"Scorched Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stivers Dick)

8

As the pilot held the Huey troopship in a hover, Mexican soldiers stepped down to therocks of a mountain ridgeline. The NCO leading the ambush squad turned and saluted Colonel Gonzalez. The colonel returned the salute, then the helicopter sideslipped away and descended into the canyon. The helicopter stayed low in the canyon, the pilot weaving the million-dollar ship between the cliffs and mountainsides, using the topography to conceal its rotor throb from the North Americans somewhere in the mountains.

Sergeant Mendoza called his men together, and briefed them quickly, touching the map to indicate the location of the gorge.

At the site of the wreck the searchers had found the false tracks leading south. Colonel Gonzalez believed the North American drug agents who survived the wreck had fled north, into the mountain gorge. The colonel's helicopter had placed Sergeant Mendoza and his squad more than ten kilometers north of the crash site. Now, only a mountain ridge and a march of a few kilometers separated the soldiers from the North Americans.

"We think four escaped the crash and ran into the mountains. Some are bleeding. The colonel will send the other squad into the gorge. The gringos will run from them..."

His blunt calloused finger traced the path. The squad would go uphill to the first ridge, proceed north to a second, then travel east along a third. "We will take positions here, above them, and kill them. Or force them to surrender to the others. It should all be over before nightfall."

He led his men west up to the first ridge. They grunted against the weight of the weapons and munitions they carried. In addition to their heavy FN-FAL folding-stock paratroop rifles and two hundred rounds of 7.62mm cartridges in magazines, each man carried rifle grenades and mortar rounds. The mortar crew, burdened with the components of the 81mm mortar, carried lightweight Uzi submachine guns. Every soldier carried four one-liter canteens of water.

At the mountain ridge, as the soldiers caught their breath, their rasping throats and coughs loud in the silence of the mountains, Sergeant Mendoza surveyed the terrain.

To the south, he saw the foothills and desert. A smear of gray smudged the sky, but smoke no longer rose from the crash site. To the other points of the compass, Mendoza saw only the Sierra Madres, the thousands of canyons and ridgelines and peaks continuing into the distance.

With his binoculars he searched the mountainsides for signs of Indian bandits. His brigade had lost men in these mountains before. Though soldiers with dogs searched for the lost squads, they never found the missing men. The dogs found the scent of blood and a few cartridge casings buried in the sand, but nothing else.

Legends told of Indians who still fought in the Sierra Madres. Sergeant Mendoza searched every rock and shadow and form of the mountains, focusing his binoculars on scrub brush and wind-gnarled trees. He did not want his death to contribute to the legends.

The sergeant ordered his squad to move. Leading the way, he followed the ridge to the north, his men behind him groaning and complaining about the weight of their weapons. Automatically his eyes searched the sand for signs of Indian bandits.

Mendoza consulted his map at every turn of the ridgeline. Prepared from satellite photos, the topographical map had been provided to the Condor Group by the DEA for use in operations against the opium farmers.

In the recent months, Mendoza had used the map to find and force the cooperation of the farmers in the mountains. Now he used it to find and kill American DEA officers.

The squad followed the ridgeline, slipping and scrambling across the steep slope until they came to a sheer drop. Hundreds of meters of void separated the squad from the opposite mountain. A hawk floated in the updrafts, watching the canyon and mountainsides for prey.

Mendoza crawled to the edge and looked down into the cleft between the mountains. Two hundred meters below, stagnant water pooled in the sand of the streambed. A thin stream snaked around slabs of fallen stone. Twisted cottonwood and mesquite trees grew from the walls of the gorge, but at the bottom, where countless flash floods had scoured the stones, only brush and grasses would provide cover for the Americans.

He scrambled up to the knob of stone where the ridge ended. From there, he looked down into a section of the gorge.

Perfect. Here, his riflemen and mortar crew would command the entire canyon. Without cover the Americans could not pass him. They would be trapped between his squad and the squad pursuing them.

Between death and death.

Able Team maintained a quick pace north. In the streambed at the bottom of the gorge, they walked in cool early-morning shadow. Above them, the intense sunlight burned white on the cliffs and near-vertical mountainsides. They constantly scanned the slash of sky overhead for helicopters, but none appeared. They heard no rotor throb.

Midges and blue-bodied dragonflies buzzed around them as they walked. When they stepped through the stagnant pools, every splash of their boots raised swarms of tiny flies. Ropes of moss alive with flies clung to their boots.

Davis and Coral, walking in street shoes, kept up with Able Team. Blancanales carried Coral's overnight bag on his backpack. Though both the DEA pilot and the Mexican gang soldier maintained the pace, they did not have the boots and physical conditioning necessary for comfortable long-distance hiking.

Lyons called a stop. "Let's tape their feet. Otherwise, they won't last the day. And we've got distance to make."

"Right," Blancanales agreed. "You go on ahead, Carl, and scout the terrain. Wizard, watch our back."

Davis sat on a rock and pulled off his shoes. He wore thin nylon dress socks. "Got an extra pair of socks? I didn't come prepared for a forced march."

