The Hostaged Island (10 page)

"Bad scene," Gadgets muttered.

Lyons grinned. "Real bad scene. No doubt about it."

Banzai directed his squad of Outlaws to encircle the steel building. He sent two men with rifles to cover the south wall. Two other men ran behind the airline offices, took positions covering the east wall and part of the north. Banzai spread out his other men throughout the parking lot and equipment yard.

Keying his walkie-talkie, he reported to Horse: "I've got men covering every way out. And there's nothing but the ocean behind them."

"Take them alive," Horse ordered.

"What if they won't come out?"

"Then kill them."

Banzai called out again to the besieged warriors. "Come out or we kill you."

An Uzi burst answered, the slugs punching into the car in front of him. Tinted glass showered him.

"KILL THEM!"

Shotguns and automatic rifles ripped the corrugated steel walls of the warehouse. Bullets and pellets tore through one side and out the other. Return fire from Able Team faked the cars in the parking lot.

Gasoline started to pour from the punctured tank of a Volkswagen. Then a tracer round hit the car and the fuel exploded. Two cars to the side, an Outlaw broke cover to escape the flames. Slugs caught him in one knee and in his gut. It knocked him down. The spreading pool of flame enveloped him. Screaming, his body burning, the Outlaw clawed at the asphalt, trying to drag himself clear, but without success. Foul, greasy smoke rose from the flaming man.

Several other cars exploded. Smoke from the tires of the already gutted Volkswagen darkened the sky. The heat from the burning cars drove the Outlaws out of the south end of the parking lot, leaving the west end of the warehouse uncovered. Three bikers gathered around Banzai.

"Ace!" Banzai looked to a man with an M-16. "Run up that slope across the road. Put some shots down on that end. Watch that window there." Banzai pointed to the end of the building nearest the flaming cars.

"On my way." Ace ran through the swirling clouds of smoke. Overweight and out of condition, the smoke around him acrid, he panted across the road and struggled to run up the steep embankment. A three-shot burst broke his back, spraying parts of him onto the crumbling rock. His broken spine arched over in an impossible backbend. He lay in the road, his body bent back at a ninety degree angle.

The other two Outlaws looked at the crumpled Ace and turned to Banzai, fear in their eyes. Banzai pointed to a skinny man with an eyepatch.

"You, Bone. You can run fast. Make it up that slope."

"But I only got a shotgun."

"So pick up Ace's rifle and ammo. Move it!"

"How can I run fast and pick up that stuff, too?" he pleaded. "Besides, I can't hardly see out of this one eye of mine..."

"Can you see this?" Banzai put a .44 Magnum to Bone's face. "Now move it!"

Slinging his shotgun over his back, Bone darted from the parking lot and sprinted across the road. He snatched at the M-16 of the dead biker. The sling tangled with the dead man's arm. Bone tugged at it desperately, dragging the body to the curb before the sling pulled free.

A slug smashed Bone's right knee. He spun backwards onto the embankment, screaming. He held his knee as blood gushed between his fingers, and yelled at the others: "I'm hit! I can't run, get me out of..."

Another slug slammed him back. "Get me out of here, ohhhhhhhhhhh..."

Then his left shoulder exploded. Both arms hung limp, blood pouring from the sleeves of his jacket. Another slug bounced him off the embankment. Yet another slug hit the gore that had been his right shoulder. Thrashing like a fish, he rolled into the road and then lay on his belly, yelping.

Banzai sighted over the eight-inch barrel of his .44 Magnum and fired a shot into Bone's head. The slug flipped the broken biker onto his back. He lay bloodied against the curb, arms and broken legs akimbo. The vast hole where his face had been stared back at Banzai.

Keying his walkie-talkie again, Banzai's voice shook: "Horse. We need rockets. Send another bunch of guys with some rockets. We need..."

"What the fuck's going on!" the voice screamed from the radio. "You got them trapped. Now you need rockets? What kind of jerk-off are you? You got grenades, use them!"

"We still need more men. I've lost three guys already. We need the rockets to knock down the building."

"Okay, they're on their way. Use your grenades, rip the place up. The rockets will be there in four minutes."

