Drawpoint

“No way, man!” Pinter said vehemently. “Sure, I vote green. Sure, I want the EAF to succeed in bringing their voice to the people, man. But I’m, like, a pacifist! I wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“You just support those who do,” Blancanales said, sounding disappointed.

Pinter said nothing.

“You have one chance, kid.” Lyons let Ryan Pinter contemplate the gaping maw of the Python pointed at his face. “If you know something that will help us, something that will take us to the EAF or the WWUP, something they’re doing that’s not on the up and up, you’d better spill it. Or so help me God, I will spill you.”

Pinter seemed to deflate in front of their eyes. He looked down, shaking his head. “I told them…I told them this wasn’t the way. I told them—”

“Told who what?” Blancanales prodded.

“My roommates, man.”

“Roommates?” Lyons looked around skeptically. “In this one-bedroom dump?”

“They don’t live here, exactly,” Pinter said. “But they crash here a lot. Hang out, sleep on the couch, plan stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Direct action, man.” Pinter shook his head. “Stuff we can do to save the environment and the country from the capitalists and from depoliation.”

“Uh-huh,” Lyons snorted. “And you’re completely innocent in all this.”

“I wanted to help the planet and change the country, sure,” Pinter said. “But when they started talking about…well, I couldn’t do it. Maybe I’m a wuss. They said I talk a big game. That if I’m going to be a facilitator in the WWUP or a field operative in the EAF, I gotta do more than talk big. I don’t know, maybe they’re right.”

“Facilitator?” Blancanales asked.

“A recruiter, somebody who helps further the cause, volunteers in the offices.”

“And your ‘field operative’ status?”

“Direct action,” Pinter said again. “You know, go out and…do stuff.”

“Terrorism,” Lyons said flatly.

“It’s not like that!” Pinter insisted. “We’re not terrorists! We’re just trying to…trying to get people’s attention. Make them see that all this conspicuous consumption, all this crass commercialism, it’s killing the planet!”

“Shut up,” Lyons said. He lowered the Python, since Pinter seemed more than happy to talk. “What was it your friends wanted you to do?”

Pinter looked from man to man, turning pale.

“Don’t make me change my mind about punching your ticket,” Lyons snarled.

“Okay, okay,” Pinter said, defeated. “Mogray Estates. It’s a housing development. Full of bourgeois fat cats raping the land, pumping out too many kids. You know. In the suburbs, man. My roommates, they went to Mogray Estates.”

“To do what?” Lyons asked, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“What they always do in the suburbs, man. Fight the sprawl.”

“Fight it how?” Blancanales asked.

“They’re going to burn it down.”

T HE BLACK S UBURBAN’S engine roared as Gadgets Schwarz directed the big vehicle through the traffic of suburban Chicago. In the passenger seat, Carl Lyons was on his secure satellite phone, connected to Stony Man Farm.

“That’s right, Barb,” Lyons was saying. “Mogray Estates, a housing development in suburban Chicago.” He rattled off the address Schwarz had pulled from the phone book in Pinter’s apartment. “We need you to scramble fire and local police out there. Not sure how many we may be dealing with. Could be two or three kids, could be something else. But this Pinter character says it’s happening today, now. Seems he chickened out of the party.” He paused again. “All right, Barb. We’re in transit now. ETA in…Gadgets?”

“Five minutes,” Schwarz said.

“Five minutes,” Lyons repeated. “Will do.”

“What did she say?” Blancanales asked from the rear seat. Behind him, in the cargo area, Pinter was trussed up in plastic riot cuffs, blindfolded and gagged, with ear plugs in his ears. The plugs were held in place by a long strip of silver duct tape that was wound around his head and secured his blindfold. For his part, Pinter had not resisted and seemed resigned to his fate. No doubt he feared he was headed to someplace like Guantanamo. There had been no time to transfer him into appropriate custody for further questioning, so Able Team had simply bundled him up and taken him with them.

“She said to be careful,” Lyons said as he closed the phone.

“We going to be careful?” Blancanales asked.

“Of course not.” Lyons shook his head.

The entrance to the housing development reminded the big ex-cop of a gated community, except that there was no gate. It was an elaborate arch bearing the name of the development and boasting twin lion statues, their finishes painted to simulate verdigris. Why anyone would believe the statues and the development had been here long enough for the lions to look weathered was a mystery to the Able Team leader, given that the place was so new the lawns were still just dirt. He supposed those types of touches meant something to someone.

“Pulling up a satellite map of the complex now,” Blancanales said, reading the scrambled feed from Stony Man Farm. “It should be transmitting to your phones, as well.”

“What’s the play, Ironman?” Gadgets asked.

“Take us in deeper, toward the center of the complex,” Lyons said, watching the houses and parked minivans speed by. “We’ll split up, head for three points roughly equidistant, then start sweeping clockwise from the perimeter. Sooner or later we’ll find Pinter’s little buddies.”

“Let’s hope for sooner,” Blancanales said.

“That’s right.” Lyons nodded. “Otherwise it may be too late. Let’s move.”

Leaving Pinter trussed up in the SUV, the three Able Team commandos moved out. It was Schwarz who first called in over the earbud transceiver link.

“Ironman, Pol, I’ve got something,” he said. He relayed the street address, which his teammates could check on the browsers on their secure phones. “Looks like one man, in an attached garage. I can smell gasoline from here.”

“Move,” Lyons instructed him.

“Moving,” Schwarz responded. Lyons continued on it. He vaulted a low picket fence and rounded the corner of one of the many very similar houses. Parked out front was a panel van and emerging from it was a scruffy-looking, college-age youth with a gas can in one hand and some kind of electronic device in the other.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“Drop it!” Lyons ordered. The Daewoo USAS-12 came up, its stubby barrel no doubt looking like the mouth of Hell from where the youth stood.

“Oh, God, man, don’t shoot, don’t shoot—”

Something, perhaps combat instinct, told Lyons to duck. As he did so, he could almost hear the bullet that burned through the air where his head had been.

The guy with the gas can never had a chance. His body rebounded against the panel van, leaving a red streak as he slid to the manicured lawn. Lyons was already turning, the Daewoo churning double-aught buck on full auto. The barrage stuck a man dressed in black BDUs and wearing a red bandanna over his face. His knees were chopped out from under him and he dropped his pistol.