Orbital Velocity

With his new position, Lyons had tackled gangsters, terrorists and psychopathic madmen from Alaska to Sri Lanka. All that experience gave Lyons insight into the minds of human predators. He knew that there was one certain place to find his prey and that was where it would find the tastiest meals.

Right now, it was in Los Angeles, where the President was returning from a trip to the G8 conference. The President would stay there for a few days, and there were rumors in the wind that something was going to happen. Those rumors tickled Lyons’s honed instincts, informing him that he would be needed in the City of Angels.

Unfortunately, the intel fragments that had been picked up indicated that whatever was going to happen might occur on either coast, or both. That meant leaving his partners in Able Team behind while he went solo to L.A. His fears were confirmed when Moscow became the target of a volley of orbitally launched spears, then Britain came under assault by electronically directed rioters.

Brognola had just finished relaying the London situation over Lyons’s earpiece.

“Two G8 nations in less than two hours,” Lyons mused. “It looks like a lot of things are coming together right now. I don’t like this one bit.”

Brognola grunted in agreement. “We were lucky to have David and Gary on hand for London. But with the teams spread so piecemeal across the globe…”

“We’ll cope,” Lyons responded as he looked around the LAX terminals. There were dozens of Secret Service and other agency personnel assembled, their nerves on edge as they waited for Air Force One to touch down. Up in the night skies, United States Air Force jets were flying air patrols and their radar and infrared sensors searched for sign of any menace that would come close to harming the leader of the free world.

Lyons noted that he blended in with the L.A. police who had been pulled in to supplement federal agents in putting a protective ring around the President. It was standard operating procedure to draw from local law enforcement, and in a way, it had made things easier for Lyons to slip unnoticed among them. He had spent enough time as both a cop and a Fed to pass for the other when encountering either side. It was a two-edged sword, unfortunately. The very hodgepodge of personnel that had allowed him an anonymous presence, fully armed, in an airport on heightened security would make any other ex-cop or former federal agent blend in, and not every retired law enforcement agent was out of work because he wanted to leave the job amicably.

Lyons had encountered too many bent cops and corrupt Feds to make him feel complacent about the ease with which he operated within the supposedly airtight security cordon around the terminal. Lyons had come into the airport with an assortment of firepower that would give him a chance to grab something more substantial in the case of a full-blown gunfight. He had his favorite revolver, a Colt Python, on him as always. This particular .357 Magnum was a snub-nosed version with its frame cut and adapted to wear Pachmayr Compacs, tucked into an extralarge side pocket in his slacks. Speed loaders packed with 125-grain semi-jacketed hollowpoints weighed down the pockets of his sports blazer, ready to slam six rounds at a time into an empty cylinder. A .357 Magnum hammerless, five-shot Centennial revolver rode in an ankle holster under each of his pant legs for backup, even though the revolvers were only going to be supplementary to his main sidearm.

The three wheelguns were in reserve for the .357 Auto chambered Smith & Wesson Military and Police he wore in a shoulder holster. The high-powered auto-pistol was filled to the brim with sixteen windshield-smashing shots to start, and he carried forty-five more rounds in three magazines he wore in a pouch that balanced the MP-357.

“Carl, Hunt’s picked up an anomaly on the radar over the airport,” Brognola said. “The VOR radio had a burst of static for a moment, then the original image appeared.”

Brognola referred to Huntington Wethers, one of the most meticulous and attentive human beings that Lyons had ever encountered. Wethers had an acute eye for detail, which meant that anything he considered an anomaly was a serious deviation from the norm. Lyons consulted his PDA, which had a map of LAX loaded onto it. “The VOR station had a hiccup, and Wethers is concerned about it? Time to take a look at the transmitter.”

“Your identification will only get you so far if there’s something truly kinky going on,” Brognola said. “A gunfight on the tarmac will bring an army down on your head.”

“I’ll be careful,” Lyons promised.

Lyons slipped out an exit door close to the VOR station and jogged out onto the tarmac. The speedloaders in his pockets kept the wind across the flat concrete from blowing his lapels up to reveal the arsenal under his shoulders. He was dressed in a dark blue mock-turtleneck sweatshirt, light enough for the Los Angeles weather, and his jacket was a plaid blend of navy blue, Lincoln green and burgundy stripes, tinted just right so that Lyons could disappear into the shadows if he had to. It was a concept his friend and armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, had developed—true urban camouflage. If someone saw Lyons decked out in black from neck to feet skulking around at night, they would be suspicious of him. However, with a little bit of light, he looked just like a normally dressed man, not a black-clad commando on the stalk. If he needed to totally disappear, he had a pocketed do-rag that he could stretch over his blond hair, removing the glint of its golden sheen from his profile.

