Читать книгу Close Quarters - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

Little Havana, Florida

The stifling humidity had put Carl “Ironman” Lyons in a foul mood.

Only the ice-cold beer served by a smoking-hot waitress with wild brunette hair kept his temper in check. The sweat from the frosty bottle dribbled across

Lyons’s left hand and pooled onto the table. Once in a while, he’d wipe the cool water against his forehead but it didn’t help much. Lyons couldn’t remember the humidity being this bad during his time in Los Angeles when he was a cop with the LAPD.

Watching his Able Team partners stuff their faces with jalapeño nachos washed down by copious amounts of Malta Hatuey soft drinks didn’t improve his disposition. Lyons, leader of the elite covert-action team, sighed as he took in their surroundings for the tenth time in the past half hour. “Once more we’ve been

relegated to doing a job that should be assigned to the federal boys.”

“You know what I think?” Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz managed to ask around a giant bite, cheese and sour cream running down his chin. “I think we should order another one of these.”

Rosario “Politician” Blancanales made a concerted effort to chew and swallow his own decadent mouthful before saying, “Cheer up, Ironman. You should make the most of this. Try to think of it as a vacation.”

“A vacation.”

“Sure,” Blancanales said, drawing the word out like a man tempting his grandchildren with a story. “I mean, there are much worse places the Farm could’ve sent us.”

“Oh, yeah? Like where?”

“Well, I—”

“Alaska,” Schwarz said.

Blancanales jerked a thumb at his companion. “There you have it! Alaska. It’s cold there.”

“They also have some of the best fishing this time of year,” Lyons countered.

“They also have polar bears,” Schwarz mused. “You could get eaten alive.”

Blancanales feigned a conspiratorial whisper, cupping his hand to his mouth as he said, “I don’t think they’d find Ironman too palatable.”

Lyons ignored the gibes from his friends as two men escorted a third across the street. They headed straight for Able Team’s table in the cabana-style exterior setting of the lounge. Lyons scowled at them, wondering how they’d managed to escort the guy this far without getting him wasted. Their charge wore khaki shorts and a Hawaiian-style silk shirt; sandals adorned his feet. He had light red hair that protruded in clumpy tufts from beneath his Marlins baseball cap. The man’s dress perfectly blended with the styles worn by the Able Team warriors, but his escorts stood out like highway cones in their government suits.

They stopped at the table, and the taller one in serge blue removed his sunglasses. He looked around, then said, “You Irons?”

“Yeah,” Lyons confirmed. He gestured to Blancanales and Schwarz respectively. “This is Rose and Black.”

“Here’s your man,” they said.

Without a word the pair whirled and made distance back the way they had come.

The man stood there with a somewhat beleaguered expression. Lyons felt a bit of empathy for the guy. The two FBI agents assigned to bring him here were obviously intent on more important things, and Lyons couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. The wrist brace on his right arm and deep scratches on his legs made it obvious he’d been in a recent tussle. Lyons had no doubt this was Christopher Harland.

“Have a seat,” he said, waving Harland into the one vacant chair at their table.

The young man stuck his hands in his pockets and studied their faces in turn—almost as if sizing them up—before he sat.

“You hungry?” Blancanales asked.

Harland inclined his head at the disappearing agents and said, “They got me something when we landed. I’m good.” After a pause he added, “Thanks.”

“How about something to drink? You must be thirsty.”

He nodded and Blancanales signaled the waitress. The young man ordered a beer—a Tecate—and watched the waitress with obvious appreciation as she jiggled away with his order.

Lyons smiled at his two companions. Okay, so maybe he could learn to like the kid, after all.

“How was your flight?” Schwarz asked to break the silence.

“It was okay.”

“Those guys, they treat you okay?” Lyons asked.

“I suppose.”

“You go by Chris?” Blancanales asked.

“I prefer Christopher.”

“Fair enough.”

