slugs. Anyone coming at them would catch a face full of big bullets that hit hard.
Even though Able Team knew that a single vehicle had broken off to break their ambush, it still came as a surprise when they heard the warbling whistle of a 40 mm grenade arcing through the sky.
“Cover!” Lyons bellowed, throwing himself into a rut on the uneven ground.
Schwarz dropped behind a berm that rippled up at the base of a foothill instants before the world broke apart around him. Six and a half ounces of high explosive detonated only a few yards away, the lethal concussion wave and shrapnel deflecting off the small slope. No jagged bits of segmented wire tore through his flesh, but the powerful ripples of force coming off the detonation expanded, rolling into him.
The stars above swirled chaotically as he struggled to retain consciousness.
CHAPTER TWO
Carl Lyons saw Schwarz flop on the ground in reaction to the grenade detonation and cursed under his breath.
“Pol! Gadgets is hit,†he hissed into his throat mike. “Cover him.â€
“One sec,†Blancanales responded. His own 40 mm launcher popped off a shell. Instead of returning fire, it threw an M-583 parachute flare into the sky. Burning at 90,000 candlepower, it lit up the general area where the enemy grenade had come from, illuminating a spot two hundred yards in diameter with night vision–frying light. Even bare, night-attuned eyes would have trouble adapting immediately to the sudden blaze of white light slashing a hole in the dark.
Lyons spotted two gunners flinch from the sudden brightness, and brought up his FAL carbine, triggering a burst of high-powered rifle slugs at them across the distance. One of the enemy shooters jerked violently, crushed by the devastating 7.62 mm NATO bullets shredding through body armor and churning up vital organs. The other ducked quickly toward the cover of the uneven ground at roadside. Beyond the 650-foot circle of light descending from the parachute flare, with his DSA-58’s muzzle-blast dampened by an efficient flash hider, the Able Team leader had the opportunity to chase the enemy gunman with another burst as wild rounds snapped randomly through the darkness.
The enemy gunmen hadn’t been ready for their night game to be cast in a high-definition 90,000-candlepower spotlight, and only seven seconds had passed in the 40-second burn of the parachute flare. Through the holographic reflex sight, Lyons picked up a third rifleman who exposed only a small portion of his head and shoulders around the side of a big rock. The sight was a quick reaction design, and didn’t provide an increase of magnification, just a tiny, projected red dot in the middle of a glass screen that gave the big ex-cop a faster focus point. The projected red dot obscured the enemy shooter’s head and shoulders, and Lyons milked the trigger. At 650 rounds per minute, the carbine chewed out a blistering salvo of bullets that spat dirt and stone splinters up in a cloud.
Another 40 mm grenade sizzled through the sky, and Lyons glanced back to Blancanales and Schwarz.
The electronics genius had recovered his senses, but Blancanales had instinctively hooked his arm under Schwarz’s and yanked him along. Lyons bellowed, equalizing the pressure in his ears as he stuffed himself into the bottom of a gully beside the goat path.
The darkened desert shook with a thunderbolt strike, and Lyons could feel his load-bearing vest ripple as the concussion burst swept across him. Blancanales’s grenade launcher burped again while Schwarz’s own DSA-58 carbine snarled a vengeful response. This time, the Puerto Rican Able Team veteran popped off an M379-A1 Airburst grenade. Instead of providing a miniature sun dangling from a parachute, the Airburst shell looped into an arc, landed on the ground and a black powder charge propelled the main grenade five feet into the air before its fuse wound down to detonation. At a height of five feet off the ground, the Airburst exploded, spraying out a sheet of lethal shrapnel that would kill anything within a sixteen-foot radius of the blast, but still could wound as far out as four hundred feet.
A wailing scream of pain as shrapnel tore through body armor and fragile flash and bone beneath provided the testimony to its effectiveness. Lyons spotted the gunman who had dodged his initial burst, clutching his shredded face and neck. He’d lost his weapon when Blancanales’s shrapnel had scythed across him, and Lyons was about to put a few mercy rounds into the gunman when Schwarz nailed him.
“Can you run?†Lyons asked over the headset.
“Yeah,†Schwarz replied. “The concussion wave only knocked the wind out of me.â€
“We’ve lost the element of surprise.†Blancanales spoke up, pointing to the flare as it sputtered through the last of its forty-second lifespan, burning down to a lifeless ember that flopped under its parachute on the ground. “That baby was seen for miles.â€
“I saw their truck,†Lyons told him. “It did its job. Gadgets…â€
“I’ll get Jack on station,†Schwarz returned.
The trio raced across the desert, wary that they might not have finished off all of their opponents.
Charging up the goat path to the SUV took only another half minute. Lyons paused at roadside for a heartbeat to pop off a single round into a sprawled corpse to ensure it would never rise again. He noted with grim humor that Schwarz had been the one to nail the enemy gunman wielding the grenade launcher.
The enemy’s SUV had a guard with a compact machine pistol. The man rushed to get back behind the wheel of his vehicle, firing across the hood, but Lyons and Blancanales stitched him with twin bursts of autofire. Blown nearly out of his boots, the guard’s corpse flopped in a boneless mass, door wide open.
Blancanales checked the dead man and peeled the night-vision goggles off his face.
“Keys are in the ignition,†Lyons announced, crawling into the SUV’s shotgun seat.
“Good,†the Able Team commando replied. He slipped behind the wheel, fired up the engine and spun out.
Schwarz was in the back, picking up the FLIR camera feed from Grimaldi’s helicopter, correlating the image with his GPS data. “They’re looping around, going for a second run at the border. They’re either certain their boys did the job, or they’re going to come in hot and heavy.â€
“I’m not going to wait to see what their response is,†Lyons said. He wedged his Mossberg shotgun into the seat well and rolled down the window, providing himself with room to shoot his carbine with its stock folded. “Nut up and do it.â€
“It’s worked this long,†Schwarz agreed.
Blancanales nodded. He could see the beacons on the enemy convoy blink out, their headlights flaring to life in an effort to blind him, but they were so far away, and the wily Able Team expert was so familiar with low-light operations, he avoided any discomfort. Turning his head to observe the cast-off infrared illumination instead of staring into the “invisible†light sources directly with his NVGs, he was able to keep his course to intercept the enemy trucks.
Lyons had traded his carbine with Blancanales and stuffed an M-433 HEDP shell into its grenade launcher. The SUV jostled him, rocking hard in an effort to throw his aim
