The Hostaged Island

13

Her hands up in the air, the shotgun against her back, Ann Shepard stepped off the curb. She stumbled slightly. Roger caught her arm with his good hand. The Outlaw behind him cruelly jabbed him with the barrel of an M-14 rifle, sending the curly-haired teenager sprawling in the street. Roger grimaced with pain as he fell on his rag-wrapped right arm. Blood stained the cloth. The Outlaws stood over him, their weapons pointed at him, until he stood and walked again.

The Outlaws, one in a chromed Nazi helmet, the other sporting a bandage on his face and a stubble of beard, pushed the teenager and pregnant woman across the shady street. In addition to the weapons, that the bikers pointed at Ann and Roger, they carried shotguns slung over their backs. They wore pistol belts. Bandoliers crossed their jacket's insignia of flaming skull: "Forever Outlaws."

A block behind them, several houses smoked and crackled. Outlaws stood on the sidewalk, assault rifles and shotguns ready. They could care less if the entire island ignited into flame. From time to time, they fired at a movement or shadow in the side yards. They had contingency plans for major fire. They thought they had contingency plans for everything.

As fast as the pregnant woman could walk, the Outlaws marched their prisoners the length of the block, leaving Avalon's residential area. At Crescent Street, the Outlaws prodded them down toward the Casino.

Tourists usually crowded Crescent on Sundays. Only steps from the sand, its shops and hotels viewed the boats moored in Avalon Bay. But today, the warm wind stirring the palms carried smoke and ash. Today, broken plate glass and litter from the looted shops covered the deserted street and walkways.

The Outlaws on motorcycles cruised past the bikers escorting the prisoners; they slowed. Not looking back as the Outlaws U-turned, the biker with his face bandaged shoved the pregnant woman: "The hotel!"

They herded their prisoners through the doorway. A few steps behind the bikers, the Outlaws on motorcycles jumped the curb, stepped on their kickstands and dismounted.

"It's a party!"

"Forget that. Any woman with a belly that big's only good for head."

"Take what you want," the Outlaw laughed, "and I'll take mine."

Only seconds behind their buddies, they walked into the hotel's lobby. But there was no one there. They heard feet running up the stairs.

"Hey, us too!" The Outlaws ran up the stairs after the others.

The fire door to the second floor slowly swung closed. They whipped it open and saw Outlaw jackets enter one of the rooms. Laughing, they ran after the other bikers. One of the Outlaws called out, "Second on her!" The other laughed, shouted, "First on the boy!"

Pushing open the door, they saw the curly-haired teenager, the pregnant woman, and the Outlaw in the chromed helmet all pointing weapons at them.

As the two Outlaws stumbled astounded back, a hidden hand put a Colt Lawman to the head of the second Outlaw, spraying his brains onto the hotel room's wall. The other Outlaw fell backwards over the body, tried to crawl, looked up to see the Colt and a 12-gauge muzzle pointing at his face. He rolled onto his back and put his hands up, pleaded: "I give up, you got me, please don't please don't don't..."

The Colt's flash slammed his head back. Glen Shepard dragged the messy bodies into the room and closed the door. He stripped off the dead men's jackets, no filthier for all the new gore than they were before. He threw the larger to his wife, the smaller to Roger.

"Welcome to the Outlaws."

In the ballroom's crowd of hostages, Max Stevens and Mr. Webster rehearsed Jack for his report to Horse: "What are the people doing?" Max demanded.

"They're just trying to protect the girls. They figured that if they circled up, your bikers wouldn't risk a fight with a hundred people at once."

" Did you see any guns?"

"You have guns? Wow..."

The shove sent Jack reeling. Max stepped forward and shook the teenager, then drew back his fist. "You didn't answer my question! Tell me!"

"Don't hit my boy!" Jack's father grabbed Max, trying to break his grip. Max shrugged the overweight, middle-aged man away.

"What do you think's going to happen when he goes to talk with that psychopath?" Max asked Mr. Webster. Then he shook Jack again: "Tell me what you saw."

"They don't have anything. They're just a bunch of dumb people."

Speaking gently, Max told Jack: "That's not what you want to say. Say, 'They're just a bunch of dumb people. Some of them are talking about escape, but they're too scared.' Now repeat that."

