Five Rings of Fire

6

Terney reached for the radio. Lyons threw it at the elderly officer's stomach. As the cop moved to deal with the flying object, Lyons popped him with a solid hook in the ribs, knocking him toward the policewoman's .38. The young woman sidestepped to avoid her co-worker. She got set to fire.

Lyons had not pulled his Beretta; a shoot-out would have been suicidal. He had to get someone on his side, if even by force. He made a low dive and hit the woman below the knees, dropping her hard to the floor. Then he felt a monster hand clutch his shoulder.

"Guns away,'' a voice bellowed.

Lyons looked up. The giant in combat garb was standing over him. "Sorry, Lyons," he said, a sheepish grin crossing his face. "I checked with Archer. You're okay."

"Took you long enough to figure that out," Lyons snarled. "I could be dead meat."

"This isn't exactly my territory," the man explained. "I'm Tim Sanders, Commander, DeltaBlue Light Team. That's the code name for an instant-response team the FBI's put together. I'm here with Braddock to coordinate Olympic security.''

"Instant response could be a little faster," Lyons said.

Sanders laughed. "I deserve that," he admitted. "Took me a second to contact Archer."

"Who's Archer?" Braddock demanded, fury forming lines across his forehead.

"Archer's a Fed," Lyons said. "Sanders, is your team here?"

"All here for a briefing. Chopper, too."

"My team's in trouble. Can you help?"

"Glad to."

"Let's move," Lyons said.

Lyons was so angry he felt like slamming the door. He couldn't. He had already kicked it in.

Two minutes later, Lyons, Sanders and the men of Delta Blue Light Team were airborne. Lyons gave Sanders a quick briefing.

"I left two men to check on the security of the gymnasts at UCLA. Also, a Babette Pavlovski clone was going to show up and draw the termites out of the woodwork. My men buzzed me. By the time I got to reply, there was no answer."

The specialist nodded.

Lyons brooded.

Babette, Gadgets and Pol were weaving toward the brick face of the multilevel parking structure. They snapped shots at the enemy. The Riding Devils advanced, chewing them up the ass with wild gunfire. Gadgets tried again to reach Lyons. A bullet tore the small communicator from his hand.

They ran along the side of the building and turned in the exit ramp.

"Watch the metal spikes," Babette cautioned. "They cut the tires of cars trying to sneak in the exits." Her voice was spliced between deep gasps of breath.

The team stepped over the metal plates and pounded onto the concrete ramp. Pol shot out instructions. "Right to the top. We don't want them to flank us."

The ominous throaty roar of large powerful motorcycles came from the parking lot the trio had just abandoned.

"They won't drive over the spikes," Gadgets said. "They'll come in the entry at the north end of the building. We've got to get to the middle ramp to go to the top."

"You two stop at the first ramp," Politician said, "and cover me. They'll need some slowing down."

The three took off in another sprint, hoping to reach the ramps before the bikers entered the first level. At the first ramp, Babette scrambled partway up, turned and covered Gadgets and Blancanales. Gadgets stopped, crouching behind the wheel of a van. Pol went fifty feet farther before moving behind a parked car, just as the first motorcyclist appeared at the end of the aisle.

Pol watched as eight bikers wheeled into the garage. Each man had a handgun out, ready for action. The bikers rode in single file, moving slowly. Blancanales knew more bikers were in the area but could not pinpoint where — the noise of the bikes in the garage was deafening. The Able Team ace had a hunch that the building was surrounded, that the eight inside were just the stopper in the bottle.

Instinct grabbed at his guts. He turned in time to see a Riding Devil lining him up with an automatic. Pol dropped flat as an entire clip of .45s snapped angrily over his head. He fired a burst under the car at the tire of the lead bike. The tire blew and the rider went down in front of the other bikers. They spread and stopped. Their handguns were up.

The bastard who had fired on him was now edging toward the grounded Able Team member. Rolling and lining up at the same swift instant, Politician laced a burst that tore up the killer's chest. The biker grabbed the area of his heart as hot blood spat wildly from the pulverized organ. Pol rolled back to his original position. Again spotting from underneath the cars, he saw the fallen biker lift his machine off himself as he struggled to rise. He didn't have a chance. Pol triggered his Ingram, and a burst blasted the bastard under the chin. Jawbone collided with brain matter in a gory smear of death.

