Then he’d spotted Cole and Thornton among the crowd, and for a split second, he had thought that the two men must have double-crossed the team. He settled his sights on Cole’s head, the crosshairs resting on the hit man’s temple. It would have been easy to take up the slack on the trigger . . .
That was when one of the buildings on the other side of the camp blew into a million pieces, and Dixon realized that Cole had just carried out the main part he had to play in the plan. That phony suitcase nuke might not have been a nuclear device, but it was packed with enough regular explosives to take out that building, anyway.
And now Bill and Bailey were out of the pit, Dixon saw, fighting with machetes, mowing down the cartel men and the Middle Eastern terrorists while Cole and Thornton armed themselves and contributed to the carnage.
Tracking the scope to the side, Dixon settled the crosshairs on one of the terrorists and stroked the trigger. The man’s head exploded in a grisly spray of pink as the high-velocity round blasted through it. Before the body could hit the ground, Dixon had shifted his aim and was ready to fire again. A cartel gunman’s skull burst open like a melon.
Head shots, one after the other, continued. Death from above, Dixon thought grimly. It was what he had been born to do, and he felt a deep gratitude to Wild Bill Elliott for giving that back to him.
Catalina heard the explosion and knew the battle was starting. Some of the guards would probably rush toward the trouble to try to help, while the others would make sure the prisoners were secure.
She was waiting behind the door when a couple of men carrying automatic rifles burst in. A kick broke one man’s knee; clubbed fists to the side of the head sent the other to the floor. Both men were still dangerous, though. Catalina bent and jerked a holstered Colt .45 from one man’s hip and shot them both in the back, their bodies jerking as the heavy slugs hammered them into the floor.
The rest of the women shrieked in terror and cowered against the far wall of the barracks. Catalina shoved the .45 into the waistband of her jeans and picked up one of the automatic rifles. She yelled, “Shut up!” at the women and had to repeat it before they started to settle down a little.
Then she went on, “I’m getting out of here. There are two guns left.” She pointed at the other guard’s pistol and rifle. “Anyone who wants to fight for your freedom, grab a gun and follow me.”
She whirled through the open door as bullets stitched across the wall beside it. Spotting the guard who had opened fire on her, she squeezed off a burst that punched into his body, spun him around, and dropped him to the ground as a bleeding sack of meat. Catalina didn’t see anybody else. From the looks of it, the other guards on the women’s barracks had run off to join in the battle on the other side of camp.
Catalina did the same.
The explosion was their signal to go. Nick tromped the gas and sent the SUV surging along the crude trail that followed the winding canyon. He had sent it careening around a couple of bends before bullets began thudding into the vehicle’s armored body.
“They’re up on the rim!” he called to the men behind him.
“My job!” Calvin Watson yelled. He stood up, reached to the ceiling, and rolled back a specially designed sunroof.
Then he picked up a huge, air-cooled machine gun so big it took a man with massive strength to handle it. Watson had that strength and more. He stepped onto a firing platform bolted to the floor of the SUV. His head, shoulders, and arms extended up through the sunroof opening. He thrust the machine gun’s barrel toward the canyon rim on the right and bellowed as he began firing. The gun swung back and forth as he hosed the guard positions on the rimrock with lead.
“Leave some of them for us to kill, you black bastard!” Madigan yelled at him.
“There’ll be plenty, you damn redneck cracker!” Watson shouted back.
Bucking and rocking over the ruts, the SUV kept going. Hatcher was driving faster than any sane person would have on such a rough road, but somehow he kept the vehicle under control. Dust and grit sprayed from under its madly turning wheels and left a cloud filling the canyon behind them.
Bodies of guards shot to pieces by the storm of bullets from Watson’s gun plummeted from the rocks to smash onto the canyon floor. Whenever a dead man fell in the road, Nick didn’t try to avoid the corpse. He just plowed right over it and kept going. The cartel bastards couldn’t get any deader, after all.
Suddenly Watson’s gun fell silent. Wade heard it and thought at first that the convict must have fired the gun dry and run out of ammunition.
