Accelerating into traffic, Flor braked at a crosswalk. City workers crossed the street. Several read newspapers with headlines that screamed:
NIGHT OF HORROR
GANG TERROR
RACIAL OVERTONES TO CRIMES
A group of professionals argued among themselves, the voices of the well-dressed and immaculately groomed managers and attorneys loud even in the noise of the cars and trucks.
"This will unleash the worst police repression since the sixties..."
"The department will just dress the Triple K in blue and send them out to kill everything that isn't white..."
Music blasted away the traffic noise. Three teenagers in sneakers and torn jeans and identical black nylon jackets despite the midmorning heat wove into the crowd. One of the punks carried an expensive "ghetto blaster." The professionals looked up to see the ghetto punks.
The argument stopped. The professionals quietly scattered. The punks looked around at the fearful people and laughed. The light changed to green. Ignoring the crosswalk's signal, the punks strolled in front of the waiting cars. When cars attempted to proceed, one punk pointed a pistol-finger at the drivers. The cars stopped. The punks bebopped in front of Flor and Lyons.
One punk saw Flor. He stared at the beautiful young Hispanic woman sitting with the Anglo man. He grinned, showing all his yellow and broken teeth. Stroking the crotch of his filthy blue jeans, he swaggered up to Flor's window. "Hey, baby. Wanna get high with a cool brother..."
Flor jammed the muzzle of her Detonics .45 into the punk's mouth.
Spitting teeth and blood, the punk staggered backward into slow-moving traffic. A truck's fender hit him, bounced him into the car waiting behind Flor and Lyons. The truck did not stop.
Accelerating away, Flor laughed. Lyons returned his Colt Python to his shoulder holster and looked back.
The punk crawled on the asphalt, screaming and cursing, blood spraying from his lips. No one stopped to help him. His friends stood on the curb while traffic swerved around him without slowing.
Turning right, Flor stopped in front of Detective Towers. The middle-aged policeman with twenty years of worry lining his face glanced around at the people on the sidewalk before swinging open the back door. In a second, they merged with traffic again.
When he saw Flor, Towers blinked. He studied her for a moment before asking Lyons, "Who is your assistant?"
"My name is Flor. Carl, wipe this off." She passed the Detonics to Lyons. He turned and grinned to his old friend.
"Should have seen what just happened!" Lyons used a rental-company brochure to wipe saliva from the muzzle of the autopistol. "This punk thought he'd abuse the pretty lady. Turned out he got a forty-five in the mouth."
"You shot someone? On the street there?" Towers looked back.
"No shooting." Lyons used his thumbnail to scrape a bit of flesh out of the hairline space between the Detonics's slide and the frame. "Just low-velocity steel."
Towers laughed. He ran his hand through his thinning hair and reached inside his coat for his cigarettes. He tapped one out of the pack. He counted the cigarettes remaining and then put the cigarette back.
"Glad you showed up, hardman. This man needs some laughs. You read the newspapers?"
"Can't be true."
"It's worse." The detective stared out at the parking lots and shop fronts. The heat and mid-morning smog created a gray day without colors or horizons. The boulevards faded into the near distance, the buildings and cars becoming only shadows within the gray.
"Much worse. I thought Manson was the ultimate. But these punks, these gangs made Charlie and his little girls look like Bo Peep and the sheep. You two work together?"
"Flor's coming in as what did you call it?"
"We can talk?" Flor questioned Lyons before she answered.
"Bill was in on the Hydra op," Lyons said. "He knows enough to be a superstar at any congressional hearing. But only about Los Angeles."
"I'll be an interface between the DEA and his group," she said. "The terrorists seem to be funding their forces with dope money. Follow the dope, find the terrorists. Follow the terrorists, find the dope. It is natural that I work with Carl."
"There's drugs in this. The punks were up on some crazy drug."
"Was it PCP?" Lyons asked.
"Back where the gang went up against the old man with the shotgun, one of our men found some drug. And you know, he gave it the sniff test. Instant freak-out. His partners had to knock him down and tie his arms and legs. He's in the psycho ward right now."
"What was it?"
"Isn't Angel Dust. It's something else. Soon as you drop me off, I'm getting on the phone to the chief. I'm requesting very special federal assistance. Then maybe you two can come on as liaison.
"Because we're going to need you. This stuff the gangs got, what those gangs did to those college girls, what they did to that Mexican family, human beings can't do that. I think it's the drug. Doctors don't know what it is. Chemists don't know.
"And all I know is what it does. That dope It's got to be something straight out of hell."
4
When Lyons called Stony Man from a scrambler-fitted pay phone in Philippe's French Dip Sandwich Cafe, April Rose switched him directly to Hal Brognola.
"Finally, you called in," the cigar-smoking big Fed said. "We got a job for you out there in Los Angeles."
"The crazy dope?"
"What?"
"The gangs that have gone berserk on some kind of super-PCP out here. I want in on the action."
"If you'll listen, I'll give you your assignment. It's related. There was a weapon found on one of the punks who got killed. A Colt Automatic Rifle, one of those abbreviated M-16s..."
"High-class weapon for a gang punk."
"Let me give you details. The CAR was an old one. Made in 1965. No bolt assist..."
"An XM-177E1? That's obsolete. A collector's item. Where'd they get that?"
"That's the question. Let me continue, Carl, please. The serial number had been ground off, but the FBI got a latent impression with X-ray macrophotography. We know where it came from. Vietnam. And you have to find out how the gang got it. Then we'll trace it back from there."
"What about Political and the Wizard?"
"They're packing now. They'll be on their way this afternoon."
"So they'll be here tonight, my time. And Flor Trujillo. Can she get in on this?"
"She out there? We called the DEA. They said she had the week off. If she wants the assignment, she can check the drug angle. But the source of that weapon is the number-one priority."
"What's her clearance? She told me we have some kind of interface arrangement in the works."
"That's the official term."
"But what's it mean?"
"Improvise. We never employed an 'interface' agent before. It's a gray area. But keep your personal relationship out of it, understand?"
"Don't know what you're talking about, Hal."
The Fed laughed. "Everybody else does."
"What does everyone else know? What's the gossip?"
"The details of your personal life go in your file. Along with your biography, your qualifications, your mission debriefings it's our business to know everything about you. And about Miss Trujillo. And what we know about you two so far satisfies all our security criteria."
"So she's cleared?"
"You can talk with her."
"And what's her authorization?"
"There's the gray area. If she's working in liaison with your Team, she shares whatever authorization your Team has. If she's alone, she's subject to Drug Enforcement Agency procedures and regulations. Unless Stony Man has issued the mission directive. Then she has whatever authorization the mission carries."
"But she's with us on this one?"
"If she wants it. Looks like a straightforward PCP case to me."
"It isn't. I talked with a friend on the force. It's something new."