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right now. If I know Claire Osterman, Jackie will get another chance at her before all this is over.”

Claire slammed the phone down, muttering, “That arrogant prick! Just who does he think he is?”

Herb Knoff, who’d been sitting across the room listening to half the conversation, raised his eyebrows quizzically.

Claire glanced at him. “Get General Stevens and Harlan Millard in here right now!”

After her advisors had been assembled, Claire got right to the point. “Ben Raines called. He said he’s got proof Bottger is planning a double-cross.”

“What?” General Stevens said. “But how? His troops are thousands of miles from here, and on the other side of the SUSA from us. How in the hell can he hurt us?”

“The son of a bitch has got a new BW. A mutation of the plague he tried in Africa some years back.”

“But, Claire,” Millard said diffidently. “We knew that when we agreed to use him, and we’ve all been inoculated against his BWs.”

“Not this one, according to Raines,” she said, striding back and forth in front of her desk.

“Can we trust Raines?” Herb Knoff asked.

“Ben Raines is a lot of things,” Claire said, “a son of a bitch not the least, but he’s not a liar. If he says something, you can take it to the bank, even if you don’t much like him.”

“What about this so-called proof?” Stevens asked.

She pointed to the pile of papers and culture reports Ben had faxed her. “It’s all in there. I want you to get it to our medical people immediately.”

“What does Raines suggest we do about it, and what does he want?” Stevens asked.

“For us to pull back our troops from the borders with the SUSA. And for that, he’ll give us the formula for the vaccine and some samples until we can get our own made.”

 

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“But if we pull back, that’ll give Raines room to invade us,” Stevens said.

Harlan Millard glanced at the general. “Raines would never invade, not unless we attacked first,” he said. “It would go against everything the man stands for.”

“What do you mean?” Stevens asked, unbelieving.

“The main tenet of Raines’s entire philosophy is that man is accountable only to himself, and responsible for his own actions. The SUSA itself is built upon that fact, so they would never, ever try and force people to live under their rules. Hell, even when he’s defeated us in the past, he’s always allowed the prisoners he’s taken to return here if they wanted to, and he’s never taken any additional land from his original borders. He is, at heart, an isolationist.”

“Harlan’s right, Brad,” Claire said. “The only thing we lose by pulling back is the advantage we’re giving Perro Loco and Bruno Bottger by dividing Raines’s troops and his attention.”

“But …” Stevens began as Claire held up her hand.

“No, General, listen to me. Loco and Bottger are on the very steps of Mexico City, so even if Raines wanted to, he couldn’t stop them from taking the country. Therefore, our ruse has served its purpose and we now have two powers right on the SUSA’s back door. Once Loco and Bottger fight it out over who’s going to control Mexico, we’ll be able at some point to deal with the victor and can, if we then wish, resume our hostilities with Raines and the SUSA. But until we have protection against this BW of Bottger’s, we need to play it cool.”

“So, what happens after we get the vaccine?” Millard asked.

Claire smiled evilly. “For one thing, we’ll only give the vaccine to those people loyal to my command, and to the most productive citizens. If Bottger does end up using the BW, it will give us a way to cut some of the deadwood out of our system, like all the bastards on welfare who refuse to work to help the country.”

Millard’s face blanched. “Claire, I can’t believe you are just

 

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going to sit by while thousands, perhaps millions of your citizens die a horrible death.”

“Believe it, Harlan. Face facts. This country’s almost broke. We can no longer afford to support the idle, those who won’t help themselves. There just isn’t enough to go around.”

“I won’t be a party to this genocide!” Millard said heatedly.

Claire gave him a cool look. “All right, Harlan. If you feel so strongly about it, you can give your vaccine to one of the needy you’re so concerned about.”

Harlan sat back down, his face ashen.

Claire grinned. “I didn’t think so.”

Stevens cleared his throat. “By the way, Claire, are you going to contact Perro Loco and tell him of Bottger’s possible double cross?”

She considered this as she walked around to sit behind her desk.

Finally, after a few moments, she shook her head. “I don’t think so, Brad.”

“Why not?” Herb asked. “After all, if Bottger does use this plague bacteria, Loco’s troops won’t be immune any more than we or the SUSA would be. He and his men will be totally wiped out when the sickness spreads.”

“You’re assuming Loco knows nothing of this, Herb. How do we know that?” Claire asked. “What if Loco and Bottger are in this together, and have made some arrangement behind my back to divide up the North American continent after we’re all dead or dying?

“If I approach Loco, and he is in on the plan, it will tip Bottger off that we’re on to him. No, I think it best to get the vaccine from Raines and sit back and see what happens.”

 

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About the time Herman Bundt’s mercenary forces in Las Truchas, a coastal town 250 miles west of Mexico City, were being resupplied and reinforced with additional troops by freighter, and Perro Loco’s forces were pounding the Mexican Army’s defenses into rubble to the south, El Presidente Eduardo Pena told the leader of his Army, General Jose Guerra, to contact Ben Raines and see if the SUSA might after all be able to send some troops to help protect Mexico City and his government.

Guerra felt like pulling the Colt .45 automatic pistol from his holster and shooting his leader between the eyes, but that would leave only himself to take the blame for losing Mexico to these rebels. Instead, he took a deep breath and tried to explain the facts of life to the imbecile leading his country.

“But, El Presidente,” Guerra said, as patiently as he could, “the German mercenary troops are at Las Truchas to our west, and Perro Loco’s army has just taken Puebla to the south and Veracruz to the east. It is much too late for anyone short of God to do anything to save Mexico City.”

The president leaned over his desk and picked up the phone. “Get me Ben Raines immediately,” he ordered, staring at Guerra as if he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“We will see, General,” Pena said while waiting to be connected to the leader of the SUSA’s Army. “Mexico is much too important for Raines to let it fall into the hands of Loco

 

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and his ally, President Osterman. You will see, he will move heaven and earth to save us.”

The phone buzzed and Pena switched on the speaker. “General Raines, this is Presidente Eduardo Pena of Mexico.”

“Hello, Presidente Pena. How are you?” Raines asked, his voice casual, as if he received calls from heads of state all the time.

“At the present, General Raines, I am not so well. The rebel forces are knocking at the doorstep of Mexico City, and I am now ready to accept the help you so generously offered last week.”

There was an audible sigh over the speaker. “I am sorry you waited so long, presidente,” Raines said. “But our intel says the rebels are less than an hour away from taking your city. There is nothing I can do for you now. If you had taken my offer in a timely manner, perhaps we could have avoided this terrible outcome.”

“But … but you must! I command it!” the president shouted.

“Sorry, Eduardo, better luck next time,” Raines said, his voice heavy with irony as he hung up the phone.

As Pena glanced across the room at Guerra, the sound of helicopters came through the palace windows, followed by the raucous roar of machine-guns strafing his troops in the square below.

Pena stepped toward the window, then ducked as a couple of Kiowa helicopters buzzed the building, missing it by only yards as they flew past.

“Damn it, Guerra, do something!” Pena ordered, pointing his hand at his general, sweat forming on his brow and darkening his splendid uniform under the armpits and across the back.

Guerra smiled sadly. “As Raines said, it is much too late.” He started for the door, then called back over his shoulder, “You’ve killed us, you fool.”

A tremendous explosion sounded just outside the window,

 

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and the wall of the presidential suite fell in, showering both men with stucco and plaster as they dove to the floor, bullets stitching a path yards from them.

“General Guerra,” Pena called from his position on the floor under his desk. “What am I to do?”

Guerra looked up as he dusted plaster of paris and wooden splinters off his uniform coat. “I suspect you’ll die very shortly, presidente, unless you’re very lucky.”

Mexican Army jeeps, of World War II vintage, pulled up in front of the palace. All of them had twenty-caliber machine guns on posts behind the drivers, and Guerra’s troops tried in vain to shoot down the swooping, diving killing machines that were the Kiowas attacking them. Two squads of infantry spread out in a line in front of the palace door, taking shelter behind the balustrade and firing over the walls at Perro Loco’s troops, who were swarming up the manicured lawn of the palace grounds like ants from a disturbed bed.

Two of the jeeps in the courtyard exploded, jumping into the air under the impact of the antitank rockets the Kiowas carried. The drivers and machine-gunners’ bodies were torn apart and scattered over the white-hot cement of the yard like broken rag dolls as mangled parts of the jeeps rained down upon them.

Guerra ran from the building, shooting into the air with his .45, and jumped into the third jeep, shouting at the driver to take off.

“What about El Presidente?” the man asked as he pressed the starter button and pumped the accelerator pedal furiously.

“Fuck the president! Go!” Guerra screamed, snapping off shots from his pistol until the slide locked open signaling the magazine was empty.

The driver spun the wheels and took off, just as the cement where they’d been erupted under the onslaught of 20mm Minigun fire and a helicopter roared by overhead, banking heavily into the midday sun.

Taking the corner on two wheels, the driver of the jeep

 

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carrying General Guerra managed to get under the cover of the fifty-foot-tall stately palms ringing the drive to the palace courtyard, bullets from Perro Loco’s troops pinging the metal fenders of the jeep, but miraculously missing the occupants.

Once it was away from the building, the choppers seemed to ignore the jeep, and concentrated on the soldiers still trying to protect the palace. They dove and swooped, pumping thousands of rounds of machine-gun fire into the porch, ripping soldiers to pieces and cratering the front of the building with hundreds of pockmarks in the stuccoed walls.

As Guerra’s jeep turned a final corner down the main boulevard, he glanced back to see several Chinook helicopters land in the palace courtyard and disgorge hundreds of mercenaries, who swarmed the palace like ants at a picnic, killing the last of the remaining defenders, even though many of them had their hands in the air trying to surrender.

In the distance, tanks and halftracks containing more of Perro Loco’s troops could be seen churning up the concrete of the main streets leading toward the palace, facing only token resistance from the Mexican Army, which by now was in full retreat.

The German mercenaries were congregating on the other side of the palace, some on foot and others riding in HumVees and halftrack personnel carriers. All were waving their rifles and machine-guns in the air and shouting in victory.

“Where to now, General?” the driver asked, his eyes wide with fright as he negotiated the narrow roads leading away from the palace and out of town.

“Drive north, Jose,” Guerra said. “If we can make the Navy base at Tampico, perhaps there is still a chance for me to convince Raines to help us. Meanwhile,” he said, as he picked up the microphone from the radio under the jeep’s dashboard, “I’ll have what’s left of the Army pull back to the north of the city, and we’ll arrange to rendezvous near the Army base at Durango with as many troops as can get there.”

 

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“Do you think there’s still a chance Mexico can be saved?” Jose asked.

Guerra glanced at him, wondering whether he should tell him the truth or give him false hope.

“There is always a chance, Jose. As they say in America, the opera’s not over until the fat lady sings.”

Jose, clearly not familiar either with the saying or with opera, wrinkled his forehead but continued staring straight ahead, and didn’t ask any more stupid questions.

By suppertime, most of the dead and wounded soldiers had been carted away, to be placed in mass graves dug by bulldozers. The wounded were thrown in the pits along with those already dead. Both Bottger and Loco said they had neither the time nor the inclination to care for wounded men who’d fought against them.

The soldiers of both Loco’s and Bottger’s armies were sent out into the city to make sure there were no surviving soldiers to act as snipers or commit sabotage. The soldiers relieved the stress of their latest battle by raping and pillaging the city, killing almost as many innocent citizens as they had soldiers in the battle.

Meanwhile, Bruno Bottger and Perro Loco, along with their lieutenants-Jim Strunk, Paco Valdez, Rudolf Hessner, Herman Bundt, and Sergei Bergman-gathered in the presidential dining room to be served a dinner that had already been prepared for El Presidente Pena.

Eduardo Pena’s cries could be heard through the open window. When he’d tried to give himself up to the invading soldiers, they’d taken him out into the courtyard, stripped his elaborate uniform off, and hung his naked body upside down by his feet.

Both Bottger and Loco had smiled their approval of his status when they marched side by side into the Presidential Palace just before sundown.

 

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While they ate dinner, Bottger and Loco discussed how they each planned to proceed next.

“I see no reason to change our tactics, since they have been so successful so far,” Loco said, spearing a piece of prime beef on his fork and transferring it to his mouth.

Bottger, who’d elected to eat beef enchiladas smothered in salsa and cheese, wiped his mouth and took a deep drink of his wine before replying.

“I agree, Loco,” he said amicably. “I will have my troops move up the western coast toward the coastal city of Mazatlan and then, once we’ve established a beachhead there, inland toward Durango. From either of those two locations, we will be within air-strike range of the southern border of the SUSA.”

“Excellent, Field Marshal,” Loco said. “And I will position my army on the eastern border up the coast toward Tampico and eventually to Monterrey. That way we can form a pincer movement against Texas and the lower borders of the SUSA that will make Raines divide his troops to resist us.”

Bottger nodded. “And if President Osterman fulfills her side of our bargain, Herr Raines will be kept very busy indeed defending his pitiful country.”

Loco picked up his brandy glass and clinked it against Bottger’s wineglass in a toast to their mutual success.

