Scorched Earth

16

A storm of high-velocity bullets shrieked over Lyons. Flat in the shallow gully, he kept his face down and waited, hoping none of the unaimed, undisciplined fire killed him. The boots of running soldiers thudded across the ridgeline. He heard a grenade pop somewhere down the mountainside.

Behind Lyons, Vato and the other Yaquis watched. When Lyons did not reach for the automatic shotgun strapped across his back, they did not move to unsling the rifles they carried. Staying low, not daring to look above the sides of the erosion ditch, they listened to the chaos all around them and waited.

The shooting continued as officers shouted again and again, "Alto dejen de disparar alla afuera no hay nadie. Paren o los mato a todos."

The firing finally died away. Soldiers laughed. Others shouted to their officers.

"Juan Cordova se golpeo. Mierda!"

"Aqui! Hay una pierna... "

"Como sabes esto, Cordova?"

"Yo vi lo que paso. El fue a orinar y se perdiera."

Now the Yaquis knew what had happened. Lyons had seen the drunken soldier urinating outside the perimeter. The soldier had wandered into a claymore mine's trip line.

Shooting continued in the canyon. Lyons whispered into his hand radio, "Wizard, Political. You okay?"

"No problem here," Blancanales answered. "What happened up there?"

Gadgets clicked his code. An almost inaudible whisper came through Lyons's earphone. "We're cool... laying low..."

"These clowns," Lyons whispered in the ditch. "They're up here drunk. One of them wandered into a booby trap."

Lyons chanced a look at the soldiers. He saw a young girl fall from a troopship door. Clutching a rag around her nakedness, she stared into the night, stunned. Lyons saw no one else at the helicopters. He scanned the open area. Around the bonfire, he saw the packs and rifles of the airborne soldiers.

A crowd of soldiers gathered a hundred meters away. Most of them carried flashlights instead of rifles. Soldiers searched through the brush, waving their lights everywhere. Two men pointed flashlights at something on the dirt.

"Fue Cordova."

"Aqui esta su cabeza... El fue una estupida mierda!"

"Asquad of goons are running up the trail to the hill!" Gadgets whispered.

"This is it!" Lyons told his partners. "We're going in."

Returning his hand radio to his web belt, Lyons slipped out his silenced Colt Government Model.

He confirmed the safety, then turned to the Yaquis. He saw them unsheathing their knives.

"Vamos," Lyons whispered.

Lyons crawled for a few more meters, scrambling through the sand and rocks, feeling the hard packed clay and stones scraping his arms, gouging his thighs and knees. He looked up, saw the bonfire blocking the view of the crowd of soldiers.

Sprinting from the ditch, he raced for the nearest helicopter, the second Huey troopship in the line of three. The girl stood in his way, her eyes unseeing, blood flowing from cuts on her face. Lyons couldn't stop to help her or drag her out of the line of fire. He straight-armed her with his left hand, sending her sprawling in the dirt. He hoped she stayed down during the firefight.

Two more steps took him to the Huey and he jumped inside. A soldier in camo green looked at him. Lyons jammed the Colt's silencer into the man's left eye and fired once, the 185-grain hollow-point exploding through the eye and the skull and brain to spray gore on the Plexiglas of the other door. Lyons searched the interior in one sweeping glance, then looked forward. No one.

Through the windshield, he saw a Yaqui throw a dead soldier from the first helicopter. Another Yaqui rushed a soldier from behind. One slash of his knife sliced open the Mexican's throat. The soldier died on his feet, his mouth moving, but the silent red scream spraying out of the yawning wound.

Lyons ran to the last helicopter. He saw the gray fatigue pants of someone sitting at the door. A blond man wearing the gray uniform of the Fascist International watched as the crowd of soldiers reassembled the corpse of the drunk.

The Fascist officer turned as Lyons brought down the heavy Colt autopistol like an ax on the Nazi's skull.

