“Well, all right. Never mind, then.” Blancanales shrugged.
“On my go,” Lyons said as if the interruption had never occurred, “you’ll move in on the cookhouse. I’ll try to recon the storage trailer and take out the residence trailer while you do that. Expect resistance around and in the cookhouse to be the worst. There’ll probably be plenty of guards.”
“Probably?” Schwarz asked.
“Shut up,” Lyons said automatically. “All right, no sense delaying the inevitable. Let’s hit it.”
Blancanales sped up as much as he dared, bringing the Suburban through the curves in sprays of dust and gravel. When, according to their GPS unit, they were just short of the clearing in which the target trailers stood, Lyons signaled Blancanales to bring the truck to a stop.
“All right,” Lyons said. “Everybody out.”
Blancanales removed an AR-15 from the back of the truck. It would be his primary contact weapon for the operation. Schwarz checked the 20-round magazine in his 93-R machine pistol.
“Ironman,” Schwarz said, looking up at the big blond former cop as the man took the wheel of the Suburban, “be careful.”
“Never,” Lyons said.
“One of these days,” Schwarz started.
“One of these days, nothing,” Blancanales shot back. “He’s indestructible.”
“Wish I was.” Schwarz grinned.
“Go,” Blancanales said. Schwarz nodded. The two men split up, working their way through the trees that surrounded the property.
“Wish I was, too,” Lyons said to no one. He tromped the gas pedal and the Suburban shot forward, the big engine growling.
“Keep it tight, guys,” he said over his transceiver link.
“Got it,” Schwarz said.
“Will do,” Blancanales acknowledged.
Lyons did not have to drive far before he cleared the trees. Emerging at the opening to the clearing, he was confronted by a pair of leather-clad bikers sitting on elaborately chromed choppers. The motorcycles were parked across the dirt road, nose to nose. The men sitting on them were in their midtwenties to early thirties, greasy and unkempt, but the predatory air about them was unmistakable. Lyons saw no weapons, but both wore leather jackets that could conceal just about anything short of a rifle or full-size shotgun.
One of them came up along the driver’s side of the Suburban. Lyons rolled down the window.
“You lost, asshole?” the biker demanded.
“No,” Lyons said. He was very conscious of the other man at the nose of the truck.
“Then you’d best turn your ass around and get the hell out of here, hadn’t you?” the biker at his window said. He reached into his coat.
“You should probably get down on the ground,” Lyons said calmly. “Your friend, too. I’m a federal agent.”
“Oh, really?” the biker asked. He seemed to think that was funny.
“No, really,” Lyons said conversationally. “I’m with the Justice Department.” He held up the credentials he had plucked from his pocket while driving up. “See?”
“Oh, damn it all to—” He clawed a revolver from under his jacket, bringing it up to shoot Lyons in the head.
“Yeah,” Lyons said. The big ex-cop was faster. His Python was already pointing out the window of the truck. It spoke once, with authority, and the biker fell dead with a .357 Magnum bullet hole in his forehead.
Lyons stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The big Suburban pushed the other biker over. He went down screaming, still trying to pull his own gun, as Lyons simply drove over him. The two choppers were more of an obstacle, but the big Suburban powered over those, too, leaving behind bent and twisted chrome as it fought for traction in the dirt.
“Shots fired, shots fired,” Lyons said. “The Grubs drew down on me,” he reported to his teammates, “so assume armed and dangerous. I’ve taken two and am headed toward the buildings now.”
“Roger,” Schwarz said.
“Coming at you,” Blancanales said.
Lyons rolled up to the trailer designated on their intelligence files as the residence building. He leaped from the Suburban, his Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun at the ready with a 20-round drum magazine in place. Several motorcycles were parked in front of the trailer, as well as an old Ford pickup. Lyons ignored the vehicles. With one combat-booted foot, he kicked open the door to the trailer.
The gunfire that poured out was so heavy that he was forced to leap away, landing on his back in the mud in front of the trailer door. The men rushing to kill him, bikers all, were so eager to shoot him that one of them managed to put a bullet in the back of another. That biker fell dead at Lyons’s feet, the Grubs colors on his vest spattered red with his blood.
Lyons fired from his back, hosing the doorway with double-aught buckshot. Men screamed and died.
The big ex-cop pushed himself up and through the doorway, the shotgun leading. He poured on the fire as he encountered several more bikers, some only half dressed as they were roused from fetid bunks by the fighting. Return fire devastated the cluttered, garbage-strewed trailer all around him, but none of it found the Able Team leader. Yet another biker died as a result of friendly fire, however, when Lyons dodged his clumsy knife attack and then yanked the man in front of him to play the part of human shield.
“Knife to a gunfight, pal,” Lyons muttered before firing out the drum of the USAS-12 from behind the dead man.
The small, dark-skinned man moved so fast that Lyons almost didn’t see him until it was too late. Levering the corpse off himself and bringing the shotgun up to acquire the next target, Lyons felt the shock transmitted through his big hands as the smaller man dived from hiding behind one of the bunks that lined the walls of the narrow trailer. He slapped the barrel of the shotgun so hard that Lyons’s palms stung. The weapon was levered from his grasp as the small man snapped a brutal kick into Lyons’s shin and then unleashed a hail of blows with his fists.
Lyons released the shotgun rather than fight for it. He deflected most of the punches, though a few got through and very nearly rocked him. His opponent was small, but all wiry muscle, and he packed a hell of a punch in his small frame.
Lyons got a good look at the man’s face as they fought.
Thawan.
He’d had his doubts as to NetScythe’s ability to point them to targets ahead of the curve. He’d even entertained the notion that they might have stumbled on a local meth gang completely unrelated to the Triangle. The presence of Mok Thawan here, however, clinched it. They were definitely dealing with the Triangle.
Lyons threw a powerful front kick that staggered Thawan. In that instance, Lyons knew that, ultimately, he could take the little bastard if it came to that. It wouldn’t be easy, especially in this confined space, but he thought perhaps he could do the job. He came in, angling for a decent shot. Just one edge of a hand to the neck or a leopard’s paw to the throat and Thawan would be on the floor of the trailer, fighting to breathe. That was all it would take.
The glittering blade of the balisong flashed out and nearly caught Lyons in the face. He fought for room to draw the Python. Thawan anticipated that and slashed him in the arm as he tried to draw the gun, slamming a vicious elbow into Lyons’s midsection as he followed through. Then he was past Lyons and running from the trailer.
“I’ve got Thawan!” Lyons shouted. “He’s running from the residence!”
“Tied up here!” Blancanales shouted back. Lyons could hear the gunfire coming from the cookhouse. The firefight sounded