Читать книгу Season of Harm - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

Atlantic City, New Jersey

“Kind of out of the way, isn’t it?” Schwarz said from the passenger seat of the Chevy Suburban. Next to him, Carl Lyons was replacing the magazine in his Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun. He chambered a heavy 12-gauge buckshot round with a heavy clack of the charging handle. The 20-round drum magazine in place on the massive weapon was supplemented by the 10-round box magazines Lyons carried in the pockets of his heavy canvas vest. The vest also covered the .357 Magnum Colt Python in a shoulder holster under Lyons’s left arm.

Lyons sipped from a disposable cup of fast-food-chain coffee and eyed the front of the casino. The street was busy enough; cars moved past in both directions, and plenty of pedestrians bustled by. The gambling house itself, the Drifts, was not too far from the old Sands building, but still not exactly located in prime real estate compared to its competitors. It was as out of the way as a casino in Atlantic City was likely to be, Lyons thought. He looked at Schwarz and grunted, taking another long sip from his coffee cup.

Like Lyons, Schwarz wore casual civilian clothes. His dark blue windbreaker concealed the Beretta 93-R, custom-tuned by Cowboy Kissinger, that he wore in a shoulder rig of his own. On his belt under the windbreaker he also carried several small grenades, most of them flash-bang and incendiary charges.

“You know, it occurs to me that we spend a lot of time waiting in the truck while Pol gets to go out and have fun,” Schwarz said, ignoring Lyons’s attempt to shut down the conversation before it could begin.

“He gets shot at more, too,” Lyons said.

“Like I said,” Schwarz confirmed. “All the fun.”

Lyons ignored that. Each member of the team wore a microelectronic earbud transceiver in his ear. The little devices transmitted to each other on a tight frequency and had an automatic cutoff for sounds above a certain decibel level. This allowed the team members to stay in constant touch with each other without relaying deafening gunfire over the channel. Through this link, they both heard Pol Blancanales say quietly, “Let’s not wish any undue excitement on me, gentlemen.” Schwarz smiled at that, but Lyons didn’t react.

The fact was, for all their banter, Blancanales was indeed in a precarious position. Before Able Team could roll through the Drifts with guns blazing, they had to determine exactly what was going on inside. If the Triangle owned an interest in the casino but was running no significant smuggling or trafficking operations within, Blancanales’s quiet reconnoiter might best be followed up with another soft probe in which they raided local documents, file cabinets and computers, looking for additional hints to the Triangle’s operation. It would prove dull and disappointing, given the mission parameters and their desires to bring the Triangle’s people to justice, but it would be the only way to handle such a scenario.

On the other hand, if Blancanales found himself surrounded by enemies who were trying to kill him, it would pretty much be open season.

“All right, guys,” Blancanales said quietly. “I’m in position.”

“Roger,” Schwarz said. He took the small video unit from the dashboard and adjusted the frequency. On the color screen set in the handheld unit, a picture appeared, showing the inside of the casino at chest level. The video stream was being transmitted by a tiny camera set within the belt buckle Blancanales wore. The video captured from it would give Able Team a visual record they could review later, while giving Lyons and Schwarz a real-time briefing of what they faced within should the situation get ugly.

Lyons leaned over to get a better view. Schwarz held the video unit up between them. Blancanales’s words, and some of the ambient noises around him, were transmitted to both men’s earbud transceivers, just slightly out of the sync with the picture.

Blancanales was moving through the main lobby of the casino, headed toward the slot machine pits. The crowd looked like the dregs of Atlantic City, the sort of regulars, drifters, grafters and barflies who would gravitate to one of the seedier establishments among the many gambling houses. Schwarz spotted several hookers working the crowd. Lyons ignored him until he started counting them off, then told him to shut up.

“Thank you,” Blancanales said softly. It wasn’t clear whether he was expressing his gratitude to Lyons or to the cocktail waitress who had just offered him a bottle of sparkling water.

Blancanales worked his way around the room, blending in as one of the customers. The nondescript outfit the Politician had chosen for this little run included a tan button-down shirt open, dark slacks and a leather blazer that had seen better days. In short, Blancanales looked just like one of the nightcrawlers gambling at the Drifts, which was exactly what he’d wanted. The Politician could blend in anywhere, anytime. It was one of the things that made Blancanales so effective an operative in these scenarios.

