Army of Devils

Libya. Said he'd made a deal to smuggle some kind of new 'crazy dust' — a drug that made soldiers go crazy — into the United States with a Saudi Arabian prince. The smuggler said he'd gone to Khaddafi Duck Himself with the scheme. Ended up supplying it on contract to an ex-Panther, ex-Death's Angel named Shabaka. That's the only name he got.

'I put it through the machines. Nothing, I talked to Konzaki about all this, and he told me you guys have got more than freaked-out street punks to watch out for. You understand? Watch out for crew cuts in suits. And don't trust anyone with a Harvard accent. Over and out.'

Gadgets clicked off the radios and tape player. 'Oh, wow. Very curious.'

Lyons looked toward the room where Silva sat. 'It'd be interesting to find out who the Saudi Arabian prince actually worked for, but we've got other work to do. After we find Flor, we'll call the White House.'

'You're talking totally crazy,' Gadgets said.

'After I saw Unomundo's hired generals and colonels rubbing bellies with United States senators,' Lyons said, 'I decided I'd never know exactly what was going on. In fact, maybe even Cuba knows something about this that we don't. Now no more talk.'

Rushing over to the used-towel room, Lyons stood in the doorway and studied Silva. A wide-shouldered Hispanic with perfectly styled hair and an expensive suit, Silva had never worked with his hands or struggled or fought. His manikin-perfect face had no scars or worry lines.

Silva looked up at the man filling the doorway. He saw polyester slacks stained with filth and crusted blood. The man wore a freshly laundered shirt — the front still had the creases from a suitcase — but blood stained his hands and arms. Bits of blood clotted in his hair. As Silva studied the blond stranger, he became aware of a new smell in the room.

The smell of blood and cordite and death.

Absently Lyons rolled the thick folder in his hands, gripped it and slapped it like a length of pipe in his left palm. Voices stopped. The steady whap-whap-whap of the roll of papers became the only sound in the small concrete-walled room. Finally, Lyons spoke to the plainclothes interrogators.

'Officers, wewill question the prisoner now. Please leave us alone with him. And don't interrupt us.'

The plainclothes officers grinned to one another. But Towers shook his head. 'We're responsible for what the prisoner looks like and I can't let...'

Lyons crouched, balancing on the balls of his feet in front of Silva. He looked into the man's face and smiled. 'This puto...' Lyons used the Mexican word for a male whore '...is only a coward and a worm. He will answer all our questions.'

Towers motioned the interrogators out. The men laughed as they left. The last man closed the door. Silva twisted his face into a sneer.

'I'll be free tomorrow. And I'll file a lawsuit claiming defamation of character. That obscenity will cost you millions of dollars.'

Lyons ignored Silva's words. 'Your father and his friends fought Castro. Your family fled Cuba. If you don't answer every question we ask, photocopies of this go to your father, your father's friends, every anti-Castro organization in the country, and Omega Seven.'

Opening the curled folder, Lyons showed Silva the first page of the Cuban dossier. Full-face and profile photos identified Mario Silva. The stamp of the Direccion General de Inteligencia marked the lower right-hand corner of the identification sheet.

Silva went white. Lyons fanned through the dossier, showing the young attorney the hundreds of photocopied documents condemning him to prison and lifelong exile from his family and the Cuban American community.

Lyons grinned. 'You'll talk now?'

Silva tried to speak. But his mouth had gone dry. He sputtered a few sounds, finally nodded.

'We want to know everything about Shabaka...'

The double shock of betrayal by his Communist masters and the police knowledge of it made Silva sag in the chair. He hid his face in his hands.

In less than a minute, without striking him once, Lyons had broken the arrogant attorney.

Furious knocking at the door interrupted the interrogation before the questions started.

'What?' Lyons demanded. 'I said to leave us alone! What do you want?'

'You got a call from someone named Flor. You want me to tell her to call back later?'

16

A National Guard war-surplus Huey troopship took Able Team to El Monte, a community of Chicano barrios and light industry only a few minutes by freeway from downtown Los Angeles. Approaching the warehouse, they saw the headlights and flashing red lights of the ambulances and sheriffs patrol cars below them. White-uniformed attendants exited a building with sheeted forms on gurneys.

'Dead ones,' Towers shouted to Lyons.

'I don't care who's dead,' Lyons answered, also shouting to be heard over the rotorthrob. 'Flor's alive.'

Litter swirled in the glare of the streetlights as the Huey descended into a parking lot. Lyons jumped from the side door the moment the skids touched asphalt. Sprinting to the warehouse door, he saw two sheriff's deputies put up their hands to stop him. He dodged through them into the warehouse.

'Hey, buster! Who do you think you are?'

'Stop that clown!'

'Flor! Where are you?' Lyons shouted, ignoring the deputies rushing to seize him.

'Over here!'

A deputy with a baton confronted Lyons. Lyons pushed him aside. The deputy swung back the baton to club the ex-LAPD officer.

'Quit it!' Lyons told him. 'You don't know who you're dealing with.'

'Officer!' Flor Trujillo called out. She approached, limping, from behind the bullet-pocked truck, her dress bloody, a Kalashnikov slung over her shoulder. 'That is my associate you are threatening...'

'Then tell him to get out of here. This area's closed to civilians,' the soldier said, breathing hard.

'Officer,' Flor repeated. 'This is my operation. You are only here to clean up. If you continue to threaten my associate, I will be forced to request your withdrawal.'

As she spoke, she shifted the Kalashnikov in her hands. Casually gripping the forestock in her left hand, she flicked the AK's safety lever up and down with her right. In the quiet after the shutdown of the helicopter's engine, both Lyons and the deputy heard the sharp clacking of the Soviet safety. She ended the argument with the final question, 'Do we understand each other?'

The deputy sheriff lowered his baton. 'He with you?'

Lyons rushed to Flor. She had the presence of mind to reset the AK's safety before Lyons hugged her. For almost a minute he held her, not speaking, his face in her hair, drinking the scent of her sweat with every breath.

'Carl,' she whispered. 'It's okay. I'm okay. It couldn't have been more than an hour or two since I saw you.'

'I thought you were gone.' He felt the rise and fall of her breasts against his body.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I saw the truck leaving, and I jumped on. Like a fool I didn't take one of the radios. I'm not used to working with a team.'

'What happened?' Lyons finally broke the embrace.

'Did you bring my luggage? I lost my shoes. And I have to throw this dress away.'

'Hey, lovers,' Gadgets jived as he joined them. 'We're here on business. Time to get to it.'

'What was the trouble with the sheriff's department?' Blancanales asked.

Lyons laughed. 'Flor had to establish exactly who is in command here. Able Team one, sheriff's department