Season of Harm

“How big?”

“No definite numbers,” Price said, “but there are quite a few bodies on the ground. Unless it’s a racetrack or an amusement park, you can assume anywhere from a dozen to two or three times that number. Completely speculative.”

“Wonderful,” Lyons said. “All right. Just wanted to be sure. Give Hal my love.”

Price laughed. “I might just do that.”

“Able, out,” Lyons said. He closed the connection.

“I always knew you two had something going on,” Schwarz said absently. He was examining the data the Farm had sent to each man’s phone. Blancanales was driving, so Schwarz quickly and quietly gave him a rundown of what they were facing. Lyons brought up the data on his own wireless unit and listened in as Schwarz spoke.

“Okay, Pol, we’ve got a main building here, a double-wide, in the center of this clearing,” Schwarz explained. Lyons examined the photographs provided by the Farm. They were enhanced shots taken from space, the detail provided by NetScythe reportedly enhanced, according to the notation, using the amazing device’s programming logic. “Outlying trailers here and here.” Lyons found the two structures as Schwarz described them. “According to the heat-signature analysis, the double-wide is the cookhouse, almost certainly crystal meth, if local law-enforcement reports are any hint. One of the outlying trailers may be storage for drugs, or may not be. One of them is most certainly the primary residence, where most of the personnel on-site congregate during the evenings. That much is verified by the heat clusters.”

“Bet it smells wonderful,” Lyons grumbled.

“I’ll bet it does, at that.” Schwarz smiled then turned more serious, all business where the work itself was concerned. “How do you want to play it, Ironman?”

“You and Pol,” Lyons said, “will use the cover of the trees surrounding the property, work your way around to either side. West and east. I’m going to take the truck straight down the middle, up the road and to their front door.”

“Uh, Ironman…” Pol started.

“Yeah?”

“Won’t that mean they’ll start shooting at you almost immediately?”

“It might. So?”

“Well, all right. Never mind, then.” Blancanales shrugged.

“On my go,” Lyons said as if the interruption had never occurred, “you’ll move in on the cookhouse. I’ll try to recon the storage trailer and take out the residence trailer while you do that. Expect resistance around and in the cookhouse to be the worst. There’ll probably be plenty of guards.”

“Probably?” Schwarz asked.

“Shut up,” Lyons said automatically. “All right, no sense delaying the inevitable. Let’s hit it.”

Blancanales sped up as much as he dared, bringing the Suburban through the curves in sprays of dust and gravel. When, according to their GPS unit, they were just short of the clearing in which the target trailers stood, Lyons signaled Blancanales to bring the truck to a stop.

“All right,” Lyons said. “Everybody out.”

Blancanales removed an AR-15 from the back of the truck. It would be his primary contact weapon for the operation. Schwarz checked the 20-round magazine in his 93-R machine pistol.

“Ironman,” Schwarz said, looking up at the big blond former cop as the man took the wheel of the Suburban, “be careful.”

“Never,” Lyons said.

“One of these days,” Schwarz started.

“One of these days, nothing,” Blancanales shot back. “He’s indestructible.”

“Wish I was.” Schwarz grinned.

“Go,” Blancanales said. Schwarz nodded. The two men split up, working their way through the trees that surrounded the property.

“Wish I was, too,” Lyons said to no one. He tromped the gas pedal and the Suburban shot forward, the big engine growling.

“Keep it tight, guys,” he said over his transceiver link.

“Got it,” Schwarz said.

“Will do,” Blancanales acknowledged.

Lyons did not have to drive far before he cleared the trees. Emerging at the opening to the clearing, he was confronted by a pair of leather-clad bikers sitting on elaborately chromed choppers. The motorcycles were parked across the dirt road, nose to nose. The men sitting on them were in their midtwenties to early thirties, greasy and unkempt, but the predatory air about them was unmistakable. Lyons saw no weapons, but both wore leather jackets that could conceal just about anything short of a rifle or full-size shotgun.

One of them came up along the driver’s side of the Suburban. Lyons rolled down the window.

“You lost, asshole?” the biker demanded.

“No,” Lyons said. He was very conscious of the other man at the nose of the truck.

“Then you’d best turn your ass around and get the hell out of here, hadn’t you?” the biker at his window said. He reached into his coat.

“You should probably get down on the ground,” Lyons said calmly. “Your friend, too. I’m a federal agent.”

“Oh, really?” the biker asked. He seemed to think that was funny.

“No, really,” Lyons said conversationally. “I’m with the Justice Department.” He held up the credentials he had plucked from his pocket while driving up. “See?”

“Oh, damn it all to—” He clawed a revolver from under his jacket, bringing it up to shoot Lyons in the head.

“Yeah,” Lyons said. The big ex-cop was faster. His Python was already pointing out the window of the truck. It spoke once, with authority, and the biker fell dead with a .357 Magnum bullet hole in his forehead.

Lyons stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The big Suburban pushed the other biker over. He went down screaming, still trying to pull his own gun, as Lyons simply drove over him. The two choppers were more of an obstacle, but the big Suburban powered over those, too, leaving behind bent and twisted chrome as it fought for traction in the dirt.

“Shots fired, shots fired,” Lyons said. “The Grubs drew down on me,” he reported to his teammates, “so assume armed and dangerous. I’ve taken two and am headed toward the buildings now.”

“Roger,” Schwarz said.

“Coming at you,” Blancanales said.

Lyons rolled up to the trailer designated on their intelligence files as the residence building. He leaped from the Suburban, his Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun at the ready with a 20-round drum magazine in place. Several motorcycles were parked in front of the trailer, as well as an old Ford pickup. Lyons ignored the vehicles. With one combat-booted foot, he kicked open the door to the trailer.

The gunfire that poured out was so heavy that he was forced to leap away, landing on his back in the mud in front of the trailer door. The men rushing to kill him, bikers all, were so eager to shoot him that one of them managed to put a bullet in the back of another. That biker fell dead at Lyons’s feet, the Grubs colors on his vest spattered red with his blood.

Lyons fired from his back, hosing the doorway with double-aught buckshot. Men screamed and died.

The big ex-cop pushed himself up and through the doorway, the shotgun leading. He poured on the fire as he encountered several more bikers, some only half dressed as they were roused from fetid bunks by the fighting. Return fire devastated the cluttered, garbage-strewed trailer all around him, but none of it found the Able Team leader. Yet another biker died as a result of friendly fire, however, when Lyons dodged his clumsy knife attack and then yanked the man in front of him to play the part of human shield.

“Knife to a gunfight, pal,” Lyons muttered before firing out the drum of the USAS-12 from behind the dead man.