by Dick Stivers
Three militiamen scrambled into the Silverado. Lyons, sprinting across the broken, muddy ground, stopped, pulled down a breath to steady his aim and lined up the Atchisson’s tritium nightsight on the windows of the truck.
In the front seat, the militiamen died before they heard the shots that killed them. Blasts of steel smashed through the passenger-side window and punched through their skulls. In the back seat, a man’s eyes whirled toward the flash in the darkness. Steel balls shattered his window and tore away his head.
Lyons sprinted to the passenger truck, the Atchisson ready in his hands. He fired blasts point-blank into the seats to kill any militiaman waiting to surprise him. But the Silverado contained only corpses. He shoved aside the driver’s body and started the truck.
Racing after the jeep, he flicked the high beams again and again. He saw Ricardo aim the M-60 at the Silverado’s windshield. Lyons flicked the high beams once more and waved a hand out the window. He accelerated to pass the jeep.
“Stop!” he shouted out to Blancanales.
Blancanales slowed. “What?”
The jeep and the Silverado coasted on the blacktop. Lyons saw the guard tower and gate three hundred meters ahead. He leaned across a gory militiaman to speak to Blancanales through the shattered passenger window.
“You two put out rounds. Get as close as you can risk, and then put out everything you got. Or they’re going to chop me to shit before I hit that gate. There are heavy machine guns up there. Maybe rockets.”
“Anything you say. This is your idea.”
“You first, then I come up to speed.”
Blancanales accelerated ahead. Looking in the rearview mirror, Lyons saw headlights weaving through the smoke and the flames far behind him. Other headlights came from the coffee rows.
Tracers arced down from the tower. Blancanales swerved from side to side as Ricardo aimed the M-60’s autofire at the gunner. Flame flashed from the tower and a rocket shrieked into the earth. Blancanales slammed to a stop. He snapped up his M-16/M-203 and fired.
A 40mm grenade popped against the tower. The frag did not silence the machine gun. Blancanales aimed the jeep’s front M-60. Two streams of tracers found the tower. Lyons saw tracers going in one window and out the other side.
Lyons prepared to crash the gate. He shoved the corpses of the militiamen into the footwell. He kicked one dead man up against the firewall. Then he put the heavy passenger truck into gear and floored the accelerator.
Driving the truck like a missile, he aimed for where padlock and chains secured the gates. A heavy steel crossbar braced them.
The designers of the Quesada security perimeter had anticipated attack from the outside. Therefore they had installed speed bumps in front of the gates to stop vehicles from hurtling into them. But they had not protected the gates from vehicles crashing out.
Lyons flashed past the jeep.
The machine gunner in the tower directed his weapon at the racing truck. Tracers sparked off the road.
Two lines of tracers found the machine gunner.
In the Silverado, Lyons held the steering wheel until the last instant, then threw himself against the dead men in the footwell.
The flesh of corpses reduced the shock, but the impact stunned him. At one-hundred-plus kilometers per hour, the Silverado cut its way through the buckling gates, snapped chains, bent the steel crossbar around the truck, threw one gate into the air.
The Silverado survived the crash, but not the speed bumps.
The springs shattered. Wheels smashed into fenders and the axles snapped. When the frame hit the bumps, the Silverado flipped end over end.
Blancanales saw the hulk roll to a stop on its side. He sped to the gate, skidded almost to a stop to negotiate the bumps. Ricardo fired burst after burst, aiming upward through the floor of the tower. No fire answered. Blancanales braked behind the shelter of the mangled truck.
“You alive?” he shouted out.
Lyons struggled to climb out the window. Blancanales grabbed the Atchisson from Lyons’s hands, then helped his partner from the wreck. The Ironman stared around him, his eyes unfocused. Gore covered him.
Running his hands over Lyons’s arms and legs, Blancanales checked for broken bones. He found only blood and pieces of flesh. Lyons watched him.
“You’re wasting time,” Lyons said. “That’s other people all over me. Check my gear. I got my pistols? Where’s my Atchisson?”
