Promise To Defend

As the final gang banger walked on, Lyons noticed a tremor pass through the guy. He allowed himself a tight grin.

Blancanales’s voice came over his earpiece. “Ironman, you still got it.”

“Bet your ass I do.”

Schwarz, who was watching the rear of the target building from a nearby rooftop, broke in. “Look alive. We’ve got Hakim’s Beemer pulling in.”

“Roger that,” Lyons said. “He have help?”

“Right. Two, no, three hard-looking guys. Probably bodyguards.”

“Probably,” Lyons said. “Or walking corpses. Depends on how they want to play it. Let’s move.”

Lyons crossed the parking lot and waded into traffic. Irritated drivers honking their horns and shouting obscenities barely registered with him as he crossed the street. From his peripheral vision, he saw Blancanales exit a surveillance van disguised as a bakery truck and approach the office building from the right.

The men met at the building’s entrance, a pair of glass doors. Lyons slid his hand inside his jacket. His fingers encircled the Colt’s grip, but he left it in its holster. Driving a shoulder into the door, Lyons entered the lobby with Blancanales a step behind him. Moving in lockstep, they strode across the room. A pair of heavies, one dressed in a suit, the other in jeans and a T-shirt, lounged at what Lyons guessed was a guard station, a steel desk topped by a telephone and a sign-in sheet attached to a clipboard.

The bigger of the two men, the casually dressed guy, rounded the desk, his face a hard mask of anger. His exposed arms a mosaic of ropelike muscles, veins and stretch marks, he stepped between Lyons and the elevator.

Snapping off his shades, Lyons stepped to within a hair-breadth of the guy and locked eyes with the bigger man. The guard stank of perfumed hair gel and apparently had bathed in a mixture of anabolic steroids and cologne before work.

“You are here to see who?” the man in the suit asked.

“As I was about to explain to your lady friend here,” Lyons said, “we’re here to see Hakim.”

“You got an appointment?” the suit asked.

“You work for Hakim?” Blancanales asked.

“I ask the questions around here,” the suit replied.

“I beg to differ.” Blancanales produced his fake Justice Department credentials and flashed them at the man.

Scowling, the guy studied their credentials. He reached for the telephone. “I got to call the man.”

Blancanales shook his head. “Wrong. You and Mr. Anabolic here are going to cop a squat off the premises and wait until we’re done with our business. Comprende?”

The guy stared at Blancanales for a long moment, nodded his head. “Sure, man. We can do that. Anything for the Justice Department.”

“Much obliged,” Blancanales said. “I trust you won’t call your boss?”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

Lyons heard footsteps slap against the floor behind him. Staring over the body builder’s shoulder, he saw a reflection of Schwarz stepping into view, a dart pistol in his hand. The pistol whispered twice as he swept it over the two men, planting tranquilizer darts into the bigger guard’s neck and the smaller man’s left shoulder. Lyons watched as the big man’s face contorted with anger and confusion. He slapped at his neck, trying to find the source of the pain. Lyons drove an open-palmed strike into the man’s sternum, knocking him back. The guy hit the floor. He tried to bring himself back up, but found his muscles going slack. Within moments, he’d fallen unconscious.

“So much for negotiating in good faith,” Blancanales said. “How long will they be out, Gadgets?”

“Hours.” Intel had it that Hakim used contract security for the building, so the team had opted for nonlethal weapons.

They dragged the men out of sight, hiding them in a vacant office. Blancanales and Schwarz took the elevator to the fourth floor, while Lyons used the stairs. According to intel provided by Stony Man Farm, Hakim occupied the entire top floor of the building, which was only accessible from a single elevator located further within the building.

The men converged on the fourth floor and fanned out. The elevator opened into a large waiting area filled with cushy chairs and potted palms. A pretty Latina sat behind the reception desk. Flashing his own Justice Department ID, Lyons jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Jackpot time, lady,” he said. “You just got the day off. Go home.”

The woman gave him a quizzical look and started to reach for the phone. Lyons put his hand on hers before she could lift the receiver.

“What do you say we do this smart? Your purse. Home. Now. Understand?”

The woman cast a glance over her shoulder at her boss’s office, but nodded and began to gather her things. When she palmed her mobile phone, Lyons shook his head.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Leave the phone. You can pick it up later.”

Hesitating, the woman regarded Lyons for a moment, then nodded. Clutching her purse, she came to her feet and rounded the desk, giving the men an uncertain look as she did.

Lyons lightly gripped her upper arm, stopping her. “Anyone else on this floor besides Mr. Hakim?” he asked.

She shook her head no. “He sent everyone home yesterday, telling them to take the weekend off. He asked me to come in and answer phones. He promised me double time and I figured, what the hell? I’ve got a baby at home, you know, and the money—”

“He have any visitors?” Lyons asked.

