Texas Showdown

18

Pardee charged through the stinking CN gas, snapping shots at the truck. The truck hurtled toward the road, dragging chain link and poles, disappearing into the dust clouds and darkness. A final 40mm grenade slammed into a barrack wall and the explosion ripped away the head and arms of a soldier who had been leaning there, choking on CN gas. Truncated torso and legs flopped about in the dust.

"Ralston! RALSTON!" Pardee bellowed. Holstering his .45, Pardee shoved soldiers aside, running through the confusion, searching for the platoon leader. "Ralston!"

"Here, sir!" The short wide-shouldered mercenary rushed to his commander.

"Take ten men. Get one of the helicopters to the south road. If those Feds try to make it to the state highway, hit them. Try to take them alive, but stop them."

Ralston ran in the direction of the base offices. Pardee had had the helicopter pilots land the Hueys there to speed his capture of the three federal agents, but the goddamned agents had then roared through the camp in the stolen truck.

Speaking into his hand-radio, Pardee called all his platoon leaders: "Assemble your men. Get them into the trucks. Issue all the available ammunition. Make sure they have flashlights. Now!"

Five voices answered at once, all trying to question their new commander. Pardee cut them all off. "Shut up! Assemble your men."

The wounded screamed. Their friends clustered around the thrashing, struggling injured, wrapping field dressings over wounds, injecting morphine. Pardee saw four men gathered around one man. Two men held the sobbing, writhing man down. They spoke to console him while his other friends worked on his wounds, one of them knotting a tourniquet around the stump of a leg, the other pressing plastic sheeting over a sucking chest wound.

"Leave him!" Pardee commanded. "Assemble with your platoons."

"Sir! He's got a chance to live if..."

Pardee fired a .45 slug through the wounded man's head. "He's dead. Join your platoons."

One of the men snatched his M-16 from the dirt, tried to bring the muzzle to bear on Pardee. A .45 slug slammed him back.

"Now go!" Pardee shouted, waving the pistol past the other men's faces. Slowly, not taking their eyes from Pardee, the three men picked up their rifles, backed away, then ran toward the barracks and the waiting trucks.

Rotors throbbed. Pardee saw dust clouding against the glare of the mercury-arc lights. He holstered his Colt, ran for the second helicopter.

* * *

Jerking a tangle of chain link away from the truck cab, Jack Grimaldi swung open the door. Forty millimeter and 5.56mm brass casings fell to the asphalt. Grimaldi took the passenger seat even as the truck accelerated.

"Hey, Rosario! Que pasa?" The flyer extraordinaire gave Blancanales a punch in the shoulder. "Saw the fireworks down there. Anything left for me to do?"

"Sure," Blancanales grinned. "Best part is yet to come. But first, could you reload everything for me? Been kinda too busy."

"Yeah, looks that way." Grimaldi looked around at the bullet holes in the cab, the spider-web shattered windshield. He picked up the M-203, found magazines and 40mm shells.

"It's super-fly!" Lyons joked through the shattered back window.

"Ironman! When do I go to work?"

"Ever fire 106mm recoilless rifles from a Huey? A hundred of them?"

"What? Never even heard of..."

"Lyons!" Gadgets shouted from the tailgate. "Helicopter coming after us!"

Scrambling over the weapons, boxes, and rolling cartridge cases, Lyons went to the tailgate, saw the silhouette of a helicopter against the flames and smoke of the camp. But it banked to the south.

"They're going toward the highway," Lyons said. "We got them fooled."

"Guess again."

A second helicopter rose from the camp, banked north. "Oh, shit," Lyons muttered. "Up front, prepare to get strafed!"

Grimaldi heard Lyons' warning, looked over to Blancanales. "Tell me, Rosario. How exactly does someone 'prepare to get strafed'?"

"Say your prayers," Blancanales suggested.

"No time." Grimaldi jammed extra mags for the M-203 in his jump suit's pockets. He pulled a tiny MAC-11 out of a shoulder holster, looped its strap over his right arm. He chambered a round in the M-203, opened the truck's door.

"Where you going?" Blancanales asked.

"I'm preparing to strafe back!" Grimaldi laughed as he climbed onto the roof of the truck cab. He jammed his legs down between the cab and the canvas canopy, hooked his boots through the shattered window. He braced the auto-rifle/grenade launcher on the canopy frame and waited.

