Deathbites

3

July 8, 1530 hours, Smyrna, Georgia

The attack on Elwood Industries went off like the well-planned military campaign that it was. The only thing that separated it from actual war was the fact that heavily armed, well-trained thugs were going up against unarmed civilians.

At precisely 1530, three trucks stopped on the three access roads to Elwood Industries and set up roadblocks. Men in coveralls halted traffic and told drivers there would be a half-hour delay while a crew located a large gas leak.

At 1532, a man and a woman in a stolen telephone-company truck went down an access hatch and cut the lines to Elwood Industries and all the neighboring plants. When an off-duty security guard stopped to pass the time of day, the man and woman took turns practicing their karate blows. Then they stuffed the body into the access space and replaced the hatch cover.

The Elwood building was surrounded precisely on schedule, at 1540. Two minutes later, three teams of four men each went into the building by its three different entrances.

At the front entrance, the receptionist's smile died when she saw the two M-16s and the double-barreled shotgun carried by the three terrorists who followed Aya Jishin. Jishin's hands were empty, but that did not make her look any less menacing than the others.

"Where do I find Lao?" Jishin demanded.

The receptionist turned white.

Jishin grabbed her arm, held it over the edge of the desk and broke it with a single blow.

"Where?" Jishin asked.

"The end of corridor three on the right," the receptionist screamed.

"That's better," Jishin said and strode out of the reception area, leaving her henchmen to kill the receptionist.

The one with the shotgun blasted her face into gory bits.

Jishin found corridor three and marched grimly to the end. Gunshots sounded elsewhere in the building. Doors in corridor three began to open and heads poked out of doorways.

"Get back in your offices," Jishin shouted.

A fat balding man stepped out in front of the striding terrorist.

"What's this all about?" he demanded.

"Just do as you're told," Jishin ordered.

The man did not move.

"I demand an immediate answer."

Jishin had been forced to come to a halt by the fat form blocking her way.

"What do you do here that you can demand anything?" Jishin countered in her hoarse voice.

The man grinned in the knowledge of his own power. "I'm the vice-president and the comptroller here. And who do you think you are?"

"Then you aren't a researcher?"

"You seem slow to get the message."

"Then we don't need you," Jishin told him. Her fists blurred and the fat man screamed.

For a moment the only sound that could be heard in the corridor was the whack, whack, whack of fists smashing meat. The vice-president and comptroller slid down the wall, leaving a streak of red. He died in a large heap on the floor.

Doors slammed. Jishin was alone in the corridor, except for the three terrorists who had followed her into the reception room.

"Go down this hall," she told them. "If the person is a researcher, leave him for me, if not kill him. Move."

They moved, grinning in anticipation of more targets for their weapons.

Shots sounded from another portion of the building.

"George," Jishin commanded, "tell those trigger-happy slobs to wait until you've sorted them before they start shooting people who don't resist."

George lowered his shotgun and went to obey orders. He was clearly irked that he had to put aside his work to straighten out the amateurs.

"Don't you two start without me," he barked at his fellow jackals.

The door at the end of corridor three was locked. Jishin used a front kick to smash the catch. The door swung back with so much force that the knob smashed the plaster wall. A diminutive Oriental woman looked up from one of the electronics workbenches. She seemed more curious than startled. Jishin tried to place the country of origin, but could not. The small woman looked Vietnamese.

"Where's Dr. Lao?" the terrorist leader demanded.

Although the small face retained its Oriental calm, Jishin detected a flicker of amusement in the eyes. The hands continued to solder small parts.

"Dr. Lao's busy and doesn't wish to be disturbed," the woman said. Much to Jishin's surprise, the English had the accenting given by Japanese.

Jishin had her concentration broken by a heavy dose of firing somewhere in the building. If those long-noses did not learn discipline soon, she would kill them herself. A deep boom derailed her train of thought. She knew that nothing her forces carried spoke with such authority.

She reached into a coverall pocket, pulled out a compact communicator and hit the red broadcast button.