He didn’t know what he would be looking for, and with grim concern, he realized that he wasn’t equipped for a stealth probe, unless he counted the Protech automatic knife he had clipped onto his belt. With a touch of a button, its five-inch blade would flash out, and as a cop on the violent streets of Los Angeles, he had no illusions that five inches of sharpened steel was any less deadly a weapon than a contact blast from a shotgun. A knife, even an inch-long stub, could destroy much more tissue than the largest bullet in the world. He’d have to get up close and personal to kill silently with the sleek switchblade, but with lives and national security at stake, he would make the sacrifice if necessary.

As Lyons neared the VOR transmitter, he slid behind the shadow of a parked luggage cart. A man paced back and forth, his bright cell phone screen causing his face to light up. The glowing reflections in his eyes were the only warning the Able Team commander had of his presence.

He pulled out his own PDA, made certain its LCD wasn’t too bright, then pulled up the cell phone cloning application that Hermann Schwarz had loaded into the powerful pocket device. He didn’t know the exact programming science behind the process, but Schwarz had explained simply that cellular phones were just encrypted radios that connected to a regular telephone network. This was why so many transmitter towers were needed around towns, as the cells were effectively only short-range. Schwarz explained that his program located the transmissions of nearby phones, then decrypted the mathematical keys that kept others from listening in.

A row of digits appeared on the screen and Lyons recognized the area-code prefix on the phone was for a cell number. He copied the text, put it in his instant messenger program and fired off the number to the Farm to trace it. In the meantime, he’d wait and observe, keeping his senses peeled for friends and foes in the darkness. If the Secret Service or a police officer saw him skulking in the shadows, he knew that his identification wouldn’t explain why he was acting like a ninja when the President was due any minute. If the menace targeting the President had posted guards to scout their operation, then a bloody fight would be inevitable.

For all of Carl Lyons’s reputation as a berserker warrior, a man capable of phenomenal violence in the face of the enemy, he was still a policeman and had become the tactical leader of Able Team. Observation and planning were Lyons’s two secret weapons that allowed him to appear as an unstoppable engine of destruction in addition to his great strength, endurance and fighting prowess. He studied his opponents, sized them up and found their weaknesses. By applying his strengths to his foes’ flaws, he could blow through them as if they were made of tissue.

Lyons looked at the PDA screen and saw that Stony Man Farm had come up with the original phone number that his quarry was using. It was a cell phone owned by a fifty-eight-year-old woman in San Bernardino County. Right now, he was operating on a clone of a cloned phone. The cybernetic geniuses back in Virginia were running the recent list of calls that had been made on the line, but the other end of the line was well encrypted. There were regular numbers, and then there were lines of gibberish that couldn’t be deciphered.

Whoever they were up against, they had good, secure communications. Naturally, Lyons sighed mentally; anyone who would dare go after the leaders of eight nations, let alone the U.S. President, would have to be highly organized and capable. When something showed up on Able Team’s radar, it generally had to be a national-scale conspiracy seeking to achieve its goals by murder and mayhem.

Just wait and see who’s calling in, Lyons thought. He fished along his belt for a small sheath that contained a compact Bushnell night-vision monocular. The device had a 4x magnification, which would allow him to get a better look at the man with the phone.

The man was clad in a denim jacket, and through the green tint of the night vision, Lyons could see what appeared to be sigrunes on his neck. Normally, Lyons wouldn’t know about arcane, occult designs, but the sigrunes were on a list of identifying tattoos for the southern California Reich Highwaymen, a widespread gang of thugs enlisted by the prison-based White Pride Defenders as muscle for their outside operations. The makeup that covered the lightning-bolt S’s on the man’s neck was very different from his normal skin color under the light magnification, and the dark ink underneath showed through. In regular vision, even under good light, Lyons knew that the man would have covered himself so as not to be noticed.

Lyons grit his teeth, then checked his PDA, sending a text message off.

“Any signs of neo-Nazi activity in London or Moscow?” Lyons asked.

“Jakkhammer Legacy in London,” came the reply almost instantly. “Suspect RNCG organizing rioters in Moscow.”

Lyons furrowed his brow in concern. Sightings of three different local neo-Nazi groups in relation to threats to G8 nations was a disturbing trend. He quickly took a snapshot with the PDA and entered the text CRLR. He got the rapid message and its attachment off as quickly as possible as he heard his quarry’s phone ring.

Lyons listened in.

“Your phone is compromised. Ditch it,” came the terse order. “Pull back for Plan B.”

