Five Rings of Fire

11

Sam Jackson was the last man to arrive at the school parking lot. He was swinging a small flight bag and swaggering. Lightning Sam Jackson was proud of himself; he had dramatically changed his economic standing. By selling out he had moved up in a world he believed conspired to keep him down.

"You're late," Boering snapped.

But the KGB mole did not look at Jackson. Instead, his eyes were fixed on a man who had been following the large boxer.

Jackson grinned at the mole. "I knew you wouldn't leave without me. I'm prepaid."

He slung his flight bag into the open trunk.

"Who's that behind you?" Boering asked.

"Damned if I know. Some wino who asked me for a buck."

The wino was a squat, roly-poly man whose body looked and smelled as though it had not benefited from a bar of soap or a razor in days. He was wearing an old suit that was a good tailor away from a good fit: in some places it was short, in others it was long. The wino was about to accost the boxer again. Boering stepped forward and the derelict veered toward him.

"Can you give me a buck for a bowl of soup?" the wino slurred. "I haven't had anything to eat all day."

Jackson stepped in front of Boering and gave the pudgy drunk a shove. "Beat it," he said, his voice dripping with contempt.

The wino staggered back a few steps and swayed. He looked at the boxer with loathing.

''No nigger treats me like that,'' he screamed. And then he charged. Fists flailing like windmills, the wino was inches from Jackson when the lightning-quick boxer showed off his reflexes, stepping easily to one side. The attacker went headfirst into the trunk of the car. Jackson laughed and grabbed the man's legs, stuffing the rest of his body into the trunk. He slammed the cover.

"What did you do that for?" Boering snarled.

"I couldn't hit the little shit," Jackson replied. "I'd have killed him."

Boering fished the car keys out of his pocket and unlocked the trunk. Jackson reached in, grabbed and lifted the drunk and deposited him on the ground. The wino curled up in a ball and began sobbing. Jackson gave a short snort of disgust and walked to the limousine, climbing into the front seat. Four of his teammates, three in the back and Zak Wilson in the front, were already in the car.

"Greetings, fellow traitors," he said as he hopped in.

No one answered.

Boering climbed in and started the car. The air conditioner blasted out a stream of cold air. Jackson, Wilson and another athlete looked back as the car pulled away. The lone figure still lay huddled on the parking lot.

Boering drove toward the San Diego Freeway. After covering two blocks he pulled over to the curb and stopped the car. He reached across his passengers and removed what looked like a cheap transistor radio with a short antenna from the glove compartment.

"What's that?" Jackson asked.

"A precaution," Boering replied.

Boering told the athletes to step out on the sidewalk. He approached them with the gadget and carefully scanned them, pointing the antenna at all parts of their bodies.

He came up empty. The KGB agent then turned his attention to the car. When he reached the back of the car, the instrument began to squeal. It took him only ten seconds to find the transmitter. It was fastened magnetically under the bumper. He removed it and opened the trunk. There were no squeals from the baggage or the inside walls of the trunk. However, a quick exploration under the car revealed another transmitter near the back of the vehicle.

"Those CIA types are stupid," Boering spat. "Your drunken friend left us one easy bug to find and then a hard one to find. Did he really think I'd be so stupid as to stop looking when I found the first?''

Cars were stopped nearby for a traffic light. Boering jogged over to one of the vehicles and attached the bugs.

When he returned, Jackson stepped in front of him.

"Wasn't my friend," he said.

"Are you sure?" Boering asked, looking almost amused.

"I'm sure."

Boering poked the transmission detector inside the car and probed around. There was no response. He straightened and retracted the short aerial. He put the device back in the glove compartment as the athletes got back into the car. The KGB man pulled the car back into traffic and onto the approach to the San Diego Freeway.

"Jackson," he said, taking his eyes off the road for a second. "I'm glad he wasn't a friend of yours. He's dead."

Hermann Gadgets Schwarz was lying on the asphalt of the school parking lot as the limousine disappeared from sight. Suddenly he heard three noises — the high-powered distant crack of a rifle, the lower-powered crack of a nearby gun, and the whip-snapping sound of a bullet tearing past his ear.

He didn't wait for other sounds. Rolling to his feet, he took off in a weaving run, hoping to make it to the wall of the nearest building.

There were two more cracks, one distant, one close. A bullet hit the tarmac by Gadgets's feet. It seemed to come from the building he was running toward, but there was no time to change direction. He moved faster, cursing the awkward clothing and padding he wore.

There was another distant rifle sound. No bullet came near Schwarz. He nipped around the edge of the building, cutting himself off from the other school buildings. He glanced up to see if a gun was poking over the edge of the roof. None, so far. Bringing his eyes down, he caught a flash of light from the parking lot between the school buildings and Sunset Boulevard. He threw himself flat just as a string of slugs chewed up brick and glass where he had been standing. Gadgets was thankful for the fool who had put an optic on the submachine gun. The flash from the evening sun had barely given him enough warning.

The distant gun boomed twice more. Gadgets was on his feet and running again to put a building corner between himself and the parking lot. As he ran, he tried to get under the padding to draw his Beretta.