Schwarz went back to shoveling food into his mouth while Blancanales took another pull at his malt-based soda.

Lyons looked around. He saw only a couple of people nearby, nobody within earshot. Midafternoon and the lunch crowd was gone. It was too early for happy hour. “We’ve been briefed on what happened to you.”

“Okay,” Harland said.

“Anything you want to add?”

“It’s pretty much like I told them.” Harland clammed up as the waitress dropped a napkin on the table, followed by his beer.

Lyons handed her enough cash to cover the entire tab plus a tip that was generous enough to imply they wouldn’t need her again.

Once she’d left, Harland continued. “I barely managed to escape with my life. Those bastards are holding my friends hostage, including a woman I care about.”

“What do they want with your team?” Blancanales asked.

Lyons eyed Harland. “And especially why would they keep the others and release just you?”

Harland pulled off his sunglasses to expose a fresh black eye. Something in his expression seemed hardened, more mature and empowered than the average twenty-eight-year-old college grad. His expression bore witness to untold brutalities and hardships, and Lyons felt a measure of regret.

“I didn’t make any deals, if that’s what you think,” Harland said.

Lyons leaned close. “Hey, asshole, take it easy. We’re on your side.”

Blancanales quickly intervened in a way that had earned him the “Politician” nickname. “Listen, Christopher, we’re not trying to give you a hard time. You can relax with us. Our job’s to keep you alive, but in order to do that we need to know everything. You shoot straight with us and we’ll do the same, no bull. Just tell us everything you can remember about these men.”

Able Team had, of course, already been thoroughly briefed by Stony Man Farm. As soon as word came from channels—specifically a SIGINT analyst from the American embassy in the Paraguayan capital of Asunción—mission controller Barbara Price had called the Stony Man teams into action. The situation, as Harland had laid it out, was that seventeen members from a U.S. Peace Corps contingent along with three missionaries had been brutally assaulted and taken hostage by parties unknown. After they razed the camp and brutalized several of the women, they took them all except Harland. He’d been fortunate or maybe unfortunate enough to get the crap beaten out of him and sent to Asunción with a message: don’t attempt to interfere or the hostages would be slaughtered.

“What were you doing there exactly?” Schwarz asked.

“I was there on a Peace Corps mission,” Harland said.

Lyons said, “We understand that, but what kind of mission? Humanitarian aid, education, what?”

“Take your pick. After I left Rutgers I got selected to go down there and help try to bring modern facilities to their indigenous tribal populations. In some respects, these people have chosen a self-imposed exile. Mostly it’s a social and cultural isolationism but there’s a political play to it, too.”

“What kind of play?” Blancanales asked.

Harland took a long swallow from his bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “More than sixty percent of the population of Paraguay is urbanized. The rest are content to retire to farming life, particularly since they have the sixth largest soy production in the world. A very small percentage have made their homes deeper in the jungle, traveling to the farms like sharecroppers and then back again at the end of the workday. It’s almost a migratory existence. It’s those people we were sent there to help.”

“So these military men,” Lyons said. “What can you tell us about them specifically?”

“Nothing. I was told that if I so much as breathed a word about what I saw they’d kill my friends. I took a risk just leaving the country. I’m sure they’ll figure I’ve talked.” Harland’s voice cracked when he added, “They’re probably all dead by now and I killed them.”

“You can’t think like that, man,” Schwarz said.

“That’s right, Christopher,” Blancanales added in a gentle tone, squeezing Harland’s shoulder. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you. And if we can help it, we’re not going to let anything happen to your friends, either.”

“Get real, dude,” Harland said as he wiped his bloodshot, swollen eyes. “You don’t have any control over what’s going on down there.”

“We have more control than you might think,” Lyons said.

Indeed, even as Harland’s tough facade melted, the Able Team warriors knew something perhaps less than a dozen people in the world knew. Five of the toughest and bravest men alive were touching down in Paraguay at that moment. Few knew their names or places of origin, but the exploits of Phoenix Force were no less mythical than the fiery bird from which they drew their namesake.

