'Politician!' Lyons called out. 'You there?'
'Elevator!' said a hoarse whisper.
'The kid with the AK is dead. You see the woman?'
'She made it into this apartment.'
Lunging across the wide hallway, Lyons snatched the AK-47 and the full magazine. Both rifle and magazine were slick with blood. He jammed in the magazine, chambered a round, wiped off the weapon with his coat sleeve.
AK-47 in his left hand, Uzi in his right, he crept back to the elevator. At the closed door to the apartment opposite the elevator he glanced back. Blancanales watched him from the elevator, pointed at the door, made a fist. Lyons nodded.
The AK-47 jumping awkwardly in his one-hand grip, Lyons fired bursts into the hinges and lock, then emptied the magazine through the door. Blancanales ran from the elevator, went to one knee, waited.
Suddenly, shots came from the apartment, punching into the wall by the elevator.
Lyons kicked the splintered door down, threw the AK-47 through the doorway, heard it crash into furniture. Both Lyons and Blancanales fired crisscrossing bursts into the apartment.
Blancanales dived through the doorway, low, as Lyons fired over him. He heard Blancanales exchanging fire, shots hitting the wall, breaking glass. Furniture crashed. Lyons glanced in, saw Blancanales roll behind an overstuffed velvet couch as a Vietnamese man shouldered an AK, firing a burst. Then the Vietnamese saw Lyons, and turned.
Lyons ducked back as shots ripped wood from the door frame beside his face. Then he heard the Uzi burst. The AK fire went wild. A man screamed.
Lyons looked again. The Vietnamese was gone, the window behind where he had stood was gone. The afternoon breeze flagged the curtains.
A pistol shot roared past Lyons' ear. He dropped, heard another pistol shot rip over him, then the Uzi fired again. Blancanales would be out of ammo by now. Lyons fired from the floor, rolling into the apartment. He saw Le Van Thanh aiming a pistol down at him, her hands still chained together. Lyons fired.
The first slug punched into the wall behind her, but the second and third hit her shoulder, threw bits of flesh and cloth onto the wall, and spun her violently around. She dropped to the floor. The pistol clattered against the wall. Lyons took aim at her head, but his gun was empty.
Incredibly, she came up with an AK. She watched Lyons grappling with Gadgets' satchel, trying to get the Uzi out. Meanwhile he was watching the wounded woman drop the empty magazine from the AK and try to snap in another. But with one hand on the grip, and the handcuffs still linking her wrists, she couldn't quite reach the AK's cocking lever.
Making a quick decision, he swung the satchel by its shoulder strap, the nylon bag heavy with Uzi and magazines, hand-radio and spent brass, coming down on her head hard, stunning her. She dropped the AK. Lyons swung the satchel again, saw blood gushing from her head, pouring over her face and white blouse.
Still she struggled, putting her hands out in front of her in kung-fu claws, kicking, but in the slow motion of semi-consciousness. Lyons dropped the satchel, took out his Colt Python .357, grabbed her by her lustrous black hair, smashed her in the ear with the Python's heavy barrel.
Silence. Lyons looked around, saw Blancanales jump up, kick open a door. Nothing. Blancanales looked into the room, then went in. He came out in a moment, giving Lyons the thumbs up.
Blancanales crossed the apartment, glanced into another room, searched through a closet, finally came back to Lyons. He looked down at the bleeding woman.
'She alive?'
'Sure she's alive! She's alive 'cause she has a date with interrogation. The men with hypodermics. Then she'll explain what this is all about.'
He looked around the apartment again, surveying the damage.
It had been a spacious apartment with French windows overlooking the trees of the street. Now most of the glass was shot out. One entire window was gone. The curtains were sprayed with blood. The furnishings were ripped, broken, overturned, dusted with plaster and bits of brick. The velvet couch looked as if it had been attacked with a chain saw. Lines of automatic rounds dotted the walls, huge hunks of plaster broken away from the bricks underneath.
'See what happens when you rent to foreigners?' Lyons asked Blancanales. 'They have no respect for things. It lowers the property values.'
Blancanales laughed. He changed magazines on his Uzi. 'Come into this other room, take a look.'
A bedroom had been converted into an intelligence office. Tables were stacked with papers and photos. Row after row of eight-by-ten black-and-white glossies were pinned to the wall.
'Is the war over?' Taximan called from the hallway. 'Where are you?'
'In here,' Lyons called.
'See those photos?' Blancanales pointed to one series. 'Recognize the crazies from that folder I have? The FALN information? These Vietnamese were onto the group.'
Taximan came in. 'We got to get out of here. There's a crowd outside, the police are on their way. We got a Vietnamese hanging out of a tree with most of his head gone. I'm afraid this is going to be on the six o'clock news.'
Lyons didn't listen. He studied a series of photos. In one photo, the man the FALN folder identified as both a terrorist and embezzler spoke with a young man. In another photo, the unidentified young man spoke with an older man. Though the photo was grainy black and white, taken with a telephoto lens, Lyons recognized the distinguished sandy-haired gentleman talking with the hard-faced young man. He had seen the gentleman posing with a former President and Secretary of State. He was the President of the World Financial Corporation.
12
Siren wailing, a New York Police Department squad car cut through the late-afternoon traffic. Taximan kept the front bumper of the cab only a few car lengths behind the police black-and-white, roaring through intersections at sixty miles an hour, throwing the wheel from side to side to swerve around slow trucks, accelerating in open stretches of avenue, power-gliding around corners.
In the cab's back seat, Lyons shouted instructions through the security phone. 'I want a team of surveillance agents ready
He shared the backseat with Blancanales and several boxes of photos and paperwork taken from the apartment. Blancanales patiently sorted through the material as the cab skidded from side to side of the streets and avenues. He skimmed over the typed and handwritten Vietnamese, a language in which he was fluent, searching for names. There were hundreds of sheets.
'Anything?' Lyons asked.
'It'll take me weeks to get through all this. But look at these dates, they go back months. This was no rush job. They've been on it quite a while.'
'Any background? Why they were sent? What they were looking for?'
'Can't tell. These are only day-to-day logs. Surveillance records. Copies of weekly reports. All signed by Le Van Thanh.'
'She was the commander?'
'That's right. When they stitch her head back together, we'll have to ask her about Davis and that other man, the man who links Davis to the crazies. I see Davis' name all over the place, but I don't see the go-between's. Maybe they didn't get it.'
'What is the hold the crazies have on Davis?' Lyons pondered the mystery out loud. Then, to Blancanales: 'When did the crazies first contact him? You find anything that could tell us that? What's the date on the first