“Colt .45. Revolver. Here’s the shotgun…”
“Then get me out of here. I am all fucked up,” Lyons intoned.
Blancanales half-carried him to the jeep and eased him into the seat. In seconds, they raced away from the finca.
Infinitely slowly, Lyons turned in the seat to look back. Flames and columns of black smoke rose from several fires. Gasoline fireballed as he watched.
Two pairs of headlights still pursued them. He slowly turned forward again. He closed his eyes and spoke.
“You know what this means, don’t you…”
“Don’t talk. You might be broken inside. I’ll give you some morphine when we get back to the Wizard.”
“It means we lost the element of surprise. But I’ll get him.”
“What’re you talking about? I’m radioing Grimaldi for a medevac.”
Lyons continued as if Blancanales had not spoken. “Now we know what’s going on. We know Quesada’s in there. But he knows we’re out here. Now it’s going to be a real drag.”
The M-60 fired, Ricardo hammering the pursuing trucks with slugs. Autorifles sparked and slugs zipped past the jeep. A slug smashed into the tailgate.
Lyons sighed. “More nonsense.”
Rising slowly from the seat, he gripped his Atchisson like a crutch.
“Don’t move, don’t,” Blancanales told him. “The boy can handle them. They won’t follow us into the mountains. We’ll get away, no problem.”
Flashes ripped apart the night. Points of flame from the muzzles of autorifles and squad automatic weapons slashed the darkness. Tracers streaked down at the jeep from the hillside above the road. Hundreds of slugs filled the air.
Ambush.
18
In the communications room, Colonel Quesada keyed the digital code lock to power the high-tech radio. Machine-gun fire continued outside the family compound. The voices of his personal aides called from office to office as his staff marshaled the militia forces. He heard men rushing through the corridor. Colonel Quesada spoke urgently into the microphone of the secure-band American radio.
“Captain Mendez! Captain Mendez! This is Colonel Quesada. Emergency!”
Boots stopped outside the door. A fist knocked. “Colonel! News from the fighting. We have the identities of the attackers.”
“Wait. In a moment…”
The colonel knew who attacked. The warning of the North American “paramilitary agents” had come from Washington only hours before. But his friends in the United States administration had said “paramilitary,” not “commandos.”
The North Americans had endangered his life with the use of the wrong word. In his country, “paramilitary” meant raping and murdering the family of an unarmed campesino, or the driveby machine-gunning of a student at a bus stop, or the torture and mutilation of a teenage girl. Salvadoran “paramilitary agents” did not assault concrete-and-steel defense positions manned by overwhelming numbers of militiamen.
The voice of his trusted officer over the radio interrupted Quesada’s panic. “This is Captain Mendez.”
“Are your men mobilized?”
“My squad assembles at the helicopters. We will pursue the Communist…”
“No!” commanded Quesada. “Your duty will be my personal security in Honduras. We will go to La Escuela. Tell the pilots to prepare for the flight to Reitoca. We will take two helicopters. Divide your squad into two groups. I will wait in the gardens for my helicopter.”
“Comandante, the attack is over. The guerrillas have fled the property.”
“Then what is that I hear?”
“The militia shoots at shadows and trees. Allow my unit to pursue and exterminate…”
“The attack is not over! They killed my men in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California. And they are not guerrillas. They are elite commandos sworn to my assassination. They will come again.”
“These commandos have attacked before? In North America? Now here? Comandante, no one informed me of this threat to your security…”
“Ready the helicopters. We leave immediately!”
Colonel Quesada switched off the National Security Agency radio. He pressed an intercom button. “Orderly. Return to your duties.”
As the colonel left the communications room, the radio operator ran in from the other office. Colonel Quesada did not allow any of the technicians to remain at the other radios when he used the secure-band radios. The high-tech electronics encoded every transmission to ensure absolute secrecy. But a disloyal radio operator overhearing and repeating a message would negate all the marvels of the North American technology.
A militia officer waited in the corridor, his gray uniform dripping rainwater. He snapped to attention and saluted when he saw his commander. “I have the identities of the attackers, comandante.”
