Scorched Earth at-13

by Dick Stivers

  In front of Gadgets, Lyons nodded. He pulled off his backpack and found his one smoke grenade. Gadgets turned to Davis.

  "The boots fit?" he asked.

  "Too small. Maybe they'll fit if I cut the leather."

  "Forget it. We'll look for a Mexican with bigger feet. It's time to move."

  "Where? How can we goddamn well move anywhere? They'll blow us to pieces."

  "Be cool, man. We've got a chance. Could be a lot worse. What the hell! That's a helicopter!"

  Rotor throb increased in intensity. The mortar rounds stopped as a Huey troopship descended into the canyon. A gunner at the door pointed an M-60 machine gun. The muzzle flashed and the slugs exploded in lines across the slabs of stone sheltering them.

  "Panic time!" Gadgets shouted to Davis. He keyed his hand radio. "Get ready to pop the grenades. Buzz me back when you're ready to run for it."

  Wedging his body against a rock, Lyons looked over to Gadgets. "What do you think?"

  Slugs poured down on the streambed from the rifles on the ridge, from the helicopter's gunner, from the riflemen pursuing them. Gadgets forced a smile.

  "Maybe they'll run out of ammunition," he said.

  The rotor throb changed. They looked up to see glittering sheets of Plexiglas falling through space. The helicopter spun in the air, out of control for an instant, the machine-gun fire punching a line of slugs across the canyon wall, then the pilot regained control and took the troopship straight up.

  The rip-shriek sound of a high-velocity, heavy-caliber slug pierced the air. The noise came from above them, crossing the canyon from the southeast to the northwest. A rifle's report carried to them. They heard another velocity shriek. Then another and another.

  "What the hell's going on?" Gadgets wondered aloud.

  Lyons watched the ridge through his binoculars.

  In the gorge, the Mexican army platoon resumed its autofire and aimed rifle fire. But no rifle fire came down from the ridge.

  Through the binoculars, Lyons saw specks scrambling along the ridge. Then he saw something else, on the ridge but in a different place.

  A mirror flashed. In code.

  "Wizard, up there on the ridge." Lyons passed the binoculars to Gadgets. "There's a signal mirror."

  "It's Morse," Schwarz declared. "It's saying... esperen... alli... nosotros... los... ayudaremos. Hey, we've got friends up there. They're telling us to lay cool."

  Lyons laughed. "I'm cool, you're cool. It's those Mexicans who're..."

  High-velocity slugs whined over them. A barrage of rifle grenades fell in a continuous roar of explosions. Then a storm of M-16 fire ripped the area, the Mexicans firing out their magazines in continuous full-auto.

  "Here they come!" Davis shouted.

  The Mexicans rushed.

  * * *

  On the high ridge above the canyon, Sergeant Mendoza watched the helicopter break off the attack. He signaled to his mortar crew to resume fire, and the riflemen continued blasting the North Americans in the canyon.

  Mendoza turned to his radioman. He switched the radio to the helicopter's frequency and took the handset. Behind him, a man shouted.

  A soldier rolled down the slope. The sergeant saw the two remaining men of the mortar crew staring wide-eyed at the falling man.

  The firing of the other men died away. They all turned to watch the soldier as he came to a flopping stop in the rocks. He did not move. No one spoke. The firefight continued in the canyon below them, distance reducing the reports of the rifles and the explosions of the grenades to pops and sputters.

  In the near-silence, the shriek of a heavy-caliber bullet and unnerving slap of the bullet hitting flesh startled the squad. Blood misted in the air as another soldier flew backward from the mortar. He spun and hit the rocks face first. Blood fountained from a hole in his back. Gasping, vomiting blood, the soldier tried to stand. He rolled to the side and sat up. His eyes stared around him. Then he fell back, dead.

  Scrambling through the rocks, the squad took cover. Ordering two men to take the places of the dead men at the mortar, Mendoza lifted the handset to hear the pilot of the helicopter calling.

  "Sergeant! Sergeant Mendoza..."

  The handset was ripped from his hand as the radioman fell backward. Pieces of metal and plastic tinkled on the stones as radio components rained down. A bullet had killed the radioman, then exited through his back to shatter the circuitry of the radio into a thousand pieces.