Reacting with the speed of a man half his age, Politician surged to his feet and sprinted between parked cars and the outside retaining wall. Bullets whistled by him. He stopped behind a car, fired, then moved on. After half a dozen cars, Pol came to a pickup with a high cab. It was backed against the retaining wall, blocking his path. Keeping low, Blancanales moved back toward the center roadway, his legs churning to carry him with speed.

The bikers had all moved past their fallen buddies. Pol took out their new lead rider with a burst to the side. Bullets tore, chewed. The man screamed but his cry was lost in the din. The bikers, caught behind the corpse, stopped. There they waited for the man they felt they had trapped. Pol wastrapped, but he held the key to freedom.

He reached into the gym bag he had strapped around himself and pulled out two grenades. He let both spoons go and threw one, then the other. The first exploded from its landing pad on the floor, the second burst while it was still in the air.

As the double blast rocked the area, Politician beat a hasty retreat. A quick glance over his shoulder told him that not all the Riding Devils had been leveled by the grenades.

The Able Team warrior brought up the Ingram. It spat one bullet then locked open. Empty clip. There was no time to change clips. No time to draw the Beretta. He turned his will to live into speed. He ran.

Gadgets Schwarz peered around the side of a car he had just taken shelter behind. Two bursts from an Ingram whizzed by him. Looking to one side, he saw Babette sitting on the ramp. She had just fired the machine pistol. A biker was lying under his fallen bike, his weapon still aimed in Gadgets's direction, his face bloodied, eaten by bullets. Gadgets nodded thanks to the female sharpshooter. He then leaned forward and saw Politician running for his life.

The lead biker was set to fire when Gadgets, in a careful two-handed firing stance, let go a single shot. The bullet sailed perfectly, nailing the biker in the hollow of the throat. He went down in a heap, the bike crashing on top of him, crushing the bones of a man already dead.

Blancanales headed for the safety of a parked car. Gadgets held his ground, prepared to meet the two remaining Devils. The bikers had guns raised and were coasting toward him. Thumbing the selector to triple shot, he quickly took care of the biker on the left, dropping him with a solid punch to the chest. Gadgets feinted a move toward the parked cars on the right, then dived to the left. Bullets flew past, inches from his arm. As his body bounced off the garage floor, he fired the Beretta. The bullets connected with deadly results. The man clutched at the remnants of his face. In seconds he was dead.

Gadgets rolled back behind the car. Pol, also behind the shield provided by a car, changed clips. The enemy gave them no time to breathe.

A barrage of bullets announced the arrival of the ground troops who had been scattered around the lawns of the campus.

Blancanales punched a bullet into the eye of one of the bikers attacking on foot. He continued to fire at maximum distance for the Ingram. Two more fell. The rest scattered behind cars. By the time the Devils had defensive positions, Pol and Gadgets were on the offensive.

They borrowed bikes from two of the fallen bikers with the promise of repayment sometime after never.

Gadgets throttled up to where Babette was waiting.

He stopped, giving Pol time to catch up. Gadgets motioned for Babette to swing on the pillion. The feisty woman stayed put, waiting. Gadgets then heard what she was waiting for: more mounted bikers were moving inside.

"To the top," Gadgets screamed.

Pol nodded and took off.

About a minute later the first level was filled with the deafening drone of motorcycles. The bikers raced around the corner of the ramp. Babette sprayed them with the rest of the Ingram's clip then ran and leaped onto the seat behind Gadgets. There were screams of agony as the dead and wounded fell and bikes collided with flesh and bone. Gadgets let the bike loose, leaving carnage and a patch of rubber behind. They drove to the open top-story of the building. Pol was waiting for them at the head of the ramp.

"Babette bought us some time," Gadget explained.

Babette, her arms wrapped snugly around Gadgets, took a long look at both men.

"Okay," she said. "I've let you tackle me off a bicycle, almost get me killed, take me on this terror mission. Do I get your names?"

"How impolite," Pol said, laughing. "I should have introduced myself between streams of gunfire. Rosario Blancanales. Politician to friends."

"Hermann Schwarz at your service. But since you've got your arms around me, call me Gadgets."