He was moving through the slot machine pit now, dodging lifers of all ages transfixed by the one-armed bandits. Lyons was amused to see the magnetic cards being swiped through the machines. He supposed a lot had changed since the last time he’d been in a modern casino, but it didn’t seem the same to him: waiting to hit the jackpot so you could increase the balance on your gambling card, rather than filling a plastic cup with metal tokens. It was all fool’s gold, he supposed, but that didn’t make it any less amusing. He and Schwarz watched as Blancanales passed row after row of desperate players swiping those cards and pressing push-button gaming screens instead of yanking on metal handles.

As the two other Able Team members watched, Blancanales made a slow, careful circuit of the entire main level of the casino. While not the largest or the nicest gambling house in Atlantic City by any means, the Drifts was still a fairly elaborate establishment. It took some time, and Blancanales knew his work well enough not to push too hard. Hurrying would look suspicious. He had to search the casino without looking like he was searching the casino, being careful not to raise any suspicions.

“There,” Lyons said finally. “There’s another one.”

“Another one?” Schwarz asked, looking at him.

“Pol,” Lyons instructed, “without looking like you’re doing it, back up three paces and slowly pan right.”

Blancanales took his time. He managed to make the move look natural, from what the two in the truck could see. The scan from his camera eventually took in what Lyons had noticed. He pointed to the screen.

“That guy?” Schwarz queried.

“That guy,” Lyons said. “That’s the second big mother in a black turtleneck and black jeans I’ve seen tonight, just standing around. They’re not dressed like casino security.” They had seen the official security guards working the casino; those guards wore matching maroon blazers.

“Sure looks like a guard,” Schwarz agreed. “What’s he guarding?”

“Pol, can you tell what he’s pretending not to cover?” Lyons asked.

Blancanales moved around slowly, taking in the guard from two different angles, then moving farther down the corridor just off this corner of the casino. Finally he found a remote corner where, Lyons figured, there was no one to overhear.

“There’s a fire door at the end of the hallway, opposite the guard,” he reported, whispering. “There’s also a camera focused on that door.”

“Take another look around,” Lyons said. “Let’s be sure.”

Blancanales did so. He worked his way across the casino again, paying special attention to the darkest corridors and corners. When he was satisfied that the door he’d seen was the only one guarded in that manner, he reported as much. Lyons nodded to Schwarz. During Blancanales’s sweep, they had counted a total of three of the black-clad incognito guards. Two of them were surreptitiously guarding the front and rear entrances, in both cases doubling up on the more overt casino security personnel. The lone guard in front of the camera-equipped door was therefore unique.

“How do you—” Blancanales said, then stopped. Schwarz and Lyons watched as a pair of women in micro-mini black dresses flounced past him.

“Not bad,” Schwarz remarked.

“Hookers,” Lyons said.

“As I was saying,” Blancanales said once they were out of range, “how do you want to play it?”

“I’d like to know what’s beyond that door,” Lyons said, “but I’d rather not tip our hand just yet.”

“All right,” Blancanales said. “But we’ll only get one shot at this. It might get hairy on the way out.”

“If it does, so much the better,” Lyons said. “We’ll back you up.”

“Easy for you to say, Ironman.” Schwarz poked him in the ribs.

“Zip it,” Lyons growled.

The two watched as Blancanales moved along the corridor, essentially flanking the lone guard while staying out of what was likely to be the mounted camera’s field of view. He affected a drunken stagger, if the sudden swaying of the video feed was any indication. Then he was stumbling into the guard.

“Hey,” the guard said, sounding disgusted. “Get the hell off me, asshole.”

“Whereza baffroom?” Blancanales slurred.

“Not here, stupid.” The guard reached out to give Blancanales a shove. To Lyons and Schwarz it looked as if he was reaching right for the camera.

Blancanales lashed out with a sudden, vicious edge-of-hand blow to the side of the man’s neck, staggering him. Blancanales followed up with a knee to the man’s groin and then a relatively light blow to the back of the head. The guard dropped like a stone.

“Remind me not to piss off Pol,” Schwarz cracked.

“I said shut up,” Lyons said absently. It was an old act between the two of them, and one neither man had to think about consciously.

Blancanales dragged the guard into the corridor he was guarding, careful to stop short to stay out of the mounted camera’s field of view. Lyons and Schwarz watched as their teammate quickly searched the man, after first checking his pulse.

“He’s not dead, is he?” Lyons asked.

“No,” Blancanales said quietly.

“Proceed,” Lyons instructed.

