Army of Devils

She clicked the Kalashnikov's fire selector down to full-auto and sighted on a muzzle-flash. A burst sent a punk staggering backward.

A dead guy sprawled only an arm's reach away. Flor grabbed his shirt and pulled him into the boxes. From the corpse, she took a web belt hung with AK mags and a .357 Magnum pistol. She took one of the magazines out and held it ready as she searched for targets.

She recognized the voice of the black man, Shabaka. "All of you. Fire there," she heard. "All at once. She's in there."

Spraying slugs at the voice, she dived through cardboard, felt her shoulder hit a heavy crate. Autofire punched the walls and concrete floor as the surviving punks tried to kill her with wild, unaimed bursts.

She took cover behind the heavy crate and waited. She felt several slugs hit the crate, but the two-by-fours and the contents stopped the slugs. She waited, silent, not moving.

"Manuel," Shabaka called out again. "Go take a look."

"Let's shoot her some more first," Manuel answered, then emptied another magazine into the clutter of boxes. Slugs ricocheted and fragmented on the concrete.

Flor felt high-velocity metal rip through one of her legs. But she did not cry out or move, not even as the blood flowed and the pain came. She waited. As the shooting continued, she dropped out the AK's magazine and put in the full magazine with thirty rounds. Counting the one round in the chamber of the AK, she had thirty-one shots.

Then she checked her wound. With her fingers, she found where a tiny bit of metal had hit her leg. Exhaling hard against the pain, she pressed on her flesh and felt the piece of metal in her leg. She would not let the injury slow her.

Shotgun blasts threw cardboard and bits of wood everywhere. Finally, Shabaka stopped the barrage. "She's dead! Now get the body and find out who she was."

The punks searched for her.

Alone on the killing floor, with the rifles of the gang poised ready to take her life away, Flor waited.

15

At a hundred miles an hour on the deserted freeways, Detective Towers raced to the command center of the joint LAPD, state and federal task force of officers assembled to fight the gang punks terrorizing Los Angeles. He spoke to Able Team in the car as he drove.

"We got Silva cold. Read him his rights, served the warrant, took the evidence. Perfect case."

"What about interrogation?" Lyons had rinsed off some of the gore from the LAYAC slaughter-fest, but blood still obstinately clung to his hair and the hair of his arms. His luggage in the trunk of the rented Ford had provided clean shirts for himself and his partners.

"They're questioning him, but no answers yet."

"What're they doing?" Lyons demanded. "Letting him discuss his case with his legal staff? While those monsters rip Flor Trujillo apart?"

"You still think they've got her?"

Blancanales leaned forward from the back seat. "Lyons, the ones in that truck didn't grab her. Maybe some other gang..."

Lyons interrupted his partner. His desperate worry for the woman he loved did not allow anyone to reason with him. "I figure they somehow got her into that truck. And I figure Silva will know where the truck went. That's all we've got to goon."

"Makes sense to me…" Towers agreed.

"You weren't there," Blancanales told him.

Slowing to sixty miles an hour, Towers left the freeway. He sideslipped through a screaming, two-wheeled left-hand turn, then accelerated. He switched on the siren at the intersections.

In the back seat, Gadgets looked at the boulevard flashing past. "You cops, you drive crazy." He put his hands over his eyes. "Tell me when it's safe to look."

Turning to Gadgets and Blancanales, Towers steered with one hand. "It's part of the benefits package. You can't expect men to go out and face the puke of the world for the pay of a nursery-school teacher. So they give us some perks. Like supercharged Dodges."

"Please," Blancanales asked. "At this speed, it is important that you watch the road."

"What road?" Towers questioned them, his face solemn. "This is a jet plane!"

As the Dodge hurtled through an intersection, it hit a dip where the boulevards crossed. The undercarriage smashed into the asphalt, then the car left the pavement at ninety miles an hour.

"Whoooeeeee!" Towers laughed. "Airborne..."

The Dodge smashed its undercarriage again when it landed. Towers fought the wheel as the heavy sedan drifted sideways. A sign in the center of the boulevard flew end over end into the night sky after the Dodge sheared off its four-by-four post. Finally, Towers returned the speeding car to a straight line. Still laughing, he floored the accelerator. Lyons punched him in the shoulder.

"Get serious, will you? This is no time to show off."

"Never had a better opportunity. All the good, decent citizens are at home snorting cocaine and watching the LAPD storm troopers stomping on the civil liberties of the vatos and Crips. In living color. In stereo. In wide-screen video…"

Slowing, Towers swerved into a parking lot. The LAPD had taken over a high school closed for summer vacation. The parking lots provided assembly areas for the officers and vehicles. Typewriters and papers could be seen covering tables in the gymnasium. The school's many telephone lines provided quick communication to all the law-enforcement offices participating in the counterattack.

Blancanales saw the parked squad cars and unmarked federal vehicles. He shook Gadgets. "You can look now. We got here alive."

"This car stinks of blood," Towers told Able Team as he parked at the end of the lot. They all got out. "There's showers in the gym. Why don't you guys have a proper cleanup?"

"No time," Lyons answered. "Where's Silva?"

"Okay, come on. Maybe all the blood will enhance your impact as an interrogator."

Uniformed LAPD officers with shotguns and M-16s guarded a side entrance to the gymnasium. Lyons laughed bitterly as he passed the guards.

"Where were they when the punks rushed us?"

Towers turned to Lyons. "Those men aren't watching for punks. They're protecting us from the media and the Civil Liberties Union."

"I believe it."

"Silva's down this way."

A group of men in suits stood at the end of a row of lockers. A screen identified a small room as the towel room. One of the plainclothesmen saw Towers and the three bloodied Federals. He grabbed a briefcase from the floor and rushed to them.

"I've got information for you and… these specialists," the young man in a suit told Towers.

At first, Towers did not recognize the man. "Oh, yeah. You're not LAPD. You're that liaison man for the Olympics antiterrorist detail. Why are you on this program?"

"The incidents last night qualified as terrorism."

"Sure did. What's this information?"

"The People's Republic of Cuba has decided to cooperate in the prosecution of Mr. Mario Silva."

"The Cubans?" Lyons asked, incredulous.

"Here's a copy." The liaison man passed Lyons a thick folder. "Most of it's in Spanish. Some of the papers are in English. Even some Russian and French. Silva has been a long-term agent for Communist Cuba — very surprising when you consider his family background. His father was a close associate of Generalissimo Batista. The Direccion General de lnteligencia assigned him to create a network of organizations and individuals who would advance Cuban interests in the United States. And he received millions of dollars to fund his operation.