Motion to his right caused Lyons to whirl. He spotted a second shooter drawing down on him with an automatic pistol. The big ex-cop bent at the knees, aiming the Uzi and triggering it within the span of a heartbeat. As Lyons fired, the Arab shooter triggered a quick burst of autofire that cleaved the air a foot or so above Lyons’s head. In the same instant, a reply from the Able Team leader’s Uzi hammered into the man’s midsection. The gunner emitted a short cry of pain as the rounds drilled into him and dumped him in a heap.
The rattle of weapons fire to Lyons’s right caught his attention. Whirling toward the source, he spotted Blancanales pinned down behind an overturned dining-room table. Concentrated autofire from assault rifles wielded by two of Hakim’s killers shredded the wooden barrier.
The shooters were positioned at twelve and three o’clock from Blancanales’s position. The Able Team commando was curled up behind the table, reloading his Uzi, as rounds from the twin AK-47s pierced the table and sizzled the air around him. Fear for his friend’s safety quickly morphed into white-hot rage.
Lyons brought the Colt into target acquisition, trying to nail the guy closest to him even as he brought the Uzi around to gut the second thug trying to kill his teammate. As he did, a third man sprinted from the hallway, pistol in hand as he ran up on Blancanales to get a clear shot.
“Pol!” Lyons yelled.
As the warning escaped his lips, Lyons caught the vague impression of a lithe shape, little more than a blur, thundering toward him. A second later, someone struck him with a flying tackle. He felt air explode from his lungs as he lost his footing and tumbled over. As he went down, his senses trying to identify this latest threat, he heard gunshots from near Blancanales’s position, followed by an anguished cry.
AS THE SMOKE from his grenade began to clear, Schwarz saw a shape cross the hellground of Hakim’s penthouse, apparently heading for the glass double doors that led onto the rooftop that doubled as a patio and helipad.
Uzi held at the ready, Schwarz threaded between bits of furniture savaged by the fighting and closed in on the fleeing figure, hoping to get a better look. As the door slid open, the gale-force breeze whipped up by a helicopter’s rotor wash exploded through the doorway, the whining of the turbine engines overtaking the crackle of gunfire. The smoke thinned to little more than a haze and Schwarz saw Hakim silhouetted for a moment in the doorway as the man passed through it and onto the rooftop.
Schwarz proceeded for the door at a dead run, vaulting overturned chairs and coffee tables as he closed in on his quarry. At this point, the bastard was their best bet for finding the other Arm of God killers running loose in America, their best bet for preventing a possible terrorist strike, mass murder in America.
That meant escape wasn’t an option for Hakim. At least not while Schwarz and the others lived. One of Hakim’s killers crossed Schwarz’s path, the muzzle of his pistol fast locking on Schwarz. The Able Team warrior fired from the hip, the Uzi stuttering out fire and lead that thrust the man back against a wall, body jerking until Schwarz eased off the trigger. The man slid down the length of the wall, leaving a bloody smear in his wake.
Schwarz barely acknowledged the death as he darted through the doorway. Instantly the transition from indoor light to the brilliant San Diego sun caused him to squint for a moment as his eyes readjusted. He made out the vague impression of Hakim’s silhouette as the man sprinted for the chopper. He considered firing low, raking Hakim’s feet and ankles with bullets, hobbling him and ending his escape plans all at once. He dismissed the idea for the moment, at least until his eyes adjusted. He couldn’t risk shooting too high and killing rather than wounding his quarry.
The men in the chopper had no so such limitations when it came to nailing Schwarz. Gunfire lanced through the air around him as he darted for the fleeing man. Someone was firing upon him from inside the helicopter. Running in a zigzag pattern, the Able Team commando covered the distance between himself and his quarry, his breath growing ragged under the stress of dodging live fire.
A bullet scorched the air next to his cheek. Ducking, he spotted the source, a man crouched in the chopper’s door, a pistol in his hand. The hard guy squeezed off a second shot, but in the same instant, the hovering chopper lurched forward, throwing off his aim, causing the round to slice through the air above Schwarz’s head rather than into his face. Cursing, the warrior lunged forward, landing hard against the fake grass carpeting the patio. The Uzi ground out a quick burst that stabbed into the chopper, driving the man under cover, but not striking him.
In a heartbeat, Schwarz was again up and running across the roof. Reflexively, he squinted against the rotor wash, the incessant beating of the blades tousling his hair, causing his clothes to ripple. The shooter in the helicopter came back into view, exposing a sliver of his face, a shoulder and a knee.
Not much.
But, in this case, maybe enough.
Schwarz tapped out a sustained burst from the Uzi, the shots pounding into the chopper’s skin just next to the crouched shooter. The bullets rent steel, penetrating it before slamming into the terrorist. The guy’s eyes widened and his mouth opened, apparently in a scream. The man’s limbs went rubbery and he pitched forward, his body hanging half in, half out of the chopper, suspended by the harness. His pistol fell to the ground.
Schwarz closed in on Hakim, who, after taking a brief spill, was back on his feet and darting for the helicopter. Schwarz raked his Uzi over the ground at Hakim’s feet. However the slugs caught dead air as the terrorist sprang through the door. In the same instant, the submachine gun clicked dry.
Shit. It would come down to this, Schwarz thought.
Reloading as he ran, the Able Team commando vaulted an overturned table, ducking reflexively as he closed in on the chopper with its whirling blades. Engines whining, the craft lifted off the rooftop, its skids about five feet off the ground.
Springing forward, Schwarz caught the landing skid by looping an arm around it. With his free hand he grabbed the elbow suspending him from the skid, hoping to fortify his position.
The chopper continued its ascent. Suddenly, Schwarz’s world became one of deafening engine noise, nauseating fumes, buffeting winds and the steely pull of gravity. Muscles straining, burning, he freed his hand from his elbow and closed it around the skid, tried to pull himself onto it, his body held back by the rotor wash’s unseen force. He kicked once, twice, unsuccessfully trying to loop his leg over the landing gear.
He chanced an upward glance. Two things registered with him, Hakim’s face contorted with rage and a pistol muzzle tracking in on his head.
BLANCANALES SPOTTED a pair of hardmen pushing through the sliding doors leading from the rooftop patio and fanned out across the luxurious living room. A third man popped out from a kitchen door, molding himself around the jamb and trying to acquire Blancanales as a target. The commando dropped into a crouch and raked a punishing, waist-high burst through the room.
Blancanales’s initial volley of slugs chewed through plaster, slicing and dicing the midsection of the man hiding out in the kitchen. The man uttered a strangled cry accompanied by a stuttering protest from his AK-47 as his trigger finger tightened reflexively in death.
The other two men parted and went to ground, each unloading his assault weapon at Blancanales. Bullets scorching the air around him, the Stony Man warrior pressed his attack. He swept the stammering Uzi in a horizontal line, dropping a hard rain of fiery lead on his opponents.
His weapon clicking empty, Blancanales ejected the machine pistol’s clip as he dived forward. Skidding to a stop underneath a large oak