Pulling a fragmentation grenade from his jacket pocket, Banzai crept up between two parked cars. He motioned the biker behind him to follow. The biker carried an antique Thompson submachine gun with a drum magazine.

"Put a burst in there when I stand up to throw. I'll tell you when." He watched the warehouse door, now open six inches. A muzzle flashed fire. Another weapon fired from one of the small windows. Banzai jerked the pin from the grenade. "Okay, right now!"

The biker behind Banzai stood up and fired the Thompson, which jumped awkwardly in his hands. He waved the muzzle back and forth, the .45 caliber slugs crumpling the thin corrugated metal of the warehouse.

Banzai swung his arm back to throw. The biker behind him fired the clumsy Thompson point-blank into the back of his head.

"Jesus, Banzai! I'm sorry!"

The live grenade fell at the fool biker's feet, then rolled under the car. In panic he dropped to his hands and knees, grabbing for the grenade. It rolled beyond his reach. He stood up; slugs ripped past his head. He reached for his Thompson. Suddenly the grenade exploded, shockingly fierce; it tore away both his feet, also the hand grasping the Thompson.

The mutilated man fell to his knees almost on top of the mangled body of Banzai. More slugs punched into the cars. In shock and panic, the biker rose again and staggered backward on his shortened legs. He fell in the center of the parking lot, wailing, blood spurting from the stumps of his legs and wrist.

Firing from behind an oil drum, a biker with a braided beard heard the grenade explode. Squinting through the thick, stinking smoke, he saw a shadow fall back screaming. He called out: "Banzai! Hey, you all right?" There was no answer. Slugs pounded the 50-gallon steel drum. Oil drained from the many bullet holes. "Banzai!"

Still without an answer, the biker squatted low against the drum. He jammed shells into the tube of his riot shotgun. He came to the end of his bandolier. He had eight shots in his shotgun, three more in the loops of his bandolier. Then he had only his Browning Double-Action. "Banzai," he screamed again. "You hit?"

Leaning out from behind the oil drum, the biker pumped three loads of double-ought pellets into the warehouse door. Then he broke cover and ran weaving and ducking through the equipment yard. He was sprinting for the line of parked cars just barely visible in the pall of burning tires and cars. A 9mm slug tripped him, sending him rolling. He crawled the last few feet.

Blood oozed from his boot. He had a through-and-through wound to his ankle. Behind the protective bulk of a parked pickup, he tried to slip off his heavy boot. He leaned back against the car, panting with pain. He saw a radio lying on the asphalt, probably Banzai's. He reached for it.

"Calling Horse, this is the Frog. I think Banzai's dead. We need help, man. We're all ripped to shit. I don't know who these crazies are, but they're doing it to us. Send us some artillery. I'm almost out of ammo..."

He smelled gasoline. He noticed the car and truck on each side of him sat on their wheel rims, the tires blown apart. Streams of gasoline and oil puddled the asphalt all around the biker.

"... I got to get out of here. I'm sitting in gasoline. Get us some help. I'm shot. I only hear two or three guys still shooting. Horse! Get us some help!"

Putting the radio in his pocket, the biker crawled between the cars. He heard a single rifle slug whap through the car beside him. A tracer flashed by his face like a streak of fire.

The gasoline beneath him burst into flame.

Motorcycles roared around the curve at Lover's Cove and accelerated on the straightway. Approaching the seaplane terminal, the thick smoke forced them to slow. The five bikers heard only sporadic firing. As they pulled into the parking lot, stopping far from the burning cars, they saw something run toward them.

A flaming Outlaw was staggering, thrashing, lurching through the smoke. His eyes were gone, his open mouth a hole of darkness from which came an animal groan.

Charlie pulled his pistol and fired twice into the faceless head. Then Charlie himself flew back, a stream of .308 slugs ripping across his chest. Merciless engagement.

High in the corrugated steel warehouse, near the roofline, a muzzle kept flashing, the points of light bright through the black sooty smoke. The newly arrived bikers had only time to lift their eyes toward the M-60 before the slugs found them. Inaccurate because of the smoke, the stream of slugs sought no targets. The machinegunner simply swept the fire over them, firing indiscriminately.

The .308 slugs smashed knees and skulls, punched holes through the motorcycles, tore through lungs and hearts to destroy the fiberglass LAAW rocket tubes slung across the Outlaws' backs. Slugs pocked the asphalt, found flesh, ricocheted from engine blocks.