"Is the perimeter patrol on channel?" she asked.

"Perimeter patrol leader here," the small unit answered almost immediately.

"We're under attack. Move the perimeter force in-for backup," Jishin ordered.

"Move in, roger."

She did not bother acknowledging, but put the communicator back into her coveralls.

"Roger," she snorted to herself. "Baka!"

The small woman overheard the muttered "fool!" and laughed. "It must be terrible to attract such incompetent people to serve such a worthy mistress," she sympathized. Her Japanese was so heavily inferior addressing superior that it was insulting.

A mere technician would never have thought to use language in that sarcastic fashion.

"Youare Dr. Lao," Jishin stated.

"So I am," the woman agreed.

Jishin strode to the computer terminal in one corner of the lab.

"What is your access code?" she demanded.

"None of your business," Dr. Lao told her in a quiet, calm voice that was still faintly tinged with amusement.

Jishin sighed. "I suppose I must do some persuading."

She walked around the edge of the workbench and approached Lao. Lao slid off the stool she was using and stood waiting. She seemed expectant, not alarmed.

Jishin noticed the relaxed stance, the careful placement of the feet. She knew she was meeting a martial artist, but was uncertain of the art practiced. The style hardly mattered. Someone that frail was not going to be able to block ashotokankarate blow.

Jishin launched a feint at Lao's head, followed by a fist to the chest. It was nothing fancy, but it would serve to demonstrate that nothing could stop a well-launched blow.

The chest was not there. The fist went by the slim woman. There was a tug on Jishin's sleeve, her forward momentum increased and she stumbled into a wall. She straightened up and shook her head. Now she knew the fighting style. This small twerp was about to die because she trusted aikido. Useless bunk, it meant standing around and waiting for the other person to attack.

Jishin executed a roundhouse kick, followed by a snap punch toward the face, followed by a knee lift to the groin. She had never seen aikido effectively used against a determined triple attack. The roundhouse kick received the nudge that Jishin knew it would. She was braced to counter it. She used her counterforce to launch the blow toward the face. The small aikido fighter spun away from the blow, receiving the knee lift to the rump instead of the groin. She stumbled into the wall.

Jishin laughed and kicked the small rear end, sending her opponent slamming harder into the wall. Lao hit the plaster with a loud slapping sound, but instead of bouncing back into Jishin's waiting hands, she spun away along the wall. Lao stopped about ten feet away, obviously dizzy and confused.

Jishin closed in rapidly, noting with satisfaction the cut over the scientist's right eye. The terrorist promised herself that before she was through, she would use that cut to peel away the entire damned face. Jishin felt great; it was a relief to find someone who could put up even a bit of a fight.

Jishin's punch was thrown too rapidly. Another tug at her sleeve and she spun from her own momentum. Suddenly Jishin's back was to her opponent, who quickly planted a small foot on her rump and shoved the terrorist into the wall so hard she broke plaster with her face.

Jishin bounced off the wall straight at the small scientist. The terrorist's fist shot out but it never connected; Lao deflected it up and outward, using the force picked up from her attacker to spin and plant a small fist in Jishin's armpit. The shot would have rendered most fighters unconscious, but it merely made Jishin stagger back and plant her feet firmly, ready to be rushed, but waiting for her head to clear.

Lao did not make the mistake of rushing an experienced fighter simply because she was groggy. The aikido fighter waited, calm, composed, just out of reach. There was no attempt to escape or call for help. For the first time Jishin wondered if she could beat the diminutive woman who stood, eyeing her curiously.

There was more gunfire, but Jishin forced herself to concentrate on the job at hand. She had a killing to perform. There was no way she would allow her troops to discover that such a small person had even slowed her down. Jishin erupted with a savage yell and a high kick at Lao's chest.

The kick was deflected with a small hard fist to the calf. Jishin found her leg painful to stand on. Even more painful was the way the small woman stood, patiently waiting to see what would happen next.

The door to the lab was splintered off the frame, falling flat on the floor. Nogi entered, closely followed by two of the experienced terrorists.

