"In a minute," Blancanales answered, then shouted. "Reload! Airstrip coming up!"
Accelerating, the truck lurching and bumping on its two shot-out tires, Blancanales left the road. At sixty miles an hour, he hit the chain link fence straight on. He ducked below the dash at the last instant.
Chain link and razor wire tangled on the truck's hood. Metal grinding, the truck came to a stop. Blancanales revved the engine, downshifted. The truck lurched forward a few feet, dragging wire and poles. Grimaldi leaned out the side window.
"You got a steel post jammed in the front end."
Blancanales climbed out, stepped over the tangled wire and steel, went down on his hands and knees in front of the truck. He gave the thumbs-down sign. "Time to walk."
Gadgets and Lyons gathered weapons. Gadgets paused to listen to his hand-radio, the voices frantic and chaotic. "Trucks coming. The airstrip sentries have spotted us."
"Jeep on the runway, coming this way!" Grimaldi shouted. He rested his M-203 on the truck, guessed the distance to the twin headlights, estimated the vehicle's speed, fired a 40mm HE grenade. The jeep exploded, the burning hulk rolling to a stop. "Jeep no longer coming this way!"
Loaded with weapons and ammunition, the four men jogged toward the hangars. They saw three sets of headlights on the road from the base. Another jeep left the hangars, racing toward the wrecked truck. In the center of the runway, the blasted jeep burned.
"Quick distraction," Lyons called out to the others. "Three high-explosive rounds, mortar-style for the airstrip turnoff. Maybe it'll slow down those trucks."
They braced the M-203 butt stocks against the asphalt, fired in high arcs. Reloading, they continued across the runway. The 40mm grenades hit without any effect, two popping in the open desert, only one near the road. But the trucks slowed. Gadgets flipped the switch on his hand-radio, screamed through it to the enemy: "Get back, all of you! Back! We got Feds all over the place. They're setting up a mortar. Make a run for it. We have to surrender. They're everywhere."
For emphasis, he fired another wild 40mm round. By some miracle, it actually hit the road, though one hundred yards short of the first truck. Several voices at once blared from the hand-radios.
"Not enough confusion," Gadgets grinned. "Give me your hand-radio." He snatched Blancanales' radio, switched it to the mercenary frequency. He set one radio to transmit, the other to receive, put them face to face. A high-pitched shriek filled the air. He looped the radios together with the wrist straps. "Until the batteries go out, nobody uses that frequency."
"Mr. Wizard strikes again!" Lyons laughed.
Spreading out to a four-man skirmish line, they rushed the hangars. Lyons saw a man run around the corner, then stop to raise his rifle. Lyons shot him. Blancanales watched the sentry station at the gate. The sentries heard the rifle shot, ducked down and aimed their rifles. Blancanales put an HE grenade into the station. There was a scream. A man crawled into the open, clutching at a twisted leg. Blancanales raised his rifle. Lyons shouted: "Don't! Don't kill him. These guys are just ex-cons down on their luck. The Feds'll pick him up."
"Lyons the nice guy," Blancanales called back. "Can't believe it!"
A mercenary appeared in the hangar door, his hands high. "Don't shoot! I'm only a mechanic."
A second man ran out, his arms up. "We give up."
"Anyone else in there?"
"Not in there," the first man told them. "Maybe in the other hangars."
"Where's the helicopter with the 106mm rifles?" Lyons demanded.
"It's here, why..."
"You want to live? Help us get it into the air."
Motivated by Lyons' rifle, the two mechanics pushed the hangar doors wide. Grimaldi ran to the modified Huey, stared at the hundred steel tubes in the cargo area.
"This thing is deadly! Is it loaded?" Grimaldi asked the mechanics.
"Sure is! We were getting it ready for tomorrow's demonstration. Everything's tip-top."
The little man climbed into the pilot's seat.
"Demonstration happens tonight. Get this thing out in the clear."
In less than a minute, the several men hauled the Huey out to the open runway. Grimaldi started the engines. He shouted down to Lyons: "You want to radio them? Give them a chance to surrender?"
"No talk. Just blast them. Just like they intended to do to the President of Mexico. Send their People's Republic to hell."
Blancanales laughed. "Now that's the Lyons we know and love!"
"Up, up, and away!" Grimaldi shouted over the rotor noise. He revved the engine and the helicopter floated up into the night sky.
"That's it," Lyons told the others. "This mission is hereby shut down."
"Not quite," Blancanales replied, pointing to the road. The trucks sped through the security gate, accelerated toward the hangars.
"Put grenades through the windshields!" Lyons unslung his rifle, sighted carefully, fired.
The grenade blasted the cab of the first truck. Grenades from the rifles of Blancanales and Gadgets hit the other trucks, one gutting another cab, killing the driver. The third grenade went low, exploding in the grillwork. The driver managed to swerve behind a building. The other trucks burned as soldiers scrambled from the tailgates.
Able Team didn't stop to assess the damage. Sprinting for the hangars, they sprayed one-handed bursts at the soldiers, not hitting anyone but forcing the soldiers to take cover. The soldiers returned the fire, bullets punching into sheet steel.
Inside the hangar, Lyons threw himself flat behind a forklift. Blancanales and Gadgets found cover, reloaded their weapons. Snapping a mag into his M-203, Lyons looked outside. He could see nothing.
"Mechanics! Turn off the worklights! Mechanics! Turn off..."
But their prisoners had disappeared. Lyons turned on his back, sighted on the glaring lights and shattered the bulbs with single shots. Now in darkness, they could see forms moving in the night outside, occasional muzzle-flashes.
Lyons switched on his hand-radio. The steady shriek still jammed the mercenary frequency. Lyons called across the hangar: "Gadgets! Turn off that noise! I want to try to talk them into surrendering."
In a moment, the shriek died away. Before Lyons could speak, his hand-set buzzed. It was Grimaldi: "What's going on down there? I see fire and shooting. You want me to try out this Stalin's Organ on those trucks?"
"No. You hit the mansion. All the leaders are up there. These soldiers will give up."
"You three against how many?"
"Quality versus quantity. Hit the mansion. They'll have nothing left to fight for. Do it, flyboy."
"I'll be back quick. Over."
* * *
One of the captured mechanics had briefed Grimaldi on the rocket launcher. To the pilot's left, a black circle on the Plexiglas served as a sight. A bank of ten switches triggered the 106mm rounds in bursts of ten, the electrical trigger impulses firing at intervals of a quarter second. When the pilot hit the switch, ten rounds fired within two and a half seconds. Depending on the helicopter's speed and motion, the high-explosive warheads would strafe or saturate a target.
He circled the mountaintop estate. In the blaze of lights illuminating the grounds, he saw three men in gaudy uniforms, a man in a suit, and a woman. They stood at the Spanish-style mansion's entryway, watching the helicopter above them. Grimaldi flipped up the safety plate covering the ten switches, sighted on the entryway.
"Bye bye, People's Leaders!" he said, flipping the first switch.
His aim was a bit off. The ten rounds blasted away the second floor of the mansion, showering the generals with steel shrapnel and fragments of stucco and tile. Continuing his circle, Grimaldi saw that only the front of the house remained, the rear of the house a tangled mass of smashed masonry and framing. He sighted on what remained, flipped the second switch.