The Hostaged Island (4 page)

Luck blessed Able Team with fog.

Maintaining a distance of four miles off the western coast of Santa Catalina Island, the Coast Guard cutter lowered a steel boarding ramp to within a few inches of the water, then launched the three kayaks at intervals of a half mile. After the cutter faded into the fog, its wake and propeller foam dissipated and the surface of the sea returned to a mirror calm.

They floated in a gray void unbroken by sound or daylight, the only motion a gentle groundswell bobbing the fiberglass kayaks.

"Well, all right!" Lyons called out, his voice lost in the emptiness. "This is fun!" He tried the double-bladed paddle, going straight for a few strokes, then spun the kayak in a circle as he watched the wobbling needle of the compass that was epoxied to the deck of the kayak.

"I'd be nowhere without this compass," he said out loud. "In fact I am nowhere..."

A splash broke the water. Lyons whipped his head around to see a shadow and a fin move under the ocean's surface. He remembered the recent news accounts of Great White sharks attacking surfers. Search teams had recovered only body parts and pieces of shark-gnawed surfboards. He touched the butt of the Colt Python shoulder-holstered under his black rain slicker, then paddled furiously to the west. "Hope it was a seal," he chanted. "Hope it was a porpoise, hope it was a dolphin..."

Less than an hour after the cutter had cast him into the Pacific, Gadgets spotted the rocky shore. Though the fog still held, from time to time sunlight flashed on the water. Wind came and went, allowing him glimpses of sage-covered hillsides. In a few minutes, he knew, he would be visible from shore.

Off to the south, his right, he saw a wave rise to a wall, then arc over. The curl created a tunnel of churning foam, then the wave collapsed, shooting spray. Gadgets angled toward the pattern of white water that the wave had left. If he could get the force of the white water behind him, he would surf the last two hundred yards.

He paddled hard for a minute. He seemed no closer than before to the peaking waves. Maybe it was a current, he thought, as he kept on paddling.

Glancing behind him, he suddenly understood. He had misjudged the distance. He had thought the waves small, and only a few hundred feet away. No, they were several times that distance, and over ten feet in height, like the wave walling behind him.

Thinking first of the electronics inside the kayak, Gadgets checked the plastic and elastic seal closing the gap between the hole in the kayak's deck and his body. It was tight. He gave his black plastic rain slicker a quick tuck into the elastic seal, then stroked hard and fast with the paddles, spray flying behind him. His only hope was to be ahead of the wave when the top came down.

Feeling the wave lift him, he knew he'd lost the race. The kayak stood vertical on the wave face for an instant, then, as the wave curled over him, blocking out the sky, at the moment he expected to be thrown into the churning vortex, the kayak slipped down the wave, accelerating.

He hurtled through darkness and the roar of the wave around him overwhelmed his thoughts, and for a moment his fear too. Instinctively, he leaned toward the light beyond the curl. The roar became so loud he seemed to be flying through silence.

Light circled by a vast, spinning vortex rushed toward him, and then he burst out. Salvation. But above him still, the wave's face towered, a wall of water defying gravity and overhanging him.

Keeping the paddle out of the water that blurred beneath him, Gadgets leaned forward until his arms and chest rested on the deck of the kayak. Whether from reduced wind resistance or improved hydrodynamics or both, he gained speed, leaving the roaring curl behind him. Soon he skipped far ahead of the critical section and into almost flat water. Still moving fast, he sat up and looked for shore.

Rocks! A previous wave's backwash rolled toward him, the kayak bouncing, then the wave behind him leaped up and crashed, and the white water engulfed him. He dug in with the paddle, trying to slow his rush onto the rocks.

Fiberglass shrieked. He felt several quick lurches, then the foam drove him onto a pebbled beach. As the backwash tried to tug him back, he jammed the paddle into the pebbles and jumped from the kayak. He quickly pulled the craft above the waterline.

He sat on a rock shaking, trying to calm his heart-beat. He took long, slow breaths. He could not remember being so scared in a long, long while.

He noticed some small rocks in a circle, scorched by campfire, and a discarded sandal, and some beer cans. Spray-painted across one large rock were the words: "Surfers Rule."

