Diego then searched for more targets before getting up and running over to re-join his teammates.
Avery opened his mouth to plan their next move, but he was interrupted by the sudden, distinctive whoosh of a speeding projectile, the sound cut short by the impact and the explosion that instantly followed.
They looked up into the sky and saw the second Huey, engulfed in flames and spewing gray and black smoke, appear overhead seconds later. Its tail sheared off, the burning chopper spun through the air and descended into the earth a thousand feet away from Avery and the Colombian soldiers.
Fuck.
Avery shut his eyes, swallowed hard, and reminded himself to breathe.
The Huey rested partially on its side, one of its skids collapsed beneath its weight, a twisted, charred heap of metal. The cabin was bathed in and filled with orange and yellow fire. Thick black smoke trailed into the sky from the burning engines and fuel tanks, which had kicked off a secondary explosion. Debris and shattered rotor blades lay several meters out from the wreckage, along with Slayton’s burning body. He’d fallen from the Huey in flight.
“Come on, let’s go,” Aguilar finally said, setting a hand on Avery’s shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Avery knew Aguilar was right. There was no point in risking their lives crossing the open field hoping to help anyone over there. Helicopter crashes were the worst, almost always fatal — Avery had seen plenty in Afghanistan, and they were always the biggest unspoken fear of heliborne troops — and there was simply no way anyone survived this one.
“Yeah,” Avery agreed, finally taking his eyes off the wreck. He heard the fires crackling and felt the heat from here. Fuck.
Keeping alongside the wall of the barn, Avery advanced forward to the front of the structure. Lowering his body, leaning forward in a half-crouch, he followed his M4 around the corner. He flinched as a shot instantly drilled through the wood inches away from his face. Splinters pelted his cheek and forehead. He sidestepped right and took another step forward, while shifting his M4 to track the lone Los Zetas shooter. Avery squeezed the trigger on his target, once, twice, three times. The cartel gunman’s unprotected body jerked as it absorbed the bullets. Atomized blood misted briefly in the air before dissipating as he dropped onto his knees and then fell forward onto his face. Avery took another couple steps forward and drilled the Mexican once through the head to make sure he wouldn’t get back up.
Without stopping, Avery continued forward. He stopped just before the barn’s open set of double doors. He heard voices coming from inside, followed by a diesel engine sputtering to life and revving, and tires squealing.
Avery stepped back to get clear and hand signaled Diego.
The pick-up rolled out of the barn doing 20mph and quickly gaining speed. Two men carrying AKs were crouched in the bed, searching for something to shoot at. They sighted Avery, and he hit the ground as shots flew overhead, blasting the barn wall behind him.
Diego ripped into the truck with his machine-gun, stitching a stream of fire through the gunmen in the pick-up’s bed, and then through the rear windshield, into the cabin, and then the tires. The truck swerved, slowed, and continued rolling forward, eventually easing to a stop two hundred plus feet away, its driver slumped over. Nothing moved, and no one climbed out.
Followed by Aguilar and Diego, Avery stepped around the corner of the open barn doors, swung his rifle around to the interior of the barn, and swept his aim left to right, up and down, right to left.
It was clear. No one in sight. No movement.
Then, far behind, the distinctive crackle of AK fire picked up from the direction they’d just come. Avery craned his head around the open door and then stepped out. Retreating back along the wall to the side, he saw DEA agents firing their M16s from the open cabin of the landed Huey.
Jogging to and looking around the next corner of the barn, Avery saw four Zetas, two lying prone with their AKs in front of them. Two more covered each other as they attempted to leapfrog across the open land toward the chopper. One of the Zetas fired a rifle-mounted grenade launcher, but it landed several yards short of the Huey and exploded.
Avery was aware of Aguilar and Diego coming up behind him, saw their shadows across the ground in front of him, and he turned around to face them.
“Stay with these guys,” Avery told them. “I’m going after the Viper.”
Aguilar opened his mouth to protest, but Diego and Avery were already splitting up and moving in opposite directions, so Aguilar took his Galil into the ready position and ran after the former. Along the way, Aguilar spotted an easy target of opportunity. He sighted the back of an oblivious cartel soldier crouched a hundred feet away and fired twice.
Hearing more gunfire sound off behind him as Aguilar and Diego joined the fight, Avery ran forward with his M4 shouldered in front of him. He crossed the front of the barn and, coming up to the east side, stopped, and kept his ears open, trying to tune out the exchanges of gunfire behind him.
After several seconds, he heard a voice yell something in Spanish.
Avery proceeded slowly around the corner.
The two Silverados sat idle near the tool shed. One truck’s doors were left open, its engine running. Spent brass littered the ground, along with the empty missile launcher. There were also nearly a dozen open and empty SA-24 transit cases.
Two men stood in the open doorway of the shed, their backs to Avery, oblivious to his presence several meters away. The one on the left had two launchers slung over his back, and he reached down to lower a third through the open hatch in the floor. Then the man on the right likewise passed off another launcher into the shaft.
Avery acquired the left-side man in his sights and pressed the trigger.
The M4 thundered, and Avery’s shoulder absorbed the recoil.
The man reeled from the hit, fell forward, and, carried by the extra weight of the missiles, went headfirst through the hatch into the tunnel and broke his neck.
The man on the right was small and fast.
Reacting instantly to the discharge of the M4, before his partner even went down, Benito Trujillo jumped, spun around, and opened up on his Uzi.
Avery’s vest caught a three round burst of .45 ACP. It felt like taking a swing from a baseball bat, and Avery was knocked clean off his feet. He instinctively rolled over onto his side, missing a second burst that drilled through the ground. He repositioned his rifle in front of him and returned fire without aiming, cutting Trujillo’s legs out from under him.
Dark red spots erupted from his thighs, and Trujillo screamed. His legs flayed, and he plopped flat onto his ass, his back leaning against the doorjamb of the shed.
Still in too much pain to move, each breath caught painfully short in his chest, Avery lifted his rifle’s barrel an inch and let off three more shots from the ground, catching Trujillo once in the shoulder and twice in his plated vest.
The little Peruvian reeled from the hits and, still clinging to his Uzi, fell over onto his back. He fired back without aiming, holding the Uzi one-handed in his good arm across his body.
The bullets hit the ground a few feet to Avery’s right and behind him.
Avery sighted on the exposed soft spot a couple inches beneath Trujillo’s armpit, unprotected by the armored vest, visible with his arm raised, and hit the trigger.
The bullet went clean through, penetrating a lung, exploding inside, sending fragments throughout Trujillo’s chest cavity, into ribs and arteries. Trujillo’s whole body shuddered and jerked, and then went limp, his finger slipping from his own trigger before he finally let go of the Uzi.