The two men took a calm second out of a stormy battle to drink in the beauty of Babette Pavlovski. The phony wig had fallen off her head during the battle, leaving her short, blond hair looking wild. Her face was shiny with perspiration, but there was a classic beauty that no amount of dishevelment could conceal. And to boot she could fight. Like a soldier.

Pol broke the momentary silence.

"Did you get through to Ironman?"

"No. I lost the radio. Shot out of my hand."

"Then we hold out here until help arrives," Blancanales concluded. "And with this much noise shaking the garage, someone's bound to arrive soon."

"If they come up here," Gadgets said, "they've got to come up these ramps. We should be able to hold them. How much ammo's left?"

A combined count logged four clips for the Ingrams, including the fresh clips in the guns, and seven 15-bullet clips for the Berettas. They also had two grenades.

"We're fine," Pol joked. "We've got six more bullets than there are yahoos out there."

They could hear the thunder made by the Riding Devils biking across the level below them.

"These two bikes are the only cover we've got," Gadgets said. The two men dropped the machines on their sides. The trio flattened out behind them, using the sparse cover to best advantage.

A head soon poked around the corner of the cement ramp. The trio held their fire for a split second and the head jerked back out of sight. The man yelled.

"They're holding out at the top."

"I think the party's over," Pol quipped.

"It's just beginning," Gadgets countered as an assault rifle was eased around the curve of the wall, bearing in on the three fighters. Slowly a head followed the rifle around the corner. Politician fired. He put a single shot into an eye.

The sound of cars, their gas pedals pushed toward the floorboard, alerted the trio that trouble was arriving on four wheels.

"Get to one side," Pol instructed Babette. "They'll try to ram our barricade."

Babette drew back from the edge of the ramp and then ran to the side where she could get the longest view of the floor below. She could not yet see the Riding Devils.

Gadgets and Pol each took one of the remaining grenades. Babette, working in perfect tandem with the Able Team duo, shouted "Now!" the second she saw the front of the first car. Gadgets and Politician pulled the pins. They rolled the grenades down the ramps, then sprinted in opposite directions away from the ramps. The car taking the tighter turns was directly over a grenade when it went off. The force of the explosion lifted and twisted the vehicle, leaving it a bent, battered, flaming pile of rubbish that blocked entry from the floor below. The other car made it over the grenade. It charged on toward Able Team's flimsy barricade.

At the last possible moment, the driver of the car saw that there was no one behind the motorcycles.

He swerved sharply to avoid hanging the car up on the bikes. The driver then began a wide sweep that would allow him to stop out of effective firing range or continue to hunt.

Gadgets lined up his Beretta on the rear wheel. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a gun barrel emerging from the passenger window. Gadgets let himself collapse to the cold cement as heavy automatic fire blazed over his head.

Blancanales, who had turned a different direction from Schwarz when they had retreated from the ramp, found himself removed from the battle, located behind his partner and at an even greater distance from the pair in the car. He tracked the car with his Ingram, but the range was doubtful and his aim was leading dangerously close to Gadgets. Politician held his fire and began to run toward the action.

Car wheels screeched as the driver used the space on the empty top story to put the vehicle into a power turn and head it back toward Gadgets. The gunner in the car could no longer hit Gadgets without hanging most of his frame out the window. The danger for the Able Team member now lived with the machine that was speeding toward him.

At the bottom of the ramp, the Riding Devils had used a car as a battering ram to remove the burning, beat-up auto. The gunners were now using the car as a shield to get a better angle on, and some protection from, the lone sniper who was preventing them from rushing the ramp. Babette was firing, but was having trouble finding targets. Overhead she heard a large helicopter. She glanced up but the bird had no markings. She turned her attention again to the ramp and opened up the head of a thug who was lining her up over the hood of the car. The man's face was thumped into a bloody pulp.

Instead of getting to his feet and trying to reach cover, Gadgets Schwarz switched the Beretta to full automatic and stitched a line of slugs across the windshield of the car. The instant the gun clicked empty, he rolled to his right as fast and hard as was humanly possible.

The shots killed nothing, but they spiderwebbed the windshield, dropping visibility to nil. The car pulled away to the right as the driver, unable to see the target, veered away from the area where the automatic fire had come from. The skidding back end of the car missed the rolling Able Team member by inches.

