Ramrod Intercept. Don Pendleton

until the smoke cleared and the college boys were safely on their way to the big house.”

      Blancanales saw Lyons bobbing his head, hashing it over.

      “Makes sense, in some twisted way,” Lyons said. “And the marginal lifestyles they lead, it wouldn’t be a stretch for the top brass to point out these guys had serious vice problems.”

      “It’s the only thing that fits,” Schwarz said. “We know they are simply numbers crunchers for the most part, moving the parts of the goodies around, writing up the manifests, using the contacts of the real powers to create safe transport lanes for delivery. They figured the civilian workforce they hired would be too naive to figure it out.”

      “How wrong they were,” Blancanales said. Then he saw two big men in dark suit jackets and buzz cuts going for the doors to the gentlemen’s club, rolling out of the night shadows, flashing lights jumping about like winking halos around them from this lit-up neon stretch of clubs and bars. “Hey, heads up. Our playboys are about to get paid a visit by your friendly neighborhood DYSAT goons.”

      “Yeah,” Lyons said. “They were at the last club, too, where Collins disappeared. Only I counted up three the last stop.”

      “I know their vehicles,” Gadgets said, watching his monitor, the image being relayed from a minicam mounted on top of the van, the rolling command center handed off to Able Team courtesy of Hal Brognola’s Justice contacts in L.A. “I photoed them and the plates yesterday when they came out of the garage of the office complex.”

      “So, go find them,” Lyons said, “and stick another of your famous tracking boxes so we can stay glued on their tails. I see a parking lot down the street, the direction they came from. Let’s rock and roll, Gadgets. I’m going in. Pol, keep the engine hot. The looks I just read on the goons’ faces…let’s just say I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

      Blancanales cleared his throat as he watched Lyons secure the mini-Uzi in a special rigging beneath his loose-fitting windbreaker, the Ironman’s .357 Magnum Colt Python snug in a shoulder holster on the opposite side with a clear bulge. Subtle wasn’t found in Lyons’s vocabulary. “Easy, big guy. We still haven’t been flashed the green light.”

      Lyons shot Blancanales a cold grin, checked the load on his Colt Python, then slid the big piece back into shoulder leather. “Relax. I’ve got a few extra bucks on me to throw around. Maybe I’m just rolling in there to have a couple laughs, check out the girls. Let ’em know big daddy’s in town.”

      Lyons was out the door, into the night. Schwarz rolled back the side door, gone to play his role as bug planter.

      Now Blancanales felt a real heart palpitation, and it wasn’t the aftereffect of hot sauce and too many tacos. This wasn’t good, he thought. Hell’s bells, he could almost feel the angry energy, trailing Lyons as he crossed the street.

      A human time bomb, looking for a place to blow.

      No mistake, he could feel it all about to hit the fan, and maybe go straight to hell before the mission even got official status.

      JACK ROSWELL DESPISED his current task, or, more to the point, the kind of flunkies he was hunting. The former air commando and black operative for the NSA had his orders from up top, and he would carry them out even if he couldn’t fathom the logic in the whole scheme from the very beginning. This whole mess, he thought, could have been avoided long ago. Now he had been cut loose, a stone-cold killer, on the march to silence wagging tongues.

      As he weaved his way through the gaggle of suits and howling throngs of half-drunken lechers, Morton on his left flank, he wondered where it was all headed. It was the colonel’s show, just the same, from day one, and he had often considered broaching the subject. Such as why hire on a pack of twentysomething guys to do the dirty work of moving the prototype high-tech goodies around the globe? Such as why allow them access to classified files? Such as why let them run all around Los Angeles, having the Sodom and Gomorrah time of their lives, a couple of them coked up half the time, six figure salaries to a man? Flash, showing off, now flapping loose lips.

      Worse still, the backbone, the real movers and shakers behind DYSAT, had the boot heel of the Justice Department stomping down on it, putting on the weight, ready to snap it in two. At last count, three of the pretty-boy executives were dead and accounted for, with three more that he knew of still running around, making little whispered noise about blowing the lid on the whole plan to one another. Well, the Feds had come running, and Roswell knew they were even right then in the neighborhood. No, it wasn’t all that difficult to spot the black van bristling with antennae, parked across the street for what it was.

      Official G-men were on the prowl.

      He hoped they came running, trying to close the net. With some cunning and a little brazenness, he could lead them outside, a dark alley maybe, where he could send a message to the Feds. When they came and picked up what was left of the bodies, he didn’t figure they’d just pack up their surveillance and leave town, tails tucked between their legs. No, they’d turn up the heat, but that was just fine with him. Things were reaching a critical mass anyway, and only a swift and decisive counterattack could save the DYSAT kingdom.

      After dogging the marks around for days, where they wiled away their nights in gentlemen’s clubs, paid cash for quickies and huffed up blow in back rooms, he was starting to feel mean, and dirty. Midforties, he was somewhat surprised to find a craving for younger girls boiling in his loins, an urge he hadn’t known existed until now. But this was business, and he had no time to indulge any amount of seething lust.

      He needed relief, though, and he was content enough to find it through the barrel of his sound-suppressed Beretta 92-F.

      Maybe when this whole dirty business was cleaned up he could return to one of these clubs, peace of mind intact, and spend some of his hard-earned cash indulging the fire.

      He spotted them beyond the next stage where three girls were gyrating the creamy goods to heavy metal thunder, in their faces. The swirling light show lit up their baby-smooth features, eyes glittering, and it angered Roswell to find the executives ready to laugh and lust the night away while prepared to stick it to DYSAT. They had secured a booth, nothing but Heineken and top-shelf booze for those guys.

      Roswell gave Morton the nod. They knew the drill.

      And they had their marks squeezed into the booth before they could wonder what the hell was happening.

      Grogan had his bottle poised near his lips, eyes darting all around. “You guys…”

      “Yeah, us guys,” Roswell said. “There’s good news and there’s bad news, ladies. Bad news—Collins, Hurley and Samuels found new employment…in hell. Good news—you guys have a chance to stay breathing, but only if you talk to us and give us everything you even think you think you know.”

      Caldwell was the first to want to spill it. “Not a problem, guys, just let us explain…”

      “Not here,” Roswell said. “Nice and quiet, we’ll all get up, one big happy family, out the back door.”

      “We’ve got a problem. Twelve o’clock.”

      Roswell followed Morton’s stare out to the party sea of lights and noise and AWOL husbands. In Roswell’s experienced estimation of human nature, separating what was what from who was who in the interest of self-preservation, the big guy was falling way short of trying to blend into the crowd as another rooster on the loose away from the wife and kids. For one thing, there were the twin bulges under the windbreaker, the first tipoff a hunter had walked in, trying to close the gap, quick and quiet. He didn’t quite have the look of a Fed, Roswell decided. There was something too cold and menacing to conclude he and Morton would simply hear the guy reading off their Miranda rights.

      The big guy with icy eyes stuck to the Mr. Cool routine, just the same, ordering a beer at the bar, grinning around at the female amusement park. Once the bottle was settled in front of him, he picked up his march, shouldering his way through the suits.

      Moving with purpose.