Gallucci waited until Prescott's Dodge pulled into the traffic of occasional cars and trucks speeding through skid row. Then he left his bureau Dodge and ran across a parking lot to a pay phone.
The Sheraton switchboard answered.
'Good morning, Sheraton Hotel.'
'Room 615, please.' Gallucci told the operator. He listened as the phone rang eight times.
The operator returned to the line. 'There's no answer, sir. Would you like to leave a message?'
Gallucci dropped the phone and ran back to his car. Accelerating, he raced to the freeway. He had to get within the signal range of Captain Madrano's radio. Only then could Gallucci warn the Salvadoran.
Only then could they set the contingency plan of ambush and sterilization in motion.
Able Team sped south on the Harbor Freeway, Blancanales and Prescott in the first car, Gadgets and Lyons following in the second. Lyons radioed Blancanales.
'When we get off, we give that car a complete search, agreed?'
'I searched it,' Blancanales's voice answered. 'It's a rental. Found only Prescott's briefcase and the walkie-talkie.'
'A complete search,' Lyons stressed. 'The trunk, under the hood, the underside...'
'Visual and electronic,' Gadgets added.
'Looking at this map,' Blancanales responded, 'we'll be there maybe four minutes after we leave the freeway. We're parking and then going in on foot, correct? Even if they have a D.F. on the car, they won't know it's us or even where we park. We might be late already. I don't know if we want to risk the extra ten or fifteen minutes.'
'You want our arrival announced?' Lyons asked.
Gadgets took the hand-radio from Lyons. He spoke as he maintained a one-handed seventy miles per hour, steering smoothly to glide from one lane to another through the light traffic.
'Pol, dig it. Prescott said these Nazis pay in gold. We know they use good equipment. That trick with the shielded and pulse-switched D.F. on the motor home proved it. They could have anything on that car...'
Lyons leaned to the hand-radio and added, 'What about a radio-triggered bomb as a backup? Prescott goes softhearted and tries to take the Riveras away — Bang. If we can use electronic force multiplication, why not them?'
'Maybe…' Blancanales admitted.
'You're in the car, Political.' Gadgets laughed. 'Give it some thought…'
Blancanales sighed through the encoding and decoding electronics of the hand-radio. 'You talked me into it. We'll do a quick search.'
Heading west on Century Boulevard, Gallucci pressed the transmit key of the walkie-talkie again. 'This is
Words finally answered, static-blurred but audible. 'Yes… we wait.'
'They took Prescott.'
'What?'
'They — took — Prescott.'
'Who?'
'The 'specialists.' I watched them march him to the car. They may be coming.'
'You said the 'specialists'? The ones who guard the Communist reporter?'
'They took Prescott. They know about you.'
Static, then cursing in Spanish. 'They come?'
'I don't know. If not now, soon. Time to send out your second squad. And you should get ready.'
Static and laughter. 'We will be ready.'
In only a few minutes, Captain Madrano had reorganized his men into an ambush. He also dispatched four men to liquidate the Riveras.
Then the Salvadoran soldiers waited, concealed in the urban desolation of what had been a suburban neighborhood before bureaucrats and vandals ran wild.
Overgrown hedges and the blackened ruins of stucco houses concealed the soldiers. In the always-gray overcast of the Los Angeles night, they had both vision and concealment. Anyone arriving in an automobile would be an easy target.
The first car appeared. Captain Madrano recognized the rental Dodge Prescott had driven to the Sheraton. He shouted the command to his men:
Ten Uzi submachine guns ripped the Dodge in one long maelstrom of 9mm death.
31
Leaving the freeway, Able Team had pulled into a closed service station. Security lights bathed the asphalt surrounding the sheet-metal garage in blue white glare. Wire mesh covered all the windows of the garage and station office. A body shop adjoined the gas station. Behind the chain link and razor-wire enclosing the smashed or primer-red cars, guard dogs paced.
Gadgets parked behind the blue Dodge Prescott was driving and surveyed the area, the wire-mesh station windows, the guard dogs, the boulevard of boarded-over windows and abandoned cars.
'Not a good neighborhood,' he said to Lyons.
'Understatement of the year,' Lyons told him. 'You're in cannibal territory here.'
Gadgets laughed as he took his counterelectronics wand from his equipment case. 'You got a weird sense of humor, Ironman. Do all cops make jokes like that?'
'Who's joking? The world we live in, I only tell the truth. People don't believe it, so they laugh.'
'The district sure looks bad,' Gadgets countered as they left the car, 'but it can't be
'Hey, Wizard, this is Lennox. There really is a gang here called 'The Cannibals.' When I was with the LAPD, we never were able to get an informer into the club. Seems the initiation rite is...'
'You're jiving!' Gadgets passed the wand under Prescott's car.
'No jive,' Lyons insisted.
Blancanales passed the car keys to Lyons. 'You telling more cop jokes?'
Opening the trunk, Lyons threw the keys back to Blancanales. 'No jokes,' Lyons continued. 'To join the gang, a punk had to murder somebody and then eat them. No jive. I am serious.'
'Man, I can't believe that.' Gadgets laughed. 'Your arm wound's infecting your head. How is your arm, by the way.'
Lyons went flat on his back and directed a flashlight beam at the undercarriage of the car. 'It's cool,' he said.
Gadgets searched the interior of the trunk with a flashlight and the counterelectronic wand; slamming the trunk closed, he opened the rear passenger-side door.
The wand buzzed. Gadgets swept it over the rear seat and over Prescott. The tone faded. He waved it toward the dashboard. The tone became loud. Then Blancanales opened the glove compartment. Gadgets touched the wand to the walkie-talkie. The device shrieked.
Blancanales and Gadgets glanced to one another. Gadgets signaled his partners to be silent with a finger over his lips. He pointed to the walkie-talkie, then sat in the seat and disassembled it. Lyons continued searching the undercarriage.
Headlights swept the gas station. A lowered Olds-mobile pulled up beside Able Team's cars. A tape unit blasted soul music. Red light illuminated the interior of the Olds.
Two black men — one man in a purple satin turban, the other with a vast cloud of ratted 'natural' hair- looked over at the three men in the Dodge. The music cut off.
