The Lotus Eaters

snapping it, and threw him, spinning while screaming, some distance away.

* * *

The Phaeton careened out of control and smashed into a telephone pole. Carrera was thrown forward into the dash. He gasped aloud—'ahhh, Gggoddd!'—at an awful pain he felt in his right shoulder. Briefly stunned, he shook his head to clear it. That hurt, too. Pain or not, he then reached under the seat and pulled out one of the weapons kept there, a Pound submachine gun, along with several magazines. Shouting something to Mitchell and the guards, Carrera opened the door and rolled out, then crawled to a position in front of the caved in grill and next to the telephone pole.

Whitley aimed his RGL at the car and let fly. The backblast smashed shop and home windows behind him. The rocket impacted on the rear passenger door, killing the two guards and causing the rear of the Phaeton to explode in flames. Whitley dropped the rocket launcher, drew a pistol, and walked forward to finish the job. Two men by the church, who hadn't so far done anything to help Whitley's ambush, ran up the street to join him. The original gunman lay screaming in the road. The two lookout men had their own transportation. They were only to fire if Carrera's vehicle had made it through the main ambush and tried to exit town. Since it hadn't, they followed their instructions and rode off separately.

'Keep both sides of the street covered,' Whitley ordered. The two unused gunman complied.

Carrera heard the order and thought, I'm so dead.

* * *

Private Hector Pitti, 6th Mechanized Tercio, was new to the Legion, and only a militiaman to boot. His rank was as low as it got without being an outright recruit. Still, he was proud of his military status, proud enough that his F-26 rifle hung over his lorica in a place of honor in his living-cum-dining room cum kitchen. A full magazine sat on a narrow shelf right underneath the firearm.

Pitti heard no shots. Moreover, the sound of a crashing auto was nothing remarkable anywhere along the InterColombiana. But when the rocket grenade launcher fired, and its backblast shattered the windows over the kitchen sink, Pitti thought that it was about time to take his rifle from the pegs that held it. There was no time to don his body armor, the lorica.

With hands still shaking from the blast, he did so. He held the rifle in one hand while the other fumbled with the protective tape that sealed the ammunition in the magazine. That wasn't working too well until Pitti swung the magazine under one armpit to hold it. Cursing, he fumbled with the tape until thumb and forefinger managed to grasp it. A quick pull and the tape came off of the mouth of the magazine. He dropped the tape, then lifted his arm, releasing the magazine and catching it with his hand. Slamming it into the F-26's magazine well, he was already jacking the bolt as his feet carried him to the shattered window.

* * *

Carrera would probably have been dead, too, had not one of the reservists of the town—Got to get that man's name!—stuck his issue rifle out of his front window to fire at Whitley. It was a hurried shot. The militiaman missed.

Still, shocked at the unexpected fire and the bullets cracking the air nearby, the former Sea Lion dove to his belly. 'Motherfucker! Where did that come from?' Whitley slithered around on the gravel as he scanned for the source of the fire.

That distraction was all Carrera needed. Rolling over from his covered position next to the car, Carrera winced as his right shoulder temporarily took the weight of his torso. He fired two short bursts at Whitley, the bolt chattering and the bullets making little sonic booms, lower in pitch than those from the F-26. One or—more likely, given Whitley's size—several of the Pound's bullets connected; Whitley spun and then fell to his rear end, torso still upright. He made no sound beyond a surprised 'oomph.' The assassin seemed confused when he looked down at his red stained, ruined midsection.

Rising to a crouch and aiming over the Phaeton's hood, using it to support his aim, Carrera turned on the other two. These were just now rising from where they'd taken cover at the unexpected shots. Surprised anyone was left from the Phaeton after the RGL had struck it, they fired from the hip. Carrera, conversely, took the time to aim. His metal-shrouded pin sight lined up on the upper torso of one of the gunmen. He stroked the trigger, lightly, and was rewarded by the image of the gunman's chest rippling under the impact. A late round, driven high by muzzle climb, hit the assassin's head, exploding it like an overripe melon.

Good thing the Pound is low recoil, Carrera thought absently, as his sight traversed to the last remaining assassin. Otherwise, I wouldn't hit shit. Ouch.

The bullets from the still spraying, and last standing, assassin struck the hood of the Phaeton, as well as the tires. Air rushed even as metal gave way and chips of paint flew.

Again Carrera's finger stroked the trigger, then twice again in rapid succession. The last assassin fell with satisfying screams of pain.

Carrera rose to a crouch and duckwalked forward, stopping once to change magazines. He donated another burst each to the two olive skinned gunmen, then turned back to the white one.

Still looking dazed and confused, the ex-Seal Lion tried to focus his eyes on the uniformed man in front of him.

'It was just business,' Randy Whitley said, in English, as if that explained everything.

'So is this,' Carrera answered, placing the smoking muzzle against Whitley's forehead. He squeezed the trigger again, causing the contract professional's head to disintegrate in a spray of blood and bits of brain and skull.

The militiaman who had spontaneously fired in Carrera's support ran out with his rifle at port arms. That he looked like a soldier, despite his workingman's clothes, was all that kept Carrera from firing on him as well.

'Senor, you are bleeding,' the militiaman said.

Carrera ignored that. Pointing to the broken legged gunman laying on the ground, he said, 'Guard him, soldier!' Then Carrera ran to the driver's side of the Phaeton to see to Mitchell and his guards. It was not pretty. Flames licked around the guards' bodies, as hair and uniform material added their stench to the smell of cooking pork.

Carrera's heart sank as his bile rose. 'Oh, hell. Ah, shit, Mitch! What am I going to tell your wife and kids?' Carrera looked only once to be sure. Mitchell was dead, the back of his head missing where a bullet had forced his brain out of it. He put a hand on Mitchell's blood stained shirt and began quietly to cry, even as he pulled his friend's corpse away from the fire. The people who had begun to gather now that the shooting was over looked wonderingly