“You haven’t seen what these men are capable of,” Harland said.

Blancanales smiled. “They haven’t seen what we’re capable of.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and drink up,” Lyons said. “Sitting here with our derrieres hanging out for just anybody to take a shot at is starting to make me nervous.”

“Remember,” Schwarz quipped. “We were going to try to look at this as a vacation?”

Lyons’s cold blue eyes glinted wickedly in the sunlight as he expressed alert like a terrier on a rabbit’s scent. “I think it just got cut short.”

Even as Schwarz and Blancanales turned to see what had Lyons’s attention, the Able Team warrior was rolling out of his seat and grabbing hold of Harland’s shirtsleeve. He yanked backward as he warned his two companions to take cover, although it seemed pointless since Blancanales and Schwarz were already in motion with the practiced reaction of combat veterans. The four men ate the decorative tile of the patio as young Arab types exited a black sedan, leveled SMGs and opened up on their position.

The report from the weapons drowned a shout of pain from Harland, who got slammed onto his shoulder with some significant force. He wouldn’t realize until later it was a small price to pay in consideration that Lyons had kept his promise to save Harland’s ass. Lyons ordered his charge to stay where he was, then whirled on one knee and reached beneath his loose-fitting shirt. In his fist rode a 6-inch Colt Anaconda, its silver finish brilliant in the afternoon sun. A successor to Lyons’s .357 Colt Python, the pistol had been qualified by Lyons with six rounds in a one-inch shot grouping using 240-grain XTPs at 30 yards—a champion marksman’s score. The Anaconda was deadly in the hands of the Able Team leader.

Lyons snap-aimed the pistol, going for the opponent who had experienced a gun jam, and squeezed the trigger twice. A pair of 300-grain jacketed hollowpoints crossed the gap in milliseconds and caught the intended target as if Lyons had fired point-blank. The first busted the gunner’s chest open and exploded his heart, while the second ripped out a good portion of the left side of his neck. The man did a pirouette as the jammed SMG fell from his fingers and then he toppled to the pavement, bright blood springing from his neck in a geyser.

Lyons went low and pressed his back to the waist-high brick wall lining the dining patio even as a fresh maelstrom of rounds buzzed the air around them. The street and sidewalks had erupted in complete pandemonium, and the few diners who’d been sitting outside had either hit the ground and crawled for cover into the restaurant or simply beaten feet out of there.

Schwarz and Blancanales had produced their own sidearms, a Beretta 92-DS and a SIG-Sauer P-239, respectively. The pair found relatively decent concealment behind a set of potted rubber trees just ahead of the patio wall to the left of where they’d been seated. They took up positions and began dishing out some of what they’d been served.

Lyons took the moment to inspect Harland and make sure the young man was still alive, and then risked breaking cover to assist his companions.

Two of the remaining gunners made a beeline for the cover of an old, beat-up SUV while a third apparently thought he was Superman and tried to take out his quarry single-handedly. For his troubles he got three of Schwarz’s 9 mm slugs to the belly, followed by a head shot courtesy of Blancanales.

The other two opened up from the cover of the SUV parked at the curb, but they didn’t have great position and their attack proved mostly ineffective.

Lyons considered their options and realized they had a better chance of squaring off with the opposition if they didn’t have Harland to worry about. After all, chances were good he was the real target, and their enemy probably considered Able Team little more than collateral damage. They hadn’t obviously thought it through, figuring they had surprise on their side, and now it had cost them half their team.

During a lull in the firing, Lyons said, “It would seem discretion being the better part of valor would apply in these circumstances.”

“Agreed,” Blancanales said. “You have a plan?”

“An idea. Give me covering fire. I’m going to get our lucky boy out of here.”

