Don Pendleton - Promise To Defend

The woman shrugged. “Could be. Mr. Hakim always speaks English around me.”

“Those guys gone?” Lyons asked.

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Ten this morning. I take a break at ten-fifteen and they left just before that.”

“Hakim alone?”

“Just his usual guys.”

“How many?”

“He had two with him when he came in a little bit earlier. He always has the same couple of guys trailing after him every day. Says they’re his cousins or some such. They never say anything. They just skulk around the office, stone-faced, staring at everyone. I thought maybe something was going on, like Hakim was gay or something, the way these guys followed him around. But one of them started staring at me so I started to think otherwise. Is Hakim in trouble?”

Lyons nodded over his shoulder at the door. “You’re not. That’s all you need to know. Go.”

“I’m not sure,” the woman said. “Mr. Hakim asked me to stay after work. Said he had something he needed to discuss with me.”

Blancanales flashed a winning smile. “My guess is he wanted to terminate your employment, so to speak.”

Lyons watched the woman’s expression change from confusion to grave understanding as the meaning behind Blancanales’s words sank in. Swallowing hard, she grabbed her things. The click of her heels receded quickly as she distanced herself from the office.

“And they say I have no tact,” Lyons groused.

Reaching inside his jacket, Lyons palmed the Colt, his most trusted weapon. Blancanales and Schwarz each produced micro-Uzis from under their jackets. Lyons knew both also carried Beretta 92s in hip holsters.

Crossing the room in quick strides, Lyons stepped up to the door leading into Hakim’s network of offices. Kurtzman had supplied the team with layouts of the office space used by Hakim as well as the penthouse located on the building’s top floor. According to the plans, four offices lay on the other side of the door as well as the private elevator leading to the Arab’s penthouse.

With Schwarz and Lyons on either side of the door, Blancanales tried the handle and found the door locked. The Beretta spit two subsonic rounds into the lock, shredding it. Blancanales stepped aside to avoid retaliatory fire. When none came, he cocked his leg back and drove a booted foot into the door, knocking it inward.

Lyons rounded the corner in a crouch, the Colt extended in front of him in a two-handed grip. The corridor split into two directions. Ahead lay three rooms, doors closed, two to the left, one to the right. Blancanales was right on his tail. A glance over his shoulder told him Schwarz had headed in the opposite direction to check the rooms at Lyons’s back.

The blond commando edged along the wall, listening for signs of danger. He reached the door to his right first. Crouching, he passed under the pebbled glass window that took up the door’s upper half. Reaching the other side, he came to his full height, grasped the doorknob and twisted. The door came free and swung inward. He tensed for a moment, waiting for a fusillade of hot lead to lance its way through the opening. When none came, he chanced a look around the doorjamb and scanned the interior.

He flashed Blancanales hand signals indicating that he wanted cover. Blancanales gave him the okay. Lyons rounded the doorjamb, sweeping the room with the Colt. The office was nondescript, outfitted with a steel desk topped by a PC, a row of brown filing cabinets, a small roller table and a four-cup coffeemaker. He checked behind the desk, the only possible hiding place, found no one there, and gave his friend the all-clear signal.

Checks of the other two rooms yielded similar results.

Schwarz rejoined his teammates, shaking his head. “Nada. You guys?”

“Same,” Blancanales said. “Time to hit the penthouse?”

Lyons nodded. As the three moved for the penthouse elevator, the Able Team leader switched the Colt for the micro-Uzi he carried in a custom shoulder rig underneath the windbreaker. He stopped several paces short of the doors, a scowl creasing his features.

He turned to his comrades. “Nothing like boxing ourselves up for an easy kill,” Lyons said. Before the others could reply, motion registered from the corner of Lyon’s eye and he spotted a pair of thugs, each armed with submachine guns, stepping into the corridor.

In almost the same instant, the beating of chopper blades sounded in the distance, growing louder with each heartbeat.

The thugs spread out across the hallway, each man’s weapon spitting long tendrils of orange-yellow flame. Bullets sizzled the air around Lyons and the others before slamming into walls. Lyons felt everything slow down around him as he came under attack. His noticed his comrades each responding, Blancanales flattening against a wall, firing his chattergun with one hand. Schwarz dropped into a crouch, his weapon chugging out an angry swath of 9 mm death as three more men poured through the door.

One of the attackers lunged forward, flattened against the floor and tried to draw a bead on Lyons, who knew he was a nanosecond from death as the stream of bullets slashed toward him like a cutlass sinking in a downward stroke.

A guttural cry welling up from within, Lyons stroked the Uzi’s trigger. The volley of slugs closed the gap between him and his attacker, pounding into the man, eliciting a crimson spray as the man jerked under the Uzi’s onslaught.

Swinging his weapon forty-five degrees, Lyons squeezed off a second burst that ripped through another terrorist’s white button-down shirt and pulped his chest. The bullets whipsawed the man until Lyons eased off the trigger and turned his attention elsewhere. The man folded to the ground in a boneless heap.

A third man, weapon at hip level, came into view, but withered quickly under relentless blasting from Blancanales, never getting off a shot.

At the same time the door of Hakim’s private elevator slid open behind them, revealing another trio of hardmen. From the corner of his eye, Lyons saw Schwarz turn to meet the threat, his Uzi up and ready. The stout weapon stuttered out a searing line of 9 mm slugs as Schwarz hosed down the elevator car’s interior, cutting down the men before any could squeeze off a shot. One of the men pitched forward from the automatic door squeezing and releasing his body as it tried to close.

Lyons stared through the thick haze of gun smoke that clung to the air. He strained his ears, listening for more attackers, but heard only the roar of blood thundering through his ears and the muffled beating of helicopter rotors.

As the din of gunfire died down, he looked at Schwarz, who shot him a grin. “You think they know we’re here?” the electronics genius asked.

Schwarz let his micro-Uzi fall free on its shoulder strap. Wedging himself between the corpse and the elevator door, the Able Team warrior grabbed the corpse by his belt and shirt collar and heaved him into the corridor. A moment later he again fisted the Uzi while propping open the elevator door with his hip, waiting for the others.

His teammates boarded the elevator. Schwarz punched the penthouse button and the elevator lurched to life. All three men ejected spent or partially spent magazines from their weapons and inserted fresh ones. Lyons also fisted the Colt Python.

Holstering his Uzi, Schwarz withdrew a pair of grenades from special pockets in his jacket. As the elevator came to a stop, all three men crouched low, figuring they’d face an almost-instantaneous onslaught of weapons fire when the door opened.

They were right.

The angry chatter of submachine guns sounded and weapons fire lanced through the doorway, splintering the elevator’s interior, a few of the rounds ricocheting around the confined space. Schwarz armed the flash-bang grenade and rolled it into the room while Blancanales and Lyons returned fire from prone positions, their shots shredding upholstering, chewing through wood and showering the room with shredded stuffing.