Blancanales found a 1911-pattern .45-caliber pistol in the man’s waistband, under his turtleneck. He also found a key card. He tucked the .45 into his own waistband, where Lyons knew it would keep Blancanales Beretta 92-F company. Then he moved quickly to the door, swiped the magnetic key card and popped the door open.

“Go fast, Pol,” Lyons said. “Whoever’s watching knows you’re not supposed to be there.” He checked the loads in his Colt Python before replacing it in its shoulder holster. “Get ready, Gadgets.”

“Roger,” Schwarz said. He set the video unit on the console between them and drew his 93-R. Then he checked the machine pistol’s 20-round magazine.

On the small color screen, Blancanales was making his way down a stairway. It was dimly lighted by small red light bulbs set within metal grates along the cinder-block wall. All pretense of the supposedly lavish gambling establishment had been dropped here. Whatever this was, wherever it led, no attempt had been made to disguise it.

Blancanales stopped at the bottom of the stairs. He was facing a pair of metal double doors. Pushing past these, he found himself in an empty anteroom. There was another set of doors. These were locked, but the electronic lock pad on the wall matched the one that had been installed at the top of the stairs. Blancanales used the key card again, sliding it through, and was rewarded with the metallic click that signaled the door unlatching.

He pushed the door quietly open.

At least a dozen men looked up at him.

On the screen, the scene was clear enough, in the split second Lyons and Schwarz had to observe it. The basement, which was lighted by overhead fluorescent lights, was filled with long, low tables. Men sat at these tables, weighing and dividing individual portions of white powder into smaller plastic bags. Several other men holding shotguns and rifles, a mixture of Mini-14s, AR-15s and even Ruger 10/22s, stood around the room at intervals watching over the process.

“Who’s he?” one of workers asked.

“Hey, that’s not—” another said.

Blancanales ran for it.

The first bullets struck the doors behind him as he cleared the next set of double doors.

“Go, go, go!” Lyons ordered. He grabbed the Daewoo shotgun as he piled out of the truck. Schwarz was close behind with his 93-R. The two men ran through the traffic outside the Drifts, dodging honking vehicles as they made for the entrance to the casino.

“I’m coming up the stairs,” Blancanales reported through their earbud transceivers. “The sewing circle I just interrupted is hot on my trail.” There was some static, suddenly, over the connection.

Gunfire.

Schwarz and Lyons burst through the front doors of the casino, Lyons leading the way with his Daewoo at port arms. Customers scattered. A woman screamed at the sight of the big Able Team leader with the massive automatic shotgun in his arms.

“Stop!” a uniformed security guard yelled. He walked up to Lyons. “You there, you can’t come in here with that!”

“Buddy,” Lyons growled, “you’d best back up.”

The security guard reached out, placing a hand on Lyons’s shoulder. “I said stop!”

Lyons butt-stroked him, lightly, slamming the Daewoo’s stock into the side of his head. He folded over with a grunt. “Told you,” Lyons said.

Schwarz had the 93-R in both hands and was covering the crowd. “Everyone out!” he said. “Proceed to the exits in an orderly fashion! We are federal agents!”

The casino’s patrons didn’t need to be told twice. They started hurrying toward the main exit, giving the Able Team commandos a wide berth. A couple of the uniformed guards looked as if they wanted to say something, but they were apparently unarmed and seemed to Lyons to be just what they were supposed to be—civilians hired to watch for pickpockets and roust the occasional drunk.

“Gadgets,” Lyons said, bringing the Daewoo up to his shoulder as they approached the corridor Blancanales had entered, “find me those other covert guards.”

“On it,” Schwarz said. He broke from Lyons and began sweeping the wing they had just passed.

As Lyons neared the hallway, he fought the urge to react as Blancanales came bursting through the fire door. Blancanales had his 92-F in his left hand and the captured 1911 .45 in his right. As the fire door slammed, bullets ricocheted from the opposite side. They did not go through.

“You all right?” Lyons asked calmly.

“Never better.” Blancanales smiled. “But we’ve got a nest of hornets down below.”

“Positions?”

“Bottom of the stairwell.” Blancanales jerked a thumb toward the fire door.

“Good,” Lyons said, hefting the Daewoo. “Get ready on the door.”

Blancanales stowed the 1911 and transferred the 92-F to his right hand. “You sure?”

“Yes,” Lyons said. He grinned. It was not a pleasant smile.

