by Dick Stivers
White phosphorous turned the concrete guardhouse into a crematorium. Then another high-explosive round hit the gate. But it left the steel unmarked, the gate still closed.
A mile away, a rain of 40mm high-explosive and fragmentation grenades fell on the prefab buildings housing the nuclear technicians. Explosions marched across the apartments. Lines of explosions ripped the equipment yards. Gasoline and diesel fuel flamed. The lieutenant then moved the cruiser upstream, the gunners on the PT boats watching for slaver boats.
Lyons sprinted along the road. Forty-millimeter grenades passed over his head, hit inside the walled compound. Indian snipers in the trees killed every exposed Cambodian. Fire from Blancanales’s G-3 slammed a guard’s chest, staggered the man off the wall. The Indian at the roadside sighted over his Remington’s barrel as he waited for a target.
Throwing himself prone in the mud only twenty feet from the gate, Lyons sighted the Atchisson on the gate’s steel bars. But he declined to waste the slug. There was nothing vulnerable. Steel horizontals four inches square braced the bars. Concrete shrouded both ends of the gate. He shouted into his hand radio:
“I’m going over the top!”
“Don’t!” Gadgets screamed.
“Only one way in…” Slinging his auto-shotgun over his shoulder, Lyons pulled the fragmentation grenades from his pants’ thigh pockets. He jerked out the pins, holding the levers down as he dashed to the concrete wall. He threw the grenades over, one to the right, one to the left, and waited.
Blasts sent thousands of steel razors through the air. Lyons grabbed the bars and climbed and threw a leg over the top. An AK slug shriek-roared past his head. A slug hit steel. The shock went through the steel like hammers to his palms. Then he continued over, dropping to the asphalt, rolling, his Atchisson clattering.
Python now in hand, he scrambled for cover. Slugs from a G-3 at the tree line took out an Asian with an AK. Lyons saw a rifle barrel slide out of a fire port. He put a .357 hollowpoint through the slot. The rifle barrel jerked about, slid back, caught on its front sight.
From a doorway, three Cambodians rushed him.
Double-actioning 158-grain hollowpoints, Lyons put a slug through the chest of the first man before he took two steps. The Asian lurched but continued forward. Other slugs went into the second and third mercenaries, blood and flesh spraying from their backs. They went down. Lyons fired another shot through the first man, saw him fall. Struggling with the twisted sling, Lyons tried to get the Atchisson off his shoulder.
One of the dying mercenaries on the ground raised his rifle. Lyons snapped a shot at the man’s face, saw his shoulder spray flesh. The AK pointed and flashed…
Diving, Lyons heard slugs punching concrete. In front of him, a Cambodian stepped away from the wall and brought his AK to line on Lyons’s head. Lyons rolled to the side. One-handed, he threw open the Python’s cylinder as he slipped a speedloader from a belt pouch. He pushed the cartridges into the cylinder.
A blast ripped away the guard’s head as his finger touched the trigger. Then he thrashed headless on the blacktop, his unfired rifle falling from his hands.
Lyons snapped his Python closed and looked back. Surrounded by swirling black smoke from the guardhouse, the Indian “prisoner” dropped from the steel gate, Remington in his hands. He fell in a crouch and fired again. An AK slug slammed him back.
Lyons, twisting his auto-shotgun free, sighted across the asphalt parking area at the bulletproof glass of a guard station, then shattered the glass with a one-ounce slug. He dropped the magazine still containing four slugs into his thigh pocket and jammed in double-ought/number two steel loads.
The Indian staggered to his feet, trying to make it to cover. Another slug hit him, punching into his leg. His leg flew out as if he slipped. Spraying the area with two wild blasts, Lyons dashed to the man and grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the cover of a doorway. Inside, Lyons saw stairs to the walkway on the wall.
With a through-and-through chest wound and a bullet-shattered leg, the Indian reloaded his Remington. Shock glazed his eyes but he still moved. The warrior pointed at the concrete walls of the main house, at the protected guard stations, at the gun ports. He shook his head to Lyons, then motioned to where the others fired from outside for the others to come. Lyons nodded, crept up the stairs leading to the wall, keeping his head down.
A walkway ran along the top of the wall, reinforced concrete protecting defending soldiers chest-high in front. Lyons eased one more step up the stairs. He saw no concrete on the side of the house and dome, only a safety railing. He bobbed his head up above the stairs, saw a fighting position on top of the guardhouse, the walls concrete and four feet high. Smoke swirled.
Between him and the guardhouse, a wounded Cambodian spoke into a walkie-talkie. Lyons dashed to him. Tearing the radio out of the mere’s hands, he killed him with a blast to the chest, continued past. Atchisson in one hand, a radio screaming Khmer in the other, Lyons sprinted for the shelter of the concrete and slid in, safe.
Hot concrete scorched his hands and legs. Rising to a crouch, he felt the heat coming through his boots as chemical fire raged inside the guardhouse. Ribbons of smoke came from around the roof hatch.