Later, in his personal quarters, Bottger addressed Bergman and Bundt. “I think as soon as we’ve taken Mazatlan, we can start our bombardment with the anthrax plague.”

“Do you think our helicopters and airplanes will be able to deliver the bombs against the SUSA,” Sergei Bergman asked as Rudolf Hessner prepared the field marshal’s bed. “After all, I’ve heard the SUSA has excellent air-defense measures.”

Bottger shrugged. “Whether or not the planes survive the attack is immaterial. The bombs will be on board, and the

 

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scientists have designed them so that even if the aircraft are shot down, the bacteria will still spread. Within a matter of two weeks, the SUSA will be devastated by the effects of mass sickness and death. If we’re lucky, the soldiers of Ben Raines will begin to die like flies.”

“What about the soldiers of Perro Loco, Field Marshal?” Herman Bundt asked. “Won’t they also begin to be affected by the plague?”

Bottger smiled as he rubbed into his scarred face a special cream that the doctors had prepared to keep the skin soft. “Of course, Herman, that is the idea. Soon, the only army not wiped out by anthrax will be under my command. A situation I have dreamed of for the past ten years.”

In Loco’s quarters, Loco was also discussing details of the upcoming campaign with Paco Valdez and Jim Strunk.

“I thought once we took Mexico City, you were going to let me kill that Kraut bastard,” Jim Strunk said.

Loco held up his hand. “Don’t be too anxious, Jim. There will be plenty of time and opportunities to dispatch our friend after he has outlived his usefulness to us. Once we are within striking distance of the SUSA, I will give the order and the field marshal will suffer a fatal dose of food poisoning, leaving me in command of his troops.”

“What about his associates?” Valdez asked.

Loco shrugged. “Once their leader is dead, they can either go along with the program or they can die. What do you think they will decide to do?”

“And his troops?” Strunk asked.

“They are mercenaries,” Loco said, stretching and yawning as he prepared for bed. “They will fight for whoever has the money to pay them to fight.”

“He’s right, Jim,” Valdez said. “Mercenaries’ only loyalty is to their paycheck.”

 

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“I hope you are right, Loco,” Strunk said. “Because I’m getting awfully tired of that strutting peacock of a German.”

“Be patient, Jim, your time will come soon enough,” Loco said.

 

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While Dr. Buck sent teams of medics to all of the various battalions scattered around the SUSA to make sure all of the troops received the new anti-BW vaccine, Ben gathered his team in his office.

Harley Reno, Hammer Hammerick, Coop and Jersey, fully recovered now, and Anna, Beth, and Corrie all waited to see what Ben had in mind for them in the upcoming battle with Bottger and Loco’s troops.

“Get your gear packed, guys, we’re heading south,” Ben said without preamble.

“By we, you mean you’re going with us, sir?” Harley asked.

“Yes. I’ve just gotten off the phone with General Guerra from Mexico. He and several battalions of Mexican Army troops have retreated after the fall of Mexico City to Durango and the Navy base at Tampico.”

“And just why are we going down there?” Coop asked, playing the spoiler as usual.

“He’s asked for our help in positioning and training his troops to slow or stop the advance of the rebels’ armies,” Ben said. “And I’ve agreed to send him our best people at staging guerrilla warfare.”

“And if I may ask, sir, why are you coming with us?” Harley said, a questioning look on his face. “Aren’t you needed here to coordinate the defenses against Osterman’s troops?”

“I’ve reached an agreement with President Osterman, and she’s going to call off her Army in exchange for our providing

 

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her with the new vaccine against anthrax,” Ben said, aware that his team knew nothing of his talk with the president of the USA the night before. “Therefore, since I’m doing nothing but sitting on my butt here in this office, I’ve decided I need some time in the field before I go terminally stale.”

“An agreement with Sugar Babe?” Coop asked, screwing up his face. “Do you think you can trust her to keep her part of the bargain?”

“Not usually, but in this case I’ve got the UN. monitoring her troop withdrawals. If she reneges on the deal, we’ll have plenty of warning.”

“So, once again, we’re going to Mexico to baby-sit the Army and pull their fat out of the fire?” Jersey said with disgust.

“Not only their fat, Jerse,” Ben said, “but ours as well. Dr. Buck tells me he needs a couple of weeks before the vaccine takes effect. If we let Loco and Bottger steamroll over the Mexican Army, they’ll be able to get within range to send their BW to our borders before our troops are fully protected.”

“So, we don’t have to kick their butts single-handed?” Har-ley asked. “We just have to slow them down a bit?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Ben said. “We also need to buy some time while Striginov gets the 505 Bat moved further down into western Mexico and McGowen gets the 502 situated and dug in in the eastern half of the country.”

Mike Post knocked on the door and entered Ben’s office. “Ben, I’ve got the latest intel info for you on Loco’s and Bottger’s movements.”

“Go ahead, Mike.”

“Bottger’s mercenaries are headed up the west coast toward Mazatlan, while the troops under Loco are moving rapidly toward Tampico on the east coast.”

Ben spread his hands. “There you go, guys. We don’t have a minute to waste. Get ready and we’ll move out in an Osprey at 1400 hours.”

 

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As the Osprey descended from fifteen thousand feet through heavy cloud cover in its final descent toward Durango, Mexico, Ben and the team started to get their gear ready for a quick exit of the plane.

Suddenly, the pilot banked hard to the left and pulled the nose up until the plane was dangerously near stall speed.

“Mayday! Mayday!” the pilot yelled over the intercom. “We’re under heavy attack by three Kiowa gunship helicopters.”

“Shit!” Harley Reno said, dropping his duffel bag and ripping a cargo-hold door open as he tried to keep from being thrown from his feet.

He reached into the closet-sized space and began to dig out parachutes stored there. As he grabbed them, he pitched them over his shoulder to Hammer. “Everybody get one of these on,” he yelled over the roar of the Osprey’s twin engines as the pilot jigged and swerved to avoid the fire of the Miniguns that could be heard even over the engine noise.

Ben’s team quickly slipped the chutes on, and pulled their Uzis over their heads to let them hang by straps across their chests in case they had to bail out.

The Osprey shuddered under the impact of hundreds of 20mm shells as one of the Kiowas dived on the plane as it made a sweeping turn to the left. The right engine burst into flame and the plane nosed down. After the pilot feathered the engine so the prop wouldn’t be as much of a drag, he clicked on the intercom.

“General Raines, there’s no way I can climb high enough to avoid the choppers with only one engine. You guys better bail, and bail fast!”

Harley pulled the emergency release handle on the rear door, and the pilot added, “We’re about fifty miles north and west of Durango. Looks like some heavy jungle down there, so you should have plenty of cover after you land.” He didn’t add, “If you don’t impale yourself on a tree coming down.”

Harley let the door fly off its hinges, torn away by the slip-

 

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stream wind, and pumped his fist in the air. “Come on, get the lead out!” he shouted over the noise.

One by one, with Ben going last before Harley, the team dived out into the early evening dusk and tumbled toward the jungle below.

Their last sight of the Osprey was of it angling down, trailing smoke from its engine, two of the Kiowas following and continuing to strafe it with Minigun fire.

As they floated on the air currents, pulling on parachute strings to try to stay together in a close formation, the third Kiowa banked steeply and arrowed at them, its Miniguns winking in the darkness as it tried to shoot them out of the sky.

All of the team jerked their Uzis around and began to fire back at the helicopter, catching it off guard as it drew nearer and nearer. It got close enough for them to see the Plexiglas in front of the pilot spiderweb under the impact of hundreds of 9mm bullets from the machine-guns, and then it turned turtle, smoke pouring from its turbines as it fell to the earth below, a giant fireball erupting and lighting up the night as it impacted in dense foliage.

Luckily, no one in the team was seriously hurt upon landing, though Anna suffered a severely sprained ankle, which Jersey had to tape up from the first-aid kit in her pack.

Ben gathered his team around him and consulted his compass. “Looks like we need to head south by southeast if the pilot had our bearing correct.”

“Shit, just what I was looking forward to,” Coop complained, “another fifty-mile march through snake-infested jun-gle.”

“Look on the bright side,” Hammer said with a grin. “At least they’re not sending somebody to pick us up from a plane crash with a sponge.”

After the Osprey exploded and fell burning to the ground, the pilot of the lead Kiowa radioed Sergei Bergman in Mexico City.

 

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“Sir, we’ve just attacked and shot down an American Os-prey heading toward Durango.”

“Excellent, Jurgen,” Sergei said.

“One thing, sir. Six or seven men ejected from the plane before it went down, and the pilot was on the radio to his base, saying General Raines was in the group and calling for air support.”

“What is your location, Jurgen?” Sergei asked, sounding excited at the chance to get Ben Raines.

“Approximately forty-three miles north-northwest of Durango.”

“Can you intercept Raines and his men?” Sergei asked.

“No, sir. We burned up most of our fuel in the attack on the Osprey. We’ll be lucky to get back to base as it is.”

“Come on home then. I’ll send another team,” Sergei said, signing off.

He put the radio down and rang Bruno Bottger on his private line in his quarters.

“Sir, one of our Kiowas just shot a plane carrying Ben Raines out of the air.”

“Is the son of a bitch dead?”

“No, sir. He and several of his men managed to bail out of the plane. But I’ve got his exact location.”

“Send a team after him immediately. This is too good a chance to pass up, Sergei.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

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Former Navy SEAL Sergeant Gerald Jones listened to the air whisper through his black parachute as he guided it down with the aid of hand stirrups toward a starlit opening in the jungle. Eleven highly skilled assault troops came from the inky skies above him as their cargo plane, a C-130, swept back to the north at low altitude, staying off Mexican radar as much as it could, flying just above the jungle treetops at dangerously low levels after the chutists made their jump from higher altitudes.

Jones hit the ground, rolling, gathering his chute cords as soon as he came to his feet. All around him, men in black shirts with blackface greasepaint hit the meadow, tumbling, making as little noise as possible despite heavy packs, automatic rifles, and explosives.

“Down safe, so far,” he heard Corporal Bill Woods say in a whisper, collecting his parachute only a few yards from where Jones landed.

“Yeah. So far, so good. Get the men in those trees at the edge of this clearing. Make sure everybody’s got his chute, so there’s no telltale sign of our landing. Any son of a bitch drops so much as a cigarette butt an’ I’m gonna kill him myself. Pass the word around. The Mexicans may have patrols out looking for Raines too. We can’t let ‘em find a goddamn thing.”

“Right, Sergeant.” Woods hurried off into the night to get the assault team together.

 

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Jones gathered his black chute, dragging it from the meadow to a tangle of palm trees. They were on a special assignment for Field Marshal Bruno Bottger, to find where Ben Raines and his men had landed when they bailed out of a plane, and to kill him and everyone with him. The orders were to take no prisoners, but Bottger wanted Raines’s head to prove he was dead.

No one seemed quite sure where General Raines was, despite the best intelligence General Bottger’s men could gather. They knew he’d bailed out forty-three miles north-northwest of Durango, but that was four hours ago. He could be almost anywhere in this stretch of jungle by now.

Jones had only heard about Raines … he’d never seen him in the flesh. But if all went as planned, he would get his first glimpse of Raines as a dead man, a bullet-riddled corpse, or a pile of pulpy flesh and bone if an RPG got him first. Jones’s team carried enough firepower-RPGs, rocket launchers, and other explosives-to blow Raines out of a bunker dug halfway down in the Mexican soil. While other assault groups in the past had failed to get Raines, Jones harbored no doubts he could accomplish his objective, and he’d said so to General Bottger and his second in command, Sergei Bergman himself, even though he harbored a lingering dislike for the German leader. Bottger was the kind of madman anyone could hate, a real lunatic. But the pay was good with his advancing armies.

Jones’s men were veterans of other wars, regional conflicts. Older, seasoned, experienced, they would not make the same mistakes made by the younger mercenaries Bruno Bottger seemed to prefer. The hotshot Russians had been particularly stupid in the south, allowing a Mexican band of Special Forces troops to close a circle around them, blowing them to bits in less than ten minutes when the meres under Captain Zubov walked into a deadly trap.

A figure came dashing toward Jones. As a reflex, the sergeant swung the muzzle of his AK-47 up, ready to blow the man away unless he identified himself with a code word.

 

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“The men are in position, Sergeant,” Corporal Lloyd Davis said, out of breath. “We’re waiting for orders.”

“You forgot the goddamn code word, Davis!”

“Parrot! Parrot!”

“Raines and his group must be over that way. Fan out in a line, Davis. Pass the word down the line, and this time, remember the goddamn code word!”

“Parrot, Sergeant.”

“A mistake like that can get you killed, Davis. Don’t make it again.”

“Should I leave two men back as a rear guard, Sergeant Jones?”

“Of course, you damn fool. How many times have we been through this drill? Send McKinney and Smith back. They know what to do.”

“But, Sergeant,” Davis stammered, “Bill McKinney can’t see a damn thing in the dark.”

Jones turned back to Davis with his jaw clenched. “Corporal McKinney can smell an enemy at a hundred yards. Never question my orders again. I picked Bill McKinney myself, because he doesn’t make dumb mistakes … like forgetting the goddamn password on a mission.”

“Yes, Sergeant. Sorry. I’ll pass the word down the line right away.”

