Straining against the weapon's jackhammering recoil, Lyons held the muzzle on line as steel shot slammed the hood, windshield and interior. Blood and flesh splashed over the upholstery as the full-auto fire shredded the four gunmen.

Blancanales accelerated past the demolished Cadillac. In the back, Gadgets saw a dying gunman stagger from the car. One arm hung limp, blood was bubbling from a pattern of holes in his chest, but he still gripped an Uzi. One-handed, he raised the 9mm submachine gun to avenge himself.

Sighting his CAR-15 on the gunman, Gadgets fired through the rear window. Tempered glass sprayed both inward and outward as Gadgets triggered one burst, then another, then another. Deflected by the glass, the first burst skipped off the asphalt and banged the Cadillac, only one slug punching through the already dying man's chest. But the second and third bursts knocked him back, slugs tearing away his jaw and forehead as he staggered back, finally dead.

Slugs from the rifleman in the plane above them continued to punch through the roof of the motor home. Meanwhile all in the vehicle heard the continued buzzing of Gadgets's electronic detector.

Peering through the shattered windshield, Blancanales swerved into the freeway traffic. Gadgets ran forward with the droning detector. He adjusted a dial, then waved the unit over the floor of the motor home.

Near the gas and brake pedals, at the point nearest the front bumper, the detector buzzed. As he backed away, the buzzing stopped. He told the others. "We got D.F. up front here. Must be radio-switched. That's why I didn't find it before."

"Prescott!" Lyons cursed. "That pink shit!"

Blancanales glanced into the rearview mirror. "Quit the talk, Ironman. We got two more cars gaining on us."

Slugs from the plane punched through the roof. Auto-fire from the pursuing cars hammered the back of the motor home. Slugs tore through the interior.

Lyons slapped another magazine into his Atchisson. He crouchwalked through the wrecked interior of the mobile political office.

"Prescott's going to get it."

Gadgets followed a step behind him. "Not if we get it first."

17

Hurrying past the few patrons having breakfast, legislative aide Bob Prescott went to the pay phone at the rear of the fashionable cafe in the financial district of San Francisco. He pulled a handful of dimes and quarters from his pocket. Punching a long series of numbers, he then dropped in three dollars in coins.

"Good afternoon, sir. You've heard the news. Your men failed... The ones last night and this morning… No sir, he won't escape."

The stylish young attorney glanced to the nearest tables. A man and a woman spread a fanfolded computer printout on the table. The man, in a tie-dyed shirt blazing with a hundred colors, his thinning blond hair in a long ponytail, totaled figures on a briefcase-sized computer. The woman, in a conservative gray suit, explained the significance of several lines on the printout. Neither the man nor the woman had any interest in the man a few steps away speaking into the pay phone.

"They won't escape…The reporter told me he has the photographs and negatives on him. So they will burn with him… I activated the units I held in reserve, the mercenaries… no, not your countrymen, no one will link these soldiers to your country. That black journalist Jefferson will die. I'm using blacks to kill a black."

18

Weaving through the light traffic, the two cars of black gunmen used trucks and passenger cars as shields. Unwilling to risk killing innocent drivers, Gadgets and Lyons held their fire. Above them, the rifleman continued firing down through the motor home's roof.

Lyons watched slugs punch through the ceiling. Bits of plastic and bullet fragments rattled on the linoleum floor. He picked up a deformed fragment of 5.56mm slug.

"If they had an M-60 up there," Lyons yelled, passing the slug to Gadgets, "we'd be closed down."

An impact showered them with plastic. Setting his CAR-15 on semi-automatic, Gadgets sighted on the plane above them.

Firing carefully aimed shots, Gadgets emptied the short assault rifle's magazine. Appearing unaffected, the plane made no attempt to evade his fire. Slugs continued punching through the roof.

Gadgets dropped out the magazine, jammed in another. He flicked the fire-selector to full-auto. To correct for the sixty-mile-per-hour crosswind, he aimed ahead of the Piper Cub. He fired the entire magazine, thirty brass cartridge casings showering Lyons.

The Piper veered away.

"Think I got it?" Gadgets asked.

Lyons did not answer. Startled by the rifle fire from the motor home, a commuter two lanes to the left had hit her brakes and swerved to the shoulder. Her panic exposed the nearest car of gunmen. Lyons sighted on its windshield. He fired a three-shot burst of twelve-gauge rounds.

At the same instant, Uzi-fire from the car hammered the left side of the motor home, the 9mm slugs tearing through the aluminum siding and exiting through the other side.

One hundred fifty steel balls traveling at 1,200 feet per second hit the pursuing car. The gunner in the front seat died instantly. Though the windshield deflected many of the projectiles, a spray of blood and the car's sudden lurch to the side indicated that Lyons had hit the driver.

Lyons sighted again on the weaving car. He saw a man in the back seat struggle to shove the bloody driver aside. Lyons fired as the car swerved across two lanes, the steel shot smashing a headlight, pocking a fender. He sighted to fire again, but the car sideswiped a pickup truck. The truck's tires smoked as the driver panic-braked. Both the car and the truck skidded to a stop.

Blancanales changed lanes. Slugs exploded through the motor home's right side. Accelerating from behind a diesel truck and trailer, two black gunmen strafed the motor home. As Gadgets and Lyons shifted positions to fire, the driver hit his brakes to regain the cover of the diesel.

Looking down from the high cab of the semi, the driver saw the ongoing firefight. He spoke into a citizens band microphone as he slowed his truck to get out of the line of fire.

Running through the litter of broken glass and plastic, Lyons went to a side window. He called back to Gadgets, "When the truck slows, they'll..."

"There they are!" Gadgets shouted back.

The gunmen's car accelerated, two Uzi muzzles extended from the back window of the driver's side. Lyons flipped his fire-selector to full-auto and aimed low. Gadgets fired first, the burst of high-velocity 5.56mm slugs from his CAR-15 destroying the skull of one gunman, spraying flesh from the shoulder and arm of the second man.

Lyons triggered a long burst of full-auto twelve-gauge fire. He swept the entire length of the old Chevrolet with steel, hammering sheet steel, tearing apart the whitewalls of the tires, a thousand fragments of flesh and bone and glittering glass exploding from the opposite side of the car as a dying gunman and the rear window disintegrated.

Careering wildly, the Chevy hit the bumper of the diesel. Metal screamed as the huge truck pushed the automobile sideways at fifty miles per hour. Tires smoking, the diesel braked, launching the Chevy into a roll. Doors flew open, the gyrating car throwing corpses to the asphalt. Flames came in a whirl of orange.

"One down!" yelled Lyons.

Slugs threw papers and pens from a shattered drawer as he went to the other side of the motor home.

The first car — the three surviving gunmen firing: two men from the back seat; the driver steering with one hand and squeezing off pistol shots with his other — gained speed. Jefferson's Smith & Wesson shotgun boomed.