Warlord of Azatlan

17

A roar came, then heat, but no explosion. Uncompressed and too cold to mix with the air, thus lacking the correct oxygen-to-gas ratio, the liquid petroleum gas — unlike a true explosive — failed to flash instantaneously into the heat and combustion wastes. Yet the gas had spread under and beyond the kitchen and mess hall areas, to the command offices, and to the barracks and the helicopters.

In the first milliseconds of the fire, half the cavern was enveloped in a single flame. The initial instant of fire heated the inches-thick layer of cold gas that coated the floor of the cavern, causing the unburned gas to expand rapidly into the flames. As the heat of the flames accelerated the rate of combustion, and the heat produced churning air currents that intermixed the flames and expanding gas with more oxygen, the flames rose still higher. This happened in the first fifteen-hundredths of a second after Gadgets Schwarz detonated the radio-fused plastic explosive.

The exploding charge also tore open the steel tank that held hundreds more gallons of liquid gas. Encountering the superheated atmosphere, the fuel expanded into gas. In the absence of oxygen — the available atmospheric oxygen had been consumed by the first flash of flame — the unburned gas surged outward. When it mixed with the atmosphere, it also flamed.

Though the Nazi personnel did not suffer dismemberment, all of the personnel in the south half of the cave received instantaneous third-degree burns. Then the wave of flame enveloped the helicopters and aviation fuel.

Av-gas became superheated. It burned, radiating a flash-temperature of three thousand degrees Centigrade. Every combustible object or substance — wood, hoses, insulated wires, tires, fuel, clothing, hair, skin fat — burst into flame.

In the center of the flames, the staff offices became the crematorium of the Nazi commanders and the handful of Guatemalan army officers who had betrayed their country to Unomundo's European doctrine.

The hired commandos sleeping in the steel barracks knew a few seconds of confusion and agony as they woke to red hot walls and superheated air. When they screamed at the shock of their waking nightmare, they scorched their lungs, and died choking seconds later. As the flames and heat continued, the glowing barracks baked the dead men's bodies. Fat flowed and burned, contributing to the inferno.

Mercenaries and technicians in the open felt only an instant of pain before their bodies became ash.

Outside, a few of the mercenaries near the mouth of the cavern turned to the roar. The heat-flash melted their faces. Others threw themselves down. Those near the fire received third-degree burns, their uniforms first smoking, then bursting into flame.

Unomundo sprawled under the corpses of three of his bodyguards. Stunned by a head wound caused by a .33-caliber steel ball that had punched through the head of one of his bodyguards to tear through his own left cheek and ear, Unomundo saw the diffused glare of the inferno. He did not suffer burns. The bodies of his guards had saved him. He heard screams, then autofire from a dozen rifles.

Knowing that his lifelong dream had been shattered only hours before he made it reality, he lay still. Now he plotted survival.

Heat searing their backs, Lyons and Nate sprinted into the shelter of the parked trucks and buses. A Quiche saw them, mistook them for mercenaries. As he raised his M-16, another Quiche knocked the rifle aside, a single shot ripping through the side of the bus.

"Get the Nazi clothes off, spookman!" Nate shouted at him over the screaming and shooting and the roar of the burning cavern complex. He ripped off his shirt to expose his light skin and bandage of red cloth.

"Politician!" Lyons called out.

"Your armor's up here!" Blancanales answered.

Climbing the side ladder to the cargo rack of a bus, he saw Blancanales on the bus roof, snapping single shots into Nazi mercenaries. Every shot killed. Blancanales sighted on two meres dragging a burned comrade to the cover of a truck, and he triggered a 40mm grenade. Steel-wire shrapnel shredded the three.

"How many still alive?" Lyons yelled, going prone beside his partner. Blancanales had already discarded his own Nazi shirt. He wore his black bat-tie armor and a red Indian shirt whose sleeves would identify him in the firefight.

"Maybe fifty, sixty. Most of the ones doing the torture, some drivers, some officers."

Lyons took grenades and his heavy Kevlar and steel trauma-plate battle armor from the pack. He stripped off his gray shirt, started to put on the armor. He found one of Nate's hand-sewn cotton shirts folded inside the armor, the cotton fabric woven in the design and color of Marylena's Quiche village.

"The shirt's for you," Blancanales told him. He touched the cloth of his own shirtsleeves. "Magic."

"With Kevlar and steel plates, it's magic."

"What about Unomundo?"

"Got him. Put him and his bodyguards down with a full-auto chop job," Lyons grinned. He slapped his Atchisson. "Lyons's Crowd Killing Device."

Lyons pulled on the red shirt, then the battle armor, and he watched the Huey troopship that hovered above the scene. The troopship stayed at a thousand feet, only observing.

Blancanales glanced at Lyons's new uniform — black armor, red sleeves pinstriped with yellow and purple, black nylon bandoliers and gray pants.

"No one's mistaking you for a Nazi, most definitely."

Gadgets came up the ladder. He also wore a red shirt under his armor. "Did we kill that Nazi?"

