Shotgun blasts went off above them. Wadding and hot powder rained on them. Lyons grabbed an Uzi from the hands of a corpse. Flat on the concrete, he emptied the Uzi in a wild, one-handed spray in the direction of the fascist gunmen. Then he dropped the empty weapon and crawled through blood to the panel truck.
Heavy-caliber slugs punched through the truck, glass flying. Lyons looked inside.
No Gunther.
Lyons grabbed his Atchisson and the Uzi he had captured in the alley firefight. He saw Coral and the others firing from the cover of a bullet-pocked Dodge a few steps away.
Blancanales and Gadgets crawled through the slaughter. They both had Uzis over their shoulders. Magazines weighed down their pockets. Each held an autopistol in one hand.
"Move it, Ironman!" Gadgets shouted as they ran to join Coral.
Blood puddled on the oily concrete. Staying low, Lyons looked for Gunther in the tangle of corpses. He saw a headless corpse and a man with his hands knotted in his spilled intestines, and a wounded man vomiting blood. One fascist crawled away, dragging a shattered leg. A shotgun blast struck him low in the back, his clothing suddenly torn and bloody as his broken-backed corpse flopped.
But no Gunther.
Lyons crabbed under the panel truck, then scrambled for the wall of parked cars, calling out, "Amigos! Mis amigos Ochoas! No dispare!"
An Ochoa man reloading a Remington 1100 gave him a salute and a grin. To the side, a revolver popped and a light went out. Gadgets sat against the shelter of a police car, plinking at the overhead lights with a captured .38 revolver. One by one, he shot out the light bulbs.
"Where's Gunther?" Lyons yelled out. "Dande estd Gunther?"
"No se," answered the Ochoa with the Remington.
"It happened too fast," Coral shouted. "But he is here. We will find him. He will not escape you."
Gadgets popped out another light. "That ain't the question. Our problem at the moment is for us to escape them."
"Wrong attitude, Wizard." Lyons flicked the safety off his Atchisson. Heavy with weapons and ammunition the assault shotgun in his hands, an Uzi over his shoulder, pistols in his holsters and pockets, magazines in other pockets he moved to the side.
Blancanales followed him. The Ochoa with the Remington joined the North Americans as they slipped from parked car to parked car. Gadgets fired above them, still popping light bulbs.
Gunmen of the International spotted Lyons's flanking team. Heavy-caliber slugs punched the cars. Other fascists sprayed 9mm autofire at the concrete, trying to create skipping ricochets under the cars to wound the flankers.
Flat on his belly as NATO-caliber slugs came through the car door above him, Lyons saw feet running. He fired under the car, the double-ought buckshot bouncing off the concrete. A foot disappeared. The gunman staggered forward, trying to run on the bones of his ankle but falling. Lyons fired again, at a distance of ten feet, the load of buckshot tearing a two-inch-wide hole through the fascist's torso.
The dead man had an FN FAL para-rifle. He wore a bandolier of magazines. Keeping his head down, Lyons stripped the man of his weapons and ammunition. He also found a 9mm autopistol. He passed the FN FAL to Blancanales.
Continuing in a semicircle, they came to a traffic lane. Lyons looked out from behind a parked car. Fascists fired an explosion of 9mm slugs at him. Bullets popped the tire near his ear.
"Pol! I'm going across. You and Senor Remington put out some fire. On three. One! Two! Three!"
Weapons fired in one long blast. Lyons dived across the traffic lane to the shelter of a concrete pillar. As he scrambled behind the pillar, bullets chipped the other side, ricochets whining to hit concrete and cars.
Lyons crabbed another few feet to a parked truck. He saw polished shoes and pressed slacks. A gunman pointed his Uzi down at Lyons and Lyons rolled and fired the Atchisson one-handed, the blast catching the fascist in the crotch, flipping the man face first onto the concrete. His arteries pumping jets of blood out of a vast wound, the fascist tried to raise himself on his arms.
Lyons did not waste another 12-gauge round. Standing, he brought the butt of the Atchisson down on the back of the man's neck, snapping his vertebrae.
Another gunman ran around the back of the truck. Point-blank, Lyons put a 12-gauge blast through the man's face.
"Pol!"
"Can't! Cannot do it."
Letting his assault shotgun hang from his shoulder by its sling, Lyons snatched up the Uzis of the dead men. An Uzi in his left hand, he leaned from cover and sprayed out the magazine. Return fire smashed into the truck. Lyons felt blood flowing down his arm. Blood dripped from his sleeve.
The blood of other men covered his sports coat. He could not see his own wound. He could not stop to find it. Dropping the blood-slick Uzi, he shifted his position. NATO slugs tore through the truck as riflemen tried to kill him.
Blancanales answered with the FN FAL para-rifle.
Over the sights of the Uzi, Lyons saw a fascist stagger back. Then the Remington 1100 blasted a gunman's face and hands away. Lyons spotted a leg and put a burst of 9mm slugs through it. As the wounded man clawed at the concrete, another burst killed him.
Fascists retreated to the ramp, trying to gain the safety of the street. The Ochoas cut them down with shotguns and bursts of .45-caliber slugs. Gadgets broke cover and pursued the fascists, firing quick bursts from an Uzi into any fascist still holding a weapon.
A wounded man with a pistol got a 3-shot burst to the face. A running fascist got four 9mm slugs through the back. A soldier in camouflage-patterned fatigues tried to tear a grenade from his web belt but died.
Lyons changed magazines and charged, killing everyone in front of him. Wounded men, fascists crawling to escape blasts of 12-gauge ended their allegiance to the Pan-American Reich.
A shot zipped past Lyons's face. He whirled, unleashing a full-auto burst from his Atchisson. A fascist with a pistol disintegrated as three blasts of double-ought and number-two buckshot ripped away an arm, opened his chest and tore off his head.
"Where's General Mendez? Where's Gunther?" Lyons shouted to the others as he searched for another Atchisson magazine in his pockets.
"I think the general made it out," Gadgets called back. As the firing died, he took that moment to change Uzi mags. "I haven't seen Gunther."
A full-auto burst from an M-16 chipped concrete, the high-velocity 5.56mm slugs whining and ricocheting through the garage.
Caught in the open with empty weapons, Lyons and Gadgets looked up the ramp. Lieutenant Soto and a wall of black-clad Mexican army commandos stood at the top.
Each of their rifles pointed at the North Americans.
16
Spinning to face the line of soldiers, Lyons slammed a magazine into his assault shotgun and thumbed down the fire-selector to full auto.
Gadgets screamed, "Don't. They're good guys!"
Lyons stopped an instant before his index finger touched the trigger. "What?"
"Yeah, man. The lieutenant's okay. He tried to stop the colonel from taking us here. And he got banged upside the head for thanks."
Setting the safety of his Atchisson, Lyons strode up the ramp to the Mexican soldiers. The lieutenant directed his soldiers to form a cordon around the entrance. He motioned Lyons back.
"You cannot be seen," Lieutenant Soto told him. The young officer accompanied him down the ramp. Lyons saw that a huge scab of drying blood matted the lieutenant's black hair. "There will be much trouble soon. I may lose my commission. Or I may be a hero. But first we must do what must be done."
"Now do you know what's going on?" Lyons asked.
"Yes, now I know."
Blancanales greeted the lieutenant with a quick medical exam. "How's your head? Do you feel dizzy? Nauseated? Do you have a medic with you?"