One biker, as a slug shattered his leg, threw himself sideways and dragged himself out of the kill zone. He watched as the steady stream of slugs stitched across the parking lot again and again, shooting the dead all over again, spilling entrails, giving corpses sudden movement.

The biker braced himself and struggled to remove the LAAW rocket from his back. He was almost unconscious from his leg's pain. Every move brought agony like he'd never known. He heard shrieking, did not realize his own throat made the sounds. But he got the rocket off his back.

The M-60 had quit. From the area around the warehouse, a shotgun fired: one shot, two shots, then a pause.

Laying still on his back, the one surviving biker from Charlie's rescue squad struggled to deal with the LAAW rocket's extension tube. Finally he pulled it out, and saw the sight flip up.

He heard boots running toward him. He saw above him an Outlaw holding an assault rifle. But his vision swam, he could not recognize the Outlaw's face.

"Just in time," said the Outlaw standing above him. "We've been waiting for the rockets."

"Here," the biker gasped, offering the LAAW rocket.

The Outlaw carefully accepted the ready-to-fire rocket launcher.

"Kill them!" the dying biker spat, his limp hands splashing in his own warm blood. "They killed Charlie, they killed our brothers... Waste those bastards... " His voice faded.

"Ready?" The Outlaw above him spoke into a radio.

A voice squawked, "All clear."

Putting the rocket launcher to his shoulder, the Outlaw sighted on the far end of the warehouse, and fired.

Screeching into the smoke, the rocket hit and passed through the corrugated steel like paper, punching through the hurriedly stacked crates, the sheet metal and thick planking offering only enough resistance to detonate the warhead. Twelve ounces of Octol high explosive ripped apart the stacked drums of oil and the cans of gasoline, vaporizing the oil and the fuel.

The door and windows flying out, the warehouse became a single ball of flame. Anyone inside would die before feeling pain, instantly incinerated. Twisted sheets of steel floated upward in the flames.

Shielding his face from the flash, the standing Outlaw watched the warehouse disintegrate, then squatted beside the biker. But the biker was dead, drained of blood.

The Outlaw put the expended launcher tube on the biker's chest, folding his hands around it.

Then the Outlaw slipped away into the swirling smoke. Motorcycles roared to life, moved on out.

Wind tangled his hair with his beard. Horse surveyed the devastation and death. The warehouse still burned. Smoke poured from the shell of buckled, scorched sheet steel. Gutted hulks of cars smoldered in the parking lot, wisps of acrid matter drifting from blackened interiors.

At the entrance to the parking lot, Horse looked down at Charlie's annihilated squad. The four Outlaws were sprawled amongst the wreckage of their motorcycles. Their ripped bodies had stiffened in the postures of death: hands knotted over spilled viscera, faces contorted in agony as if they still screamed. A pool of oil, gasoline and coagulated blood added background color to the group.

Twenty feet to one side, a dead man embraced the tube of the expended LAAW rocket.

"Last thing he did," Stonewall said.

Without commenting, Horse strolled on. He looked down at the scabs, bones, greasy meat that had once been an Outlaw. He observed closely the eight-inch barrel of the revolver lying in ash.

"That was Banzai," he said. "I gotta talk to Turk."

Stonewall called to a group of bikers standing near the burning warehouse. "Turk! Horse here wants to talk to you."

The balding giant plodded over to his commander. Turk carried a riot shotgun slung over his back. Only two 12-gauge cartridges remained in the bandolier that crossed his chest.

"Where were you?" Horse asked him.

"I was over there." Turk pointed to a seawall on the far side of the airline terminal. "Hanging my ass over the water, covering the big door and the side facing the water."

"Did any of them get away?"

"Nothing got out. Banzai had us surround the place. Guys on the other side, guys on these sides, me covering that end. We kept shooting until the rocket hit it. And bang, it went up."

"They're not even shit now," Stonewall said, looking at the warehouse.

"Just smoke," said Turk.

"It ain't funny!" Horse's eyes were fit to kill. "We lost twelve brothers. You understand? Those locals took twelve of us with them."

