Tower of Terror

9

Lyons breathed. He felt air moving through his mouth and throat. He strained to fill his lungs, but there was an immense weight on his chest. Trying to move his arms, he felt steel cut his wrists. Handcuffs. He wondered why they had bothered. For they had shot him in the back of the head.

How long until he died? Seconds? A minute or two? How long until his life drained through the hole in his skull?

He had no vision. Only thoughts. Thoughts of life in this last second of living, telescoped by onrushing death to trick him into thinking he had minutes left.

Sensations came to him. He heard quick sing-song conversation, not English. Chinese? Japanese?

A low, unheard vibration. A lurch forward, then a stop. He was in a car or truck. He could smell the exhaust. The vibration came from the engine idling.

The weight on his chest shifted. Someone was kneeling on his chest, to immobilize him. Perhaps he was dying, perhaps not. Then it all came back to him.

In the alley, he had felt the pistol against his head, had stepped down from the barred window. When they grabbed his arms, he twisted away from the pistol, slammed one man's face with his elbow, saw blood. Turning, he kicked another man, chopped an arm holding a pistol. He saw an Oriental face and grabbed it by the hair, and in the instant that he jerked the head down into his upcoming knee, Lyons had felt the back of his head explode. Then he had fallen into the void.

They had captured him. They put him in a car. They wanted him for interrogation. He had seen enough eye-gouged, blow-torched, pliers-mangled corpses in his years to know what might soon happen to him. If he fought now, in this car, his struggling might only bring the coup de grace, the second bullet. But that way he would escape the long hours of horror.

Thrashing suddenly, he heaved the man off his chest, then twisted on the seat and kicked out. He felt his feet smash glass. He kicked again and again, wildly. He connected with someone's head, someone else's arms. Another man grabbed Lyons by his hair, hit him.

But the fist glanced off his head. He could see! The glancing punch had half torn off a rag covering his eyes. He could see an arm swinging a pistol. He twisted again, blocked it with his shoulder, kicked out again.

Hands closed around his throat. He heaved and thrashed but couldn't break the grip. He had only seconds of consciousness left.

Lyons had not served a decade with the Los Angeles Police Department without learning that handcuffs could be broken. He'd seen crazies do it. Was he strong enough? Was he crazy enough? Despite the thumbs crushing his throat, he relaxed his shoulders, forced his handcuffed wrists down over his buttocks. He strained down with the muscles of his back and torso, while pulling up with his arms and shoulders. The pain became a white light.

The handcuffs broke. Screaming like a beast, he slammed his numb arms against the heads of his captors. Blood sprayed onto the car's windows.

Outside the car, he saw other cars, trucks, the fronts of shops. Even as he reached for the driver's head, the car accelerated. The driver twisted from Lyons' grasp. His fingers were too numb to grab the man's hair. Lyons thrust himself forward, hooked his arm around the man's throat, pulled him backwards with incredible force.

The car swerved out of control. A pistol's blast seared the air around him. With Lyons' one arm still around the driver's throat, the other arm hammering into the bloody face of the Oriental with the pistol, the car leaped the curb and crashed.

Now, amidst battered, grappling people, Lyons had the pistol. He fell backwards from the open door, rolling onto the sidewalk. Faces peered down at him.

"Police officer!" Lyons screamed. "Stand back! Back!" He stood gasping, sucking air into his lungs. The crowd gathering around him stared. A woman looked away, covered her mouth. Two small kids carrying shopping bags gaped at him, their, mouths open. One kid said to the other, "That cop's all messed up. Betcha he dies."

Lyons wiped his face, saw blood and flesh on his hand. He felt the back of his head, found a quite small sore spot, but no wound. Had they pistol-whipped him? Hit him with a blackjack? No time to speculate. He stood up gingerly.

The Orientals' car was a late-model Ford sedan. It had taken off the left front fender of a parked Volkswagen, jumped the curb, snapped off a parking meter, crashed into a telephone pole. Lyons had apparently kicked out a rear door window. There was a neat hole in the roof where a bullet had exited.

Lyons glanced into the front seat and saw a young Oriental woman with blood on her face, lying in the footwell. She wore a conservative blue skirt-suit with a white silk blouse and knotted scarf. Her skirt was up around her thighs, exposing long slim legs. A garter holster held a .22 automatic just above one knee.

Lyons kept the captured pistol pointed at her head, took the .22 automatic, then slipped his hand under her jacket. She wore another pistol in a shoulder holster. Again, an automatic. He pocketed the second pistol. Suddenly she tried to jab her fingers into his eyes, but he jammed his pistol into her solar plexus. She gagged, choked.