Dropping down to only ten feet above the desert, the Huey paralleled the road at a hundred miles an hour.

"Pilots or the tail rotor!" Grimaldi shouted. He didn't wait for the helicopter's door gunner to fire the first round. He snapped bursts of two and three shots at the Plexiglas windshields of the Huey.

Holding the trigger down, Lyons emptied a magazine at the helicopter, dropped the empty mag, slapped in the second as .308 slugs slammed into the steel of the truck. Gadgets held the MAC-10 in his right hand, the M-203 in his left, and sprayed the helicopter, oblivious to the slugs and tracers streaking past him. Letting the machine pistol hang by its strap, Gadgets fired a 40mm grenade as the helicopter dosed on them.

The grenade popped against the helicopter, releasing a puff of CN gas. "Oops, wrong box," Gadgets muttered.

As the helicopter roared past, with the door gunner firing the M-60 point-blank into the truck, Lyons sighted on the side door and fired his 40mm grenade. The flash lit Pardee's face behind the M-60, then a man crouched behind him in the interior of the Huey exploded, pieces of his body and the bodies of other men falling from the opposite side of the helicopter.

The line of tracers from the M-60 went wild, spraying the sky. On top of the truck, Grimaldi fired a 40mm HE grenade directly into the tail rotor. Steel shrieked. The tail boom disintegrated, the helicopter pitched sideways, losing the ten feet of altitude separating it from the desert. The skids hit the sand sideways, flipped the helicopter.

Rolling, rotor blades flailing the earth then breaking loose, the helicopter cartwheeled.

Blancanales didn't slow the truck. Shot through-and-through, the two right rear tires flapped against the frame. Smoke poured from the tailpipe and from under the hood. He took his sheath knife, cut the last shards of shattered windshield from the frame.

"Everybody alive?" Blancanales called out.

"We're all right," Gadgets shouted. "Where's Grimaldi?"

"I'm okay." Grimaldi, little Stony Man hero, slung his M-203 over his shoulder and climbed down from the roof of the truck. The cab's passenger seat had been shredded by .308 slugs. It smoldered from a tracer. He patted out the smoking plastic. "That was fun. But I came to fly. When do I get to do my stuff?"

"In a minute," Blancanales answered, then shouted. "Reload! Airstrip coming up!"

Accelerating, the truck lurching and bumping on its two shot-out tires, Blancanales left the road. At sixty miles an hour, he hit the chain link fence straight on. He ducked below the dash at the last instant.

Chain link and razor wire tangled on the truck's hood. Metal grinding, the truck came to a stop. Blancanales revved the engine, downshifted. The truck lurched forward a few feet, dragging wire and poles. Grimaldi leaned out the side window.

"You got a steel post jammed in the front end."

Blancanales climbed out, stepped over the tangled wire and steel, went down on his hands and knees in front of the truck. He gave the thumbs-down sign. "Time to walk."

Gadgets and Lyons gathered weapons. Gadgets paused to listen to his hand-radio, the voices frantic and chaotic. "Trucks coming. The airstrip sentries have spotted us."

"Jeep on the runway, coming this way!" Grimaldi shouted. He rested his M-203 on the truck, guessed the distance to the twin headlights, estimated the vehicle's speed, fired a 40mm HE grenade. The jeep exploded, the burning hulk rolling to a stop. "Jeep no longer coming this way!"

Loaded with weapons and ammunition, the four men jogged toward the hangars. They saw three sets of headlights on the road from the base. Another jeep left the hangars, racing toward the wrecked truck. In the center of the runway, the blasted jeep burned.

"Quick distraction," Lyons called out to the others. "Three high-explosive rounds, mortar-style for the airstrip turnoff. Maybe it'll slow down those trucks."

They braced the M-203 butt stocks against the asphalt, fired in high arcs. Reloading, they continued across the runway. The 40mm grenades hit without any effect, two popping in the open desert, only one near the road. But the trucks slowed. Gadgets flipped the switch on his hand-radio, screamed through it to the enemy: "Get back, all of you! Back! We got Feds all over the place. They're setting up a mortar. Make a run for it. We have to surrender. They're everywhere."