"Sure." Blancanales found heavy socks and a roll of OD adhesive tape in the compartments of his backpack. "Got to keep you two moving. A platoon's only as fast as the slowest man."

"When I was a boy," Coral said, surveying the cliffs and peaks above them, "I hunted deer in these mountains with my grandfather. These mountains are a world without end. When we are in the mountains, there will be no problem from the soldiers. They will never find us."

A hundred meters ahead of the others, Lyons scanned the ridgelines. A point of light flashed, sunlight reflecting from glass on a rocky peak overlooking the canyon. Lyons backed into a dark crevice between two fallen slabs of rock. The dark rock and shadows concealed his gray uniform and black gear. He raised his binoculars.

The extreme distance defeated the optics. He could see only the crags and the windswept mountainside. Gnarled brush clung to the slopes, splotches of green against the rocks and sand.

Lyons eased himself into a comfortable slouch against the slabs and braced his elbows. He held the field of view on the ridgeline, where the ragged edge of the rock outcrops met the pure blue of the sky. Relaxing, he held his eyes still, almost unfocused, letting his eyes see everything at once.

One of the rocks moved.

He watched that one spot. The rock moved again. Then from the side, sunlight flashed again. Lyons shifted the field of view. A point of white light flashed, then disappeared as an observer lifted, then lowered binoculars.

His hand radio buzzed. Lyons maintained his watch of the ridge while Blancanales and Gadgets talked.

"We've got soldiers on our back," Gadgets said.

"How many?" the Politician asked.

"I've seen two. Pointmen, one man on each side of the gulch. Wait a minute. There's another man... Looks like we got a platoon tracking us."

"They see you?"

"No."

"Davis and Miguel are ready to go. We'll try to outrun the Mexicans."

Keying his hand radio, Lyons interrupted the others. "Negative. We've got a lookout ahead."

"What?" Gadgets asked. "In front of us?"

"That's what I said, Wiz. I've seen movement and reflections from binoculars."

"What's the distance?" Blancanales asked.

"Extreme. Maybe a half mile away, and three or four hundred feet above us. They're up on a ridge-line overlooking the canyon. I say we ambush the ones behind us, then leapfrog up the canyon."

"Through the lookout's field of fire?" Blancanales asked.

"Only chance we've got to get out..."

Gadgets interrupted them with a whispered warning. "Dudes! Make up your minds. Those Mexicans are only a hundred yards away."

Blancanales spoke calmly. "Could they be a rescue party? Searching for survivors?"

"Yeah, that's it," Gadgets snapped back. "You got it. First they shoot us down, and when we survive, they try to find us. Problem is, when they find us, we ain't going to be survivors. You got thirty seconds to get back here, Pol."

"On my way. Ironman, I'm sending Davis and Miguel forward."

"Hit those Mexicans and leapfrog retreat," Lyons answered. "Try to capture some rifles and ammunition."

Lyons changed his position, working his way through a maze of chest-high blocks of rock that had fallen from the sheer wall of the gorge. When he came to the canyon wall, Lyons crabbed up a ledge until he found a position concealed by mesquite from which he could fire into the streambed.

A minute later, he saw Davis and Miguel Coral jog up from the south. They glanced around, looking for Lyons. He hissed to them, catching their attention, and pointed to the ridgeline where he had seen the light-flashes. They nodded, and took cover in the rock maze.

Lyons waited, monitoring his partners through his hand radio, listening for the firefight.

Blancanales crept back through the rocks and stagnant pools. He saw Gadgets concealed in the crevice of a multiton flake of stone, watching the approaching Mexicans through a tangle of mesquite. Before continuing, Blancanales whispered into his hand radio, "Where are they?"

Two clicks, a pause, then two clicks answered, the signal that the enemy was too close for Gadgets to speak.

"You got your earphone in?"

Two clicks, yes.

"I'll take cover here. Let the pointmen pass you. We need their weapons and gear. Understand?"

Two clicks, yes.

Crouching in the shadowed crevice, Gadgets slipped out his silenced Beretta 93-R. Representing the cutting edge of Beretta technology, the Parkerized black autopistol featured semiauto or 3-shot bursts. An oversized trigger guard and a fold-down grip provided for a two-handed hold. Fitted with a sound suppressor and firing custom-loaded 9mm cartridges with steel-cored slugs for enhanced penetration, it killed without a sound. A positive safety allowed the single-action pistol to be carried cocked and locked.

Gadgets folded down the Beretta's left-hand grip. He eased the fire-selector to the one-shot mode.

He heard the Mexican before he saw him. Rocks turned under a boot. Water sloshed inside a canteen. Then boots squeaked through the streambed's sand. The Mexican soldier passed, his head swiveling to the right and left, scanning the rocks for movement. He looked directly at Gadgets, and Gadgets put a slug between his eyes, then a 3-round burst into his heart as he fell back.

There had only been the sound of the pistol's slide functioning and the four slaps of the slugs hitting flesh.

