Royal Flush

6

The rear door of the war wagon swung open at seven-thirty-three that evening, and three shadowy figures joined the descending night. Their weapons they carried openly. They wore black nightsuits with black watch caps covering their heads.

The contents of the war wagon were distributed among the three men. Each carried an M-16/M-203, a suppressed M-10 on a strap, and a silenced Colt in a hip holster. Radios hung on the opposite side of the belts to the Colts. Grenades and extra magazines were touch-placed on the bandoliers. A Startron nightscope hung on the webbing of each nightsuit.

Politician and Lyons carried two garrotes each. Coiled around Lyons's left shoulder, safely out of the way of the weapons of war, was a rope.

The three men moved to their positions.

Gadgets headed south along High Street, moving from house to house. When he reached the intersection of Park Street, he turned east and worked his way through narrow cobbled streets to the edge of Home Park and the south front of the castle. A door opened and spilled light onto the street. Two couples came out of the house. They saw the heavily armed man and all conversation stopped. Gadgets nodded, continued walking at a measured pace. The success of his cool was confirmed by snatches of the resumed conversation behind him. The couples merely commented on the fortresslike atmosphere of Windsor, not admitting to their fright.

Gadgets reached the border of Home Park and melted into the rows of trees at the west side of the Long Walk. Between him and the castle wall ran an iron fence. With his radio he sent a signal to his partners that he was in position. He ensured he was fully covered by the trees. At any moment he could be picked off by an alert sniper on the castle roof.

Lyons and Blancanales carefully explored Thames Street, which ran beneath the North Terrace. They found the street had been blocked off, two bobbies manning a barrier. The policemen were covered by snipers on the roofs of houses overlooking the street.

Like wraiths, Lyons and Blancanales backed away. Their new objective was the One Hundred Steps.

Built in a previous age, the One Hundred Steps led from the town to the castle's North Terrace. The stone stairs, worn down from centuries of use, were flanked by low stone bannisters. The gateway barring access to the steps was guarded by two British troopers in full combat gear, toting standard British issue Sterling SMGs that spewed five hundred fifty 9mm rounds per minute.

Blancanales found cover in the deep shadows of an evergreen near parked cars, some distance away from the steps. Here he would wait. He sent a two-click signal to Gadgets and felt the tap on his shoulder that marked the departure of Lyons.

As the Ironman moved off, Pol sent a silent prayer into the night. When the two men first met, Carl was an L.A. cop, a good one. Then Lyons became a true soldier — one of the hardest soldiers that Pol had ever known. Lyons was now a legend. But the current situation presented a special challenge. Able Team knew something bad was about to happen and they would move to stop it, but they could not expect back-up of any sort because acknowledgement of their existence might tip a traitor. At best it would tip off British intelligence that there indeed was a traitor among them. Either way the lid would blow too soon.

They had to do it their way, Able Team's way, and that meant Lyons, true to character, would have to go up the wall.

Lyons worked his way along the shadows of tree-lined Thames Street toward the east end of the castle. He knew that an encounter would prove disastrous. These were friendly forces, and he could not fire back.

Soon Thames Street followed the curve between the castle wall and a small section of woodland. Lyons found a hiding place between bushes growing beneath a stand of linden trees.

He looked at the stone wall. It was not immense. It protected only the outer limits of this part of the castle, which held parkland and a forest as small but as dense as the woodland on the outside. He could see the tops of elm trees swaying within the grounds.

From the top of the wall jutted metal spikes to deter trespassers.

Lyons crouched deep in the shadows. He unwound the rope and tied a small loop at one end. He peered out from his position.

He jerked back as two British sentries approached in the night. He watched them pass, holding himself rigid and unbreathing. Their uniforms told him they were Welsh Guardsmen.

They chatted amiably on their patrol, ignorant of what lurked to one side. Lyons watched them. Terrorist atrocities occurred with mounting regularity in Britain, but nothing had yet shaken the islanders' native sangfroid and resigned tolerance. Naked fear was not known in Britain to the degree it was elsewhere.