But Watson slumped back against the edge of the opening and started to slide down. Legs braced wide against the motion of the SUV, Madigan stood up and grabbed the gun as Watson dropped it. Watson slumped heavily to the floor, blood pumping from a gaping wound in his upper chest.
“Madigan . . .” he croaked.
“What?” Madigan snapped as he knelt beside the other convict, holding the gun.
“I still . . . hate you,” Watson gasped out.
“I hate you, too, you black son of a bitch.”
“If I . . . gotta die . . . you better not . . . live through this. Wouldn’t be . . . fair . . . Freakin’ . . . racist . . .”
Watson sighed and died.
That was the first one, Wade thought, the first one of their team to die, at least as far as he knew.
But he was mighty damn sure that Watson wouldn’t be the last.
CHAPTER 42
When he saw the terrorists and cartel thugs dropping around him from head shots, Bill knew that Henry Dixon was taking a hand. Dixon had to be up high somewhere, maybe as much as half a mile away.
Those lethal strikes from above demoralized some of the enemy. They started to run for cover. As the ranks thinned around the four members of the team at the edge of the pit, the tide of battle turned. Bill buried his machete in the chest of a gunman who was about to shoot Bailey, then left it there as he scooped up a couple of fallen pistols and went to work like old Wild Bill Elliott the cowboy movie star.
This was no soundstage, though, and the guns weren’t firing blanks.
Jackie Thornton grunted and doubled over as a bullet tore into his midsection. He clamped his free hand to the wound. Blood welled over his fingers as he struggled to stay on his feet and keep fighting. He failed in that effort and fell to his knees.
One of the terrorists, screaming something about Allah, had gotten hold of one of the machetes. He rushed at Bill from behind, who barely caught a glimpse of the man from the corner of his eye. He tried to swing around, but the machete was already slashing through the air at his head.
Thornton squeezed off a last shot and put the bullet in the middle of the terrorist’s forehead. The man stumbled, already dead on his feet, and dropped the machete before the deadly blow could land. Bill said, “Thanks, Jackie,” and started to reach toward the man to help him up.
Before Bill could do that, though, the gun slipped from Thornton’s nerveless fingers. He looked up at Bill, smiled slightly, laughed, and pitched forward on his face to lie still.
Their gazes had met for that split second, and for the first time since Bill had known Jackie Thornton, he hadn’t seen guilt lurking in the man’s eyes. Thornton had finally found a measure of peace and redemption, here at the end of his life.
Now there were three of them battling side by side, and although things had swung their way for a moment, the odds were still too heavy against them. Too many bullets buzzed through the air around them like angry hornets. They needed another tide-turner.
They got it in the form of a racing, careening SUV that burst out of the canyon and roared across the camp with Bronco Madigan firing a huge machine gun from the opening of a sunroof. The vehicle turned and skidded to a stop, kicking up even more dust, and Wade Stillman, Nick Hatcher, and another man spilled out, firing automatic weapons. Bill’s eyes widened slightly as he recognized the third man. Clark had no business being here . . .
But Bill was g
lad to see his old friend anyway.
More help came from another direction. Bill heard the shots and swung in that direction to see Catalina Ramos coming toward them, firing a Colt .45 in one hand and an automatic rifle with the other. She was a warrior woman, a true Amazon . . . or maybe, given her heritage, more like an Aztec goddess of war.
She had followers, too, as several of the female prisoners were right behind her, also spraying lead toward the cartel soldiers with guns they had liberated from men they had killed.
Most of the men in the camp had gathered to see the spectacle in the Pit of Blood, and now the three-pronged attack was scattering them, mowing them down, sending panic coursing through them. He and his companions might actually win this battle, Bill thought.
Beside him, Braden Cole coughed and stumbled. Bill looked over and saw Cole pressing a free hand to a wound in his chest. Bill’s left hand gun was empty, so he looped that arm around Cole’s shoulders to hold him up.
“No,” Cole choked out. “Let me go.” He shrugged out of Bill’s grip. “Damn it . . . I won’t ever collect . . . that million-dollar bonus . . . but I might as well . . . earn it.”
