The Hostaged Island by Don Pendleton, Dick Stivers Page A

shot, when the woman again blocked his aim as she kicked and punched the bleeding biker.
    "Get down!" Blancanales shouted. "Out of the way! Let me kill him!"
    She turned and saw him for the first time. Her eyes went wide at the sight of the black-clad warrior with the pistol. But she didn't move. The biker sprinted away, weaving through trees and brush. Blancanales sighted, fired again, heard the bullet slap the biker. He fell, scrambled up, kept running.
    Starting after the wounded biker, Blancanales yelled back at the woman:
    "Take that dead man's weapons, you all go hide in the brush somewhere. Don't show yourself till you see uniformed police officers or soldiers. Move it — I can't help you any more!"
    "Thank you, oh, thank you, thank you. God be with you," the woman sobbed as he ran.
    He followed the blood trail through the campground. Ahead of him was a cluster of park buildings surrounded by bushes and trees. The blood led in that direction. Off to his left, the camp road curved through brush and trees shading the camping sites.
    Not to risk walking into the wounded man's ambush, Blancanales took the road. He would circle around, kill him.
    He jogged past the park buildings, then spotted a trail through the campsites and trees that led back to the buildings. If the biker was waiting for him, that trail would allow Blancanales to surprise him. He left the road and pressed through thick branches. He held the Beretta ready in front of him.
    A rifle butt slammed into the back of his head. He fell hard, didn't move. A biker stood over him. He was pointing a Heckler and Koch G-3 assault rifle at the motionless Blancanales.
    "Well, well, well. What is this?"
    * * *
    Waiting at the rendezvous point, Lyons and Gadgets repeatedly sent out the click-code for the third member of Able Team. They received no answer until the scanner/auto-recorder spoke:
    "Well, Horse. This here is Rebel out at the Little Harbor camping ground. Guess what? We got ourselves a commando."
    "What? He alive?"
    "Yeah, for a while. We were thinking of..."
    "I want him! Bring him here!"
    "All we got is bikes, man. He could get away."
    "I'll send a car. You don't touch him, unnerstan'? He's mine!"
    Lyons and Gadgets didn't wait to hear every word. Sprinting through the brush, they already knew the sadist's message:
    Horrible death for Pol Blancanales.

7
    Finally coming to the hillcrest, Lyons stumbled the last few steps, then had to fall, coughing. On his hands and knees he spat long ropes of mucus into the dirt. He had attempted to sprint up the hill with a fifty-pound backpack of weapons and equipment. Though his sprinting steps had slowed to a determined march, he had not stopped. His friend's life depended on him.
    Glancing back, Lyons saw Gadgets still struggling up the slope. Packing more weight — weapons, electronics, and heavy nickle-cadmium batteries — and lacking Lyons' fanatical physical conditioning, Gadgets straggled a hundred yards behind him. Lyons slipped out of his backpack straps, snapped open the "Daylight" Mannlicher's fiberglass and foam case, and crawled to the ridgeline.
    Though the morning remained gray and cool, the light breeze had blown away the fog. The scope's eight-power optics closed the distance between Lyons and the campground a couple of hundred yards below. He saw three bikers standing in front of Blancanales. With heavy wire twisted around his wrists, Blancanales hung by his hands from a utility pole, his boots swinging a few inches from the asphalt of the parking lot.
    A biker with a bloody head waved a knife. As Lyons watched, the biker touched the blade tip to Blancanales' eye. Lyons whipped back the Mannlicher's bolt, chambered a .308 Accelerator. But one of the other Outlaws, a lanky, slow-moving biker wearing a Confederate army cap, shoved the bloodied biker away from the prisoner. The third biker popped open a beer can and swilled the drink.
    Setting the rifle's safety, Lyons glanced to the gravel and dirt road