Here he was shaking, and teenagers did it for thrills.

Gadgets went to work. He glanced every few seconds to the hillsides above him as he stripped the plastic bag from his Uzi, snapped in a magazine, and chambered a round.

He examined the kayak and realized it would not float again. Long rips had broken open the fiberglass bottom. Near the nose, a snapped flap of fiberglass exposed the plywood frame. He unloaded his equipment and other weapons and pushed the kayak back into the water. The wash pulled it out to the shore break, and the first wave sank it.

He assembled his electronics. First, the scanner/auto-recorder. The LAPD file on the Outlaws had noted the theft of a case of high-quality walkie-talkies. If the Outlaws were using those radios, Gadgets' scanner could monitor and record the conversation automatically.

Then he extended the antenna of his hand-radio and keyed a click-code. Two beeps for onshore and safe, three beeps to identify himself. His scanner/auto-recorder picked up the beeps, recorded the signal on the cassette.

Voices came on. "This is Chief, this is Chief."

"Horse here. What?"

"We cleaned up Little Harbor. Had to kill a Park Ranger. We're sending back a couple of families we found at the campground. Couple of good-looking women in the crowd. We took turns on one, saved the other one for you if you're interested."

"Don't waste your time on that, you're on patrol."

"Sorry, it just sorta happened."

"You watching the ocean? Any ships, boats?"

"Use the radar. There's too much fog here."

"Okay, but keep patrolling the beaches the best you can. Over and out."

Gadgets hurried through the assembly of the rest of his equipment: the long-range directional microphone, the radio-triggered detonators. After what he had heard, he understood that every minute of delay meant death and degradation for the people of the island. As he shouldered his backpack, another voice came from the scanner, on a different frequency: "Horse, this is your friend. Answer."

"Yes, sir! This is Horse. Is there anything you need?"

"No, everything's fine. I'm quite comfortable. Brief me. Is the seizure of the island complete?"

"Oh, yeah. No problems. Some shooting. Had to kill some heroes."

"What about the conversations with the Governor?"

"Nothing else with the Governor. They said they'd be sending the submarine. They put a negotiator on the line, but I just hung up."

"Good. Follow the plan. Soon we will be very wealthy men."

"Yessir! That's what I want." Then there was static.

Who was that man? He called himself a "friend" of these biker sadists? The man with the calm, educated voice was a co-conspirator with Horse. Who was he?

Gadgets' thoughts were interrupted by clicks on the radio. Two clicks, then two more. Blancanales.

Another set of clicks answered. Two clicks, then one. Lyons. Gadgets keyed his hand-radio as he went up the hillside toward the rendezvous.

On shore and ready, Able Team were moving into action.

Striding through the sagebrush, Blancanales listened for voices or motorcycles. He had heard large-caliber rifle fire only seconds after reaching shore, but Lyons' and Gadgets' click-code replies calmed his fears. The rifle fire had not been aimed at them. Now his concern was to avoid it being aimed at him.

He glanced at his compass and the plastic-covered topographical map, then surveyed what terrain he could see for landmarks. Light fog still shrouded the hillsides. Continuing due south, he followed a cattle trail through the low brush, inspecting it for foot or tire tracks.

Below him he heard surf. Then when a canyon's breeze carried away the fog for a moment, he saw the rocky shoreline. Above him the sun rose from behind the unseen peaks; it became a gray disk. Soon the sun would burn away the fog. He hurried his pace, counting cadence to himself.

Footprints appeared on the cow trail. Blancanales stopped for a second to check the tracks. Jogging shoes, yesterday, maybe the day before. Cow hooves had crossed the shoe tracks. There was a dry cow-paddy over one of the prints. Going on, he saw more and more footprints — jogging shoes, hiking boots, sandals, even a high-heel shoe — and some cow tracks. Bubble gum wrappers, cigarette butts and drink cans indicated frequent visitors.

He checked the map again. He knew the Little Harbor campground was only a few hundred yards farther. He cut due east, staying in the narrow creek bed of a small canyon. The tangled brush and loose rocks slowed him to a hand-over-hand climb, but the steep sides of the gully and the overhanging branches protected him from being observed.

