would make him believe such a failure had occurred.
'Well... a couple of the guys may have surrendered,' one of the Riding Devils confessed.
The third, still-silent member of the bikers was busy putting a small pinch of powder between his thumb and first finger. Then he inhaled the powder, snorting deeply.
'I suppose you were all enjoying the dust,' the white-haired man said. 'How much dust?'
'Not enough to get real high, Mr. Boering. Just enough to make sure no one got chicken shit.'
'Just enough? Just enough. I want one goddamn woman taken care of... you send three Devil Riders...'
'Riding Devils,' the sniffer corrected.
Klaus Boering ignored him. 'I even supply the guns. But three is not enough to take care of one woman! So you send thirty-five and only three of you come back.'
'She had two bodyguards. Then some sort of SWAT squad came,' one of the bikers tried to explain.
'Oh,' Boering sneered sarcastically. 'Thirty-five of you went after one woman. Turns out she had two bodyguards. It was obviously a trap. How lucky you are to have escaped!''
The three shifted nervously, spending most of their time looking down at their feet, at the floor. They didn't know how to deal with Boering. The white-haired man was obviously furious over their inability to get the job done. He waved at them as if he were shooing chickens.
'Goodbye. Good-goddamn-bye. I have no more work for you. Get out. Close the door when you leave.'
The three turned and shuffled out; too defeated to protest their treatment. As soon as they had left, Boering picked up the telephone and dialed.
'Georgi, this is Klaus. I want the special team made operational immediately... I know they're for special use only. This is a special use.
'Listen. A small squad of one, two, three, maybe a couple more are protecting that damn defector. They just killed thirty or more goons to do it. The special team is the best. Use them. Take out Pavlovski and everyone around her.
'How's the other operation going? Are the athletes away clear? Good. If you hear from Frazer, give him my congratulations.'
He signed off and hung up the telephone.
Soon he could forget about Pavlovski's bodyguards.
They would be dead.
He was sure of that.
7
'Welcome to my office,' Carl Lyons said, laughing as his Able Team partners examined the trailer on campus.
'It's more spacious than Brognola's,' Blancanales said. 'How'd you swing this?'
'I phoned Archer, told him I wanted one of those portable offices used by construction companies and he got it. Magic.'
'Presto. This is a bit better than the huts we're used to using in the jungles,' Gadgets noted.
'How's the arm?' Politician asked Lyons.
The blond warrior looked surprised. 'I'd forgotten about it,' he said with a shrug. Lyons never gave small pain anything more than small consideration.
The trio settled down on some heavy, scarred chairs.
'How long do you figure it'll take Babette to round up the black athletes?' Gadgets asked.
'They've got to come from other areas where they're staying,' Pol said. 'Unfortunately they're not all together. Doesn't really matter, though. We need the time for planning.''
The three men outlined a plan, each pitching in with suggestions, questions, until one solid block of strategy had been mapped out.
'I'm going to need squealers — miniature transmitters that send a constant signal — and tracking gear,' Gadgets interjected at one point in the session.
'FBI or cops have them?' Lyons asked.
'Not exactly what I want,' he replied, 'but something close enough. I can modify them. I'll need some tuning crystals, too.'
Lyons went to make a phone call. When he returned he told Schwarz, 'They'll have what you need in a half hour. Be delivered here.'
The discussion continued until there was a knock at the door of the trailer office. Babette Pavlovski let herself in. She was followed by eight blacks.
'That was quick,' Gadgets said.
'We're quick,' one of the athletes informed him.
The only athlete the members of Able Team recognized was Sam Jackson, the U.S. amateur heavyweight boxing champion. Jackson was a huge man with huge fists. The fists hung at his sides, lightly closed. Over the past few years he had earned the nickname 'Lightning' for the fast way those fists burned, punished opponents.
'So you're Lighting Sam Jackson,' Pol said. 'You're supposed to have the quickest hands in boxing.'
'What do you mean, 'supposed to'?'
Jackson moved close to Blancanales, shadow boxing, his fists a blur. The Able Team warriors were more than impressed.
'Yeah,' fired Lyons to Pol. 'What do you mean, 'supposed to'?'
Everyone sat down. Silence filled the room.
Lyons, not wanting to waste valuable time, broke the quiet.
'Babette tells us Old Lady Russia would embrace you people with open arms. What's the draw?'
'Babette should mind her own business,' one of the athletes piped in.
'American athletes are my business,' Babette said. 'Since I defected — something that had nothing whatsoever to do with the Soviet Union — I have been hounded by Soviet scum. They feel my defection is a taint on communism.'
Lyons broke in to repeat his question. 'What's the draw?'
'There's no discrimination over there,' a female athlete said.
'We'd be supported by the state,' another said.
'We'd get better training,' said another.
'Bullshit,' said Lyons. 'They're not luring you over there with a nickel-and-dime draw of no discrimination, state support, better training. Don't feed me that shit. I just ate. What's the draw?'
Again silence filled the room. The athletes looked at one another. Tension hung heavy. No one wanted to be the first to speak. Finally, Lightning Sam Jackson opened up.
'Draw's different for each of us,' he said.
'What's being offered to Sam Jackson?' Blancanales asked.
Jackson looked pained. He was a man clearly more confident dodging punches than questions.
'Money, man. What else? Old Boering told me they'd get me money and I could keep my amateur status.'
Once Jackson had opened up, the rest began to spill their stories, reluctantly at first, freely later.
When they seemed to have run out of steam, Pol told them about the kidnapping. He passed around the note he had found in the blond man's pocket. He urged them to keep the situation to themselves.
'Maybe Russia would be better,' one athlete, shocked at the news of the kidnapping, said.
'That is Russia,' Pol told them. 'Those were Russian agents we killed at the airport. That's your sample of Russia. Kill, capture...'
'No way,'' Jackson said as he finished reading the letter. 'The Klan hates Commies. There's no way those bigoted bastards would help the Russians.''
'They'd help the South Africans, though,' Pol reminded him. 'And how hard would it be to set them up for
