Kill School

6

As their hands closed on their weapons, the men of Able Team saw this scene: The road widened. Engineers had graded flat the low slopes of a hill to provide a service area for road maintenance. At the downslope edge of the area, trucks had dumped loads of gravel and broken stone. Pine trunks had been stacked a few meters away. To the north, the road went over a low rise to continue into the mountains.

A steep hillside overlooked the road and service area. High brush and pine saplings had concealed the guerrillas.

The ambush had evidently been quick and efficient. The first truck burned at the far side of the clearing, only ten meters short of the exit to the north. Corpses of soldiers indicated that gunfire had come from the hillside above them and from the rise ahead of the truck. The autofire had driven the survivors back from the truck and into the center of the kill zone.

The second and third trucks had been hit with RPGs as they attempted to back out. More sprawled corpses of soldiers indicated that the guerrillas had closed a circle around the unit. Running from the infernos of the trucks, the soldiers had run into the rifle fire of guerrillas waiting behind the piles of gravel and stacked pines.

Now the guerrillas, wearing workshop-stitched uniforms, tennis shoes and black nylon web-gear, herded captured soldiers through the smoke and flames of the killground. Guerrillas with red stars on their berets stripped uniforms from the living, and from the dying and dead soldiers. Other guerrillas gathered the captured uniforms, weapons and boots.

On the far side of the ambush site, where the road headed north away from Able Team, two jeeps with pedestal-mounted M-60 machine guns parked, the drivers pulling on the handbrakes. A guerrilla officer with an Uzi left the second jeep. Unlike the others in the ragged platoon of mountain fighters, the leader appeared military. Clean-shaven and short-haired, he wore clean fatigues and polished black boots. Guerrillas moved to the jeeps with their loads of captured equipment.

The freedom fighters of the Popular Liberation Forces made no secret of how they would dispose of their prisoners.

Two Communists forced a naked teenage soldier to his knees as a third Communist put a pistol muzzle to the boy's face.

The pistol flashed, the corpse flopped back as the Coupe de Ville hurtled over the rise.

Lyons thumbed his Atchisson's fire-selector to semi-auto. "The one with the Uzi — the officer — we take him alive!"

"Lyons, no!" Blancanales leaned from the back seat. "We can race through! We got the speed..."

A Communist sentry turned at the sound of the on-rushing car, the AK-47 he held rising to his shoulder.

Lyons fired. At 1200 feet per second, a spray of steel balls crossed the ten-meter distance to tear through the guerrilla's chest. The other Communists heard the boom of the assault shotgun and whirled as their dead comrades flew back.

A shiny symbol of capitalist decadence hurtled at them. Gadgets's Colt rifle flashed autofire from the back windows, lines of 5.56mm slugs — military hardball alternating with hollowpoints — scythed through groups of bearded, swaggering Communists.

Victory became annihilation as they died with their ComBloc rifles and RPGs slung over their shoulders.

The AKs of the guerrillas guarding the soldiers went on line at the Cadillac. Reprieved from execution, the soldiers started grabbing the weapons, punching the Communists, wrestling them for their AKs.

"Lieutenant!" Blancanales shouted. "Continue! Go through!"

"No!" Lyons countered. "We waste these shits." He sighted on a guerrilla and fired. A single blast of steel killed one Communist and wounded another.

"Use your head! It's not our war..."

"We need those jeeps!" Lyons shouted.

Lieutenant Lizco screamed his words like a battle cry. "We kill them all!"

Flashing past the flames of the second and third trucks, the lieutenant spun the steering wheel hard to the right, aiming for the gap between the first and second trucks. The Cadillac sideslipped, bounced across the road, threw mud and gravel. But it did not quite clear the first truck.

The left rear fender clipped the steel of the troop truck's plate-steel rear bumper. Metal tore. The impact threw Gadgets and Blancanales hard against the rear left door. Lyons fell against the lieutenant.

As the heavy Cadillac raced through mud, Lieutenant Lizco whipped the wheel to the left. Lyons flew toward the passenger-side open window.

Lyons somersaulted out of the Cadillac and slammed into the road, rolling. Stunned, he realized he no longer held his Atchisson. His reflexes took over.

He scrambled on all fours through the acrid smoke of the burning trucks. Clawing the Colt Python from the holster at the small of his back, he pointed the .357 Magnum at a smoke-shrouded form holding an AK.

As his finger tightened on the trigger, he saw a bloody teenager in the uniform of the Salvadoran army. Lyons's thumb caught the hammer at full cock.

"Amigo!" Lyons shouted out one of the few Spanish words he knew.

"Americano?" The sight of a blond, blue-eyed North American in slacks and sports coat on his hands and knees in the mud amazed the Salvadoran trooper. The youth grabbed the North American's coat and jerked him to his feet.

A guerrilla blundered into them. Lyons fired a 158-grain hollowpoint point-blank into the man's face. As the corpse fell back, Lyons snatched the AK from its grasp.

The AK in his left hand, the Colt Python Magnum in his right, Lyons dashed for the cover of a gravel pile. Beside him, the Salvadoran private grabbed a wounded friend from the ground. The young soldier dragged the wounded boy away. Lyons turned to cover their retreat.