Jones forced himself to relax. Davis was right. Mckinney’s eyesight was failing some. But a soldier with experience didn’t need to see like an eagle to know who to kill, or when. Davis was too young, too green, to understand. Davis had been his last choice for the Blackshirt mission, when no more experienced men were available.

Corporal Woods came back with his automatic rifle slung from his shoulder on a leather strap. “The men are ready to advance, Sergeant.”

“Move out. But tell them to be careful. Raines has six or seven men with him, according to our intelligence reports. We probably won’t be able to see much of them because of this

 

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thick jungle. Look for any lights, and listen for the sound of machetes clearing a path through the jungle. They make just enough noise that, on a quiet night like this, we should be able to hear them if they’re moving. And tell everyone to be on the lookout for an ambush. Raines is no dummy, and he’ll know we’re coming for him.”

“How can we avoid an ambush in the dark, Sergeant?”

“You can’t, you idiot, but have the men spread out so if they open fire on us, we won’t be all bunched up together. Now get moving. We don’t know exactly how many of them to expect or how well armed they are, except they were evidently able to bring down a Kiowa with whatever weapons they were carrying. They may even have some land mines with them, so watch where you step, and for God’s sake be quiet.”

“I’ll get the word down the line, Sergeant. But land mines are gonna be a problem. We don’t have any sweepers, to keep our backpacks as light as we could. Maybe we should have brought at least one.”

“We have no choice but to gamble, Corporal. If somebody steps on a mine, then all hell’s gonna break loose. We will have lost the element of surprise.”

“What about dogs, Sergeant? You think they might have dogs?”

Sergeant Jones looked at him as if he were crazy. “Dogs? You think they parachuted out of a burning aircraft with dogs in their hands, you idiot?” he whispered in a harsh voice to Corporal Woods.

“Uh, no, I guess not,” Corporal Woods answered, a chagrined look on his face as he swung off at a trot to deliver Jones’s instructions.

The night in these Mexican jungles was as black as any Gerald Jones had ever seen. Not a breath of air moved among the trees. A man could be heard sneezing or farting at five hundred yards, an advantage for his men, and a disadvantage if one of them made a mistake.

Jones waved a silent signal across the grassy meadow. In

 

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the blackness of shadows below the forest canopy, darker shapes began to move toward the crest of a wooded hillside, hard to see in the night, harder to hear because these men were well trained in the art of night combat. Jones would allow no greenhorns on his handpicked assault force. Davis had been a necessary exception.

A ripping explosion sent Lloyd Davis into the air like a wounded buzzard, flapping his useless arms like broken wings, his AK-47 erupting in a spray of gunfire.

Men began to shout, in spite of Jones’s order to keep quiet. Someone shouted, “They got Davis, blew him to hell! Shoot the bastards!”

The chatter of an AK-47 filled the night. Another machine gun chattered in the distance, an Uzi by the sound of it, Jones thought to himself as he ducked under a low-hanging bush. Then a man began screaming, “I’m hit, goddamnit, I’m hit! Shoot the son of a bitch!”

Gerald Jones knew things had suddenly gone wrong. Davis had stepped on a mine, and now everyone in Raines’s group must know they were under attack.

Squatting down, Jones cocked an RPG and sent the grenade flying high above the roof of the jungle.

The charge detonated fifty feet in the air, blasting trees and undergrowth with shrapnel. Corporal Woods’s shrill scream echoed across the forest as he sank to his knees, clutching his face with both hands in the brief flash of exploding gunpowder.

“I’m hit! Help me, Sergeant!”

“Screw you, Woods,” Jones muttered. “A paid soldier has to learn how to help himself, you idiot.”

He watched the jungle for signs of movement. Other than the fleeting shadows of his own men racing through the woods, he found nothing to shoot at.

The element of surprise was lost, all because Lloyd Davis was so dumb as to step on a land mine. A voice inside Gerald

 

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Jones’s head had whispered that he shouldn’t take a man like Davis along on a mission this sensitive. However, good men were getting harder and harder to find lately, and his choices were nil on such short notice.

Jones’s first priority was to assassinate Ben Raines, at any cost. But how was he to find Raines in the dark like this, with men shooting and dying all around him?

He crept away from the thick palm trunk where he’d been watching the failing assault on Raines and his crew, inching forward, hoping for a shot at Raines. He only knew him by an old photograph General Bundt had shown him, taken years ago when the SUSA was formed.

Staying low, listening to the hammering of automatic gunfire on all sides, he moved toward where he figured Raines and his men must be with all the stealth he could muster. If Gerald Jones could manage one thing well after his years as a Navy SEAL, it was stealth before he made a kill.

He paused at the edge of a clearing less than a hundred yards from the palm trunk, listening, watching, craning his neck to see what was happening to his assault troops. His men were being slaughtered, from the sound of it … not that he gave a shit about anyone other than himself. One lesson he had learned over years of fighting was the value of his own life. It didn’t matter a damn who else died. Staying alive was priority one.

A voice behind him spoke. “You looking for somebody in particular?”

Jones froze-he did not recognize the man who spoke to him now-but it could be Private Watts, a Southerner from Alabama who’d stayed back with McKinney.

He risked a glance over his shoulder. “Is that you, Watts?” he asked.

“I’ve been called names. Smith is one of my favorites, but I stopped using it a long time ago.”

A cold chill ran down Jones’s spine. The man talking to

 

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him wasn’t Private Watts or any other soldier in his company of Blackshirts.

“Nice shirt you’re wearing,” the voice said, coming from a dark stand of trees only a few feet behind him. “Not one of my favorite colors, black, but it’s a nice shirt.”

Jones tensed, ready to make his move with his AK-47. “Who are you?” he asked to distract the stranger.

“Ben. Ben Raines. I’m sure I’m the one you’ve been sent here to kill.”

Jones closed his eyelids briefly. How the hell had Raines gotten behind him? “There must be some mistake. We came here to fight the Mexicans.”

“No mistake,” the voice said. “Unless you count letting me get behind you. That was a helluva mistake.”

“Would you shoot a man in the back?”

“I’d shoot a sorry son of a bitch like you in the balls if the light was better. I suppose I’ll have to take the only target you’ve given me. But just for the hell of it, I’m gonna give you a chance to turn around before I pull the trigger.”

Gerald felt he had no choice. Either he would be shot down from the rear, or he could take a chance at having better aim than Ben Raines.

He wheeled, sweeping his AK-47 barrel toward the trees as his finger tightened on the trigger.

Jones was lifted off his feet by a hail of lead tearing through his body. As he fell over on his back, just before he lost consciousness, he wondered what Ben Raines really looked like.

Ben walked rapidly away from the dead body that was cooling in the humid jungle air. He knew the flash of his Uzi would’ve been seen by Jones’s men, and he needed to get some distance between him and the site.

Within twenty minutes, the last shot was fired and the jungle was filled with silence.

Moments later, a warbling whistle trilled over the jungle

 

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night, and Harley Reno walked into a clearing, holding a flashlight aloft.

As Raines’s team gathered to the light, Harley said, “I got the last one a couple of minutes ago. We’re okay now.”

Ben stepped forward. “We won’t be okay until we get to the Mexican Army base at Durango. When they don’t hear back from the patrol they sent to kill us, they’ll probably send out choppers at first light. We need to be gone by then.”

He glanced at Anna. “You going to be able to make double time from now on?” he asked.

She nodded, though the swelling of her ankle could be seen even through Jersey’s tape.

“Yes, sir.”

Ben consulted his compass again, then glanced at the night sky, studying the star formations there. “Okay, we’ll head off in that general direction as fast as we can,” he said, pointing to the southwest. “At first light, we’ll slow down and make sure we stay under cover in case the choppers fly by.”

“I’ll take point,” Harley said, starting off with his SPAS shotgun cradled in his arms.

“I’ll bring up the rear,” Hammer said, taking the second most dangerous position in the column.

“Let’s go, people,” Ben said, glancing around at the bodies sprawled all around them. “We’ve wasted enough time here.”

 

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When Ben had heard from General Guerra that he needed the SUSA’s help at Durango and Tampico, Ben had instructed Striginov and McGowen to get their bats headed south as fast as they could.

Both men called upon HEMTTs (pronounced Hemits) to do the heavy work of transporting the heavy equipment the men would need. HEMTTs, or Heavy Equipment Mobility Tractor Trucks, were first used for cargo, recovery, and carrying tanks filled with water or fuel in the Desert Storm war in Kuwait in the ‘90s. They were essentially large tractor-trailers, fitted with four huge wheels on each side that were necessary for traveling through desert and sandy areas.

The HEMTTs tooled through the desert as if they were on superhighways, accompanied by the heavy M-l Abrams tanks, which could travel forty to fifty miles an hour and could laser-target six objectives at the same time; the smaller but no less effective Sheridan tanks, which were modified low-profile tanks fitted with the older optical sights; and the Bradley Attack Vehicles, or BAVs. All of these carried both 120mm cannons and fifty-caliber machine guns as their main armament. Also running alongside were the Vulcans, very small tanklike vehicles that carried a crew of two along with three-man scout teams they could transport quickly behind enemy lines, covering them with their own 120mm cannons.

The troop movements were led by the aircraft the bats used as air cover: Cobras, which had no night-fighting ability but

 

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were deadly hunters in good weather, and Apaches, the super-expensive, all-weather attack helicopters that were state of the art in killing efficiency. The venerable A-10 Warthogs, planes that had been known in combat to have a tail and half a wing shot away and still return home safely, were used both as troop transports and tank hunters. They flew vanguard, and swept the area ahead of the troops for any enemy soldiers that might hinder the movements of the thousands of men Ben was sending into Mexico to help General Guerra slow down the advance of Loco’s and Bottger’s armies.

Harley Reno stepped out of the jungle a hundred yards from the guard post of the Durango Army base and held up his hands.

The guard, who looked to be no more that sixteen years old, leveled an old M-16 and snapped off a couple of shots in his direction.

Harley dove to the ground and considered blowing the kid’s head off, then thought better of it. That wouldn’t be a diplomatic way to enter the post.

“Hold your fire!” he shouted.

“Who … who goes there?” the soldier asked in Spanish.

Harley answered the same way, explaining he was with General Raines from the SUSA and they were there to see General Guerra.

After some confusion, the boy shouted for them to come on in to the camp.

Ben stepped out of the jungle, smiling at Harley, who was still lying on the ground.

Harley glanced up and grinned. “I’m applying for hazardous-duty pay if we’re gonna be working with these dopes.”

Coop strolled by, smiling. “I guess you just look like the suspicious type, Harley, not a clean-faced, all-American type like me,” he said.

 

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“I didn’t hear you volunteer to take point, Mr. All-Ameri-can,” Harley growled, jumping to his feet.

“My momma didn’t raise no fools, Harley,” Coop replied.

“No, just assholes,” Jersey called from the back, but she smiled as she said it.

Coop gave her an injured look. “That hurts, Jersey, and after all we shared.”

“You can share my bugs anytime, Coop, especially the fatal ones,” she shot back as they neared the guard post.

The young soldier, after a fearful look at Harley, who towered over him by at least a foot, saluted Ben and said, “The general said for me to take you to him at once, sir.”

Harley gently pushed the barrel of the young boy’s M-16 up toward the ceiling. “We’ll follow you, soldier,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you behind me with that thing.”

General Guerra rushed from behind his desk to shake Ben’s hand, nodding his greeting to the other members of the team.

“General Raines, I am very happy to see you, sir.”

“Happy to be here, General. As it turns out, we have a common goal … to keep Loco and Bottger out of Durango and Tampico as long as we can.”

“That is my hope as well,” Guerra said. “Please, gentlemen and ladies, have a seat and I will have my aide bring you some refreshments.” He looked over the bedraggled group. “You look as if you could use them.”

“A couple of nights and a day in your jungles will do that to you, General,” Ben said.

“Please, call me Jose and I will call you Ben.”

Ben shrugged. “All right.”

After Guerra gave the orders for them to be brought food and wine, he sat behind his desk, ready to get down to business.

“What are your plans, Ben?” he asked.

“Of course, I’d like you to remain in command of all the

 

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Mexican troops, Jose, but I’ll have to insist on giving the orders concerning the disposition and conduct of my men.”

“Certainly, Ben, that is to be expected.”

“Good, I’m glad we agree,” Ben said. “Now, what is your latest intel on Loco’s and Bottger’s movements?”

Guerra whirled his desk chair around and pulled a large-scale map of Mexico down from a roller on the wall. “Here we are at Durango, Ben,” he said, pointing to the map. “Bottger’s mercenaries have taken Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and are now attacking Valparaiso, about ninety miles to our south.”

“How about Loco?”

“They are massed at Ciudad de Valles twenty-five miles south of Tampico, and are now staging attacks against the Navy base there with helicopters and some older-model jet airplanes.”

“No foot soldiers?”

“Not as of yet. The terrain there is very … how you say, wild. My officers think it will take them another two days for the troops to get in position to attack them.”

“Why aren’t they just airlifting them in with Chinooks?” Harley asked.

