Don Pendleton - Mind Bomb

“Pol, stun and sting,” Lyons ordered.

Blancanales leaned out of the door frame and fired a stun grenade into the kitchen area. It was a 40 mm and the house thundered like an echo chamber. Blancanales followed it with a 40 mm sting ball grenade. The munition slammed into the oiled bronze of the restaurant-size refrigerator and 150 hard rubber spheres ricocheted off everything including screaming human flesh. “Get some, I’ll cover.”

Lyons and Schwarz rapidly moved down the stairs, tracking through the gas for targets. The former LAPD cop thumbed his throat mike and spoke into the PA system built into his custom-designed gas mask. The voice scrambler made him sound disturbingly like Darth Vader. “Paging Mr. Manzo. Paging Mr. Manzo...”

Lyons smiled beneath his mask as a ragged, choking voice screamed, “Screw you!” from behind the kitchen island

A Glock flopped over the cultured marble and popped off a couple rounds blindly and ten meters off target. Lyons snapped his shotgun up, took an extra second to aim and gently touched off a round. The CS gas projectile smashed into Guillotino’s gun hand and sent the Glock spinning away. Manzo screamed and flopped backward as the shell imbedded in his hand fountained gas between his fingers.

Lyons rounded on the kitchen aisle with Schwarz on his six. Team Guillotine was in a bad way. Sting-and-stun had beaten them down and the level of CS gas was going toxic. Lyons snapped in a 12-round magazine of buckshot and shot out the kitchen windows. He put two bursts into the two-story panoramic window looking down on the hillside and glass fell in giant, jagged sheets. Gas billowed out into the burning afternoon heat.

Manzo lay on the tile, gagging and mewling. Lyons’s round had literally punched through the back of his hand and oozed wisps of irritant from the front.

Schwarz photographed weeping and beaten men for the Farm’s database. He chuckled under his mask at the stigmata Manzo bore. “That’s a first even for you,” he said to his teammate.

Lyons shrugged beneath his mask and armor but he was secretly very pleased with himself. He took a knee, flipped and zip-tied Manzo. “Guillotine secure. We’re out of here, Pol.”

Blancanales swiftly descended the stairs. “On your nine, Ironman. We got a live one.”

Lyons turned. A man did a push-up and rose from the tiles. He was bloodied, beaten and choking. His hair was close cropped in a fade and beneath his pink tank top and Team Cruz Azul track pants he had a physique that could genuinely have taken him into the final round of a Mr. Mexico bodybuilding competition in the heavyweight division if it wasn’t for all his gang tattoos. He squinted through streaming eyes and took in Lyons kneeling over Manzo.

Lyons thumbed his PA. “Don’t do it.”

The muscleman walked toward the coffee table and the AK-47 lying on it.

“This one has spirit,” Lyons acknowledged. He put three tear-gas rounds into the muscleman’s bank-vault pecs. The cartel enforcer staggered backward with his Herculean chest a ruined mosaic of blunt trauma and impacted CS particles. He straightened and continued again for the rifle on the table.

Lyons frowned under his mask. “Gadgets?”

Schwarz raised his weapon and fired the M-26 modular accessory shotgun slaved beneath his submachine gun. His was loaded with a gas round rather than a gas projectile. CS gas erupted out of his shotgun like a high-velocity fire extinguisher and occluded the muscleman’s head. Musclehead staggered out of the cloud blindly, groping for the assault rifle.

“This one’s a freak!” Schwarz snarled.

Blancanales sighed across the com. “I hate the tweekers.”

“Genuine gift of emptiness.” Lyons kept a knee on Manzo’s chest but drew his Python. “Gadgets, light him up.”

Schwarz squeezed the trigger on his side-mounted CEW. The weapon chuffed and the twin probes sank into the smoldering hamburger meat Musclehead called a chest. Most conducted energy weapons hit and swiftly ebbed as their batteries drained. Schwarz’s weapon was a highly modified device of his own design. The lithium-ion batteries hit full charge and, rather than tapering, continued full charge until they suddenly cut. When Schwarz gave Mr. Most Muscular Mexico all twelve million volts, the cartel enforcer shuddered as if someone had put a quarter in him. He still took a step forward.

“Son of a bitch!”

Schwarz held the trigger down. The probes snapped, crackled and popped like God on High’s own million-volt Rice Krispies. The Latin Schwarzenegger finally fell twitching to the tiles. “Son of a bitch...”

“I like him,” Lyons decided. “Pack him up, but use the steel. Handcuffs and shackles.”

Jack Grimaldi’s voice came across the com. “I got chatter across the emergency channels. Smoke, explosions and the Old Faithful level of tear gas going into the sky has been noted. I’ve been hailed and asked who I am. Farm says federale helicopters are deploying. There is chatter from Santa Lucia Air Force Base. They are scrambling F-5 fighter jets.”

“Beat it, J.G.,” Lyons ordered.

“Gone!” The sound of Dragonslayer ’s rotors faded into the distance.

Schwarz finished clapping Musclehead in irons. “And our extraction?”

Lyons went to a door off the kitchen and kicked it open. The garage door was opening and a man behind the wheel of a Jeep Cherokee screamed in terror. Lyons raised his weapon. The guy should have closed the driver’s-side window. The Able Team leader pumped five CS rounds through the open window into the Jeep’s interior, and the vehicle promptly swerved, ran over a dirt bike and crashed into the side of the garage.

Lyons gazed upon a gleaming black 2015 Cadillac Escalade. He grinned at the Peg-Board strung with keys beside the door. He snatched the one with the Cadillac symbol on it. “We’re taking the Caddie.”

CHAPTER THREE

The Safe House

The Guillotine and “El Roble” sat bound to folding chairs. Enrico “the Oak” Olivar was a low-level thug in the scheme of things.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger had been the top bodybuilder in the world, his nickname was the “Austrian Oak.” Enrico had taken up the El Roble sobriquet in homage to his hero. He was small-time cartel-wise, and apparently not particularly bright. Everything the Farm could dig up on Olivar indicated he was kept around for intimidation purposes and low-level collection services. The charges against him, all of which had been dropped, were simple assault and battery.

Bowling Ball was still in his underwear and still handcuffed to the pipe. Guillotine glared bloody murder at him. Uribe stared at the floor between his feet unhappily and refused to make eye contact. All three criminals wore duct tape over their mouths. The Oak stared at Manzo, then at Lyons and then back again. He did this for long seconds as if he was doing Chinese algebra. The Oak flexed his mighty muscles against his shackles and started doing the math again. He’d been performing this cycle like a broken record since his blindfold had been removed. Lyons didn’t care for it all. Back at the Guillotine’s mansion Olivar had not displayed roid-rage aggression or pit-bull loyalty to his master. He’d kept going for his gun like an automaton.

Schwarz had been forced to light him up twice in the car and to put a replacement power module in his CEW. Lyons had even dug out his own TEK-12 flashlight/stun gun and armed it.

He strode over to Manzo and ripped off his gag. Lyons jerked his head at Olivar. “Is he always like this?”

“Bastard!” Manzo screamed. He was screaming at Uribe. “Dead! You are dead!”

Bowling Ball cringed.

Lyons shook his head. “I asked you a question.”

“Screw you!” Manzo spat. “I’ll kill you all! Your wives! Your whore mothers! I’ll kill your—”