  A man shouted to the other soldiers, and frantically pointed across the canyon to the far mountain. The sergeant raised his field glasses and scanned the mountainsides.

  He saw only mesquite and dust and rocks. Nothing moved. Then a semicircle of dust suddenly stirred.

  An instant later, a bullet shrieked into the ridge and exploded in the rocks. A man screamed. A near-miss had ricocheted from the rock protecting him, and the smashed, misshapen slug entered his shoulder and erupted through his knee. Two soldiers dragged him below the edge of the ridge and attempted to stop the gushing blood. One glance told Mendoza the man had no hope.

  The squad abandoned the ridge and scrambled to the safety of the mountainside, leaving the mortar in place, the 81mm rounds piled on a plastic tarp.

  Sergeant Mendoza unslung his FN-FAL para-rifle and swung out the metal-tubing stock. Laying low on the ridge, he braced the long-range kill machine and sighted on the dust thrown up by the rifle on the opposite mountainside.

  But in the glare, he could not see the dust. He raised his field glasses to locate the sniper. A bullet exploded against the rocks a step away as the sniper searched for targets.

  Squinting through his rifle's peep sight, Mendoza could only adjust for the range by guess. The FN-FAL did not have a click adjustment for extreme ranges. He fired single shots, attempting to find the sniper.

  Then he heard the rifle fire behind him.

  * * *

  Lyons switched magazines as the Mexicans rushed the last hundred meters. He returned the load of one-ounce slugs to his bandolier and snapped in the partially empty mag of number-two and double-ought steel shot mix. He took out a second mag of mixed-shot rounds and tucked it into the front pocket of his gray fatigue shirt.

  The Mexicans, expecting to find a group of dead and wounded North Americans hiding in the rocks, attempted to finish the foreigners in one rush of sprayed full-auto fire. The men of Able Team waited. Mexican riflemen in concealment overlooking the streambed continued aiming fire into the rocks. The riflemen stopped shooting only when the soldiers closed on the North Americans.

  Able Team waited until the Mexicans ran into the maze of rocks. Lyons saw a green uniform rushing toward him. He fired, and the blast lifted the Mexican off his feet and slammed him down. Gadgets triggered a 3-shot burst through another Mexican.

  Another soldier spun at the sound of shooting to his side and took a steel storm of number two and double ought in the face. He fell, and Davis put the muzzle of his M-16 against the dead man's chest and killed him again.

  A Mexican saw Davis and fired as Lyons fired. High-velocity slugs tore past Davis and exploded on the rocks and the Mexican died, his chest blasted open, one arm and his rifle spinning wildly through the air.

  Miguel Coral popped up, fired a burst through a soldier, then dropped down as a rifleman two hundred meters to the south squeezed off a shot. Coral scrambled to another rock and fired at a running soldier, hitting him in one leg. The wounded soldier staggered past Blancanales, who shot him in the back. Then the Politician delivered a mandate of full-auto fire at another Mexican. Slugs from his M-16/M-203 tore the soldier to pieces.

  Lyons snatched a glance, then quickly dropped down as a slug from an FN-FAL whined off the rock. But he had seen no other soldier still standing. He took an M-16 from a dead man, changed mags, then called out to his partners: "Anyone hit?"

  "I'm bleeding," Davis answered.

  "Is it serious?" Lyons called out.

  "I don't know. But I'm bleeding like crazy."


  Blancanales crawled to Davis. "It's not a bullet wound. He hit his head on a rock."

  "Any of the soldiers alive?" Lyons asked.

  The others all answered, no.

  Lyons shouted out again. "We've got riflemen downstream. One on each side, with heavy rifles. We can't move until we get them. Everyone shift positions and on three, pop up and fire. Got it? Answer me, Davis!"

  "I can handle it."

  "No hay problema," Coral answered. "I have seen them."

  "Shift and fire, shift and fire," Blancanales repeated.

  "One... two... three!"

  The five men lurched up and fired in a tearing burst. Dropping down, they heard a rifle firing back. They shifted positions in the rocks. One by one, they fired bursts, then dodged down before the rifleman could find them in his sight.

  Staying flat on the sand and exposing only one eye, Lyons peered up at the canyon wall. He saw a rifleman pressing a field dressing against a bloody arm. Sighting on the wounded man, Lyons squeezed off a burst. The rifleman's body rolled down the slope.

