It missed the window. Gadgets reloaded as the snipers killed Cambodians running for the gate. A second 40mm grenade arced across the mine field.
White phosphorous turned the concrete guardhouse into a crematorium. Then another high-explosive round hit the gate. But it left the steel unmarked, the gate still closed.
A mile away, a rain of 40mm high-explosive and fragmentation grenades fell on the prefab buildings housing the nuclear technicians. Explosions marched across the apartments. Lines of explosions ripped the equipment yards. Gasoline and diesel fuel flamed. The lieutenant then moved the cruiser upstream, the gunners on the PT boats watching for slaver boats.
Lyons sprinted along the road. Forty-millimeter grenades passed over his head, hit inside the walled compound. Indian snipers in the trees killed every exposed Cambodian. Fire from Blancanales's G-3 slammed a guard's chest, staggered the man off the wall. The Indian at the roadside sighted over his Remington's barrel as he waited for a target.
Throwing himself prone in the mud only twenty feet from the gate, Lyons sighted the Atchisson on the gate's steel bars. But he declined to waste the slug. There was nothing vulnerable. Steel horizontals four inches square braced the bars. Concrete shrouded both ends of the gate. He shouted into his hand radio:
"I'm going over the top!"
"Don't!" Gadgets screamed.
"Only one way in..." Slinging his auto-shotgun over his shoulder, Lyons pulled the fragmentation grenades from his pants' thigh pockets. He jerked out the pins, holding the levers down as he dashed to the concrete wall. He threw the grenades over, one to the right, one to the left, and waited.
Blasts sent thousands of steel razors through the air. Lyons grabbed the bars and climbed and threw a leg over the top. An AK slug shriek-roared past his head. A slug hit steel. The shock went through the steel like hammers to his palms. Then he continued over, dropping to the asphalt, rolling, his Atchisson clattering.
Python now in hand, he scrambled for cover. Slugs from a G-3 at the tree line took out an Asian with an AK. Lyons saw a rifle barrel slide out of a fire port. He put a .357 hollowpoint through the slot. The rifle barrel jerked about, slid back, caught on its front sight.
From a doorway, three Cambodians rushed him.
Double-actioning 158-grain hollowpoints, Lyons put a slug through the chest of the first man before he took two steps. The Asian lurched but continued forward. Other slugs went into the second and third mercenaries, blood and flesh spraying from their backs. They went down. Lyons fired another shot through the first man, saw him fall. Struggling with the twisted sling, Lyons tried to get the Atchisson off his shoulder.
One of the dying mercenaries on the ground raised his rifle. Lyons snapped a shot at the man's face, saw his shoulder spray flesh. The AK pointed and flashed...
Diving, Lyons heard slugs punching concrete. In front of him, a Cambodian stepped away from the wall and brought his AK to line on Lyons's head. Lyons rolled to the side. One-handed, he threw open the Python's cylinder as he slipped a speed-loader from a belt pouch. He pushed the cartridges into the cylinder.
A blast ripped away the guard's head as his finger touched the trigger. Then he thrashed headless on the blacktop, his unfired rifle falling from his hands.
Lyons snapped his Python closed and looked back. Surrounded by swirling black smoke from the guardhouse, the Indian "prisoner" dropped from the steel gate, Remington in his hands. He fell in a crouch and fired again. An AK slug slammed him back.
Lyons, twisting his auto-shotgun free, sighted across the asphalt parking area at the bulletproof glass of a guard station, then shattered the glass with a one-ounce slug. He dropped the magazine still containing four slugs into his thigh pocket and jammed in double-ought/number two steel loads.
The Indian staggered to his feet, trying to make it to cover. Another slug hit him, punching into his leg. His leg flew out as if he slipped. Spraying the area with two wild blasts, Lyons dashed to the man and grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the cover of a doorway. Inside, Lyons saw stairs to the walkway on the wall.
With a through-and-through chest wound and a bullet-shattered leg, the Indian reloaded his Remington. Shock glazed his eyes but he still moved. The warrior pointed at the concrete walls of the main house, at the protected guard stations, at the gun ports. He shook his head to Lyons, then motioned to where the others fired from outside for the others to come. Lyons nodded, crept up the stairs leading to the wall, keeping his head down.
A walkway ran along the top of the wall, reinforced concrete protecting defending soldiers chest-high in front. Lyons eased one more step up the stairs. He saw no concrete on the side of the house and dome, only a safety railing. He bobbed his head up above the stairs, saw a fighting position on top of the guardhouse, the walls concrete and four feet high. Smoke swirled.
Between him and the guardhouse, a wounded Cambodian spoke into a walkie-talkie. Lyons dashed to him. Tearing the radio out of the mere's hands, he killed him with a blast to the chest, continued past. Atchisson in one hand, a radio screaming Khmer in the other, Lyons sprinted for the shelter of the concrete and slid in, safe.
Hot concrete scorched his hands and legs. Rising to a crouch, he felt the heat coming through his boots as chemical fire raged inside the guardhouse. Ribbons of smoke came from around the roof hatch.
Lyons saw another hatch. He touched it, found it cool. He pointed his Atchisson down and jerked the hatch open.
The motors for the steel gate! Lyons went down a utility ladder. He searched for a breaker box, found it. Chinese ideograms and incomprehensible printing labeled the switches. He threw all the switches. An electric motor whined.
His hand radio buzzed even as he reached for it. "You got it — it's opening. Where are you now?"
"Inside. Your turn."
"Moving!"
Returning to the top of the wall, Lyons lay prone, sighting on rifle ports and guard stations, firing blast after blast. Cambodians and Thais and Chinese died or took cover.
American warriors — Brazilian Indians and Yankee commandos — rushed through the open gate, to besiege the Asians inside the fortress of Wei Ho.
22
Reflecting the hues of the dawn, a column of smoke towered above the jungle. A mile south of Wei Ho's fortress, gasoline exploding in the equipment yard sent balls of flame churning into the smoke. Sheet metal drifted in the smoke and flames like ashes.
Blancanales took his M-16/M-203 over-and-under from Gadgets and loaded a high-explosive 40mm grenade. With the firefight roaring around them, Gadgets shouted into his hand radio, "Wild man! We're in. Where..."
A shadow dropped from the wall. Lyons landed in a crouch beside them. Gadgets stared for an instant. Lyons took the slaver-band walkie-talkie out of his thigh pocket.
"You are one surprising dude!" Gadgets shouted over the noise. He took the radio and lifted it to his ear and switched it on. Voices jabbered back and forth. Gadgets held the radio close to Blancanales. "You understand that?"
"Some of it's Chinese. Don't understand any of it."
"What can you do with the radio?" Lyons asked. "Anything interesting?"
Gadgets grinned. He keyed the transmit. "Chinese Commie doper punks! You die! We come to kill that old pimp!"
Lyons laughed, shook his head. "Get serious..."
"Serious isn't fun." Gadgets found a spent shotgun casing on the asphalt. He flattened the cardboard tube and jammed it under the transmit key: "Long as the battery lasts, they got to talk over all this noise... Say your prayers, Commies! We come to kill you!" Gadgets set the radio in the open, the microphone turned away from them.