Scorched Earth

9

"We're taking fire from there!" Lyons shouted to the others in the maze of rock slabs below him. He pointed to the distant ridge overlooking the canyon.

Blancanales and Gadgets looked in different directions, Blancanales to the west side of the canyon, Gadgets to the east. Another mortar round whistled down, the explosion spraying mud and putrid moss. The air of the narrow canyon stank of TNT and decay.

High-velocity bullets ripped through the air and sang from the rocks. Still another mortar round howled its approach. An instant later, an explosion sent thousands of steel fragments rocketing through the gorge looking for flesh. Shrapnel laced the sides of the canyon. Sand and rocks fell.

Lyons looked downstream. A hundred meters to the south, a Mexican soldier with an FN-FAL rifle scrambled up a steep mountainside to gain height. Aiming above the soldier, Lyons squeezed off one blast, then a second, then a third from his assault shotgun. Steel shot threw dust around the soldier, he stumbled, but he recovered and struggled to gain cover.

The distance had defeated the Ironman's Atchisson. He jerked the magazine out of his autoshotgun and jammed in a magazine of one-ounce slugs. He flipped up the slug sight and aimed at the Mexican. Lyons waited until he had a full-length target, then aimed above the soldier's head to compensate for the distance and squeezed the trigger.

Blood sprayed the rocks as the soldier's body exploded. The dead man slid down, his opened chest leaving a smear of gore on the canyon wall.

Blancanales crawled through the network of spaces and passages of the broken slabs of rock to where he could look up to the ridge over five hundred meters away. From that height, more than two hundred meters above the streambed, the mortar and heavy-caliber rifles on the ridge could fire on Able Team without exposing themselves to return fire.

Blancanales knew firing back would be pointless, even if he saw a target. His M-16/M-203 hybrid and Gadgets's CAR both had the enhanced ballistics of the newest 5.56mm NATO round and the SS-109, and the M-16A3 quick-twist rifling. The combination of the 65-grain SS-109 slug and l-in-7 twist barrels gave their rifles improved accuracy compared to standard M-16A1 or M-16A2 rifles, but five hundred meters was a formidable distance. Blancanales decided to save his ammunition for the soldiers only a hundred meters away. He crouched down to wait.

Lyons scanned the streambed and slopes of the gorge. He saw Mexican soldiers maneuvering for position. Another rifleman, more than two hundred meters away, climbed through slabs of rock to gain a sniping position. High on the wall of the gorge, the soldier would aim down at Lyons and his partners. Lyons didn't even point his Atchisson at the man.

"I need a rifle!" Lyons shouted to the others.

A mortar blast ripped the air, sending up a steel spray of death. Slugs rained down without a pause. Retreat meant attacking the army platoon, but without the advantage of surprise. Continuing to the north meant braving high explosives and the rain of high-velocity slugs.

"I need a skyhook!" Gadgets shouted back.

Rifle grenades came from the Mexican platoon. One exploded on the rock slabs. A second and a third plopped into the streambed. Green filth and mud sprayed Gadgets. Coughing and retching at the stink, he scrambled away, crawling into the shelter of the rock maze.

He found Davis crouched there. Wearing Mexican web gear and a floppy OD hat, he gripped a captured M-16. A pair of Mexican boots, tied together by the laces, hung around his neck. He greeted Gadgets with a left-handed salute.

"How's your cool, Mr. Wizard? Is it okay to panic now?"

"Not yet, man. Save it for later."

"I don't care what you say. This is a bad situation! What the fuck are we going to do?"

"You got it, this situation stinks."

A mortar explosion threw rocks and mud over them. Waves of nauseating odor came from the ooze.

"We could definitely get killed by this stink." Gadgets tapped the boots hanging around Davis's neck. "Try those on. That's what you do. When we break out of here, it won't be no jog in the park."

"Pass me a rifle!" Lyons shouted from his position above them.

Slugs danced forward from the Mexican platoon. Riflemen aimed at Lyons's voice, pocking the rocks shielding him with 7.62mm NATO. Gadgets took the floppy hat from Davis and raised it on the end of a stick.

A high-velocity slug perforated the hat.

Gadgets shouted up to Lyons, "You want a rifle, come get it."

Lyons slid down the slope. A rifle grenade arced into his position of an instant before and exploded in a blast of steel and chopped mesquite. A churning ball of dust hid Lyons for a few seconds as he gained cover in the rocks. He crawled to Gadgets.

"We've got to get out of here."

"Yeah, it's cool and shady but I guess we gotta get moving. You got a smoke canister?"

"One orange."

Gadgets keyed his hand radio. "Pol, you got smoke grenades?"

"One yellow. Found a white phosphorous on the Mexicans."

"All the colors! I've got a red smoke, Lyons has an orange one. This retreat's gonna be psychedelic! Those boots fit Miguel?"