For emphasis, he fired another wild 40mm round. By some miracle, it actually hit the road, though one hundred yards short of the first truck. Several voices at once blared from the hand-radios.

"Not enough confusion," Gadgets grinned. "Give me your hand-radio." He snatched Blancanales' radio, switched it to the mercenary frequency. He set one radio to transmit, the other to receive, put them face to face. A high-pitched shriek filled the air. He looped the radios together with the wrist straps. "Until the batteries go out, nobody uses that frequency."

"Mr. Wizard strikes again!" Lyons laughed.

Spreading out to a four-man skirmish line, they rushed the hangars. Lyons saw a man run around the corner, then stop to raise his rifle. Lyons shot him. Blancanales watched the sentry station at the gate. The sentries heard the rifle shot, ducked down and aimed their rifles. Blancanales put an HE grenade into the station. There was a scream. A man crawled into the open, clutching at a twisted leg. Blancanales raised his rifle. Lyons shouted: "Don't! Don't kill him. These guys are just ex-cons down on their luck. The Feds'll pick him up."

"Lyons the nice guy," Blancanales called back. "Can't believe it!"

A mercenary appeared in the hangar door, his hands high. "Don't shoot! I'm only a mechanic."

A second man ran out, his arms up. "We give up."

"Anyone else in there?"

"Not in there," the first man told them. "Maybe in the other hangars."

"Where's the helicopter with the 106mm rifles?" Lyons demanded.

"It's here, why..."

"You want to live? Help us get it into the air."

Motivated by Lyons' rifle, the two mechanics pushed the hangar doors wide. Grimaldi ran to the modified Huey, stared at the hundred steel tubes in the cargo area.

"This thing is deadly! Is it loaded?" Grimaldi asked the mechanics.

"Sure is! We were getting it ready for tomorrow's demonstration. Everything's tip-top."

The little man climbed into the pilot's seat.

"Demonstration happens tonight. Get this thing out in the clear."

In less than a minute, the several men hauled the Huey out to the open runway. Grimaldi started the engines. He shouted down to Lyons: "You want to radio them? Give them a chance to surrender?"

"No talk. Just blast them. Just like they intended to do to the President of Mexico. Send their People's Republic to hell."

Blancanales laughed. "Now that's the Lyons we know and love!"

"Up, up, and away!" Grimaldi shouted over the rotor noise. He revved the engine and the helicopter floated up into the night sky.

"That's it," Lyons told the others. "This mission is hereby shut down."

"Not quite," Blancanales replied, pointing to the road. The trucks sped through the security gate, accelerated toward the hangars.

"Put grenades through the windshields!" Lyons unslung his rifle, sighted carefully, fired.

The grenade blasted the cab of the first truck. Grenades from the rifles of Blancanales and Gadgets hit the other trucks, one gutting another cab, killing the driver. The third grenade went low, exploding in the grillwork. The driver managed to swerve behind a building. The other trucks burned as soldiers scrambled from the tailgates.

Able Team didn't stop to assess the damage. Sprinting for the hangars, they sprayed one-handed bursts at the soldiers, not hitting anyone but forcing the soldiers to take cover. The soldiers returned the fire, bullets punching into sheet steel.

Inside the hangar, Lyons threw himself flat behind a forklift. Blancanales and Gadgets found cover, reloaded their weapons. Snapping a mag into his M-203, Lyons looked outside. He could see nothing.

"Mechanics! Turn off the worklights! Mechanics! Turn off..."

But their prisoners had disappeared. Lyons turned on his back, sighted on the glaring lights and shattered the bulbs with single shots. Now in darkness, they could see forms moving in the night outside, occasional muzzle-flashes.

Lyons switched on his hand-radio. The steady shriek still jammed the mercenary frequency. Lyons called across the hangar: "Gadgets! Turn off that noise! I want to try to talk them into surrendering."

In a moment, the shriek died away. Before Lyons could speak, his hand-set buzzed. It was Grimaldi: "What's going on down there? I see fire and shooting. You want me to try out this Stalin's Organ on those trucks?"

"No. You hit the mansion. All the leaders are up there. These soldiers will give up."

"You three against how many?"