Turk backed away as Horse brought up his MAC-10. "Horse, easy man. I was here. It was bad, man, it was bad! But we won. We offed them. Take it easy."

Turning his back on Turk, Horse walked to the warehouse. He shielded his face against the heat and moved closer to the red hot wall of the warehouse. He snatched up a cartridge casing and an odd bit of metal from the concrete.

"What's that?" Stonewall called to him.

"A .308 casing and a belt link for an M-60."

"No wonder they ripped our dudes up. They had a goddamned machine gun. Where the fuck did they..."

"From Chief. He had one of the M-60's. These were the locals who got the Chief. And all of Chief's men. And the Monk. And the twelve men here. Heroes. Thinking they're going to save the day, screw up our plan, protect the wife and punk kids..."

Horse angrily threw the cartridge casing and belt link into the flames. He spoke to the rising column of smoke. "This is it, heroes. You killed my men, I killed you. But that payback ain't enough. Now I'll kill your people! All of your people!"

He laughed eerily, his gaunt addict's face cavernous like the skull in flames on his jacket's insignia.

"I wonder who they were?" Roger Davis said, rewrapping his shot-through forearm. He drew the strip of hotel sheet tight and tucked in the end. He tried to make a fist, but winced from the pain.

"Whoever they were," Chris told him, "they took out a lot of creeps."

From the roof of the hotel, the youths could see only the smoke from the burning terminal. But they had monitored the pursuit and battle on the captured walkie-talkie.

"If everyone had fought like them," Roger said as he looked into the distance, "the Outlaws wouldn't have lasted ten minutes. But everyone just did what they were told..."

"The Outlaws tricked everyone, people didn't know. Only people who didn't follow instructions got away. Like us. Like Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. Like those three guys."

"Wonder who they were... " He turned to Chris. "What'll you do if they spot us? If they try to take us?"

"I saw what they did to those old people. That's what they'll try and do with us. But in these jackets..." he pointed to the bloodstains on the denim "...with rifles and pistols and all the stuff that we took from their guys, oh man, we don't have any choices. We fight. That's all there is."

"Here they come!" Roger hissed. The roar of motorcycles announced the return of the Outlaws from the Pebbly Beach seaplane terminal.

Drawing their heads down as the Outlaws passed, both boys tightened their grip on their weapons: Chris holding the M-14, Roger a revolver in his left hand. They had counted only five bikers.

They looked up again, saw the bikers continue to the Casino. Chris grinned. "Not as many as there used to be."

Shirley pressed through the Ballroom's crowd. A child pulled at her sweatsuit. She leaned down, listened to the little girl, then took the girl's hand. She walked with her to the edge of the huge circle of residents in the center of the dance floor.

"Joe, Andy," she called out. Two wide-shouldered men turned. "This little girl — what's your name, honey?"

"Georgia, like the state."

"Well, gentlemen. Please escort Miss Georgia to the little girl's room. She's afraid to go with just her mother."

The shorter, stronger man glanced to the Outlaw guarding the exit door near the women's restroom. "I know the story. We'll take her over." Then he leaned close to Shirley: "Notice there's only one of them at each door now? What's happened outside?"

"I don't know. Something."

Joe smiled slightly, then he and the second man walked with the young girl across the expanse of dance floor.

Shirley continued on to Max Stevens. A teenage boy was speaking with Max.

"Why would they need gasoline? You think they're going to make a break for it in a boat? Maybe a plane?"

"Who knows? But thank you for reporting, try to hear something whenever you think it's safe. Shirley, just a minute. Mr. Andrews over here has been waiting to tell me — yes, Mr. Andrews?"

The elderly man in red silk smoking robe and leather slippers told his story:

"... I kept my legs up. He came into the restroom and walked along the toilet stalls checking to see which ones were empty. I had my legs up, and he went into the stall next to me. What he said, I listened to every word: 'Horse, this is your friend. Have you eliminated... good. The loss of your men is unfortunate. Horse, understand this, it is the threat of action against the hostages that keeps the authorities at a distance. You do not need an army to defend the island. The threat is your defense. After we board the submarine, the survival of these petty bourgeoisie' — that is what he said — 'the survival of these petty bourgeoisie is immaterial. We will have the gold, we will have our escape, do as you will... ' Then he said he'd talk with him again soon and he left. I waited until my legs couldn't goddamn take it any more, then I came out. He never saw me."

