Dick Stivers - Into the Maze

Blood and casings fell on Able Team. The autofire from the Ochoas seemed to be one continuous explosion, the noise and the blast continuing for seconds as the four Ochoa pistoleros killed or maimed every standing man.

As corpses dropped around him, Lyons pulled the knife from his pocket and cut the ropes tying the hands of his partners. Then he freed his feet with one quick cut.

"The Man of Iron does it again!" Gadgets yelled, grabbing an Uzi from the tangle of dead men on the floor around them.

"Is that Miguel Coral?" Blancanales asked.

"Whose side is he on now?" Gadgets demanded.

"Our side. The escape was a trick on the Nazis," Lyons said as he unholstered the Python. He covered his partners, giving them time to find weapons.

The parked cars shielded Able Team. In the kill-zone, only the panicked and the dead and the screaming wounded remained. The other fascist squads, beyond the cars, did not have a direct line of fire at Able Team lying flat on the concrete.

A fascist running for cover turned, Uzi in hand. Lyons snap-fired, the X-head hollowpoint hitting the Uzi's handle, the gunman's right hand exploding as the 158-grain high-velocity slug shattered on the steel of the weapon. The tangled ruins of the gunman's hand flopped at the end of his arm as he staggered backward into a car. Nine-millimeter slugs from behind Lyons punched into the wounded man's chest.

A fascist ran from behind the shelter of a concrete pillar with an FN FAL para-rifle. Lyons steadied his Python in both hands. Before the para-rifle reached the fascist's shoulder, a .357 slug smashed through his forehead.

Shotgun blasts went off above them. Wadding and hot powder rained on them. Lyons grabbed an Uzi from the hands of a corpse. Flat on the concrete, he emptied the Uzi in a wild, one-handed spray in the direction of the fascist gunmen. Then he dropped the empty weapon and crawled through blood to the panel truck.

Heavy-caliber slugs punched through the truck, glass flying. Lyons looked inside.

No Gunther.

Lyons grabbed his Atchisson and the Uzi he had captured in the alley firefight. He saw Coral and the others firing from the cover of a bullet-pocked Dodge a few steps away.

Blancanales and Gadgets crawled through the slaughter. They both had Uzis over their shoulders. Magazines weighed down their pockets. Each held an autopistol in one hand.

"Move it, Ironman!" Gadgets shouted as they ran to join Coral.

Blood puddled on the oily concrete. Staying low, Lyons looked for Gunther in the tangle of corpses. He saw a headless corpse and a man with his hands knotted in his spilled intestines, and a wounded man vomiting blood. One fascist crawled away, dragging a shattered leg. A shotgun blast struck him low in the back, his clothing suddenly torn and bloody as his broken-backed corpse flopped.

But no Gunther.

Lyons crabbed under the panel truck, then scrambled for the wall of parked cars, calling out, " Amigos! Mis amigos Ochoas! No dispare !"

An Ochoa man reloading a Remington 1100 gave him a salute and a grin. To the side, a revolver popped and a light went out. Gadgets sat against the shelter of a police car, plinking at the overhead lights with a captured .38 revolver. One by one, he shot out the light bulbs.

"Where's Gunther?" Lyons yelled out. " Dande estd Gunther ?"

" No se ," answered the Ochoa with the Remington.

"It happened too fast," Coral shouted. "But he is here. We will find him. He will not escape you."

Gadgets popped out another light. "That ain't the question. Our problem at the moment is for us to escape them."

"Wrong attitude, Wizard." Lyons flicked the safety off his Atchisson. Heavy with weapons and ammunition — the assault shotgun in his hands, an Uzi over his shoulder, pistols in his holsters and pockets, magazines in other pockets — he moved to the side.

Blancanales followed him. The Ochoa with the Remington joined the North Americans as they slipped from parked car to parked car. Gadgets fired above them, still popping light bulbs.

Gunmen of the International spotted Lyons's flanking team. Heavy-caliber slugs punched the cars. Other fascists sprayed 9mm autofire at the concrete, trying to create skipping ricochets under the cars to wound the flankers.

Flat on his belly as NATO-caliber slugs came through the car door above him, Lyons saw feet running. He fired under the car, the double-ought buckshot bouncing off the concrete. A foot disappeared. The gunman staggered forward, trying to run on the bones of his ankle but falling. Lyons fired again, at a distance of ten feet, the load of buckshot tearing a two-inch-wide hole through the fascist's torso.

The dead man had an FN FAL para-rifle. He wore a bandolier of magazines. Keeping his head down, Lyons stripped the man of his weapons and ammunition. He also found a 9mm autopistol. He passed the FN FAL to Blancanales.

Continuing in a semicircle, they came to a traffic lane. Lyons looked out from behind a parked car. Fascists fired an explosion of 9mm slugs at him. Bullets popped the tire near his ear.

"Pol! I'm going across. You and Senor Remington put out some fire. On three. One! Two! Three!"

Weapons fired in one long blast. Lyons dived across the traffic lane to the shelter of a concrete pillar. As he scrambled behind the pillar, bullets chipped the other side, ricochets whining to hit concrete and cars.

Lyons crabbed another few feet to a parked truck. He saw polished shoes and pressed slacks. A gunman pointed his Uzi down at Lyons and Lyons rolled and fired the Atchisson one-handed, the blast catching the fascist in the crotch, flipping the man face first onto the concrete. His arteries pumping jets of blood out of a vast wound, the fascist tried to raise himself on his arms.

Lyons did not waste another 12-gauge round. Standing, he brought the butt of the Atchisson down on the back of the man's neck, snapping his vertebrae.

Another gunman ran around the back of the truck. Point-blank, Lyons put a 12-gauge blast through the man's face.

"Pol!"

"Can't! Cannot do it."

Letting his assault shotgun hang from his shoulder by its sling, Lyons snatched up the Uzis of the dead men. An Uzi in his left hand, he leaned from cover and sprayed out the magazine. Return fire smashed into the truck. Lyons felt blood flowing down his arm. Blood dripped from his sleeve.

The blood of other men covered his sports coat. He could not see his own wound. He could not stop to find it. Dropping the blood-slick Uzi, he shifted his position. NATO slugs tore through the truck as riflemen tried to kill him.

Blancanales answered with the FN FAL para-rifle.

Over the sights of the Uzi, Lyons saw a fascist stagger back. Then the Remington 1100 blasted a gunman's face and hands away. Lyons spotted a leg and put a burst of 9mm slugs through it. As the wounded man clawed at the concrete, another burst killed him.

Fascists retreated to the ramp, trying to gain the safety of the street. The Ochoas cut them down with shotguns and bursts of .45-caliber slugs. Gadgets broke cover and pursued the fascists, firing quick bursts from an Uzi into any fascist still holding a weapon.

A wounded man with a pistol got a 3-shot burst to the face. A running fascist got four 9mm slugs through the back. A soldier in camouflage-patterned fatigues tried to tear a grenade from his web belt but died.

Lyons changed magazines and charged, killing everyone in front of him. Wounded men, fascists crawling to escape — blasts of 12-gauge ended their allegiance to the Pan-American Reich.

A shot zipped past Lyons's face. He whirled, unleashing a full-auto burst from his Atchisson. A fascist with a pistol disintegrated as three blasts of double-ought and number-two buckshot ripped away an arm, opened his chest and tore off his head.