  A second rifleman broke for the safety of the streambed, running a few steps, then sliding down the steep canyon wall. Blancanales and Gadgets and Coral fired simultaneously, the slugs from three rifles tearing through the man's head and chest.

  "That's it," Gadgets announced.

  "Stay down!" Lyons shouted. "Gather up whatever equipment we can use and then crawl out. There could be another one out there."

  "Ironman, put the binocs on that ridge," Gadgets told him. "Something's going on up there."

  Focusing on the mountain overlooking the can-yon, Lyons saw figures moving. They did not wear the green uniforms of the Mexican army. Light flashes came from mirrors.

  "Wizard, what's their code say?" Lyons called out.

  "F-i-n-i...fini..."

  10

  In the last hour of morning, they met the Yaquis.

  After the firefight Able Team had bandaged Davis, then outfitted themselves with weapons and gear from the dead Mexican soldiers. Lyons and Davis and Coral found folding-stock FN-FAL paratrooper rifles. Davis and Coral stripped the dead of knives and packs and clothing. They had marched for the rest of the morning and afternoon, watching signal mirrors flash from the cliffs and mountainsides above them.

  Following the streambed north, they left the gorge and climbed trails cutting across the sides of mountains. Animal prints marked the trails, but they saw no human footprints. Yet they knew others walked in these mountains. The others watched them from ridgelines, signal mirrors flashing from mountain to mountain.

  The introduction came abruptly. Lyons, sweating under his load of gear and weapons, had walked point for the preceding hour. He looked down to check the trail for tracks, then looked up to see the three young men.

  Two of the young men carried M-16 rifles. The third carried what looked like a .30-06 Springfield rifle with a custom stock featuring a pistol grip.

  Lyons knew that rifle, or a rifle like it, had saved them from the trap in the gorge.

  Lyons let the FN-FAL rifle in his hands hang by the strap over his shoulder. He crossed his hands over the top of the receiver. He stood without moving as the others caught up with him.

  Blancanales spoke first in Spanish. "Buenas tardes."

  "We will speak English," the young man with the Springfield told the foreigners.

  "Thanks for helping us," Lyons said. "Without you, we'd be dead now."

  "Why are you in our mountains?"

  "The Mexican army," Lyons explained, "or a gang dressed in the uniforms of the Mexican army, shot down our plane. We're walking to the railroad. We'll take the train down to the coast. Who are you?"

  "Are you with the Ochoa family?"

  Behind Lyons, Blancanales whispered quickly with Miguel Coral.

  "Don't talk about it," the young man with the Springfield told them. "Answer."

  Coral stepped forward. "I served Don Ochoa. But he is gone now."

  "Do you serve now with Los Guerreros Blancos?"

  "Those assassins!" Coral spat on the trail. "They killed my friends, they killed the children of my friends, they mutilated one of the sons of mi Padrino Ochoa. Juntarme con esos? Jamas primero muerto!"

  "Who are you?" Lyons asked again. "Why are you asking about Los Blancos?"

  The young man answered. "We are Yoeme. The Mexicans call us Yaquis. We also fight the White gang. Come."

  "Yaquis?" Blancanales asked, incredulous. "Yaqui Indians?"

  "I said, Yoeme. Yaquis. The Yoeme do not come from India. We are the people of this land."

  The three Yaquis led the way.

  "Broncos..."Miguel Coral told the North Americans. "Wild ones. The old men used to talk about Yaquis and Mayos and Tarahumaras who still fought in the Sierras, but that was when I was a boy. Even then no one believed it and that was thirty years ago."

  "We go?" Lyons asked.

  "Why not?" Gadgets answered. "We're here, let's make the scene."

  Blancanales looked to the Yaquis striding away. "They said they're fighting the White gang, Los Guerreros Blancos. I think we have a lot to talk over with them."

  "We came for information," Lyons said, nodding. He started after the young men. "And they've got it."

  * * *

  To keep pace with the Yaquis, Lyons forced himself to jog. He realized why he had not seen tracks. The Yaquis wore rags over the soles of their boots. Their footsteps were only vague smears on the sand. His boots, stamping into the trail with the combined weight of his body and the equipment and weapons, left deep imprints.