Guerra smiled. “The base at Tampico is not without its own defenses. While our helicopters are of the older, Huey vintage, my pilots are fearless and have inflicted heavy damages to the more modern helicopters of Perro Loco’s army. I feel he is afraid the Hueys would shoot the slower Chinooks down, so he is waiting until most of the Hueys are neutralized, as they soon will be, by the vastly superior Kiowas.”

Ben nodded. “That gives Ike McGowen a couple of days to get some reinforcements to your base. If you will get me a radio, I’ll get on the horn and tell him to put it in high gear. We’ve got some helicopters with the 502 that will make the Kiowas look like kids’ toys.”

“Oh?” Guerra asked.

 

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“Yeah,” Harley said, grinning. “The Apaches will eat the Kiowas for lunch, if they’ve got the cojones to face ‘em.”

Guerra grinned. “I’ve heard of the Apache helicopter, but I admit, I’ve never seen one.”

“The Apache is the most sophisticated and most expensive attack helicopter ever built,” Ben said. “It’s equipped with night vision and target acquisition and designation systems to enable it to fly and fight in all weathers, day or night. It’s armed with Hellfire missiles that can lock onto and destroy any known tank, and for softer targets it’s also equipped with 2.75-inch rockets and an extremely accurate thirty-millimeter Chain Gun.”

Harley grinned. “And it flies at one hundred fifty-five knots and has a range of three hundred miles. It kicked butt in the Gulf War and in Africa against Bottger a few years ago.”

“Ike’s also got a couple of Aardvarks,” Ben said, “and their range is over nine hundred miles. Maybe he could send a couple of them to keep Loco’s troops busy until he gets in range for the Apaches.”

“That is excellent news, Ben,” Guerra said. “Perhaps Tampico can be saved after all.”

Lieutenant Tommy Bartholomew took off in his Aardvark from an improvised airstrip that’d been bulldozed in the desert by the big Catapillar Cat-9’s the night before. He’d barely had time after his night landing to get six hours’ sleep and eat a quick breakfast before Ike McGowen had told him of Ben’s request for a little harassment of Loco’s troops at Ciudad de Valles.

The General Dynamics F-l 11 Aardvark was the first supersonic fighter-bomber with the ability to make low-level precision bombing attacks by day or night, in any kind of weather. Known as the Aardvark because of its droop-nose silhouette, the swept-wing F-l 11 entered service over Vietnam in 1968. In 1986, F-lll’s based in England struck at Colonel Qaddafi’s

 

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Libya, and in 1991 the F-lll was one of the anti-Saddam Hussein coalition’s most important aircraft. Now, almost fifty years since its first combat flight, the F-lll was still a mighty killing machine, and Bartholomew loved it as most men loved their wives.

Carrying almost eleven tons of bombs, it took almost three thousand feet to get airborne, but once in the air, the fighter flew at almost eight hundred knots southward toward Loco’s troop concentrations in the City of the Valleys.

Assured by McGowen that there were few if any civilians in the occupied city, Tommy dove out of the sun at just under the speed of sound, his electronic sights picking out targets of tanks, ammo dumps, fuel storage tanks, and troop bivouac areas.

On his first sweep, catching Loco’s men completely unaware, he dropped his bombs so low that he flew through the dark red mushroom clouds of debris and flames that rose upon exploding. Sweeping up in a wide turn, he glanced over his shoulder and saw several helicopters and two smaller jet fighters angling on the runway south of the city to get in position to take off.

Banking so steeply his cheeks bulged and flattened against the G-forces, he whipped around and made another run, this time the craters of his bombs marching inexorably toward the hapless planes still warming up for takeoff. Two of the helicopters managed to get off the ground before Tommy’s bombs totally destroyed the runway, three hangars, and most of the control tower of the airport.

His left wing shuddered under the impact of the Kiowa’s 20mm Minigun as he swept past the first helicopter. Ignoring the damage and the red warning lights that lit up his instrument panel like a Christmas tree, Tommy keyed the second Kiowa into his fire-control computer and pressed the button on his wing guns.

Every fifth bullet was a tracer, and the red dots of death screamed toward the helicopter, finally mating with it in a

 

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fiery explosion that rocked the F-lll as it flew by. Tommy watched the wreckage land in a field of scattering troops, incinerating at least a couple of dozen screaming men.

The control stick shook and shuddered in his hands, and he could see pieces of his left wing peeling off where the 20mm shells had stitched a pattern across.

He made one more pass at high altitude to stay out of range of the remaining Kiowa, and dumped the rest of his bombs indiscriminately over the city, watching most of them disappear under clouds of smoke and dust and flames.

Reluctantly, he pointed the nose of his beloved F-lll north toward Tampico and keyed the mike on his radio.

“Mayday, Mayday,” he said calmly, dialing in the frequency of the Navy base at Tampico that he’d been given in his pre-flight briefing that morning.

“This is Big Bird One-One-One to base at Tampico. I have a Mayday.”

“Come in, Big Bird, this is Tampico Navy base,” a Spanish-accented voice said in fairly good English.

“I’ve taken a hit on my left wing and the stabilizer is out. I need clearance for a straight-in approach on Runway B-12,” Tommy said, glancing at the map strapped to his right thigh.

“Come ahead, Big Bird. We’ll have fire trucks and foaming equipment standing by for your landing.”

“Roger, Tampico. Get the beer ready. I’ve got a mouthful of dust to cut.”

“Roger that, Big Bird. Good luck, amigo,” the voice said, signing off.

Minutes later, his wings wiggling and shaking more than Elvis’s hips ever had, Tommy lowered the nose of the F-lll toward the base at Tampico and lowered his flaps, hoping they would help calm the jittering of his wings on final approach.

His speed slowed, making control of the aircraft more difficult, and sweat began to pour from his forehead and face as he gripped the control stick with both hands, using his feet

 

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on the pedals to try to keep the plane in the air for another quarter mile.

“It’s gonna be close, old girl. Hang in there for me another couple’a seconds,” he whispered through a dry mouth to his plane.

The F-lll hit the ground, bounced once, skidded slightly to the right, then began to slow to manageable speed in the center of the runway.

Tommy leaned his head back, breathed a quick prayer of thanks, and let the air he’d been holding out of his lungs.

 

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Lieutenant Commander Johnny Held and Lieutenant Josh Fuentes were in the lead Apache flying out of Georgi Striginov’s 505 Bat, while Lieutenant Commander Jerry Stringer and Lieutenant Wally Fuller were flying backup in the second Apache.

Their orders were simple: Find the mercenaries operating under the command of Field Marshal Bruno Bottger and destroy as many men and as much equipment as they could. If they managed to down a few helicopters, all the better.

Their last intel was that the meres were attacking the village of Valapraiso ninety miles to the south of Durango, where General Ben Raines and his team were meeting with the head of the Mexican Armed Forces, General Jose Guerra.

As they flew along the tributaries of the Grande de Santiago, the large river on the West Coast that sent its smaller branches up near Valapraiso, they could see smoke and flashes of light as the meres systematically destroyed the meager defenses of the small town.

“Whirlybird One to Whirlybird Two,” Held said to Stringer over the ship-to-ship radio. “Looks like the bad guys are having some fun down there, pickin’ on the smaller boys.”

“Yeah,” Stringer answered. “Let’s go kick some sand in their faces and teach them some manners, American style.”

“Roger that,” Held said. “Drop your socks and grab your cocks, boys, we’re goin’ downtown!”

The two Apaches separated slightly, put their noses down

 

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for increased speed, and rushed toward the conflagration below. Held could see a couple of small black dots flitting around the outskirts of the town, and knew them to be either Kiowas or Defenders. It was too far to tell which they might be, but it really didn’t matter too much, for the Apache outclassed both of them in combat by a large margin.

Deciding to save his 2.75-inch rockets for the big boys, the Chinooks he knew must be in the area, Held fingered the trigger on his 30mm Chain Gun. The Chain Gun was a hellish instrument that could fire 30mm slugs so fast it sounded like a steady whine instead of the usual chatter of a machine-gun.

One of the enemy helicopters, a Kiowa, must have seen them coming, for it turned its back and headed off in full retreat.

“Smart boy,” Held said to his copilot, Josh Fuentes, who was busy checking the area for other targets or risks.

The second helicopter, a McDonnell Douglas OH-6 Defender, made the mistake of turning to face the Apache and letting go with a stream of 20mm shells from its Minigun while the Apache was still far out of range.

“That boy’s got more balls than brains,” Josh said. “The Defender may be good against tanks and ground installations, but it’s not worth spit as an attack chopper.”

“He’s gonna find that out in about twenty seconds,” Held said as he locked his target acquisition computer sights on the smaller helicopter and pulled the trigger on the Chain Gun.

The Defender seemed to just disintegrate under the onslaught of the first burst of 30mm shells, breaking into pieces too small to see, then exploding in a fireball of av-gas and ammunition.

Without slowing his descent, Held asked, “Next target?”

Josh keyed his computer and said, “Halftrack personnel carrier at three o’clock low, off to the right. It’s already keyed into right-pod rocket launcher.”

“Roger,” Held said, and fingered the trigger to the right-hand-side rocket launcher.

 

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A 2.75-inch rocket shot from under the right turbine engine, and curved in a gentle arc downward toward a large truck with tank threads on its rear part, full of soldiers. As the rocket flared on its way down, Held could see a couple of men try to jump out of the vehicle. They were in midair when the rocket buried its nose in the engine compartment of the truck and exploded, sending crumpled, blackened metal and bits and pieces of soldiers’ bodies flying through the air.

“Incoming!” Josh hollered as his computer picked up the trail of a handheld GTA SAM missile that’d been fired at them by one of the soldiers.

Without thinking, acting on reflex since he had only seconds to react, Held pulled up on the collective, jerked the throttle stick to the side, and pumped his feet on the pedals, sending the Apache in a sideways, leaning dive toward the ground. The SAM passed by less than thirty feet from the right turbine, too close to turn toward the heat.

In one continuous move, Held bent the Apache’s nose back around and arrowed toward the ground, his finger holding the trigger of the Chain Gun down, strafing the thousands of troops scattering like stampeded cattle before him.

A 30mm bullet makes quite a mess of human flesh, and the soldiers below were smashed and torn asunder by the fusillade of bullets that rained down on them like hail from hell, killing hundreds of men in the first pass.

A few soldiers tried to fire their machine-guns at the Apache, but it was like trying to hit a hawk with a slingshot, and none of the bullets made contact as Held pulled up out of his dive and prepared for another pass.

“Target?” he asked in a calm voice, as if this were just another day at the office.

“There’s a pair of Chinooks over to the left,” Josh said calmly. “Looks like they’re trying to warm up their engines for a fast getaway.”

“Dial ‘em in and let’s get the bastards,” Held said.

 

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Josh’s fingers flew over the keyboard to his target acquisition computer, and seconds later he said, “Done.”

Held lined up the nose of the Apache, and pulled back on the collective to cause it to hover momentarily. Just as he tapped the fire button on the rocket launcher, one of the Chinooks lifted off, the heavy helicopter trying to get airborne and escape its fate.

The first rocket hit the Chinook on the ground, exploding it in a giant fireball, the metal of its fuselage collapsing around the troops that had been trying to clamber on board and killing all in a split second.

The second Chinook was about thirty feet off the ground and just beginning its turn when the 2.75-inch rocket entered its turbine exhaust port, blowing the engine off the machine.

The Chinook spun wildly, out of control, and smashed to the ground, first flattening out like a giant pancake. Then it too exploded, sending flames and smoke a hundred feet into the air.

Stringer and Fuller were equally busy. Stringer had elected to focus his attack on the troops on the outskirts of the town. He aimed the nose of his Apache at several HumVees and smaller jeeps that were using their pole-mounted fifty-caliber machine guns to rake the buildings of Valapraiso with murderous fire.

When their gunners saw the Apache coming at them out of the sun, they swiveled their guns upward and continued to fire, trying desperately to down the approaching aircraft.

It was no use. The Chain Gun mounted under the Apache’s nose exploded into action, sending thousands of rounds of 30mm shells at the vehicles.

Two HumVees disintegrated under the impact, exploding and killing all the men within a hundred yards of their location as molten, twisted metal acted like shrapnel from a dozen hand grenades and scythed through them like a cultivator through a field of wheat, mowing them down and killing them instantly.

One of the jeeps took off in a screeching turn, trying to

 

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escape the fire, but the tracers of the Chain Gun followed it, stitching a path up the road until they intersected with the jeep and blew it twenty feet into the air, its rubber tires on fire and sending out thick, black clouds of smoke.

By now, the mercenaries were in full retreat, running in packs and individually as fast as they could away from the town. Some even dove into the rivers that ran near the city limits and tried to hide in the slowly moving waters.

With most of the heavy equipment either abandoned or destroyed, the two Apaches flitted back and forth, firing their Chain Guns at the running men, killing hundreds as they tried to make their escape.

Soon, most of the larger groups of men were either dead or had dispersed, dropping their weapons and hightailisg it toward the sparse jungles in the distance, trying to get under cover and away from the Angels of Death flying overhead.

“Whirlybird Two, come in,” Held said, pulling his Apache away from the fleeing soldiers and back toward town.