As the sentries' sauntered paces faded into the night, Lyons waited for minutes more, then made his move.

The rope caught on the first toss. Silently he scrambled up. Exposed at the top for perilous seconds against the night sky, Lyons unhitched the rope from the spike and carried it with him as he jumped down into the bushes on the other side. He absorbed the impact of his drop on bended knees, ending in the right-shoulder roll that Bolan taught him. He came up short behind the sheltering trunk of an elm.

His M-16/M-203 swung automatically into position as he sighted the glowing end of a cigarette at head-height in the shadow of a tree fifty yards away. "Beejaysus, dat's good stuff," the shadow said to itself. Lyons's motor revved on recognition of the accent. Contact confirmed.

The ember continued to glow, periodically burning brighter as the Irishman toked noisily on his prebattle spliff. Battle hash was a common custom in Nam, but Lyons was surprised to see an Irishman smoking up before combat. Welcome to the eighties.

Lyons stripped himself of his combat gear and pulled a Bowie knife from its sheath on his thigh. Silence was imperative, and the Bowie fit that criterion. He moved out on his belly. The orange ember glowed brighter in the otherwise black night. The smoker sucked a hearty lungful. "Christmas, dat's good," the voice said to no one.

Lyons crawled in a semicircle toward his target. When the ember glowed brightly again, he raised himself into a crouch, ran noiselessly toward the target. He staggered the pot smoker with an openhanded blow to the forehead. Then he dragged the knife blade backhand across the man's carotid and jugular. It was an effortless kill.

The joint burned in the grass beside the corpse. Lyons ground it out with the toe of his Israeli combat boot. He heard more Irish voices calling hoarsely into the velvet night.

"Micky, ya'dere?"

"Micky lad, where is ya'?"

Lyons's heart skipped a beat. His grenade launcher and other fighting gear were fifty yards behind him. He would have to dispose of both terrorists, using his wits and the knife.

The pointman passed within inches of his position. Lyons could not see him but he felt the air move as he passed, and he smelled the odor of tobacco on the guy's clothes. With patience and professionalism learned from Blancanales, Lyons waited for the second man. The moon broke briefly through a cloud.

He saw a heavily armed figure walking through the trees. "He'll be spliffin' da' weed," the man said. "See if it ain't true." Lyons came on him in the dark. He reached around the man's head with his left hand and clapped the mouth shut. With his right hand, he drove the Bowie knife deep under the breastbone. Both men fell together to the forest floor.

"Ya' may be right, Stevie," the first man answered, "but we still need the bastard. Right?"

"Uh-huh," said Lyons in the dark. The terrorist's talk had given him a good fix on the guy.

With a smooth, practiced motion, he flung the bloody blade into the middle of the voice.

"I'm kill't!" gurgled the terrorist.

"Good t'ing, too," muttered Lyons.

Whatever else he thought of that Kathleen McGowan bitch, Michael O'Shea had to admit she was one hell of an organizer. During the past two months, thirty-five people involved in the night's operation had undergone training in both Northern Ireland and England, and their leaders had visited the castle as tourists and had studied its interior plans under McGowan's careful eye.

O'Shea knew the information and training would serve him well.

His group was to secure the west end of the North Terrace. O'Shea and his four men had scaled the wall some distance west of the One Hundred Steps, using the trees as cover. The killers with O'Shea carried AK-47s and two HE grenades each. O'Shea held a silenced Uzi; the advantage of silence for the night's work outweighed the loss of accuracy incurred by the silencer.

O'Shea checked his watch, shielding the digital timepiece with his hand so its glow would not give them away. Timing was essential; if he moved earlier than 8:30, his group's actions would not be coordinated with those of the other two assault teams and the attack would fail.

Moments before 8:30, a five-man British patrol slowly made its way down the One Hundred Steps, looking for anything out of place in the forest on both sides of the worn steps. O'Shea heard the thud of the combat boots on the stone. He waited patiently for the first casualties of the night.

