Justice by Fire

El Ejercito de los Guerreros Blancos. The men knew they faced arrest and a few days of jail. As their leaders had assured them, the administration would grant the squad immediate release — as in the murders of the North Americans in El Salvador — but the questions and publicity would be embarrassing.

They did not see the onrushing automobile until it neared them. For a moment, they stared.

Quietly, without lights, an automobile hurtled at them in reverse. The Salvadoran soldiers stared at the rear bumper and rear windows of the automobile.

Doubts restrained their reflex to fire. If the automobile had raced toward them directly, the soldiers would have raised their weapons and fired instantly.

But an attack in reverse? Four of their compatriots had departed only minutes ago. Could this be their friends returning for some reason? Then they realized the automobile had a different color and manufacturer than the vehicle their compatriots drove.

The Dodge braked suddenly. As the driver slammed the transmission into forward and smoked the tires with acceleration, the rear windows exploded outward.

A deafening auto weapon boomed. Glass floated in the air, a universe of tiny red stars as the cubes of tempered glass flashed with the red muzzle-flash of a weapon sweeping the standing Salvadorans.

As the Blancosraised their Uzis, as men dived for the shelter of graffitied walls and trash mounds, a storm of projectiles swept them. One of the gunmen twisted in the air as a pattern of high- velocity steel balls tore through his body. Another lurched and staggered as his through-and-through wounds spurted blood. Another fell screaming, his legs collapsing backward from multiple hits that shattered his knees and his leg bones.

The car screeched away. Slugs from the Blancos'Uzis sought it.

An explosion boiled upward. A wave of flame enveloped the dead Gallucci's gasoline-drenched automobile. The soldiers heard a scream as Captain Madrano writhed on the asphalt in a hell of gasoline fire. Justice by fire lit the night.

32

Flat in the back seat, Lyons snapped a safety belt around his waist as Uzi slugs hammered the Dodge. Slugs hitting the trunk lid shrieked across the sheet steel and through the interior of the car to shatter the windshield.

Behind the car, he heard the pops of 40mm grenades killing the Blancos. An orange flash colored the darkness.

Blancanales lay flat in the front seat, his head below the level of the car's windows. He did not steer the car. He only held the steering wheel straight as his foot kept the accelerator to the floor.

The bodywork's steel, the spare tire and the seats protected both men from the lightweight 9mm bullets. Hurtling away from the wild auto-fire of the Blancosat sixty miles per hour, the Dodge swerved from curb to curb on the empty street of the desolated suburb until a front wheel went up a driveway. The undercarriage scraped concrete as the car jumped the curb. Bouncing across lawns, crashing through shrubbery, the car smashed into the arson-gutted frame of a house.

Ashes and stucco and framing fell. Unsnapping his safety belt, Lyons looked around. A fire-charred wall leaned on the front and one side of the Dodge. Tangled bushes screened them from the view of the Blancosa block behind them.

Lyons smelled gasoline. 'Pol! Out of here!'

'You need help?' Blancanales asked as he kicked a door open.

'Not me, I thought...'

'Don't think. Move. This car's about to burn.'

Pushing aside boards and branches and sheets of stucco, they staggered to the lawn. Lyons scanned the street and other yards, his Atchisson on line. The gray dome of the sky cast a half-glow on the neighborhood. No one had pursued them.

The flaming hulk on the next block lit the street and house fronts. Silhouettes dashed from cover to cover. Wounded men clawed at the asphalt, pools of blood around them shimmering with flamelight.

Blancanales keyed his hand-radio. 'Wizard. We're out. Which way are they moving?'

'They're not! What a crew of losers. They're panicked and screaming.'

'We're on our way…'

'Make distance!' Lyons hissed. 'Here comes a distraction…'

Blancanales saw Lyons point his silenced Colt at the rear end of the Dodge. The jacketed slug sparked off the concrete foundation of the wrecked house, then the leaking gasoline roared.

Thrashing through shrubbery, they left the flames behind them. The gas tank exploded, a fireball churning into the night. They dropped low as the street went bright with the orange light.

Two Blancosran from the wild firefight. The moment of rising flame illuminated their sweat-shining, panicked faces. One man limped badly, his strides awkward. The second man ran past the first, made no effort to help his compatriot as the man's wounded leg buckled.

The wounded man called out as he struggled to rise from the street. 'Armando! Armando, ayudeme… ayude…'

Armando did not turn or slow in his sprint.

Lyons glanced to Blancanales. 'Prisoners?'

'We'll leave them for the police.' Blancanales let his borrowed CAR rifle hang on his shoulder as he sighted his Beretta.

Bursts of slugs tore Armando's legs, a steel-cored 9mm shattering one knee, another low-powered 9mm breaking the shinbone of the other leg. Lyons scored only one hit on the falling death-squadder, but the merciless .45 ACP hollowpoint exploded through the man's thigh, the expanding disk of spinning metal decelerating in a microsecond to liberate 400 footpounds of shock force. Blood and muscle and bone sprayed from an exit wound three inches in diameter.

The limping man behind Armando took the next bursts, a .45 ACP ripping away a foot and breaking the other leg. Nine millimeter slugs from Blancanales's selective-fire pistol punched through his knees.

Screaming, moaning, calling out in incomprehensible Spanish, the men thrashed on the sidewalk. Blancanales pulled lengths of prepared nylon cord from his pocket and started toward the wounded Blancos. Lyons jerked him back.

'Leave them. We don't owe them any tourniquets. The more blood they lose, the less chance they'll shoot the sheriffs when they get here — which will be in about one minute!'

Sprinting ahead, Lyons dodged from shadow to shadow. At the corner house, he dashed up porch steps and stood behind a brick column. Over the sights of his Atchisson, he surveyed the scene on the next block.

No Blancosexposed themselves. No auto-fire broke the sudden quiet. A scream rose, faded to a whine.

Blancanales joined him. As Lyons squinted into the shadows of a driveway — did he see a man moving, a car door opening — he heard Blancanales whisper into his hand-radio.

'We're on the southwest corner. Where are they?'

A 40mm grenade cracked. No auto-fire answered. Blancanales whispered into the radio again. 'Wizard!'

'Wait a second!' Gadgets answered. The radio went silent for a moment.

Lyons watched a driveway where the overspreading branches of a tree created a pocket of darkness. He saw a shadow move. Could it be only the rising and falling flames from the burning car?

Gadgets's voice returned. 'Dudes, I'm all tangled up in wires. I'm monitoring three radios and trying to kill people, too. I got to get an assistant...'

'What do you see?' Blancanales interrupted.

'I don't see anything. But I'm hearing things. The goon squad's forming up for a breakout, so watch out.'