Nothing moved. Gadgets listened as the insects continued buzzing around the stagnant pools of the streambed. Holding the autopistol ready, he raised the hand radio to his lips. "I hit the first one," he whispered. "Where's the other pointman?"

Blancanales answered in a whisper. "He's coming up on the other side of the canyon. About twenty yards back."

"What's the line of sight? Can you pull the dead one into cover?"

"Doing it."

Gadgets watched Blancanales snake from cover. He grabbed the dead soldier's M-16 rifle, checking the safety. Then, slinging the M-16 over his shoulder, he grabbed the collar of the Mexican soldier and dragged him back. The dead man's gear clanked on the rocks.

A burst of a thousand-meter-per-second slugs screamed through the silence, the full-auto muzzle reports coming an instant later as impacting full-jacketed slugs exploded on the rocks around Blancanales. A last jerk pulled the dead man behind cover. The autofire continued.

Boots splashed through the stream. The second soldier changed magazines on the run and sprayed M-16 fire at the rocks concealing Blancanales.

A burst of silent 9mm staggered the Mexican, the three steel-cored bullets punching through the back of his head. He died before he fell.

"Strip them!" Gadgets shouted. He set the Beretta's safety and holstered the weapon, then unslung his CAR and peered through the mesquite for targets.

A soldier appeared a hundred meters downstream. He held an FN-FAL rifle with a grenade fitted to the muzzle. Gadgets set his CAR's fire-selector to semi-auto and sighted on the soldier's face. As the soldier aimed the rifle-grenade, Gadgets squeezed off his shot.

The grenade went wild as the dead man fell back. An explosion against a cliff face sprayed stone and shrapnel into the air.

Autorifles hammered. Slugs and ricochets zipped through the canyon as the soldiers reconned by fire. Gadgets saw an officer with a radioman advancing to the front, dashing from cover to cover as the soldiers kept up the fire.

A 3-round burst from Gadgets's CAR spun the officer. Gadgets snapped off a second burst as the radioman dived for cover. The autofire slowed as several riflemen went to the aid of their dead or dying leader.

"Wizard!" Blancanales called out. "Ready?"

Gadgets ran to his partner. Slugs tore through the air and whined off rocks as the unaimed fire continued.

The dead Mexicans lay in the sand, stripped of their weapons, web gear and boots. Blancanales had strapped on a bandolier and Mexican web gear. A pair of boots hung around his neck. He wore two soft-brimmed OD hats, one on top of the other. He passed other equipment to Gadgets.

"You work fast."

Blancanales nodded. He put one of the hats on Gadgets. "Off-load the rifles and gear with the others. I'll fall back and slow them down."

"I'll be back."

Blancanales shifted position. He didn't chance crossing to the opposite side of the canyon. Instead he watched for movement, and when he saw none, crawled and sprinted upstream. The volume of fire continued. A rifle grenade blasted the rocks where Gadgets had crouched.

Ahead, he saw Gadgets carrying the captured weapons and gear to the others. Blancanales scrambled up a rockfall and took cover behind a slab of stone. He loaded a high-explosive shell into his M-16/M-203 over-and-under assault rifle/grenade launcher. He set the M-203's sights at a hundred meters and waited.

The Mexicans advanced. Blancanales held his fire. The Mexicans killed brush and shadows with bursts of autofire. Rifle grenades maimed mesquite. He saw a soldier rush from rock to rock. The soldier found the bodies of the pointmen. He called out to the platoon. Other soldiers crowded around the dead men. They turned over a body.

A blast threw the men back. Blancanales had pulled the pin from one of the pointmen's grenades, slipped the grenade under a dead man's shirt, then lowered the corpse to hold down the grenade's safety lever.

Screams came from the wounded. Men shouted desperately for help. Blancanales waited until several soldiers of the platoon went to the aid of the wounded.

The 40mm grenade hit the rock behind the group, ripping the men with hundreds of steel fragments. Riflemen fired at Blancanales as their comrades screamed in agony. The flesh-shredder had done its grisly work.

Blancanales slid down the rockfall and dodged from cover to cover to rejoin the others.

Lyons saw Gadgets pass below him. Gadgets crouched with Davis and Coral in the rock maze and passed the captured rifles and equipment to them. Coral slung the boots over his neck to try on later. Then Lyons turned to the action downstream. He had heard the flat clang of the 40mm launcher, then the pop of the grenade. Now he saw Blancanales retreating upstream. Lyons waited.

Fewer rifles fired. His partners had killed or wounded several of the platoon pursuing them. Now the Mexicans feared advancing. If Able Team and the DEA man and the Mexican gunslinger-turned-guide could keep the pace, they could leave their pursuers far behind.

A high-pitched whistle shrieked in the sky. Shock slammed Lyons's ears as an explosion across the canyon threw stone and steel shrapnel through the air.

In the moment of ringing silence after the blast, Lyons heard a distant pop. Then slugs ripped through the air, sparking off the flat slabs, slapping into the wet sand of the streambed. But Lyons did not hear the firing of rifles.

Another blast sent shrapnel and stone tearing through the narrow gorge. Blancanales shouted to him, "Get down! Mortars!"