She paused, chewed at her lower lip and scrutinized Lyons with a lingering stare. Finally she shook her head. “This morning. A group of men. In the conference room. I heard them, but Mr. Hakim never let me see them. They were speaking a foreign language. Not Spanish. I’d know that if I heard it.”

“Arabic?” Blancanales ventured.

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.

CHAPTER FIVE

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.

The first grenade exploded, filling the room with a sudden white flash and a crack of thunder. The thugs’ weapons fire became more sporadic and less focused as men fought to reorient their senses after the startling explosion.

In the meantime, Schwarz activated the second device and tossed it through the doorway. The cylindrical object skittered across the mirror-finished hardwood floors before banking off a table leg and coming to rest next to a large vase. Plumes of gray smoke poured from the grenade, shrouding the room in a seemingly impenetrable haze.

The Able Team warriors used the cover to exit the elevator, crawling on their stomachs, propelling themselves forward on their elbows.

Lyons was the first on his feet, coming up in a crouch. He glided along the wall, using it as a touchstone while he waited for the smoke to clear. The big man had walked about twenty paces when a thug spilled out of the smoke, hacking, rubbing his eyes with one hand, but searching out a target with the muzzle of his handgun. Lyons snap-aimed the Colt, squeezed off two shots, planting both into the man’s center mass. The force shoved his body into a nearby hutch, shattering the etched-glass windows and showering the floor with bits of china, glass and blood.

Motion to his right caused Lyons to whirl. He spotted a second shooter drawing down on him with an automatic pistol. The big ex-cop bent at the knees, aiming the Uzi and triggering it within the span of a heartbeat. As Lyons fired, the Arab shooter triggered a quick burst of autofire that cleaved the air a foot or so above Lyons’s head. In the same instant, a reply from the Able Team leader’s Uzi hammered into the man’s midsection. The gunner emitted a short cry of pain as the rounds drilled into him and dumped him in a heap.

The rattle of weapons fire to Lyons’s right caught his attention. Whirling toward the source, he spotted Blancanales pinned down behind an overturned dining-room table. Concentrated autofire from assault rifles wielded by two of Hakim’s killers shredded the wooden barrier.

The shooters were positioned at twelve and three o’clock from Blancanales’s position. The Able Team commando was curled up behind the table, reloading his Uzi, as rounds from the twin AK-47s pierced the table and sizzled the air around him. Fear for his friend’s safety quickly morphed into white-hot rage.

Lyons brought the Colt into target acquisition, trying to nail the guy closest to him even as he brought the Uzi around to gut the second thug trying to kill his teammate. As he did, a third man sprinted from the hallway, pistol in hand as he ran up on Blancanales to get a clear shot.

“Pol!” Lyons yelled.

As the warning escaped his lips, Lyons caught the vague impression of a lithe shape, little more than a blur, thundering toward him. A second later, someone struck him with a flying tackle. He felt air explode from his lungs as he lost his footing and tumbled over. As he went down, his senses trying to identify this latest threat, he heard gunshots from near Blancanales’s position, followed by an anguished cry.

AS THE SMOKE from his grenade began to clear, Schwarz saw a shape cross the hellground of Hakim’s penthouse, apparently heading for the glass double doors that led onto the rooftop that doubled as a patio and helipad.

Uzi held at the ready, Schwarz threaded between bits of furniture savaged by the fighting and closed in on the fleeing figure, hoping to get a better look. As the door slid open, the gale-force breeze whipped up by a helicopter’s rotor wash exploded through the doorway, the whining of the turbine engines overtaking the crackle of gunfire. The smoke thinned to little more than a haze and Schwarz saw Hakim silhouetted for a moment in the doorway as the man passed through it and onto the rooftop.

Schwarz proceeded for the door at a dead run, vaulting overturned chairs and coffee tables as he closed in on his quarry. At this point, the bastard was their best bet for finding the other Arm of God killers running loose in America, their best bet for preventing a possible terrorist strike, mass murder in America.

That meant escape wasn’t an option for Hakim. At least not while Schwarz and the others lived. One of Hakim’s killers crossed Schwarz’s path, the muzzle of his pistol fast locking on Schwarz. The Able Team warrior fired from the hip, the Uzi stuttering out fire and lead that thrust the man back against a wall, body jerking until Schwarz eased off the trigger. The man slid down the length of the wall, leaving a bloody smear in his wake.

Schwarz barely acknowledged the death as he darted through the doorway. Instantly the transition from indoor light to the brilliant San Diego sun caused him to squint for a moment as his eyes readjusted. He made out the vague impression of Hakim’s silhouette as the man sprinted for the chopper. He considered firing low, raking Hakim’s feet and ankles with bullets, hobbling him and ending his escape plans all at once. He dismissed the idea for the moment, at least until his eyes adjusted. He couldn’t risk shooting too high and killing rather than wounding his quarry.

