Army of Devils

As the helicopter neared the pickup truck, an autorifle flashing from the side door, the rocket launcher shot flame.

The launchflash lighted the helicopter. In a frozen instant, in the milliseconds before the RPG hit its target, Lyons saw Flor leaning from the helicopter, a rifle in her hands. Then, at an altitude of ten feet above the sand, the helicopter exploded. It hit the sand and disintegrated in a maelstrom of flame and twisting metal.

"Oh, Flor…" Lyons gasped. He unsnapped his safety harness and scrambled across the Huey, the Atchisson in his hand clattering on the aluminum floor.

In the opposite door, Blancanales beside him, he looked back to see a column of sooty flame rising from the desert. As their speed took them away from the crash, Lyons leaned farther from the side, hoping the impossible, hoping to see Flor run from the mass of fire and junk metal.

No one left the wreckage.

Blancanales grabbed one of Lyons's bandoliers and pulled him back into the helicopter. He shouted into his friend's face, "They're dead, Ironman. She's dead. And if you don't get with it, we'll be dead, and that insane drug will hit the streets. Back to your position."

Stu

"But..."

"But nothing. Do as you're told or you'll be shot. Take it in so I can hit that rocket launcher. Wizard, if our pilot hesitates again, put a bullet in his head and then we'll give the copilot a try."

"Hey, weekend warrior," Gadgets jived, but not joking, his voice hard and angry. "'You heard it. You're going to die either way."

Confronted by the threats, the pilot took the helicopter down to the road. Now the two-lane road cut ruler-straight across the desert. Only a mile away, they saw the lights of the airfield. Sighting over the grenade launcher, Blancanales directed the pilot, "Down, down, hold it..." As he squeezed the M-16/M-203's second trigger, Blancanales shouted into the intercom. "Now take it up, now!"

As the 40mm grenade arced to the truck, the suited Anglo in the back of the pickup fired the RPG. The rocket streaked under the helicopter. Then the rocket man died in a flash of high explosive.

Out of control, the pickup left the road. Overturning in a spray of dust, the truck rolled. Blancanales looked back to see flame billow. He glanced at Lyons.

Slumping against the safety webbing, Lyons leaned his face in his hands. Blancanales reloaded his grenade launcher. He took the 40mm casing and bounced it off Lyons.

"Get with it, Ironman. Cry for her later. You're still on duty."

Without looking up, Lyons shook his head. Blancanales unsnapped his safety belt and went over to his friend. He grabbed a strut for a handhold and kicked Lyons.

Lyons did not notice. Blancanales kicked him again and again as he shouted down into his friend's ear.

"She's dead, and there's nothing you can do to make her live again! You're alive, and you're on mission and it isn't done yet! A lot of people are going to die if we don't stop that truck. Now..."

A hand like steel clamped on Blancanales's ankle. Lyons looked up to his partner and nodded. He said nothing. He pointed down and nodded. Blancanales squatted for an instant and embraced his friend. Neither man spoke. Then Blancanales crouch-walked across the Huey and strapped himself into his seat.

"Take it down again," Blancanales told the pilot.

Below them, the white Dodge and the cargo truck raced to the airfield. Dropping to zero altitude, the pilot paralleled the truck. Autofire flashed from the sedan.

As Blancanales aimed his grenade launcher, a slug ricocheted through the cockpit. Plexiglas splintered. The helicopter veered away for an instant until Gadgets pushed the pilot's head with the muzzle of the Beretta. The helicopter returned to its parallel course.

"Steady…" Blancanales said into the intercom. Slugs hammered the helicopter. He fired and shouted. "Take it away!"

Hundreds of steel fragments slashed the front tires of the truck. Skidding sideways across the gravel airfield, the driver lost control. The truck tipped sideways and slid to a stop.

The Dodge cranked a sweeping turn. At the other end of the field, a Lear jet left a hangar.

"Now the Dodge," Blancanales told the pilot. Reloading, he looked over at Lyons.

As the helicopter banked through a steep turn, Lyons waited, his face expressionless, the Atchisson ready in his hands. He stared out at the dying, paling night as if he were a passenger on a bus. Blancanales shouted into the intercom, "Ironman, hit the Dodge with everything you can put out."

Without acknowledging his partner, Lyons took a magazine of 12-gauge rounds out of his bandolier. He held the magazine in his teeth and waited, grimacing like a pirate.

"Take us in, pilot," Blancanales said.

Swooping low, the helicopter closed on the Dodge. An Anglo in a suit leaned from the car's rear driver-side window and fired an Uzi up at the troopship. The 9mm slugs plinked the aluminum hull.

The Dodge skidded to a stop at the overturned cargo truck.

"Up to a hundred feet and hover. Hover!" yelled Blancanales. "Wizard, grenades out the doors. Everything!"

The helicopter seemed to lurch to a stop. Dust clouded from the field as Blancanales stood in the side door and fired his M-203 straight down at the Dodge.

The Dodge's driver stepped from the door of the car as the grenade hit the roof. Suddenly headless, he took one more step and fell.

While Lyons emptied his magazine of slugs through the roof of the Dodge, each impact like a supersonic sledgehammer strike, Gadgets pulled the cotter pins from hand grenades. He lobbed them out the doors underhand, then pulled two more out and threw those.

Blancanales sprayed the Chicanos and Anglos with thirty 5.56mm slugs. At the other side door, Lyons dropped out the spent magazine and loaded seven rounds of double-ought and number-two steel.

Lyons sighted on a man in a suit sprinting across the gravel. The blast sent steel through his brain and heart and lungs. He died before he fell. A Chicano scrambled from the back of the truck. Lyons put a single blast through his body. Another Chicano stepped over the corpse. Steel from the Atchisson and from one of Gadgets's grenades ripped him.

"That plane!" Blancanales called out.

The Lear jet veered away from the carnage. An arm reached from the cabin and pulled the cabin door closed. Accelerating, the jet bounced across the field.

The helicopter pilot turned the Huey. At a hundred miles an hour, he attempted to intercept the jet before it lifted off. But the jet's engines took it into the dawn sky and away.

"Sorry, I couldn't stop it, it was too fast…" the copter pilot apologized.

"Back to the truck and the car. Put us down," Blancanales said.

Nothing moved in the scene. Anglos and Chicanos sprawled around the overturned truck and the unmarked sedan. As the Huey touched down on the field, the rotorstorm made the suit coats of the dead Anglos flap.

"We need prisoners," Blancanales told his partners.

Jumping from the helicopter, they fa

None of the dead carried identification.