Near the trucks, a guerrilla shouldered an RPG and aimed it at the careering Cadillac. Lyons thumb-cocked his revolver and sighted on the rocketer's head. He squeezed off the shot, saw the hollowpoint throw the man sideways.

The Communist's dead hand triggered the launcher. The rocket's primary charge sent the warhead skittering over the road and into a flaming truck.

Flame and black smoke enveloped the hillside as the RPG's warhead exploded, spraying metal and burning rubber from the already fire-gutted truck.

The sheet of flame churned into the sky. A guerrilla staggered from the flaming brush, his hair and beard burning, his hands and face melted. The flame-blinded Communist wandered in horror for an instant, then fell down the embankment and thrashed with the agony of slow death by shock.

In the Coupe de Ville, the lieutenant whipped the steering wheel from side to side, his foot holding the accelerator to the floor. The car shuddered as the tires spun.

"Carl's out there!" Blancanales shouted to Gadgets.

"That's their problem!" Gadgets yelled back.

A guerrilla saw the Cadillac swerving toward him. Despite the big car's high powered engine, the Cadillac seemed to move in slow motion, the engine roaring but not accelerating the vehicle as its spinning tires sprayed mud and gravel. The guerrilla calculated the path of the Cadillac as he dashed forward. He would fire directly into the open windows of the armored luxury car.

Both Lieutenant Lizco and Gadgets saw the guerrilla sprinting toward the Cadillac, AK flashing. Slugs hammered the steel of the car's fenders and doors. Lieutenant Lizco cranked the steering wheel in the opposite direction. Gadgets pointed his CAR.

The Cadillac careened sideways, the muzzle of the Colt autorifle touching the guerrilla's olive-drab uniform as Gadgets fired a burst.

AK slugs tore the leather seat mere inches behind the lieutenant. Then the mangled fender struck the guerrilla's legs like a sheet-steel ax, severing one leg, impaling the other. The Cadillac dragged the guerrilla over the road, his body tumbling like a tangle of bloody rags.

In a wide, sweeping turn, the lieutenant attempted to circle around the first truck.

The Cadillac left the ground.

What? Gadgets thought as he saw the scene of burning trucks and running men fall below him. Can this Cadillac Coupe de Ville fly?

Then the shock and roar answered his unspoken question.

A land mine.

After an instant of flight, the Cadillac hit the road. Steel-plate armor under the passenger compartment had saved Gadgets and Blancanales from the mine's blast and shrapnel, but not the vehicle. Minus the right rear wheel and fender panel, the Cadillac bounced to a stop.

The lieutenant attempted to continue. As he stood on the accelerator, the drive shaft, blast twisted and torn from the differential, flailed at the underside of the Cadillac like a rotary hammer gone wild.

Numb, disoriented, his vision spinning, Blancanales smelled gasoline. "Wizard, Lieutenant, out!"

A hand grabbed Blancanales. Gadgets leaned in the Cadillac and dragged Blancanales clear. Blinking at two suns, Blancanales realized he lay flat on his back. He felt his M-16/M-203 in his hands.

Pushing himself up with the butt of the assault rifle-grenade launcher, Blancanales's double vision saw two scenes of Gadgets throwing gear and weapons from the Cadillac while the lieutenant fired Lyons's Atchisson at guerrillas rushing the blast-wrecked Cadillac.

Slugs tore over Blancanales. Too dizzy to stand or run, he rolled onto his stomach. He braced his M-16/M-203 on the road and searched for the guerrilla gunner.

A teenager with a red hammer and sickle embroidered onto his beret rushed from the smoke. Blancanales sighted on the center of the two spinning images and pulled the trigger. Nothing. He touched the M-16's receiver. The magazine empty, the bolt had locked back.

His left hand found the trigger assembly of the M-203 grenade launcher. Closing one eye, he fired the grenade as the teenage Communist sighted his AK on the North Americans.

The 40mm HE fragmentation grenade disintegrated the boy's torso. Like half a marionette, the legs and pelvis danced about in the mud of the road as the dead boy's nerves died.

"Just use bullets, will you?" Gadgets shouted through the chaos. "That's overkill!"

Diving into the mud, Lieutenant Lizco and Gadgets escaped a searing wave of flame from the Cadillac as the spilled gasoline flashed. The fireball rose to join the smoke of the burning trucks and hillside.

Waiting until the heat-flash faded, Gadgets dragged two cases of Able Team equipment away from the Cadillac.

"Ammo!" Blancanales called out.

Lieutenant Lizco, dragging other cases, unslung a bandolier of magazines and tossed it to the North American.

Blancanales tore open a Velcro closure to find a box mag of 12-gauge shells. He slung the bandolier and his M-16/M-203 over his shoulder and pulled out his Beretta 93-R. Staggering to his feet, he searched the ground near the burning Cadillac for weapons and gear.

"We got it all! We got it!" Gadgets shoved Blancanales away from the fire. "Put out rounds!"

