"Forget the gate!" Blancanales shouted back. Slugs ripped through the canopy's canvas and punched into the sheet metal cab. "Put out some firepower, passengers."
Lyons found the already open case of 40mm HE grenades, jammed one in an M-203. He fired wild, reloaded, fired again. He broke open the case of 40mm CN grenades. The truck swerved, throwing him on his shoulder.
Gadgets sent a blast of .45 caliber slugs through two mercenaries. The MAC-10 clicked empty. He switched magazines, but then slung the small weapon over his shoulder and grabbed an M-203, loading it with a grenade. He passed the weapon to Lyons: "Teamwork time. Just shoot."
Lyons snapped grenades in all directions as Gadgets loaded. Explosions and CN gas sent soldiers diving for cover, staggering blind and vomiting. Lyons slapped in twenty-round mags of 5.56mm, sprayed the buildings, grabbed another reloaded weapon from Gadgets, fired another grenade.
A major flash lit the night. Huge roaring shook the camp as exploding ammunition belched fire into the sky.
The truck lurched twice as Blancanales smashed through the double chain link fences, snapping off poles and shredding wire.
"We're out!"
18
Pardee charged through the stinking CN gas, snapping shots at the truck. The truck hurtled toward the road, dragging chain link and poles, disappearing into the dust clouds and darkness. A final 40mm grenade slammed into a barrack wall and the explosion ripped away the head and arms of a soldier who had been leaning there, choking on CN gas. Truncated torso and legs flopped about in the dust.
"Ralston! RALSTON!" Pardee bellowed. Holstering his .45, Pardee shoved soldiers aside, running through the confusion, searching for the platoon leader. "Ralston!"
"Here, sir!" The short wide-shouldered mercenary rushed to his commander.
"Take ten men. Get one of the helicopters to the south road. If those Feds try to make it to the state highway, hit them. Try to take them alive, but stop them."
Ralston ran in the direction of the base offices. Pardee had had the helicopter pilots land the Hueys there to speed his capture of the three federal agents, but the goddamned agents had then roared through the camp in the stolen truck.
Speaking into his hand-radio, Pardee called all his platoon leaders: "Assemble your men. Get them into the trucks. Issue all the available ammunition. Make sure they have flashlights. Now!"
Five voices answered at once, all trying to question their new commander. Pardee cut them all off. "Shut up! Assemble your men."
The wounded screamed. Their friends clustered around the thrashing, struggling injured, wrapping field dressings over wounds, injecting morphine. Pardee saw four men gathered around one man. Two men held the sobbing, writhing man down. They spoke to console him while his other friends worked on his wounds, one of them knotting a tourniquet around the stump of a leg, the other pressing plastic sheeting over a sucking chest wound.
"Leave him!" Pardee commanded. "Assemble with your platoons."
"Sir! He's got a chance to live if..."
Pardee fired a .45 slug through the wounded man's head. "He's dead. Join your platoons."
One of the men snatched his M-16 from the dirt, tried to bring the muzzle to bear on Pardee. A .45 slug slammed him back.
"Now go!" Pardee shouted, waving the pistol past the other men's faces. Slowly, not taking their eyes from Pardee, the three men picked up their rifles, backed away, then ran toward the barracks and the waiting trucks.
Rotors throbbed. Pardee saw dust clouding against the glare of the mercury-arc lights. He holstered his Colt, ran for the second helicopter.
* * *
Jerking a tangle of chain link away from the truck cab, Jack Grimaldi swung open the door. Forty millimeter and 5.56mm brass casings fell to the asphalt. Grimaldi took the passenger seat even as the truck accelerated.
"Hey, Rosario! Que pasa?" The flyer extraordinaire gave Blancanales a punch in the shoulder. "Saw the fireworks down there. Anything left for me to do?"
"Sure," Blancanales grinned. "Best part is yet to come. But first, could you reload everything for me? Been kinda too busy."
"Yeah, looks that way." Grimaldi looked around at the bullet holes in the cab, the spider-web shattered windshield. He picked up the M-203, found magazines and 40mm shells.
"It's super-fly!" Lyons joked through the shattered back window.
"Ironman! When do I go to work?"
"Ever fire 106mm recoilless rifles from a Huey? A hundred of them?"
"What? Never even heard of..."
"Lyons!" Gadgets shouted from the tailgate. "Helicopter coming after us!"
Scrambling over the weapons, boxes, and rolling cartridge cases, Lyons went to the tailgate, saw the silhouette of a helicopter against the flames and smoke of the camp. But it banked to the south.
"They're going toward the highway," Lyons said. "We got them fooled."
"Guess again."
A second helicopter rose from the camp, banked north. "Oh, shit," Lyons muttered. "Up front, prepare to get strafed!"
Grimaldi heard Lyons' warning, looked over to Blancanales. "Tell me, Rosario. How exactly does someone 'prepare to get strafed'?"
"Say your prayers," Blancanales suggested.
"No time." Grimaldi jammed extra mags for the M-203 in his jump suit's pockets. He pulled a tiny MAC-11 out of a shoulder holster, looped its strap over his right arm. He chambered a round in the M-203, opened the truck's door.
"Where you going?" Blancanales asked.
"I'm preparing to strafe back!" Grimaldi laughed as he climbed onto the roof of the truck cab. He jammed his legs down between the cab and the canvas canopy, hooked his boots through the shattered window. He braced the auto-rifle/grenade launcher on the canopy frame and waited.
Dropping down to only ten feet above the desert, the Huey paralleled the road at a hundred miles an hour.
"Pilots or the tail rotor!" Grimaldi shouted. He didn't wait for the helicopter's door gunner to fire the first round. He snapped bursts of two and three shots at the Plexiglas windshields of the Huey.
Holding the trigger down, Lyons emptied a magazine at the helicopter, dropped the empty mag, slapped in the second as .308 slugs slammed into the steel of the truck. Gadgets held the MAC-10 in his right hand, the M-203 in his left, and sprayed the helicopter, oblivious to the slugs and tracers streaking past him. Letting the machine pistol hang by its strap, Gadgets fired a 40mm grenade as the helicopter dosed on them.
The grenade popped against the helicopter, releasing a puff of CN gas. "Oops, wrong box," Gadgets muttered.
As the helicopter roared past, with the door gunner firing the M-60 point-blank into the truck, Lyons sighted on the side door and fired his 40mm grenade. The flash lit Pardee's face behind the M-60, then a man crouched behind him in the interior of the Huey exploded, pieces of his body and the bodies of other men falling from the opposite side of the helicopter.
The line of tracers from the M-60 went wild, spraying the sky. On top of the truck, Grimaldi fired a 40mm HE grenade directly into the tail rotor. Steel shrieked. The tail boom disintegrated, the helicopter pitched sideways, losing the ten feet of altitude separating it from the desert. The skids hit the sand sideways, flipped the helicopter.
Rolling, rotor blades flailing the earth then breaking loose, the helicopter cartwheeled.
Blancanales didn't slow the truck. Shot through-and-through, the two right rear tires flapped against the frame. Smoke poured from the tailpipe and from under the hood. He took his sheath knife, cut the last shards of shattered windshield from the frame.
"Everybody alive?" Blancanales called out.
"We're all right," Gadgets shouted. "Where's Grimaldi?"
"I'm okay." Grimaldi, little Stony Man hero, slung his M-203 over his shoulder and climbed down from the roof of the truck. The cab's passenger seat had been shredded by .308 slugs. It smoldered from a tracer. He patted out the smoking plastic. "That was fun. But I came to fly. When do I get to do my stuff?"