Beyond her in the front seat, the driver was dead, his neck broken. The other two moved. One breathed through a mangled mouth and jaw. Blood and pieces of teeth spilled down his shirt. His jaw twisted oddly to one side. The other was unconscious, but alive. Blood flowed from scalp wounds. The Orientals' slacks and shirts were splotched with blood.

"Officer? Officer?" A shopkeeper in a denim apron came up to Lyons. "Should I call for an ambulance? Would you like to use our phone?"

"My backup is on the way."

"Your backup is here." Gadgets ran up to Lyons, and winced when he saw the blood all over him. Gadgets still had the Uzi concealed beneath his satchel. "Are you okay? Why don't you sit down? I'll take over."

"I'm okay. Where'd you come from?"

"You're only a block and half from the building. Blancanales is back. He's okay. Now sit-down, you're a mess!"

"It's not myblood, all this, it's theirs. Help me wrap it up. Take these pistols. I need to find my .357."

Lyons dumped the captured pistols into Gadgets' satchel, then searched through the car. He found his .357 Magnum and the .38 revolvers he had captured from the Puerto Rican sentries. He found the hand-radio, pressed the transit button.

"Numero UnoBadass here, come in Numero Dos." Lyons buzzed the transmit button a few more times, then heard Blancanales' reply: "This is your worried friend. I'm in the garage. Where are you?"

"Stick tight, we'll be there in a flash. Wait till you see what I got for you. Very interesting." Lyons turned to Gadgets. "Get in the back. I'm taking these losers back to where we can ask them some questions."

Waiting in the alley, Blancanales saw a Ford with a smashed front make a turn, accelerate toward him. For an instant, as the car approached, he didn't recognize the driver. The man's face was smeared with clots of blood. But then Lyons grinned, and Blancanales pointed into the garage. He waited until his partners were inside the building, then spoke into his hand-radio. "Taximan? You still parked? This is Badman Number Two."

"Yes, sir. Parked and waiting. What do you need?"

"Come around the block, park in front of the garage. Let us know if anyone interesting shows up."

"Yes sir. In motion now."

"Slow down. We've got it under control. Where's Smith? What's he doing?"

"He followed that florist's truck out to Brooklyn. Sir, I've been getting a lot of calls from the agents around the Tower. They want to know what's going on with you three. Things are very tense back there."

"Tell them there's been a major break in the investigation. I'll be bringing them a folder full of names and faces. Things are moving fast." Blancanales looked into the garage, saw Lyons pulling a struggling young woman out of the Ford. "In fact, things might be out of control. Over."

The dark-haired young woman in the skirt-suit hammered at Lyons with a high-heeled shoe. She broke away from Lyons and Gadgets and ran for the open door to the alley.

Blancanales grabbed the rolling door's chain, pulled the door down. Her escape blocked, she stopped, looked at her captors, her eyes moving like a trapped animal's. She sprinted in another direction. Lyons ran after her.

He chased her into a corner. As he approached, the woman — standing about five foot two without her shoes — took a kung-fu stance and clenched her fists, waiting for him. Lyons went into the shotokan karate sparring stance, but kept his hands at his sides. When he was very close to her, he twitched one shoulder as a feint.

She jumped straight up, shot a side kick at his throat.

Lyons caught her ankle with one hand and dragged her in one sweeping movement across the concrete to the other prisoners. She shrieked, clawed at him, cursed in her language. Lyons stepped on her throat and passed two of the plastic handcuffs to Blancanales.

"Hands and feet. Cinch her up tight. This one is hardcore."

"You got it," Blancanales told Lyons, "I haven't seen one like her for ten years."

As Blancanales pulled the plastic loops tight around her ankles and wrists, he spoke to the young woman in her language. She didn't answer. Gadgets came over, spoke also. She looked from man to man, and finally said, "Your Vietnamese is very poor. I would rather speak English."

"Vietnamese?" Lyons was incredulous. Despite his aching skull, the strong-jawed man stared quietly at the girl. "How'd you people get involved in this?"

"That's what I asked her," Blancanales told him.

"Who are you?" Lyons demanded.

"I am Le Van Thanh, of the People's Army of Vietnam."

The three men stared at her.

"You do not believe me?" She spoke textbook English, very correctly, as if in a language class.

"Long way from home, aren't you?" Lyons queried.

"Other representatives of my government attempted to speak to your officials, and they, too, were not believed. Your government displayed an overwhelming hostility, despite our good intentions. May I sit up, please?"

Blancanales pulled her up so that she could lean back against the Ford. She laid her head back against the door, exhausted. In her tailored, conservative blue skirt-suit, she looked like a young bank executive.

"If you had such good intentions," Lyons asked, "how come you put a pistol up against my head? How come you kidnapped me?"