Somewhere behind and to the left, they heard a shotgun blast, followed by the chatter of Schwarz’s 93-R.

“That’ll be Gadgets ferreting out our friends,” Lyons said. “Back him up after I go.”

“Will do,” Blancanales said. “Triangle operatives, you figure?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lyons said. “Triangle or not, they’ve got a heroin distribution center in the basement.”

“Could have been baking powder.”

“More power to them if it was,” Lyons said. “Okay, in three.”

Pol nodded and gripped the fire door’s handle.

“Three…two…one…now.”

Blancanales ripped open the fire door and triggered several shots down the stairwell. Lyons dived through, flat on his belly with the Daewoo in front of him. He threw himself with such force that he slid down the steps, holding the trigger of the Daewoo back as he did so. The buckshot rounds ripped up the doors at the bottom of the stairwell, tearing through the gunmen who waited in front of them.

The gunners screamed and died horribly. Lyons was up and charging as soon as he hit the bottom of the stairs. He slammed a combat-booted foot against the double doors, mowing down a gunman with an Uzi pistol who was waiting in the anteroom. He dropped the now-empty drum magazine in his USAS-12 and swapped in a 10-round box.

Another kick parted the doors separating him from the basement area. He dived through the doors, narrowly avoiding the answering fusillade. The workers were running and ducking for cover, but the gunmen guarding them and the product on the tables were cutting loose with everything they had. Full-automatic weapons fire converged on Lyons’s position. He surged to his feet and, in a half crouch, carved through the ranks of the enemy gunmen like a shark swimming through a school of fish.

Bullets raked the table to his left, shredding plastic bags of heroin before shattering a set of electronic scales. Lyons triggered a blast that knocked the gunmen down and out forever.

Moving heel-to-toe in a combat glide, Lyons kept up his pace, staying calm and deadly in the middle of the fire-storm. Each time his shotgun blasts found an enemy, the remaining shooters were that much more demoralized, firing that much more wildly. Finally, as the second to last man fell with a load of double-aught buck in his face, the last of the guards cut and ran for the doors.

“Oh, no, you don’t, you little scumbag.” Lyons let the USAS-12 drop, since it was empty, and drew the Colt Python from his shoulder holster and leveled it at the fleeing man. “Stop! Federal agent!”

The running man paused, spun and brought up a snubnose revolver. Lyons double-actioned a .357 Magnum round through his chest. The dead man never got off a shot.

“Lyons clear. Basement secure,” Lyons announced.

“Gadgets clear,” Schwarz said.

“Blancanales clear,” Blancanales reported. “Two down up here, Carl. We weren’t able to take them alive, unfortunately.”

“Understood,” Lyons said. He surveyed the drugs scattered around the room, and the dead men among the living. “Everyone over there,” Lyons directed, pointing with the barrel of the Python. “Against the wall.”

One of the workers looked at him, wide-eyed, and said something in rapid-fire Spanish.

“Pol, did you hear that?” he asked. “I’ve got several prisoners down there. They look to be noncombatants.”

“Just barely,” Blancanales said. “He says…Well, he says a lot, but it boils down to, ‘we just work here.’”

“Yeah,” Lyons said. He herded the workers. “Come on, people. Go.”

“I’m on my way down,” Blancanales reported over the transceiver link.

“Good,” Lyons said. “I could use a translator.”

“I’ll stay up here and mind the store,” Schwarz said. “It looks like the Justice Department identification Hal gave us is going to get a workout.” The sirens were barely audible over the transceiver link.

“All right,” Lyons said. “Run interference with the Atlantic City PD for us. Pol and I will work our way through these jokers, see if there’s anything to be found.”

“Any computers down there?” Schwarz asked.

Lyons double-checked, scanning the room carefully. He retrieved his Daewoo as he did so, holstering the Python and swapping box magazines in the shotgun. “Doesn’t look like it,” he said. “We’ve got a pile of drugs, some dead guards and not much else.”

Blancanales entered the room, stepping over the dead body near the doors. He took out his secure satellite phone, part of the standard kit issued by the Farm, and took a digital photograph of the dead man. He would do the same for the others; it was standard procedure. The photos would be transmitted to the Farm for analysis, run through international crime databases using facial-recognition software. Identifying the gunmen might give them some connection to the Triangle’s operation.

“Dead end?” Blancanales asked.

“Dead men,” Lyons corrected. He jacked a round into the chamber of the USAS-12. “But us? We’re just getting started.”