by Dick Stivers
Carrying the aluminum case, el jefestepped from the bus. Blancanales jammed the Parkerized black suppressor of the Beretta under his chin. As the death-squad leader jerked back reflexively, Lyons pinned the man’s arms.
“Silencio,” Blancanales warned. He took the radio case out of their prisoner’s hand. Lyons jerked his arms behind him and secured his wrists with plastic handcuffs.
Ricardo whistled. Headlights flashed through the tailing rain. They saw the Salvadoran army jeep speeding to the bus.
Blancanales spoke in quick Spanish to el jefe.
The death-squad leader clamped his jaw and said nothing. Blancanales emphasized his question by putting the Beretta to the man’s beak nose. El jefespoke in German-accented English.
“What do you want?”
“Quesada.”
El jefe’slips drew back in a sardonic grin. “How interesting.”
“You want to live?” Lyons demanded. “You’re taking us to Quesada.”
“Certainly.”
Glancing to the approaching headlights, Blancanales told the prisoner, “You move, you try to warn them, you die.”
He left Lyons with the prisoner. Putting his auto-Colt to the back of el jefe’shead, Lyons grunted, “Where you from?”
“From Salvador, americano.”
“Why do you have an accent?”
“I learned English at a German university. Why do you ask?”
As the jeep stopped behind the bus, the army officer called out to Blancanales in Spanish. Blancanales answered as he stepped toward the officer. The officer questioned Blancanales. Even as the officer spoke, he went for the holstered pistol under his raincoat.
Blancanales brought up the Beretta. Firing silent three-shot bursts, the slugs slapping into their chests and faces with a sound like quick fists, he killed the officer and two soldiers in the jeep before their hands closed on their weapons. He moved to the driver’s seat.
Pushing the dead soldier aside, Blancanales got in and backed the jeep through a quarter turn. The headlights now pointed toward the prefabs two hundred meters away, the glare blocking the vision of the mechanics and sentries.
He motioned Ricardo forward. While Lyons held the prisoner, Blancanales and Ricardo jerked the corpses out of the jeep. They carried the bodies a few steps and shoved them under a truck.
Lyons shoved el jefeforward. Blancanales sent Ricardo back for the “black box” radio. Then they took seats in the jeep, Blancanales driving, their prisoner in the front passenger seat. Lyons sat directly behind el jefe, the auto-Colt against the German-educated Salvadoran’s back. Next to the second pedestal-mounted M-60, Ricardo now wore one of the Salvadoran army-issue camouflage green plastic ponchos.
Throwing the jeep into gear, Blancanales accelerated for the gate. He flashed the high beams. As before, the sentries opened the gates. Lyons leaned forward to the prisoner.
“Look straight ahead. Don’t even think of making a noise. If you want to live, you’re taking us to Quesada.”
“I understand,” their prisoner answered.
“Which way to Quesada?” Blancanales demanded.
The prisoner nodded to the right. Blancanales sped through the gate, sideskidding on the wet pavement as he made the right turn.
Lyons saw that the service road continued straight for hundreds of meters. Far ahead, taillights blinked and disappeared. No other vehicles traveled the road.
Standing, Lyons checked the jeep’s rear M-60. The machine gun had no belt in place. Opening the side-mounted box of ammunition, he found the belts of cartridges dry. He threw open the M-60’s feed cover.
In the blue white light from the mercury-arc streetlights over the road, Lyons saw rust in the mechanism. He had no time to clean and oil the weapon. He put a belt in place, shut the feed cover and jerked back the operating handle. A cartridge chambered. He jerked back the operating handle one more time. The cartridge ejected. Maybe the M-60 would fire.
Squinting into the wind-driven rain, he looked at the forward M-60. The second machine gun had no belt of cartridges loaded.
The Salvadoran army officers had entered the free-fire zone without arming their heavy weapons. Not wanting to risk leaning over the fascist prisoner to arm the second machine gun, Lyons sat down. He shouted over the noise of the tires and rain to Blancanales.
“Ask Ricardo what goes on in those mountains. Today, the Commies hit those troop trucks. The officers in this jeep were part of the react-force. But you know, they went into those mountains unloaded. Neither one of these M-60s had a belt in place.”