The car came to a stop about fifty feet from Gadgets. The door on the far side of the machine opened. The passenger and the driver both got out the same door. Schwarz could see their feet as he shoved another clip into his gun. Remaining prone, the warrior carefully lined up his sights on one of the ankles. Weapons were being swung to bear on him over the top of the car.

Simultaneously, three gunners popped up over the car at the bottom of the ramp. Babette managed to take out one before her clip was empty. She retreated from the edge of the ramp, out of range of a hail of bullets. She slapped the last clip into the Ingram.

Babette lay back from the ramp, waiting for the first head to appear above floor level. Her back was fanned by prop wash from the copter hovering overhead. She could not spare a second to look up; she could only hope it carried allies.

Screams — chilling, almost unreal — sounded. They were screams of fear, not agony. They were followed by a series of explosions. Bloodied bits of human beings rose, then fell. Babette risked taking a quick glance. She looked up at the copter from which the grenades had been lobbed into the attackers, but it was already landing at the entry to the parking building. She moved her eyes back to the ramps, determined to stop any survivors from surfacing.

Politician saw the two gunners from the car bringing their automatic rifles to bear on his partner. He fired on the run. The bullets stitched the car roof, nailing one of the gunners in the cheek, missing the other. Both of the bastards ducked low.

Gadgets forced them to duck even lower. Before the goons could think about getting off more shots, he fired a burst at one man's ankle and then the next man's. The guncocks crashed to the ground. Two more bursts guaranteed they would never get up.

Pol and Gadgets trotted back to the ramp to help Babette hold the fort. They could hear shooting from below.

Ten minutes later, following a two-minute silence, Carl Lyons called.

"Don't shoot. I'm coming up."

The men greeted each other.

Blancanales did the introductions. "Carl, meet Babette Pavlovski. Best backup gunner in the business."

They locked eyes. They locked hands.

"Nice to meet you."

He was six feet tall with wide shoulders, a barrel chest, narrow hips. His white hair gave him the look of maturity; he did not look old. His complexion had a flushed, just-scrubbed appearance. His blue eyes carried little expression, but they had the ability to send chills through anyone who dared to stare into them. He talked to three young men who stood uncomfortably before him.

"There were how many of you?" he asked in a cold, clipped voice.

The three glanced around the room, each more than willing to allow the other to answer.

After several silent seconds, the eldest, a thirty-year-old still fighting a losing war against acne, answered. " 'Bout thirty-five of us went there."

"And only three of you survived?" The white-haired man's tone indicated that no amount of convincing would make him believe such a failure had occurred.

"Well... a couple of the guys may have surrendered," one of the Riding Devils confessed.

The third, still-silent member of the bikers was busy putting a small pinch of powder between his thumb and first finger. Then he inhaled the powder, snorting deeply.

"I suppose you were all enjoying the dust," the white-haired man said. "How much dust?"

"Not enough to get real high, Mr. Boering. Just enough to make sure no one got chicken shit."

"Just enough? Just enough. I want one goddamn woman taken care of... you send three Devil Riders..."

"Riding Devils," the sniffer corrected.

Klaus Boering ignored him. "I even supply the guns. But three is not enough to take care of one woman! So you send thirty-five and only three of you come back."

"She had two bodyguards. Then some sort of SWAT squad came," one of the bikers tried to explain.

"Oh," Boering sneered sarcastically. "Thirty-five of you went after one woman. Turns out she had two bodyguards. It was obviously a trap. How lucky you are to have escaped!''

The three shifted nervously, spending most of their time looking down at their feet, at the floor. They didn't know how to deal with Boering. The white-haired man was obviously furious over their inability to get the job done. He waved at them as if he were shooing chickens.

"Goodbye. Good-goddamn-bye. I have no more work for you. Get out. Close the door when you leave."

The three turned and shuffled out; too defeated to protest their treatment. As soon as they had left, Boering picked up the telephone and dialed.

"Georgi, this is Klaus. I want the special team made operational immediately... I know they're for special use only. This is a special use.

"Listen. A small squad of one, two, three, maybe a couple more are protecting that damn defector. They just killed thirty or more goons to do it. The special team is the best. Use them. Take out Pavlovski and everyone around her.

"How's the other operation going? Are the athletes away clear? Good. If you hear from Frazer, give him my congratulations."

He signed off and hung up the telephone.

Soon he could forget about Pavlovski's bodyguards.

They would be dead.

He was sure of that.