The Reich rider looked up from the cell, then dropped it to the tarmac, his boot heel crushing the device. Lyons cursed, but even this bit of activity had given him information about his enemy. They were able to monitor their phones, and somehow had picked up on the fact that their line had been cloned. Sophisticated technology plus a white supremacist biker gang with national prison ties added up to the kind of opposition that Lyons couldn’t help but welcome.

Whatever the biker’s contingency plan, Lyons hoped that they only had one mode of communication that they felt was secure. As it was, the Reich rider turned and jogged to the VOR transmitter building. The boxy red-and-white base of the building with its conelike tower was an unassuming little place, but it could hide at least three more men inside. Lyons was going to have to ask about Plan B before he got to the others.

Lyons exploded from his hiding space with the speed that had made him a star football player in high school and college. Powerful legs propelled him along like a human rocket, and he caught up to the anxious neo-Nazi biker before he could make out the thump of feet or the trainlike pants of breath escaping the ex-cop’s nose and mouth. The denim-clad gang member turned just in time for Lyons’s brawny arm to catch him right across the throat. Momentum and velocity slammed the Reich rider to the ground hard, his head bouncing on the tarmac.

Breath released in a subdued “oof,” thanks to the force that Lyons had applied to his throat, and his face was clenched up in a painful wince. The undercover biker must have hit the back of his head hard on the ground, which was fine with the Able Team commander. A little pain was a handle with which he could convince his prisoner to talk. He didn’t have much time before whoever the motorcycle thug had come here with came looking for him.

“Plan B?” Lyons growled, drawing his Protech automatic knife. A simple press of the button and the five-inch serrated blade flickered into being right before his prisoner’s eyes. Shock registered on the man’s face as he tried to squirm away from the razor-sharp cutting edge that ended in a wicked needle tip.

The biker had trouble getting enough breath to speak louder than a harsh whisper thanks to Lyons’s weight and the placement of his forearm. There was also an enraged madness flickering behind Lyons’s eyes, informing the downed criminal that if he cried out for help, the burly warrior would slice his face off and leave him to die slowly.

“I’m not asking again,” Lyons said, resting the edge of the knife against the biker’s left eyebrow. One flick of the wrist, and the biker knew he would be blinded and mutilated. It was a basic, inborn fear. The blind rarely lasted well in the days before the modern world. The biker himself not only had the gruesome mental images of his eyes punctured running through his mind, but also the realization that he would be ostracized by his circle of acquaintances. Riding with the gang would be out of the question, as well, as he would have failed his brothers. There was also no guarantee that Lyons wouldn’t take out the other orb, too, leaving him blind. He would lose the life he’d known for the past decade or so.

“We’re supposed to meet up with another group. They tell us the location when we call them,” the man said.

“You guys are too tight not to have a password on hand,” Lyons mentioned. “A code word to let them know everything is all right.”

“I don’t have that,” the thug confessed. “Bones does.”

“Which one is Bones?” Lyons asked.

“He has a baby skull on a necklace,” the biker told him.

“How many others?” Lyons asked.

“Two,” the prisoner confessed. “Don’t mess my eyes up, man.”

Lyons nodded, but that didn’t preclude reversing the blade, then punching the pommel of the knife against his temple. The steel-reinforced fiberglass handle was less fragile than the small bones of the human hand, which broke easily when punching a man in the skull. Out cold, the biker wouldn’t be much of a threat now.

Lyons rose from the ground and scanned the VOR station. One thing in his favor was that few such transmitter buildings had windows installed. Unfortunately, such structures had very limited numbers of entrances. In this case, there were two, parallel to each other. Lyons could try to go through the front door, but that would leave him a target for armed men inside. Three-to-one odds wasn’t new for the Able Team commander, and indeed, he’d handled far worse.

Lyons preferred to fight smart, as well as hard. He scooped up the unconscious biker and put him in the luggage cart’s driver’s seat. The cart itself was hardly a step up from a riding mower, except with an engine that let it pull thousands of pounds of luggage a day. Lyons strapped the biker in, started the engine, then steered toward the VOR station’s door. His final act was to push his former prisoner’s foot against the accelerator.

He was setting bait, getting the bikers inside the building as bunched up as possible. A slow-moving cart bumping against the side of the station would draw curiosity, while anything faster striking the structure would send everyone packing.

With the cart set up, Lyons jogged along in its shadow, easily keeping up as he moved in a crouch behind the low-speed hauler. It struck one of the doors and crunched to a halt, its wheels grinding against the ground and causing the door to rattle. Lyons slipped out of sight behind the hauler and the unconscious biker.

Sure enough, the door opened a crack. Then a little farther. Lyons stayed hidden in the shadows, his do-rag tugged down to hide the glint of his blond hair in the ambient light.