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"Careful, compadre," Zuniga warned. He glanced at his watch. "She must live another two minutes."

Zuniga pressed the elevator button marked RH for roof/helipad.

* * *

Lyons felt the cables and motors start to vibrate in the elevator's housing beneath him. He spoke into his throat-mike: "Here they come. Helicopter, come on down. Any problems with our guest star?"

"He is one very frightened man."

"They just came out the door! Over." Turning up the volume on Alcantara's body-mikes, Lyons heard the man's petulant voice complaining over the noise of the rotors. "... the vileness of your threats... I thought this was a civilized country... I don't believe you'd dare..." Lyons flicked off the safety on his CAR-16.

Have no doubts, Mr. Alcantara, Lyons said to himself. We have the nerve, all right.

* * *

Clutching a hostage against him and holding his M-16 at ready, Zuniga left the elevator, stepped over the filament and into the rotor storm. He scanned the rooftop for ambushers, saw no one. He motioned for his squad to follow, cautioning each one about the booby trap, then shoved his first hostage ahead and dragged the second behind him. She staggered, fell, choked as Zuniga pulled her to her feet by the rope around her neck.

He heard the second helicopter and looked up. He warily approached the helicopter on the pad. He pointed his automatic rifle through the side-door.

"Is this a trap, federates! If it is, you all die!"

Alcantara, his leader through all the months of planning and preparation — who had given Zuniga's pointless life meaning, who had brought his lifetime of hatred to flower — stepped from the helicopter. The landing lights made his coward's face seem like a mask of blood.

"Zuniga! My compatriot! Yes, they planned a trap for you! But I learned of it and changed the plans.

The helicopter will take us all to freedom! Victory is ours!"

Too surprised to speak, Zuniga said nothing. His leader, who had always been so proud and aloof, aristocratic, strangely blond, threw his arms around Zuniga, embraced him.

"Where is the detonator, my friend?" Alcantara asked him, his voice almost begging. "May I have the honor of pushing the button?"

Lifting the walkie-talkie to his lips, Zuniga called down to Fernando. "We are ready, come now. Viva Puerto Rico Libre!'

Zuniga turned to his leader, studied his face. Alcantara's smile quivered, became a grimace of fear. Now Zuniga knew.

"How could you have learned what the federatesintended?" And he raised his M-16 to Alcantara's throat. The burst ripped away his leader's head.

* * *

From the third-floor stairwell, Charlie Green heard the psycho screaming curses in Spanish. He inched the door open, saw a young Puerto Rican in a moving company's overalls pacing the corridor, turning every few seconds to laugh or shout at the closed doors of the company auditorium. The doors' handles were lashed together.

Across the corridor, near the elevators, Green saw stacked army-drab crates.

Through the inch-wide space, Green watched, waiting for his chance. He held the .45 pistol pointed straight up, the hammer at full cock, safety off. His sweat made the grip clammy. Sweat trickled down his arm. If the terrorist had put Sandy in the auditorium, he'd free her and any other people the terrorists might have taken prisoner. He would tell them about the commando team upstairs. If Sandy wasn't there, he'd take the psycho's M-16 and go find her. He liked Sandy. She had introduced her husband to him at a company party: they were a beautiful young couple with a two-year-old child. It was Green who had called her to work that morning. She was his responsibility. Period.

The psycho's walkie-talkie buzzed. A few words blared from the speaker, then he slung his rifle over his shoulder, went to the elevator, pushed the "up" button. Green knew it would take the terrorist two seconds to unsling his rifle, chamber a round and fire.

Sprinting, his running shoes silent on the corridor carpeting, Green crossed the twenty yards separating them before the young man could jerk the rifle from his shoulder. The .45 was less than a foot from the terrorist's face when Green fired. The slug entered the psycho's gaping mouth, tore his head from his lower jaw, spraying brains and blood and bone over the immaculate chrome of the elevator doors.

Pulling the rifle from the twitching corpse, Green chambered a round, flipped the lever to full auto, and watched the elevator doors. The car came, the doors sliding open to reveal the empty interior.

He turned to the auditorium. Someone on the other side pushed against the doors. Green heard a voice inside: "Is he still there?"

"No," Green answered. "He's dead."

"Who's that?" The voice called through the doors.

"Charlie Green, Eastern European Accounts. Is Sandy Robinson in there?"

"Get us out of here!" voices screamed. "There's a bomb in here!"

Green tore at the ropes binding the door handles.

* * *

When they saw the muzzle-flash of the terrorist's M-16 on the helipad below them, the federal agents circling in the second helicopter hit the switch powering the Xenon searchlight. Ten thousand watts of white light created a disorienting noon on the rooftop.

An agent in the helicopter recorded the slaughter on high-resolution video tape for later analysis. It only lasted seconds.

But for Lyons and his partners Blancanales and Schwarz, the few seconds were hours.

From their positions around the helipad, they looked into the confused group of terrorists and hostages, crowded shoulder to shoulder, their heads only inches apart.

Lyons had anticipated this. Before entering the Tower, he had requested, and received, specially loaded 5.56mm cartridges for their CAR-16's. The standard 50-grain military and the 55-grain hollow-point hunting slugs used with the 5.56mm cartridge had a maximum kill range of four hundred yards. At close range, regardless of the slug used, the 2700-feet-per-second muzzle velocity of the CAR'S would create through-and-through wounds, the slug continuing through the body of the target to perhaps kill or maim someone beyond. Knowing that the combat would be at close range, with the terrorists shielding themselves behind hostages, Lyons had Able Team's weapons loaded with specially cast hollow-point slugs.

The 40-grain bullets were actually lead cups, their interior voids packed with common lubricating wax to give the slug additional weight. These slugs, though unstable and inaccurate at distances exceeding one hundred feet, had the advantage of dissipating the bullet's striking energy of 1200 foot/pounds within inches of the point of penetration.

Impact opened the cup from its diameter of 5.56mm to a disc of approximately 25mm, resulting in the instantaneous dissipation of the striking energy and the conversion of the lubricating wax filler into expanding gas.

At the sound of Zuniga's auto-burst, Lyons and Blancanales and Gadgets became mechanical marksmen. To them their work appeared in slow motion.

The first radical hollow-point from Lyons' CAR-16 struck Zuniga just above his right ear. His head ceased to exist, only the blood-spurting stump of his neck and a few ragged strips of jaw and scalp remaining. The impact threw the corpse and the two hostages to the helipad asphalt.

Simultaneously, slugs from Blancanales' and Gadgets' rifles killed Rico and Julio. Staring up at the second helicopter, Rico had turned to ask instructions of his squad leader, his jaw moving to form the first word of the question. Blancanales' slug hit him at the base of his skull. The jaw and brains and pink fragments of skull struck Ana in the face and chest.