Schwarz and Blancanales nodded in unison and returned their attention to their attackers. Lyons waited until they started pouring on the heat and then jumped to his feet, ran to Harland and hauled him to his feet. They continued on to the entrance in the restaurant, where Lyons quickly located the waitress.

“You got a freezer?”

She swallowed hard but an impatient scowl from Lyons shook her back to reality. She nodded and jabbed her finger toward a swinging door at the back. Lyons, one hand clamped on Harland’s good arm, made the door in three strides and pushed it open with the muzzle of the Anaconda. He followed the weapon, his eyes tracking where he pointed the muzzle, ready for any sign of trouble. They reached the freezer door unmolested and Lyons yanked it open.

“Inside, little man.”

“What? You ain’t sticking me in no freezer…big man.”

“They always want to argue,” Lyons said before he hurled Harland through the doorway and slammed it shut behind him. He located a mop handle, wedged it against the bar so it couldn’t be opened from the inside and then yelled, “Stay toward the back and keep down! I’ll be back in a minute!”

The Able Team warrior then whirled and began searching the kitchen diligently for what he knew had to be close. It took what seemed like hours but was only actually a few minutes to locate several Sterno cans, the oversize kind designed for catering large parties. Lyons nodded in satisfaction and spun on his heel. He headed through the kitchen and returned to the main restaurant.

“One more thing, miss,” Lyons said calmly amid the continuous exchanges of gunfire echoing on the air. “Any high-content alcohol? Preferably clear?”

Without leaving her position tucked behind the bar, the waitress turned, withdrew a bottle filled with clear liquor from a cabinet nearby and tossed it to him. Lyons set the cans on the counter, quickly inspected the contents and then nodded with satisfaction. He broke away the cap, snatched a wad of paper napkins off the bar and stuffed them into the top.

“Hey, buddy!”

Lyons turned in time to see something small and silver fly through the air. He reached out and snatched it, then noted it was a Zippo lighter with the symbol of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne, Vietnam era. Lyons looked at the dark-skinned man whose salt-and-pepper beard stood out starkly against that face. The man sat on the floor against a booth and gave Lyons a double thumbs-up. Lyons offered him a wicked grin as he flipped back the lid with a metallic zing and fired up the napkins. He closed the lighter and tossed it back to the man with a nod.

“Airborne,” Lyons said.

“All the way!” the man declared.

Lyons stepped through door and into the courtyard. Blancanales had just opened up with a fresh volley, while Schwarz was slamming home his last cartridge. He noticed Lyons approach and said, “Well, it’s about time. You stop for a potty break or something?”

“Figured we could use a little help,” Lyons replied as he tossed the Sterno cans at his friend.

Lyons then stepped into the clear and tossed the Molotov cocktail. Even as the bottle sailed toward the pair of gunners, they had noticed him and were fixing to turn their weapons in his direction.

That single mistake cost them the end game.

As Lyons dived for cover, the bottle clipped the edge of the SUV and broke open. Flaming liquor doused the two men and immediately ignited their facial hair. They stepped from cover, dropping their weapons as they tried to beat out the flames, but there would be no reprieve. Lyons turned to see Blancanales and Schwarz had the Sterno cans open and ready. Simultaneously, the pair rose and tossed their homemade grenades with unerring accuracy.

The gel substance clung to the pair of terrorists like goo and in moments their clothes had ignited. While it didn’t really burn their skin, the highly flammable gel acting as a mild ignition point, the distraction proved fatal. No longer in danger of taking fire from the SMGs, Able Team doled out justice in a variety of calibers. Their two opponents fell under the heavy fire, and when the smoke cleared there were only two bloodied bodies remaining, the clothes still smoldering from the remnants of the liquor and chafing gel.

“Well, that’s going to make identification a problem,” Blancanales pointed out as sirens wailed in the distance. “You suppose we should stick around?”

“No, we better get scarce,” Lyons said. He looked at Schwarz and said, “Still feel like a vacation to you?”

Schwarz shrugged. “At least we got nachos.”