He lunged forward, still firing, and jerked as more slugs pounded into his body. He emptied his gun, though, bringing down several more cartel soldiers before he collapsed in a bloody heap.
“Come on!” Bailey yelled. “We all need to link up!”
Bill knew the big former noncom was right. Their ranks were thinning. They might not be able to wipe out all the enemy—that would be a feat almost beyond belief—but they had to keep the battle going until Sanchez, Maleef, and al-Waleed were all dead. Bill had been looking for their bodies among the bloody shapes sprawled on the ground, but he hadn’t spotted them. They might have slipped away when the fighting started.
The two terrorists were the biggest threats in this entire valley. They couldn’t be allowed to escape.
If they did, all the dying here might be for nothing.
Anwar was almost hysterical. He had never been under fire before. His efforts on behalf of their cause had never been in the front lines but rather in secret hideaways where the infidels couldn’t get to him. Tariq knew that, so he kept a firm grip on his friend’s arm as he hustled Anwar toward the jeep into which the cases containing the spores had been loaded.
“Come on!” he urged. “We have to go! None of these other men matter!”
“They’re shooting,” Anwar babbled. “They’re going to shoot me.”
“Nobody’s going to shoot you if you keep your head down and move!”
Tariq didn’t know what had happened to Sanchez and didn’t care. The man was meaningless now. All the Mexicans were. Their boastful “security” had proven to be less than nothing. A mere handful of Americans had thrown the whole valley into havoc and chaos. It was impossible . . . but it was playing out right before Tariq’s eyes.
The jeep was up ahead, only a few yards away. They were going to make it.
Then Sanchez somehow got ahead of them and vaulted into the jeep’s front seat. He twisted the key and started the engine, even as Tariq shouted, “No!”
The jeep leaped ahead with a spurt of gravel.
Suddenly a woman dashed in front of it. A woman, a shameless woman with her head uncovered and the shape of her body blatantly displayed in her clothing and most important . . . a gun spitting fire and death in her hand.
The jeep’s windshield shattered under the onslaught of lead. Sanchez’s head jerked back as a bullet broke his expensive sunglasses and bored on through his brain before exploding out the back of his skull and ruining his carefully arranged hair.
His foot was still heavy on the gas, though, and the woman who had just killed him couldn’t get out of the way in time. The jeep’s grille slammed into her and sent her flying through the air like a broken toy.
As Sanchez finally toppled out the side of the open vehicle, it slowed to a stop.
Tariq dragged Anwar toward it.
“Come on! We can still get away!”
Wade, Nick, and Clark reached Bill’s side. Bailey flanked Bill on the other side. Bailey’s bare arms were gory to the elbows, and blood dripped from the machetes he held. He looked like some ancient barbarian standing on the field of battle with heaps of corpses strewn around his feet, surrounded by his fallen enemies.
“Where are the others?” Clark shouted above the din of gunfire.
“Thornton and Cole are dead!” Bill replied. “Catalina was on her way here a minute ago, but I don’t see her now!”
“Son of a bitch!” Bailey exclaimed. “Look at Madigan!”
The massive convict had climbed out of the SUV, bringing the heavy machine gun with him. A long belt of ammunition trailed behind him. The weapon’s barrel glowed red from heat as he continued firing while holding it cradled in his arms.
He strode through the throng of killers, laying waste to them. Bullets struck him again and again, but he didn’t go down, didn’t even slow his pace. He ignored the blood flowing like crimson rivers from his wounds and kept fighting with a savage grin on his ugly face.
He looked like he had never been happier in his life.
Men could stand up to a lot, but not to a seemingly indestructible engine of destruction, at least not for long. Cartel thug and terrorist alike broke and ran in sheer terror from Madigan’s onslaught, and Madigan continued gunning them down from behind. Wade, Nick, and Clark dropped some of them as well.
