Glass showered Blancanales as slugs shattered the picture window. The stocky Puerto Rican jerked sideways as a slug punched through the sidewall and hit the Kevlar of his battle armor.
"You all right?" Lyons called out.
"Shut up and shoot!" Blancanales shouted back.
Tearing another magazine from his bandolier, Lyons loaded and sighted. He fired a single round at the gunmen firing from the rear seat. The torso of one man exploded.
Lyons glanced at the magazine he had loaded. Not buckshot, but one-ounce slugs. Custom-fabricated by Konzaki, the slugs contained tungsten-steel cores for penetrating steel or Kevlar armor. He aimed next at the front fender as Gadgets's CAR-15 wounded another gunman. Lyons fired again and again.
Huge dents appeared in the fender as the steel-cored slugs hit with the foot-pound impact of express trains. A tire shrieked as impact-deformed sheet metal cut into the sidewall. The driver fought for control of the car. Lyons put another slug through the windshield.
An arm flew from the car. With a dying man at the wheel, the car sides wiped the concrete-and-steel center divider and scraped to an eventual stop.
Gadgets and Lyons reloaded their weapons. Searching the freeway lanes behind them, they saw no pursuers. Victory.
But their attackers had almost destroyed them. Slip wind blew through a hundred holes in the motor home. Every window had been shattered.
In the front, Jefferson reloaded his sawed-off shotgun. Blood trickled from a speckle pattern of tiny wounds on his face and left arm.
Lyons rushed to the young man. He examined the small wounds. A shard of glass protruded from one, a gleaming bit of bullet fragment from another.
"I'm okay, I'm all right," Jefferson told Lyons. He shrugged away Lyons's hands.
Lyons turned to Blancanales. "Where were you hit? You bleeding?"
"Take care of yourself," Gadgets told Lyons. "You're the one who's bloody."
"What?" Lyons wiped his hand across his forehead. His palm felt warm blood.
Blancanales looked to his partners. "I pronounce this vehicle a wreck. Time to get off the highway and find a replacement."
"Second the motion," Gadgets agreed. "Highway Patrol will catch up with us any minute now."
"State park five miles," Blancanales told them. He coasted through the curve of an off ramp.
"Think we can get this past the Rangers?" Lyons looked around at the bullet-destroyed motor home; glass continued falling from shattered windows as urethane dust from the walls' insulation blew in the wind.
"Spray paint, man," Gadgets told them. "What we need is some spray paint."
"What are you talking about?" Lyons demanded, incredulous.
"Vandals, ese," Gadgets jived in mock barrio dialect. "We stopped and we got vandalized. We're just tourists. We go to the wrong neighborhood, see what happen? No bueno."
As farms and roadside vegetable stands flashed past, Lyons leaned from the shattered picture window. High in the sky above them, he saw sunlight glint from the wings of a small plane.
"Wizard, we got a plane over us. Is that transmitter or whatever still on?"
Gadgets waved the electronic transmission detector over the front end of the motor home. The unit buzzed. "Got to stop. Pull that thing off. Either they got a D.F. on us or they're monitoring highway noise."
Lyons shook his head. "We'll leave it on. That way they can find us."
19
Captain Alejandro Madrano of Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista, better known by its acronym, ORDEN, watched the familiar landscape of central California flash past his car. Years before, after his training at Fort Bragg, he had visited his sister at the University of Southern California. He and his sister had toured California and Nevada for a week, visiting San Francisco, Yosemite and Reno. The decadence, the racial impurity, the weakness of the governing forces had enraged him. He had asked his sister: "Why does this country, this cesspool of socialism and racial chaos, have the arrogance to meddle in the affairs of El Salvador?"
His sister had explained to him, in her innocence and ignorance, that what he saw represented "the freedoms of the North Americans."
But now he returned. With the help of the North Americans, he would battle the cultural sickness of this vast nation so that sickness would not condemn El Salvador to revolution. Today, they would exterminate the negro journalist and the three mercenaries protecting him from justice.
His driver spoke into the radio, communicating with the other drivers in the convoy of three Chevrolet Silverados. The electronics technician in the last truck reported a steady signal from the location device on the enemy's vehicle. Though the spotter plane had returned for refueling, the pilot's last report confirmed the position of the enemy.
Seated around him, his soldiers appeared to be businessmen touring California. They did not fear any encounter with the local authorities.
He and his soldiers carried the correct immigration stamps in their passports. They carried receipts proving they had rented the truck. Garbed in white suits and ties purchased from expensive shops in Miami and Beverly Hills, they only appeared to be tourists. Up until the moment they took their weapons from the packing cases stacked in the back of the Silverado, he and his soldiers would maintain their act as a group of prosperous Hispanics lavishing dollars on a visit to California.
Though his friends in the United States government had provided both material and moral support, Captain Madrano had no confidence in the North American people. Democrats, liberals, technocrats, Christians, Jews, whatever the word: all were Communist sympathizers.
Did not most North Americans belong to unions? Did they not applaud the Marxist movie actors in Hollywood? Did they not abandon General Somoza to the Sandinistas? Did not their corporations solicit business with the Russians and Red Chinese? Did they not contribute to the International Red Cross?
Though a responsible administration now ruled in Washington, the Communists controlled the news media. Inundated with lies, the North American people — already in sympathy with the international communist conspiracy — opposed their leaders' efforts to battle the agents of the conspiracy.
If a North American policeman became too inquisitive, Captain Madrano's soldiers had orders to neutralize the threat immediately.
If a North American witnessed their attack on the Communists, his soldiers would eliminate the witness.
Although he did not have the express approval of the American president or the State Department officials who had processed his entry into the United States, Captain Madrano knew they would not disapprove. Had the administration prosecuted the killers of North Americans in El Salvador?
After three years, the "investigation" into the murder of three nuns and a church worker continued. After two and one-half years, the "investigation" into the murders of two American lawyers continued. After a year, the "investigation" into the murder of an American tourist continued.
With the cooperation of the United States government, attorneys and private investigators and family members visited El Salvador to demand justice. With the cooperation of the United States government, the Salvadoran "investigations" into the rapes and tortures and murders continued. The "investigations" would continue forever…
Without convictions.
In fact, when Captain Madrano visited the Miami home of Colonel Quesada, the commander of Los Guerreros Blancos, the colonel introduced him to two officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Two years before, Colonel Quesada had walked into the dining room of a San Salvador hotel and pointed out two North American labor lawyers — actually Communist agitators — sitting at a table with a Salvadoran Communist traitor. The colonel's soldiers then executed all the Communists.