Army of Devils

14

Flor Trujillo rode on the bumper of the five-ton truck speeding from East Los Angeles. The wind whipping her hair, she gripped the latch of the roll-up aluminum cargo door.

As her hands became tired, every bump and lurch threatened her with a high-speed encounter with asphalt. She watched for a police car, hoping to signal for assistance.

But the only patrol cars she saw flashed past in the opposite direction. Lights flashing, sirens screaming, the black-and-white units went to help the officers caught in the ambush she had overheard on the scanner.

So she held on. Few other cars traveled the streets and boulevards of the city. She saw the driver of one car do a double take at the sight of her — a young Hispanic woman in a wind-flagged green dress and high heels — riding the cargo truck's bumper.

Then the truck went onto the freeway. Gripping the latch, she eased herself into a crouch as the evening air tore at her hair and skirt. Behind her, she saw only two or three distant pairs of headlights. On this night after the slaughter of the Valencia family, no one risked the freeways.

A few minutes before, she had seen the truck swerve from the alley behind the LAYAC building. The truck had lurched for a moment as the driver clashed the gears. On impulse, she dashed from the rented Ford and stepped up on the bumper. She wished she had taken a hand-radio. With only her Detonics and a few extra magazines, she sped to a destination unknown.

She felt movement inside the truck. Pressing her ear against the roll-up aluminum, she heard voices and footsteps. The vibrations and noises of the speeding truck made the words incomprehensible. But now she knew she faced more opponents than only the driver and the gunman in the truck's cab.

Without slowing, the truck swerved onto an off ramp. The truck's body clattered and shook as the tires seized the asphalt, the acrid smoke of burning rubber swirling around Flor. The truck whipped through a right turn, then accelerated again.

Before Flor could catch sight of a boulevard street sign, the truck whipped through another right turn and sped through a gray district of wrecking yards and industrial buildings. She saw only empty streets and desolate parking lots under the blue white light of the mercury-arc street-lamps.

Finally the truck slowed. Flor heard the cab door open and footsteps run from the truck to the building. Steel clanked against a steel door.

Now came the danger. She knew she must somehow slip away from the truck without betraying herself. In the isolation of a manufacturing area, with only her autopistol against the rifles of the gang punks who guarded the truck, she had no doubt of the outcome of a pursuit and firefight.

She peered around the side of the truck. She snapped her head back instantly when she saw the punk at the warehouse door looking at the truck. The truck lurched into motion and turned to enter the warehouse.

Desperate, Flor considered her options.

Run and be seen and pursued.

Stay on the bumper and be seen as she rode into the garage.

She could not run, and she could not remain immobile. Her desperation forced her into the only possible action…

Gripping the edge of the bumper with one down-stretched hand, she released her other hand's grip on the latch. Then she grabbed the bumper with both hands, and thrust a foot underneath it.

She hung below the bumper by her hands and one foot, her back only inches from the asphalt. Reaching into the undercarriage of the truck, she gripped the gritty steel of the chassis. She lost her high-heeled shoe as she struggled to maintain her toehold. She let her other shoe fall away as she moved her other leg.

The truck paused. Hanging underneath the truck, she heard the punk at the garage door shout out, "A la derecha. Poquito a la derecha."

With a lurch, the truck continued into the warehouse. She heard the steel door crash down. The punk jumped onto the bumper and released the truck's cargo latch.

Footsteps and voices inside the truck became feet and legs as a gang crowded out from it. She heard ghetto English and Spanish. Another voice spoke in softly accented English. Flor could not identify the accent as the man talked.

"To your positions, my warriors. Though we will be secure here, we must remain on guard. Soon we go to another city and continue Allah's work."

The punks answered. "Sure thing, brother… Waste those white devils."

Hanging by her hands and ankles, Flor waited for the gang to disperse. Only after the footsteps of the punks and their leaders receded did she ease herself down to the oily concrete of the warehouse floor. Crawling a few feet, she pressed herself against the double tires for concealment. She watched the activity in the warehouse.

Work lights in the high ceiling lighted the interior. The driver had parked the truck in the center of the building. Open concrete extended on all sides. A few boxes and crates and tables lined the walls. But she saw no open doors. Flor could not hope to snake from under the truck and dash out to the street.

The truck had carried her into a trap.

She could do nothing but wait.

Across the concrete space, she saw a stoop-shouldered black man in a dark blue suit. He wore his hair conservatively short. Glasses framed in black plastic gave him the look of an accountant. He directed two gang punks in blue nylon jackets and dirty jeans to open a wooden crate.

The punks crowbarred away the crate's lid. They carefully lifted out a block of Styrofoam and put it on a table. Then the black man took a knife from the punks and cut the tape that secured the Styrofoam.

When the packaging fell away, Flor saw a shortwave radio. The black man attached antenna leads to the back of the radio and handed a coil of wire to one of the punks. The punk took the wire up a flight of stairs to the roof. The other youth ran an extension cord to the radio.

Hiding only a few steps away, Flor heard every word the black man said.

"This is Shabaka. Calling the truck. Shabaka calling the truck…"

The black man repeated his call for minutes. Finally a voice responded. The monotonic, strangely disembodied voice alerted Flor to the electronic code guarding the conversation.