"Quality versus quantity. Hit the mansion. They'll have nothing left to fight for. Do it, flyboy."

"I'll be back quick. Over."

* * *

One of the captured mechanics had briefed Grimaldi on the rocket launcher. To the pilot's left, a black circle on the Plexiglas served as a sight. A bank of ten switches triggered the 106mm rounds in bursts of ten, the electrical trigger impulses firing at intervals of a quarter second. When the pilot hit the switch, ten rounds fired within two and a half seconds. Depending on the helicopter's speed and motion, the high-explosive warheads would strafe or saturate a target.

He circled the mountaintop estate. In the blaze of lights illuminating the grounds, he saw three men in gaudy uniforms, a man in a suit, and a woman. They stood at the Spanish-style mansion's entryway, watching the helicopter above them. Grimaldi flipped up the safety plate covering the ten switches, sighted on the entryway.

"Bye bye, People's Leaders!" he said, flipping the first switch.

His aim was a bit off. The ten rounds blasted away the second floor of the mansion, showering the generals with steel shrapnel and fragments of stucco and tile. Continuing his circle, Grimaldi saw that only the front of the house remained, the rear of the house a tangled mass of smashed masonry and framing. He sighted on what remained, flipped the second switch.

Ten more rockets blasted the house. The explosions threw the front wall over the grounds. Grimaldi circled, watching for survivors.

To his surprise, he saw one general and the woman. It was the general with the most gaudy uniform. He clutched the woman around the throat with one arm, fired a pistol at the helicopter with his other hand.

El Rojo shielded himself with his hysterical sister, put the pistol to her head. He called across the grounds to a cowering sentry: "Radio that pilot that I will kill this woman if he does not..."

Ten almost simultaneous blasts disintegrated their bodies.

* * *

"Soldiers! Surrender!" Lyons spoke into the hand-radio. "Look up at the Monroe house. It's gone. Monroe is dead, the Mexican communists are dead. Furst is dead. Pardee's dead. There's no reason to fight. If you want to chance the desert, make a run for it. Federal officers will be here in minutes. Leave your wounded if you want. We'll see to it that they get to hospitals. There's no reason to continue fighting. It's all over. All the leaders are dead..."

An arm locked around Lyons' neck, lifted him from the concrete. Pardee's voice croaked in his ear: "Wrong, Fed. I'm alive, and you're going to die with your balls down your throat."

The ironlike arm tightened around his neck, taking away Lyons' breath, causing his blood to pound in his head. He tried to call out, couldn't. Striking out wildly, he hammered at Pardee's body of concrete, clawed at his uniform.

"Lyons?" Blancanales shouted across the hangar. "What's going on? Why..."

Unable to answer, Lyons felt his consciousness slipping away. Lights swirled in his vision as he started to die. He lashed out in a frenzy. His right hand grabbed something sticky, a wet cloth. He clutched at it, clawed.

Pardee screamed, dropped him. Lyons rolled away. A kick caught Lyons in one leg, spun him. He crawled away, gasping for air, his vision returning.

A flashlight swept the scene. Lyons saw Pardee. Smeared with blood, his face a hideous mask of contusions and hatred, Pardee swayed on his feet. Blood soaked his uniform. His right arm, the forearm wrapped in cloth and bent like a second elbow, had been strapped to his torso. In his left hand, he held a bayonet.

"Drop the knife!" Blancanales shouted.

Pardee stomped forward, going for Lyons. Blancanales fired his M-203, the two 5.56mm ultra-high velocity slugs punching holes through Pardee, spraying flesh behind him. He didn't stop. Blancanales fifed again, but only one slug hit Pardee, the last round in the rifle's magazine.

"Kill him!" Lyons croaked.

Gadgets stood from cover, calmly sighted on the huge man's head, fired a burst, decapitating Pardee. He finally dropped, the razor-sharp bayonet still in his hand.

Every breath a gasp, Lyons crawled to the hand-radio he'd dropped. From it he heard Gadgets' voice. "That was my contribution to make up for the one-grand bonus you never got, Carl."

Lyons laughed, then pressed the transmit button.

"Everyone who can hear me! Tell your men to Surrender. There's no need for you all to die. Pardee's dead. Come see for yourselves. He's dead."

It was over.