"I don't have rounds!"

"Here." Gadgets shrugged the Atchisson of his shoulder. "There's ammo for this monster somewhere..."

"I got it," Blancanales gasped.

AKs banging, three Communists broke from the smoke and flames and sprinted for the parked jeeps. Slugs zipped past Gadgets and Blancanales as the guerrillas sprayed autofire in all directions. Lieutenant Lizco returned the fire with a mud-splashed M-16. All three ComBloc weapons were pointed at the men staggering away from the burning Cadillac.

Blancanales flipped down the Atchisson's fire-selector and pulled the trigger at the three guerrillas. The assault shotgun roared in full-auto mode.

As he saw the running Communists contort in a mist of sprayed blood, the slamming recoil of the weapon knocked Blancanales backward. Sitting in the mud, he pocketed the empty mag and slapped in another magazine of 12-gauge shells. Before standing again, he glanced at the fire-selector and clicked it up to semiauto.

Across the clearing, Lyons heard the Atchisson booming. He lay behind the cover of the gravel pile and stacked pines with several Salvadoran soldiers, some wounded, others dazed. Teenage soldiers put out aimed shots into the confusion.

Lyons scanned the road and maintenance area for the guerrilla officer. He knew the value of capturing a member of the Communist command cadre. The officer would not only know the locations and patrol routes of guerrilla units, but also — as demonstrated by the efficient and deadly ambush — information on army movements. Perhaps he would have details on the security of Able Team's target, Colonel Quesada.

But black smoke drifted over the road and clearing, hiding the guerrillas and the surviving soldiers. He listened for the 9mm popping of the officer's Uzi. He did not hear the weapon.

Perhaps the officer had already died… or escaped.

Above the road, flames consumed several pines. The green brush burned slowly. Wind came for a moment. Lyons saw a Communist on the hillside leave the smoking brush and take cover in a tangle of low pine branches. A second later, heavy-caliber slugs slammed into the wood sheltering Lyons. The Salvadorans went flat to the ground to escape the downward-directed autofire.

Lyons shifted his position. Aiming his captured AK at the hidden gunman's cover, he sprayed out the magazine of 7.62mm ComBloc slugs. But the wind had shifted and the smoke obscured the hillside again.

He dropped the AK and sprinted for the embankment. Squatting beneath the tangle of pine branches, he waited.

The gunman fired again. Lyons took out his Python and checked the cylinder. He dropped the four unfired cartridges into his pocket. Slapping in a speed-loader, he waited.

Smoke swirled around him as the wind shifted. Clawing up the embankment, he looked into the muzzle of a G-3.

His eyes searching for targets near the burning Cadillac, the guerrilla did not see Lyons's face only two feet in front of him. Lyons put a hollowpoint into the gunman's right ear.

Lyons scrambled over the top of the hill and snaked into the tangle. He stripped the dead man of his bandolier and G-3, then scanned the road for other guerrillas.

Dragging a bullet-shattered leg, a Communist crawled toward the downhill edge of the clearing. Lyons sighted on the man's shoulder and fired. The bullet impacted inches to the guerrilla's right. Lyons corrected for the rifle's misaligned sights and fired again. Instead of hitting the man's shoulder, the bullet struck the guerrilla in the small of the back.

Lyons glanced at the G-3. A small star had been scratched on the plastic stock and then painted in red. On the receiver, the stamp of the army of El Salvador identified the source of the weapon. Years of wear and pitting from corrosion showed on the receiver and metal parts.

He aimed at the head of a dead guerrilla on the far side of the clearing and squeezed off two careful shots. The first slug missed by inches, the second hit the guerrilla in the chest. The old rifle no longer had the accuracy to hit a six-inch-diameter target at one hundred meters.

Lyons resumed his visual search for the officer, but did not spot him. He saw Salvadoran soldiers pulling their dead and wounded away from the burning vehicles. One soldier hacked at the faces of wounded guerrillas with his bayonet.

Beyond the smoking hulks, he heard the Atchisson boom once again. Two troopers threw a Communist guerrilla to the ground and stood on his arms while another soldier searched him.

A Communist appeared from a wall of smoke. He had no rifle. Coming directly up toward Lyons, the teenage guerrilla sprinted for the safety of the hillside. Lyons waited.

As the boy scrambled up the hill, Lyons clubbed him with the ancient G-3. The blow broke of f the plastic stock of the German rifle.

Dragging his prisoner by the collar, Lyons joined his partners and Salvadoran allies. They squatted behind the cover of the jeeps, alert to the threat of guerrilla snipers.

Gadgets, wild-eyed with adrenaline, greeted him with jive. "Hey, it's the Ironman. Who's too cool to cruise with his amigos. Did you have a good time? Out here with the Salvos?"

Lyons looked around at the hellground. No officer. Only dead teenagers.

The dead teenagers of the Popular Liberation Forces.

Dead teenagers of the Salvadoran Army.

The ashes and black bones of the anonymous dead near the burned-out trucks.

Lyons took a second to think of an answer to Gadgets's question.

"Next time," he said, "I fasten my safety belt."