The sixth mattress collected another sixty or seven rounds of .223 ammo. Then heavy firing broke out to one side of the doorway as Gadgets and Pol arrived.
Lyons ignored the direction of the firing and dropped behind his thick wall of mattresses. The terror goons at the other end of the hall had begun a charge to help their fellow killers. They found themselves facing the end of the Atchisson.
While Pol and Gadgets mopped up one end of the hall, Lyons reasoned with the terrorists who were charging from the other end. The steady boom, boom, boom of the Atchisson demolished all arguments for terrorism.
"Where are the pros?" Lyons demanded as soon as the rest of Able Team joined him.
"Gone. They never stopped," Gadgets reported.
Lyons led the way down a side hall, opening doors as he went, but there seemed to be nobody left in the building. Suddenly Lyons stopped and listened.
"Sirens already, and we have a dozen killers running around and no idea where they are," he said over his shoulder.
"Not right," Pol corrected him. "While you stopped at the doughnut shop, Gadgets went back and put a beeper on one of the taxis just in case."
"Let's go," Lyons said, leading the way downstairs at a full run.
Pol drove the van while Gadgets used the radio. Lyons followed in the T-bird. Soon they were headed north.
"Looks as if we're headed back to the airport," Lyons said through the microphone.
"More likely Fairfax Municipal Airport this time," Gadgets replied. "It's on the other side of the river."
A little later Gadgets broadcast again. "The signal is coming back toward us."
Lyons sped the T-bird around the van. As soon as he spotted one of the taxis he had been following, he steered the Ford into the oncoming lanes and stopped it in front of the taxi. It took a few millimeters from the brake lining, but the driver managed to stop the cab on time.
He stuck his head out the window and yelled. "You nut! Get yourself wiped out by someone else."
Lyons walked up to the driver's window. Then he pulled a wad of money from his pocket. As the driver watched he peeled off a five and a twenty.
"Your fare from the airport, downtown and back here, where did you drop them?"
The driver stuck his hand out the window. Lyons put the money into it.
"Acme Charter Service. The orange building over there. They're as nuts as you are."
Lyons laughed and tossed another five into the cab before returning to his car.
"Not nearly as nuts as I am," he told the startled driver.
"Yeah. They chartered an executive jet to St. Paul. You'll never catch up to them," the clerk at the charter-flight office told them.
Lyons turned to Gadgets. "Get Grimaldi here. Now."
15
July 13, 2004 hours, Minneapolis, Minnesota
J. Courtney Cain was a man who loved to talk. Usually it was not necessary for others to be willing to talk; it was enough that they should simply listen. However, in this case, he wanted his prisoner to talk and found her refusal to do so very frustrating.
Cain mechanically slapped his swagger stick against his right leg as he stared at Toni Blancanales. The stick tapped against carefully pressed fatigues, which Cain thought made him look very military. Unfortunately, at five-foot two, with long hair combed back to cover a bald spot, he looked more comic than military, a deficiency he found difficult to ignore when he saw the mockery in his prisoner's dark eyes.
"I am not entirely stupid..." J. Courtney began.
He stopped when he noticed the quirk at the corner of Toni's lips. He regretted his choice of phrase. The swagger stick whistled, Toni's head was jerked to one side. Soon an angry welt began to form on one cheek, just under the right eye. It joined three similar welts on the left side of her face. She struggled briefly against the ropes that held her to a wooden chair. Then her head dropped.
Cain tried again. As he spoke he paced back and forth in front of Toni, waving his stick and speaking as if he were addressing a class.
"First, Atlanta gets pounded during a raid. They lose half their force. Then Boston gets mauled during a raid and the rest of Atlanta's HIT trainees get wiped.
"It doesn't take much brains to figure that there's some sort of a force after us. Now I'm told that our trainees have been massacred in Kansas. That leaves me with the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that we may be next, here in Minneapolis. So, you can see that I was already on the alert. And when I do a sweep of the area, what do I find? I find that a lady investigator has us under surveillance."
He paused and brought his pockmarked face close to Toni's.
"Now, do you understand that I will go to any length necessary to find out what we're up against?"
The tip of the swagger stick slammed viciously into her solar plexus, leaving her gagging and gasping for air. Cain waited patiently the seven minutes it took for Toni to recover control of her breathing and pay attention to his questions.
"Why were you watching this building?"
"Screw off," she spat.
The swagger stick dug into her solar plexus with such force that she lost consciousness. Cain swore. He had not intended to lose time having to wait until she recovered. The woman was so damn maddening. But, he knew he would eventually get the information he wanted. The Nazis who taught him the techniques were experts with years of practice.
He left her alone for a while. When he returned, he could tell right away that she was faking. He wandered in as if he did not know better and started to tap her head very lightly with his swagger stick. She held out amazingly well, pretending not to feel the light taps, but Cain knew better. By now it would feel like she was being hit with a battering ram. Her head would feel as if it were being battered inside a bass drum. He could see the neck muscles tighten with each tap. Finally she began to scream.
"Now," he said with satisfaction. "Now, you will tell me what I want to know."
She was weeping uncontrollably. She nodded her head.
"Who will be coming?"
"Able Team."
"When?"
"They... they would be here by now."
That shook Cain. He would have thought he had more time. Surely it took longer than that to get to Minneapolis from Kansas City. Something was wrong.
"How many strong is Able Team?"
"Three."
He swung the stick onto the same spot on her head. She screamed.
"How many?"
"Only three. They should be studying this place right now."
It suddenly made sense. First send a spy. Then send three scouts. After that, bring in the main body of killers to wipe the place out. Of course, the scouts could easily arrive long before the main body. They did not have to wait until one fight was finished before moving on. Cain turned and sprinted from the soundproof interrogation room. He ran up to the communications room and strode in there.
"Get me our patrol leaders," Cain told the radioman.
The radio operator handed the unit commander a microphone.
"You're on both walkie-talkie channels," he told his commander.
"This is Cain."
He waited for two voices to acknowledge before continuing. "There should be three men out there scouting us. Locate them, but leave them alone. Don't move in until the main force moves in to attack. Take the scouts only if they spot you. Have you got that?"
Two voices acknowledged.
Cain left the radio room and decided to do a tour of interior defenses before returning to the interrogation room. When whoever it was attacked, they were going to get hit back much harder than they had ever been hit before. Cain was grinning like a death's head as he made his rounds of the old warehouse that had become the HIT headquarters.