roadway. Ricardo raised his aim to the headlights following them.
Tracers crisscrossed. In the lead vehicle pursuing them, an experienced gunner got their range. Slugs whined off the roadway beside them. A tracer sparked off a fender. A slug slammed into the jeep's spare tire.
Lyons sighted the Atchisson on the headlights two hundred meters behind them. Then he adjusted his aim upward to compensate for drop. He fired semiauto, once, twice, three times, emptying the Atchisson's box mag.
Behind them, a headlight went black. The lead jeep — with only one headlight — swerved from side to side. The other headlights wove. Though the steel buckshot at that extreme distance presented no lethal threat to their pursuers, the spent projectiles had shattered glass and perhaps wounded the standing machine gunner.
They approached the vehicle yard. Many pairs of headlights indicated a general mobilization of the militiamen.
A truck came from the gate and blocked the road. Letting the Atchisson hang at his side, Lyons put the butt of the forward-pointing M-60 to his shoulder. As Blancanales slowed to evade the roadblock, Lyons sighted carefully and put bursts through the rear tires. The next burst went through the passenger-side door.
Holding the trigger back, Lyons raked the cab, behind the door, under the door, hoping to find the fuel tanks. He scored. The tracers ignited a sea of gasoline. A flaming figure staggered from the inferno and stumbled into the coffee rows to burn. The sheet of flames blocked the vehicle-yard exit.
Lyons directed the line of 7.62mm at the gate, killing a sentry, shattering the windshield of a Silverado blocked by the burning truck. He swept the autofire across the other vehicles attempting to exit — trucks, cars, a bus. Tracers hit the chain link fencing and flew at wild angles. But the fragments and ricocheting heavy NATO slugs retained the velocity to punch through steel and flesh.
Militiamen evacuated their transports. Rifles and heavy weapons returned Lyons's fire as Blancanales left the asphalt road for the muddy coffee fields. Ricardo directed his fire straight back at the vehicle yard, sending a line of tracers through the flames and smoke to rake militiamen and trucks and cars.
Ricochets from wild autofire scratched against the black overcast. The orange glow of the gasoline flames tinted the clouds.
'How we going to get out the gate?' Blancanales shouted to Lyons.
'Only one way. Crash it.'
Blancanales downshifted to power through mud and pools of rainwater. 'We won't make it. It's steel beams and cables under the chain link.'
'You don't think this jeep would do it?'
'If we try to crash that gate with this vehicle,' Blancanales emphasized, 'we will disable this vehicle. We will be on foot. And then very quickly dead.'
'So the solution is obvious...'
Lyons looked back. Headlights followed them along the row of coffee. Ahead, their headlights illuminated a long corridor through endless coffee bushes. Standing in the front seat, he looked over the bushes but saw no roads or breaks in the green sea of the plantation.
Slugs tore past him as the militiamen sighted on their jeep's taillights. Ricardo returned the fire. But with the lurching and bumping of the jeeps and trucks over the earth and mud, no one hit anyone.
Lyons climbed into the back. As Ricardo watched for targets, Lyons pulled his Colt Python. He held the revolver by the barrel and leaned over the tailgate of the jeep. He smashed out the taillights.
Blancanales cut to the left. Crashing across rows, swerving, he zigzagged to confuse the pursuers. He maintained a course parallel to the road, then veered back for the blacktop. Lyons saw headlights in the rows continuing in the opposite direction.
But on the road, headlights waited for them. A truck's spotlight swept the rows of coffee. Lyons motioned Ricardo to the front machine gun. He leaned to Blancanales and explained.
'Here's the plan. Get as close to the road as you can while the kid puts out some rounds. Then turn parallel. Then cut for the road. Got it? Straight on, parallel, then straight on to the road and make it for the gate. I'll be right behind you.'
'What are you talking about?'
'I'm getting us a truck.'
'Crazyman!'
'You got any ideas?' Lyons touch-checked his equipment. Bandoliers. Pistols. Grenades. Knife.
As they neared the road, the spotlight found them. Autorifles fired. Blancanales switched off the headlights and swerved through bushes. Ricardo aimed the M-60 at the lights. Blancanales spoke to him quickly in Spanish. The teenager raised the barrel and fired a short burst over the truck.
Forms scattered. The searchlight went dark. Lyons tapped Blancanales.
'Now!'
The jeep slowed for a moment. Lyons stepped into the darkness, running for a few steps. He crashed into a bush and rolled through mud. The jeep accelerated away in the darkness, plunging through coffee rows.
Lyons moved fast. Mud sucked at his boots. Ahead, he heard voices. Rifles fired blindly into the coffee rows, the slugs cutting through leaves and branches. He moved closer. He saw militiamen bracing M-16 rifles on the hood of a gray Silverado. They watched the rows for the North Americans.
Lights appeared a hundred meters to his right as Blancanales switched on his headlights. The militiamen at the truck snapped bursts from their M-16s. The jeep's headlights wavered as Blancanales bounced up the shoulder of the service road and skidded through a hard right turn.
Three militiamen scrambled into the Silverado. Lyons, sprinting across the broken, muddy ground, stopped, pulled down a breath to steady his aim and lined up the Atchisson's tritium nightsight on the windows of the truck.
In the front seat, the militiamen died before they heard the shots that killed them. Blasts of steel smashed through the passenger-side window and punched through their skulls. In the back seat, a man's eyes whirled toward the flash in the darkness. Steel balls shattered his window and tore away his head.
Lyons sprinted to the passenger truck, the Atchisson ready in his hands. He fired blasts point-blank into the seats to kill any militiaman waiting to surprise him. But the Silverado contained only corpses. He shoved aside the driver's body and started the truck.
Racing after the jeep, he flicked the high beams again and again. He saw Ricardo aim the M-60 at the Silverado's windshield. Lyons flicked the high beams once more and waved a hand out the window. He accelerated to pass the jeep.
'Stop!' he shouted out to Blancanales.
Blancanales slowed. 'What?'
The jeep and the Silverado coasted on the blacktop. Lyons saw the guard tower and gate three hundred meters ahead. He leaned across a gory militiaman to speak to Blancanales through the shattered passenger window.
'You two put out rounds. Get as close as you can risk, and then put out everything you got. Or they're going to chop me to shit before I hit that gate. There are heavy machine guns up there. Maybe rockets.'
'Anything you say. This is your idea.'
'You first, then I come up to speed.'
Blancanales accelerated ahead. Looking in the rear-view mirror, Lyons saw headlights weaving through the smoke and the flames far behind him. Other headlights came from the coffee rows.
Tracers arced down from the tower. Blancanales swerved from side to side as Ricardo aimed the M-60's autofire at the gunner. Flame flashed from the tower and a rocket shrieked into the earth. Blancanales slammed to a stop. He snapped up his M-16/M-203 and fired.
A 40mm grenade popped against the tower. The frag did not silence the machine gun. Blancanales aimed the jeep's front M-60. Two streams of tracers found the tower. Lyons saw tracers going in one window and out the other side.
Lyons prepared to crash the gate. He shoved the corpses of the militiamen into the footwell. He kicked one dead man up against the firewall. Then he put the heavy passenger truck into gear and floored the accelerator.
Driving the truck like a missile, he aimed for where padlock and chains secured the gates. A heavy steel