"He's got them on," Lyons said.

"All right. The mortar and the rifles on the mountain are too far away to really zero down on us. It's that gang behind us that's dangerous. I say we lay down some smoke and exit north."

A high-velocity slug, coming down from the distant ridgeline, impacted only inches from Gadgets's hand. Sand sprayed the hand radio. He casually turned the radio over to dump off the sand before keying the transmit button again.

"What do you say?"

"There's nothing else," Blancanales answered.

In front of Gadgets, Lyons nodded. He pulled off his backpack and found his one smoke grenade. Gadgets turned to Davis.

"The boots fit?" he asked.

"Too small. Maybe they'll fit if I cut the leather."

"Forget it. We'll look for a Mexican with bigger feet. It's time to move."

"Where? How can we goddamn well move anywhere? They'll blow us to pieces."

"Be cool, man. We've got a chance. Could be a lot worse. What the hell! That's a helicopter!"

Rotor throb increased in intensity. The mortar rounds stopped as a Huey troopship descended into the canyon. A gunner at the door pointed an M-60 machine gun. The muzzle flashed and the slugs exploded in lines across the slabs of stone sheltering them.

"Panic time!" Gadgets shouted to Davis. He keyed his hand radio. "Get ready to pop the grenades. Buzz me back when you're ready to run for it."

Wedging his body against a rock, Lyons looked over to Gadgets. "What do you think?"

Slugs poured down on the streambed from the rifles on the ridge, from the helicopter's gunner, from the riflemen pursuing them. Gadgets forced a smile.

"Maybe they'll run out of ammunition," he said.

The rotor throb changed. They looked up to see glittering sheets of Plexiglas falling through space. The helicopter spun in the air, out of control for an instant, the machine-gun fire punching a line of slugs across the canyon wall, then the pilot regained control and took the troopship straight up.

The rip-shriek sound of a high-velocity, heavy-caliber slug pierced the air. The noise came from above them, crossing the canyon from the southeast to the northwest. A rifle's report carried to them. They heard another velocity shriek. Then another and another.

"What the hell's going on?" Gadgets wondered aloud.

Lyons watched the ridge through his binoculars.

In the gorge, the Mexican army platoon resumed its autofire and aimed rifle fire. But no rifle fire came down from the ridge.

Through the binoculars, Lyons saw specks scrambling along the ridge. Then he saw something else, on the ridge but in a different place.

A mirror flashed. In code.

"Wizard, up there on the ridge." Lyons passed the binoculars to Gadgets. "There's a signal mirror."

"It's Morse," Schwarz declared. "It's saying... esperen... alli... nosotros... los... ayudaremos. Hey, we've got friends up there. They're telling us to lay cool."

Lyons laughed. "I'm cool, you're cool. It's those Mexicans who're..."

High-velocity slugs whined over them. A barrage of rifle grenades fell in a continuous roar of explosions. Then a storm of M-16 fire ripped the area, the Mexicans firing out their magazines in continuous full-auto.

"Here they come!" Davis shouted.

The Mexicans rushed.

On the high ridge above the canyon, Sergeant Mendoza watched the helicopter break off the attack. He signaled to his mortar crew to resume fire, and the riflemen continued blasting the North Americans in the canyon.

Mendoza turned to his radioman. He switched the radio to the helicopter's frequency and took the handset. Behind him, a man shouted.

A soldier rolled down the slope. The sergeant saw the two remaining men of the mortar crew staring wide-eyed at the falling man.

The firing of the other men died away. They all turned to watch the soldier as he came to a flopping stop in the rocks. He did not move. No one spoke. The firefight continued in the canyon below them, distance reducing the reports of the rifles and the explosions of the grenades to pops and sputters.

In the near-silence, the shriek of a heavy-caliber bullet and unnerving slap of the bullet hitting flesh startled the squad. Blood misted in the air as another soldier flew backward from the mortar. He spun and hit the rocks face first. Blood fountained from a hole in his back. Gasping, vomiting blood, the soldier tried to stand. He rolled to the side and sat up. His eyes stared around him. Then he fell back, dead.

Scrambling through the rocks, the squad took cover. Ordering two men to take the places of the dead men at the mortar, Mendoza lifted the handset to hear the pilot of the helicopter calling.

"Sergeant! Sergeant Mendoza..."

The handset was ripped from his hand as the radioman fell backward. Pieces of metal and plastic tinkled on the stones as radio components rained down. A bullet had killed the radioman, then exited through his back to shatter the circuitry of the radio into a thousand pieces.

A man shouted to the other soldiers, and frantically pointed across the canyon to the far mountain. The sergeant raised his field glasses and scanned the mountainsides.