"The Ironman did."

"Where's the body?"

Lyons pointed. In the light of the inferno, he saw the tangled corpses of the bodyguards. "In that pile."

Blancanales jammed another 40mm round in the M-203 fitted under his M-16. "Now they die again."

The 40mm grenade hit one of the corpses. High-velocity steel tore the bodies a second time.

"War's over, gentlemen," Lyons told his partners. "Now it's payback and bodycount."

With a salute, he went down the ladder. His Atchisson cocked and locked, his thigh pockets heavy with grenades, he jogged between the rows of vehicles, searching for targets.

The body of a mercenary lay in the narrow walk-space. Point-blank autofire had killed him, then machetes had dismembered the torso. At the end of the bus, an Indian fired quick bursts from his M-16. Lyons neared him and called out: "Qui-chay, qui-chay." To identify himself, Lyons spoke the only word he knew of their language.

As he dropped out a spent magazine, the fighter nodded to Lyons. Slugs slammed into the sheet metal of the bus, windows broke above them as a mercenary sprayed auto-fire.

Taking cover behind the double rear wheels of the bus, Lyons dropped flat and peered under the frame. He saw a muzzle flash. More bullets tore through the bus.

The mercenary also had the shelter of heavy-duty wheels. Though return fire from the Indians had flattened the truck tires, the steel-belted rubber and the steel rims stopped the 5.56mm bullets from the M-16s. Lyons had a solution.

Konzaki had included two magazines of one-ounce steel-cored slugs with Lyons's 12-gauge ammunition. Dropping the magazine of shot shells out of his Atchisson, he slapped in the magazine of slugs. Sighting on the muzzle flash, he fired three quick blasts.

The chambered shell sprayed the mercenary with double ought and Number Two steel shot. Then the Atchisson's bolt fed the first of the slugs into the chamber. Traveling 1,200 feet per second at four inches off the gravel, the first slug tore through the tire, then continued through the gunman's body. The second punched through the wheel to again rip the Nazi's body. The autofire stopped.

Dashing out, the Indian ran to the other side of the truck. Lyons followed. A burst of fire from the Indian's M-16 shattered the dead merc's skull.

Lyons and the Indian continued, covering one another as they ran from walkspace to walkspace. They passed an Indian with a bullet-torn arm. He sat against a truck wheel, binding the wound with a strip of cloth. Lyons paused to check the man's injury for arterial bleeding. Despite the pain, the Indian smiled and waved Lyons past.

Indians fired at the two trucks in the center of the parking area. The two tortured men still lay on the steel beams. In two groups, mercenaries clustered behind the protection of the trucks. Several autorifles flashed.

Lyons's hand-radio buzzed. "What goes?"

"One of them's radioing that helicopter," Gadgets told him. "Politician's listening now..."

Blancanales's voice came on the frequency. "Unomundo's still alive."

"What?"

"Wounded but alive. The helicopter's coming down for him."

A voice called out from trucks in Spanish. Nate shouted back. Lyons crept down the line of fighters to the North American ex-Marine.

"What do they want?" Lyons asked.

"They say our tortured men are still alive," Nate said. "They'll let them live if we let them go. Or they'll execute them."

"It's Unomundo..."

"I saw you shoot him."

"He's alive." Lyons pointed up at the Huey troopship. "He radioed the helicopter."

The voice called out again in Spanish. Nate listened. Then he spoke to his men in Quiche. The men moved position so they could see their mutilated friends.

One Indian called out in Quiche.

The blinded, scorched boy moved his head, and in a weak, quavering voice called back to his friends. The Indian shouted again. The boy answered, then lay back.

As one, the Quiche men raised their rifles and sighted. Autofire from ten rifles ripped the dying man and boy, ending their suffering.

Lyons jerked the pin from a fragmentation grenade and threw it past the trucks. A second grenade went under the nearest truck. As he pulled the cotter pin from a third grenade, shrapnel from the first one tore into the cowering mercenaries. The second punched steel through the truck's gas tank.

He threw the third, then a fourth grenade, and shouldered his autoshotgun. A mercenary ran from the flaming truck. He never reached the cover of the second truck. Sighting on the center of his back, Lyons fired.

A one-ounce slug threw the mere forward. Bullets from the Indians' rifles ripped the falling man. Exploding grenades spun the corpse again. The chaos of flames and flying shrapnel drove the other Nazis from cover.

Silhouetted against the flames of the complex that burned behind them, fascists sprinted in all directions. Autofire from the rifles of the Quiche men sprayed the running Nazis.

Rotorthrob drowned out the noise of the firefight. As the gray-painted Huey dropped from the stars, the door gunner strafed the buses and trucks. Glass shattered, slugs hammered steel, ricochets slammed into sheet metal.

"Nate!" Lyons shouted. "Spread them out. The helicopter's coming down for Unomundo."

Directing his friends in Quiche, Nate moved through the line, shoving men, pointing. Broken glass showered his back as he divided the men into groups. The men went to widely spaced positions along the lines of buses and trucks.

