Death Dealers. Don Pendleton

fighting cane.

      You underestimated them, Blancanales thought the moment before he slashed the hardwood cane against the side of his oppressor’s knee. Through his knowledge of human anatomy and his years of not only training but field experience with the fighting stick, the simple slice suddenly toppled the brawny Russian, forcing him to release the Able Team veteran’s shoulder.

      Blancanales stepped back, already feeling the bruises forming from the monstrous claw that had threatened to crush his shoulder joint. He whipped the cane up and was ready to destroy the blond man’s face when Red lurched toward him, moving with all the power and speed of a charging buffalo.

      Blancanales threw himself aside as 250 pounds of freckled muscle surged past him, breaths and ponderous footfalls making him sound like a locomotive. The hurt Russian grit his teeth and sprung off his remaining leg, fingers hooked like talons to tear at Blancanales’s flesh. The Able Team warrior speared out, the brass tip of his cane striking the blond in his Adam’s apple before sliding down into the notch of his collarbone. The brawny thug gurgled, but Blancanales could feel his opponent altering his course, minimizing the jarring effect of being jammed in the throat.

      Even so, Blondie gasped, sliding into the grass and taking a moment to clasp his hands around his dislocated knee.

      Blancanales barely had a moment to look for the other man before a thick rope of muscle wrapped in black leather lashed toward his head in his peripheral vision. Blancanales dipped his head. The clothesline maneuver mussing his salt-and-pepper hair. Muscles glancing off his skull informed him that he’d have lost his head to the strike. Blancanales pivoted the cane in his hands, slicing at his foe’s hip, but the collision between man and wood spun both combatants.

      Blancanales stepped quickly to recover his balance and looked with dismay upon the Red-topped ape that merely dropped one of his meaty paws to rub the sore spot on his side. Green eyes glared from under a beetled brow, and Blancanales couldn’t see a hint of humanity in those features now. This thing before him was a raging beast, and somehow those shoulder muscles seemed to spread even wider, like something out of a werewolf movie. Spittle frothed at the corners of the Russian’s mouth, and he surged forward at the Able Team warrior.

      Blancanales charged, as well, pressing the attack and stabbing forward as if his cane were a sword. The brass cap struck rippling chest muscles and dragged heavily off the Russian’s leather jacket. It hit a wrinkle and suddenly it was as if Blancanales rode a tidal wave, being shoved backward off his feet. His red-haired opponent continued steaming toward him, but Blancanales’s grasp on his cane kept him just out of reach of a gigantic hand.

      Blancanales slammed his feet into the grass behind him, throwing all of his weight and strength into slowing his freight train of an opponent. Sod wrinkled and tore under the soles of his boots, and the Russian let out a bellow of pain as the hardwood cane snapped in two.

      Blancanales’s only weapon shattered, he lurched aside as the beast stormed past him, striking a cobblestone walkway chin-first. If that brute could snap his battle cane, then there was no way that Red could have come away from that crash without a broken rib or three. Still, Blancanales rushed to the big thug’s fallen form and jumped onto his broad back, coming down on both knees. He put all his weight into the attack, hoping to further stagger the man.

      Blancanales saw those thick arms lift, hands flattening against the ground to raise his ponderous bulk and return to combat. The Russian’s haircut was too short to get a sufficient grasp on it, but there was no trimming his ears. Blancanales grabbed the twin dishes of flesh and cartilage on either side of Red’s head and pushed forward hard, mashing the man’s face into the sidewalk. With brutish energy, the Russian reared up like an untamed stallion, seeking to wrest Blancanales from his back.

      The Able Team warrior slammed his knee between the attacker’s shoulder blades and wrenched back hard. Both ears were torn from the sides of his skull, skin ripping away along his scalp, eliciting thunder from deep within the man-beast’s breast. Red bent away from Blancanales’s knee, giving the wily Able Team fighter enough room to bring up his other leg and push down hard. Bones cracked as the Russian’s face struck cobblestone, blood spurting from a burst nose.

      The blond was back, gingerly favoring his injured knee, but still on two feet and ready to step in to make up for the loss of his partner in this conflict.

      Blancanales was breathing heavily, but he stood his ground, glaring at the blond Russian, standing astride the corpse of his even more brutish partner. Blancanales lifted his hand, borrowing from one of Hong Kong’s greatest breakout action heroes, folding his hand toward himself in challenge. The Able veteran figured that he had a good chance if this fight continued, as he still maintained his full mobility, while Blondie was limping. Bulk and power were nothing in comparison to skill and intellect.

      In a heartbeat, hands took the blond by either arm, and the twin meaty impacts of knuckles against a leather-clad torso caused the big Slav to collapse to both knees. Between the dual kidney punches and landing so heavily on his injured knee, the Russian folded at the waist and curled into a fetal position on the grass.

      Calvin James and Rafael Encizo were breathing deeply, evenly, evidencing their mad rush across Statue Square to Blancanales’s aid. On the edge of the park, a minivan screeched to a halt, the side door slamming open.

      “Oy! Time to move!” McCarter’s bellow crossed the square.

      “Want this one?” James asked Blancanales.

      “We’re not moving fast dragging him along,” he returned. “Dump him and let’s move!”

      As one, the two Phoenix Force commandos and the Able Team warrior raced across the park to Manning and McCarter in the rented van.

      Within a few moments the Stony Man operatives would lose themselves in Hong Kong traffic, disappearing from the scenes of battle as far as the police would be concerned.

      But they had a prisoner; a skilled killer who was trying to silence information about the attack on the Gobi Desert base.

      For Blancanales, it was worth the broken cane and stiff, sore arm.

CHAPTER SIX

      Carl Lyons was ready the moment there was a knock at the door, rising to his feet. He’d dressed and had his .357 Magnum Colt Python in its waistband holster. Opening the door, he ushered in Hermann Schwarz and T. J. Hawkins.

      “Did you get a party favor last night?” Lyons asked.

      Schwarz tilted his head. “What did you get?”

      Lyons could see that Schwarz looked tired. He smelled the chemical stink of methamphetamine hovering around him like a fog. “I’m guessing we all got our vices. What did you do?”

      “I lit up my shit,” Schwarz explained. “So I been tweaking all night.”

      As he said so, he made a small hand gesture informing Lyons that he hadn’t inhaled. Lyons knew that faking smoking was a little bit easier, but even so, he’d exposed himself to the smoke from a neurotoxic drug. Even that seemed to have left Schwarz a little burned out this morning. Hawkins had heavily lidded eyes and looked more than a little sheepish.

      “We’re here on business,” Lyons growled. “You get baked, and you end up tweaking?”

      “I turned my radio into a Taser,” Schwarz answered with a shrug.

      Hawkins frowned. “My mouth is all raw from chip mouth.”

      Lyons rolled his eyes and then turned away.

      He had to act the part, which meant having a razor’s edge thin line between temper and control. So far, the bloodied Sanay had proved Lyons’s cover, but that had been her playing on his reflexes. Right now, he realized that those blind instincts and reflexes had likely saved his life and those of his friends.

      * * *

      THOMAS JEFFERSON HAWKINS hoped he’d put on a good enough show as