He saw only mesquite and dust and rocks. Nothing moved. Then a semicircle of dust suddenly stirred.

An instant later, a bullet shrieked into the ridge and exploded in the rocks. A man screamed. A near-miss had ricocheted from the rock protecting him, and the smashed, misshapen slug entered his shoulder and erupted through his knee. Two soldiers dragged him below the edge of the ridge and attempted to stop the gushing blood. One glance told Mendoza the man had no hope.

The squad abandoned the ridge and scrambled to the safety of the mountainside, leaving the mortar in place, the 81mm rounds piled on a plastic tarp.

Sergeant Mendoza unslung his FN-FAL para-rifle and swung out the metal-tubing stock. Laying low on the ridge, he braced the long-range kill machine and sighted on the dust thrown up by the rifle on the opposite mountainside.

But in the glare, he could not see the dust. He raised his field glasses to locate the sniper. A bullet exploded against the rocks a step away as the sniper searched for targets.

Squinting through his rifle's peep sight, Mendoza could only adjust for the range by guess. The FN-FAL did not have a click adjustment for extreme ranges. He fired single shots, attempting to find the sniper.

Then he heard the rifle fire behind him.

Lyons switched magazines as the Mexicans rushed the last hundred meters. He returned the load of one-ounce slugs to his bandolier and snapped in the partially empty mag of number-two and double-ought steel shot mix. He took out a second mag of mixed-shot rounds and tucked it into the front pocket of his gray fatigue shirt.

The Mexicans, expecting to find a group of dead and wounded North Americans hiding in the rocks, attempted to finish the foreigners in one rush of sprayed full-auto fire. The men of Able Team waited. Mexican riflemen in concealment overlooking the streambed continued aiming fire into the rocks. The riflemen stopped shooting only when the soldiers closed on the North Americans.

Able Team waited until the Mexicans ran into the maze of rocks. Lyons saw a green uniform rushing toward him. He fired, and the blast lifted the Mexican off his feet and slammed him down. Gadgets triggered a 3-shot burst through another Mexican.

Another soldier spun at the sound of shooting to his side and took a steel storm of number two and double ought in the face. He fell, and Davis put the muzzle of his M-16 against the dead man's chest and killed him again.

A Mexican saw Davis and fired as Lyons fired. High-velocity slugs tore past Davis and exploded on the rocks and the Mexican died, his chest blasted open, one arm and his rifle spinning wildly through the air.

Miguel Coral popped up, fired a burst through a soldier, then dropped down as a rifleman two hundred meters to the south squeezed off a shot. Coral scrambled to another rock and fired at a running soldier, hitting him in one leg. The wounded soldier staggered past Blancanales, who shot him in the back. Then the Politician delivered a mandate of full-auto fire at another Mexican. Slugs from his M-16/M-203 tore the soldier to pieces.

Lyons snatched a glance, then quickly dropped down as a slug from an FN-FAL whined off the rock. But he had seen no other soldier still standing. He took an M-16 from a dead man, changed mags, then called out to his partners: "Anyone hit?"

"I'm bleeding," Davis answered.

"Is it serious?" Lyons called out.

"I don't know. But I'm bleeding like crazy."

Blancanales crawled to Davis. "It's not a bullet wound. He hit his head on a rock."

"Any of the soldiers alive?" Lyons asked.

The others all answered, no.

Lyons shouted out again. "We've got riflemen downstream. One on each side, with heavy rifles. We can't move until we get them. Everyone shift positions and on three, pop up and fire. Got it? Answer me, Davis!"

"I can handle it."

"No hay problema," Coral answered. "I have seen them."

"Shift and fire, shift and fire," Blancanales repeated.

"One... two... three!"

The five men lurched up and fired in a tearing burst. Dropping down, they heard a rifle firing back. They shifted positions in the rocks. One by one, they fired bursts, then dodged down before the rifleman could find them in his sight.

Staying flat on the sand and exposing only one eye, Lyons peered up at the canyon wall. He saw a rifleman pressing a field dressing against a bloody arm. Sighting on the wounded man, Lyons squeezed off a burst. The rifleman's body rolled down the slope.

A second rifleman broke for the safety of the streambed, running a few steps, then sliding down the steep canyon wall. Blancanales and Gadgets and Coral fired simultaneously, the slugs from three rifles tearing through the man's head and chest.

"That's it," Gadgets announced.

"Stay down!" Lyons shouted. "Gather up whatever equipment we can use and then crawl out. There could be another one out there."

"Ironman, put the binocs on that ridge," Gadgets told him. "Something's going on up there."

Focusing on the mountain overlooking the can-yon, Lyons saw figures moving. They did not wear the green uniforms of the Mexican army. Light flashes came from mirrors.

"Wizard, what's their code say?" Lyons called out.

"F-i-n-i...fini..."