The Hostaged Island by Don Pendleton, Dick Stivers Read Free Book Online

Casino Ballroom. Beneath the false heavens, the imprisoned people of Catalina — men, women and children: residents and tourists — waited, agonized. Some tried to sleep on the dance floor. Most sprawled on the floor or paced through the crowd. Numbed and silenced by fear, many stared into space, ignoring the other prisoners around them.
    Max Stevens refused to surrender to his fears. Leaving his wife and teenage daughter with a group of friends, he limped through the crowd. He saw crying men, sobbing women, men and women with faces twisted by barely restrained hysteria. Despite the ballroom's humid warmth, he still wore his coat. He searched through the crowd, found men and women who were still calm and thinking. He quizzed each hostage as he spotted them:
    "You want to talk about getting out of here?" he asked a young woman.
    "How? What are you going to do?"
    "I don't know yet, but if we get the chance, we should be ready."
    "I'm willing to listen..."
    "Not just listen. I want to hear your ideas." Then he moved on to the next person.
    "You think we can break out?" he asked a bath-robed man.
    "Maybe. Those creeps aren't supermen."
    "Tell me when I get back with the others." Max pressed on, always searching for the faces of the acquaintances he trusted.
    "Max Stevens! You okay?" One of the island's resident fishermen held him by the shoulders. "I saw them shoving you around."
    "I tried to get away."
    "That's my man!" The fisherman leaned close. "Think a knife could help us get out of here?" He pulled up his pants leg, revealing a knife handle in his boot.
    Max grinned. "They didn't search me, either. Think fourteen rounds of .45 caliber hollow point might open some doors for us? I got my Hardballer and two magazines."
    The fisherman's face crinkled into a wide grin. "Might help."
    "Don't go anywhere," Max told him. "I'm looking for more recruits."
    He found many, but searched for more, crisscrossing the ballroom, looking into the faces of everyone there. Screams and shouts stopped his search. He joined a crowd gathering around a scuffle.
    Two Outlaws were beating and kicking a middle-aged man as two others dragged away a pretty teenage girl. A woman lay gasping on the floor, doubled-over, her face bleeding from several blows.
    "What's happening there?" Max asked an onlooker.
    "Those animals saw a girl they wanted. The girl's mother and father tried to stop them. I wish I hadn't left my gun in the house."
    "You want to do something about it?"
    "No! Max, no!" His wife Carol had come to the crowd. She jerked him back. Pressing close to him, she clutched at the weapon under his coat. "If you try anything, even if you kill them, kill ten of them, you'll die. You've got Julia and me to think of. No matter what, you'll be killed. They've got machine guns for God's sake!"
    Max looked helplessly at the Outlaws. They dragged the shrieking, pleading teenager out of the ballroom. His wife took his face in her hands, made him look at her. "She'll probably live, Max. Don't throw your life away. Someday, she'll forget. If they kill you, I'll never forget."
    He listened to his wife, his lips a bloodless line across his face. He looked over at the beaten man and woman. As the bikers walked away, a few onlookers went to the aid of the bloodied couple, covering them with coats, wiping the broken teeth and blood from the man's mouth. Max looked back to his wife:
    "What if the next girl they want is Julia?"

6
    Luck blessed Able Team with fog.
    Maintaining a distance of four miles off the western coast of Santa Catalina Island, the Coast Guard cutter lowered a steel boarding ramp to within a few inches of the water, then launched the three kayaks at intervals of a half mile. After the cutter faded into the fog, its wake and propeller foam dissipated and the surface of the sea returned to a mirror calm.
    They floated in a gray void unbroken by sound or daylight, the only motion a gentle groundswell bobbing the fiberglass kayaks.
    "Well, all