Scorched Earth at-13 Read online

  He scrambled up to the knob of stone where the ridge ended. From there, he looked down into a section of the gorge.

  Perfect. Here, his riflemen and mortar crew would command the entire canyon. Without cover the Americans could not pass him. They would be trapped between his squad and the squad pursuing them.

  Between death and death.

  * * *

  Able Team maintained a quick pace north. In the streambed at the bottom of the gorge, they walked in cool early-morning shadow. Above them, the intense sunlight burned white on the cliffs and near-vertical mountainsides. They constantly scanned the slash of sky overhead for helicopters, but none appeared. They heard no rotor throb.

  Midges and blue-bodied dragonflies buzzed around them as they walked. When they stepped through the stagnant pools, every splash of their boots raised swarms of tiny flies. Ropes of moss alive with flies clung to their boots.

  Davis and Coral, walking in street shoes, kept up with Able Team. Blancanales carried Coral's overnight bag on his backpack. Though both the DEA pilot and the Mexican gang soldier maintained the pace, they did not have the boots and physical conditioning necessary for comfortable long-distance hiking.

  Lyons called a stop. "Let's tape their feet. Otherwise, they won't last the day. And we've got distance to make."

  "Right," Blancanales agreed. "You go on ahead, Carl, and scout the terrain. Wizard, watch our back."

  Davis sat on a rock and pulled off his shoes. He wore thin nylon dress socks. "Got an extra pair of socks? I didn't come prepared for a forced march."

  "Sure." Blancanales found heavy socks and a roll of OD adhesive tape in the compartments of his backpack. "Got to keep you two moving. A platoon's only as fast as the slowest man."

  "When I was a boy," Coral said, surveying the cliffs and peaks above them, "I hunted deer in these mountains with my grandfather. These mountains are a world without end. When we are in the mountains, there will be no problem from the soldiers. They will never find us."

  A hundred meters ahead of the others, Lyons scanned the ridgelines. A point of light flashed, sunlight reflecting from glass on a rocky peak overlooking the canyon. Lyons backed into a dark crevice between two fallen slabs of rock. The dark rock and shadows concealed his gray uniform and black gear. He raised his binoculars.

  The extreme distance defeated the optics. He could see only the crags and the windswept mountainside. Gnarled brush clung to the slopes, splotches of green against the rocks and sand.

  Lyons eased himself into a comfortable slouch against the slabs and braced his elbows. He held the field of view on the ridgeline, where the ragged edge of the rock outcrops met the pure blue of the sky. Relaxing, he held his eyes still, almost unfocused, letting his eyes see everything at once.

  One of the rocks moved.

  He watched that one spot. The rock moved again. Then from the side, sunlight flashed again. Lyons shifted the field of view. A point of white light flashed, then disappeared as an observer lifted, then lowered binoculars.

  His hand radio buzzed. Lyons maintained his watch of the ridge while Blancanales and Gadgets talked.

  "We've got soldiers on our back," Gadgets said.

  "How many?" the Politician asked.

  "I've seen two. Pointmen, one man on each side of the gulch. Wait a minute. There's another man... Looks like we got a platoon tracking us."

  "They see you?"

  "No."

  "Davis and Miguel are ready to go. We'll try to outrun the Mexicans."

  Keying his hand radio, Lyons interrupted the others. "Negative. We've got a lookout ahead."

  "What?" Gadgets asked. "In front of us?"

  "That's what I said, Wiz. I've seen movement and reflections from binoculars."

  "What's the distance?" Blancanales asked.

  "Extreme. Maybe a half mile away, and three or four hundred feet above us. They're up on a ridge-line overlooking the canyon. I say we ambush the ones behind us, then leapfrog up the canyon."

  "Through the lookout's field of fire?" Blancanales asked.

  "Only chance we've got to get out..."

  Gadgets interrupted them with a whispered warning. "Dudes! Make up your minds. Those Mexicans are only a hundred yards away."

