Ramrod Intercept. Don Pendleton

the arm. “Let’s go.”

      LYONS WAS twelve to fifteen steps away from the hardmen when he was spotted. They were hauling the playboys out of the booth, the two buzz-cut thugs seeing him without seeing him. Tweedledee and Tweedledum had the eyes, too.

      Which meant they would just as soon kill him as look at him.

      He could have radioed Pol for backup, as he saw the foursome weaving through the crowd, angling for a gigantic bouncer guarding what Lyons supposed was the doorway to whore paradise. The Able Team leader decided to go solo, do it his way.

      The hard way.

      He deposited the beer on the edge of the bar, brushed past a scantily clad waitress who scowled and bleated an oath at his backside. They made the door, and Lyons saw Tweedledee slip a crisp bill into Godzilla’s hand, mouthing something in his direction.

      Rolling on, as the foursome was swallowed up by the gloom beyond the door, Lyons already knew where this was headed. Godzilla was all evil eyes, watching as Lyons marched up to him. Getting tensed up to go on the muscle, Godzilla sizing the opposition.

      “It’s a private party. Take a hike, Pops.”

      Lyons gave Godzilla a quick measure. Late-twenty-something, all muscles, the kind of arrogance in his eyes that told Lyons he had never done much more most likely than toss a few drunks out the front door.

      “You’re telling me this is members only, son?”

      Godzilla was about to lose it, his eyes turning mean. “What part of ‘take a hike’ didn’t you understand, Pops?”

      “How about none of it?”

      It came from the heart to begin with, the tried-and-true warrior backed by experience, all the pain and disappointment a man could know, choke down and file away along the course of his life coming together in a critical instant to do the deed. It boiled down, essentially, to a man versus a punk. Physically it came from the legs, a coiled spring that cut loose up his lower back, up the spine, an explosion down the arm until his forearm shot up with all the force of an erupting land mine. Lyons saw the light nearly winking out as Godzilla was lifted an inch or so off his patent leathers, head snapping back on wilting rubber from the forearm pile driver to the jaw. Figure he’d spent a few more hours in the gym lately, pumping more iron than Lyons had his entire life, and he saw the need to follow up with a sweeping left hook. It damn near scared Lyons to hit the guy that hard, his fist driving through jawbone, head snapping sideways, out and back. For a second, Lyons wondered if he had decapitated Godzilla. When the man went thundering off the floor, down for the count, Lyons checked his pulse, found a weak beat. A scan of the party crowd and he found his luck was holding up for a change. They were too busy playing grab ass to notice the incident.

      “Pops” Ironman Lyons freed his Colt Python, then hit the door.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Schwarz found the black Lexus parked in the shadows of some white-facaded structure gone to seed with weeds and vines. There was no gate around the lot, permitting quick and easy access, no valet he could find with a search of the naked eye. And the surging party mass along Sunset was too busy trooping in and out of all the rock, comedy and gentlemen’s clubs to pay one straggling shadow any mind.

      Or so he hoped.

      He was deep in the lot, but felt an unseen watcher hawkeyeing his back, radar from some invisible force homed in on his march, lining him up. He started to feel an itch between his shoulder blades as he gave the line of vehicles a long probing eye.

      Nothing stirred.

      Okay, he was in, but something felt off-kilter, and he found himself planning his exit already. Still he had a job to do, but as he was forging toward the black Lexus, he couldn’t help but feel Lyons was on a headhunting tour inside the club, a sense of urgency to get back to the van burning him up. Three days of lurking all over town, watching their targets live it up like piggish royalty. For some reason he couldn’t quite pin down, he felt it was set to blow up in their faces.

      Lyons wasn’t the patient sort.

      Schwarz picked up the pace, feeling that heart palpitation Pol mentioned, wondering where the black SUV that carried at least two of the other thugs was parked. He’d settle for one out of two, at worst, even though Ironman wouldn’t appreciate a half-assed outing. It wasn’t that Schwarz intended to come up short on his task. Rather, he felt a strange anxiety, some omen hanging out there in the buzz and babble of nightlife. Speed and a quick retreat made more sense than wandering about, checking out vehicles, casting about the paranoid eye like some potential car thief in the neighborhood.

      He made the Lexus, fixed the small magnetic tracking box under the starboard front fender. He was suddenly thinking of his choice side arm, the Beretta 93-R, when he sensed a presence behind him. It was pure combat instinct that sent Schwarz springing to his feet, propelling himself into a flying leap over the hood as the pistol sounded a cracking retort from behind, a bolt of hot lightning burning over his scalp. The round chipped off a fleck of stone above his head, the screaming ricochet flying off into the night. Smart money told him a cop would have at least identified himself.

      That left the missing third goon.

      Schwarz had the Beretta out, came up, glimpsed the thug in question and capped off a round to let the guy know he was no easy tag. He missed badly, a hasty shot with no time to line it up, winging it for effect, the thug dropping beneath the roof. The windshield of a Jaguar downrange absorbed his wild round, a neat hole punched through to give the missing driver some mystery to ponder over later.

      Schwarz hit the pavement on his belly, somehow kept the wind from getting punched out of his lungs, adrenaline doing all the work as he knew there was less than a second to clean it up before he was the only mess left behind. It was nothing more than a flash, feet scampering up the opposite side, but Schwarz tapped off a 9 mm round that scored flesh and bone, chopped the guy off at the ankle. Even in the heat of battle, he gave the opposition some credit for not screaming out, the hardman hammering the ground, but holding on to dish it back and fight it out.

      The microsecond of begrudging admiration ended in the next eye blink as the thug turned wildman, opened up to throw his own play back in his face. Rounds were whining off the asphalt, lead hornets buzzing and banging off the chassis. Schwarz hit the front end, the tire punched out in a thud followed by a long hiss of exhaling air, then he went for broke.

      Schwarz made a snap decision to steal a page from the Ironman manual on combat tactics. It was akin to charging the hill, all balls and brazen defiance, but Schwarz knew there was no choice but to go for it.

      The opposition was still blasting away on the blind-side when Schwarz threw himself onto the hood, rolling up the windshield as more wild rounds then came erupting through glass, the shooter trying to line him up, professional cool under pain and fire, the faceless hardman trailing all the racket of his weight slamming metal with screaming lead. He was up and sliding down the roof, skidding on his butt off the back end when the shadow shooter figured out the play too late. It could have been white-hot agony clogging up the works, keeping the fallen shooter from twisting to line him up. It could have been he’d burned out the clip by the time Schwarz was dropping off the trunk and going for it.

      It didn’t matter either way in the end. Schwarz hit his feet, pumped a 9 mm sendoff between the shooter’s eyes just as the hardman was swinging the pistol his way.

      The curtain might have dropped on one out of three, but Schwarz knew the real trouble had only just started. So much for high-tech intentions.

      War had just been declared on Able Team.

      Schwarz was scanning the vicinity, retracing his steps back through the lot. They were still laughing it up out there on Sunset, unaware death walked among them. Schwarz kept the Beretta out and leading the way. He was thinking of Lyons, some uncanny instinct tugging him toward the club. He pulled out his handheld radio, raised Blancanales and told him, “We’ve got problems.”

      ROSWELL