"Good. Good," Max told the elderly man. "Thank you."

An Outlaw had entered the Ballroom while the old man was speaking. The Outlaw went to one of the emergency fire hoses, opened the glass-doored compartment, and twisted the valve inside. A mere trickle of water dripped from the brass nozzle of the hose. Then he twisted the valve closed.

The Outlaw glanced at the sixteen hundred prisoners crowding the center of the Ballroom. A hideous smirk distorted his face. Then he left.

Fear struck Max like a wave.

The sun fell behind the mountains to the west of Avalon. Autumn chill was arriving with the dusk shadows, and Chris and Roger Davis pulled their Outlaws jackets tight around them. A motorcycle passed on Crescent. Roger snuck a glance over the edge of the hotel's roof to the street below. The biker carried a five-gallon red and yellow can.

"More gasoline," Roger said.

"We got to tell Mr. Shepard. Maybe he can think of some way to warn... Keep listening, maybe..."

Chris took the stairs down to the third floor, and he went into one of the rooms. The bed squeaked in the room.

"Mr. Shepard, it's Chris."

Glen Shepard got to his feet wearing only his pants. But he held his sawed-off riot shotgun. Chris saw huge bruises on his ribs and chest.

"Roger and I, we've been listening to the walkie-talkie and watching the street." Chris motioned Glen to follow him. Glen picked up his Outlaws jacket and put it on as they went to the roof.

"We can't believe what we think is happening. They had a roll call on the radio, and hardly anybody answered. This Horse guy keeps calling names, and the bikers say, 'Haven't seen him in hours', 'Don't know where he went,' stuff like that. Then Horse starts screaming about 'payback for the brothers, burn these locals.' He sent his men out for gasoline. That's all they've been doing for hours."

"Gasoline?" Glen asked. "How much gas does a motorcycle use?"

"It's not for the motorcycles."

Roger had the walkie-talkie pressed to his ear. "Listen..."

"Got it drained?" the radio said. "Still coming out. Down to drops now..."

"Put the cap back on. We can't wait all..."

"Mustn't have any water in the line."

"Cap it off! Upstairs, you guys there? Upstairs!"

"Stand-pipe's empty."

"Okay then. A little water in the pipes wouldn't matter, when that gas comes out of the fire hose and the fire sprinklers, a little water won't slow it down a bit. This is going to be one hot ballroom, hot time on the old town tonight..." Laughter.

Roger started to his feet. "Now we know."

"They took a car to the gas station, just kept going back and forth with cans," Chris told Glen Shepard. "They must have hundreds of gallons of it. Hundreds."

Glen nodded. "They said 'fire hose and the fire sprinklers.' They'll need a few gallons, that's for sure."

Chris spoke with panic in his voice. "They've turned the building into a bomb. My mom and dad are in there, Roger's mom, everybody in our family, everybody we know in town, all those people..."

"What can we do, Mr. Shepard?" Roger asked him.

Looking up at the darkening sky, Glen watched the gulls gliding on the wind. High above the dusk-shadowed town, the gulls still flew in sunlight, their wings white against the violet sky. He swept his eyes over the mountains, drinking in the thousand shades of green, brown, blue, the points of yellow wild flowers, the red flowers of hillside homes. What a beautiful island, he thought. He had moved to Catalina because it was a small town set in a desert paradise isolated by the ocean. He had wanted to walk with his children on the island's beaches and mountains, through its desert wilderness and gardens of tropical flowers. Now his child would walk without a father.

"How old are you two?" he asked the Davis cousins.

"Eighteen," Chris answered.

"Sixteen, seventeen next month," Roger told him.

"So you're drafted. I want you to write your parents letters, tell them what happened today, tell them that you loved and respected them, and that there was no one else to help. You had to."

"What're we going to do?" Roger asked.

Across the bay, the Casino's automatic lights came on. The light bathed the white building in brilliance. Chris and Roger saw Glen Shepard staring, turned to see what he watched. Chris spoke first: "We're going over there?"

"We have to. There's nobody else. I'll be back in a few minutes." Then Glen left to say goodbye to his wife.