  Blancanales spoke calmly. "Could they be a rescue party? Searching for survivors?"

  "Yeah, that's it," Gadgets snapped back. "You got it. First they shoot us down, and when we survive, they try to find us. Problem is, when they find us, we ain't going to be survivors. You got thirty seconds to get back here, Pol."

  "On my way. Ironman, I'm sending Davis and Miguel forward."

  "Hit those Mexicans and leapfrog retreat," Lyons answered. "Try to capture some rifles and ammunition."

  Lyons changed his position, working his way through a maze of chest-high blocks of rock that had fallen from the sheer wall of the gorge. When he came to the canyon wall, Lyons crabbed up a ledge until he found a position concealed by mesquite from which he could fire into the streambed.

  A minute later, he saw Davis and Miguel Coral jog up from the south. They glanced around, looking for Lyons. He hissed to them, catching their attention, and pointed to the ridgeline where he had seen the light-flashes. They nodded, and took cover in the rock maze.

  Lyons waited, monitoring his partners through his hand radio, listening for the firefight.

  * * *

  Blancanales crept back through the rocks and stagnant pools. He saw Gadgets concealed in the crevice of a multiton flake of stone, watching the approaching Mexicans through a tangle of mesquite. Before continuing, Blancanales whispered into his hand radio, "Where are they?"

  Two clicks, a pause, then two clicks answered, the signal that the enemy was too close for Gadgets to speak.

  "You got your earphone in?"

  Two clicks, yes.

  "I'll take cover here. Let the pointmen pass you. We need their weapons and gear. Understand?"

  Two clicks, yes.

  Crouching in the shadowed crevice, Gadgets slipped out his silenced Beretta 93-R. Representing the cutting edge of Beretta technology, the Parkerized black autopistol featured semiauto or 3-shot bursts. An oversized trigger guard and a fold-down grip provided for a two-handed hold. Fitted with a sound suppressor and firing custom-loaded 9mm cartridges with steel-cored slugs for enhanced penetration, it killed without a sound. A positive safety allowed the single-action pistol to be carried cocked and locked.

  Gadgets folded down the Beretta's left-hand grip. He eased the fire-selector to the one-shot mode.

  He heard the Mexican before he saw him. Rocks turned under a boot. Water sloshed inside a canteen. Then boots squeaked through the streambed's sand. The Mexican soldier passed, his head swiveling to the right and left, scanning the rocks for movement. He looked directly at Gadgets, and Gadgets put a slug between his eyes, then a 3-round burst into his heart as he fell back.

  There had only been the sound of the pistol's slide functioning and the four slaps of the slugs hitting flesh.

  Nothing moved. Gadgets listened as the insects continued buzzing around the stagnant pools of the streambed. Holding the autopistol ready, he raised the hand radio to his lips. "I hit the first one," he whispered. "Where's the other pointman?"

  Blancanales answered in a whisper. "He's coming up on the other side of the canyon. About twenty yards back."

  "What's the line of sight? Can you pull the dead one into cover?"

  "Doing it."

  Gadgets watched Blancanales snake from cover. He grabbed the dead soldier's M-16 rifle, checking the safety. Then, slinging the M-16 over his shoulder, he grabbed the collar of the Mexican soldier and dragged him back. The dead man's gear clanked on the rocks.

  A burst of a thousand-meter-per-second slugs screamed through the silence, the full-auto muzzle reports coming an instant later as impacting full-jacketed slugs exploded on the rocks around Blancanales. A last jerk pulled the dead man behind cover. The autofire continued.

  Boots splashed th
rough the stream. The second soldier changed magazines on the run and sprayed M-16 fire at the rocks concealing Blancanales.

  A burst of silent 9mm staggered the Mexican, the three steel-cored bullets punching through the back of his head. He died before he fell.

  "Strip them!" Gadgets shouted. He set the Beretta's safety and holstered the weapon, then unslung his CAR and peered through the mesquite for targets.

