Justice by Fire

16

As Blancanales piloted the borrowed motor home south from San Francisco, Jefferson spun through the AM and FM radio stations. He paused to listen to news programs. Finally, he heard a report on the four killings:

"…investigators report the two men carried false identification. They had given an airport car-rental agency false names and identification. In what may be a related crime, two other men died this morning in a horrifying incident in the Twin Peaks area. Witnesses reported a number of gunmen firing weapons. Police refuse to link the killings last night and this morning, but they also refuse to comment on witnesses' statements indicating sawed-off shotguns were used in both shoot-outs…"

"You hear that?" Jefferson asked Lyons.

"You're famous." Lyons did not pause as he searched the interior of the motor home.

"I hope not…"

Standing feet apart to brace himself against the sway of the moving vehicle, Lyons had begun his search with the drawers of a kitchen cabinet converted to a desk. The furnishings and decor of the coach indicated Prescott used the thirty-foot-long vehicle not for vacations but for precinct work. The sink and enclosed toilet and the rear bedroom remained, but the aide had remodeled the motor home to reflect his European taste in design. Gray industrial linoleum covered the floor. Curtains had been replaced with pull-down shades. White sheet plastic covered the walls. Steel and cloth folding chairs replaced all the couches and bucket seats. Wall-mounted telephones lacked only connecting lines to create a self-contained political office. With the breakfast table and couches gone, the interior became almost spacious.

Lyons pulled out the first drawer. It contained pens, pencils, felt markers, and the congressman's letterhead stationery and envelopes. Lyons examined every pen and eraser, then looked at the underside of the drawer.

"What you doing, Ironman?" Gadgets called out from the bedroom. The Stony Man electronics specialist had spread out all of his equipment on the fold-out double bed. "You think those liberals put a bomb on board?"

"No. Maybe a microphone. Maybe a cassette recorder."

Jefferson swiveled around. He sat in the second bucket seat immediately next to Blancanales, who was driving. "Bob wouldn't do that. He's a good guy. Ricardo, he and I were like brothers."

"Marquez was a reporter, right?" Lyons asked. "And you're a reporter?"

"When I can get the work."

"Did Prescott give you stories?"

"Sure. The congressman's Mr. Conspiracy himself. Always investigating something."

"Well, no one's going to be reading about usin the newspapers." Lyons set the drawer aside and pulled out another. He examined rolls of sealing tape and wrapping paper.

"But they're with us," Jefferson protested. "They won't go public on us."

"They would if they got the chance. That's why I shot off my mouth like I did. They were so smooth, I just had to hear what they really thought. And the congressman told me."

Blancanales glanced back to Lyons. "Indeed. The man told you to 'do justice.' I think you made a convert to the cause."

"Maybe. But while Buckley gave me his speech, that Prescott goof was outside. And I don't know what he was doing."

"Is he ever paranoid!" Gadgets shouted forward to Blancanales. "Now he thinks Congress is trying to get us?"

Disregarding his partner's joking, Lyons continued his search. He went through the other drawers, setting each aside after he checked the contents. Then he examined the interior of the cabinet, shining a flashlight inside. Where he could not see, he explored with his fingertips.

"If you wait a minute," Gadgets told him, "I'll do an electronic sweep."

"That's not good enough. What if it's just a cassette recorder? What if it's one of those radio-switched units?"

"Go to it. Then I'll give it a sweep. We'll see what kind of equipment Congress has got."

As they left San Francisco behind, the morning commuter traffic thinned. The urban and manufacturing areas gave way to the suburbs of San Mateo, San Carlos, Palo Alto, then the city of San Jose. Blancanales maintained a steady sixty miles per hour. Other motor homes passed, the travelers — families or retired people — waving. Blancanales and Jefferson returned the greetings. Lyons continued his search, tapping the walls, looking inside the burners of the stove. Gadgets glanced out the back window from time to time, watching for cars following the motor home.

