stand a chance,” Lyons replied.
“Scary shit in the hands of a bad guy.”
“Looks like the dwarf was smart enough to wear gloves when he was preparing his ammunition,” Lyons muttered. He stood and looked at the crime scene. The floor was peppered with markers where empty cartridges ejected and littered the floor.
“You color coded the markers,” Lyons noted.
“Right. Yellow for those weird cases,” the tech began. “Red for the 9 mm ammo. Blue for the 12-gauge shells.”
Lyons looked at the floor. “Do you have an example of the 9 mm and 12-gauge?”
“Sure, but—”
“I’ll just make an imprint on a piece of paper,” Lyons answered.
The tech nodded and got a couple pieces of notepaper and a pencil.
While he ran the pencil across the bases of each cartridge through the paper, he thought about the crime scene.
This had a mixed feel to it. As an investigator, Lyons developed a sense of how a murder took place, just by standing at the scene. Even before the days of evidence markers, he could feel the vibes from a crime. Here, the vibes were mixed. This was at once an act of passionless slaughter and a thrill kill committed by madmen.
The dwarf stayed still. He could see the shape of his fallen brass, and he stood still, spraying the office with precision bursts. Like a turret. No chasing after victims. No exposing himself to more danger than he had to. The little guy was a pro, and he was at the center of things.
All his brass of the one with the 9 mm pistol was centered around a bloodless tape outline.
“Who was killed here?” Lyons asked.
“Amanda Cash, owner of the company. She was strangled and her neck was broken,” the technician said.
“Do you have a photograph?”
The tech handed over a copy. “We’re using digital cameras, and printing up with a mobile printer.”
“Good quality. Very useful,” Lyons said. He looked at the woman’s face. He remembered that this was Carmen Delahunt’s friend, and he shoved a pang of regret deep into the recesses of his subconscious and let his analytical mind take over. There, the regret for his friend’s loss could smolder, building into a flame to add to his fury over the loss of fellow officers. There, his mind could harden, and he’d be in the right frame of mind to handle this trio of mystery killers. He could hone that anger, that rage, into a razor-sharp precision edge with which he could rip through the murderers. His friends and superiors often described Lyons as a berserker, but that wasn’t the case. While his rampages could be legendary, his fury was controlled. He’d never take an innocent life, he’d never harm anyone on his side. He’d talk and grumble a good show, but when it came down to the line, the powder keg of retaliation burning down in the middle of his powerful frame was as focused as a laser, despite its destructive force.
Berserkers didn’t care who they hurt. Lyons took his rampage of revenge and laid every ounce of seething anger and hatred on top of the guilty. And he washed it away completely in his torrent of action. He never let it stick with him, and after every battle, he cleansed his mind. No lingering bitterness stayed, nothing to harden his mind and soul against the suffering of those he put his life on the line for. Everything gouted out of him like a stream of napalm, immolating his foes.
He looked at Cash’s face, keeping his conscious mind clear, analytical. She was racked with fear and sorrow. Her bulging eyes and furrowed brow showed that she watched most, if not all, of her friends, partners and co-workers slaughtered by the three-man wrecking crew. The freak who strangled her wanted her to watch, wanted her to feel that loss. It wasn’t enough for her to suffer only an instant with a 9 mm bullet in her head. It wasn’t enough to live through the agony of being strangled to death. Lyons knew that the killer wanted her to watch shock after horror after atrocity. The murderer probably fired over her shoulder and allowed her see where every one of his bullets stuck home.
It had to have been the thin man, the one who was like a snake. He may have looked scrawny, but it took a hundred pounds of force to shatter bone. To do that with one arm, it took strength that could only be surpassed by the giant, who waded into the cubicles after tossing a human being like a missile. But the snake, he was a constrictor. He loved the feel of a squirming victim against his chest. If he hadn’t been a killer for hire, he’d have become a serial killer.
That left the giant. The man-mountain had waded in, and that told Lyons two things. One, he trusted the dwarf’s aim. Two, he was like Lyons in that he preferred his violence at point-blank range. That was where their similarities ended, however. The mammoth who stampeded through the cubicle farm was a beast who unleashed a murderous rage upon unarmed, helpless victims. He reveled in being splattered with blood from contact-range shotgun blasts, and enjoyed the feel of bodies crushed in his massive fists.
Amanda Cash was just one of five victims who didn’t die of gunshot wounds, but as opposed to the pretty redhead, the others died swiftly. Smashed to pieces by being hurled through office equipment or having their necks broken by savage twists or brutal punches. The titanic killer was a professional, and thorough, shooting his victims in the head to make sure they were down, but there was a lethal fury at work in this killer, a desire to crush and pulp those smaller and weaker than he was.
Lyons got an imprint off the linking ring, and the 5.7 mm casing before he left. The papers would be faxed to Stony Man Farm in an effort to trace the ammunition lots that the murderers used. It would provide some kind of clue, but looking at the trio’s work, the Able Team leader had figured out the identities of the murderers.
Linn “Gremlin” Keller, a miniature master designer of weapons, embittered by shady business practices. He sold his skills as not only a gunsmith and arms supplier, but also as a killer.
David Lee Haggar was called The Mammoth when he was in the underground fight circuit. He reveled in killing with his hands, but also enjoyed the splash of gore present when a shotgun exploded in a victim’s face. After being wanted for several deaths in the ring, he decided to make his living as an assassin, hooking up with the tiny Keller, who designed weapons for the titan’s massive paws.
And the thin man was Jacob “The Snake” Cannon. Exbiker, meth dealer, with a rap sheet that pointed toward him being a serial rapist and an unashamed cop killer. The wild-card madman had to have hooked up with the other two, feeling a kinship with them.
Lyons had figured out who they were, but he didn’t know where they were or where they would strike next.
The only thing he knew for sure was that he was going to lead Able Team against them, and bring them down hard.
He owed the San Francisco Police Department, and Carmen Delahunt, that much.
CHAPTER THREE
Calvin James and Rafael Encizo stood on the prow of the small launch as it chugged through the junks moored in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. The sprawl of floating boats was as much a city as the landlocked skyscrapers and shantytowns that gleamed like a blaze of diamonds on the shore. James and Encizo had both ridden in the passenger seats of F-14 fighters, ferried from Langley airfield to Japan, where they met up with the Tokyo headquarters of the U.S. Homeland Security task force.
There,