“Whirlybird Two here,” Stringer replied. “What do you think, Johnny? We done enough damage for the time being?”

“Roger that, Jerry. You stand guard up here for a while in case that Kiowa decides to come back and fight. I’m gonna land and see if there are any defenders left in the town to fight.”

“That Kiowa won’t come back, Johnny, not unless he’s got shit for brains, but I’ll keep an eye out just in case.”

Johnny Held landed his Apache, leaving Josh at the controls in case he needed to take off in a hurry, while he walked toward the destroyed buildings of Valapraiso.

Within ten minutes, bedraggled Mexican soldiers and townspeople began to come out of basements and the rubble of collapsed buildings from all across the town.

Held stood with his hands on his hips until a contingent of soldiers, led by a man with sergeant’s stripes on his uniform, walked up to him.

 

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The sergeant saluted smartly, even though blood from two wounds on his left arm was dripping onto the ground.

“Sergeant Raul Dominguez, sir,” he said.

“You the commanding officer here, Raul?” Johnny said, sticking out his hand to shake.

“Yes, sir, I am now. Both our lieutenants were killed in the attack.”

Johnny looked around. Dominguez had perhaps sixty or seventy men left who looked like they were well enough to fight.

“Why don’t you get your men to round up the weapons and ammunition, and a couple of those jeeps over there with the fifty-calibers on ‘em?” he asked. “My partner and I will stay aloft and cover you until you’re back in the town and get your defenses set back up.”

“Yes, sir,” Dominguez said. Then he turned and barked orders in rapid Spanish to his men, who scattered and began to pick up machine guns, grenades, and ammunition boxes that were lying among the dead and wounded mercenaries.

Dominguez glanced around. “What shall I do with the wounded enemies, sir?” he asked.

“You got enough men to play nursemaid to a bunch of mercenaries that were doin’ their best to kill you an hour ago?” Held asked.

“Uh, now that you mention it, sir, I don’t.”

“Then leave ‘em,” Held said. “Buzzards gotta eat too.”

Dominguez grinned, and Held knew that was the answer he’d wanted, and probably what he would have done no matter what Held had advised. The Mexican Army was not known for its humanitarian instincts in the best of times.

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll hang around until we see your men are all safely back in town. Then we gotta split. Gettin’ kinda low on go-juice,” Held said.

“You think they’ll be back, sir?” Dominguez asked, glancing in the direction the soldiers had taken when they ran off.

 

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Held shook his head. “Not today, but they’ll get reinforcements and probably hit you again tomorrow or the next day.”

“Can we expect more help from you americanos?” Dominguez asked.

Held shrugged. “Yeah, our battalion should be well within distance to help out by tomorrow, but you fellows look like you were doin’ all right on your own. Now that you got plenty of ammo and time to dig in, I don’t think you’re gonna have any problems.”

Dominguez saluted again, then turned to make sure his men were thorough in picking through the weapons and ammunition scattered around the battlefield.

 

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It was almost full dark by the time the Kiowa helicopter that had fled the battle at Valapraiso landed outside the Presidential Palace at Mexico City.

The pilot and copilot were brought to the conference room on the third floor, where Bruno Bottger and Perro Loco and their entourages were having a strategy meeting.

Bottger and Loco sat side by side, glaring across the desk at the tired, sweaty men who stood before them, their heads hanging down.

“Give us your report,” Bottger ordered harshly.

“We were about to enter the town, Field Marshal, when two Apache helicopters came at us from the north,” said the pilot.

“They had the SUSA markings on them, Herr Bottger,” the copilot added.

Bottger glanced at Loco, then back at the two men. “And you didn’t stay to fight?” he asked, scorn dripping from his tongue.

The pilot shook his head. “No, sir. The Kiowa is no match for one Apache, much less two. The pilot of the Defender tried to fight them, and was blown out of the sky before he could get a shot off.”

“It appears the dead man was much braver than you two,” Bottger said, his face turning red.

“I thought it more important to save the helicopter, sir,” the pilot said, standing up straight. “I am not afraid to die, but to

 

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throw my life away when I have no chance would be counterproductive to our efforts to win this war.”

Sergei Bergman leaned forward to speak to Bottger. “He is correct, Field Marshal. The Kiowas, and the men with the know-how to pilot them, are too valuable to us to lose unnecessarily.”

Bottger took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps you are right, Sergei.”

He glanced back at the two pilots. “Get yourselves cleaned up and get something to eat. We will need you again in the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” the two men said in unison, and saluted before turning to leave, much relieved they hadn’t been shot out of hand.

After they were gone, Bottger referred to a radio report from the field. “It appears the attack on Valapraiso was completely routed by the arrival of the American warships.”

Loco nodded. “The same thing happened to my men at Ciudad de Valles. General Enrique Gonzalez states he barely escaped with his life and that most of his men are either dead or wounded. He desires immediate reinforcements and better air cover.”

“Looks like Ben Raines’s men have arrived a bit sooner than we expected. This is gonna complicate matters.”

Sergei Bergman nodded his agreement. “Yes. It means it will be extremely difficult to occupy the remainder of Mexico in the time frame we first planned.”

Bottger thumbed through the intel reports in front of him. “It seems a full battalion of troops has been sent to defend Tampico, and a full battalion to defend Durango.”

“Our men will play hell trying to defeat battalions equipped as well as those of the Americans are,” Paco Valdez said from his seat next to Loco.

Loco nodded. “I do not believe it can be done as long as our forces are divided.”

“I agree,” Bottger said, his eyes fixed on a map of Mexico.

 

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“I propose we unify our forces and concentrate on Durango. If I send my men straight from Guadalajara toward Durango, skirting the mountains to the west of the city, they can be there in two days’ time.” He cut his eyes to the other side of the map. “And if you order your men that are south of Tampico to strike directly west, we might be able to catch Durango in a pincer movement between our two forces.”

Loco leaned over to look at the map. “I see. Together, we vastly outnumber one battalion. If we strike fast enough by having our men travel all during the night and lay low during the day, we might be able to catch the defenders of Durango off guard.”

“We can transport most of the men still here in Mexico City in our C-130’s and land them at Sombrerete, fifty miles southeast of Durango. There is an old airfield there that will let the transport planes land. If we time it right, we will then have a three-pronged attack that will hit Durango at the same time.”

Bottger and Loco looked at each other and nodded. “Then that is what we shall do,” Bottger said. He glanced at Sergei Bergman. “Sergei, you and Mr. Strunk coordinate the troop movements so that the attacks will occur simultaneously.”

Bergman and Strunk nodded and began to gather their papers together.

Sergei knocked on Bottger’s bedroom door just before midnight.

“Come in,” Bottger said.

“Field Marshal,” Bergman said as he entered. “The plan is done and the orders have been given. The attacks will occur day after tomorrow at dawn.”

“There’s one more thing we have to do,” Bottger said.

“What’s that?”

“Tomorrow evening I want you to send three jets loaded with our plague bombs to the north. One is to let his bombs

 

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off over Durango. The other two are to fly as far north as they can get and drop them as close to the SUSA’s southern border as they can.”

“But, Field Marshal, they will never get all the way to the SUSA. The air defenses are too good.”

“I know that, but with two divisions of Americans here, and with several million people inhabiting northern Mexico, it will not take long for the plague to spread to the SUSA. By the time we’ve finished with Durango, the disease should be well established in both the SUSA and Mexico.”

“You are aware the plague will devastate not only the Mexicans and Americans, but Perro Loco’s troops as well?”

“Yes, but by then, we will no longer need Senor Loco or his men. Once the plague has rendered both Mexico and the SUSA impotent, it will only be a matter of occupying the countries with our mercenaries and beginning to take them over.”

Bergman nodded, smiling. “And soon after the SUSA falls ill, the U.S. will follow.”

Bottger grinned. “Exactly.”

After darkness fell the next day, Bottger and Bergman rode out to the Mexico City airport. Bottger had told Loco he was going to send a couple of bombers over Durango to see if they could soften the city up by dropping some bombs from a high altitude.

Loco didn’t think much of the plan, but since the planes belonged to Bottger, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Of course, he knew nothing of the lethal cargo in the bombs the planes carried.

Bottger and Bergman pulled up to the runway in front of the three F-l 11 ‘s. The pilots were standing on the edge of the tarmac awaiting final instructions.

“Gentlemen,” Bottger said, standing in front of them. “You have your orders. It is imperative that the bombs be dropped

 

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as planned. It is not important that you are precise in your targeting. The bombs are designed to detonate one thousand feet from the ground to insure maximum spread of the bacteria contained in them.”

He pointed to one of the men. “Your target is the city of Durango, or as close to it as you can get. The most important thing is to release the bombs if you come under attack, even if you are not over your target.”

He glanced at the other two. ‘1You men are to separate and to head at maximum altitude and speed toward the southern border of the SUSA. Once again, at the first sign of interdiction or if you are fired upon by missiles, release the bombs no matter where you are. Understand?”

The men all nodded. They knew there was little chance of them returning from this mission, but Bottger had promised each of them huge sums of money in the event they succeeded, with the money to go to their families if they died in the attempt.

One after another, the jets taxied up to the end of the runway and took off, climbing at a steep angle to get as high as they could as fast as they could.

A Mexican soldier burst into the situation room at the Army base at Durango where Ben Raines and his team were going over the latest intel reports with General Guerra and his staff.

The soldier and General Guerra spoke back and forth in rapid Spanish for a moment, with Guerra’s face becoming more and more worried the longer they spoke.

Ben glanced at Harley Reno. “What’s going on, Harley?” he asked.

Harley, who was fluent in Spanish, leaned over and whispered, “That man is the radar operator of the base. Evidently, he’s picked up three fast-moving blips at high altitude and coming this way from Mexico City. They’ll be over us in less than fifteen minutes.”

 

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Without waiting for confirmation from Guerra, Ben turned to Corrie, his radio operator. “Get on the horn, fast, to Georgi Striginov,” he said, “and tell him we need a couple of F-Ill’s up here pronto.”

Corrie, who was never very far from her compact radio set, rushed to the back of the room and began the call immediately. Her low voice could be heard talking urgently to someone, but the words couldn’t be made out.

After a couple of minutes, she came back over to Ben. “Georgi’s second in command said he’d get right on it, but there was no way they could be here in time to beat the bogeys from Mexico City.”

Ben turned to Guerra, who was listening. “Can you scramble anything that’ll help us?” he asked.

Guerra shook his head. “The only aircraft we have here right now ready to go are a couple of old Warthogs.”

“How fast are the bogeys moving?” Ben asked the radar operator.

Harley quickly translated the question. When the man answered, he looked back at Ben. “A lot faster than the Warthogs can handle.”

Ben looked at Guerra. “Scramble the Warthogs, General. Maybe they’ll get lucky with one of their guided missiles.”

Guerra nodded and picked up the phone on his desk, speaking rapidly into it. Then he looked up. “They’ll be airborne in five minutes. If the jets coming this way drop low enough, we might have a chance.”

“Better sound the air raid siren and get everyone under cover,” Ben said. “If those are F-Ill’s coming this way, they can carry over eleven tons of bombs and still travel twice as fast as a Warthog.”

Lieutenant Colonel Jaime Fuentes eased back the stick on his Warthog, and smiled as it lifted up off the runway at the Durango airfield. Jaime, who’d been trained at Fort Hood in

 

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Texas some ten years ago, lived to fly. To him, the war of aggression by Perro Loco was a godsend, relieving him of the boredom of the years of peace when he’d had to beg for air time to keep his skills intact.

He was a gifted flyer who’d finished first in his class, to the surprise of the college grads he’d beaten from the SUSA schools. Jaime had only a high school education, but he’d been born to fly and the complex movements of hands and feet and eyes came like second nature to him.

The Fairchild A-10 Warthog he was flying had few rivals as a close-support aircraft, carrying both guided missiles and a 30mm cannon in its nose. Its one drawback was it was very slow, flying at only 380 knots at sea level. The F-lll’s it was going up against could fly at over seven hundred knots, and were better armed.

Jaime didn’t think of this as he pulled his beloved Warthog up as fast as it could go. He was going into battle, and his adrenaline was pumping and his heart was racing-in short, he was having the time of his life. Like most pilots, he felt he was the best there was, and counted on his skills overcoming the natural superiority of the planes he was going up against.

“Hog One, this is Base, come in,” a scratchy voice on his radio sounded.

“Hog One to base,” Jaime answered.

“Bogeys are separating,” the voice continued. “Only one bogey is headed this way. The other two are going to pass well to the west of us.”

“What is the current altitude of the bogey?” Jaime asked as he stared at his shipboard radar screen to see if he could pick out the blip that was to be bis target.

“Fourteen thousand feet and dropping. It’s coming in for a bombing run, Jaime.”

“Roger that,” Jaime said, imitating the pilots he’d trained with in Texas, down to the Texas drawl they’d said it with.

He keyed the intercom switch to talk to his copilot and

 

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gunner, sitting directly behind him in the double cockpit. “Julio, put your dancing shoes on, we’re fixing to boogie.”

“I’m on the dance floor, but I cannot hear the music, com-padre,” Julio responded, their personal code meaning Julio had all weapons systems ready to go but the target was still out of range.