Jefferson wandered back to the bedroom. He saw Able Team's equipment and weapons.

"Oh, my God. I thought you guys just had pistols, like normal people." He pointed at the Atchisson full-auto shotgun. "What in hell is that?"

"A shotgun," Gadgets answered.

"Looks like a machine gun."

"It's a selective-fire twelve-gauge shotgun," Lyons told him. "Semi-auto, three shot, and full-auto. Not exactly a pocket weapon, but where it goes, the bad guys die."

"And those pistols. They have silencers."

"You guessed it," Gadgets said as he finally activated his counterelectronic unit. The hand-held device used magnetic Fields to detect transmitters. Gadgets worked his way through the motor home, waving the long oval antenna inside every cabinet and closet, over every surface and piece of furniture.

"Nothing."

Lyons went forward to Blancanales. "Next turnoff, we park for a while. I'd like to get under this barge. See if anything's on the undercarriage."

"It'll cost us time."

"This is not Team equipment. I won't go any further without completing the checkout."

Two miles farther on, Blancanales pulled off at a roadside rest station. Three other motor homes and campers were parked near the picnic tables. A family from Ohio cooked breakfast under the canvas awning of their trailer, ignoring the freeway's noise and smog. Blancanales drove past them and parked at the far end of the area.

Stripping off his sport coat, Lyons unbuckled his shoulder holster and Colt Python. He took his flashlight and Gadgets's counterelectronic wand.

"Want to come supervise?" Lyons asked Gadgets.

"As long as I don't have to get dirty."

"Specialist!" Lyons muttered sarcastically.

He started at the front bumper. Then on his back on the asphalt, he searched the interior of the stamped steel bumper with his fingers. He heard a tone coming from the counterelectronic wand. Gadgets dropped flat to peer under the motor home.

"What did you find?"

"Didn't find anything. It just buzzed."

"You drop it?"

"I just laid it down while I crawled under here."

Hammering slammed the motor home's aluminum siding. Both men recognized the zip-crack of high-velocity slugs. Glass shattered.

Their reflexes threw them into motion as Blancanales started the diesel engine again. Gadgets grabbed the door handle as the motor home lurched into motion.

Lyons trotted alongside as Blancanales maneuvered through the parking lot. A Piper Club circled above them at a few hundred feet. Squinting against the morning sun, Lyons saw the dark triangle of the plane's open side-door. A point of light flashed one-two-three, then three slugs punched into the motor home. The freeway noise drowned out the reports of the auto-rifle.

Lyons swung inside. "There's a plane up above us. Rifleman firing from the passenger side."

Bits of white plastic and urethane foam exploded from the ceiling. In the bedroom, Gadgets pressed tight the Velcro closures on his Kevlar and steel-plate battle armor. Lyons rushed to the equipment, and Gadgets handed him his battle armor.

Lyons pushed it away. "Put it on, Floyd. He's the witness we're protecting." He slipped on his shoulder holster and Python, then buckled on a bandolier of box magazines for his Atchisson selective-fire assault shotgun.

"Up front!" Blancanales shouted, steering as he sealed his armor's closures.

Setting the Atchisson's safety, Lyons snapped back the actuator to strip the first twelve-gauge round off the magazine. The motor home lurched as he ran forward. Lyons staggered, fell against the driver's bucket seat as a line of slugs smashed the windshield.

Through the patterns of shatter-crazed safety glass, Lyons saw two gunmen with Uzis scrambling from a rusted, dented Plymouth station wagon. The gunmen — black men in jeans and flowing African shirts, their hair ratted into globes — took cover behind the Plymouth as the driver leveled a shotgun through the passenger-side window.

Lyons jammed the fourteen-inch barrel of the Atchisson through the shattered windshield and thumbed the weapon's fire-selector all the way forward.