Lyons saw another hatch. He touched it, found it cool. He pointed his Atchisson down and jerked the hatch open.
The motors for the steel gate! Lyons went down a utility ladder. He searched for a breaker box, found it. Chinese ideograms and incomprehensible printing labeled the switches. He threw all the switches. An electric motor whined.
His hand radio buzzed even as he reached for it. “You got it — it’s opening. Where are you now?”
“Inside. Your turn.”
“Moving!”
Returning to the top of the wall, Lyons lay prone, sighting on rifle ports and guard stations, firing blast after blast. Cambodians and Thais and Chinese died or took cover.
American warriors — Brazilian Indians and Yankee commandos — rushed through the open gate, to besiege the Asians inside the fortress of Wei Ho.
22
Reflecting the hues of the dawn, a column of smoke towered above the jungle. A mile south of Wei Ho’s fortress, gasoline exploding in the equipment yard sent balls of flame churning into the smoke. Sheet metal drifted in the smoke and flames like ashes.
Blancanales took his M-16/M-203 over-and-under from Gadgets and loaded a high-explosive 40mm grenade. With the firefight roaring around them, Gadgets shouted into his hand radio, “Wild man! We’re in. Where…”
A shadow dropped from the wall. Lyons landed in a crouch beside them. Gadgets stared for an instant. Lyons took the slaver-band walkie-talkie out of his thigh pocket.
“You are one surprising dude!” Gadgets shouted over the noise. He took the radio and lifted it to his ear and switched it on. Voices jabbered back and forth. Gadgets held the radio close to Blancanales. “You understand that?”
“Some of it’s Chinese. Don’t understand any of it.”
“What can you do with the radio?” Lyons asked. “Anything interesting?”
Gadgets grinned. He keyed the transmit. “Chinese Commie doper punks! You die! We come to kill that old pimp!”
Lyons laughed, shook his head. “Get serious…”
“Serious isn’t fun.” Gadgets found a spent shotgun casing on the asphalt. He flattened the cardboard tube and jammed it under the transmit key: “Long as the battery lasts, they got to talk over all this noise… Say your prayers, Commies! We come to kill you!” Gadgets set the radio in the open, the microphone turned away from them.
“Straight in,” Blancanales told Lyons. He pointed at a sheet steel door. An AK fired from the shattered glass of the not-so-bulletproof port.
“If we can…” Lyons dropped out his Atchisson’s magazine and slipped in a half-spent mag of heavy slugs.
Blancanales scanned the interior of the compound. From cover, Indian warriors aimed fire into the rifle ports and windows. Few AKs answered. He shouldered h
is assault rifle/grenade launcher. “One in the window.”
High explosive threw glass and debris out the guard station’s port. No fire came now. Lyons sighted on the sheet steel door, punched a ragged hole through it with a high-velocity one-ounce slug. He sighted again, squeezed the trigger so slowly…
The hole became a rip. Lyons sighted higher, spread the rip another two inches. Blancanales sighted his grenade launcher. He fired. The blast slammed a vast dent into the steel, tearing the steel open. A head-sized hole yawned in the security door.
“I’m rushing it,” Blancanales told them, passing Gadgets his weapon. He checked the two fragmentation grenades in his thigh pockets and pointed out his path across the asphalt. “I’ll cut to the side, you two put some fire out, I’ll put frags in there. You two follow. Got it?”
Lyons and Gadgets nodded. Lyons fired the last slug in the magazine straight through the hole, then jammed in a full box mag. Gadgets slipped out another magazine for his CAR-15 and held it ready.
Zigzagging, Blancanales sprinted for the steel door as his partners fired burst after burst at the rifle positions. He ran without slowing and slammed his shoulder into the concrete. Pulling the pin out of a grenade, he let the lever fly free, waited for the count of four, heaved it through the ripped steel door. Dust and smoke blasted out as he turned away, covering his head. Then Blancanales stepped across to the guard station. He dropped in the second grenade. Debris flew from the interior.
Gadgets covered Lyons. Soon he followed, also. Against the concrete wall of the fortress-house, none of the AK fire could touch them. The Indian gunners still fired at guard ports around the house. Gadgets returned Blancanales’s weapon and the few remaining 40mm grenades. He took out the two hand grenades he carried and pulled the pin of one.
Waving his arms to the Indians, Gadgets sidestepped. The gunners held their fire as Gadgets slipped up to a shattered port and let the lever fly. After four seconds, he slammed it in. The blast silenced the rifleman inside. Gadgets dashed to the other rifle port, silenced it also.
Indians rushed across the asphalt. They crowded around the entry. Two warriors climbed through the shattered port and called out to the others. Several men followed. Thomas shouted to Able Team, “Inside door open, come!”
Fire from an AK hammered the steel. An Indian was slammed back. Lyons put his Atchisson through the hole in the steel. He sighted on an Asian at the end of the corridor. Steel shot tore a nine-inch wide hole in the Asian’s chest.