“Snap off a quick ATA to see if we can get his attention,” Jaime ordered, hoping the air-to-air missile would at least get close enough to cause the other pilot to change his course away from the base.

“It’s too far,” Julio protested.

“I know, but lead him like you do the geese when we go hunting at the lake, Julio. Perhaps the missile’s heat seeker will pick him up as he approaches.”

“Si, and perhaps it will miss him, circle, and pick us up instead,” Julio said, “but here goes nothing.”

The Warthog shuddered slightly as a missile jumped from the right-wing pods and angled off to the left, toward the unknown bogey, which was still on the very edge of the plane’s radar screen.

Jaime shifted course slightly to his left.

“What are you doing?” Julio asked.

“Most pilots are right-handed,” Jaime explained. “I’m betting when he sees the ATA coming at him, he’s going to jig to the right. I’m altering course to cut the distance down and when he jigs, I’m going to be there waiting for him.”

“What if you’re wrong and he jigs left?” Julio asked.

“Then we’re probably dead,” Jaime answered calmly, as if he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Sure enough, when the blip of the missile closed on the blip of the F-l 11, the plane jigged to the right and downward to get away from the ATA missile, just as Jaime figured he would.

Jaime’s A-10 was already pointed at the F-l 11 as it dove, and he thumbed the button on the 30mm cannon and simul-

 

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taneously fired another ATA, hoping if the other pilot managed to dodge one, the other would get him.

Several blips appeared on the screen as the ATA missile and machine-gun bullets arched toward the F-111.

“He’s dropped his bombs,” Julio said exuberantly, “well short of the base.”

Suddenly, the night sky was lit up by the explosion of several tons of aircraft above and directly in front of the Warthog.

Cursing, Jaime jerked his stick to the side and put the A-10 in a slip-sliding dive, trying to avoid the shrapnel-like wreckage of the F-lll.

The windscreen in front of Jaime shattered and his face felt as if it’d been punched by a heavyweight fighter as pieces of the F-Ill’s fuselage punched through the Plexiglas.

Jaime’s head snapped back under the impact and he lost consciousness for a few seconds. When he came to, Julio’s voice was hollering in his ear over the intercom.

“We’re in a spin … we’re in a spin! Pull up, Jaime, pull up!”

Groggily, with only his instinct to guide him, Jaime’s hands and feet began a delicate dance together to regain control of the aircraft before it plunged into the desert sands below.

The Warthog leveled out at less than five hundred feet, Julio’s voice saying the Lord’s Prayer in Jaime’s ears as he finally cleared the blood out of his eyes and banked back toward the base for a landing.

 

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There was jubilation in the war room of the Durango Army base when the radar operator reported the F-l 11 from Mexico City had been shot down well short of the base.

While the other men were celebrating the heroism of Jaime Fuentes, who was in the medical ward having the cuts on his face stitched up, Harley stood next to the radar operator and continued to question him closely about what he’d seen.

Harley’s face was glum when he came back to Ben to report. “Something strange about this whole thing, General,” he said.

“What’s that, Harley?” Ben asked, putting down the glass of wine that Guerra had passed out on the news of the successful interdiction of the attacker.

“The radar man says it looked like the F-l 11 dropped his bombs before he was blown up.”

Ben shrugged. “So what? They evidently fell over land that was sparsely populated.”

“That’s not what’s bothering me, sir,” Harley continued. “The radar man says it looked to him like the bombs exploded at one thousand feet instead of falling all the way to the ground.”

“Shit!” Ben exclaimed. “There’s only one type of bomb designed to detonate in the air like that.”

Harley nodded. “Yes, sir. BW bombs.”

“That means the other two that’re headed toward our southern border are probably filled with the anthrax bug too,” Ben

 

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said, “and even if we shoot ‘em down, the bug is going to be released over northern Mexico or the southern SUSA.”

“Yes, sir, my thoughts exactly,” Harley said.

Ben leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. “I guess it’s time to tell the general what’s going on, and to get Dr. Buck to ship as much of the vaccine as he can spare down here pronto.”

“I’ll have Corrie get on the radio to Mike Post at headquarters immediately, Ben, while you talk to the general,” Harley said.

After Ben had explained how Bottger had most probably released a potent biological weapon over General Guerra’s country, they made plans for the quick distribution of the vaccine to all units of the Mexican Army, to be followed as rapidly as possible by the vaccination of as many of the citizens of Mexico as could be gotten to.

“The problem,” General Guerra said, a sad look on his face, “is that this part of Mexico is very rural, with the population spread over many thousands of acres. It will be almost impossible to vaccinate everyone before the plague begins to spread.”

“You’re right, Jose, but that will work in our favor too. The plague is spread person to person, so if the people are very spread out, fewer of them will come in contact with those afflicted by the plague. We just have to get on the radio and TV and newspapers to tell everyone to stay away from congested areas, like towns and markets.”

“I will have my information officers get right on it, Ben, and we will pray that the vaccine gets here in time to prevent the loss of most of my Army to sickness.”

“Those that do contract the illness can be treated with antibiotics, which I will also have sent along with the vaccine, Jose.”

“Muchas gracias, Ben.”

 

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At that moment, Harley returned from Corrie’s side. She’d been talking with Mike Post in Louisiana at Ben’s headquarters.

“Good news, Ben,” he said.

“Tell me,” Ben said. “I could use some good news right about now.”

“Mike says no problem on the vaccine and antibiotics. They’ll be on the way here by midnight, and should arrive in time to start inoculations first thing in the morning. He’s also sending extra teams of medics to help with the shots, both in the Army and in the countryside.”

“That is good news,” Ben said, a look of relief on his face.

“There’s more. General Striginov’s interceptors were able to shoot down both of the other bogeys before they reached our border. One went down near Chihuahua and the other over Monterrey.”

“Damn,” Ben said, some of the elation leaving his face. “That’s good for us but terrible for the Mexicans. There’s going to be tremendous loss of life before we can get the vaccine down there.”

“I know, but it could have been worse,” Harley said, “if they’d made it over Houston or El Paso.”

“You’re right, Harley. Guess we need to count our blessings.”

As they spoke, another man entered the room, a worried look on his face. After Guerra spoke with him, the general approached Ben.

“Our advance scouts report heavy troop movements to the south.”

Ben stared at him. “From the east or the west?” he asked.

“Both,” Guerra said shortly. “It appears as if Loco has given up on his idea of taking Tampico and has coordinated with Bottger to have both their armies converge on us here at Durango.”

“When does it look like they’ll arrive?” Ben asked.

 

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“Our scouts figure they’ll attack at first light tomorrow, or shortly thereafter.”

Ben turned to Corrie. “What’s Striginov’s ETA here?” he asked.

“He said if he pushes it, he can be here early in the morning with most of his heavy equipment. The ground troops will be a few hours later.”

“Get back on the radio and tell him to push it,” Ben said. “Looks like we’re gonna have some visitors by breakfast time.”

Claire Osterman called a meeting of her advisory staff for eight o’clock in the evening. When they arrived, she looked like a cat who’d just swallowed a canary.

Harlan Millard, Major General Bradley Stevens, Jr., his assistant Colonel James King, and Herb Knoff all helped themselves to coffee from a sideboard in her office and took their seats, waiting to see just what Claire had on her mind.

Stevens and King had been very busy for the past week making sure all of her troops were moving back from their stations on the borders with the SUSA, as well as getting medics around to all the battalions to inoculate the troops against Bruno Bottger’s dreaded plague bacteria in case it was launched.

Claire took her time, letting the suspense build for a while as she shuffled papers on her desk and fiddled with her coffee, getting it just right with cream and artificial sweetener. Proud of her new build after her incarceration of the year before, she was still on a strict diet and daily workout regimen.

Finally, Stevens could stand it no longer. “Madame President, you called us here for a reason?”

“Yes, Brad,” she said sweetly. “I have here a collection of reports from my spies in Perro Loco’s army, as well as some news reports from reporters in the SUSA who are … shall we say, sympathetic to our cause?”

 

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Stevens glanced at Millard and King. He’d heard nothing new in his daily intel reports that would justify such a meeting.

“And?” he asked.

“It seems that Ben Raines and some of his closest associates are down in Durango, Mexico, coordinating the fallback and consolidation of the Mexican Army down there.”

“So?” Stevens asked, wondering what bee was in Claire’s bonnet now.

“Perro Loco and Bruno Bottger both suffered severe setbacks in their last offensive, both due in part to the interference of Raines in Mexico’s affairs.”

Stevens had to force himself to keep his mouth shut about Claire railing against Raines for interfering in Mexico in a war that was the direct result of some meddling of her own.

“Perro Loco and Bottger are now working in concert and are forming a huge offensive against Durango, coming at the city from both sides with everything they have. It’s going to be a do-or-die effort, with maximum effort put forth to crush the Mexican defenders. What they don’t know, but I do, is that Raines has at least two battalions of his own coming to his aid. With that setup, who do you think will emerge victorious in the upcoming battle for Durango?” she asked, staring at Stevens and King.

Stevens shrugged, being careful to choose words that would not set Claire off. He didn’t dare give Raines and his Army too much praise, though he knew Loco’s ill-trained troops and Bottger’s hired mercenaries couldn’t stand against the highly trained and very loyal troops under Raines’s command. “I’d have to give the edge to Raines and the Mexicans,” he finally said. “They’re much better equipped and the Mexicans are fighting on their home ground, which always counts for something.”

King nodded his agreement. “Me too. I’d be surprised if Loco or Bottger come out of the battle with enough troops to ever be a serious force again.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Claire said, surprising everyone with

 

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her agreement. “And, evidently, Bruno Bottger knows he doesn’t stand a chance with conventional warfare, because my news sources inform me that three jets bearing BW bombs were launched last evening.”

“What?” Stevens said, sitting forward in his chair.

Claire nodded. “That’s correct. Bottger has finally launched a BW attack against both Mexico and the SUSA, though his bombers only got as far as Chihuahua and Monterrey before they were forced to drop their plague bombs prematurely.”

“Jesus,” Harlan Millard said as he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face. “It’s a good thing Raines shared their vaccine with us, or we’d be facing death and destruction on a major scale.”

“Yes, it is,” Claire said, still smiling for an unknown reason. “Which brings me to the point of tonight’s meeting. Now that the plague is afoot, Mexico is going to be devastated. Even if the SUSA manages to get the vaccine down there, it’s going to take a couple of weeks before it’s effective. In the meantime, thousands, perhaps millions of Mexicans are going to be infected.”

“Do you want us to send some of our medical teams down there?” Millard asked.

Claire looked at him as if he had suddenly gone crazy. “Not exactly,” she said. “It appears to me that Ben Raines is going to be extremely busy for the next few weeks, perhaps even months. Even if he wins the upcoming battle for Durango, he’s then going to be forced to help the Mexicans treat all their plague-infected peons.”

Stevens leaned back in his chair and bit his lip. He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

Claire didn’t disappoint him. “I think this would be a perfect time to reassess our decision to pull our troops back from the borders with the SUSA. Raines has already pulled his battalions back, and even sent some of them south to help out on the Mexican border. If we reversed our troop movements and pressed on past the borders, I think it would take Raines by

 

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surprise and by the time he could react, we’d have taken control of quite a bit of his territory.”

“But, Claire,” Millard said, “we can’t do that. You said yourself, you gave Raines your word you would pull our troops back and cease the hostilities if he provided us with the anthrax vaccine against Bottger’s biological weapons.”

“Harlan, you’re such a wimp!” Claire said with sudden fervor. “Do you really think I consider myself bound by a promise given under duress? That son of a bitch Raines blackmailed me into promising to pull our troops back, and I don’t consider blackmail an honorable way to conduct affairs of state.”

Stevens glanced at King and took a deep breath. “Madame President, may I remind you we are rather far along in the pullback process? Our troops are already loaded up, and most have already started to move away from the borders.”

“All the better,” Claire said, slamming her hand down on her desktop. “If the troops are already loaded up, then all it will take is an order from you for them to turn around and head them back the way they came. The only difference this time is that they won’t stop at the borders, but will continue on as far as they can, smashing the token resistance along the way.”

“But, Madame President …” Stevens began.

“General Stevens,” Claire interrupted, her voice as harsh and as hard as he’d ever heard it, “if you are unwilling to give the order, or to support it with all your heart, I am sure I can find another officer who is not afraid to do as I say.”

Stevens was defeated and he knew it. “No, ma’am. I’ll give the orders immediately.”

“And I can count on the full support of you and your other commanding officers in this offensive?” she asked, her eyes dangerously dark.

“Yes, ma’am. You have my word on it, as an officer and a gentleman.”

She smiled for the first time in several minutes. “And if

 

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you fail me, Brad, I promise you I’ll have your head on it. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, putting his hat on and standing up. He gave her a quick salute and left the room, followed closely by Colonel King.

Harlan Millard stood up too. “Claire, once again, I must register my protest. I think you are making a mistake.”

“Harlan,” Claire said softly, “get your candy ass out of here. I’ll deal with you later.”

Harlan quickly exited the room without looking back.

Claire turned to Herb, who hadn’t said a word during the entire meeting.

