Don Pendleton - Ramrod Intercept

Worse still, the backbone, the real movers and shakers behind DYSAT, had the boot heel of the Justice Department stomping down on it, putting on the weight, ready to snap it in two. At last count, three of the pretty-boy executives were dead and accounted for, with three more that he knew of still running around, making little whispered noise about blowing the lid on the whole plan to one another. Well, the Feds had come running, and Roswell knew they were even right then in the neighborhood. No, it wasn’t all that difficult to spot the black van bristling with antennae, parked across the street for what it was.

Official G-men were on the prowl.

He hoped they came running, trying to close the net. With some cunning and a little brazenness, he could lead them outside, a dark alley maybe, where he could send a message to the Feds. When they came and picked up what was left of the bodies, he didn’t figure they’d just pack up their surveillance and leave town, tails tucked between their legs. No, they’d turn up the heat, but that was just fine with him. Things were reaching a critical mass anyway, and only a swift and decisive counterattack could save the DYSAT kingdom.

After dogging the marks around for days, where they wiled away their nights in gentlemen’s clubs, paid cash for quickies and huffed up blow in back rooms, he was starting to feel mean, and dirty. Midforties, he was somewhat surprised to find a craving for younger girls boiling in his loins, an urge he hadn’t known existed until now. But this was business, and he had no time to indulge any amount of seething lust.

He needed relief, though, and he was content enough to find it through the barrel of his sound-suppressed Beretta 92-F.

Maybe when this whole dirty business was cleaned up he could return to one of these clubs, peace of mind intact, and spend some of his hard-earned cash indulging the fire.

He spotted them beyond the next stage where three girls were gyrating the creamy goods to heavy metal thunder, in their faces. The swirling light show lit up their baby-smooth features, eyes glittering, and it angered Roswell to find the executives ready to laugh and lust the night away while prepared to stick it to DYSAT. They had secured a booth, nothing but Heineken and top-shelf booze for those guys.

Roswell gave Morton the nod. They knew the drill.

And they had their marks squeezed into the booth before they could wonder what the hell was happening.

Grogan had his bottle poised near his lips, eyes darting all around. “You guys…”

“Yeah, us guys,” Roswell said. “There’s good news and there’s bad news, ladies. Bad news—Collins, Hurley and Samuels found new employment…in hell. Good news—you guys have a chance to stay breathing, but only if you talk to us and give us everything you even think you think you know.”

Caldwell was the first to want to spill it. “Not a problem, guys, just let us explain…”

“Not here,” Roswell said. “Nice and quiet, we’ll all get up, one big happy family, out the back door.”

“We’ve got a problem. Twelve o’clock.”

Roswell followed Morton’s stare out to the party sea of lights and noise and AWOL husbands. In Roswell’s experienced estimation of human nature, separating what was what from who was who in the interest of self-preservation, the big guy was falling way short of trying to blend into the crowd as another rooster on the loose away from the wife and kids. For one thing, there were the twin bulges under the windbreaker, the first tipoff a hunter had walked in, trying to close the gap, quick and quiet. He didn’t quite have the look of a Fed, Roswell decided. There was something too cold and menacing to conclude he and Morton would simply hear the guy reading off their Miranda rights.

The big guy with icy eyes stuck to the Mr. Cool routine, just the same, ordering a beer at the bar, grinning around at the female amusement park. Once the bottle was settled in front of him, he picked up his march, shouldering his way through the suits.

Moving with purpose.

Roswell grabbed Caldwell by the arm. “Let’s go.”

LYONS WAS twelve to fifteen steps away from the hardmen when he was spotted. They were hauling the playboys out of the booth, the two buzz-cut thugs seeing him without seeing him. Tweedledee and Tweedledum had the eyes, too.

Which meant they would just as soon kill him as look at him.

He could have radioed Pol for backup, as he saw the foursome weaving through the crowd, angling for a gigantic bouncer guarding what Lyons supposed was the doorway to whore paradise. The Able Team leader decided to go solo, do it his way.

The hard way.

He deposited the beer on the edge of the bar, brushed past a scantily clad waitress who scowled and bleated an oath at his backside. They made the door, and Lyons saw Tweedledee slip a crisp bill into Godzilla’s hand, mouthing something in his direction.

Rolling on, as the foursome was swallowed up by the gloom beyond the door, Lyons already knew where this was headed. Godzilla was all evil eyes, watching as Lyons marched up to him. Getting tensed up to go on the muscle, Godzilla sizing the opposition.

“It’s a private party. Take a hike, Pops.”

Lyons gave Godzilla a quick measure. Late-twenty-something, all muscles, the kind of arrogance in his eyes that told Lyons he had never done much more most likely than toss a few drunks out the front door.

“You’re telling me this is members only, son?”

Godzilla was about to lose it, his eyes turning mean. “What part of ‘take a hike’ didn’t you understand, Pops?”

“How about none of it?”

It came from the heart to begin with, the tried-and-true warrior backed by experience, all the pain and disappointment a man could know, choke down and file away along the course of his life coming together in a critical instant to do the deed. It boiled down, essentially, to a man versus a punk. Physically it came from the legs, a coiled spring that cut loose up his lower back, up the spine, an explosion down the arm until his forearm shot up with all the force of an erupting land mine. Lyons saw the light nearly winking out as Godzilla was lifted an inch or so off his patent leathers, head snapping back on wilting rubber from the forearm pile driver to the jaw. Figure he’d spent a few more hours in the gym lately, pumping more iron than Lyons had his entire life, and he saw the need to follow up with a sweeping left hook. It damn near scared Lyons to hit the guy that hard, his fist driving through jawbone, head snapping sideways, out and back. For a second, Lyons wondered if he had decapitated Godzilla. When the man went thundering off the floor, down for the count, Lyons checked his pulse, found a weak beat. A scan of the party crowd and he found his luck was holding up for a change. They were too busy playing grab ass to notice the incident.

“Pops” Ironman Lyons freed his Colt Python, then hit the door.

Schwarz found the black Lexus parked in the shadows of some white-facaded structure gone to seed with weeds and vines. There was no gate around the lot, permitting quick and easy access, no valet he could find with a search of the naked eye. And the surging party mass along Sunset was too busy trooping in and out of all the rock, comedy and gentlemen’s clubs to pay one straggling shadow any mind.

Or so he hoped.

He was deep in the lot, but felt an unseen watcher hawkeyeing his back, radar from some invisible force homed in on his march, lining him up. He started to feel an itch between his shoulder blades as he gave the line of vehicles a long probing eye.

Nothing stirred.

Okay, he was in, but something felt off-kilter, and he found himself planning his exit already. Still he had a job to do, but as he was forging toward the black Lexus, he couldn’t help but feel Lyons was on a headhunting tour inside the club, a sense of urgency to get back to the van burning him up. Three days of lurking all over town, watching their targets live it up like piggish royalty. For some reason he couldn’t quite pin down, he felt it was set to blow up in their faces.