“Who are they?”
“North Americans. One blue-eyed, the other Latin. The second one speaks Spanish. There is a third, but he is believed to be Salvadoran.”
“Did you see them?”
“No. They took Lieutenant Kohl prisoner, but he fought his way free before the attack…”
“Kohl? Him? Take me to him.”
The officer nodded. “He is with the wounded. This way, comandante…”
Hurrying past the command offices, Colonel Quesada saw his officers speaking into telephones and pointing at maps. Some wore dry uniforms, others muddy fatigues. A radio monitored the walkie-talkie chatter between the scattered militia units. Voices announced a confusion of victories and defeats, casualties and men missing, guerrilla corpses and Communist units trapped in ambushes.
But the noise of machine-gun fire and the panicky voices on the radios had only suggested the truth.
As they stepped from the building, the colonel received his first images of the strike by the North Americans.
To the west, flames tongued the night. Orange light glowed on the storm clouds. Black columns rising from the fincamerged with the black sky. Despite the continuing rain, the acrid stink of burning fuel and rubber and flesh seared the colonel’s throat.
Everywhere on the vast plantation, the hammering of machine guns continued. Tracers arced through the night like penny skyrockets at a saint’s festival. He heard the ripping sound of M-16 rifles.
Colonel Quesada followed the officer along the veranda to a garage near the main gate. Holding the door open, the officer announced the colonel’s entry.
“Attention! Our commander!”
Stepping into the dim interior, a smell struck Colonel Quesada, a horrible commingled stench of vomit and blood, scorched hair and burned flesh. Medics turned from a gore-red table and saluted with bloody hands. His eyes scanned the carnage on the floor.
Dead and wounded militiamen sprawled everywhere. A line of dead had been piled against one wall. Wounded men writhed on the garage floor, pouring their blood onto the oily concrete. One man had been totally blackened by fire. His eyes and features and fingers gone, he gasped down breaths through a seared throat, yellow fluid bubbling from the ruin of his face when he exhaled.
“How many men dead?” the colonel asked a medic.
“Eight dead, two dying, five wounded.”
“Thank God it was not worse,” Colonel Quesada told the officer leading him.
The medic corrected his commander. “But these are only the casualties from the compound and the guard posts. They are taking the other wounded to the hospital. And the fighting continues everywhere.”
“There is Lieutenant Kohl,” the officer pointed.
Stepping over wounded and dying men, they went to a militia officer wrapped in bandages. Splints immobilized his right shoulder and right arm. Blood seeped through the bandages wrapping his head.
Colonel Quesada went to one knee beside Lieutenant Kohl. “Nephew, what happened?”
Kohl, the death-squad leader whom Lyons and Blancanales had called el jefe, opened eyes glazed from medication. He tried to sit up. A medic held him down.
Finally, the sharp-featured, light-haired young man spoke.
“We returned from the mountains. In the motor yard… as I left the troop bus, they took me. Two were gringos. They spoke gringo English and North American Spanish… There was a Salvadoran traitor…”
The colonel heard rotorthrob approaching.
“When Captain Lopez came in the jeep… to take me to your meeting… they shot him and his men. I knew if they went to the gate to the family compound, the guards would take them. I sounded the alarm and dived from the car… then there was shooting. I know nothing else.”
“Only two?”
“Three… I saw three.”
The colonel heard the helicopter descending in the garden. He hurried his questioning. “Only two gringos?”
“A dark one and a blond one.”
“A Negro?”
“Not Mexican… Puerto Rican… I do not know. They covered their faces. I only guess.”
“Comandante!” Captain Mendez called from the door. “There is a development in the battle!”
Colonel Quesada gave Lieutenant Kohl a salute. “Our family is fortunate you survived. Prepare a complete report when your condition permits.”
The broken and bleeding officer grasped at his uncle’s hand. “Comandante, did you kill them?”