Gadgets and Blancanales climbed up, got swept along in a charge, Indians firing shotguns continuously, men crouching down to reload, letting the others surge forward.
A grenade bounced from the guard station. Gadgets kicked it back, screamed to the others, dropped flat. Indians tripped over him, sprawling. Other men crouched as the grenade skittered to the end of the entry corridor. It spun like a top for an instant and came to rest against the security door.
The corpse of a Cambodian took most of the shrapnel and blast. A few steel razors slashed men’s backs, peppering prone men with wounds. Bloody, they still rushed forward again. An Indian fired wild into the guard position, then pumped the Remington’s action and fired again. A torn body flopped out. Blancanales rushed forward to strip three grenades from the guard’s pockets. Gadgets found the door’s power switch and hit it.
“Throw those grenades! Now, now, now!”
Blancanales jerked the pins out, lobbed a grenade, pulled another pin, threw that grenade hard. The blasts slammed the interior, one-two, one near the door, the second across the garden. Blancanales pulled the third pin. He snapped his head out for an instant.
He almost lost it. A burst of AK fire came from behind him. He whipped his head back in, bounced the grenade in that direction. He found one of his 40mm buckshot rounds and loaded his grenade launcher. Then he changed the magazine on the M-16.
“Don’t!” Gadgets had found another grenade on a second dead mere, and he passed it to his partner.
Lyons charged up behind the attacking force, saw Blancanales let the grenade’s lever flip free, count, then toss the frag. An instant after the blast, he dived through the door and rolled across flowers.
A tiny Chinese girl with an Uzi ran at him, her silk robe fluttering. Blancanales lifted his weapon. Simultaneous blasts from three Remingtons sheared away the upper half of her body.
Slugs from an AK hit the Indians, a warrior dropped, Blancanales spun, saw the shoulder and head of a man holding an autorifle. Firing the M-203, Blancanales saw the rifle and arms and head disappear in a spray of gore.
Remingtons and G-3s fired in one continuous roar as the Indians riddled the carved wooden partitions and painted screens inside Wei Ho’s palace. Double-ought blasts ripped gaping holes through doors, walls, priceless Chinese art.
Able Team searched for Wei Ho. They killed everything that moved. A boy wearing a girl’s gown and makeup ran from hiding, took a burst from an Indian through the back. Serving maids attempted a last desperate defense of their master with the AKs of dead guards. They died.
Lyons kicked a door as slugs punched through the wood. Spinning aside, he ran a few steps, slammed his shoulder against the wall. The carved partition crashed inward, knocking two Chinese guards to the floor. Lyons waved a burst of steel shot over them, their bodies suddenly masses of torn flesh and spilled guts. He saw the old man.
Wei Ho wore a gray English suit cut in the style of the thirties, his thin gray hair combed flat on his skull like a bank clerk. Rimless spectacles perched on the bridge of his fine-boned nose. He sat at a lacquered table, papers and blueprints spread before him.
“Would you kill a defenseless old man?” Wei Ho asked, his whine accented with the preciseness of British schooling.
Lyons brought up the Atchisson even as the old man’s clawlike hand flashed. Dropping low, Lyons saw darts shoot over his head. He decided not to give the warlord another instant of life. He triggered an auto-burst of steel high-velocity shot through the ancient body. The three blasts ripped the old dart-wielder in two.
Rushing in, Blancanales saw the blank-eyed torso and arms drop to the floor, thrash for an instant, blood turning the conservative English suit’s fabric to black. Lyons stared down at the dead Chinese. How could a frail old man contain so much evil as Wei Ho did?
“I think you killed him, Lyons. Now move it. We gotta hold this place until the cavalry arrives.” Blancanales lifted his hand radio to his mouth. “Gadgets, he’s dead. Lieutenant Silveres. Lieutenant! Send out the calls.”
On the river cruiser, as the gunners on the deck continued raining high-explosive grenades on the mercenaries, Lieutenant Silveres pressed the transmit button of the long-distance radio, having been briefed by Gadgets on its workings, and sent a highspeed taped message by satellite to American stations in Bolivia, Peru, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
Then he changed frequencies to radio his commander in the nation’s capital of Brasilia.
“Men of the American Phoenix have torn into the heart of a great sickness. I was with them. We live. It is great to live! It is great to be here at this victory, greater than you will ever know! Allow me this moment of glory with these men. Then I return. But such men as these will never leave me in spirit. I salute them in your name. These damn Yankees…!”
FB2 document info
Document ID: ed8aec93-283e-4e1f-9e5f-638e0798bf10
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 2005-05-30
Created using: FB Tools software
OCR Source: OCR Highroller
Document authors :
Денис
Document history:
v 1.0 — создание fb2 OCR Денис
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon’s FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it’s usage)
Этот файл создан при по�
�ощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