Like the hand-radios Able Team used, the longdistance radio employed encoding circuits to electronically scramble and unscramble every conversation. Only those with the radio sets could understand the transmissions. Any technician or amateur radio enthusiast monitoring the transmissions would hear only bursts of static.

"This is the truck," came the reply. "We're a hundred miles south of the border. No problems, we're making good time."

"The Los Angeles delivery is canceled."

"What?"

"The Los Angeles delivery is canceled. We will take the delivery in Escondido instead. Do you understand?"

"It won't be going to L.A. We're going to drop it Escondido instead."

"This address is outside of the city. Are you ready to copy down the address?"

"Right. I got a pencil. Go ahead."

Flor memorized the address and the time of the delivery as Shabaka dictated it to his truck crew Shabaka switched off the radio.

As the punks put the radio in the truck above her, Flor racked her imagination for a way to escape. With the information on the place and time of the delivery, Able Team had the opportunity to follow the conspiracy to its source. Whatever the cargo — weapons, terrorists, cash or drugs — the cargo and drivers and truck would provide another lead in breaking the puzzle of the gang siege that terrorized Los Angeles.

But Flor knew she must escape silently, secretly. If Shabaka suspected he had been overheard by a federal agent, he would change the location of the delivery.

How could she escape? She had seen the punks lock both the big cargo door and the office door.

If she left the darkness under the truck, she risked an instant firefight.

If she stayed under the truck and waited, she chanced the punks discovering her.

Flor decided to take the greatest risk, to wait until the punks and their leader left the garage, then drop away from the truck when the opportunity came.

She prayed that the truck would slow for a moment at some point on the route to the town on the Mexican border. Hitting the asphalt at a high speed would not be pleasant…

A voice interrupted her thoughts.

"What's that under the truck?" one punk asked another.

A Kalashnikov rifle gripped in his right hand, a black punk got down on his hands and knees to peer under the cargo truck.

Flor shot him in the face. She scrambled from under the truck and grabbed the AK from his still-twitching hand. Snapping down the safety lever to semiauto, Flor put a single shot through the chest of the other punk as he struggled to unsling the AK on his shoulder.

A brown-skinned youth ran down the stairs. Flor put a ComBloc slug through the center of his chest.

Running around the truck, she came face to face with another Chicano punk. Without raising the Kalashnikov in her hands, she jerked the trigger twice, the first slug smashing through his crotch, the second slug striking him in the top of his head as he doubled over in agony.

Without the strange drug supplied by Shabaka, the punks knew fear. They struggled to aim their rifles with shaking hands as a barefooted young woman in a shimmering dress ran through their midst, killing them.

A sentry at the door turned at the sound of the shots and raised his rifle. He saw the woman with the Kalashnikov. Sighting, he fired his M-16.

Another punk chose that moment to rush the woman. Swinging a machete, he attacked. Flor blocked the blade with the barrel of the Soviet autorifle, then the punk's head exploded with the impact of a 5.56mm slug.

Dodging from the mist of brains and blood, Flor saw another youth rushing her. She threw herself sideways, felt her shoulder hit a truck tire. A blast deafened her and showered her with chips of enamel paint from the truck. Kicking out, she tripped the charging punk.

Flor extended the rifle with one hand. With the muzzle against his face, she fired. The flash illuminated an expression of surprise and confusion as the slug smashed through the youth's eye socket.

Rolling, she gained the cover of a few crates and cardboard boxes against one wall. She shoved through the boxes as slugs pocked the wall around her.

She clicked the Kalashnikov's fire selector down to full-auto and sighted on a muzzle-flash. A burst sent a punk staggering backward.

A dead guy sprawled only an arm's reach away. Flor grabbed his shirt and pulled him into the boxes. From the corpse, she took a web belt hung with AK mags and a .357 Magnum pistol. She took one of the magazines out and held it ready as she searched for targets.

She recognized the voice of the black man, Shabaka. "All of you. Fire there," she heard. "All at once. She's in there."

Spraying slugs at the voice, she dived through cardboard, felt her shoulder hit a heavy crate. Autofire punched the walls and concrete floor as the surviving punks tried to kill her with wild, unaimed bursts.

She took cover behind the heavy crate and waited. She felt several slugs hit the crate, but the two-by-fours and the contents stopped the slugs. She waited, silent, not moving.

"Manuel," Shabaka called out again. "Go take a look."

"Let's shoot her some more first," Manuel answered, then emptied another magazine into the clutter of boxes. Slugs ricocheted and fragmented on the concrete.

Flor felt high-velocity metal rip through one of her legs. But she did not cry out or move, not even as the blood flowed and the pain came. She waited. As the shooting continued, she dropped out the AK's magazine and put in the full magazine with thirty rounds. Counting the one round in the chamber of the AK, she had thirty-one shots.

Then she checked her wound. With her fingers, she found where a tiny bit of metal had hit her leg. Exhaling hard against the pain, she pressed on her flesh and felt the piece of metal in her leg. She would not let the injury slow her.

Shotgun blasts threw cardboard and bits of wood everywhere. Finally, Shabaka stopped the barrage. "She's dead! Now get the body and find out who she was."

The punks searched for her.

Alone on the killing floor, with the rifles of the gang poised ready to take her life away, Flor waited.