The men in the chopper had no so such limitations when it came to nailing Schwarz. Gunfire lanced through the air around him as he darted for the fleeing man. Someone was firing upon him from inside the helicopter. Running in a zigzag pattern, the Able Team commando covered the distance between himself and his quarry, his breath growing ragged under the stress of dodging live fire.

A bullet scorched the air next to his cheek. Ducking, he spotted the source, a man crouched in the chopper’s door, a pistol in his hand. The hard guy squeezed off a second shot, but in the same instant, the hovering chopper lurched forward, throwing off his aim, causing the round to slice through the air above Schwarz’s head rather than into his face. Cursing, the warrior lunged forward, landing hard against the fake grass carpeting the patio. The Uzi ground out a quick burst that stabbed into the chopper, driving the man under cover, but not striking him.

In a heartbeat, Schwarz was again up and running across the roof. Reflexively, he squinted against the rotor wash, the incessant beating of the blades tousling his hair, causing his clothes to ripple. The shooter in the helicopter came back into view, exposing a sliver of his face, a shoulder and a knee.

Not much.

But, in this case, maybe enough.

Schwarz tapped out a sustained burst from the Uzi, the shots pounding into the chopper’s skin just next to the crouched shooter. The bullets rent steel, penetrating it before slamming into the terrorist. The guy’s eyes widened and his mouth opened, apparently in a scream. The man’s limbs went rubbery and he pitched forward, his body hanging half in, half out of the chopper, suspended by the harness. His pistol fell to the ground.

Schwarz closed in on Hakim, who, after taking a brief spill, was back on his feet and darting for the helicopter. Schwarz raked his Uzi over the ground at Hakim’s feet. However the slugs caught dead air as the terrorist sprang through the door. In the same instant, the submachine gun clicked dry.

Shit. It would come down to this, Schwarz thought.

Reloading as he ran, the Able Team commando vaulted an overturned table, ducking reflexively as he closed in on the chopper with its whirling blades. Engines whining, the craft lifted off the rooftop, its skids about five feet off the ground.

Springing forward, Schwarz caught the landing skid by looping an arm around it. With his free hand he grabbed the elbow suspending him from the skid, hoping to fortify his position.

The chopper continued its ascent. Suddenly, Schwarz’s world became one of deafening engine noise, nauseating fumes, buffeting winds and the steely pull of gravity. Muscles straining, burning, he freed his hand from his elbow and closed it around the skid, tried to pull himself onto it, his body held back by the rotor wash’s unseen force. He kicked once, twice, unsuccessfully trying to loop his leg over the landing gear.

He chanced an upward glance. Two things registered with him, Hakim’s face contorted with rage and a pistol muzzle tracking in on his head.

BLANCANALES SPOTTED a pair of hardmen pushing through the sliding doors leading from the rooftop patio and fanned out across the luxurious living room. A third man popped out from a kitchen door, molding himself around the jamb and trying to acquire Blancanales as a target. The commando dropped into a crouch and raked a punishing, waist-high burst through the room.

Blancanales’s initial volley of slugs chewed through plaster, slicing and dicing the midsection of the man hiding out in the kitchen. The man uttered a strangled cry accompanied by a stuttering protest from his AK-47 as his trigger finger tightened reflexively in death.

The other two men parted and went to ground, each unloading his assault weapon at Blancanales. Bullets scorching the air around him, the Stony Man warrior pressed his attack. He swept the stammering Uzi in a horizontal line, dropping a hard rain of fiery lead on his opponents.

His weapon clicking empty, Blancanales ejected the machine pistol’s clip as he dived forward. Skidding to a stop underneath a large oak table, he drove a foot into the table, tipped it onto its side, grateful for the cover as he reloaded his weapon. He heard the dull thump of bullets smacking into the furnishing, ripping its finely crafted, curved edges into a jagged line, like a mouthful of broken teeth.

He rolled onto his stomach, peered around the table’s curved edge and poked the Uzi through the opening. He caught one of the hardmen breaking cover, assault rifle snug against his hip as he closed in on Blancanales for the kill. The second shooter was firing sporadically at Blancanales’s position.

He targeted another hardman delivering a blistering volley of 7.62 mm slugs from his AK-47. The commando heard glass shattering overhead, felt shards raining down upon him. He snapped off a short volley of slugs that came within a hairbreadth of slaughtering the gunner.

His combat senses crying out, Blancanales thrust himself to the right before his mind understood why. A chandelier plummeted to the floor, hitting the spot he’d just vacated. The glass light fixture struck the ground and exploded, littering the air with shards that bit into the exposed skin of his face and hands. He shut his eyes, protectively wrapping a forearm around them and riding out the assault of splintered glass.