Royal Flush

17

Noisy chaos greeted the four men as they left the building. Police were everywhere, trying to control the curiosity seekers who had gathered at the sound of gunfire. Some of Carlton's men were helping the bobbies keep the crowd away.

Able Team stepped back as three of Carlton's men moved past them with a curt nod. The Americans recognized some of them as they headed up to secure the apartment from intruders.

Lyons paced away from the crowd with Carlton. "Where the hell do we look?" he said.

"We look in the alley that leads to Paddington Station, that's where," Carlton grinned. A glint of triumph showed in his eyes. The nearby railway station was the ideal bait for their prey.

Lyons waved to his partners. The three men jogged after the English soldier who knew the mean streets and alleyways of London like a coroner knows the arteries of a corpse.

They turned sharp right at the end of the street into an alley connecting with the wider pedestrian alleyway that ran behind the row of houses. In the main alleyway, about a hundred yards to the left of them, the pursuers saw the small, unmistakable figure of Lady Carole Essex. Unmistakable because she walked briskly, as if to avoid attention.

The pounding of boots on the pavement alerted her. She looked over her shoulder and broke into a run at the sight of the four men.

Lyons broke ahead of the sprinting group. He chased the woman as she darted into a side alley that dead-ended fifteen feet from her turn. He had her cornered.

He crouched, looked at his quarry to catch sight of any firearm in the darkness.

She showed no weapon. She had sunk to her knees on the grimy cobbles, leaning her head against the brick wall that blocked her way. She was whimpering.

Lyons rose and turned to address Schwarz and Blancanales. "She's mine," he said softly to his partners. "Leave her to me."

He entered the dead-end alleyway and stepped remorselessly toward the petite blond woman. She let out a scream.

He took a last long, quick step up to her. "Shut your cake hole, dammit," he told her. The muzzle of his Colt touched her forehead.

She choked off her scream, stared up at him like a terrified dog, the tears in her eyes catching the starlight. But this was no mongrel. This bitch was class.

"Why did you do it?" interrogated Lyons. "Why did you get them to take so many hostages?"

"I had nothing to do with it!" she yelled back at him. Her pretty face twisted into ugliness with fear and rage. She clutched her handbag to her chest like a crucifix. "It was the Irish that did it. Irish terrorists. I'm not Irish..."

Lyons shoved his weapon into her right cheekbone and pushed her face sideways against the bricks. Nerve endings in his flexed right forearm told him the venomous kiss of the Colt was only seconds away.

"Why?" he repeated. "Tell me why." His tone condemned her as surely as the hangman's grasp on the trapdoor lever. "Tell me. Now."

The woman's cowardly collapse before him enraged Lyons.

"Listen to me, woman. This gun in my hand — I call it my roadblocker, see? Nobody goes anywhere when I've got this thing pulled. So talk. It's all you've got left," and he pushed the barrel up under her top row of teeth, forcing her mouth into a grotesque leer.

She backed away from the muzzle as far as she could, which was less than half an inch. With the gun pointing at her palate, she gasped a defiant confession.

"If I'd killed them all, I'd have had the succession. I'd have been queen for a day, pretty boy. Maybe queen for a lifetime!"

"You're crazy," Lyons pressed. "Twenty dead people and the next in line would have been suspect number one."

"But I was going to be hit, too, jerk." She laughed crazily, saliva splashing from her immobilized mouth. "McGowan would have staged an attack on me as well."

"Then that's the way it's gonna be," Lyons said without emotion. "You're going to be hit too…"

"No!" she screamed, cringing. "Don't do it! I beg of you!"

"Lady," Lyons said once again, "I don't have the time."

As his finger pressed on the trigger, Lady Carole shoved the barrel from her mouth with the handbag. Desperately, insanely, she rummaged in the bag for her handgun. Lyons eased up on the finger pressure. He let her find what she sought.

The woman pulled a small caliber piece from the bag and pointed it at her assailant.

Just as she pulled the trigger, Lyons's Colt boomed. The point-blank explosion thrust the woman's small gun under her disintegrating chin, where it discharged in turn.

Lyons's blast had taken her face away, but her own shot creased what remained of her forehead and took off her hair.

Lyons looked aghast as the dead woman's wig flew from the pulpy head to reveal a hairless skull covered in scabs and sores.

The faceless nonbeing lay crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the wall. The woman had been fearfully sick before she died. Cancerous lesions of the skull stood exposed to Lyons as he backed away from the remains.

His partners joined him. The mouth of the small alley filled with curious soldiers and police.

"Good diagnosis, good treatment, Doctor Lyons," Gadgets joked without smiling.

"And in the best tradition of British socialism," observed Blancanales, "she got it free."