"Three points!" Powell raved. "That's no lame-loser lingo. That's high jive."
"Quit the talk!" Blancanales shouted out. "Put out rounds!"
Gadgets took the M-16/M-203 and the canvas bag of 40mm shells. He chambered a shell and snapped closed the launcher. "Where's the man with the rockets?"
"Right... there," Blancanales said as he triggered another long burst, three tracers arching down into the shadow.
A 40mm grenade followed the tracers. High-explosive popped and a rocket went wild, streaking over the roofs of the ranch buildings and hitting the hillside near the wrecked truck and trailer. Brush flamed.
Reloading quickly, Gadgets watched an Iranian run from the ranch and take cover in the gully beyond. Other Iranians followed, sprinting away from the flames and slaughter. A line of rifles fired from the embankment.
Slugs zipped past the ridgeline. Gadgets searched through the bag of grenades, squinting at the markings in the moonlight. He found what he wanted. Laughing, he chambered the shell and sent it down.
White phosphorus sprayed the gully. A man ran from the fire, points of white flame glowing on his body. He stumbled into the weeds and fell, flames and smoke rising as his body ignited the weeds.
Gadgets aimed a second white phosphorus grenade into another section of the gully. The chemical fire sprayed twenty meters of brush and weeds, flames coming immediately. An Iranian ran from the brush-fire. As the Iranian stood silhouetted against the flames, Gadgets saw the M-60 and the rifles stagger him, multiple hits throwing him back into the fire.
"That Jap Jeep!" Gadgets shouted out as he slammed a 40mm shell into the grenade launcher. "Pol, hit it!"
A four-wheel-drive Toyota wove across the ranch, swerving around running men and flaming brush. Blancanales sent a line of tracers at it, missing as the Toyota wove across the airstrip then disappeared behind the flames and black smoke of the burning plane.
Blancanales estimated the Toyota's path. Arcing tracers past the plane's flames, he waited for the sight of the Toyota. Gadgets fired a high-explosive grenade. The distant pop raised a circle of dust.
The Toyota reappeared, racing in the opposite direction. Jumping ditches, swaying wildly, the Toyota accelerated on the stretch of road. Tracers and rifle fire followed it, but the zigzagging vehicle hurtled past the house, struck a running Iranian, then disappeared again, this time into the darkness at the south end of the ranch.
Powell and Akbar continued firing. Blancanales shouted, "Stop! Our partner's..."
"Damn, that Eranie made it away!" Powell cursed.
Gadgets laughed. "Not yet..."
19
Engine screaming, the Toyota low geared through the brush and small trees. Lyons saw the driver wrench the wheel and the wagon dropped down the gully wall. The tires sprayed mud from the stream.
"Soto!" Lyons hissed.
The young infantry captain turned, the angles of his Nahuatl features silhouetted against the fires. The noises of splashing and slamming continued as the four-wheel drive vehicle maneuvered through the darkness. Soto issued quick instructions to his three remaining soldiers, then edged back to Lyons.
"That car," Lyons told him. "It could be leaders. What do you say you and me try to take them prisoner?"
Soto nodded. He crouchwalked back to the nearest Mexican soldier. On the distant ridgeline, Lyons saw the muzzles of weapons flashing, a machine gun and several rifles firing down at the ranch. No organized resistance countered the attack. Kalashnikov rifles and Uzis popped from time to time as individual Iranians blindly sprayed bullets at the hill, but their firing only attracted the downward directed aimed fire of the attackers' NATO-caliber weapons.
When Soto returned, they moved south again, retracing their path above and parallel to the gully.
They heard the Toyota crashing through brush, the engine roaring as the driver tried to double clutch. Then gears shrieked and the motor died.
Doors slammed and men cursed and shouted. Lyons moved quickly, silently, Soto a shadow a few steps back. They gained on the voices.
In the gully, flashlights lit the darkness. Lyons slowed, his steps silent in the sand of the hillside. He found a break in the weeds and brush, and going flat, he looked down into the gully.
Two Iranians were attempting to push the Toyota off a rock. The rock had bent the front bumper, then smashed into the frame. Pinned, the front wheels off the ground, the rear wheels in water and mud, the Toyota could go neither forward nor backward.
Then, in the reflecting yellow glow of a flashlight, Lyons saw the faces of the men. One had the thick features and beard of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard. But the other man had black skin and African features. His Afro shone like a halo when a flashlight swept past him.
Soto slid up beside Lyons. He noticed the black man and whispered to Lyons, "A negro?"
"Yeah." The grunting and cursing of the two men and the distant battle covered their whispered words. "Bet you a thousand pesos he's an American. A norteamericano. We ran into a black nationalist in Beirut," Lyons said.
"I cannot understand. Black North Americans attacking the United States?"
"They hate whites. They think whites are devils created by God. They say they are Muslims, but real Muslims don't accept them. I guess he's working with the Iranians to kill white people."
The Iranian and the black man froze. Had they heard Lyons and Soto?
Autofire sprayed the Toyota, slugs hammering the heavy steel bumper, shattering the windshield and side windows. The two men went flat in the mud. The black man unslung an Uzi and sprayed out a magazine of 9mm.
Then both men ran. Forms splashed through the stream, muzzle-flashes from an Uzi tracking the retreating Iranian and black. But the noise of the men running splashes and curses and arms thrashing against branches continued to the north, back to the rancho.
A Mexican soldier rushed to the Toyota and looked inside. He carried an Uzi. Web gear taken from Iranians crisscrossed his camou-patterned fatigues. A second Mexican appeared, his bloody right arm strapped against his body, his FN FAL slung over his back. The wounded man held a pistol in his left hand.
"Mis muchachos!" Soto called out. "Tus vivas! Vienen aqui! Aqui!"
The Mexicans stared around them, startled by the voice. Captain Soto blinked his penlight, then pointed it upward to illuminate his face for his soldiers. They smiled.
As they came to the gully wall, Lyons reached down and pulled the Mexicans up. Captain Soto whispered and laughed with them. They checked the wounded man's arm. Then the two soldiers traded weapons, the wounded man taking the Uzi and the mm magazines, the other soldier taking the FN FAL and all the ammunition. The wounded man gave Lyons and the Mexicans a left-handed salute and hurried into the moonlit brush of the hillside.
"I sent him to wait with the other wounded man," Captain Soto explained. "Now we pursue the terrorists."
"We take them alive," Lyons stressed. "That black one could lead us into his organization up north. And the other one? Who knows?"
Soto nodded and translated to the other Mexican. They marched north again, moving fast along the now-familiar path. Ahead they heard only occasional bursts and single shots of gunfire from the rancho. A vast column of black smoke rose against the night sky, obscuring the stars and moon. As Lyons ran, he saw ashes falling, like black snow.
They soon overtook the two terrorists. Slinging his Konzak, Lyons pulled his silenced auto-Colt. He eased back the slide to chamber the first hollowpoint and thumbed up the ambidextrous fire selector to safe.
A rifle fired. One of the Mexican soldiers watching the ranchohad killed a fleeing Iranian with a point-blank NATO slug to the chest.
In the gully, the other terrorists went silent. Lyons waited, listening. He heard their feet on the rocks of the streambed. A pair of boots splashed through the water. He listened as the sounds of boots on rocks, then boots breaking dry weeds crossed to the opposite side of the gully.