The goon in the parking lot must have emptied his clip. The gun did not start barking again until Gadgets was nearly at the corner. As he pulled around the corner, brick chips stung one ear. He ran full tilt into a KGB executioner.

The guy was wearing a camouflage-green skintight combat suit. He had a bandolier of clips thrown over one shoulder and a quick-release rig. He was holding a Makarov on the other shoulder. In his hands he carried a Kalashnikov AKS74, fitted with a scope.

Gadgets did not even have time to bring his hand out from under the padding. He swung his elbow, connecting solidly with the gunner's windpipe. As the man went down, Gadgets drove his left hand into the goon's jaw. There was a snap, loud and brutal. The man carrying the Communist weapons was dead before he hit the ground.

Gadgets forgot about digging out the Beretta. He hastily tore off the tramp clothes and padding. His own clothes were underneath. He was grateful for the flak jacket's cooling system; without it he would have fried. He threw the bandolier over a shoulder, slipped the Makarov into one of the pockets in his pants and picked up the Kalashnikov. He checked the weapon's magazine, then took off around the corner of the building.

The Able Team member could hear the welcome booming of a Champlin, operated by Blancanales from the top story of the parking garage where they had held off an entire motorcycle gang earlier in the day.

Hitting the pavement, Gadgets brought his head around the corner of the building from a prone position. He hoped to spot the gunners — before the bastards spotted him. A bullet burned air inches from his nose. He'd been spotted. The gunner on the roof of the other school building had wedged himself between the air-conditioner box and the roof of the building, leaving Politician squat to shoot at.

The wing of the building holding the Russian sniper stretched well past the building that was sheltering Schwarz. Trusting his buddy to hold the man pinned, Gadgets retreated. When he had pulled back one hundred feet, he made a dash for the end of the wing of the building sheltering the sniper. It was a gutsy move that paid off. Schwarz made it to the wall before the gunner even got a shot off.

Keeping as close to the wall as possible, Gadgets moved until he found a maintenance ladder leaning against the side of the building, away from the parking lot. As he went up the ladder, he heard the Champlin speak twice, its retorts keeping the KGB killer pinned.

Gadgets crouch-walked to the far side of the air-conditioner housing. The Champlin sounded three more times, but the bullets were missing the mark. Pol seemed to be having difficulty keeping the third member of the KGB hit team pinned down. Gadgets decided to creep over the top of the housing. When he eased his head up, he almost lost it. A rapid burst of fire from the corner of the other school building clanged off metal. He jerked back.

He pulled the Makarov from his pocket and tossed it over the housing. The KGB killer's taut nerves reacted to the flying, dark object as if it were a grenade. The highly trained specialist flipped himself around the housing in a fraction of a second — right into a stream of 5.45mm slugs fired by Gadgets, who had taken off on the run as soon as he tossed the Makarov. The gunner's face was turned into a bloody, shredded mess.

The next logical thing to do was to throw himself flat, out of the line of fire of the remaining KGB guncocks. But the Able Team fighter was not feeling logical. Lyons wasn't around to be hard-assed and unpredictable, so Gadgets took over. He kept running straight at the Kalashnikov AKS74 barrel that was swinging to bear on him from the corner of the other building. He ran straight off the edge of the building.

Letting gravity grip him and drop him down, Gadgets fired the rest of the clip toward the building, aiming just above the submachine-gun barrel. Two of his bullets chewed at a piece of arm.

Gadgets landed easily from the ten-foot drop, rolling to his left as soon as he touched down.

Knowing that his target was down and rolling, the wounded KGB killer took two seconds to change clips, then charged around the corner, finger tightening on the trigger of the submachine gun. His steps suddenly turned into a rubber-legged stagger as his right arm and left leg exploded, sending pieces of flesh and bone airborne. The scum's face slammed into a brick wall, changing the features from ugly to uglier. Gadgets had heard the rumbling sounds of Politician's big Champlin and he knew that once again he owed his life to a fellow member of Able Team.

Politician had seen the attack coming and he had prepared himself for three quick, well-placed shots. His aim was deadly.

Gadgets scrambled to his feet and walked over to examine the last opponent, now lying dead in a puddle of blood. Gadgets searched for intel into the ambushers. He tore open the camo-fatigues. Underneath was battle armor that look like Kevlar. It had done little to discourage the entry of a 500-grain avenger. He rolled the corpse over. It was little consolation to the wearer, but the jacket had prevented the spent slug and gore from exiting.

Gadgets looked at the face from quarter view. It was disturbingly familiar. Puzzled, he walked to the man he had killed with his hands. That face was not familiar. He started for the ladder to the roof of the other building and met Pol on the way.

"Thanks," he said. "I owe you one."

Pol shrugged off his friend's talk. "Think you'd do the same for me."

The pair stepped around the air-conditioner housing and rolled the body onto its back. The soft cap came off. Long, blond hair spilled out.

"A woman," Pol said.

"A bitch," Gadgets muttered.

The two men quit the battlefield.