tight, literally.â€
Paczesny nodded, tucking his knees up to his chest and resting his bloodied forehead between them. Lyons unsheathed his combat knife and sliced an exit hole through the canvas. He climbed through the tarp and grabbed onto the back of the cab.
Able Team’s captured Chevy Suburban was at Lyons’s side, Schwarz firing his DSA carbine through the back window of the armored raider vehicle at the two remaining enemy SUVs which were struggling to keep up with the racing convoy. Lyons grimaced as he heard the rip-snap of the FAL’s high-velocity rifle bullets spearing through the darkness. By now, all pretense of stealth had disappeared, and the Burgundy Lake raiders had switched on conventional headlights. Lyons stiff-armed his MP-40 and fired a volley as fast as he could work the trigger, six 165-grain jacketed hollowpoint rounds striking the windshield behind a pair of enemy headlights. The Able Team commander focused his fire on the Suburbans, not certain if the other truck had a hostage, as well.
Safety glass deformed and whitened under Lyons’s barrage, shocking the driver into slamming on the brakes. The second Chevy flashed forward to take up the slack, but its hood smoked, pouring out thick clouds from where its shattered radiator and shot-up V-8 burned. The fact that the Suburban continued to rattle onward to keep up with the rolling battle despite a magazine of .30-caliber bullets in it was testament the truck’s engineering. Unfortunately, no amount of SUV design excellence could have provided the raiders with protection from a 40 mm buckshot grenade.
Firing the equivalent of three 12-gauge shotgun shells’ worth of number 4 buck, the M-576 turned Blancanales’s M-203 into a supershotgun. At maximum dispersal, the M-203 could put out a cone of death almost one hundred feet wide. At the range between Schwarz in the back of Able Team’s Suburban to the enemy vehicle, the spread only ensured that a seven-foot diameter hose of death collapsed the windshield and perforated the surviving gunmen in the Jeep.
The smoldering vehicle rolled on, glancing off the fender of the second M-35 cargo truck before rebounding into a ditch. As tortured steel collapsed under its own inertia, gasoline squeezed out of severed fuel lines and turned into a blossom of fire licking into the night sky.
Lyons returned his attention to the cab, only to see the shotgun rider of the lead two-and-a-half-ton truck climbing out the passenger door, a Glock in hand. Lyons swept the MP-40 back toward him and triggered a pair of slugs. The bouncing truck was too much for Lyons to maintain his aim, so the bullets went high and to the right. Only one wide-mouthed round clipped the enemy gunman’s shoulder, gouging a deep laceration through the muscle. The impact was still enough to throw the raider’s aim off, his Glock punching holes through the roof of the cab. A sudden spray of blood darkened the driver window, and the M-36 cargo truck lurched violently. Lyons tightened his grasp on the iron rib holding up the tarp, and though his feet left the thin ledge he was using as a running board, he wasn’t thrown from the vehicle.
“Hang on!†Lyons bellowed to Paczesny. “We’re going to crash!â€
The truck swerved off the road and Lyons twisted, hurling his Smith & Wesson into the bed and using both hands to haul him through the tear in the canvas. He tucked his legs up and behind him just as the two-and-a-half-ton truck lurched and skidded onto its side. The steel ribs held as Lyons flopped against the bottom of the seats. The packing crates shattered, spilling prototype motors onto the canvas where shredding tarpaulin snagged them and ground them to useless metal splinters under the cover’s ribbing.
Lyons looked around for Paczesny and saw the balding, bloody-headed man holding his Smith & Wesson.
“Had to go and fuck up everything didn’t you, Blondie?†Paczesny snarled, jabbing the pistol toward Lyons. The faux hostage took in a breath, but Lyons straightened his legs, using the bench he laid on as a launch pad, slamming into the gun-toting fake and knocking them both out the back of the sliding truck. The pair hit the ground, tumbling, MP-40 flying clear of stunned fingers as the second two-and-a-half-ton truck whirled past, missing them by inches.
Paczesny’s fists rained on the Able Team leader’s neck and shoulders in a futile attempt to dislodge Lyons. Without leverage, the blows were merely annoying, and Lyons whipped his forehead forward, striking the balding man’s nose at the bridge, hard enough to make him see stars under the impact without doing any fatal damage. Lyons needed this man for information. Grabbing Paczesny’s wrist, Lyons twisted. The pop of joints was accompanied by a wail of pain.
“Are there any hostages in the other truck?†Lyons bellowed.
“Piss off!†Paczesny answered.
Lyons twisted even harder, and he could see the knob of his prisoner’s ulna stretching the skin of his elbow. “Wrong answer. I’ll rip this fucking thing off and feed it to you if you don’t answer.â€
“No. No. I was the only one with them,†Paczesny said.
“How’d you get the stock burn?†Lyons asked.
“Air Force guard gave me a whack in the head when I pulled a gun on him. My partners burned him down,†Paczesny said.
Confronted by the balding man’s betrayal, Lyons gave a hard final twist, then punched him in the temple. The blow rendered Paczesny unconscious, and Lyons secured his wrists and ankles with cable ties. “You two get that? No friendlies are on truck two. Free fire!â€
“We’ve got it,†Schwarz answered. “Let me just take care of this.â€
Hundreds of yards away, Schwarz fed another magazine into his DSA-58 tactical carbine and hammered off another burst through a pursuing Suburban. Finally, despite the unstable platform of his own ride and the uneven road, he was able to score a direct hit with the autorifle. Schwarz’s burst struck the enemy driver in the head and exploded his brains. The shotgun rider lunged, grabbing the wheel, but the vehicle fell back without any pressure on the gas.
Schwarz had an easier time aiming at the stilled SUV full of gunmen, burning off the rest of his 30-round magazine into the cab. One of the enemy raiders was leaning out the window, returning fire with his M-4 carbine, but his efforts were cut off by the Able Team genius’s slashing storm of high-velocity bullets. The vehicle was out of the play.
“Okay, the last of the escorts are done,†Schwarz called. “Wish you were here for this.â€
“Just do it,†Lyons growled over the com link.
Schwarz fed another HEDP round into the M-203’s breech and aimed at the second M36. He pulled the trigger and the 40 mm armor-piercing round hit the grille and detonated. A small gust of flaming gases appeared around the nose of the cargo truck, a display of the impact point as the real light show went on inside of the engine compartment. The shaped charge liquefied the interior cone of copper and turned it into a flaming bullet that shredded the engine block. The twelve-cylinder motor disintegrated into a wave of shrapnel that obliterated the bellies and legs of the driver and the passenger, killing them instantly.
The vehicle skidded to a halt, kicking up dirt as it slid sideways. Blancanales hit the brakes, and the two Able Team commandos got out of the captured SUV using it as a shield.
“I’ve got movement,†Blancanales announced. He opened fire at a fleeing shadow, but the enemy figure was just too fast.
