They herded their prisoners through the doorway. A few steps behind the bikers, the Outlaws on motorcycles jumped the curb, stepped on their kickstands and dismounted.

"It's a party!"

"Forget that. Any woman with a belly that big's only good for head."

"Take what you want," the Outlaw laughed, "and I'll take mine."

Only seconds behind their buddies, they walked into the hotel's lobby. But there was no one there. They heard feet running up the stairs.

"Hey, us too!" The Outlaws ran up the stairs after the others.

The fire door to the second floor slowly swung closed. They whipped it open and saw Outlaw jackets enter one of the rooms. Laughing, they ran after the other bikers. One of the Outlaws called out, "Second on her!" The other laughed, shouted, "First on the boy!"

Pushing open the door, they saw the curly-haired teenager, the pregnant woman, and the Outlaw in the chromed helmet all pointing weapons at them.

As the two Outlaws stumbled astounded back, a hidden hand put a Colt Lawman to the head of the second Outlaw, spraying his brains onto the hotel room's wall. The other Outlaw fell backwards over the body, tried to crawl, looked up to see the Colt and a 12-gauge muzzle pointing at his face. He rolled onto his back and put his hands up, pleaded: "I give up, you got me, please don't please don't don't..."

The Colt's flash slammed his head back. Glen Shepard dragged the messy bodies into the room and closed the door. He stripped off the dead men's jackets, no filthier for all the new gore than they were before. He threw the larger to his wife, the smaller to Roger.

"Welcome to the Outlaws."

In the ballroom's crowd of hostages, Max Stevens and Mr. Webster rehearsed Jack for his report to Horse: "What are the people doing?" Max demanded.

"They're just trying to protect the girls. They figured that if they circled up, your bikers wouldn't risk a fight with a hundred people at once."

" Did you see any guns?"

"You have guns? Wow..."

The shove sent Jack reeling. Max stepped forward and shook the teenager, then drew back his fist. "You didn't answer my question! Tell me!"

"Don't hit my boy!" Jack's father grabbed Max, trying to break his grip. Max shrugged the overweight, middle-aged man away.

"What do you think's going to happen when he goes to talk with that psychopath?" Max asked Mr. Webster. Then he shook Jack again: "Tell me what you saw."

"They don't have anything. They're just a bunch of dumb people."

Speaking gently, Max told Jack: "That's not what you want to say. Say, 'They're just a bunch of dumb people. Some of them are talking about escape, but they're too scared.' Now repeat that."

Jack repeated the line. Max released the kid, took his father aside. "If he doesn't say something like that, then they don't need a spy anymore. They caught him with a rifle. They think he shot at their gang. Your son's only alive because they need a spy. I'm sorry to abuse him, but I'm just trying to keep him alive."

Max returned his attention to Jack and resumed the rehearsal. The teenager repeated his lines time after time, almost perfectly. Finally Max glanced at his watch: "It's time, Jack. It would be better if you went to them, like a loyal agent, instead of making them find you. You should say goodbye to your father and mother now."

"Tell Mr. Stevens thank you, son," Mr. Webster prompted. "He's probably saved your life."

"Yeah," Jack said. "Thanks a whole lot."

Jack turned his back so that he could speak alone with his parents. "Any chance for an escape soon?" he asked in a whisper. "How much longer before we rush the bikers and break out?"

"I'm sure Max will tell us about that when you get back," Mr. Webster said.

"But we will break out, right? I mean, we won't be like this for days and days."

"Mr. Stevens is a godsend, Jack." Mrs. Webster ran her hands through her son's permed blond hair. "Without him, we'd have no hope at all."

"Yeah." Jack watched Max Stevens limp through the crowd, stopping to encourage the fearful, to comfort the despairing citizens of the island. "He's a real hero."

Horse stared out at Avalon Bay and the ocean beyond. He stood with Jack Webster on the balcony that encircled the Casino. The doors behind them led to the ballroom and the wide flights of stairs descending to the mezzanine, the theater, and the museum that was once the gambling salon.

After the seizure of the town, Horse had placed his heavy weapons — the Browning .50 caliber machine guns, the LAAW rockets, the mortars and the .444 Marlin sniper rifles — on this balcony. Any assault unit attempting to rescue the hostages, whether they came by sea or land, would face fire directed at them from one hundred and fifty feet above the street. And if the attackers returned the fire, they would hit the hostages.

A squad of Outlaws had secured the hill inland of the Casino. Even if rescuers took that hill, they would gain nothing. Hundreds of feet of open air separated the hill from the Casino. Unless the attackers had wings, they could only snipe at the Outlaws. The mortars would annihilate the attackers in a minute.

"...they circled up the people because your guys kept taking girls. They figured your bikers wouldn't want to fight a hundred people at once."

Horse looked to Charlie. "Sheep tactics. Next time someone wants a piece of ass, take an Uzi in there. See how brave those people are after ten or twenty get blown away. Go on, keep talking," he spat at Jack. "What about guns and knives? What do they have?"

"I didn't see anything. But I think they do. Everybody's talking about escaping. How they'd get past the guards and so on. But they haven't let me in on their plans yet. Maybe later."

"They're working on an escape, huh?"

"Everyone's talking about it."

"Who's everybody?"

"All the people in there..."

"Who's talking the most? Who's going to lead the escape?"

"I can find out."

"Get me names, boy."

Smoke obscured Avalon. The afternoon winds, sweeping down from the canyons, fanned the burning homes. Even from where Able Team watched on the Divide Road, two miles from Avalon Bay, the flames could be seen, from time to time lighting the underside of the smoke clouds or leaping up high, the tongues of flame for an instant defeating the afternoon brilliance.

Sharing the binoculars and the Mannlicher's scope, Blancanales, Gadgets and Lyons studied the burning neighborhood. Though trees and smoke allowed them only snatches of vision, they saw the Outlaws pacing the block, cruising around the block on their motorcycles. Only one group of houses burned. And it was those that the Outlaws circled.

The voices on the Outlaws' walkie-talkie, recorded by Schwarz, explained what Able Team watched: "We were standing in front of the house. It burned. They couldn't have got out."

"Hey, tell that to Zapata. While you're watching the fire, he walked into them and they blew his head off. Clean off. Had to look at his boots to figure out who he was."

"They must've got away before we burned that one house. Now they're dead, because we burned them all. The whole block's gone. Nothing but crispy critters in there now."

"Want to bet they weren't even in those houses? Bet they split long time..."

"This is Horse. Shut up! Has anyone out there seen the Monk? His patrol went to help the Chief. Has anyone seen him? Anyone heard a radio call from him?"

"This is Stonewall. I'll go out and find the Chief and the Monk and all their men. Give me the word, Horse, I'll be on..."

"No! Stonewall, everyone else — no one leaves the town. No one! Like the Chief said, the locals out there know the territory. We're not losing one more brother to those crazies. Come tonight, we're rich men. We'll be in another country living like kings! So everyone hang tight. We hold the town. Twenty million in gold, remember that."