In seconds the loops of plastic handcuffs secured the Nazi's wrists and ankles. Tape covered his mouth and eyes.

Lyons kept moving. Voices came from the trail leading up from the pueblo. With a hand signal, Lyons directed a Yaqui to accompany him. They went to the head of the trail. Throwing themselves flat on the hard earth, they waited. Lyons pointed to the silenced Colt autopistol he held, then pointed to the knife in the hand of the Yaqui. The Yaqui nodded his understanding.

Tailored fatigues and a holstered pistol identified the officer. In the moonlight, Lyons also saw silver insignia of rank flashing from the officer's collar. The officer carried a walkie-talkie. His soldiers carried flashlights and rifles.

Several of the newcomers ran ahead to the crowd on the far side of the ridgeline. Two soldiers remained beside their officer. They lit the path with flashlights. Striding as if on parade, his beret cocked at the perfect angle on his head, the officer maintained his military decorum.

Lyons waited until the officer and soldiers passed. Rising from the ground, he rushed up behind the three men and braced the silenced Colt as he fired once into the head of each soldier. He didn't pause in his rush.

The bodies of the soldiers fell as if their legs had been cut out from under them. The officer stood motionless for a moment of shock as the spray of brains and blood hung in the moonlight. Lyons smashed him in the back of the head.

The Yaqui watched for other soldiers as Lyons wrapped tape around the officer's head, covering his eyes and mouth. Then Lyons jerked plastic loops tight around the officer's wrists and ankles. Seconds later, the army officer joined the Fascist prisoner in the helicopter.

At the troopship's door, Lyons holstered the Colt and unslung his Atchisson. Looking to the other helicopters, he saw Vato rushing to him. One Yaqui guided the raped and beaten young woman to safety. The other Yaquis slipped behind the troopships and waited.

"You want us to kill them?" Vato asked.

"I have my prisoners. Those..." Lyons looked at the soldiers. He could not think of an obscenity to voice his loathing. "Take them, kill them, whatever."

"We will take them alive." Vato dashed back to his men.

Only the shouts of the soldiers broke the silence of the ridge. Lyons waited.

Gadgets heard the Interdynamic slug punch into the sentry's skull. The soldier fell back. Snapping back the autorifle's actuator to chamber the next silent cartridge, Gadgets sprinted to the thrashing soldier and fired a coup de grace directly into the dying soldier's temple. He crouched by the dead man and slung the CAR over his shoulder. Slipping out his Beretta 93-R, he continued to the row of shacks, holding the selective-fire autopistol in both hands.

He heard voices coming from a house. Looking inside, he saw the single room packed shoulder to shoulder with the captured townspeople. They saw his blackened face in the window. Then a Yaqui appeared beside the North American and whispered urgently to the prisoners.

Moving on, Gadgets looked between every adobe house, glanced in windows, listened for the authoritarian voices of soldiers. He came to a group of local people tied together. They lay on the dirt outside one house. A woman cried, a wounded man groaned. Yaqui fighters went to them.

A form moved in Gadgets's peripheral vision. He spun, the Beretta's glowing tritium night sights streaking the darkness. As the autopistol went on line, a hiss stopped him.

"Wizard! Don't!" Blancanales whispered hoarsely. "Any here?"

"Most of them went up the trail." Gadgets pointed to the group of soldiers rushing up a switchback trail to the ridge overlooking the village.

"Any others?"

"Maybe in there." Gadgets pointed to the house. Inside, they heard crying. "I'll check..."

"Give me your rifle. Is there a round in the chamber?"

Gadgets unslung the silenced Colt autorifle in one motion. "An empty shell."

Blancanales jerked back the actuator.

Gadgets went to the door of the house. The door stood open an inch. Peering inside, he saw a man lashed to a chair. A flashlight on the floor lit the interior. Gadgets pushed open the door.

On the floor, in the light of the flashlight beam, a soldier grunted on the body of a girl. Totally involved in the rape, he did not see Gadgets step up to him with the Beretta.