“What?” Blancanales asked, incredulous.
“Take a look,” Lyons said, pointing at the second M-60. “I just loaded the back gun. But that one, it’s empty. And I bet you those ammo belts in the can got no rain on them. What do you think of that?”
“Later! Look…”
They approached a landscaped area. Immaculate lawns surrounded a ten-foot-high concrete wall. The modernistic, flowing lines of the cast concrete offered no hand-or toeholds. The lawns, lit bright as day by many lights, provided open fields of fire for the machine guns placed in guard positions built into the wall. No flower beds or decorative greenery offered cover for infiltrators.
A sheet-steel gate barred the entry. A concrete-and-steel security office in the center of a traffic circle blocked the possibility of ramming through the gate. Without artillery or antibunker rockets, the two men of Able Team saw no way in but the steel gate.
Lyons leaned forward to their prisoner. “What’s inside?”
“Colonel Quesada,” el jefeanswered. “That is the family compound. Inside, there are homes and offices and the Quesada personal guards. Soon, you will see.”
A Dodge four-door had stopped at the bunkerlike security office. Under glaring lights, the passengers stood in the shelter of an alcove while guards with M-16 rifles searched the car.
One of the passengers wore the uniform of the army of El Salvador.
The other passenger wore fatigues, polished black jump boots and black web-gear. He wore a holstered pistol. A red hammer and sickle marked his shoulder.
“La Vibora!” Ricardo gasped. He pointed at the man in fatigues next to the army officer. “Alla! El es mi capitan, el capitan de la PFL. La Vibora! No es un revolucionario. El es una facista!”
Slowing to stop behind the Dodge, Blancanales translated for Lyons. “He says that’s his officer. The one that got away from us this afternoon.”
“The army and the Communists,” Lyons said loudly, “going in to visit the colonel. A miracle of Salvadoran politics.”
El jefedived out of the jeep. He smashed into the pavement and rolled.
As Blancanales floored the accelerator and whipped the steering wheel to the left, Lyons saw the guards at the gate startle. The soldiers searching the car turned. Then the broken and bleeding el jefescreamed, “Americanos. Mateselos!”
Auto weapons roared.
17
A line of tracers shot from a slit in the wall. Blancanales careened across the lawn, throwing muddy bluegrass behind the jeep’s tires. Lyons fought G-force, one arm around the M-60’s pedestal, his free hand grabbing for the pistol-grip of his Atchisson rifle.
But Ricardo was the first to strike back. He jerked the pin from one of the Italian MU-5OGs and threw it at his former guerrilla leader. Before the tiny frag hit, Ricardo pulled the pin on the second. He saw the army officer and La Vibora dropping flat beside the Dodge. He let the lever flip free as he braced for the throw. He turned in his seat and awkwardly, threw the second grenade.
The first grenade bounced off the security-office wall. A guard braced his M-16 on the roof of the Dodge and sighted on the jeep. Popping behind him, the grenade shattered the Dodge side windows and peppered the guard with hundreds of pinpoint wounds. Arching backward in shock, the guard fell, his M-16 spraying wild autofire straight up.
La Vibora dashed for the M-16. The second grenade skipped across the asphalt, then rolled under th
e Dodge. The army officer saw the tiny grenade and scrambled away on his hands and knees. La Vibora looked down at his feet and saw it.
Hundreds of tiny steel balls slashed his body like razors. Steel punched into his downturned face. The blast knocked his feet from under him. Blinded, his feet ripped to blood-spurting tangles of leather and flesh, he crawled for safety. Dying on the asphalt, his body released an immense blood pool that spread around him.
As Blancanales steered the jeep through a half circle, Lyons untangled his Atchisson from his yellow raincoat. He flipped the fire-selector down to full-auto. Patterns of high-velocity steel swept the guards and the army officer, silencing their weapons.
But the machine gun still fired from the slit in the compound’s concrete wall. Lyons knew he had no hope of killing that gunner. From the top of the wall, other weapons flashed. His voice almost lost in the hammering of the machine guns and autorifles, Lyons screamed to Blancanales, “Make distance! Get us out of here!”