The patrol leader had no time to warn his companions. The 9mm parabellums from O'Shea's Uzi tore into his throat. The remainder of the patrol died quickly as the silent onslaught continued. The clatter of their weapons on stone was the only signal that something was amiss.

Two sentries in the street below heard the clatter. Quickly they opened the gate at the bottom of the steps and headed up them toward the noise. So intent were they on their objective that neither noticed the black-clad man slip out of the shadows and follow them. Once through the gate, Blancanales vaulted the left bannister of the steps and followed the two men as they climbed. While moving, Pol transmitted a pair of double clicks, advising his partners that the battle was on.

O'Shea's finger stroked the trigger of the Uzi again as the two British sentries came up the steps. One of the troopers slipped in the rivulets of blood that washed down the center of the worn stone. Before he could recover, his own life ran out to join with the crimson stream. A heartbeat later, his companion fell. Stillness returned to the night as the stream flowed on.

From experience gained in the jungles of Nam, Blancanales knew the art of moving silently through a forest. Among the elms and sycamores of this English hill, he was in his element. When he saw the brief flashes from the Uzi, he hurled himself up off the steps and into the undergrowth. He wriggled into hiding. He pulled the Startron from his nightsuit webbing.

Five men were silhouetted in the night-scope's eerie light.

As more boots thudded on the steps, Blancanales saw the five Irishmen move farther into the shadows to strike again. Stealthily he unlimbered his Colt.

Corporal Phillips had become concerned when the five-man patrol did not radio in. The route down the One Hundred Steps had been timed during the drills, and they should have radioed Phillips from the bottom of the steps two minutes earlier.

Phillips advised his CO of the problem and, with Private Scott, headed down to check on the missing patrol.

The two men reacted immediately as they came within sight of the corpses, but immediately was not fast enough, and Private Scott died where he fell.

As O'Shea swung his Uzi around to take out Phillips, two .45-caliber slugs from Blancanales's Colt found the terrorist's head. O'Shea's finger tightened on the Uzi trigger, sending random blasts of 9mm slugs into the night. The slugs found one of O'Shea's fellow terrorists, dispatching him with silent holes.

A second burst from the Colt sent another ambusher to join O'Shea.

Phillips had ducked when Scott fell. Now he raised his head. The muzzle of his L2A3 hovered just in front of his chin.

He saw two shadows moving. He stood up, aimed at one of them, fired, saw the other one crumple, then the first one, too, before he ducked back down.

Silence descended. Phillips slowly raised his head again. He knew he had an ally in the night.

Holding his Sterling level, the young corporal moved slowly down the steps until a whispered voice from the forest on his right stopped him.

"Friend," said the voice.

Blancanales emerged from the shadows and joined the British soldier. Quickly the American filled him in on the revised picture.

At the top of the steps, a voice from Phillips's radio demanded explanations.

From their natural blind in the trees the roof of the castle was just over two hundred fifty yards away — nearly point-blank range for their Russian rifles. Collins and Donegal scanned the top of the east wall. Four orange blobs glowed along the roof. British snipers' sites.

They heard the sound of the SMG far off to their right. O'Shea was having problems. It was time to go to work.

Almost as one, the two terrorists fired. A millisecond later, two of the orange blobs dissolved.

Carl Lyons, M-16 cradled in his arms, crouched just below the east end of the Sunken Garden. The reports of the two weapons to his left signaled the start of the battle in his sector. He began to crawl toward the source of the sounds.

The two snipers fired again. Lyons caught a hint of movement in the trees to his left.

He loaded an HE grenade into the 203, and with a pump, shot it into the middle of three flank men who had appeared in the darkness, black on black. The steel fragments propelled by thirty-five grams of explosive tore into the Irishmen. Screams cut through the night like an animal's cries. The roar of the M-16 restored silence to the scene.

Then two more booming reports. Lyons rolled to the cover of the trees.

Four riflemen on the east roof lay dead, shards from their nightscopes buried in what was left of their faces.

One of the snipers from the north roof moved to take their place. The British sniper was quickly joined by another, and the two men trained their scopes along the trees at the leading edge of the forest.

