Don Pendleton - Drawpoint

Schwarz was armed with a Kissinger-tuned specialty, the silenced Beretta 93-R machine pistol, and several 20-round magazines were in the pouches of his web belt, under his windbreaker. Blancanales had opted for something a little less exotic, but no less effective—a short-barreled CAR-15 with a collapsible stock and vertical foregrip complete with flashlight unit.

The three men took the stairs leading up to the target apartment with practiced precision, covering one another with Lyons in the lead.

They had discussed the fastest way to breach the door to the apartment. Lyons’s first thought had been to use a portable battering ram of the type used by SWAT teams, but the warning from the Farm had nixed that plan. He did not want any member of Able Team to be vulnerable, even temporarily, if armed hostiles were waiting on the other side of the door. In the end he had simply loaded the Daewoo’s chamber with a fléchette breaching round. The first shot from the awesomely powerful weapon would be to take down the lock, after which Lyons and his teammates would blitz the door and overwhelm whoever was waiting on the other side.

The hallways through which they walked were padded with stained, threadbare carpet, which softened the impacts of their combat boots. The hallways smelled of cooking food. Lyons could hear a baby crying through one of the doors on a lower floor; he signaled to Schwarz and Blancanales and frowned. His warning was clear. There were innocents nearby and they could risk no collateral casualties.

Their earbud transceivers were active, but Lyons didn’t want to risk even a whisper as they neared the target doorway just past the top-floor landing. He signaled to his teammates, who took up positions on either side of the door to back him up. Lyons aimed the USAS-12 and braced himself. He looked to his teammates both of whom nodded.

Lyons pulled the trigger.

The shotgun blast disintegrated the lock. The big ex-cop immediately slammed the sole of his combat boot into the spot immediately left of the hole, slamming the flimsy hollow-core door open. He led Able Team into the apartment, his weapon sweeping the room for targets. Blancanales and Schwarz flanked him, taking opposite sides of the room as he advanced. They would sweep and clear in both directions, each man covering the other to prevent any nasty surprises.

“Clear!” Lyons shouted. The living room was empty save for a broken and half-collapsed flea market sofa and an ancient console television boasting a bent pair of rabbit ears. Pizza boxes were piled in a corner of the room, next to two blue plastic bins into which empty beer and soda cans had been piled. While the apartment itself was typical of the hovels third-rate scumbags occupied, Lyons thought to himself, it was surprisingly clean.

“Bedroom’s clear!” Schwarz called from the next room.

“Bathroom!” Blancanales sang out. “Got a live one!”

His shotgun at a low ready, Lyons found Blancanales standing over a twenty-something male who was doing his best to look nonchalant—while sitting on the toilet. He had been reading a magazine when the team had busted down his door, apparently. It was crumpled on the floor at his feet, on top of the fuzzy blue bathmat that covered most of the floor in the tiny bathroom. The title Earth Action was emblazoned across it.

“Is there anyone else here?” Blancanales asked calmly, the stubby barrel of his rifle trained on the young man’s face.

“No,” the man shook his head.

“Your name?” the Hispanic commando asked in the same even, almost friendly tone.

“Ryan,” the young man answered. “Ryan Pinter.”

“Well, Mr. Pinter—” Blancanales lowered the CAR-15 “—I suggest you cooperate fully. You’re in a lot of trouble.”

“But…but…I didn’t do anything!”

“We’ll be the judge of that,” Lyons said, easily playing bad cop to Blancanales’s good.

“First things first,” the Hispanic commando said. “Why don’t you, well, pull your pants up. You’ll be joining us in the living room.”

“Is anyone else expected here?” Lyons snarled.

“No, no, not for hours,” Pinter admitted readily. “Look, please, I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t know what this is about, but—”

“Oh, you know,” Lyons said, planting a beefy palm between Pinter’s shoulder blades and propelling him into the living room as the young man left the bathroom, still hitching at his pants. Pinter almost collided with the couch and tried to crawl up into a ball on it, looking up at each of the armed men who had suddenly invaded his world.

“Look, you can’t just break in here and…Do you have a warrant?”

Lyons, playing his part now, raised the USAS-12 menacingly. “This is my warrant,” he said.

“You’re a member of the World Workers United Party,” Blancanales informed him.

“So that’s what this is?” Pinter became indignant. “You’re rousting me because of my political beliefs? Oh, man, I knew this Patriot Act thing was going to turn into oppression! You can’t suppress my political beliefs at gunpoint! I’ll sue, I’ll sue and you’ll be—”

“We’ll be what?” Lyons asked. “You are aware, aren’t you, that the director of the WWUP here in Illinois was killed while attempting to murder federal law-enforcement officers?”

Pinter looked down, the wind taken out of his sails for a moment. “I heard he was maybe in an embezzlement scandal.” The young man shook his head. “That he tried to shoot his way out rather than get caught. That isn’t right, man, but it shows you that capitalist greed can infect even those who—”

“Shove a sock in it,” Lyons growled. “I’m not interested in your speeches.”

“But look, man, you can’t hold every member of the party responsible for what one guy does.”

“Three guys, actually,” Lyons said. “Or don’t you read the news?” An officially scrubbed version of the events at the WWUP facility had been released to the media, complete with rumors of corruption as the official reason behind the shootings. The rumor mill had already started to manufacture plausible backstories, with the assistance of a twenty-four-hour cable news media desperate for unfounded speculation with which to fill its schedule. All of this put the public off the trail, as was intended. There was no point in starting a panic—though at this point, even the Farm didn’t know enough to guess as to why the WWUP director had been so fast on the trigger—with the real story behind the events, and of course Stony Man’s covert operatives had to be shielded. Lyons knew that Brognola’s heartburn only intensified every time Able was involved in so public a shooting, but it went with the territory. The big former L.A. cop had been as surprised as anyone when the probe had turned to gunplay so fast. The fact that it had was just proof for Brognola’s theory that big things were happening, or about to happen. The worm in front of Able Team now could well prove the key to unlocking some part of the puzzle. If not that, he might lead them to those who could.

“This is not about politics. At least, it’s not about your public politics. You’re also member of the Earth Action Front,” Blancanales said calmly. “A highly ranked member, in fact.”

“Look, man, you got it all wrong,” Pinter said desperately. “I’m an environmentalist, sure. Green Party, a few other groups. I care about my planet, is that a crime? But I’m not in the Earth Action Front.”

Lyons snorted and lowered the shotgun. He stepped away long enough to duck into the bathroom, grab the magazine Pinter had been reading and throw it at him. Ryan flinched as the dog-eared, glossy pages hit him.

“So what’s that?” Lyons demanded. “A little light reading?”