“We will,” said Quesada. “Be certain of that. The fighting continues. Soon we will know. Now rest, be strong…” He leaned close to Lieutenant Kohl so that the others would not hear. “Your Fatherland and the New Reich need you.”
The lieutenant balled his left fist against his chest, then extended his arm out straight in a variation of the Nazi salute.
Colonel Quesada paced away from the dead and the suffering men. Outside, he saw the helicopter waiting in the center of the garden lawns. Captain Mendez shouted over the roar.
“There is shooting outside the west gate,” he reported. “May I delay your departure while I take my squad to the fight?”
“No! We go on to Honduras. I do my duty to the Reich, before I take revenge on the attackers.”
The colonel ran across the courtyards and garden walkways to the waiting helicopter. In moments, the Huey lifted away, carrying Colonel Quesada to the safety of the Honduran mountains.
19
A lightshow of death — red tracers, green tracers, the orange yellow flame slashes of RPG-7 rockets — streaked from the night-black hillside. Amazed by the intensity of the one-way firefight that would end their lives, Blancanales and Lyons and Ricardo stared at the flashing autofire, reflexes locking their hands on their weapons, their reason abandoning all hope. But not a bullet hit them. Their heads pivoted as their jeep sped through the kill zone.
Behind them, the storm of full-metal-jacketed slugs tore the two pursuing trucks to bloody junk. The Quesada militiamen, who chased Lyons and Blancanales and the teenager knew only an instant of the high-velocity maelstrom — headlights exploding, windshields shattering, windows dissolving into glitter, sheet-steel deforming — before falling into the endless night of death.
Tires popped. The first truck went into a sideskid across the wet pavement, the steering wheel in the hands of a dead man. Ten lines of tracers focused on the truck. An RPG’s warhead hit. Metallic points of flame sprayed into the night, then petroflame engulfed the rolling hulk.
A rocket flashed from the hillside to hit the second truck. Ragged sheet steel spun into the low brush beyond the road. A fireball churned into the darkness and rain.
Blancanales glanced in the rearview mirror and saw only flames. Then a wall
of headlights appeared in front of him. The shadowy forms of cars blocked the road.
Stomping the brakes, Blancanales fought the fishtailing jeep. He danced the pedals, downshifting, braking, downshifting again. Desperate for an escape route, he steered for the hillside’s muddy embankment. He would go above the roadblock.
Gadgets Schwarz stepped into the glare of the headlights and waved his arms.
“What’s happening here?” Blancanales wondered as he stood on the brake.
In pain, Lyons laughed. “Ask Mr. Wizard.”
The jeep slid to a stop. Gadgets ran to his partners. He slapped Lyons on the back.
“Saw that stunt show through binocs!” he exclaimed. “Don’t ever ask to borrow my car.” He leaned across and jabbed Blancanales in the shoulder. “Wait till you see who’s here. Floyd Jefferson! And some people from the other side…” He glanced to the darkness of the hillside and whispered, “Just be cool. They’re on our side, tonight. I explained what we’re doing and it’s cool. Be cool.”
“What are you talking about?” Lyons’s eyes scanned the darkness as he reached for his Atchisson.
Gadgets’s hand closed around his partner’s wrist and moved his hand away from the autoshotgun. “Be cool, Ironman, or you’ll be scrap metal. You’re standing in the wrecking yard…”
Shadows came from the hillside. Against the flaming hulks of the militia trucks, they saw the silhouettes carrying an international collection of autoweapons. Israeli Galil rifles. M-60 machine guns. An M-14. Heckler & Koch G-3s. Two forms carried Soviet RPG launchers and slung CAR-15s.
“Hey specialists.” Floyd Jefferson called out. The young reporter from San Francisco, California, ran from the silhouettes. A camera on a strap bounced against his side. A shotgun bandolier loaded with 35mm film cans crossed his rain-soaked camouflage shirt.
Lyons shoulder-slung his Atchisson and got out of the jeep. He swayed on his feet. Floyd ran up and hugged his ex-cop friend.
“Easy, kid.” Lyons winced with pain. “I just totaled a truck.”