"Shoot her," Jishin told her followers.

As soon as they hit the ground, the members of Able Team cut parachute harnesses and let the breeze play with the empty chutes. They took off toward the building from which emerged screams and the sound of gunfire.

Two of the perimeter guards had moved in to investigate the parachutes. There was no mistaking the fit figures in olive drabs from the terrorists in coveralls. The two terrorists stopped and steadied their M-16s on target.

Gadgets checked over his shoulder and saw the two dropping into firing position. He shouted the one word that he knew would bring instant reaction from his companions.

"Ambush!"

Instantly, the three running warriors dived for the ground. Hastily fired .223 tumblers swarmed over their heads, humming their sound of angry destruction. Gadgets did a shoulder roll to the left, coming back to his feet in a crouch, facing the enemy. Lyons and Pol landed in opposite ditches, eyes peeled for other terrorists.

Gadgets's Uzi, without the folding shoulder stock, easily yanked free of the clip on his left thigh. He worked the first bullet into the chamber and acquired the target. Before the would-be assassins could readjust their aims to allow for the sudden scattering of their targets, a figure eight of 9mm manglers had blown them both backward onto the road. Able Team was on its way again before terrorist boot heels stopped scraping the pavement.

The three warriors took the front door into the reception area. One look at the minced body of the receptionist told them they were already late.

"I hope we can still save some of them," Pol rumbled.

They ran through the reception area without slowing, turning left to find themselves in a large, open office area. Four men and a woman in coveralls, held captive an office force of eleven. Lyons broke right, seeking an angle of fire. Pol and Gadgets dropped flat in the doorway. Gadgets's Uzi spoke first, a three-round burst that took the legs out from under the terrorist closest to the captives. The stutter of the Uzi grabbed attention away from Lyons. Automatic rifles stopped zeroing in on the large blond man and swung back toward the doorway.

Politician's M-203 spoke next. A single, carefully aimed shot entered a terrorist's left eye and blossomed in a small fountain of gore from the crown of the head.

Terrorist bullets, fired in panic, began chopping up the doorway. That won Lyons time to flank the terrorists. He stood where they formed a row of targets, with the captives on one side and the doorway holding Pol and Gadgets on the other. The Atchisson Assault 12 shotgun spoke twice with booming authority.

The two goons closest to Lyons disintegrated from the waist up. They became a barrage of chunky red debris. The one farthest from Lyons remained recognizable as a human being, but she was just as dead.

"Dr. Lao, where is she?" Lyons barked at the terrified staff.

His commanding voice rallied several workers from their state of shock and bewilderment. Three hands pointed back past the reception area. "She's in the end office, third hallway."

"Thanks. Now, get out of here," Pol commanded. He pointed to a fire exit at the end of the room.

Pol and Gadgets then followed Lyons who was already on his way toward the other side of the building.

The first corridor they encountered had a single terrorist guard at one end. She lounged against the wall at the mouth of the hall, her 16-gauge shotgun pointing down the passageway, keeping victims confined to their offices until they could be questioned. At that moment it was the wrong way for the shotgun to be pointing.

Gadgets sent three bullets through the terrorist's brain. She died before she realized she was in trouble.

A half-gagged shout of pain came from the next hallway. Able Team rounded the corner on the run. Three terrorists were questioning a prisoner. Two had M-16s slung over their shoulders and were holding the arms of a man in a white coat. A third had the tip of a pump action, 12-gauge Marlin Glenfield pointed at the man's face. A trickle of blood ran down the victim's chin from where the muzzle had knocked out a tooth. The lab worker's knees had buckled and much of his weight was being supported by the two who were holding his arms.

"Tell us again what you do here," the holder of the shotgun was demanding.

The three terrorists were having so much fun, they did not hear the other armed force until Able Team was on them. Lyons thrust the warm barrel of the Atchisson under the questioner's chin.

