G-force broke Gunther's grip. The Fascist International colonel fell out of the doorway.
"Colonel!" the doorgunner called out.
The helicopter spun out of control, the tail rotor roaring over Lyons as he dropped for safety. He saw a Fascist with a rifle crash into the brush.
Thrown from side to side in his safety harness, the gunner clutched his M-60. Then the copilot took the controls and the troopship sideslipped away.
Now the gunner had a straight line of fire on the enemy hidden on the hilltop. He aimed his M-60 at the black-clad commando. Then the commando dived across the dead and dying soldiers of the International and locked an arm around the throat of Colonel Gunther.
"Colonel!" the gunner shouted again. The copilot heard the gunner through the intercom.
"What has happened to the colonel?"
"He's out there! He's on the hill, fighting with..."
"Fire, kill the ones you can," the copilot ordered. "I'll circle. Who's left from the squad?"
The doorgunner glanced to the benches. Two soldiers, strapped into their seats remained. They attempted to aim their M-16 rifles at the enemy on the hill. But the colonel blocked their aim.
"Only two."
"We must get the colonel."
On the hilltop, Lyons smashed the Fascist colonel again and again in the side of the head with his fist. But Gunther slammed an elbow into Lyons's gut, doubling him over.
Lyons fell back. He heard the rotor throb fading as the helicopter banked away. Then a fist smashed him. Stunned, Lyons kicked. A hand clamped around his throat and the fist smashed into his face again.
A Yaqui drove the steel butt of FN-FAL para-rifle into the Fascist's head, once, twice, then the Fascist tore the rifle out of the Yaqui's hands. Lyons slammed his knee into the colonel's groin.
Foul breath exploded into Lyons's face. He grabbed the colonel's uniform shirt and threw him to the side. A Yaqui clamped an arm around the throat of the colonel and choked him. Lyons struggled to pin Gunther's wrists.
The helicopter returned. From the opposite ridge, Blancanales and a Yaqui tracked the troopship with M-60 machine guns. Tracers arced over the canyon.
Lyons heard his Atchisson boom. Vato held the full-auto weapon at his shoulder and squeezed off another shot, the recoil jarring his slight body back. Then he brought the sights down and aimed again.
At a range of twenty meters, he did not miss. A one-ounce slug shattered the windshield of the helicopter and killed the wounded pilot. Vato aimed again, but the Atchisson did not fire. Empty.
Colonel Gunther threw the Yaqui away from him. He broke Lyons's grip and ran for the helicopter. The doorgunner leaned out to rescue his commander.
"Vato!" Lyons yelled as he tossed a 7-round mag of 12-gauge shells to the Yaqui leader.
Autofire tore past Lyons's head. Throwing him-self sideways, Lyons snatched the Colt Python from the hideout holster at the small of his back and snap-fired into the door of the helicopter. Another burst of 5.56mm tore past him, then he saw a face, and he fired and saw the head explode with the impact of the hollowpoint. On a dead run, he tackled Gunther, pushed him down and smashed the Python against the Fascist's head again and again, blood spraying, hammering the man into unconsciousness.
The Atchisson fired in wild full-auto, Vato losing control of the recoiling assault shotgun. But the spray of steel projectiles swept the troopship's interior, punching aluminum and flesh. Blasts threw a soldier back. A headless man flailed the air. The doorgunner thrashed in his safety harness, blood spurting from a hundred death wounds. The helicopter turned away.
Unaware that he carried only dead soldiers, the copilot banked the helicopter to circle around again. The maneuver exposed the top of the troopship.
The Yaqui spotter shouldered his FN-FAL para-rifle. Taking careful aim, he fired at the center of the spinning rotors. The .308 Winchester hollow-points punched into the engine cowling. The Yaqui emptied the para-rifle.
Metal shrieked. The helicopter lost power, the banking turn becoming a dead fall into the mountain. Missing the ridgeline, the troopship skipped off a steep slope. As the fuselage disintegrated into metal and Plexiglas and plastic tumbling down the mountainside, the fuel tanks exploded into an intense fireball. Burning wreckage drifted, as if in slow motion, into the canyon.
Lyons pulled the loops of plastic handcuffs tight around the ankles and wrists of the unconscious colonel. As a precaution he put two loops around the huge man's wrists.
On the hilltop a dying Fascist groaned, his breath bubbling blood. Vato dropped the Atchisson and went to the Yaqui machine gunner. He found the teenager dead, his weapon still in his hands.
Machine guns continued spraying out a river of lead death.
Lyons looked to the rocks where Blancanales and his Yaqui gunners hid. Drifting smoke from the burning hulks of the helicopters obscured rocks, but two lines of tracers emerged from the pall to streak up into the sky.
The light plane circled, its napalm canister flashing with the morning light.
"The machine gun!" Lyons called out to Vato.
They heard the engine pitch change. The plane lined up with the hilltop and gained speed as it dived.
Lyons scrambled across the litter of corpses. He took the M-60 out of the dead Yaqui's hands. Vato untangled the cartridge belt from the bloody camouflage.
Shouldering the heavy weapon, Lyons sighted on the pilot and pulled the trigger. Tracers hurtled past the cockpit. Struggling to hold the bucking M-60 on line, Lyons did not release the trigger. A windshield shattered.
The pilot pulled back as he released the napalm. Lyons saw the canister tumbling through the air directly at him. But he didn't stop firing. Resolved to kill the man who would kill him, Lyons followed the plane with the M-60.
Tracers touched a wing, then the line of 7.62mm NATO slugs found the engine. Black smoke and bright-orange flames erupted from the cowling vents.
A hand pulled Lyons down to cover. Lyons and Vato watched the bomb come. Flashing as it fell end over end, the canister of napalm came down at their faces.
Vato screamed out a prayer in the last instant of his life. "Huitzil!"
The aluminum of the canister almost grazed Lyons's hair as it hurtled past and continued into the void of the canyon. Lyons turned to see the canister fall into the pueblo, the splash of avgas and styrene engulfing the few houses in a holocaust of flame.
"The prisoners..." Vato pointed into the fires. The mud-plastered hut holding the Mexican and European officers was a raging inferno.
"Lost them," Lyons answered as he left the fighting hole. He stood over the unconscious Fascist officer. He saw the eagles and SS insignia on the gray fatigues. "But we got a colonel."
Lyons scanned the area. No weapons fired. He saw Blancanales and the Yaquis leaving their positions. They waved across the distance to the hilltop. Lyons turned to Vato.
"What's Huitzil?" he asked.
"Huitzilopochtli. The god of war. I offered myself so that I could fight in the next world. To kill as a spirit warrior."
"You want to keep fighting?"
"Until all of them are dead."
"Then come with us."
Before the fires on the Hill of the Dead cooled to ashes, Able Team and the Yaqui warriors flew south in the captured troopship. Guided by the defeated colonel, armed with the weapons of the Mexican army, they would enter a maze of treason and conspiracy to strike at the heart of the Reich of the Americas.