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 okay 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.
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.