Justice by Fire

Bracing the Atchisson against the column, the auto-shotgun's sights on line with the tree's night shadow, Lyons reached out with his left hand and pulled Blancanales's radio close enough to transmit his whisper.

'You got the scanner on?'

'Most definitely! Sheriffs' copter on the way. And they're assembling superior firepower. They know they got something badhapp'nin' in dis nadaland.'

'Talk English, will you!' Lyons told him.

'You English? I'm not. Why should I talk that talk?' Gadgets answered.

An engine revved. Lyons saw a car accelerate from the darkness of the driveway. He did not fire.

'Hold off, Politician,' Lyons cautioned his partner. The burning hulk in the center of the street blocked any straight-line escape. Keeping his right hand on the Atchisson's pistol grip, his eyes on the car, Lyons found the uppermost pouch on his bandolier. He pulled out a seven-round magazine of one-ounce slugs.

A 40mm grenade missed the car, plopped inside the house. Then Gadgets fired three-shot bursts of 5.56mm slugs.

A side window shattered. The driver whipped a hard right turn, putting the flaming Dodge between his car and the unseen rifleman, then raced for the end of the block.

Fishtailing through the intersection in a floored-accelerator left turn, the escaping Blancoshurtled directly into Lyons's and Blancanales's weapons. In one long explosion of 12-gauge fury, Lyons full-autoed seven rounds of high-velocity steel through the windshield. He dropped the empty magazine and jammed in the magazine of slugs.

Blancanales scythed the interior with a line of alternating military and hollowpoint 5.56mm, all thirty slugs tearing through the interior.

As the careering, out-of-control car failed to hold its high-speed left turn through the intersection, Lyons pounded the car with semi-auto steel-cored slugs. A door panel collapsed inward, gore sprayed from the far side. The car passed only ten feet away. Lyons snapped two more slugs through the shot-out back window as the car full of dead and dying Guerreros Blancoscrashed into the house.

Lyons jumped from the porch. He crouched and aimed at the gas-tank filler cap. The slug tore through the sheet metal. He aimed the last slug lower, fired into the gas tank.

No flames came. Pocketing the emptied magazine, he reloaded. Left-handed, he took an MU-50G mini- grenade from his thigh pocket. Not taking his right hand from his Atchisson's pistol grip, he stuck a finger through the cotter pin's ring, jerked it free.

A sound came from inside the car. A groaning, a gasping. A wounded Blancotried to form words. Lyons called out: 'Does it hurt? Don't you like it?' He pitched the grenade under the wreck. 'Go back to where you came from!'

As flames and choking black smoke rose into the gray night of Los Angeles, Lyons, Blancanales and Gadgets sped away.

33

Floyd Jefferson waited in the dark. As a game to keep himself awake, he listened to the sounds of the old hotel and the city outside. He heard the raspy breathing of Senor Rivera, asleep in a chair a few steps away, the long butcher knife clutched in his hand. The senora and the three girls slept in the bed, their arms around one another, the quiet sound of their breathing like distant waves. One of the girls moved and the old springs of the bed squeaked.

Startling awake, Senor Rivera straightened in his chair. The glow from the window revealed his look to Floyd. Floyd lifted his left hand in a mock salute. His right hand remained closed around the slick-tape grip of the sawed-off shotgun.

Letting his hearing travel the hotel, Floyd listened to the sounds of flushing toilets and faint voices. The solid brick walls blocked most of the hotel sounds. But outside the window, the noises of Los Angeles created a three-dimensional texture of late-night life.

A siren wailed. Floyd listened as it approached, growing louder, reverberating in the stone and glass canyons of the downtown boulevards, then fading as it continued away. He heard voices from the street, the screeching of tires, a blasting car radio.

Silence came, all the other sounds inexplicably absent. Small claws skittered on the steel of the fire escape outside. Shuddering, Jefferson looked toward the window. Rats.

He did not need to see them to imagine them. After five nights without sleep, the sounds of their claws created glowing rats on a giant fire escape in the theater of his mind.

Cool, kid. Be cool. You got worse than rats out there. Maybe. If his friends the 'specialists' did their number, the goons would notbe out there.

Five days? Had it been that long? Two nights in Miami. The night before he and Mr. Holt planned to fly to Washington. The night in that traitor Prescott's office. And tonight.

A few hours' sleep in Miami. No sleep the night before Washington — thought I'd be making international news, couldn't sleep thinking about that! No sleep the night at Prescott's, not with the goon squad waiting. And tonight.

Maybe he could sleep on the plane. When Pol and Ironman and Wizard get back, everyone gets on a plane north, finds a place to hide out while they splash the newspapers with this story!

What a story. Jefferson looked at Senor Rivera. A proud, hard-working man. His grandfather a ladinopeddler. Traveled around selling things. His father a shopkeeper, kept his little store open dawn to midnight to pay his son's way through college. Senor Rivera made it big. Lawyer, mayor of his town. Made the mistake of thinking the government really wanted land reform, to stop the Communist revolution by letting the farm workers and sharecroppers buy the land they had worked all their lives. An idealist. Land reform is the law, therefore he types up the forms and passes out the titles.

One bullet for him.

The senora and the girls. Four bullets for them.

Maybe even a bullet or two for me, thought Jefferson. Oh, boy. And I pay for it.

Horror-images flashed inside Jefferson's head. Stop thinking about that!

Tapping his feet on the linoleum and humming an old Puerto Rican song his mother sang years before, Jefferson stroked the shotgun. The cold steel comforted him.

They can kill me, but they can't hack me. At least, not while I'm alive. They won't do to me like they did to Senor Rivera's son.

Gouge out his eyes, hack up his body, carve off his balls and choke him to death with them. Choking to death on his own flesh.

The images came out of the darkness at Jefferson and he startled awake. Senor Rivera shook the young man. His face floated in the darkness as the Salvadoran whispered, 'You slept…'

'Ah, thanks. No good… can't sleep. No way. Not until we know…'

'Morning will come soon. Then we go to another place.'

Jefferson shook his head. 'No, sir. By morning it's over. One way or another.'

'Perhaps.'

Glancing at his watch, Jefferson saw that only forty-five minutes had passed since Prescott knocked on the door of the other room.

Talk about the long night of the soul.

Knocking broke the silence. The reporter bolted to his feet. His sneakers silent on the linoleum, he crept to the door. He had to listen for voices. If his friends had returned, if they had already eliminated the Guerreros Blancos, they would return to an empty room — because a minute after Blancanales had escorted Prescott downstairs, Jefferson, in a flash of inspiration, had run down to the desk clerk. If Prescott knew the address and room number of the Riveras, the Blancosdid also. Twenty dollars bought another room for the Riveras. With a bed. And without the stinking carpet.

Don't want the Team to come back and find us all gone. A paranoid nightmare!