A retaining wall of sheer concrete blocked his progress. He saw the guardrail of a road above him. Not wanting to chance the road, he paralleled it, staying close to the hillside as he followed animal and foot trails.

At first, he thought the sounds were gull-cries from the ocean. He listened harder. It was laughter, coarse laughter, coming from the campground.

Unsnapping the flap of his Browning Double-Action's holster, he slipped out the pistol. Then he changed his mind. Always use the proper technology, Konzaki had said. Blancanales found the Beretta 93R in his backpack, slapped in a magazine and snapped back the slide.

He hid the backpack. Soft-footing it along the trail, crouching below the level of the brush, he could hear screams, more laughter, voices. He continued another hundred yards and came to some sort of fire road. He couldn't go any farther without losing cover. But another scream told him he was already there.

Fifty yards below, two Outlaws raped a woman. One struggled on top of the naked, shrieking woman. The other biker stood on her arms, looking down at her and the biker and laughing, urging the biker on, taunting him.

The standing biker also taunted the woman's husband. The man lay against a car, bound hand and foot. He was turning his head away. Inside the car, a child cried.

Blancanales surveyed the scene. The fire road cut straight down the steep hillside, ending at the gravel and asphalt of the campground. The Outlaws and the unfortunate family were at the bottom of the fire road.

He saw only two motorcycles at this particular campsite. He looked beyond to the other campsites. He saw collapsed tents, scattered belongings, but no other motorcycles.

Sliding and crawling as fast as he dared through the thick sagebrush, Blancanales silently closed the distance between himself and the bikers. Twenty yards uphill from the campsite, he could not risk getting closer.

Prone in the brush, only his hands extending from cover, he grasped the Beretta in both hands, right hand on the grip, left hand holding the extension lever in front of the trigger guard, his left thumb through the extra-large trigger guard as Konzaki had demonstrated. He sighted on the standing biker's chest, gave him a three-round burst.

The bullets interrupted a laugh, the first round punching into his chest, the second his collar-bone, the third taking away his left eye and sideburn. He fell backward and thrashed on the gravel.

There had been no sound other than the slap of the almost simultaneous impacts. The other Outlaw looked up from the woman, puzzled by his friend's fall. Blancanales flicked down the selector to single shot. He sighted on the biker's head.

The woman clawed the biker in the face, and twisted out from under him. She blocked Blancanales' aim. He broke cover, ran and slid and jumped down the hillside. The biker scrambled to his feet, his pants around his knees, trying to pull a pistol from a shoulder holster.

The snap shot glanced off the top of the biker's head, sent him staggering backwards. Blancanales finally reached the bottom of the hill, dropped into a two-handed, wide-leg stance to deliver the kill shot, when the woman again blocked his aim as she kicked and punched the bleeding biker.

"Get down!" Blancanales shouted. "Out of the way! Let me kill him!"

She turned and saw him for the first time. Her eyes went wide at the sight of the black-clad warrior with the pistol. But she didn't move. The biker sprinted away, weaving through trees and brush. Blancanales sighted, fired again, heard the bullet slap the biker. He fell, scrambled up, kept running.

Starting after the wounded biker, Blancanales yelled back at the woman:

"Take that dead man's weapons, you all go hide in the brush somewhere. Don't show yourself till you see uniformed police officers or soldiers. Move it — I can't help you any more!"

"Thank you, oh, thank you, thank you. God be with you," the woman sobbed as he ran.

He followed the blood trail through the campground. Ahead of him was a cluster of park buildings surrounded by bushes and trees. The blood led in that direction. Off to his left, the camp road curved through brush and trees shading the camping sites.

Not to risk walking into the wounded man's ambush, Blancanales took the road. He would circle around, kill him.

He jogged past the park buildings, then spotted a trail through the campsites and trees that led back to the buildings. If the biker was waiting for him, that trail would allow Blancanales to surprise him. He left the road and pressed through thick branches. He held the Beretta ready in front of him.

A rifle butt slammed into the back of his head. He fell hard, didn't move. A biker stood over him. He was pointing a Heckler and Koch G-3 assault rifle at the motionless Blancanales.

"Well, well, well. What is this?"