His fisherman friend tried to stop him. 'Max, give us the word!' he whispered hoarsely. 'We'll make our break right now!'
Twisting away from his friend, Max stepped into the open and walked toward his death. He stopped ten feet from Horse.
Horse's heroin-ravaged face sneered. 'Hero! Remember me? I'm George Delaney. I lived here. Assholes like you chased me out, sent me to prison. Now I'm going to torch you. And in a while, I'll burn the rest of them.'
Signaling the biker at the valve, Horse pointed the brass fire nozzle at Max Stevens. After seconds, Horse looked at the nozzle, shook it. Some gasoline splashed out, splattering Horse as it trickled onto the floor.
'Turn it, open it up!' Horse shouted.
'It is!'
Gasoline drained from the hose. The stream never got farther than a few inches from the nozzle. Gasoline puddled around Horse.
'Fuck this!' He pulled his .45 auto from the holster, pulled back the hammer, screaming: 'Going to spray your brains, hero, all over the...'
'NO!' Carol Stevens screamed. She raised her husband's pistol, fired, the slug almost missing Horse, only nicking his left arm. Horse spun in terror, firing his pistol down into the puddle of gas.
Framed in flames, he shrieked and wailed as a sheet of heat enveloped him. He dropped his pistol, slapping at his flaming body. Stonewall reached for him and tried to pull him free of the burning gasoline, but he fell back, his own hands flaming. He too dropped his gun.
Behind the bikers, a submachinegun ripped. Biker after biker fell. Other Outlaws ran. Horse hopped about the ballroom floor, flaming, shrieking. Stonewall was slapping out the flames on his hands. He reached for his shotgun on the floor.
But the people of Catalina Island took him. Hundreds of hands beat him, clawed him. He managed to fight back and with his tremendous strength he broke free. His face was pulpy and bleeding. He reached for his pistol. It wasn't there. He staggered backward from the advancing people. Then he ran from them.
Other bikers were not so fortunate. Fists beat them. When they fell, shoes and high heels and bare feet stomped them. Blood and pulverized flesh splashed around their broken bodies.
On the balcony ringing the Casino, Lyons ran through the Outlaws, firing point-blank bursts from his Ingram into their backs and into their guts. Ahead of him he saw an Outlaw aiming his shotgun at the crowd inside the ballroom.
Ten feet from the outlaw, Lyons fired. Only one 9mm slug hit the biker, snapping his wrist. Staggering back, the Outlaw slid his left hand down to his shotgun's trigger. Lyons pulled his Python, popped a shot through the biker's chest, the hollow-point slug throwing the dying biker actually backwards through the air.
Running past the fallen Outlaw, Lyons fired a second shot through the man's forehead, then blasted another Outlaw running for the stairs.
His shoulder suddenly in fragments, Stonewall tumbled down the stairs. But he got up, ran, his dead arm swinging by tendons and stubborn strands of muscle.
'Lyons!' A voice shouted to him. Blancanales ran to him, G-3 in his hands. 'Take off that jacket!'
'Oh, yeah.' Lyons ripped off the stinking denim as Blancanales fired burst after burst, the powerful auto- rifle slamming Outlaws into walls, throwing one over the balcony railing.
Methodically sweeping the balcony with his Uzi, Gadgets killed. An Outlaw was running from a group of citizens. Gadgets snapped two shots through the panicked biker's spine, then stepped over him to fire again. He moved on, putting a burst through a crawling biker's head, snapping a shot through the face of a biker reloading a shotgun. He emptied the last two rounds of the magazine through the dying shotgunner's head.
Calmly dropping the Uzi's magazine, Gadgets put it in his pocket, snapped in another, continued his search for living Outlaws. There were more than seventy when this day dawned. Not anymore.
On the hillside overlooking the Casino's entrance, Glen Shepard squinted through the strange electronics of the Starlite scope. Hearing the firing and screaming high above him on the balcony, he glanced up. But he could see nothing that happened.
A biker ran from the entry and jumped on a motorcycle. Shotgun blasts from Chris and Roger Davis, twenty yards to Glen's side, ripped the biker. Then Glen saw Stonewall run from the Casino.
'Don't shoot him!' Glen shouted to the teenagers. 'He's Stonewall...'
Looking to Chris, Roger asked: 'He doesn't want us to shoot him? What's going on?'
'That's the psycho who killed the old people,' Chris said, sighting the M-14 on the biker's chest. 'He wants him for himself.'
A .308 slug snapped Stonewall's knee backward, throwing him against the steps of the Casino. Chris lowered his M-14 to watch. Twenty yards from them. Glen chambered another .308 accelerator and fired into Stonewall's other leg. Then his thigh. Then his hip. Then his uninjured arm.
On the balcony, Able Team moved through the carnage. They saw Outlaws with their heads stomped flat by the islanders. Groups of islanders were beginning to form around Able Team, touching them, shaking their hands, a hundred voices thanking them.
Lyons saw a man run. Preparing to sprint after him, a full thirty-round magazine in his Ingram, he shouted: 'Stop! Whoever you are, stop or I'll fire!'
'Don't!' A middle-aged man called from near Lyons. 'It's a local boy.' The man limped up to Lyons; he had a Colt Hardballer in the waistband of his slacks.
'Why's he running?' Lyons asked.
'Because he's afraid,' he said, his voice sad. 'And he'd better keep running, all the way to the mainland. Where they don't know him.'
'Who are you?'
'Max Stevens,' said the man, shaking hands with Lyons, smiling broadly. 'I sell things, including homes. Despite what you see, Catalina is almost paradise...'
Shotgun blasts came from the street below the balcony. Lyons ran back to Gadgets and Blancanales. They had a bloody-faced John Severine, Soviet agent, in their grip.
'More Outlaws!' Lyons shouted, running down the stairs. He raced down flight after flight, only slowing when he came to the Casino entry. Ingram ready, he glanced outside.
Glen Shepard stood over a screaming biker. Behind Glen, the teenage boys turned their faces away from what they saw. Firing at point-blank range, Glen blew away pieces of Stonewall's body.
The legless Outlaw thrashed on the steps. Pointing the sawed-off shotgun again, Glen blew off Stonewall's left hand and forearm.
Lyons aimed his Ingram at the head of the suffering man. Glen shouted, 'Don't. Let him die. I wish I could kill him a hundred times.' He squatted down in front of the truncated criminal. 'Hey, animal. You looked for me all day. I watched you butcher those old people. But I killed your psycho Outlaws, and I got you. Me, a restaurant manager, a guy who punches a time clock, I killed you. You hear me?'
Breath wheezing from Stonewall's throat, he died. Glen kicked the corpse. He looked down on the jacket's evil insignia.
'Forever Outlaws.' Glen spat on the flaming skull.
Lyons looked down at the dead psychopath. 'Forever came tonight.'
Epilogue
Days later at Stony Man, Brognola called together the men of Able Team. 'I have transcripts of the interrogation of John Severine. As suspected, he was a Soviet agent. Transcripts for all of you...'
Brognola passed inch-thick folders to Blancanales, Gadgets and Lyons. 'The first page summarizes the