Dust that was orange with reflected flame swirled against the orange light of the blazing complex. Gravel pelted Lyons's face as he scanned the sprawled corpses and running men for the blond, fair-featured Unomundo. The Huey moved low along the scraped earth, the door gunner raking the vehicles.

A 40mm grenade missed. It exploded beyond the helicopter. The Huey spun and rose straight up. Tracers from an M-60 hammered the tops of several buses. Gasoline flamed. Autofire from the ground shattered the Plexiglas window of the Huey's side door.

Lyons sighted on the rectangle of the side door and fired a blast of steel shot. The tracers from the door gunner whipped about wildly, an orange line of unaimed slugs arcing into the sky. Lyons emptied the Atchisson, then slammed in the box mag of one-ounce slugs. He sighted on the Huey, and waited.

A body fell from the side door, then the M-60 fired again. Veering, swaying, the Huey came down again. Tracers from the door gun searched for the Quiche riflemen.

Following the pilot's windshield in his sights, Lyons fired. But the Huey troopship veered and swept across the parking area, its skids only ten feet from the gravel. Dust stormed around it. Light from the burning buses and trucks revealed the shadowy form of the helicopter in the dust. A line of tracers emerged.

Lyons fired again and again at the helicopter. The dust clouded like an orange wall, concealing the hovering bird.

As one, the surviving mercenaries fired their weapons at the Indians from behind the trucks.

Bullets punched metal above Lyons, then the fire stopped as the meres dashed for the Huey.

Jumping from cover, Lyons sprinted across the open ground for the two trucks. A mercenary dropped the mag from his M-16, slammed in another before a one-ounce slug threw him back ten feet. Another raised a pistol. His head exploded in a spray of blood.

The Atchisson's action locked back. Lyons crouched against a bullet-dented fender as he dropped out his assault shotgun's empty magazine and shoved in another. He snapped a glance over the truck's hood, saw meres grab the helicopter's skid. Lyons fired two blasts. A spray of steel severed a merc's arms.

Slugs screamed past his head. Throwing himself back, Lyons saw a mere pivot with an M-16 in his hands. Lyons zipped a blast of steel at the man. He saw the legs fly away from the torso. Lyons went to the fender again, and sighted on the helicopter.

The door gunner saw him. A line of tracers scythed the night as it sought Lyons.

Lyons pointed the Atchisson at the flashing muzzle of the machine gun only fifty feet away. He sprayed full-auto 12-gauge fire. The door gunner died. A mercenary fell back from the hovering helicopter. More Plexiglas showered from the side door. Then the whipping line of tracers, the M-60 still gripped in the dead hands of the gunner, found Lyons.

Lyons saw it as if in slow motion as he willed his body to move. The red line of tracers roared past him, hammering the truck. Slugs hit the shattered windshield, bits of glass flying, then fragments of the plastic dashboard exploded.

Slowed by his adrenalin-heightened perception, Lyons saw the flashing piece of metal and glass hurtling at him. He saw it coming, felt his body dropping though the air as he sought the shelter of the tires and gravel, then it hit him, the impact twisting him.

Lyons slammed into the gravel, his left arm numb. He grabbed for the wound, expecting to find his arm gone or a wound of shattered bone and gore. He felt no blood.

Then, on the gravel next to him, he saw what had hit him: the bullet-warped steel and brilliant silver mosaic of a mirror from the truck.

Wounded by a rearview mirror!

His numb arm hanging, Lyons struggled to his feet. One-handed, he pointed the Atchisson. Beyond the hovering helicopter, a blond European-featured man in a suit ran for the other side door.

"Unomundo!" Lyons screamed, rushing the helicopter, his left arm dangling. With his right hand he fired the Atchisson twice. The action locked back, the weapon empty. Rifle fire flashed from behind him as Quiche men fired bursts at the fleeing mercenaries. Machetes flashed as they chopped wounded Nazis to pieces.

Fumbling with his bandolier, Lyons tried to change magazines one-handed and on the run. He saw Unomundo scramble up toward the Huey's far side door. Lyons could not reload the Atchisson. He threw the assault shotgun aside and pulled his Python.

As the helicopter lifted, he double-actioned slugs into the fuselage. The windshield shattered.

Lyons jumped. He tried to wrap his barely usable left arm around the skid. Blood-slick steel slipped from his failed grasp. Falling ten feet to the gravel, smashing down on his shoulder and side, Lyons rolled over and fired his Python at the underbelly of the Huey. The hammer finally fell on an empty chamber.

As the Indians slaughtered the last Nazi mercenaries with machetes and autofire, Lyons knew he had failed.

The monster Unomundo soared away. The Huey disappeared into the Guatemalan night.

For the first time, Able Team had lost their man. They had destroyed an evil dream, but they had not destroyed the mind that created it.

For the first time, Lyons truly understood what Mack Bolan meant by war everlasting.

Lyons would never rest until he had turned Unomundo's evil onto the monster himself. It might not happen next week, it might not happen next month, but eventually Carl Lyons would do Unomundo...