The Outlaws' walkie-talkie buzzed. Behind the voice, there was the roar of engines. "On our way up to relieve you dudes. I tell you, you're going to dig the good times at the casino — hey, you motherfuckers! You shooting at us?"

Rifle fire was ripping the quiet. A confusion of voices on the Outlaws' walkie-talkie mixed with the motorcycles' roar as they gunned up the hill. Lyons looked out the door, saw four bikers race past. Halfway between the radio station and the radar towers, Gadgets and Blancanales sprawled in the dirt road's ruts. A biker on the radar towers fired down at them with a large caliber rifle.

Firing wild from the handlebars of their 1200s, the four bikers sprayed Gadgets and Blancanales with shotgun and automatic fire. Bullets and double-zero shot kicked up dust all around Gadgets and Blancanales. The sniper in the towers continued firing.

A burst from Gadgets' Uzi spilled one of the bikers. Lyons grabbed the Outlaw walkie-talkie. "Pull back to the radio station! Chief's coming up the hill with twenty more guys. Don't die for nothing. We'll sit back here and shoot those two assholes to pieces."

Lyons saw the bikers circling back. He snatched an extra magazine for his Ingram. He stood in the doorway in his biker clothing, with the walkie-talkie covering most of his face. When the three bikers came within twenty feet, ignorant of the danger, he emptied his Ingram at them, knocking down two, wounding the third. Lyons ducked behind the cinder block wall, slammed in the second magazine, then blasted the third biker as he dumped his motorcycle and tried to pump a shotgun with an injured arm. Another biker, badly wounded, struggled to crawl behind his bike for cover, but died as slugs ripped away pieces of his head, punching holes in his downed bike. Gasoline whooshed into a dramatic fireball, singeing Lyons' eyebrows.

Changing magazines again, Lyons put a coup de grace burst through the third biker. On the other end of the mountain crest, Uzi and G-3 fire answered the sentry's rifle. Lyons saw the sentry fall through the tower struts.

Sprinting, Lyons didn't pause as he fired a burst through the spilled biker in front of him. The smell of death was everywhere. He continued on to Gadgets and Blancanales.

"Great trick, grandstand." Blancanales rose out of the dust holding his thigh.

"Heard it on the walkie-talkie," Gadgets grinned.

"Sorry about that," Lyons laughed. "Did it again. Improvised."

"I didn't say you couldn't improvise when it was necessary..."

"Pol, you're wounded." Lyons saw blood on Blancanales.

"My G-3 got customized." The automatic rifle had two bullet holes in the plastic buttstock. "And my leg, too. But..." He pulled a Heckler and Koch box magazine out of his thigh pocket. Bent and twisted, the magazine had a hole through it. Blancanales reached into his pocket again, felt the wound, probed it. "Oww! Here it is, double-ought." He held up the flattened lead ball.

"You okay, Gadgets?" Lyons asked.

"Oh, yeah. I took cover behind Pol!"

The screech of the Outlaws' walkie-talkie interrupted them: "This is Stonewall, come in Horse. We're a couple of blocks up from the pier, and we got ourselves a hero. Alive." Horse's coarse laughter cackled through the walkie-talkie: "Bring him in. We'll make an example of him."

The three fatigued but fit Able Team avengers looked to one another. "Anything we can do?" Lyons asked.

"In Avalon?" Blancanales shook his head, no.

Carl Lyons looked at the ground. "Well, God grant you a quick death, whoever you are."

9

Minutes before dawn, Glen and Ann Shepard, the Davis cousins, and Jack Webster slipped out of the Davis home. They crossed the street, went through a yard, climbed a fence. Rather than risk crossing the next street, they climbed fence after fence until they came to the end of the block. They broke into the last home in the street, a two-story house with a peaked roof.

Waiting there, they heard shots and yells and roaring motorcycles. As the Outlaws swept the other block, smashing doors and rampaging through homes, Glen examined the home in which they were hiding. As he had thought when he first saw the house, there was a triangular crawl space between the ceiling of the second floor and the peak of the steeply angled roof. He found the access hole in the ceiling of one bedroom's closet. He helped his wife up — her eighth-month belly a tight squeeze — then passed up blankets, water, a transistor radio with an earphone, all the weapons, and a plastic bucket to serve as a toilet.

Glen and the boys carefully searched through the drawers and closets of the house. He told the boys they would be hiding in the attic all day and perhaps the night, however long the siege of the island continued. They should gather anything that would make their wait more pleasant or safer. He also advised them to return everything they touched to where it had been. The house must not appear different than when they entered.

From the vents of the attic, they watched the Outlaws search the nearby homes. The Outlaws did not discover the knifed Acidhead until an hour after dawn. The crackle of the radiophones and walkie-talkies reached a pitch approaching hysteria. The discovery of the corpse, with rifle, pistol, ammunition and radiophone gone, had gotten the Outlaws seriously fired up.

Hearing motorcycles and voices getting really close outside, Roger went to a vent and peeked through the louvers. "They're searching this block now."

"Don't sweat it," Glen spoke calmly. "Roger, stay there, watch the street. Chris, you go to that back vent, watch the back. Both of you take blankets."

"Why?" asked Chris.

"Because if they open up the trapdoor and look in here," Glen explained, "if it's dark, they won't be able to see us. If we hear them in the closet down there, you cover those vents with the blankets. But dig it — once they come in the house, nobody moves! Have those blankets folded up and ready so you can do it silently."

"What if they have flashlights?" Roger asked.

"Then we got a problem."

"And what should I do?" asked Jack.

"Go over there," Glen pointed to a far corner of the attic. "Lie in the corner and be quiet. Ann, you go over there, put that dark blanket over you. I'll try to make myself invisible too."

Glen pressed himself into a small space between a rising vent pipe and the roof joists. He pointed his sawed-off shotgun at the access door.

"I'll shoot when you do," Jack told him. Glen looked over, saw the .45 auto in Jack's hands.

Putting down his shotgun, Glen crouch-walked over to Jack. "Give me the pistol."

"Why? It's mine."

"It isn't yours," Chris called out. "Give it to Mr. Shepard."

For an instant, Glen thought the teenager would shoot him. Then he saw that the hammer was only at half-cock. He grabbed the pistol, twisted it from the boy's hands.

"I'm taking this weapon," Glen told him, "because you having it is a threat to our lives. All you've been talking about is shooting them, and if you did that they'd kill us all."

"You asshole!" Jack shouted. "You're no one to me, you can't play God with me, I'll..."

One-handed, Glen grabbed the teenager by the throat and started to choke him. "Be quiet!" he hissed. "You'll get us killed."

Roger whispered from the far end of the attic. "Do what he tells you, jerk-off! You should be thanking him. He risked his life to help us."

"Shut the fuck up, nigger!" Jack screamed at Roger.

"Ohhhhhh... " Glen just laughed. "Is this guy your friend?"

"Will you shut up?" Chris hissed. "They're out there!"

Crouch-walking again, Glen went to the vent viewing the street. "Where?"

"Coming around the corner. He isn't really a friend of ours, by the way," Chris explained quietly to Glen. "We sorta know him. He was hanging around, when all this started."