Madigan was starting to sway, though. No man, no matter how big and strong, could absorb as much punishment as he had and not begin to weaken. The machine gun’s barrel drooped. Gritting his teeth and grimacing, he forced it back up and fired a long burst that finished off the rest of his ammo and chopped another dozen men into raw meat. Then Madigan dropped the empty weapon and stood there swaying like a tree in the wind.
When he finally fell, it was like a giant redwood toppling.
Bill spotted a jeep spurting toward the canyon. He recognized the man at the wheel as Tariq Maleef. The skinny, wild-haired man beside him had to be Anwar al-Waleed.
“Damn it!” Bill exclaimed. “Maleef’s gettin’ away!” He grabbed Nick’s arm. “Can you catch him?”
“Not in that SUV,” Nick said, “but there’s another jeep! Come on!”
“Go after them,” Bailey urged Bill. “We’ll mop up here!”
Bill left Bailey, Wade, and Clark to do that. He and Nick sprinted toward the other jeep. He hoped the blasted thing had the key in it. No reason why it wouldn’t have. Nobody was going to steal it here in the camp.
Until now.
Nick leaped behind the wheel. The key was in the ignition. He twisted it, and the engine roared to life. Bill piled into the passenger seat and they were moving before he could even get settled.
The other jeep had already reached the entrance to the canyon. Bill and Nick were about two hundred yards behind. Catching up would be difficult on the rough, twisting trail, but they had to try.
Bill took Nick’s pistol and checked to see how many rounds were left in it. Only half a dozen, he saw to his regret. His own gun held just four rounds. Ten shots in all, so he couldn’t afford to waste any.
“Get me as close as you can,” he urged Nick.
“Will do!” the driver said.
As the chase led into the canyon, the jeep took some of the turns at such high speed the wheels came off the ground for a second on one side, then the other. Sometimes it hit such a rough spot that the whole vehicle went airborne for an instant before slamming back down on its tires. Nick kept it moving somehow without wrecking them, and they were drawing steadily closer to the jeep up ahead. Maleef wasn’t the wheelman that Nick Hatcher was.
He had a gun, though, and as he continued wrestling with the wheel one-handed, he twisted in the seat and fired back at the pursuers.
Bill didn’t think it was very likely that Maleef would be able to hit anything from such an unsteady platform, but flukes could always happen.
The terrorist might get off a lucky shot. Bill leaned to the side, braced his gun arm as much as he could, and squeezed off two shots. He was going for the tires on the other vehicle, but he must have missed because Maleef’s jeep didn’t slow down.
Nick suddenly said, “Oh!” and when Bill glanced over at him he saw the crimson stain spreading rapidly across the front of Nick’s shirt.
“How bad is it?”
“You keep shooting and I’ll keep driving,” Nick said through gritted teeth. He pressed down harder on the accelerator, and the jeep surged closer to the other vehicle.
A fluke, Bill thought grimly. A lucky shot. Or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it.
Nick clung tightly to the wheel, though, and kept the jeep moving at a dangerously high rate of speed.
Bill leaned out to try another two shots.
He never knew if he hit the jeep’s right rear tire, or if it struck a sharp rock or something else that made it blow. But blow it did, and just like that the jeep was in the air, turning crazily, throwing Maleef and al-Waleed free, and then crashing back down to the canyon floor to roll over and over before coming to a skidding halt on its side.
Hatcher hit the brake and sent their jeep into a sliding stop. Bill leaped out while it was still moving and ran toward Maleef and al-Waleed. His gun was empty now, but he still had the weapon he had taken from Nick. It was a Browning Hi-Power 9mm, a good gun. Bill switched it to his right hand and covered the two men lying on the ground as he approached them.
Al-Waleed came up off the ground with no warning, shrieking in hate and hysteria. He had a rock in his hand and clearly intended to smash Bill’s brains out with it.
Bill shot him before the terrorist even got near him. He came close to putting a bullet through al-Waleed’s head, but he changed his aim at the last second and shattered the man’s shoulder instead. A man like Anwar al-Waleed might have a lot of useful information in his brain, to go along with the crawling snakes of his fanatic evil.
Suicide Mission Page 27