  A soldier appeared a hundred meters downstream. He held an FN-FAL rifle with a grenade fitted to the muzzle. Gadgets set his CAR's fire-selector to semi-auto and sighted on the soldier's face. As the soldier aimed the rifle-grenade, Gadgets squeezed off his shot.

  The grenade went wild as the dead man fell back. An explosion against a cliff face sprayed stone and shrapnel into the air.

  Autorifles hammered. Slugs and ricochets zipped through the canyon as the soldiers reconned by fire. Gadgets saw an officer with a radioman advancing to the front, dashing from cover to cover as the soldiers kept up the fire.

  A 3-round burst from Gadgets's CAR spun the officer. Gadgets snapped off a second burst as the radioman dived for cover. The autofire slowed as several riflemen went to the aid of their dead or dying leader.

  "Wizard!" Blancanales called out. "Ready?"

  Gadgets ran to his partner. Slugs tore through the air and whined off rocks as the unaimed fire continued.

  The dead Mexicans lay in the sand, stripped of their weapons, web gear and boots. Blancanales had strapped on a bandolier and Mexican web gear. A pair of boots hung around his neck. He wore two soft-brimmed OD hats, one on top of the other. He passed other equipment to Gadgets.

  "You work fast."

  Blancanales nodded. He put one of the hats on Gadgets. "Off-load the rifles and gear with the others. I'll fall back and slow them down."

  "I'll be back."

  Blancanales shifted position. He didn't chance crossing to the opposite side of the canyon. Instead he watched for movement, and when he saw none, crawled and sprinted upstream. The volume of fire continued. A rifle grenade blasted the rocks where Gadgets had crouched.

  Ahead, he saw Gadgets carrying the captured weapons and gear to the others. Blancanales scrambled up a rockfall and took cover behind a slab of stone. He loaded a high-explosive shell into his M-16/M-203 over-and-under assault rifle/grenade launcher. He set the M-203's sights at a hundred meters and waited.

  The Mexicans advanced. Blancanales held his fire. The Mexicans killed brush and shadows with bursts of autofire. Rifle grenades maimed mesquite. He saw a soldier rush from rock to rock. The soldier found the bodies of the pointmen. He called out to the platoon. Other soldiers crowded around the dead men. They turned over a body.

  A blast threw the men back. Blancanales had pulled the pin from one of the pointmen's grenades, slipped the grenade under a dead man's shirt, then lowered the corpse to hold down the grenade's safety lever.

  Screams came from the wounded. Men shouted desperately for help. Blancanales waited until several soldiers of the platoon went to the aid of the wounded.

  The 40mm grenade hit the rock behind the group, ripping the men with hundreds of steel fragments. Riflemen fired at Blancanales as their comrades screamed in agony. The flesh-shredder had done its grisly work.

  Blancanales slid down the rockfall and dodged from cover to cover to rejoin the others.

  * * *

  Lyons saw Gadgets pass below him. Gadgets crouched with Davis and Coral in the rock maze and passed the captured rifles and equipment to them. Coral slung the boots over his neck to try on later. Then Lyons turned to the action downstream. He had heard the flat clang of the 40mm launcher, then the pop of the grenade. Now he saw Blancanales retreating upstream. Lyons waited.

  Fewer rifles fired. His partners had killed or wounded several of the platoon pursuing them. Now the Mexicans feared advancing. If Able Team and the DEA man and the Mexican gunslinger-turned-guide could keep the pace, they could leave their pursuers far behind.

  A high-pitched whistle shrieked in the sky. Shock slammed Lyons's ears as an explosion across the canyon threw stone and steel shrapnel through the air.

  In the moment of ringing silence after the blast, Lyons heard a distant pop. Then slugs ripped through the air, sparking off the flat slabs, slapping into the wet sand of the streambed. But Lyons did not hear the firing of rifles.

  Another blast sent shrapnel and stone tearing through the narrow gorge. Blancanales shouted to him, "Get down! Mortars!"

  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 ok
ay 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.