Ricardo saw a sentry running along the top of the wall. The young man pointed his M-16. In his panic, he sprayed the entire magazine in one burst. He missed the guard and the wall, and the last three slugs, red tracers, streaked high into the rain.
Slapping another magazine into his Atchisson, Lyons hit the bolt release to strip the first shell into the chamber, then set the safety. He tore off the bright yellow raincoat and let it flutter away. He slipped the Atchisson’s sling over his neck so that the autoshotgun hung ready at his right side, then stood up behind the pedestal of the M-60.
The guard on the wall fired down at the jeep. Windshield glass shattered. Lyons sighted on a gray-uniformed militiaman and fired, the burst lifting the man off his feet, tracers passing through his body.
Blancanales skidded through a high-speed turn, and they left the Quesada family compound behind. Now on the plantation service road, Blancanales floored the accelerator. Lyons turned, saw headlights on the road.
“Ricardo!” Lyons shouted. He slapped the M-60.
The teenager understood and moved instantly. Slinging the M-16 as Lyons had slung his autoweapon, the boy stood and took the machine gun’s pistol-grip.
Lyons stepped over the seat to the forward gun. He popped open the can of belted ammo, then threw open the machine gun’s feed cover. He slapped down the belt of 7.62mm NATO cartridges, jerked back the operating lever and fired.
Under the blue white luminescence of the plantation’s lights, the brass casings and belt links shot out in a cascade of glittering metal. Lyons held the sights on the headlights. The line of orange red tracers extended from the jeep to the approaching vehicle. One of the headlights went black. Ricocheting tracers sparked in all directions. Glass sprayed.
The driver died. His Chevy Silverado drifted off the lane of blacktop. Lyons sighted on the doors and put bursts through the body panels. The Silverado crashed into the chain link security fence. Lyons turned as the jeep raced past.
Ricardo fired a long burst into the Silverado. Gasoline flashed, and a fireball churned up into the black sky. No one escaped the burning hulk.
“On the right! A la derecha!” Blancanales shouted.
Only a hundred meters ahead, Lyons saw a gray-painted jeep emerging from the darkness of the coffee fields. A militiaman in a black rain slicker swiveled a pedestal-mounted M-60 as Lyons whipped up his Atchisson, thumbing down the fire-selector.
Firing from the hip, Lyons sprayed steel balls at the gunner. The Atchisson’s twenty-inch barrel allowed the double-ought and number-two buckshot to disperse in extremely wide patterns. He saw the gunner jolt as one or two balls hit him.
But Blancanales closed the distance at one hundred fifty kilometers per hour. At ranges of fifty meters and thirty meters, Lyons triggered single shots and hit the gunner again, throwing him backward.
Muzzleblast slammed the back of his head. Reeling with the pain, Lyons sat down hard as Ricardo tore into the militia jeep with slugs from the rear M-60. A line of red tracers passed through the militia jeep’s windshield, specks of phosphor spinning into the darkness of the coffee fields.
Ricardo saw Lyons holding his aching ears and realized he had fired the heavy-caliber machine gun only inches above the head of the North American. He leaned to Lyons and gripped his shoulder.
“Lo siento, senor! Esta usted okay?”
His ears ringing, Lyons looked back to Ricardo. “No problem! Kill them!”
They left the militia patrol behind. Ricardo swiveled the M-60, walking a circle around the machine gun’s pedestal as he fired more bursts into the jeep. The dead driver allowed the jeep to lurch forward to stall in the roadway. Ricardo raised his aim to the headlights following them.
Tracers crisscrossed. In the lead vehicle pursuing them, an experienced gunner got their range. Slugs whined off the roadway beside them. A tracer sparked off a fender. A slug slammed into the jeep’s spare tire.
Lyons sighted the Atchisson on the headlights two hundred meters behind them. Then he adjusted his aim upward to compensate for drop. He fired semiauto, once, twice, three times, emptying the Atchisson’s box mag.
Behind them, a headlight went black. The lead jeep — with only one headlight — swerved from side to side. The other headlights wove. Though the steel buckshot at that extreme distance presented no lethal threat to their pursuers, the spent projectiles had shattered glass and perhaps wounded the standing machine gunner.
They approached the vehicle yard. Many pairs of headlights indicated a general mobilization of the militiamen.