“Well, what do you think, Herb?” she asked.

“I think you’re a hell of a lady, and that you’re gonna kick ass and take names this time,” he said.

She stared into his eyes and slowly began to unbutton her blouse. “I love it when you talk like that,” she said, letting her glance slide toward her bedroom door.

Herb stood up and walked over to stand behind her desk chair. He leaned over and let both his hands slide over her shoulders and down her chest to cup her breasts under her brassiere.

“Why don’t you show me how much you love it?” he said in a low, husky voice, kneading her breasts with his hands until they ached and made her heart race and her mouth turn dry.

She stood up and walked toward the door, glancing back over her shoulder at him seductively.

“I think I will,” she said, as she stepped out of her dress and let her blouse slide off her shoulders.

As he followed her through the door, Herb reached up and flipped the light switch off.

 

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Mike Post couldn’t believe the reports coming in from his intel sources across the SUSA. Claire Osterman had reversed her orders and her troops were now headed back toward their borders at speed.

He got on the radio to Jackie Malone, who was cooling her heels at the Air National Guard base at Peoria, Illinois.

“Malone here,” Jackie said into the radio.

“Jackie, this is Mike Post at headquarters.”

“Mike, when can I get out of this godforsaken place?” Jackie asked, her voice heavy with disgust. “I’m tired of sitting on my … well, sitting around doing nothing while Striginov and McGowen are having all the fun down in Mexico.”

“That’s why I called, Jackie,” Mike said.

“You mean I’m getting my walking orders?” she asked hopefully.

“Not exactly. I’ve just learned Claire Osterman has changed her orders about withdrawing her troops. She’s now got them headed back to attack our borders.”

“That bitch!” Jackie said. “I hope Ben kicks her ass from here to there.”

“There’s a slight problem with that, Jackie,” Mike said. “Ben made the mistake of trusting her, so he’s pulled most of our battalions down south to help with the Mexican campaign and to give shots to the Mexican citizens.”

“You mean the borders are unguarded?” she asked.

“Exactly. Except for token forces, they’re completely bare.

 

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They might be able to hold out for a day or two, but unless something is done, and done quickly, we’re liable to lose a couple of states to the U.S.”

“What can I do?” Jackie asked. “I’ve only got a couple of hundred men up here. Even if you pull us out, we won’t be much help against an entire army.”

“I’ve got an idea, if you’re up for it,” Mike said.

“Shoot.”

“If you can infiltrate Osterman’s base there at Indianapolis, perhaps you can talk some sense into her. They’ll have all their attention on their offensives against us down south, so the base itself should be at minimum security. They think Ben’s too busy down in Mexico to try anything as foolish as attacking her main base.”

Jackie didn’t answer while she thought about it for a minute. It could be done, she supposed, especially since the troops with her were some of the best scouts in the SUSA’s Armed Forces. She keyed the mike. “Got you, Mike. We’ll head that way right now. Within a few hours we’ll know if it’s possible for us to take the base.”

“Good luck, Jackie,” Mike said. “Call me as soon as you know anything. Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can to shore up our defenses along the border.”

Jackie knew they’d never make it to the base by aircraft. Since their last attack, the radars had been manned much more diligently. She called her men together and gave them their assignments.

Within hours, every vehicle capable of carrying more than a few men had been rounded up in Peoria and the surrounding towns. Jackie led the way in a large Chevrolet Suburban, with the other two hundred men in over a hundred vehicles of assorted makes and models in a long caravan down Highway 74 south toward Indianapolis. They had almost two hundred miles to travel and they weren’t wasting any time.

 

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It was two in the morning when Jackie pulled to the side of the road less than two miles from Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis.

She had her men spread out and begin to make their way toward the base. On the northwest quadrant of the base, they came to a long expanse of ten-foot-high wire fence with razor wire curled along the top.

Jackie stepped to the side, and two of her men cut through the fence with wire cutters, leaving a fifteen-foot-wide swath through the fence.

Once inside, Jackie gave quick instructions. One-fourth of the men were assigned to take out the barracks and take the soldiers not on duty prisoner. Half the men were assigned to infiltrate the hangars and guard posts and other administrative buildings to take care of the men on night duty and to gain control of the airplanes and other heavy equipment for future use.

Jackie took the remaining twenty-five scouts with her and made her way toward Claire Osterman’s headquarters building, sure it would be the most heavily guarded on the base considering Claire’s noted paranoia about her personal safety.

Jackie had warned her men to use their assault knives as much as possible, because any firing of weapons would warn the base it was under attack and would seriously jeopardize their efforts at a complete takeover.

There were guards posted every twenty feet around Osterman’s personal quarters, which also served as her office during the day.

Jackie pointed to seven men, who unsheathed their K-Bar assault knives and began to crawl toward the building on their bellies.

Fifteen minutes later, a soft whistle sounded-the signal the outside guards had been taken out. Jackie and the rest of her team of scouts stood up and walked toward the building. So

 

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far, there had been not the slightest sign anything was wrong on the base, in spite of the fact that Jackie knew at least half of it had been taken over by now.

Jerry Littletree, a Sioux Indian descendant, stepped out of the darkness, wiping the blade of his K-Bar off on his pants leg. “The door into the building is right there, ma’am,” he said, pointing to his left, where a crumpled body could be seen in front of a steel door.

“You didn’t scalp him, did you?” Jackie asked with a smile.

Littletree’s expression didn’t change. “Not yet,” he answered, and Jackie shivered, not knowing if he too was teasing or not.

When she got to the door, Littletree handed her a key he’d taken off the night guard. “Be careful, ma’am,” he said. “We’ve taken care of the outside guards, but there’re sure to be some on the inside as well.”

Jackie reached into her backpack and took out a spray can. Then she put the key in the lock and eased the door open.

Slipping inside, she quickly stepped to the corner and sprayed paint over the lens of the camera hung on the wall there.

She took her Beretta 9mm pistol out of her holster and screwed a silencer onto the barrel, then proceeded up the staircase, her men following directly behind her. She held out her hand at the top of the stairs, and snuck a look around the corner down the corridor.

A lone man was sitting at a bank of video monitors. As she watched, he banged on the side of one of the screens, cursing quietly to himself. When the picture remained black, he picked up a phone and started to dial.

Jackie stepped out into the corridor, her pistol hanging by her side, and walked toward the man, whistling softly to herself as she approached him.

He stopped dialing and looked up, his eyebrows raising in question. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, hanging up the phone and reaching for a holster on his waist.

 

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“Put your hands up, please,” Jackie said quietly.

“The hell with you!” the man said harshly, and half rose from his chair, drawing his gun.

Jackie extended her arm straight out and fired, her gun making a phftt sound no louder than a soft cough.

The guard’s head snapped back as a tiny hole appeared in his forehead and blood and brains exploded out the back of his skull to paint on the wall a grisly portrait of death. His dead body flopped back into his chair and he slumped forward, his head landing with a thump on his desk.

Jackie gave a low whistle and her men poured into the corridor behind her. “Spread out and find me Osterman’s quarters, then go in every door and secure whoever’s in the other rooms,” she ordered.

Minutes later, a sergeant motioned her down the corridor and around a corner to a door marked president of the UNITED STATES.

Jackie tried the doorknob. It was locked, so she pulled her K-Bar, stuck the hardened steel point in the keyhole, and twisted. The knife cut through the softer metal of the door as if it were made of butter, and the door swung open.

Jackie raised her Beretta and stepped into Claire’s office, swinging her arm around to cover the entire room in one sweep. It was empty, with only a low-wattage night-light on over in a corner.

She turned to the sergeant behind her and motioned to the coffee machine on a side table. “Make us some coffee, would you, Steve?” she asked. “I have a feeling it’s gonna be a long night.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the sergeant said.

Jackie stepped to a door on a side wall and eased it open, pointing her Beretta before her as she walked into the room.

The only light was from a wall clock, which cast a soft light over Claire Osterman’s bedroom. Two figures could be seen intertwined, lying on a large bed, half covered with rumpled covers.

 

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Herb Knoff was spooned up against Claire’s back, his arm draped over her with his hand cupping her breast. Both of them were completely nude.

Jackie smiled and holstered her Beretta. “How cute,” she whispered to the men standing behind her. She reached over and snapped on a light while simultaneously jerking the covers from the bed.

Osterman and Knoff jerked upright, covering their eyes against the harsh light.

“What the hell’s the meaning of this?” Claire yelled, sitting up in bed and trying to cover her nakedness and at the same time shield her eyes with her hand.

Knoff rolled quickly to the side and reached for his side arm on the bedside table, only to stop when one of the scouts cocked his M-16 with a loud metallic snap and said, “Uh-uh, podna.”

Herb returned to his position next to Claire while the scout picked up the pistol and put it in his pocket.

Regaining some of her composure, Claire glared at Jackie, who was obviously in charge. “Who are you and what is the meaning of this intrusion?” she asked sharply.

“I’m Jackie Malone, commander of the 512 Battalion of the SUSA’s Armed Forces,” Jackie said.

“What do you want?” Claire asked, glancing at Herb as he put both his hands over his crotch.

“We need to talk, Claire,” Jackie said, taking a seat in an easy chair across the room from the bed.

“May I put some clothes on?” Claire asked, reaching for a robe on the side of the bed.

“No, I think not,” Jackie said, with just a trace of maliciousness in her tone. “You’re fine just the way you are.”

Claire looked around at the men with Jackie, who were openly ogling her naked body. “Then could you ask those men to leave the room?”

Jackie shook her head. “Why? From what I’ve heard, they’re

 

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only a few more in a long line of men who’ve seen you naked, Claire.”

Claire leaned back against her headboard and crossed her arms under her breasts, her face defiant. “All right then, get on with it.”

“First of all, let me clarify your position, Madame President,” Jackie said. “Your base here is under my complete control, and all of your men are either dead or have been taken prisoner.”

For the first time, Claire’s eyes seemed to show some fear. This was something she hadn’t been expecting. “Go on.”

The sergeant stuck his head in the door from the other room. “Coffee’s ready, Jackie.”

Jackie motioned to Claire. “Would you and … your friend like a cup?” she asked.

Herb shook his head. Claire said, as cool as a cucumber, “Yes, please. With cream and Sweet ‘n Low.”

Jackie glanced at the sergeant. “Two cups, please, Steve. Make mine black.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and disappeared back through the door.

“To continue,” Jackie said to Claire, “we understand you’ve gone back on your word to General Raines and have begun to reposition your troops along our border.”

“You are misinformed, Ms. Malone,” Claire said. “My troops are merely undergoing training exercises.”

Jackie shook her head. “You know, Claire,” she said, deliberately using Claire’s first name, “as much as you lie, one would think you’d be better at it. Our intel is definite. You plan to attack the SUSA within twenty-four hours.”

Claire shrugged, but didn’t speak. Her eyes glared hatred at Jackie.

Jackie waited while the sergeant handed her and Claire their cups of coffee. She took a sip. “Ummm, good coffee,” she said.

 

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“I’m glad you like it,” Claire said. “If I thought you were going to survive this little intrusion, I’d send you some.”

Jackie smiled. “Oh, I’ll survive, Claire. It’s only your fate that’s in question here tonight.”

Claire’s eyes widened and her hand shook slightly as she took a drink of her coffee, the only signs she gave that Jackie’s words scared her.

“Now, here’s the deal,” Jackie continued. “If you get on the radio right now and call off your attack, and once again recall your troops, you may … I say may … get out of this situation alive.”

“And if I don’t?” Claire said with false bravado.

Jackie shrugged. “Then, first you’re going to watch what happens to your little teddy bear there,” she said, pointing her head at Herb, whose face paled at the thought of his fate, “and then we’ll see just how much pain you can stand before you change your mind.”

“I don’t believe you’d dare torture a sitting president of the United States,” Claire said.

Jackie looked over at the group of men with her. Then she noticed something that made her stomach crawl. She smiled grimly. “Jerry, would you step forward, please?”

Jerry Littletree stepped from the rear of the group to stand before Claire’s bed. A bloody scalp was hanging from his belt and his trousers were stained with blood from his K-Bar. “Jerry Littletree here is a Sioux Indian, Claire,” Jackie said, watching Claire’s eyes fall to the scalp hanging from Littletree’s belt. “I don’t know how much history you know, Claire, but white settlers used to save a bullet for their womenfolk rather than let them fall into the hands of the Sioux. If you continue to refuse to give the order to pull your troops back, I’m going to let Jerry show you what they were afraid of.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Claire said, shrinking back against the headboard.

“Jerry,” Jackie said, leaning back in her chair and continuing to sip her coffee.

 

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Littletree grinned savagely and pulled his bloody K-Bar from its scabbard. He stepped toward the bed.

“Claire, for God’s sake!” Herb almost screamed, pulling his legs up and crossing them over his privates.

Claire held out her hands. “All right, all right. Call that savage off!”

Littletree looked disappointed as he stepped back among the men around the bed, but he kept his knife out and ran his finger along the blade, staring at Claire through dark eyes.

“Steve, get the radio room on the phone,” Jackie said, “and have them transfer the call in here.”

A few minutes later, the phone on Claire’s bedside table rang and she picked it up.

