Don Pendleton - The Hostaged Island

There was no movement. He listened for motorcycle engines, heard only the squawks of sea gulls picking over garbage in the campground.

He started down the steep firebreak. His feet slipped on dirt and loose gravel. Instead of digging his heels in, he let gravity take him, skiing down the firebreak on his boot soles. When the slope leveled for a few yards, Lyons ran, then jumped into space, flexing his knees as he hit. He dirt-skied again to the road, and crossed it without slowing.

Instead of continuing down the firebreak without cover, he plunged into the brush, running in a crouch. He held the Uzi at arm's length, using the small weapon to part branches.

Shots! He fell flat. He heard laughter and voices. Silently, he crawled through the sagebrush. He slithered into a gully not much wider than his shoulders. He followed the gully until he came to a grating of welded reinforcing rods. Beyond the grate, a concrete spillway dropped down a vertical embankment to the parking lot.

At the far end of the parking lot, two bikers taunted Pol Blancanales. The third, the biker wearing the Confederate army cap, braced his G-3 assault rifle on his motorcycle and fired at the gulls that soared in the gray sky.

Lyons took the hand-radio from the thigh-pocket of his black battle suit. He checked the volume and called Gadgets.

"Wizard, what you see?"

"I saw you. Where are you now?"

"Maybe a hundred feet to the north of them. We've got to do this all at once, I can't rush them from here. I've got a good angle on the two in front of Pol. Think you can hit Johnny Reb without putting a hole through the motorcycle?"

"Negative. Unless he's standing up. Want to do it right now?"

Lyons rested the Uzi on the rebar gate, sighted through the peep sight on the biker with the knife. "Waiting for you."

Watching through the peep sight, Lyons saw the bloodied Outlaw whip his head around as the roar-shriek of the ultrahigh-velocity slug ripped apart the quiet morning. Lyons fired the split second he heard the big rifle's report.

Blood spurted from the biker's chest. The single 9mm slug had punched through his heart. Lyons found the other man, tightened his aim, calmly squeezed off a single shot as the biker spun around, his head whipping back and forth as he searched the hillsides for the attackers. The shot caught him in the arm and ribs, knocking him down. He tried to crawl, but his broken arm collapsed underneath him.

Should we take him for interrogation? thought Lyons, hesitating an instant. But the man pulled a pistol from his belt holster. Even as Lyons snapped off two shots, a second ultrahigh-velocity slug slammed the biker into the asphalt. Lyons spoke into the radio again:

"Keep watch. If we got time, I'm going to strip those creeps."

"Role camouflage?"

"And transportation."

Blancanales was grinning as Lyons ran up to him. "Just the man I wanted to see."

His wired wrists hung from a bolt in the utility pole. Lyons lifted his friend off. Then he helped him untwist the wire.

"Can't you keep out of trouble?"

"Trouble is my business," Blancanales countered. He appeared unhurt from his ordeal, although his wrists were bleeding, and his head was badly banged up at the back, where he had received the rifle butt.

"Gadgets is up there." Lyons looked toward the top of the hill as he finished uncoiling the wire from Pol's wrists. "We got to get back there. A goon squad is coming this way. Which motorcycle you want?"

The hand-radio buzzed. "What's happening?" snapped Lyons.

"A car and three motorcycles, moving fast!"

"Let them come in the parking lot, fire when we do."

Lyons grabbed the G-3 from the asphalt and threw it to Blancanales, who had already regained his hijacked Beretta. Then he jerked the dead biker into a sitting position against a motorcycle. He pulled the messy heart-shot biker up against the utility pole where Blancanales had hung, and left the dead man sitting there, still leaking dark fluids. He went to the last biker, rolled him over to take his jacket, had to look away. Nausea twisted his gut.

Not looking at the part that had been a face before the accelerator got to it, Lyons stripped off the jacket. He dumped the body in the bushes. He found a chromed Nazi helmet, flipped it on, then sat on a Harley to wait, nonchalantly wiping bits of human tissue from the denim jacket.

Escorted by three low-slung motorcycles, a Lincoln Continental fishtailed into the parking lot and came to a tire-smoking stop. The Harleys swung in a wide loop, coming to a slower stop. Lyons waited.

A hoodlum resplendent in chrome-studded black leather jacket and pants stepped out of the Lincoln. He wore a western holster with a nickel-plated, pearl-handled six-gun. He looked at Lyons, lifted his sunglasses. "Who the fuck..."

"Surprise!"

Leaving the gravel road behind them, Able Team followed a rutted, four-wheel drive track several hundred yards into the hills on their captured Harleys. Blancanales pointed to a grassy area shaded by a sheer hillside. They coasted to a stop and propped the motorcycles against the embankment. Lyons looked back. They could not be seen from the main road.

"So, gentlemen, what's the plan? Where do we hit next?"

"I don't think our next engagement will be so easy," Blancanales said. He spread out his map of Catalina Island on the grass.

"Able Team eight, Outlaws zero," Lyons said without emotion.

"...but now they know we're here."

"I want you guys to hear something." Gadgets took the scanner/auto-recorder from his pack and rewound the cassette. "The name of the Outlaws' leader is Horse. That's what the LAPD file said, and all the calls I've heard, the name of the man giving the orders is Horse. But listen to this."

He touched the play button. "Horse, this is your friend. Answer."

"Yessir! This is Horse. Is there anything you need?"

"No, everything's fine. I'm quite comfortable. Brief me..."

Gadgets played the conversation through. "That went out on a different frequency. What does it sound like to you?"

"Sounds like this isn't all Horse's game," Lyons replied. "He's just the front man."

"Is he talking with someone off the island?" Blancanales was fieldstripping the Beretta, spreading out the components on the plastic map. When the Outlaws had captured him, they had experimented with the weapon. He was checking it thoroughly, cleaning it like it had been violated.

"Maybe on a boat," Gadgets pondered. "But hardly the mainland. No way."

"So we have some mastermind floating offshore directing this horror show..." Lyons said. "You think all this could be a grab at those six scientists? By commies, terrorists? Except that that guy speaks perfect English. He couldn't be foreign."

"Too perfect," Blancanales said. "Remember, those eggheads are here by chance. They wanted a quiet place, this was close. They could've gone to Lake Tahoe. The man talked about 'the seizure of the island, and about money. If he only wanted those six, why not grab just them? Why take everyone on the island?"

"Yeah, very curious." Gadgets fast-forwarded the tape, stopping to listen to snatches of conversation.

"What else you got?" Lyons asked.

"I don't know. Been kind of busy, haven't had a chance to listen..."

He caught another snatch of the calm, educated voice. "...I can't help you there, Horse. Do what you think is necessary."

Gadgets rewound the tape and found the beginning of this later conversation. "Any developments, Horse?"

"Yeah, more trouble with heroes. I've lost a couple of men to local crazies."

"Your men can eliminate the opposition. Has there been any attempt yet to land security forces?"

"I don't know. There was nothing on the radar, but one of my men says they've got a commando over on the other side of the island."