went on line with the punk's chest as he rushed to kill Towers.

Towers snapped two shots. The first hollow-point slammed the punk back, exploding through his chest to destroy his heart and the knot of arteries between the lungs. The second slug went high and struck the dying punk in the nose. His head exploded with the shock-force of the impact.

Even when the medically dead zombie finally fell, the legs and arms continued to thrash, the machete still gripped in its right fist, the metal of the blade clanking and sparking on the asphalt as if the punk's arm had a nervous system independent of the destroyed brain.

Towers stared down at the thrashing corpse, astounded. Officers from other cars ran to the corpse. The driver of the squad car announced in a shaky voice, "Holy shit! You saw it. Towers put six through the chest. I put another four through its gut. And it still took two forty-fives to put it down!"

"Everyone with a shotgun over here!" Towers yelled, assembling officers.

As they gathered, Towers continued directing black-and-white units to surround the apartments. Inside, the battle continued. Directing his men, Towers heard the hammering of autofire, the booming of shotguns inside the buildings. He addressed the officers around him. "There're three men fighting in there. The crazies captured an officer and those three men went in to save the officer. We're going in to help. Everyone got their pockets full of ammo?"

"We shoot to kill?" an officer called out. "Do we try to arrest them?"

"This is war!" Towers shouted back. "Look at that one in the street and tell me if you're going to read them their rights!"

The group rushed into the battle.

Monitoring the police communications on their scanner, reporter Mark Lannon and his technicians sped to the battle at the LAYAC offices. When the sound man driving the van saw the flashing lights of the police cars blocking the avenue, he swerved onto a side street.

"I'll circle around and try the alley," the sound man told Lannon.

"Do it. Get past those pigs. We'll put this on the morning news. Smear those Nazi pigs."

They wove through the side streets, down one street, then two right turns, finally approaching on a tree-darkened street where no police squad cars parked. Lannon directed his crew with whispers. "Get the equipment together. We're going to sneak in there. If they see us, they'll pull some pigshit jive about the scene of a crime or whatever. Once we got the pictures, they can only subpoena the tapes."