The two who were holding the victim let go and tried to swing the M-16s from their shoulders. It was a futile effort. Pol smashed his M-203 into the temple of one, killing him instantly as fragments of skull lacerated animal brain. Gadgets crushed the other's windpipe with his fist, leaving the goon to roll on the floor, choking on his own tissue and blood.

Lyons's shotgun was thrust under the chin so hard that the man was stretched to the tips of his toes. He tried bringing his shotgun around to bear on Lyons.

"Don't lose your head," Lyons told him.

The goon's shotgun continued to swing. Lyons's finger tightened on the trigger. He decorated the corridor with atomized head.

"Move," Lyons instructed the saved man in the white coat. He ran for cover.

A cluster of whizzes sent Able Team diving for safety inside one of the offices.

"Reinforcements," Lyons guessed. "You two find Lao. I'll keep the lice off your asses."

"Cover me," Gadgets told him.

Lyons threw himself on his stomach and squirmed out the door. Before the hail of lead could drop to his level, he sent two blasts from the Atchisson back up the hall. He was rewarded with a chorus of screams from dying terrorists.

While Lyons fired Gadgets dashed across the hall and booted open the opposite office door. He glanced inside to make sure it was empty and then retreated back to the office where his teammates waited. Politician had an HE grenade with an impact detonator loaded into the launcher. As soon as Gadgets was out of the line of fire, he fired the grenade into the far wall of the opposite office.

Lyons sent two more discouraging messages up the hallway while both Gadgets and Pol crossed the corridor.

Two quick kicks enlarged the hole in the opposite wall and made it easy to climb through. Pol and Gadgets found themselves in a lab oh the third corridor.

The two warriors ran for the door.

Gadgets tossed a fragmentation grenade up the third corridor to discourage two terrorists. As soon as the blast came, he and Pol raced the other way to the last doorway in the hall. There was no door left to worry about.

Pol jumped into the room, crouched, ready for action.

By the time Gadgets was through the doorway, terrorists were pouring lead down the hallway after him. The Uzi sent half a clip back up the hall. Those terrorists who were able retreated to the shelter of the cross corridor.

When Jishin told the terrorists to shoot Lao, the computer expert sized up the three additional menaces that had entered her lab. The one in the lead had a seamed face that had met too many blades. He carried an ugly submachine gun, a Japanese-made SCK model 65. The other two had Army-surplus M-16s. She knew she must act quickly or be shot.

The hands wrapped around the SCK were callused from karate. That gave Lao her inspiration. She spoke quickly in Japanese before the terrorists could obey the command.

"This frail old lady needs bullets to help her. I had just kicked her ass when you interrupted."

The plaster on Jishin's face was incontrovertible proof of Lao's words. Two men quickly turned to hide their grins. The cut-up one did not bother. He laughed out loud. Jishin's eyes narrowed with humiliation and fury.

"Maybe women are too soft to become true karateka," the scarred one muttered.

Jishin's voice was like ice. "Perhaps our worthy karate senseiwould condescend to demonstrate to this student?"

Nogi sobered immediately. He had gone too far and his leader would not forgive this loss of face. But Nogi's own dignity would not let him back down at that point. He handed his weapon to Jishin.

"I will try, though if she has given you difficulties, I will need the blessings of the gods to preserve my own skin," he said.

Jishin laughed at him, confirming the knowledge that there would be no forgiveness from her. He knew she would not kill him as long as she needed him to train these stupid, long-nosed recruits, but the knowledge brought him no comfort at all.

Nogi, karate instructor and trainer of killers, advanced almost casually on his prey. He looked as if he was still getting ready to fight when his foot flashed out like a bolt of lightning. The kick was intended to make a field goal with Lao's head.

Lao bent away from the kick and her small hands grabbed the extended ankle. Then she moved in a large circle. Her left foot described a graceful arc ending in Nogi's exposed crotch.

Jishin decided that losing the karate instructor was a small price to pay for getting Lao out of the way. She brought up the SCK, but pride prevented her from pulling the trigger. She had to regain face by pulverizing that little woman.

In the moment that Jishin hesitated, the decision slipped through her fingers.