Jack repeated the line. Max released the kid, took his father aside. "If he doesn't say something like that, then they don't need a spy anymore. They caught him with a rifle. They think he shot at their gang. Your son's only alive because they need a spy. I'm sorry to abuse him, but I'm just trying to keep him alive."

Max returned his attention to Jack and resumed the rehearsal. The teenager repeated his lines time after time, almost perfectly. Finally Max glanced at his watch: "It's time, Jack. It would be better if you went to them, like a loyal agent, instead of making them find you. You should say goodbye to your father and mother now."

"Tell Mr. Stevens thank you, son," Mr. Webster prompted. "He's probably saved your life."

"Yeah," Jack said. "Thanks a whole lot."

Jack turned his back so that he could speak alone with his parents. "Any chance for an escape soon?" he asked in a whisper. "How much longer before we rush the bikers and break out?"

"I'm sure Max will tell us about that when you get back," Mr. Webster said.

"But we will break out, right? I mean, we won't be like this for days and days."

"Mr. Stevens is a godsend, Jack." Mrs. Webster ran her hands through her son's permed blond hair. "Without him, we'd have no hope at all."

"Yeah." Jack watched Max Stevens limp through the crowd, stopping to encourage the fearful, to comfort the despairing citizens of the island. "He's a real hero."

Horse stared out at Avalon Bay and the ocean beyond. He stood with Jack Webster on the balcony that encircled the Casino. The doors behind them led to the ballroom and the wide flights of stairs descending to the mezzanine, the theater, and the museum that was once the gambling salon.

After the seizure of the town, Horse had placed his heavy weapons — the Browning .50 caliber machine guns, the LAAW rockets, the mortars and the .444 Marlin sniper rifles — on this balcony. Any assault unit attempting to rescue the hostages, whether they came by sea or land, would face fire directed at them from one hundred and fifty feet above the street. And if the attackers returned the fire, they would hit the hostages.

A squad of Outlaws had secured the hill inland of the Casino. Even if rescuers took that hill, they would gain nothing. Hundreds of feet of open air separated the hill from the Casino. Unless the attackers had wings, they could only snipe at the Outlaws. The mortars would annihilate the attackers in a minute.

"...they circled up the people because your guys kept taking girls. They figured your bikers wouldn't want to fight a hundred people at once."

Horse looked to Charlie. "Sheep tactics. Next time someone wants a piece of ass, take an Uzi in there. See how brave those people are after ten or twenty get blown away. Go on, keep talking," he spat at Jack. "What about guns and knives? What do they have?"

"I didn't see anything. But I think they do. Everybody's talking about escaping. How they'd get past the guards and so on. But they haven't let me in on their plans yet. Maybe later."

"They're working on an escape, huh?"

"Everyone's talking about it."

"Who's everybody?"

"All the people in there..."

"Who's talking the most? Who's going to lead the escape?"

"I can find out."

"Get me names, boy."

Smoke obscured Avalon. The afternoon winds, sweeping down from the canyons, fanned the burning homes. Even from where Able Team watched on the Divide Road, two miles from Avalon Bay, the flames could be seen, from time to time lighting the underside of the smoke clouds or leaping up high, the tongues of flame for an instant defeating the afternoon brilliance.

Sharing the binoculars and the Mannlicher's scope, Blancanales, Gadgets and Lyons studied the burning neighborhood. Though trees and smoke allowed them only snatches of vision, they saw the Outlaws pacing the block, cruising around the block on their motorcycles. Only one group of houses burned. And it was those that the Outlaws circled.

The voices on the Outlaws' walkie-talkie, recorded by Schwarz, explained what Able Team watched: "We were standing in front of the house. It burned. They couldn't have got out."

"Hey, tell that to Zapata. While you're watching the fire, he walked into them and they blew his head off. Clean off. Had to look at his boots to figure out who he was."

"They must've got away before we burned that one house. Now they're dead, because we burned them all. The whole block's gone. Nothing but crispy critters in there now."

"Want to bet they weren't even in those houses? Bet they split long time..."

"This is Horse. Shut up! Has anyone out there seen the Monk? His patrol went to help the Chief. Has anyone seen him? Anyone heard a radio call from him?"

