phony wig had fallen off her head during the battle, leaving her short, blond hair looking wild. Her face was shiny with perspiration, but there was a classic beauty that no amount of dishevelment could conceal. And to boot she could fight. Like a soldier.
Pol broke the momentary silence.
'Did you get through to Ironman?'
'No. I lost the radio. Shot out of my hand.'
'Then we hold out here until help arrives,' Blancanales concluded. 'And with this much noise shaking the garage, someone's bound to arrive soon.'
'If they come up here,' Gadgets said, 'they've got to come up these ramps. We should be able to hold them. How much ammo's left?'
A combined count logged four clips for the Ingrams, including the fresh clips in the guns, and seven 15- bullet clips for the Berettas. They also had two grenades.
'We're fine,' Pol joked. 'We've got six more bullets than there are yahoos out there.'
They could hear the thunder made by the Riding Devils biking across the level below them.
'These two bikes are the only cover we've got,' Gadgets said. The two men dropped the machines on their sides. The trio flattened out behind them, using the sparse cover to best advantage.
A head soon poked around the corner of the cement ramp. The trio held their fire for a split second and the head jerked back out of sight. The man yelled.
'They're holding out at the top.'
'I think the party's over,' Pol quipped.
'It's just beginning,' Gadgets countered as an assault rifle was eased around the curve of the wall, bearing in on the three fighters. Slowly a head followed the rifle around the corner. Politician fired. He put a single shot into an eye.
The sound of cars, their gas pedals pushed toward the floorboard, alerted the trio that trouble was arriving on four wheels.
'Get to one side,' Pol instructed Babette. 'They'll try to ram our barricade.'
Babette drew back from the edge of the ramp and then ran to the side where she could get the longest view of the floor below. She could not yet see the Riding Devils.
Gadgets and Pol each took one of the remaining grenades. Babette, working in perfect tandem with the Able Team duo, shouted 'Now!' the second she saw the front of the first car. Gadgets and Politician pulled the pins. They rolled the grenades down the ramps, then sprinted in opposite directions away from the ramps. The car taking the tighter turns was directly over a grenade when it went off. The force of the explosion lifted and twisted the vehicle, leaving it a bent, battered, flaming pile of rubbish that blocked entry from the floor below. The other car made it over the grenade. It charged on toward Able Team's flimsy barricade.
At the last possible moment, the driver of the car saw that there was no one behind the motorcycles.
He swerved sharply to avoid hanging the car up on the bikes. The driver then began a wide sweep that would allow him to stop out of effective firing range or continue to hunt.
Gadgets lined up his Beretta on the rear wheel. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a gun barrel emerging from the passenger window. Gadgets let himself collapse to the cold cement as heavy automatic fire blazed over his head.
Blancanales, who had turned a different direction from Schwarz when they had retreated from the ramp, found himself removed from the battle, located behind his partner and at an even greater distance from the pair in the car. He tracked the car with his Ingram, but the range was doubtful and his aim was leading dangerously close to Gadgets. Politician held his fire and began to run toward the action.
Car wheels screeched as the driver used the space on the empty top story to put the vehicle into a power turn and head it back toward Gadgets. The gunner in the car could no longer hit Gadgets without hanging most of his frame out the window. The danger for the Able Team member now lived with the machine that was speeding toward him.
At the bottom of the ramp, the Riding Devils had used a car as a battering ram to remove the burning, beat-up auto. The gunners were now using the car as a shield to get a better angle on, and some protection from, the lone sniper who was preventing them from rushing the ramp. Babette was firing, but was having trouble finding targets. Overhead she heard a large helicopter. She glanced up but the bird had no markings. She turned her attention again to the ramp and opened up the head of a thug who was lining her up over the hood of the car. The man's face was thumped into a bloody pulp.
Instead of getting to his feet and trying to reach cover, Gadgets Schwarz switched the Beretta to full automatic and stitched a line of slugs across the windshield of the car. The instant the gun clicked empty, he rolled to his right as fast and hard as was humanly possible.
The shots killed nothing, but they spiderwebbed the windshield, dropping visibility to nil. The car pulled away to the right as the driver, unable to see the target, veered away from the area where the automatic fire had come from. The skidding back end of the car missed the rolling Able Team member by inches.
The car came to a stop about fifty feet from Gadgets. The door on the far side of the machine opened. The passenger and the driver both got out the same door. Schwarz could see their feet as he shoved another clip into his gun. Remaining prone, the warrior carefully lined up his sights on one of the ankles. Weapons were being swung to bear on him over the top of the car.
Simultaneously, three gunners popped up over the car at the bottom of the ramp. Babette managed to take out one before her clip was empty. She retreated from the edge of the ramp, out of range of a hail of bullets. She slapped the last clip into the Ingram.
Babette lay back from the ramp, waiting for the first head to appear above floor level. Her back was fanned by prop wash from the copter hovering overhead. She could not spare a second to look up; she could only hope it carried allies.
Screams — chilling, almost unreal — sounded. They were screams of fear, not agony. They were followed by a series of explosions. Bloodied bits of human beings rose, then fell. Babette risked taking a quick glance. She looked up at the copter from which the grenades had been lobbed into the attackers, but it was already landing at the entry to the parking building. She moved her eyes back to the ramps, determined to stop any survivors from surfacing.
Politician saw the two gunners from the car bringing their automatic rifles to bear on his partner. He fired on the run. The bullets stitched the car roof, nailing one of the gunners in the cheek, missing the other. Both of the bastards ducked low.
Gadgets forced them to duck even lower. Before the goons could think about getting off more shots, he fired a burst at one man's ankle and then the next man's. The guncocks crashed to the ground. Two more bursts guaranteed they would never get up.
Pol and Gadgets trotted back to the ramp to help Babette hold the fort. They could hear shooting from below.
Ten minutes later, following a two-minute silence, Carl Lyons called.
'Don't shoot. I'm coming up.'
The men greeted each other.
Blancanales did the introductions. 'Carl, meet Babette Pavlovski. Best backup gunner in the business.'
They locked eyes. They locked hands.
'Nice to meet you.'
He was six feet tall with wide shoulders, a barrel chest, narrow hips. His white hair gave him the look of maturity; he did not look old. His complexion had a flushed, just-scrubbed appearance. His blue eyes carried little expression, but they had the ability to send chills through anyone who dared to stare into them. He talked to three young men who stood uncomfortably before him.
'There were how many of you?' he asked in a cold, clipped voice.
The three glanced around the room, each more than willing to allow the other to answer.
After several silent seconds, the eldest, a thirty-year-old still fighting a losing war against acne, answered. ' 'Bout thirty-five of us went there.'
'And only three of you survived?' The white-haired man's tone indicated that no amount of convincing
