18

As Blancanales jerked back the cocking handle of the machine gun, Lyons crabbed across the ridge to his partner's position.

"Wait!" Lyons rasped. "Hold it. Don't hit them down there. Don't."

"What are you thinking?" Blancanales asked.

"If we hit them," Lyons said as he glanced to the airstrip and rancho, "they know we're up here. Give me five minutes. I'll try to come up behind that ambush. If Soto or any of his soldiers are alive, or if they're captured, I can get them out. Then you hit the Iranians."

"Can you get down there?"

"Yeah, I can. It's downhill. Five minutes?"

"Go. We'll wait."

Sliding, running, side slipping with every step, Lyons cut across the hillside. He made no effort at silence for the first three hundred meters. The continuous firing of the Iranians and Mexicans continued. He ran through the moonlight, zigzagging through the brush, sprinting the open stretches.

As he ran, he cursed his acceptance of official Mexican liaison. He did not know, but he suspected — he believed — the Mexicans had betrayed them. Captain Soto's battalion commander had sketched the path of approach to the rancho. Lyons remembered Captain Soto talking of his commander's assurances that the Iranians would scatter in the assault.

And then Captain Soto had walked into an ambush.

The autofire sputtered out to isolated bursts and shots. Lyons heard men shouting to one another in the darkness. They did not shout in Spanish.

Lyons slowed to a silent walk as he rounded the curve of the hill. He crouched down and scanned the hillsides and gully. He saw the streambed, the brush and small trees black in the moonlight. Flashlights appeared. Lyons stayed low in the sage, his black gear and faded black fatigues like a shadow on the hillside. He crept to the drop-off.

Below him, he heard the sound of footsteps in the streambed and saw Desmarais running through the sand and grasses. She looked back, fell, then ran again.

A submachine gun fired upstream. Slugs tore through the brush, snapping twigs and branches, the bullets continuing into the distance. A hand waved a flashlight over the brush. Rifles boomed and the flashlight spun back through the air, a man crashing back and moaning. Men shouted. Others thrashed through the scrub.

Desmarais continued downstream. Lyons unslung his Konzak. He thought of killing the Canadian, the thought making him grin. She deserved it, but the woman had a role to play. Instead, Lyons moved upstream.

Ahead he heard men moving through the brush. Boots ground pebbles, broke dry leaves. Weapons clinked. Lyons squatted and watched.

Dark shapes moved against the night sky. A head turned. He saw moonlight gleam on the sweat-slicked features of a Mexican. The Mexican motioned. Three men rushed out, two of the Mexican soldiers on each side of a third, supporting the wounded man as he limped along. The pointman held his position until another soldier scrambled out of the gully.

The last two Mexicans covered the others, then followed twenty steps behind. In a leapfrog retreat, one of the soldiers went low, his FN FAL rifle at his shoulder while the other continued. Then the second man stopped to cover the other. In front, the first three soldiers moved fast despite the wounded man. These five Mexicans had escaped the ambush.

Noise and voices came from the streambed. A submachine gun fired a long burst, slugs ricocheting into the sky. Silence followed.

On the hillside the five Mexicans went flat.

Men stomped through sand, weapons clattered, arms thrashed through branches. More dark forms emerged from the streambed. Lyons saw the distinctive shapes of Uzi submachine guns and Kalashnikov rifles.

The group of men advanced from the streambed. Lyons heard other voices in the streambed. He let the Konzak hang by its sling from his shoulder. Slowly, silently, Lyons worked two fragmentation grenades loose from his bandolier.

Sudden bursts of rifle fire knocked down the Iranians. The falling men sprayed aimless rounds into the night, into the brush, one Iranian shot another. Other Iranians, protected by the wall of the gully, fired at the flashing muzzles of the Mexicans' FN rifles.

Lyons pulled the pin on the first grenade and let the safety lever flip away. He counted off seconds, then lobbed the grenade on the count of four.

As the grenade exploded, thousands of wire razors slashed into the backs of the Iranians sheltered in the gully. Bodies tumbled into the streambed. Screams and sobs came from wounded.

The Mexicans threw grenades, three or four crashing into the brush concealing the Iranians. Lyons went flat on the hillside as gunmen shouted and broke cover for the gully. The explosions chopped brush and flesh with interlocking hemispheres of shrapnel.

But some of the Iranians managed to scramble back to the safety of the gully. Lyons jerked out the pin on the second grenade. The Mexicans threw another volley of grenades, but they fell short, exploding in the brush of the hillside above the gully. Autofire from the Uzis and Kalashnikovs of the Iranians answered the Mexicans.

Again counting to four after the safety lever flipped away, Lyons underhanded the second fragmentation grenade into the shadows of the gully. After the blast, Lyons heard only moans.

"Mexicanos! No dispare! Norteamericano aqui!" he called out to the soldiers.

"Who is it?" Captain Soto's voice came back.

"It's me," Lyons said as he rushed through the brush. "Don't shoot."

A penlight blinked, and Lyons went to Captain Soto. As another soldier watched for Iranians, they had a whispered conference.

"Where are the other North Americans?"

"Up on the ridge..." Lyons looked at his watch.

Eight minutes. They should have started firing. His hand radio buzzed at that moment.

"We heard the shooting."

"We ambushed the ambushers. What do you see down below?"

"They're moving the gas truck. We can't hold off any longer."

"Then don't. Hit them."

"What about you?"

"Hit them. Let me worry about what I'll do."

"Here it goes..."

NATO-caliber weapons fired on the ridgeline.

"How badly wounded is that man?" Lyons asked Soto.

"The bullet broke his ankle. You want to continue to the rancho? We can. He will stay..."

"Let's go."

Tracers sparked off the hard-packed earth of the airstrip. Blancanales clicked up the elevation wheel on the sight of the M-60 machine gun and fired again. The burst passed over the gasoline truck. Activity around the plane stopped as the workers stared at the orange streaks.

As the Mexican machine gunner supported the belt of 7.62mm NATO cartridges, Blancanales fired a long burst into the truck, adjusting his aim as the first tracer bounced off the top curve of the gasoline tank. The next tracer disappeared into the dark form of the five-thousand-liter tank.

Then the truck disappeared in a flash of yellow light. The tracer had sparked the gasoline vapors remaining in the empty tank, the mixture of vapor and oxygen exploding. Liquid gasoline remaining in the bottom of the tank vaporized, the blast becoming a fireball rising into the night sky.

The Iranians nearest the truck died of concussion and fragmentation wounds, then the searing fireball melted their flesh. Jagged plates of steel spun in all directions, slicing through men and trucks. Steel slashed through the wings and fuselage of the cargo plane, and aviation fuel poured from the wing tanks.

Then Blancanales swept the aim of the M-60 to the plane. A tracer arched into the torn wings and the fuel flamed. Pools of fire spread around the pyre. Flaming men ran from the fires.

The truck and trailer next to the plane burned for seconds, then disintegrated in a screaming explosion of munitions, jets of white flame shooting from the yellow fires, metal spinning into the air, then only twisted steel framing remained.