"This is Stonewall. I'll go out and find the Chief and the Monk and all their men. Give me the word, Horse, I'll be on..."

"No! Stonewall, everyone else — no one leaves the town. No one! Like the Chief said, the locals out there know the territory. We're not losing one more brother to those crazies. Come tonight, we're rich men. We'll be in another country living like kings! So everyone hang tight. We hold the town. Twenty million in gold, remember that."

"Forget your plan, you low-life," Lyons muttered. "Tonight you die."

Blancanales glanced at his watch, looked at the sun. "We've got four hours until dusk. We need to circle around the town, check out the Outlaws' perimeter, find their outposts and sentries..."

"These bikers are such losers," Lyons said. "If they've even got outposts around the town, I'll be surprised."

Gadgets grinned. He wore colored spectacles to diffuse the bright coastal daylight. "Surprised? Like that biker with the M-60 surprised you? We meet up with two or three of him at an outpost, Stony Man will be running want ads for another Able Team."

Lyons touched the wound across his ribs. "Ooo ah... I am self-criticized!"

"Hurt much?" Blancanales asked.

"Yeah."

"The numbing from shock is wearing off. That rib isn't broken but I'd say all the cartilage between your ribs on that side is separated. Like shatter lines in glass. But you played football — it'll feel like a blind-side elbow attack, except ten times worse. I have some painkillers."

"Forget the dope."

"Carl, you're going to hurt."

"I'll get through it. What good will I be if I'm doped up? The pain will motivate me to close down this horror show. Let's go find those outposts."

Descending the mountain's firebreaks and trails on their captured motorcycles, Lyons fell back, unable to keep up with Blancanales and Gadgets. Every bump, every lurch of the handlebars made his face go tight with pain. A few hundred yards short of the highway, Gadgets pulled behind a screen of manzanita and sage where they could not possibly be seen. He raised his hand to stop the others.

"Change in plans. If Lyons can't keep up on a motorcycle, how's he going to do it when we're running and jumping and crawling?"

"I can do it," Lyons insisted, his face tight. Despite the exertion of the motocrossing, he tried to hold his upper body motionless, taking shallow breaths.

"Lyons, you are hard core. But you're also walking wounded. What do you two say we just ride our bikes down the highway and cruise through town? Make like bikers on patrol?"

Now Lyons was smiling. "Taking a long chance, wizard."

"Like you said, they're losers. A gang of psycho losers. I think we can slip in and slip out..."

"With luck," Blancanales nodded. "But we'll need helmets. I want to cover these, too." He glanced down at the black nylon of his battle-suit's pants. He unfolded his map and pointed out the dotted line of a fire road. "This becomes a paved road a mile out of town. It comes down to that block that's burning. In all the smoke, maybe we could get what we need. Without any trouble. Maybe..." Blancanales held his silenced Beretta to chamber a round.

They followed Stage Road only a quarter mile, then turned off onto the Indian Trail service road. The heavy motorcycles were able to follow the twisting trail, powerfully, and they climbed the steep hills with gusts of noisy energy.

At the Country Club, the fire road became a paved, gently graded asphalt lane lined by rows of eucalyptus trees. Bougainvillea and oleander bloomed on the roadside.

They switched off their engines and coasted through the cool afternoon shadows. Only the whirring of their spoked wheels would betray them.

Soon, smoke obscured the sky. Only a few hundred yards farther on, homes were burning. The sound of shotgun blasts stopped them. Pulling over, Biancanales and Gadgets hotfooted it around a turn in the road, leaving Lyons with the motorcycles.

Two Outlaws braced their weapons on the bricks of a low wall, firing at a man running across a horse pasture. Despite several blasts from a shotgun and a burst from an M-16, the man continued running. Only another hundred yards remained between him and the safety of the brush-covered hillsides. The Outlaw with the M-16 dropped out the magazine, fumbled to insert another. He saw Gadgets and Biancanales approaching. He wore aviator-style sunglasses.

"We flushed a Mexican out of the stables," he grunted. "Get with it and put out some firepower. That funky little beaner ain't gonna get away."

Biancanales brought up the Beretta. "Yes he is."