Then Encizo twisted the blade and the man slumped, dead before he reached the dusty ground. Retrieving his knife, Encizo moved on and quietly dispatched another man standing nearby smoking a cigarette, obviously waiting for the first fellow to finish and get his own turn in the outhouse.
At the garage, James scratched on the door, and gave a low meow. Muttering something in guttural Spanish, somebody inside tromped over to the door and threw it open, a heavy Stilson wrench brandished in a dirty fist. Seeing the Stony Man commando crouching in the darkness, the mechanic registered shock for only a microsecond before the silenced Beretta chugged twice, sending the man reeling back into the workshop. Moving fast and low, James followed close behind, catching the wrench before it fell. As the door swung shut, the commando was inside. The Beretta coughed several more times, and then silence.
“W HAT WAS THAT ?” a guard sporting a scraggly beard demanded, feeding some scraps of loose wood to the fire in the oil drum.
“Nothing. Shut up,” the bald guard replied, opening the plastic wrapping on a granola bar.
“No, I heard something,” the first guard said uneasily, dropping the rest of the scraps into the drum.
“Probably just the boss chatting up the pilot,” the bald man replied curtly, biting off a piece of the bar. Chewing for a moment, he frowned, then swallowed. “He likes to get the news from home fresh.”
“I don’ think so, amigo,” the guard said, grabbing the AK-101 and working the arming bolt.
Instantly a weapon coughed softly, and both men jerked as their lifeblood splashed onto the dirty cinder-block walls. They staggered into each other and the Kalashnikov discharged a short burst, the 7.62 mm hardball rounds punching through the chest of the dying bald man and coming out the other side.
Unexpectedly there came an answering grunt of pain from the direction of the outhouse, and Encizo staggered into the dim firelight, his hands clutching a red belly just underneath his NATO body armor.
“What the fuck was that?” the fat man demanded loudly from beside the Cessna.
Instantly the pilot drew a huge Redhawk .44 revolver from within his Hawaiian shirt, and the two weight lifters each produced a Steyr machine pistol, clicking off the safety with a thumb.
Realizing the need for stealth was over, McCarter and Hawkins fired their silenced pistols at the guards, and the criminals staggered backward, but did not fall. Then they returned fire with the Steyrs, the muzzle-flashes of the little machine pistols strobing the night.
“It’s a raid!” the fat man bellowed, casting aside the brick of heroin and pulling a Colt .45 automatic pistol into view. “Sound the alarm!”
As if that was a cue, the garage suddenly erupted into flames, the door flying off from the force of the detonation of the C-4 satchel charge set by James.
The blast’s concussion was still moving across the airfield when McCarter and James appeared once more, firing their MP-5 machine guns. The barrage of 9 mm hardball ammo hammered the two musclemen backward, until they tumbled onto the concrete, twitching into death.
Wildly cursing in Spanish, the fat man leveled his Colt and started banging away.
Incredibly, the pilot pivoted at the hip and shot the fat man in the back. Slammed hard by the brutal impact of the heavy Magnum round, the dying man haplessly spun the Colt still firing. The pilot flipped over backward, drilled by a .45 hollowpoint round, most of his face gone, teeth and eyes sailing down the landing strip.
“Man down!” James called from the direction of the cinder-block house.
Turning in that direction, McCarter and Hawkins broke into a fast run. But they were only halfway there when a second man appeared from behind the plane, working the arming bolt on a Uzi machine pistol. As he opened fire, McCarter and Hawkins dived apart, and came up shooting their MP-5 machine guns. The 9 mm rounds tore into the Cessna, and aviation fuel gushed onto the concrete. The second gunman shouted in anger, the Uzi raking the darkness, then the window shattered and his head exploded. A split second later, there came the rolling thunder of the Barrett sniper rifle.
As the body dropped, something round and metallic rolled under the Cessna.
Hitting the ground, McCarter and Hawkins barely had time to take cover when the grenade went off. But instead of an explosion, there was a brilliant flash, closely followed by a searing wave of heat that increased geometrically with every passing heartbeat.
“Thermite!” McCarter cursed, protecting his face with a raised hand. “Bastards are burning the drugs!”
“Kind of a moot point now,” Hawkins drawled, dropping an empty clip and reloading the MP-5 with practiced speed. Then he frowned. “Or do you think—”
A dozen men carrying military ordnance burst out of the cinder-block house firing wildly in every direction. They spread out fast, taking advantage of what little natural cover there was, but the man passing by the outhouse suddenly jerked, the handle of a knife sticking out his neck. Dropping the Webley, the gunner grabbed his neck in both hands, trying to staunch the flow of blood. But the effort was proving to be futile.
“Blue nine!” another man shouted. “Blue nine!” The X-18 grenade launcher in his hands began thumping steadily, sending out a salvo of 30 mm rounds. The canisters hit the ground and rolled, spewing thick volumes of smoke.
Firing their machine guns at the fresh troops, McCarter and Hawkins exchanged a brief look. The drug smugglers used battle codes? Clearly the fat man had not been in charge, but was merely the chemist sent to check the purity of the heroin.
“Black Three!” a burly man shouted, triggering an AK-101 in a long burst.
Crouching, McCarter and Hawkins listened to the noise, getting his position, then triggered their weapons through the weeds. The burly man cried out in pain, and the Kalashnikov stopped firing.
“Two one!” another man cursed, a Remington pump-action shotgun blasting into the billowing smoke at chest level. “Two one!”
Man down, McCarter translated, pulling the pin on a grenade and flipping off the arming lever before throwing it toward the voice.
While the explosive was still counting down, Hawkins peppered the area alongside the building, trying to force the others toward the sphere. A few seconds later, the grenade detonated and several men shrieked in pain.
“Black Five,” a different man shouted in an oddly feminine voice, then added the belching roar of the 30 mm grenade launcher.
The sage brush disintegrated under the assault, and a cactus was pulverized, but nothing much else happened. Then an MP-5 chattered briefly in savage counterpoint and the drug smuggler crumpled over sideways.
“They got Uncle Chollo!” another weight lifter snarled, insanely marching out of the protective smoke. “Gonna kill you—”
Which was as far as he got when there came the sound of distant thunder from the Barrett. His khaki shirt ballooned out the back as his chest erupted, the fabric splitting apart as his internal organs sprayed into the darkness.
“Red ten!” the first man shouted, and the X-18 began chugging shells into the sky. The rounds came down whistling like bombs and hit the ground to form fiery geysers that banished the artificial cloud cover and
