"Sorry about that," Lyons laughed. "Did it again. Improvised."
"I didn't say you couldn't improvise when it was necessary..."
"Pol, you're wounded." Lyons saw blood on Blancanales.
"My G-3 got customized." The automatic rifle had two bullet holes in the plastic buttstock. "And my leg, too. But..." He pulled a Heckler and Koch box magazine out of his thigh pocket. Bent and twisted, the magazine had a hole through it. Blancanales reached into his pocket again, felt the wound, probed it. "Oww! Here it is, double-ought." He held up the flattened lead ball.
"You okay, Gadgets?" Lyons asked.
"Oh, yeah. I took cover behind Pol!"
The screech of the Outlaws' walkie-talkie interrupted them: "This is Stonewall, come in Horse. We're a couple of blocks up from the pier, and we got ourselves a hero. Alive." Horse's coarse laughter cackled through the walkie-talkie: "Bring him in. We'll make an example of him."
The three fatigued but fit Able Team avengers looked to one another. "Anything we can do?" Lyons asked.
"In Avalon?" Blancanales shook his head, no.
Carl Lyons looked at the ground. "Well, God grant you a quick death, whoever you are."
9
Minutes before dawn, Glen and Ann Shepard, the Davis cousins, and Jack Webster slipped out of the Davis home. They crossed the street, went through a yard, climbed a fence. Rather than risk crossing the next street, they climbed fence after fence until they came to the end of the block. They broke into the last home in the street, a two-story house with a peaked roof.
Waiting there, they heard shots and yells and roaring motorcycles. As the Outlaws swept the other block, smashing doors and rampaging through homes, Glen examined the home in which they were hiding. As he had thought when he first saw the house, there was a triangular crawl space between the ceiling of the second floor and the peak of the steeply angled roof. He found the access hole in the ceiling of one bedroom's closet. He helped his wife up her eighth-month belly a tight squeeze then passed up blankets, water, a transistor radio with an earphone, all the weapons, and a plastic bucket to serve as a toilet.
Glen and the boys carefully searched through the drawers and closets of the house. He told the boys they would be hiding in the attic all day and perhaps the night, however long the siege of the island continued. They should gather anything that would make their wait more pleasant or safer. He also advised them to return everything they touched to where it had been. The house must not appear different than when they entered.
From the vents of the attic, they watched the Outlaws search the nearby homes. The Outlaws did not discover the knifed Acidhead until an hour after dawn. The crackle of the radiophones and walkie-talkies reached a pitch approaching hysteria. The discovery of the corpse, with rifle, pistol, ammunition and radiophone gone, had gotten the Outlaws seriously fired up.
Hearing motorcycles and voices getting really close outside, Roger went to a vent and peeked through the louvers. "They're searching this block now."
"Don't sweat it," Glen spoke calmly. "Roger, stay there, watch the street. Chris, you go to that back vent, watch the back. Both of you take blankets."
"Why?" asked Chris.
"Because if they open up the trapdoor and look in here," Glen explained, "if it's dark, they won't be able to see us. If we hear them in the closet down there, you cover those vents with the blankets. But dig it once they come in the house, nobody moves! Have those blankets folded up and ready so you can do it silently."
"What if they have flashlights?" Roger asked.
"Then we got a problem."
"And what should I do?" asked Jack.
"Go over there," Glen pointed to a far corner of the attic. "Lie in the corner and be quiet. Ann, you go over there, put that dark blanket over you. I'll try to make myself invisible too."
Glen pressed himself into a small space between a rising vent pipe and the roof joists. He pointed his sawed-off shotgun at the access door.
"I'll shoot when you do," Jack told him. Glen looked over, saw the .45 auto in Jack's hands.
Putting down his shotgun, Glen crouch-walked over to Jack. "Give me the pistol."
"Why? It's mine."
"It isn't yours," Chris called out. "Give it to Mr. Shepard."
For an instant, Glen thought the teenager would shoot him. Then he saw that the hammer was only at half-cock. He grabbed the pistol, twisted it from the boy's hands.
"I'm taking this weapon," Glen told him, "because you having it is a threat to our lives. All you've been talking about is shooting them, and if you did that they'd kill us all."
"You asshole!" Jack shouted. "You're no one to me, you can't play God with me, I'll..."
One-handed, Glen grabbed the teenager by the throat and started to choke him. "Be quiet!" he hissed. "You'll get us killed."
Roger whispered from the far end of the attic. "Do what he tells you, jerk-off! You should be thanking him. He risked his life to help us."
"Shut the fuck up, nigger!" Jack screamed at Roger.
"Ohhhhhh... " Glen just laughed. "Is this guy your friend?"
"Will you shut up?" Chris hissed. "They're out there!"
Crouch-walking again, Glen went to the vent viewing the street. "Where?"
"Coming around the corner. He isn't really a friend of ours, by the way," Chris explained quietly to Glen. "We sorta know him. He was hanging around, when all this started."
"When it's over, why don't you and your cousin kick that punk's ass? Until then, we'd better watch him carefully. Here they come."
"They're in the neighbor's backyard!" Roger gulped.
Glen and Chris watched the Outlaws search the houses.
They kicked down doors, broke windows. Dogs barked. Shots silenced them.
A new group of bikers roared up on their Harleys, Kawasakis, Hondas, led by the barrel-chested Outlaw in the Confederate Army cap. He wore a shotgun slung over his shoulder. A long bayonet flashed in the morning light. The group continued to the house where Acidhead had died; they parked their bikes there, and went in.
A pistol popped in the house next to where they hid. Three bikers dragged an elderly man and woman from the house. Outlaws converged on the scene. The elderly man white-haired and stick thin comforted his wife as bikers crowded around them, taunting the old man.
The biker in the Rebel cap swaggered up and glared at the old man. One of the bikers who had dragged out the couple showed the Rebel-capped biker a small pistol, then pointed to a rip in his jacket sleeve. The Confederate biker unslung his shotgun.
"Oh, God," Chris gasped, turning away from the vent. "I can't watch this."
"Watch it," Glen told him. "It's what'll happen to you, to all of us if we get caught."
"Run, you old geezer!" the Outlaw suddenly boomed. "You want to escape. Here's your chance!"
Glen looked outside. The bikers cleared a path for the couple. A biker shoved them. The Confederate Outlaw stood with the shotgun at his hip, pointing at the old couple only six feet away.
The white-haired old man shook his head. He refused to run. He held his wife, pressing her face to his chest. He kissed her forehead.
A single blast threw them to the asphalt. They sprawled together, a huge blood pool spreading around them.
"Now they're coming to search this house," Glen told the others.
"Hey, Stonewall!" a biker on the street called out. "You are one cold mother." Several bikers laughed.
Glen peeked out, saw the Rebel-capped biker loading shells into his shotgun. Now Glen knew the biker's name: Stonewall.
"Think that's cold?" the biker shouted. "I'm looking for the hero that killed one of ours. When I find him... You all see this cap? When I'm done with that hero, I'm going to wear his hide for a hat right up here, nose and eyes and lips and all, just like a coonskin cap."
More laughter. Boots kicked down the door. Shotgun blasts inside the house shattered windows, sent furniture crashing. They must have been doing this to every house on the island. Bikers shouted: "Where are you? Get out of this house! All we want's your money and valuables. And we want you down at the Casino. Anybody in here, come out. We want you with the other people."