A light squeeze on the trigger by one of them and the shadow of a terrorist disappeared into the trees.

The second sniper tracked onto Donegal. The 7.62 NATO round thwacked into the back of the terrorist's head, exploding in a crimson spray of teeth and bone as it exited through the mouth.

Collins turned to see his partner's head explode, then dived for cover as a second round from the L42A1 chopped into a tree.

Collins brought the SVD around. A sigh, a squeeze, and a 7.62mm whoosh of death was dispatched to the castle roof. He rode the recoil and pulled once more.

He was not able to pull a third time; a NATO round had shattered his spine.

Joseph Flynn's squad number three worked through the forest by the eastern edge of the Sunken Garden. One man was walking point, followed closely by Flynn and two other men.

Lyons had a hot reception ready for the four of them. The M-16 sent a full load into the pointman. Flynn and the two surviving terrorists dived for cover in the trees.

Flynn fired his Uzi at the source of the shots.

Another blast from the M-16 took out one of his companions.

Flynn and the survivor, Kelly, continued toward their objective, the steps that led up the far end of the Sunken Garden.

Flynn kept up a stream of covering fire as Kelly headed for the steps with his only LAW. Pausing just long enough to change the Uzi's magazines, Flynn kept Lyons pinned. Kelly made the stairs leading to the top of the Sunken Garden.

Kelly extended the tube of the LAW, readying it for use against an advancing group of British soldiers.

With a whoosh, the antipersonnel rocket blasted into the middle of the little knot.

Shrapnel cut into the men like a hail of meat cleavers. Cleanly severed parts of human beings littered the air. Kelly threw the now useless tube away and unslung his AK-47. Scrambling up the steps, he ran onto the south side of the terrace and began a zigzag dash to the doors of the State Apartments.

Lyons, firing bursts at Flynn's position, moved out of the forest in pursuit of Kelly.

Lyons raced up the stairs, halted and raised his rifle. He took careful aim and fired a blast of 5.56 rounds at the running figure. Kelly's zag became a tumble as a 55-grain slug caught him in the back and pushed him over the wall.

Flynn was now dashing toward the doors that would take him into the Apartments. As he ran he hurled a grenade at the doorway.

The explosion blasted the doors open, and the terrorist ran through.

From his position in the sheltering trees at the western edge of Home Park, Gadgets heard the whine of high-powered engines coming toward him. He turned to look, saw three Land Rovers racing along Park Street.

He held up his Startron and took a closer look at the vehicles. In the cab of each Land Rover rode two men. The backs of the vehicles were covered with tarpaulins that might be concealing other men.

If they were reinforcements for the beleaguered British snipers, they were welcome. If not, they were dire trouble.

Telling friend from foe in a firefight can be hard, and an error had terrible consequences. In Able Team's war, the problem was paramount. Their fight was directed only at legitimate targets, terrorists and those who actively supported the pattern of death that followed terrorists wherever they went. If Bolan's men fired without knowing for certainthat their target was a legitimate one, then they became no different than the murdering terrorists. Gadgets fretted over each second of delay while the new players in the deadly game remained unknown.

The three vehicles reached the castle's gate.

The lead vehicle rammed the gate, tearing it from its ancient hinges. The ornamental ironwork hardly slowed the vehicle. It raced through the opening, taking tangled metal with it, followed by the other two Land Rovers.

As the three vehicles accelerated up the long walk, a blast from an LAW in the lead vehicle opened the next obstacle, the King George IV Gate, in a flurry of smoke and debris.

The last vehicle to enter the inner gate received a 40mm grenade from Gadgets's M-203. From his position on the slope above the walk, Gadgets saw the grenade land on the tarp and explode with a dull whump. He fired a second grenade and the vehicle burst into a ball of flame, a funeral pyre for the two men in front and any others concealed beneath the tarpaulin.

British soldiers poured from the Norman Gate in pursuit of the other two vehicles. A second LAW collapsed the Norman Gate's overhanging stone, crushing several soldiers underneath.

Automatic-rifle fire from within the Land Rovers cut through the survivors like a scythe.