A truck came from the gate and blocked the road. Letting the Atchisson hang at his side, Lyons put the butt of the forward-pointing M-60 to his shoulder. As Blancanales slowed to evade the roadblock, Lyons sighted carefully and put bursts through the rear tires. The next burst went through the passenger-side door.
Holding the trigger back, Lyons raked the cab, behind the door, under the door, hoping to find the fuel tanks. He scored. The tracers ignited a sea of gasoline. A flaming figure staggered from the inferno and stumbled into the coffee rows to burn. The sheet of flames blocked the vehicle-yard exit.
Lyons directed the line of 7.62mm at the gate, killing a sentry, shattering the windshield of a Silverado blocked by the burning truck. He swept the autofire across the other vehicles attempting to exit — trucks, cars, a bus. Tracers hit the chain link fencing and flew at wild angles. But the fragments and ricocheting heavy NATO slugs retained the velocity to punch through steel and flesh.
Militiamen evacuated their transports. Rifles and heavy weapons returned Lyons’s fire as Blancanales left the asphalt road for the muddy coffee fields. Ricardo directed his fire straight back at the vehicle yard, sending a line of tracers through the flames and smoke to rake militiamen and trucks and cars.
Ricochets from wild autofire scratched against the black overcast. The orange glow of the gasoline flames tinted the clouds.
“How we going to get out the gate?” Blancanales shouted to Lyons.
“Only one way. Crash it.”
Blancanales downshifted to power through mud and pools of rainwater. “We won’t make it. It’s steel beams and cables under the chain link.”
“You don’t think this jeep would do it?”
“If we try to crash that gate with this vehicle,” Blancanales emphasized, “we will disable this vehicle. We will be on foot. And then very quickly dead.”
“So the solution is obvious…”
Lyons looked back. Headlights followed them along the row of coffee. Ahead, their headlights illuminated a long corridor through endless coffee bushes. Standing in the front seat, he looked over the bushes but saw no roads or breaks in the green sea of the plantation.
Slugs tore past him as the militiamen sighted on their jeep’s taillights. Ricardo returned the fire. But with the lurching and bumping of the jeeps and trucks over the earth and mud, no one hit anyone.
Lyons climbed into the back. As Ricardo watched for targets, Lyons pulled his Colt Python. He held the
revolver by the barrel and leaned over the tailgate of the jeep. He smashed out the taillights.
Blancanales cut to the left. Crashing across rows, swerving, he zigzagged to confuse the pursuers. He maintained a course parallel to the road, then veered back for the blacktop. Lyons saw headlights in the rows continuing in the opposite direction.
But on the road, headlights waited for them. A truck’s spotlight swept the rows of coffee. Lyons motioned Ricardo to the front machine gun. He leaned to Blancanales and explained.
“Here’s the plan. Get as close to the road as you can while the kid puts out some rounds. Then turn parallel. Then cut for the road. Got it? Straight on, parallel, then straight on to the road and make it for the gate. I’ll be right behind you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m getting us a truck.”
“Crazyman!”
“You got any ideas?” Lyons touch-checked his equipment. Bandoliers. Pistols. Grenades. Knife.
As they neared the road, the spotlight found them. Autorifles fired. Blancanales switched off the headlights and swerved through bushes. Ricardo aimed the M-60 at the lights. Blancanales spoke to him quickly in Spanish. The teenager raised the barrel and fired a short burst over the truck.
Forms scattered. The searchlight went dark. Lyons tapped Blancanales.
“Now!”
The jeep slowed for a moment. Lyons stepped into the darkness, running for a few steps. He crashed into a bush and rolled through mud. The jeep accelerated away in the darkness, plunging through coffee rows.
Lyons moved fast. Mud sucked at his boots. Ahead, he heard voices. Rifles fired blindly into the coffee rows, the slugs cutting through leaves and branches. He moved closer. He saw militiamen bracing M-16 rifles on the hood of a gray Silverado. They watched the rows for the North Americans.
Lights appeared a hundred meters to his right as Blancanales switched on his headlights. The militiamen at the truck snapped bursts from their M-16s. The jeep’s headlights wavered as Blancanales bounced up the shoulder of the service road and skidded through a hard right turn.