"Be cool, man. We've got a chance. Could be a lot worse. What the hell! That's a helicopter!"

Rotor throb increased in intensity. The mortar rounds stopped as a Huey troopship descended into the canyon. A gunner at the door pointed an M-60 machine gun. The muzzle flashed and the slugs exploded in lines across the slabs of stone sheltering them.

"Panic time!" Gadgets shouted to Davis. He keyed his hand radio. "Get ready to pop the grenades. Buzz me back when you're ready to run for it."

Wedging his body against a rock, Lyons looked over to Gadgets. "What do you think?"

Slugs poured down on the streambed from the rifles on the ridge, from the helicopter's gunner, from the riflemen pursuing them. Gadgets forced a smile.

"Maybe they'll run out of ammunition," he said.

The rotor throb changed. They looked up to see glittering sheets of Plexiglas falling through space. The helicopter spun in the air, out of control for an instant, the machine-gun fire punching a line of slugs across the canyon wall, then the pilot regained control and took the troopship straight up.

The rip-shriek sound of a high-velocity, heavy-caliber slug pierced the air. The noise came from above them, crossing the canyon from the southeast to the northwest. A rifle's report carried to them. They heard another velocity shriek. Then another and another.

"What the hell's going on?" Gadgets wondered aloud.

Lyons watched the ridge through his binoculars.

In the gorge, the Mexican army platoon resumed its autofire and aimed rifle fire. But no rifle fire came down from the ridge.

Through the binoculars, Lyons saw specks scrambling along the ridge. Then he saw something else, on the ridge but in a different place.

A mirror flashed. In code.

"Wizard, up there on the ridge." Lyons passed the binoculars to Gadgets. "There's a signal mirror."

"It's Morse," Schwarz declared. "It's saying... esperen... alli... nosotros... los... ayudaremos. Hey, we've got friends up there. They're telling us to lay cool."

Lyons laughed. "I'm cool, you're cool. It's those Mexicans who're..."

High-velocity slugs whined over them. A barrage of rifle grenades fell in a continuous roar of explosions. Then a storm of M-16 fire ripped the area, the Mexicans firing out their magazines in continuous full-auto.

"Here they come!" Davis shouted.

The Mexicans rushed.

On the high ridge above the canyon, Sergeant Mendoza watched the helicopter break off the attack. He signaled to his mortar crew to resume fire, and the riflemen continued blasting the North Americans in the canyon.

Mendoza turned to his radioman. He switched the radio to the helicopter's frequency and took the handset. Behind him, a man shouted.

A soldier rolled down the slope. The sergeant saw the two remaining men of the mortar crew staring wide-eyed at the falling man.

The firing of the other men died away. They all turned to watch the soldier as he came to a flopping stop in the rocks. He did not move. No one spoke. The firefight continued in the canyon below them, distance reducing the reports of the rifles and the explosions of the grenades to pops and sputters.

In the near-silence, the shriek of a heavy-caliber bullet and unnerving slap of the bullet hitting flesh startled the squad. Blood misted in the air as another soldier flew backward from the mortar. He spun and hit the rocks face first. Blood fountained from a hole in his back. Gasping, vomiting blood, the soldier tried to stand. He rolled to the side and sat up. His eyes stared around him. Then he fell back, dead.

Scrambling through the rocks, the squad took cover. Ordering two men to take the places of the dead men at the mortar, Mendoza lifted the handset to hear the pilot of the helicopter calling.

"Sergeant! Sergeant Mendoza..."

The handset was ripped from his hand as the radioman fell backward. Pieces of metal and plastic tinkled on the stones as radio components rained down. A bullet had killed the radioman, then exited through his back to shatter the circuitry of the radio into a thousand pieces.

A man shouted to the other soldiers, and frantically pointed across the canyon to the far mountain. The sergeant raised his field glasses and scanned the mountainsides.

He saw only mesquite and dust and rocks. Nothing moved. Then a semicircle of dust suddenly stirred.

An instant later, a bullet shrieked into the ridge and exploded in the rocks. A man screamed. A near-miss had ricocheted from the rock protecting him, and the smashed, misshapen slug entered his shoulder and erupted through his knee. Two soldiers dragged him below the edge of the ridge and attempted to stop the gushing blood. One glance told Mendoza the man had no hope.

The squad abandoned the ridge and scrambled to the safety of the mountainside, leaving the mortar in place, the 81mm rounds piled on a plastic tarp.

Sergeant Mendoza unslung his FN-FAL para-rifle and swung out the metal-tubing stock. Laying low on the ridge, he braced the long-range kill machine and sighted on the dust thrown up by the rifle on the opposite mountainside.

But in the glare, he could not see the dust. He raised his field glasses to locate the sniper. A bullet exploded against the rocks a step away as the sniper searched for targets.

Squinting through his rifle's peep sight, Mendoza could only adjust for the range by guess. The FN-FAL did not have a click adjustment for extreme ranges. He fired single shots, attempting to find the sniper.

Then he heard the rifle fire behind him.

Lyons switched magazines as the Mexicans rushed the last hundred meters. He returned the load of one-ounce slugs to his bandolier and snapped in the partially empty mag of number-two and double-ought steel shot mix. He took out a second mag of mixed-shot rounds and tucked it into the front pocket of his gray fatigue shirt.

The Mexicans, expecting to find a group of dead and wounded North Americans hiding in the rocks, attempted to finish the foreigners in one rush of sprayed full-auto fire. The men of Able Team waited. Mexican riflemen in concealment overlooking the streambed continued aiming fire into the rocks. The riflemen stopped shooting only when the soldiers closed on the North Americans.

Able Team waited until the Mexicans ran into the maze of rocks. Lyons saw a green uniform rushing toward him. He fired, and the blast lifted the Mexican off his feet and slammed him down. Gadgets triggered a 3-shot burst through another Mexican.

Another soldier spun at the sound of shooting to his side and took a steel storm of number two and double ought in the face. He fell, and Davis put the muzzle of his M-16 against the dead man's chest and killed him again.

A Mexican saw Davis and fired as Lyons fired. High-velocity slugs tore past Davis and exploded on the rocks and the Mexican died, his chest blasted open, one arm and his rifle spinning wildly through the air.

Miguel Coral popped up, fired a burst through a soldier, then dropped down as a rifleman two hundred meters to the south squeezed off a shot. Coral scrambled to another rock and fired at a running soldier, hitting him in one leg. The wounded soldier staggered past Blancanales, who shot him in the back. Then the Politician delivered a mandate of full-auto fire at another Mexican. Slugs from his M-16/M-203 tore the soldier to pieces.

Lyons snatched a glance, then quickly dropped down as a slug from an FN-FAL whined off the rock. But he had seen no other soldier still standing. He took an M-16 from a dead man, changed mags, then called out to his partners: "Anyone hit?"

"I'm bleeding," Davis answered.

"Is it serious?" Lyons called out.

"I don't know. But I'm bleeding like crazy."

Blancanales crawled to Davis. "It's not a bullet wound. He hit his head on a rock."