The Hostaged Island by Don Pendleton, Dick Stivers

his pace, counting cadence to himself.
    Footprints appeared on the cow trail. Blancanales stopped for a second to check the tracks. Jogging shoes, yesterday, maybe the day before. Cow hooves had crossed the shoe tracks. There was a dry cow-paddy over one of the prints. Going on, he saw more and more footprints — jogging shoes, hiking boots, sandals, even a high-heel shoe — and some cow tracks. Bubble gum wrappers, cigarette butts and drink cans indicated frequent visitors.
    He checked the map again. He knew the Little Harbor campground was only a few hundred yards farther. He cut due east, staying in the narrow creek bed of a small canyon. The tangled brush and loose rocks slowed him to a hand-over-hand climb, but the steep sides of the gully and the overhanging branches protected him from being observed.
    A retaining wall of sheer concrete blocked his progress. He saw the guardrail of a road above him. Not wanting to chance the road, he paralleled it, staying close to the hillside as he followed animal and foot trails.
    At first, he thought the sounds were gull-cries from the ocean. He listened harder. It was laughter, coarse laughter, coming from the campground.
    Unsnapping the flap of his Browning Double-Action's holster, he slipped out the pistol. Then he changed his mind. Always use the proper technology, Konzaki had said. Blancanales found the Beretta 93R in his backpack, slapped in a magazine and snapped back the slide.
    He hid the backpack. Soft-footing it along the trail, crouching below the level of the brush, he could hear screams, more laughter, voices. He continued another hundred yards and came to some sort of fire road. He couldn't go any farther without losing cover. But another scream told him he was already there.
    Fifty yards below, two Outlaws raped a woman. One struggled on top of the naked, shrieking woman. The other biker stood on her arms, looking down at her and the biker and laughing, urging the biker on, taunting him.
    The standing biker also taunted the woman's husband. The man lay against a car, bound hand and foot. He was turning his head away. Inside the car, a child cried.
    Blancanales surveyed the scene. The fire road cut straight down the steep hillside, ending at the gravel and asphalt of the campground. The Outlaws and the unfortunate family were at the bottom of the fire road.
    He saw only two motorcycles at this particular campsite. He looked beyond to the other campsites. He saw collapsed tents, scattered belongings, but no other motorcycles.
    Sliding and crawling as fast as he dared through the thick sagebrush, Blancanales silently closed the distance between himself and the bikers. Twenty yards uphill from the campsite, he could not risk getting closer.
    Prone in the brush, only his hands extending from cover, he grasped the Beretta in both hands, right hand on the grip, left hand holding the extension lever in front of the trigger guard, his left thumb through the extra-large trigger guard as Konzaki had demonstrated. He sighted on the standing biker's chest, gave him a three-round burst.
    The bullets interrupted a laugh, the first round punching into his chest, the second his collar-bone, the third taking away his left eye and sideburn. He fell backward and thrashed on the gravel.
    There had been no sound other than the slap of the almost simultaneous impacts. The other Outlaw looked up from the woman, puzzled by his friend's fall. Blancanales flicked down the selector to single shot. He sighted on the biker's head.
    The woman clawed the biker in the face, and twisted out from under him. She blocked Blancanales' aim. He broke cover, ran and slid and jumped down the hillside. The biker scrambled to his feet, his pants around his knees, trying to pull a pistol from a shoulder holster.
    The snap shot glanced off the top of the biker's head, sent him staggering backwards. Blancanales finally reached the bottom of the hill, dropped into a two-handed, wide-leg stance to deliver the kill