Screams came from the wounded. Men shouted desperately for help. Blancanales waited until several soldiers of the platoon went to the aid of the wounded.

The 40mm grenade hit the rock behind the group, ripping the men with hundreds of steel fragments. Riflemen fired at Blancanales as their comrades screamed in agony. The flesh-shredder had done its grisly work.

Blancanales slid down the rockfall and dodged from cover to cover to rejoin the others.

Lyons saw Gadgets pass below him. Gadgets crouched with Davis and Coral in the rock maze and passed the captured rifles and equipment to them. Coral slung the boots over his neck to try on later. Then Lyons turned to the action downstream. He had heard the flat clang of the 40mm launcher, then the pop of the grenade. Now he saw Blancanales retreating upstream. Lyons waited.

Fewer rifles fired. His partners had killed or wounded several of the platoon pursuing them. Now the Mexicans feared advancing. If Able Team and the DEA man and the Mexican gunslinger-turned-guide could keep the pace, they could leave their pursuers far behind.

A high-pitched whistle shrieked in the sky. Shock slammed Lyons's ears as an explosion across the canyon threw stone and steel shrapnel through the air.

In the moment of ringing silence after the blast, Lyons heard a distant pop. Then slugs ripped through the air, sparking off the flat slabs, slapping into the wet sand of the streambed. But Lyons did not hear the firing of rifles.

Another blast sent shrapnel and stone tearing through the narrow gorge. Blancanales shouted to him, "Get down! Mortars!"

9

"We're taking fire from there!" Lyons shouted to the others in the maze of rock slabs below him. He pointed to the distant ridge overlooking the canyon.

Blancanales and Gadgets looked in different directions, Blancanales to the west side of the canyon, Gadgets to the east. Another mortar round whistled down, the explosion spraying mud and putrid moss. The air of the narrow canyon stank of TNT and decay.

High-velocity bullets ripped through the air and sang from the rocks. Still another mortar round howled its approach. An instant later, an explosion sent thousands of steel fragments rocketing through the gorge looking for flesh. Shrapnel laced the sides of the canyon. Sand and rocks fell.

Lyons looked downstream. A hundred meters to the south, a Mexican soldier with an FN-FAL rifle scrambled up a steep mountainside to gain height. Aiming above the soldier, Lyons squeezed off one blast, then a second, then a third from his assault shotgun. Steel shot threw dust around the soldier, he stumbled, but he recovered and struggled to gain cover.

The distance had defeated the Ironman's Atchisson. He jerked the magazine out of his autoshotgun and jammed in a magazine of one-ounce slugs. He flipped up the slug sight and aimed at the Mexican. Lyons waited until he had a full-length target, then aimed above the soldier's head to compensate for the distance and squeezed the trigger.

Blood sprayed the rocks as the soldier's body exploded. The dead man slid down, his opened chest leaving a smear of gore on the canyon wall.

Blancanales crawled through the network of spaces and passages of the broken slabs of rock to where he could look up to the ridge over five hundred meters away. From that height, more than two hundred meters above the streambed, the mortar and heavy-caliber rifles on the ridge could fire on Able Team without exposing themselves to return fire.

Blancanales knew firing back would be pointless, even if he saw a target. His M-16/M-203 hybrid and Gadgets's CAR both had the enhanced ballistics of the newest 5.56mm NATO round and the SS-109, and the M-16A3 quick-twist rifling. The combination of the 65-grain SS-109 slug and l-in-7 twist barrels gave their rifles improved accuracy compared to standard M-16A1 or M-16A2 rifles, but five hundred meters was a formidable distance. Blancanales decided to save his ammunition for the soldiers only a hundred meters away. He crouched down to wait.

Lyons scanned the streambed and slopes of the gorge. He saw Mexican soldiers maneuvering for position. Another rifleman, more than two hundred meters away, climbed through slabs of rock to gain a sniping position. High on the wall of the gorge, the soldier would aim down at Lyons and his partners. Lyons didn't even point his Atchisson at the man.

"I need a rifle!" Lyons shouted to the others.

A mortar blast ripped the air, sending up a steel spray of death. Slugs rained down without a pause. Retreat meant attacking the army platoon, but without the advantage of surprise. Continuing to the north meant braving high explosives and the rain of high-velocity slugs.

"I need a skyhook!" Gadgets shouted back.

Rifle grenades came from the Mexican platoon. One exploded on the rock slabs. A second and a third plopped into the streambed. Green filth and mud sprayed Gadgets. Coughing and retching at the stink, he scrambled away, crawling into the shelter of the rock maze.

He found Davis crouched there. Wearing Mexican web gear and a floppy OD hat, he gripped a captured M-16. A pair of Mexican boots, tied together by the laces, hung around his neck. He greeted Gadgets with a left-handed salute.

"How's your cool, Mr. Wizard? Is it okay to panic now?"

"Not yet, man. Save it for later."

"I don't care what you say. This is a bad situation! What the fuck are we going to do?"

"You got it, this situation stinks."

A mortar explosion threw rocks and mud over them. Waves of nauseating odor came from the ooze.

"We could definitely get killed by this stink." Gadgets tapped the boots hanging around Davis's neck. "Try those on. That's what you do. When we break out of here, it won't be no jog in the park."

"Pass me a rifle!" Lyons shouted from his position above them.

Slugs danced forward from the Mexican platoon. Riflemen aimed at Lyons's voice, pocking the rocks shielding him with 7.62mm NATO. Gadgets took the floppy hat from Davis and raised it on the end of a stick.

A high-velocity slug perforated the hat.

Gadgets shouted up to Lyons, "You want a rifle, come get it."

Lyons slid down the slope. A rifle grenade arced into his position of an instant before and exploded in a blast of steel and chopped mesquite. A churning ball of dust hid Lyons for a few seconds as he gained cover in the rocks. He crawled to Gadgets.

"We've got to get out of here."

"Yeah, it's cool and shady but I guess we gotta get moving. You got a smoke canister?"

"One orange."

Gadgets keyed his hand radio. "Pol, you got smoke grenades?"

"One yellow. Found a white phosphorous on the Mexicans."

"All the colors! I've got a red smoke, Lyons has an orange one. This retreat's gonna be psychedelic! Those boots fit Miguel?"

"He's got them on," Lyons said.

"All right. The mortar and the rifles on the mountain are too far away to really zero down on us. It's that gang behind us that's dangerous. I say we lay down some smoke and exit north."

A high-velocity slug, coming down from the distant ridgeline, impacted only inches from Gadgets's hand. Sand sprayed the hand radio. He casually turned the radio over to dump off the sand before keying the transmit button again.

"What do you say?"

"There's nothing else," Blancanales answered.

In front of Gadgets, Lyons nodded. He pulled off his backpack and found his one smoke grenade. Gadgets turned to Davis.

"The boots fit?" he asked.

"Too small. Maybe they'll fit if I cut the leather."

"Forget it. We'll look for a Mexican with bigger feet. It's time to move."

"Where? How can we goddamn well move anywhere? They'll blow us to pieces."