LITMIR.BIZ

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Chevy Suburban materialized out of the heat waves distorting the access road. It was followed by a second and a third vehicle. They weren’t shiny, armored cartel toys. To Lyons’s eyes they looked like well-used-and-abused unmarked law-enforcement vehicles. He and Blancanales watched as the lead vehicle pulled up within twenty meters. The second two broke out to either side and hung back about another ten meters. They’d formed a wedge. Men began spilling out. They wore khaki pants and blue windbreakers, and most sported cowboy hats. The majority appeared to be Latino. All of them had olive-green Glock pistols in duty rigs.

      Lyons subvocalized into his mike. “Bear, I don’t suppose you have enough imaging to read what’s on the backs of their jackets?”

      “I wish.”

      A short man jumped out of the lead vehicle. He doffed his white hat and mopped his brow. The man had gray hair and a perfectly manicured cop mustache. He resettled his Stetson and smiled. “Howdy!”

      Lyons waved. “Hey, fellas! What can I do you for?”

      “Name’s Ibanez, and I need to ask you a favor. By the way, what’s your name?”

      “Favor?” Lyons shrugged. “Shoot.”

      “Well, I need to ask you one question.”

      “Ask away!”

      “And I am begging you.”

      “What is it?”

      “Tell me.”

      “Tell you what?”

      The man shook his head as if embarrassed by the question. “Tell me you don’t have a Mexican citizen in there being held against her will.”

      Lyons cocked his head and shook it sadly in return. “Where are you getting your information?”

      “Would you mind if I ask exactly who you work for?” Ibanez countered.

      “Not at all, but you go first.”

      “Mind if I take a look around?”

      “Not at all. Show me the warrant.”

      Ibanez frowned but his demeanor remained business-like rather than hostile. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

      Calvin James came across the com link. “I’m looking through binoculars. You can’t see it from your angle, but two of the guys, right-hand car, standing behind the driver’s-side passenger door? They have tattoos. On their necks. One’s a spider. The other I can’t quite make out, but I don’t think its regulation, either.”

      Grimaldi’s voice and vague rotor noise came across the link. “ETA five, Ironman.”

      Lyons smelled a siege coming on. “All right, Ibanez, but you ain’t making any friends, and my people are gonna want to talk to you.”

      “Well, I do feel bad about it, and I know my people will want to talk to you after this, as well.”

      “And you and I are definitely going to have a little talk.”

      “I owe it to you.”

      “Fair enough.” Lyons set his water bottle on a little wrought-iron table. He snapped his knee up hard and flipped the AA-12 into his hands.

      Ibanez froze for one heartbeat at the sight and slapped leather for his pistol. Lyons cut loose. He put a long burst of CS projectiles into each vehicle on full-auto. Midtraverse he put one round into Ibanez’s chest, then dived through the door.

      Blancanales was already through and kicking the door shut. “I hope to God these guys aren’t for real!”

      Lyons reached for a reload. “I hope you’re right.”

      Kurtzman spoke urgently across the link. “They’re pulling stuff out of the vehicles. Looks like long arms! I—”

      “Shit!” James fired a burst from his submachine gun out the window and dived for the floor. “Rocket!”

      Small arms began crackling and popping outside. Lyons heard the distinctive thud of an RPG launching off its tube and the hiss of the rocket motor igniting. He rolled behind the couch and covered his eyes and jammed his thumbs in his ears. By some miracle the rocket-propelled grenade hit the adobe of the doorjamb rather than the door itself. The house shook and windows shattered.

      “Enough of this less-than-lethal shit...” The Able Team leader snapped in a drum loaded with lead.

      James bounced up and dropped back down. “Rocket!”

      Blancanales dived to put the kitchen between him and the blast. Lyons and James dived for the hall. The grenade hit the front door and it dissolved in an orange flash. Superheated gas and shrapnel expanded to fill the living room as the heat wash rolled through the house. Lyons sat up and yawned against the ringing in his ears. Schwarz spoke from his concealed position. He’d set up a small suite of minicams to watch the house perimeter. “You got twelve guys hitting the front, five more are breaking off and flanking for the back.”

      “Copy that, Gadgets. Hold position, wait for the shot. Pol, don’t let ’em in.”

      Lyons fired a burst around the hall doorway. About a hundred bullets seemed to bee-swarm back in response. He could hear coughing and ragged shouts in Spanish. Lyons knew a few words and none of it sounded police procedural.

      Schwarz spoke again. “Grenade!”

      A green metal baseball looped through the blackened, smoking orifice of the front door and clattered to the floor. Lyons snapped back around the hall door as the grenade whip-cracked and lethal metal fragments buzz-sawed everywhere. Bullets began tearing through the front windows.

      “They’re on the porch,” Schwarz reported.

      “Wait for the shot.”

      “They’re at the back door,” Blancanales reported from the kitchen.

      Lyons heard the floor vibrate with boots. Schwarz told him what he already knew. “They’re entering the house, front door and front windows.”

      “Take them.”

      Schwarz cut loose. The two-way observation mirror shattered. Schwarz had a 60-round, quad-stack magazine loaded in his carbine and he held the trigger down. He took the attackers by surprise and from the flank. Schwarz reaped them like wheat.

      Calvin James had flown out for an interrogation rather than a firefight, but the ex-SEAL had packed an MP5 submachine gun just in case. He put burst after burst into the men in the windows. Lyons stayed on one knee and leaned around the corner. He had a straight shot at the back door. Blancanales had an angle on it with his carbine-shotgun combo. The door hammered on its hinges, but the nice boys at the Federal Bureau of Investigations had installed decent doors, and anyone pounding on it had to be standing on the narrow stair.

      Blancanales nodded at Lyons and burned an 8-round mag of his car-killing ammunition through the wooden portal.

      Screaming out back joined the cacophony of screaming and gunfire at the front.

      Grimaldi came across the link. “I have you in sight.”

      “Copy, Jack,” Lyons responded. “Anything outside is hostile and legit.”

      “Commencing gun run.”

      “Copy. Everyone down!”

      Dragonslayer was currently in civilian camouflage. Part of the facade was a rescue winch mounted over the starboard-side cabin door. The aerodynamic fairing did not house a motorized winch and three hundred feet of cable. It was a facade that contained a six-barrel “six-pack” micro-gun. The mini Gatling gun snarled into life and swept the porch and everyone still on it. Dragonslayer banked in a tight orbit and hosed down the surviving men at the back door.

      “Ironman, I have drivers in the vehicles.”

      “Disable the trucks.”

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