Yaquis pushed past Gadgets. Tearing the soldier away from the crying semiconscious girl, the Yaquis threw the soldier against the adobe wall. One fighter pushed a hand over the panicked rapist's mouth. Another fighter grabbed a torn scrap of the girl's clothing from the floor and jammed it into the mouth of the soldier to stop his screams as they put their scalpel-sharp knives to his body.

Staggering back two steps, Gadgets did not turn away in time. He saw what he could never forget.

On the ridge, the Mexican soldiers of the International Group tired of the gruesome puzzle of the drunk's body. They drifted back to the bonfire. Lyons and the Yaquis waited.

Lyons heard his hand radio click. The pistol grip of the selective-fire shotgun in his right hand, he keyed his radio with his left.

"This is the Ironman. I'm still here."

"What's the situation up there?" Blancanales asked.

"We're ready to hit them. You got the town?"

"It's secure."

"Then come up here. They outnumber us three to one."

"On our way."

Soldiers joked and laughed around the roaring fire. One of the soldiers went to a Huey and climbed inside.

"Puta... puta... Donde esta mi pequena puta?"

Instead of finding the young girl, he found death. A blade slashed his throat. Hands pulled him to the shadowed side of the helicopter and held him down as he thrashed, his blood draining into the dirt.

Another soldier went to the first troopship. As the soldier approached, Lyons slipped out his silent Colt. Lining up the tritium night sights on the man's head, Lyons waited for him.

"Capitan. Donde esta el Teniente Colomo?" the soldier called out.

The soldier saw Blancanales and a line of Yaquis running behind the line of helicopters. Turning suddenly, a silent .45-caliber hollowpoint whisked by his head.

"Yaquis! Ellos atacan! Ellos..." he shouted out.

Breath and blood exploded from the soldier's mouth as a slug shattered his spine and tore through his right lung. As the dying man flopped on the earth, Lyons fired a third time, tearing away the top of the soldier's head.

Soldiers ran for the helicopters. Yaquis butt-stroked them with the stocks of their heavy FN-FAL rifles.

In the open, illuminated by a leaping bonfire, soldiers turned and looked. One jerked his rifle to his shoulder. M-16 and FN-FAL rifles fired from the line of helicopters. The impact of high-velocity bullets threw the soldier back, spinning him through the air. Single accurate shots killed the other soldiers before they could unsling their rifles.

Around the bonfire, soldiers died almost before they could scramble for their rifles. A soldier jerked a pistol from a shoulder holster and fell flat on the rocks and hard earth. His revolver popped twice, and slugs shattered the Plexiglas windscreen in the helicopter. Full-auto fire from several rifles answered, and the earth around the soldier exploded. Hits in his shoulders, head and arms arched the soldier backward. He knelt there for an instant, already dead, until another burst threw him to his god.

Soldiers ran from the ridge, seeking escape in the darkness. Two claymore mines boomed as scurrying soldiers fell over trip lines. Dust and shredded mesquite rose in a wave as thousands of lethal steel balls tore into the slope, shredding flesh and pulping bone.

A few survived to surrender. Vato shouted out to halt the rifle fire. Silence came. Somewhere in the darkness of the mountainside, a soldier maimed by a claymore screamed in agony.

Standing at the first helicopter, Lyons watched the Yaquis herd the soldiers together.

Defeat had come quickly to the airborne commandos of the International Group.

Lyons analyzed the action by the doctrines of Sun Tzu. He realized Able Team and the Yaquis owed this victory to deception: the self-deception of undisciplined criminals who thought automatic rifles and helicopters made them an elite airborne force.

Arrogant with easy victory, the International Group had deceived themselves. They thought that the murder of defenseless people proved power. They thought that gang rape proved them invincible.

But a group of brave people — with captured rifles, with ashes for camouflage, with a paperback book of Chinese philosophy for guidance — had destroyed the gang of murderers.