Two men in combat fatigues burst through the doorway. One turned back to cover their tails while the other faced the room, bringing his automatic weapon to bear on the two startled terrorists with the M-16s. Jishin felt a momentary pang of envy that someone opposing her should be able to command such fine warriors.

Jishin had the SCK in firing position. She was already targeted on the intruder.

As Jishin squeezed the trigger to cut up the interlopers with 9mm parabellums, she was jolted forward, causing the deadly blast to chew up flooring. The wooden stool, which Lao had been sitting on when Jishin broke into the lab, bounced off her back and clattered around her feet.

The two terrorists with the M-16s brought them up with well-trained precision. Well-trained precision was too slow. Blancanales already had a figure eight of .223 tumblers chewing into them and throwing them onto their backs. Dying fingers sent sporadic bursts into the ceiling.

Gadgets's Uzi sent another batch of death chattering up the hallway, teaching caution to the terrorist reinforcement.

Throwing the stool had taken Lao's attention off Nogi. In spite of the pain he was suffering, he got off the floor and hit her with a quick ax-hand across the upper vertebrae. It was not sufficient to kill the small woman, but it rendered her almost unconscious. Nogi held her for a shield against Politician's firepower.

When Jishin recovered her balance, she snatched up the stool and heaved it backward through the lab's window.

Pol noticed her maneuvers peripherally, but he was also absorbing the drama between Nogi and Lao. The problem of getting the small research scientist away from the two karatekawas not an easy one. He decided to eliminate the terrorist in the open first. As he brought the M-203 to bear on Jishin, she dropped the empty SCK and made a head-first dive out the window. He swung the weapon back on the male.

The man was a wily fighter. Although he was larger than his semiconscious victim, he kept dodging and weaving behind her, never offering a clear target for as much as a half second. As he did so, he edged toward the broken window.

Politician let go of his weapon and made his own headfirst dive across a laboratory table. Nogi had the choice of abandoning his hostage, or finding himself in a melee with an aikido expert and a warrior of unknown abilities.

Nogi shoved his hostage into Politician's flight path, and joined his leader in trying to earn his wings from a first-floor window.

Politician could not change the course of his headfirst dive. He could only sweep Lao to him and roll so that he landed on his back with the woman on top of him. She was small, but she was an incredibly compact bundle of human being. The impact knocked the wind out of Politician.

Lao had been surprised to see the savvy, white-haired warrior react with such total disregard for his own safety. She lay sprawled on top of Politician, collecting her wits.

Gadgets fired his Uzi.

"They're pushing a steel bench up the hall ahead of them," he called to Pol.

As Politician and Gadgets vanished along their newly created cross corridor, Lyons waited until a terrorist looked around the corner and then opened the goon's head with a choice selection of double-ought and number-two lead balls. With the terrorists at the head of the hall taken care of, Lyons walked to the back wall of the office and put his fist through it.

It took only seconds to punch and kick an opening through the plasterboard into the adjacent office. Two karate front kicks took one of the two-by-four studs out of his way. He stepped through and opened a door to the first corridor.

The corridor served the rarified and protected areas where the company computer worked. Several technicians were being forced at gunpoint to make the computer disgorge information for the benefit of terrorists who would rather destroy than build.

Lyons's right hand went to his hip and came back filled with Colt Python. He stood in the doorway to the computer room and let the Python sting each head whose body held a gun. Four terrorists had their tapes erased in three seconds. Only the last reacted swiftly enough to get a shot off — it went harmlessly into the ceiling.

The bewildered technicians stood motionless, staring at head-smashed terrorists. Lyons stood looking at the ceiling, where the blast from the dying terrorist's gun had removed an acoustic tile. There was a four-foot crawl space above the tiles. Before the computer technicians could recover their wits, the large blond man who had just exterminated their captors leaped onto a high-speed tape-drive cabinet. From there he pushed a couple of sound tiles out of the way and disappeared into the ceiling. He said nothing to them.

When Lyons reached an end wall, he carefully removed a ceiling tile and looked down. He was over the cross corridor. Twenty feet along, four terrorists were peering down the second hallway.