  They walked for kilometers, over the crest of a ridge, through a canyon. The Yaquis led them through the zigzags of a switchback trail weaving up the slope of a mountain. Sweat soaked Lyons's fatigues and rained into the dust of the trail.

  On the last switchback before the top, the young Yaquis disappeared. Lyons looked up to the ridge. He did not see them.

  Lyons stopped and studied the mountainside. Thoughts raced through his mind. Ambush? No. The Yaquis had saved them. Had the Yaquis abandoned them? He followed the vague smears of the Yaquis's tracks to a rock formation of vertical slabs. He found a shoulder-wide space in the rocks. The tracks led through the space. Inside the mountain, he saw what appeared to be the interior of a cave, highlighted by late-afternoon sunlight that came through the ceiling.

  Taking a step back, Lyons studied a patchwork that stretched over the mountainside. The color of the cloth matched the sand. Splotches and patterns of gray matched the rocks and stone formations. Green plastic created the illusion of weeds. Planes or helicopters — or photo-recon satellites orbiting the earth — would see this mountain as no different from all the others in the Sierra Madres.

  Lyons looked back. His partners and Davis and Coral struggled to catch up with him. Behind them, Yaqui children ran along the trail with mesquite branches, sweeping away the boot prints of the foreigners. A child laughed at a question from Blancanales, answering with a point to where Lyons stood.

  Stepping through the gateway of stone, Lyons entered the shadowy interior. A fissure cut through the stone of the mountain. Along the sides of the fissure, three levels of caves had been cut into the stone. Stone steps led to the entrances of the caves. In addition to screening the interior of the mountain from airborne observation, the tent of camouflage, reinforced with spider works of rope inside, protected the village of caves from the sun and the wind.

  Inside, Yaquis waited for the foreigners. Lyons saw young men and women, a few children, a few older people. Perhaps fifty people. Their faces showed neither welcome nor hatred, only interest. As Gadgets, Blancanales, Coral and Davis filed into the hidden village, Lyons noted details.

  Like the three young men who had led them to the village, the men and most of the young women wore dust-colored cotton clothes. Many carried holstered revolvers and autopistols. Some of the men had dirt and bloodstains on their clothes. Sweat had streaked the crust of dust on their faces.

&nb
sp; The interior smelled of cooking, but not of wood burning. Long ago, wood fires had blackened the tops of the caves with soot. But in a cave on the first level, Lyons saw pots bubbling on the gas burners of a clay stove. The cooking fire made no smoke.

  In the same communal kitchen, white plastic pipe carried water to a sink made of fired clay. He saw a drainpipe under the sink. A woman making a meal from a stack of captured Mexican army rations looked directly into Lyons's eyes.

  Above the crowd, people looked down from the second and third levels of caves. Clotheslines with pulleys ran from one side of the crevice to the other. High above the others, from above the third level of caves, a young woman in dust-colored clothes and web gear looked down. She wore binoculars around her neck, and held an M-16. Only the rise of her breasts under her shirt and the khaki scarf over her hair distinguished her from the males.

  To one side of him, Lyons saw captured Mexican army equipment and weapons on a plastic tarp. Uniforms, web gear, boots, binoculars, a mortar and rounds, a few Uzi submachine guns, a stack of M-16 and FN-FAL rifles were all arranged and ordered like a quartermaster's display.

  A stripped M-16 lay on a cloth. The Yaqui cleaning the assault rifle finished his task with a last flourish of an oily rag, then snapped the weapon together. He stood to watch the strangers arriving.

  "These people have got their act together," Gadgets said behind Lyons.

  Blancanales noted the weapons. "The mortar, the rifles. The food. They captured all that today."

  "It's an invisible town," Lyons commented.

  "Not a town," Blancanales corrected. "Almost all these people are fighters."

  The young man with the Springfield rifle stepped out of a second-level cave, and an old man followed him. The old man paused to study the five strangers, then came down the stone steps.

  The young man spoke to the elder in the Yaqui language. The old man nodded and smiled to the foreigners as he listened. Finally, the old man grasped the youth's shoulder and spoke quietly to him. Then the old man spoke to the foreigners. "He tells me you are friends of Senor Ochoa. Come to my room, tell us of the war in Culiacan. And I will tell you of the war in our mountains."