Splintered Sky. Don Pendleton

zooming past the second transport truck. Schwarz scanned the back, but could only see black-clad troopers in the shadows of the canvas tarp.

      Blancanales swerved between the two big M35s, putting the passenger side in close contact with the tailgate of the lead vehicle. Lyons threw open the door and launched himself from the shotgun seat, his Mossberg gripped tightly in his right fist. His beefy left hand wrapped around the top of the tailgate, and he hauled himself up as his partners veered away. Swinging over into the tarp-covered bed, he spotted a quartet of gun-toting men surrounding a pair of crates. In the corner, a coverall-wearing man, his head bleeding from blunt trauma, curled up.

      Lyons evaluated the scene in half the time it took for the gunmen to react to his bulk surging over the top of the tailgate. The Knox pistol-grip Comp Stock gave the Able Team leader all the leverage he needed to swing up the Mossberg Cruiser 500 like a handgun and fire a single 12-gauge slug through the chest of the closest gunman. A .72-inch missile ripped through the raider’s breastbone, reducing it to free-floating splinters as the solid hunk of lead tore his heart from its arteries like a miniature bulldozer.

      Lyons immediately shifted his aim and stabbed the next of the armor-clad raiders in the breastbone with the point of his Cruiser 500. Since Lyons had John “Cowboy” Kissinger modify the muzzle of the weapon with a Tromix Shark Brake Door Breacher, and, given his awesome strength, the shotgun became a spike-toothed spear that made ribs crunch even through body armor. The hapless enemy grabbed the shotgun instinctively, bracing the slide. Lyons thanked his opponent for playing into his hands by quickly wrenching the Cruiser 500 back and forth, his foe’s grasp enabling him to pump the shotgun one-handed. A second solid 12-gauge slug exploded from the muzzle, tearing into the bruised sternum of the marauder and exploding out of his spine. The shooter behind him was bobbing and weaving, trying to get an angle on the burly killing machine attached to the tailgate when the Brenneke slug sliced across his biceps and glanced across his ribs.

      This time, the gunman’s body armor protected him, if only because the deadly slug had been slowed down by the armor and torso of another person. The impact still threw the guy off balance and he let go of his grip on his rifle, one hand tearing through the canvas cover in an attempt to get an anchor to remain standing. Unfortunately for the raider, the force needed to tear through the tarpaulin had shattered several of his fingers, and with only one digit to maintain a hold, the next jolt of the truck sent him reeling across the crates in the middle of the bed.

      Lyons’s legs and support arm surged with power and he hurled himself over the tailgate. He somersaulted to cushion his landing on the bed where the injured raider had fallen. As the enemy shooter struggled to bring up his rifle singlehanded, Lyons foiled his efforts at self-defense by spiking both of his heels down into the murderous marauder’s chest. Aching ribs snapped under the ferocious power of the Able Team leader’s devastating kicks, and the gunman’s mouth became a crimson volcano of burbling blood and bile.

      Lyons took the opportunity to rack the action of his Mossberg with his now free left hand, just in time to see the head of the last of the hostiles in the truck poke up.

      â€œDon’t do it!” the raider shouted. “I’ll kill—”

      Lyons pulled the trigger on the shooter before he could even complete, let alone make good on his threat to shoot the cowering figure in coveralls sharing the carnal pit. One and three-eighths ounces of rifled lead struck the loudmouth between his eyes and popped his skull like a balloon filled with gray gelatin. It was a vicious, ruthless action, but the Able Team leader knew that the black-clad gunman wouldn’t have worried about shooting either Lyons or the helpless hostage. He got to his feet and moved over to the bloody-faced man in the corner, clicking on a pocket flashlight to get some intel on who the victim was.

      â€œWho are you?” the balding hostage asked. Just beneath his high hairline was an oval-shaped section of livid skin. Lyons recognized the injury as caused by the steel tubular butt stock of an M-4 assault rifle, just like the black-clad gunmen were wearing. He gripped the man by the chin and checked his eyes.

      The pupils dilated as the flashlight’s glare stabbed into them, so the head trauma was only superficial, torn skin seeping blood from a glancing impact. Lyons was glad for that, because he wasn’t in the best position to deal with a victim suffering from a major concussion or slipping into shock.

      â€œI’m a friend,” Lyons answered. “Stay here and curl up. We’re going to make certain you are safe.”

      â€œWhere are you going?” the man, Leon Paczesny according to his Burgundy Lake Testing Facility identification badge, asked.

      â€œTruck’s still moving. I’m going to schedule a stop to let you off,” Lyons told him. He returned the Mossberg to its sheath on his back and pulled the Smith & Wesson MP-40 from its holster. “Sit tight, literally.”

      Paczesny nodded, tucking his knees up to his chest and resting his bloodied forehead between them. Lyons unsheathed his combat knife and sliced an exit hole through the canvas. He climbed through the tarp and grabbed onto the back of the cab.

      Able Team’s captured Chevy Suburban was at Lyons’s side, Schwarz firing his DSA carbine through the back window of the armored raider vehicle at the two remaining enemy SUVs which were struggling to keep up with the racing convoy. Lyons grimaced as he heard the rip-snap of the FAL’s high-velocity rifle bullets spearing through the darkness. By now, all pretense of stealth had disappeared, and the Burgundy Lake raiders had switched on conventional headlights. Lyons stiff-armed his MP-40 and fired a volley as fast as he could work the trigger, six 165-grain jacketed hollowpoint rounds striking the windshield behind a pair of enemy headlights. The Able Team commander focused his fire on the Suburbans, not certain if the other truck had a hostage, as well.

      Safety glass deformed and whitened under Lyons’s barrage, shocking the driver into slamming on the brakes. The second Chevy flashed forward to take up the slack, but its hood smoked, pouring out thick clouds from where its shattered radiator and shot-up V-8 burned. The fact that the Suburban continued to rattle onward to keep up with the rolling battle despite a magazine of .30-caliber bullets in it was testament the truck’s engineering. Unfortunately, no amount of SUV design excellence could have provided the raiders with protection from a 40 mm buckshot grenade.

      Firing the equivalent of three 12-gauge shotgun shells’ worth of number 4 buck, the M-576 turned Blancanales’s M-203 into a supershotgun. At maximum dispersal, the M-203 could put out a cone of death almost one hundred feet wide. At the range between Schwarz in the back of Able Team’s Suburban to the enemy vehicle, the spread only ensured that a seven-foot diameter hose of death collapsed the windshield and perforated the surviving gunmen in the Jeep.

      The smoldering vehicle rolled on, glancing off the fender of the second M-35 cargo truck before rebounding into a ditch. As tortured steel collapsed under its own inertia, gasoline squeezed out of severed fuel lines and turned into a blossom of fire licking into the night sky.

      Lyons returned his attention to the cab, only to see the shotgun rider of the lead two-and-a-half-ton truck climbing out the passenger door, a Glock in hand. Lyons swept the MP-40 back toward him and triggered a pair of slugs. The bouncing truck was too much for Lyons to maintain his aim, so the bullets went high and to the right. Only one wide-mouthed round clipped the enemy gunman’s shoulder, gouging a deep laceration through the muscle. The impact was still enough to throw the raider’s aim off, his Glock punching holes through the roof of the cab. A sudden spray of blood darkened the driver window, and the M-36 cargo truck lurched violently. Lyons tightened his grasp on the iron rib holding up the tarp, and though his feet left the thin ledge he was using as a running board, he wasn’t thrown from the vehicle.

      â€œHang on!” Lyons bellowed to Paczesny. “We’re going to crash!”

      The truck swerved off the road and Lyons twisted, hurling his Smith & Wesson