Lyons pulled a frag from his web belt, held it to the count of three and tossed it into the midst of the four.

"What's..." began one man as the grenade fell past his eyes. That was as far as any of them got.

Lyons leaped from the crawl space and advanced toward the third corridor, Atchisson in debating position.

When Gadgets announced that the terrorists were coming up the hall behind a shield, Lao rolled off Pol and the Able Team warrior leaped to his feet.

Lao Ti had given herself up for dead the moment Jishin had broken into the laboratory. As all effective warriors must do, she considered each second of life a postponement of the inevitable. Now these two strange fighters had bought her an entirely new existence. Suddenly life seemed to sparkle as it never had before. Although for twenty-eight of her thirty-two years she had been trained in the warriors' way, never before had her life been so close to being over. The newlife was a gloriously bright and profound thing. She savored it deeply.

Blancanales was too preoccupied with the sounds of gunfire and the advancing enemy to really appreciate the situation, but he was very aware of what was happening in Lao's mind. It was an experience he had felt after many close encounters with death, but it was a feeling that was impossible to share.

As Pol dashed to retrieve the M-203, he introduced himself and Gadgets.

Politician snatched up the M-203 and shoved a frag into the launcher as he ran for the doorway. He peered out at the steel bench, slowly advancing the length of the hall. It was less than twenty feet from the broken door to the lab.

Pol aimed carefully and shot the grenade over the top of the bench. It went too far and did only minor damage to the terrorists.

"Get ready to crouch and run," Pol told Gadgets.

Politician plucked an HE with a contact detonator from his bandolier. He shot the charge straight into the side of the steel table. Pol, Gadgets and Lao ducked, opened their mouths and covered their ears against the shock wave that bounced back down the hall. As soon as the shock wave hit them, they were up and running down the hall toward the steel workbench.

Gadgets, who was in the lead, suddenly yelled.

"Hit dirt!"

The three of them dropped as the recognizable booming of the Atchisson Assault 12 filled the air with noise and a hail of death. When the booming stopped, Gadgets and Pol shouted and then popped over the top of the steel barrier, ready to finish off any surviving terrorists. There were none.

In the silence after the shooting, they could hear the sound of a siren outside.

Lao, Gadgets and Politician joined Lyons in the cross corridor.

Lyons dug an id wallet out of a pocket.

"Let's go see if this damn thing works," Lyons said.

Officer Jim Gillies of the Atlanta Police Department was the first on the scene of a reported gun battle. He had just stopped his cruiser in front of Elwood Electronic Industries when four people emerged from the front door. Three wore combat fatigues; a small, Oriental female wore a white smock. The men carried the meanest collection of automatic weapons that the young officer had ever seen.

He later tried to tell his fellow officers about the experience: "One was a fully-automatic 12-gauge, honest to God. I decided not to bother drawing the .32 the department gives us. Those weapons made me feel like I was carrying a peashooter. I sort of wanted to hide it. You know what I mean?"

He paused, but none of his brother officers told him that they knew what he meant.

"Well, before I could get out, they all got into my squad car. In the front seat, right beside me, was the meanest looking dude I've ever seen. With eyes like those, I don't see why he figured he needed those guns he was carting around.

"He flashed a Justice Department buzzer at me and said, 'The airport.'"

His fellow officers were hooked.

"What the hell did you do?" one demanded.

"I drove them to the bloody airport. What the hell do you think I did?" Gillies replied.

"Those credentials could have been faked," someone pointed out.

Gillies sighed. "You didn't see those men. You didn't see those eyes beside me, and you didn't see those weapons. That buzzer could have been from the Pretoria Department of Sanitation, I would have still driven them to the damn airport.

"The airport security didn't argue either. We picked up a pilot at the gate and went straight to a black jet marked Acme Pest Control, honest to God."

"It was nice working with you," one of the other officers said.

Gillies shrugged. He was not going to try to explain that someone from Washington had already straightened the mess out.