“Give the man on the phone instructions on how to contact whoever is in charge of your Army,” Jackie said, “and if you make a mistake, or happen to say the wrong thing, I won’t call Littletree off again.”

After Claire had gotten in touch with Stevens and explained that she’d again changed her mind, she told him to call back the troops and have them stand down. After listening to him argue for a few seconds, she screamed into the phone, “This is not a matter for discussion, General Stevens. Either do it right now or face a court-martial and firing squad in the morning.” Then she slammed the phone down.

“Are you satisfied now?” Claire asked, again trying to cover her breasts with her arms.

“No, but I’ll be satisfied when we get reports the troops are in fact gone from our borders,” Jackie said. Then she turned to the sergeant. “Steve, round up the men and have them get a C-130 ready for us. We’re going home.”

“What about her?” he asked, inclining his head toward Claire.

“She’s going to ride with us until we’re sure she’s keeping

 

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her word this time. If the troops are still gone when we get home, we’ll let one of her pilots bring her back.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?” Claire asked.

Jackie shrugged. “Believe what you want, ‘cause you really don’t have much of a choice in the matter. My orders were to stop the attack on our borders, not to kill you.” She grinned. “Otherwise, you’d already be dead.”

 

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When the C-130 airplane carrying Claire Osterman, Herb Knoff, a U.S. pilot, and Jackie Malone and her band of scouts began its final descent over Base One in Louisiana, Jackie walked over to where Claire and Herb and the pilot sat on the metal benches along the side of the aircraft.

Jackie stared down at Claire and Herb, clad only in military style overcoats to cover their nakedness.

“I have a few things to say to you before we land, Claire,” Jackie said in a low voice.

“I think you’ve said quite enough, Ms. Malone,” Claire said in a haughty voice, having regained some of her confidence now that she knew she wasn’t going to be killed or kept as a prisoner of war.

“No,” Jackie said, shaking her head, “I don’t think I have. I think you’re planning on trying to go back on your word again, as soon as you’re back at your base.”

Claire didn’t speak, but just stared up into Jackie’s eyes.

“I’d like to advise you not to do that, Claire,” Jackie said, drawing her K-Bar assault knife.

Herb’s eyes widened, and he moved over a bit on the metal seat to distance himself from whatever was about to happen.

Jackie bent down and put her face close to Claire’s. “You really should keep your word this time, Claire, because, you see, I own you. I can get to you any time I want to. President Lincoln, the Kennedy brothers, and President Reagan proved that there is no one so guarded they can’t be gotten to if some-297

 

one has the will to do it. Look deep in my eyes, Claire, and realize I have the will and the skill to take you out if you go back on your word this time.”

Claire’s face paled as she realized this woman was crazy enough to do just that.

“Now,” Jackie continued when she saw she had Claire’s full attention, “I’m from Texas, and we have a habit of marking things we own, like cattle and sheep. But since I don’t have a branding iron handy, I’m gonna do the next best thing.”

In a lightning-quick motion, Jackie flicked the knife at Claire’s head, cutting a small V-shaped notch in the top of her right ear.

“That’s called notching, dear,” Jackie explained as Claire gave a short scream and grabbed her bleeding ear. “It’s mainly used on cattle, but in your case, I made an exception. Now, every time you look in a mirror, you’ll think of me and what will happen to you if you piss me off.”

Jackie wiped the point of her knife on Herb’s coat, put it back in its scabbard, and strolled back to her seat just as the C-130 touched down for a landing.

Fifteen minutes later, the plane took off again and the pilot made a sweeping turn to the north, heading back to Indianapolis.

Herb sat in the back with Claire, holding her tight against his chest while she sobbed.

“Don’t worry, Claire,” he said in a soothing voice. “As soon as we get back you can countermand your order to pull the troops back.”

She pulled away from him and stared at him, her eyes wild. “Are you crazy?” she almost shouted. “I’ll do no such thing.”

“You’re not afraid of what that bitch said, are you?” Herb asked.

“You didn’t see her eyes, Herb. She meant every word of what she said.”

 

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“But we can protect you… .” he began.

Claire shook her head back and forth. “No … no, I don’t think anyone could protect me from that … woman. She’s a demon!”

As dawn lightened the skies to the east, Raines and his team took their places in one of the buildings of the base at Durango. Guerra had his troops spread out along a perimeter spreading in a wide semicircle facing both east and west. The base was protected to the north by a wide river that would prevent any organized motorized attack from that direction.

Bulldozers had worked throughout the night to build berms, high dirt walls, around the base. The troops were arrayed behind these berms with fifty-caliber machine guns spaced evenly along the entire length of the wall of earth.

Snipers, fitted with Heckler and Koch sniper rifles, were placed on the roofs of all the buildings, with orders to concentrate their fire on officers and drivers of any vehicles they could target.

Twenty-millimeter antiaircraft machine guns were stationed on all four quadrants of the base to help keep the helicopters and gunships away from the troops as much as possible.

Ben and General Guerra had done all they could until Georgi Striginov and his Bat 505 arrived to help. Now they just had to hold the enemy off until the cavalry arrived.

As the sun peeked over the horizon, fingers of light illuminated lowlying clouds in the sky with an orange and yellow glow.

Ben glanced over the wall around the roof he and his team were on and said, “Should be any minute now.”

Seconds later a whistling drone could be heard and mortar rounds began falling on the grounds of the base. Explosions threw up dirt and dust as the rounds pockmarked the hard-packed dirt of the compound. Guerra and Ben had told the soldiers to hold their fire until the enemy was close, but some

 

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of the Mexicans, excited by the sound and fury of the explosions, began to fire their weapons at shadows.

Suddenly, on the horizon, thousands of enemy troops could be seen beginning their advance, walking alongside tanks, halftracks, armored personnel carriers, and HumVees and old-style jeeps.

Simultaneously with the appearance of the troops, shadowy shapes flitted overhead, coming in low and fast, as Kiowas, Defenders, and even a couple of older-model Cobra helicopters buzzed the base, their machine guns blazing a trail of death toward the defending Mexican troops behind their earthen walls.

Harley had given up his SPAS shotgun for a Browning automatic rifle, which he placed on a tripod on the wall around the roof, a belt of ammunition trailing down to an ammunition box at his feet. He squatted and aimed at one of the Defenders as it made a pass. The BAR danced and jittered in his hands as he pulled the trigger, his teeth gritted and his body shuddering under the recoil of the big rifle as it poured thousands of rounds at the approaching helicopter.

Jersey and Anna and Beth held their fire, their Uzis not long-range enough to be effective yet.

Hammer, on the far corner of the building, held an M-60 machine gun in his huge arms at his waist, Rambo style, and stood up, firing along with Harley at the onrushing helicopter.

The wall along the building top behind which Ben squatted shattered under the impact of the Defender’s 20mm Minigun as it screamed overhead.

Harley and Hammer both turned, continuing to pour fire into the rear of the chopper, until smoke began to billow from its turbine engine and it shuddered under the impact of hundreds of fifty-and sixty-caliber shells.

A stream of tracers from Hammer’s M-60 danced toward the tail rotor and finally merged with it, chewing it to pieces. The Defender began to gyrate and whip back and forth, out of control, until it finally nosed down and crashed in the mid-300

 

die of the compound with an expanding fireball that roared fifty feet into the air.

Several of the Mexican troops cheered and waved their rifles, evidently thinking they had brought the chopper down with their small-arms fire.

Harley and Hammer ceased firing and grinned at each other, then ducked back down behind the wall and looked for other targets.

The troops advancing across the desert sands toward the base from the east faltered under the withering fire from the berm around the base, and even began to pull back a little, just as another line of troops appeared on the western horizon, also accompanied by a motorized company of light tanks and several Kiowa and Huey helicopters.

“Shit!” Ben exclaimed to Jersey and Coop, who were squatting next to him. “That must be Bottger’s troops. Now we’re in for it.”

A HumVee with a fifty-caliber machine gun on a post in the rear roared close by the berm, raking the troops along the top with rapid fire from its fifty.

Several Mexican soldiers were blown off the back of the wall, to lie twisting and screaming in the dirt, their blood staining the earth as they died.

When the HumVee got within range, Jersey, Anna, Beth, and Coop leaned over the wall and opened up with their Uzis, each firing six hundred rounds per minute into the vehicle as it tried to draw a bead on more soldiers.

The 9mm shells stitched a line of holes in the sides of the HumVee, blowing out the two near-side tires. The driver grabbed his head, blood spurting from his Kevlar helmet, and let go of the wheel. The HumVee veered right, then left on the ruined tires and rolled three times, throwing the dead driver and the rear-seat gunner out of the vehicle.

Three Mexican soldiers stood up behind their wall and pumped round after round into the gunner until he too was dead.

 

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In spite of murderous fire from the Mexican defenders, the troops on both sides began to close the gap, moving forward despite tremendous losses of men and machines in a do-or-die assault.

“It don’t look too good, podna,” Coop said out of the corner of his mouth to Ben as the troops got within a hundred yards. The number of Mexican soldiers seemed pitifully small in comparison to the forces arrayed against them.

Suddenly, from off to the side, small vehicles began to appear, moving at great speed toward the oncoming troops, spitting fire from 120mm cannons in their noses as they maneuvered in and out of the scattering troops.

“Look,” Ben shouted, “it’s Vulcans from Striginov’s battalion.”

As Jersey and Coop and the other members of Ben’s team turned to look, other vehicles began to appear. Two huge M-l Abrams tanks thundered over a distant hill and began to fire at the smaller Sheridans accompanying Loco’s troops. The Sheridans tried to return fire, but began to explode one by one under the rapid laser-guided fire of the Abrams.

Two helicopters, a Kiowa and a Huey, turned from their attack on the base and flew toward the Abrams, evidently hoping to take them out with missiles.

From out of the lowlying sun, three Apaches screamed between the Abrams and the two helicopters, their Chain Guns blazing as they arrowed at the hapless choppers.

The Kiowa, much faster than the Huey, managed to turn and run, but the Huey disintegrated under the Chain Guns’ fire, dropping like a stone to burn brightly on the desert floor, sending clouds of oily black smoke toward the sky.

The Kiowa tried to gain altitude and make an escape, but the lead Apache let one of its Hellfire missiles go, and it ran right up the exhaust of the Kiowa’s turbine, blowing it out of the sky in a thousand pieces that fell like rain on the parched desert below.

Seeing the battle turn, the attacking troops slowed, then

 

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turned to run as more vehicles, including several Bradley Attack Vehicles, appeared from the north. Soon, both attacking armies were in full retreat, running and firing over their shoulders at the Mexican troops, who boiled over the berm and began to chase the attackers back the way they came.

In less than an hour, the field in front of the base was littered with thousands of bodies and hundreds of broken, twisted piles of burning metal, from Jeeps to HumVees to halftracks, that had been destroyed by Striginov’s motorized madmen.

The Mexican troops, enraged and encouraged by the turn of the battle, were taking no prisoners. They mowed the retreating troops down with wild abandon, cheerfully pouring lead into their backs as they rushed forward onto the battlefield.

“Jesus,” Beth said, shaking her head. “It’s a slaughter.”

Ben nodded. “Yeah, exactly what would have happened to us had Georgi been an hour later.”

Soon, the troops of Striginov’s battalion appeared on the field and began rounding up prisoners, calming the killing rage of the Mexican troops and ending the slaughter of the defeated armies.

Two hours later, General Herman Bundt and General Enrique Gonzalez were brought before Ben, Georgi Striginov, and General Jose Guerra in the officers’ wardroom of the base commander’s office.

Ben conducted the interrogation. “Where are your leaders, Perro Loco and Bruno Bottger?” he asked the two men standing before him.

“I refuse to answer under the terms of the Geneva Convention,” Bundt said sourly. “All you are entitled to are my name, rank, and serial number.”

“Is that so?” Ben asked. “Are you aware that under the terms of the Geneva Convention, you are guilty of high war

 

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crimes for the manufacture and release of biological weapons?”

Bundt stared fixedly ahead, while General Gonzalez looked at him in horror. “What biological weapons? I have no knowledge of such a thing.”

“I believe the penalty for war crimes is a firing squad, at which the Mexican troops are more than proficient,” Ben said calmly. “General Guerra?”

Guerra stepped forward to stand in front of Bundt. “I think a firing squad is too good for this one,” he said. “I believe I will simply turn him over to my troops after telling them this is the man responsible for the plague which even now is sweeping across our country, killing thousands of their families and friends.”

Bundt looked up, showing for the first time fear at what the general was saying. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Take him away,” Guerra said to an aide.

“Wait a moment,” Bundt said hurriedly. “Field Marshal Bottger and Perro Loco are in the Presidential Palace in Mexico City.”

“Are they aware of your defeat?” Ben asked.

Both men shook their heads. “No, there wasn’t time to report back to them,” Gonzalez said.

Ben looked at Striginov and Guerra. “That means we may still have time to intercept them before they attempt to flee the country.”

He thought for a moment, then spoke to Striginov. “I need one of your Chinooks for my team, and a couple of Apaches to accompany us to Mexico City. I have some unfinished business with both of those gentlemen.”