"I was not responsible for that blunder!" Le Van Thanh looked at the Oriental with the broken jaw. "My superior has a very different attitude toward Americans than I do. He thought it better to capture you, interrogate you, before we discussed our mutual concerns."

"What mutual concerns?" Lyons demanded.

Blancanales interrupted. "Wait. How did you know who this officer is..." he indicated Lyons "...and where he would be?"

"We have contacts with the Fuerzas— you call them the FALN. Our contacts told us there would be a conference between the local commander of their organization and a federal officer. They told us it would be possible for our group also to speak with that officer. But it was imperative that the Fuerzacommander not know of our group's involvement. We meant to wait for your officer's return to this location, then speak with him. However, the meeting did not occur exactly as anticipated. My superior misjudged the situation. He decided to take one of the secondary officers — you," she pointed to Lyons. "My superior meant to interrogate you, then offer information concerning our mutual problem if you federal officers would cooperate. We meant you no harm. We carried a special electronic stun device so as to..."

"A Taser!" Gadgets reached under the Ford's seat, brought out the plastic pistol. "Fifty thousand volts," he said admiringly. "Quite a shock, knocks most people down."

"I thought you'd shot me in the head," Lyons told the woman. "I thought I was dying."

"That would have defeated our purpose. We wanted cooperation, not death."

"What is this cooperation you want?" Blancanales asked.

"First, I will tell you the information. It is this. An individual of Puerto Rican ancestry approached our government for aid in his organization's struggle against your government. This individual claimed to represent the FALN. In truth, he did not. Our government explained to that individual that the People's Republic of Vietnam hoped for better relations with the United States of America. Furnishing war material to dissident organizations would not be conducive to normal relations between our nations. Therefore, the request was denied."

"By war material, you mean C-4 explosives and M-16 rifles?" Lyons asked.

"Yes, explosives and weapons."

"But you say you didn't give it to him? Then where did they get the material?"

"Our government did not supply the explosives and weapons. But he may indeed have purchased the material in our country. You know our land is in turmoil. War creates many vices. And our nation has had many generations of war. He offered our government gold. When we refused, perhaps he found those who did not hesitate."

"And that's the information?" Lyons asked.

"Why did you want to tell us about this?" Blancanales sighed. "Why not the people in Washington, D.C.?"

"We did. I told you they did not believe us. Also, they would not consider cooperation with our group."

"Thank you for the information," Blancanales sighed. "Now, explain what 'cooperation' you want from us."

"It is simply this. The individual and his group have deceived and embarrassed our government. They could seriously impair our nation's future relations with your nation. We assume you will eventually capture these...terrorists. You will?"

"Pretty quick," Lyons told her.

"We want them exterminated. No investigation. No trials. No public revelations. Could that be arranged?"

The three members of the Able Team glanced at one another. Lyons frowned. "Do you have more information on the individual who approached your government? And the other terrorists?" he asked.

"Photographs, notes," she replied.

"Show us."

"The information is not in the automobile. We have a rented apartment in this city. Would you take me there? I could give..."

"We'll discuss this," Blancanales interrupted. He glanced at Lyons and Gadgets. "Conference time."

They went to a far corner of the garage. Blancanales covered the young woman where she sat against the car.

"What do you two think?" Lyons asked them. "You both know Vietnamese people better than I do."

"That woman is one of the smartest people I ever ran up against," Gadgets told them. "And I know, Iknow, it isn't the way she says."

"It's lies inside of lies," Blancanales concurred. "But you'd better believe they want those people dead. Exterminated."

"We need the information she's talking about," Lyons told them. "I want the photos. I want the notes. Even when we do get the psychos inside the Tower, that won't mean we've got their leaders."

"Right," Blancanales said. "I've got a folder full of punks and crazies, but none among them is the mastermind."

Inside the satchel slung over Gadgets' shoulder, a hand-radio buzzed. "Hardman Three here," he responded.

"Mr. Taxi relaying a message." All of them could hear the voice coming from the hand-radio. "There's a man named Brognola screaming for you all. He says to get back to the Tower, right now. I mean, he is pissed. Over."

Lyons keyed the hand-radio. "Tell him we're coming back real quick. Tell him there's been significant progress."

"Things must be critical over there," Gadgets said. "But so is this."

"Okay, you two go back," Lyons offered. "I'll go with her."

"I can send back my info with Gadgets," Blancanales countered. "You'll need backup if you're going to find out what she's talking about."

"You two be careful now," Gadgets warned. "That chick is dangerous."

Lyons checked his watch. Thirty-six hours remaining. "Five o'clock, gentlemen. Time sure flies when you're having fun."