A storm of high-velocity steel shot swept the old station wagon. Handloaded by the Stony Man weapon-smith, Andrzej Konzaki, each twelve-gauge shell packed a mix of fifty number-two and double-ought steel balls, a mixture developed and proved in the jungle wars of Malaysia by British counterinsurgency commandos. Unlike lead shot, the steel shot did not deform or flatten when it struck objects or flesh. An automobile's thin sheet metal did not deflect or absorb the balls.

Glass exploded, plastic shattered, brains and blood sprayed in clouds as a three-round burst — one hundred fifty steel projectiles — found the first gunman where he crouched at the Plymouth's rear bumper. His head and right arm gone, blood foaming from his yawning chest cavity, the dead man flew back, his pocked and gory Uzi clattering across the access road.

Two blasts found the driver, the first round's high-velocity steel punching through the passenger door to jerk him upright, the spent balls smashing his hands and face, bloodying the gunman but not killing him. The second round, velocity undiminished by the auto's sheet steel, passed through the open passenger window and tore his head away.

Looking over the Atchisson's sights, Lyons saw the third gunman glance over at the headless body of his comrade, the nerve spasms of the blood-spurting corpse jerking the arms and torso in fish-flops. Lyons put the last two rounds of the mag into the third man's chest and head. Another suddenly headless dead man went flopping to hell.

The Atchisson's action locked back. Lyons dropped out the empty magazine and took another from his bandolier.

Blancanales had snatched a double-edged knife from a sheath on his left ankle as he drove, and he slashed at the plastic and shattered glass of the windshield. He saw another car carrying black men with Uzis fishtail from the freeway.

"Hit them!" Blancanales pointed with the blade.

Before the gunmen could throw open the doors of their red Cadillac, Jefferson's sawed-off Smith & Wesson boomed, a load of number-six lead birdshot annihilating the windshield and spraying the interior of the Cadillac with bits of glass. The young reporter tromboned the slide and fired again, the lightweight birdshot wounding the driver. As Jefferson worked the slide to fire again, Lyons's assault-shotgun raked the enemy's car.

Straining against the weapon's jackhammering recoil, Lyons held the muzzle on line as steel shot slammed the hood, windshield and interior. Blood and flesh splashed over the upholstery as the full-auto fire shredded the four gunmen.

Blancanales accelerated past the demolished Cadillac. In the back, Gadgets saw a dying gunman stagger from the car. One arm hung limp, blood was bubbling from a pattern of holes in his chest, but he still gripped an Uzi. One-handed, he raised the 9mm submachine gun to avenge himself.

Sighting his CAR-15 on the gunman, Gadgets fired through the rear window. Tempered glass sprayed both inward and outward as Gadgets triggered one burst, then another, then another. Deflected by the glass, the first burst skipped off the asphalt and banged the Cadillac, only one slug punching through the already dying man's chest. But the second and third bursts knocked him back, slugs tearing away his jaw and forehead as he staggered back, finally dead.

Slugs from the rifleman in the plane above them continued to punch through the roof of the motor home. Meanwhile all in the vehicle heard the continued buzzing of Gadgets's electronic detector.

Peering through the shattered windshield, Blancanales swerved into the freeway traffic. Gadgets ran forward with the droning detector. He adjusted a dial, then waved the unit over the floor of the motor home.

Near the gas and brake pedals, at the point nearest the front bumper, the detector buzzed. As he backed away, the buzzing stopped. He told the others. "We got D.F. up front here. Must be radio-switched. That's why I didn't find it before."

"Prescott!" Lyons cursed. "That pink shit!"

Blancanales glanced into the rearview mirror. "Quit the talk, Ironman. We got two more cars gaining on us."

Slugs from the plane punched through the roof. Auto-fire from the pursuing cars hammered the back of the motor home. Slugs tore through the interior.

Lyons slapped another magazine into his Atchisson. He crouchwalked through the wrecked interior of the mobile political office.

"Prescott's going to get it."

Gadgets followed a step behind him. "Not if we get it first."