Exit Strategy

Blancanales nodded toward Manning and the weapon he was checking in its case. “Chopped-down Fabrique Nationale FAL?”

“No,” Manning answered. “I’d love to have my favorite battle rifle, but the Mexican army still issues the G-3 in 7.62 mm NATO. Kissinger made a version for me with a thirteen-inch barrel and collapsing buttstock I can fit it into a tennis racket case, yet still have 500 yards of reach for precision shooting. Cowboy made this up from a ‘clean’ Heckler & Koch, like he did with the sanitized Kitty ARs that Cal and T.J. are rocking. No chances of jamming with any of these guns.”

“Nor with the M203 compact he made for my Kitty,” James said. He affected a sneer. “Say hello to my little kitty!”

Encizo rolled his eyes. “And here I thought that world was mine.”

“What happens when you run out of ammo for David and Rafe’s BB guns?” Lyons asked.

McCarter smirked. “The Caballeros Cartel actually has been working with MP-7s or, rather, Brazilian-built copies, complete with ammunition designed for it. And since the ammo and guns are built to spec on cartel money...”

“You can scrounge reloads from the drug runners’ own security forces,” Lyons surmised.

“Bingo,” McCarter said. “That, along with the M16s and G-3s, which already use the ammo for the rest of our teams’ guns.”

“Shrewd,” Blancanales noted.

“We’ve showed you our toys for this trip. What about you?” McCarter asked.

“Well, you know Carl’s feelings on the 5.56 mm NATO that the rest of us haven’t had a problem with,” Schwarz said. “We’re not going to be trying to bust into any smuggling tunnels, or penetrating into a prison, so we can operate with our rifles having longer barrels.”

“Also, a stubby 7-incher isn’t going to put out much murder at five hundred yards like a proper rifle barrel would,” Blancanales said.

“We’re rolling with .300 Blackout rounds in our M16s. We’d have gone with .458 SOCOM, but then we’d be limited to only nine rounds in a magazine,” Lyons added. “And we also want some reach with our rifles.”

“Ever since you had that custom AK made for you on that Lebanon mission, you’ve been wanting an AK-caliber M16 for yourself,” Blancanales pointed out. “And the Blackout was designed to provide that kind of horsepower per bullet, while still being usable in an accurate rifle.”

Lyons nodded in agreement. “Going for punch and lots of punches for everyone sent at us.”

He opened his case. “And my particular Blackout has a box-fed shotgun attachment. Because sometimes you just need the kind of attitude only provided by a 12-gauge load of buckshot or slugs.”

“Doesn’t the M26 just make it too heavy?” Gary Manning asked.

Lyons laughed.

“Sorry... I forgot who I was talking with,” Manning returned. “The second strongest of the Stony Men.”

“Second, eh?” Lyons challenged.

Manning winked, knowing any rivalry or competition between members was in good fun.

“I see you’re jumping on my bandwagon, too, with the revolver,” Lyons noted, catching sight of the handle of Manning’s big Python Plus handgun.

“This hog leg?” the Canadian asked. “I’ve had an 8-shot .357 Magnum for a long time. The trouble is Cowboy can’t seem to hold on to any of his Colt Anaconda frames and clean cylinders long enough to sanitize one for my fieldwork.”

“Glad you finally have one for yourself,” Lyons said with a laugh. “Sorry for hogging them all.”

“You have two with you, right now?” Manning asked.

Lyons nodded. He pulled them both out; one from a shoulder holster, one from behind his hip. One was a big matte-stainless machine with a four-inch under-lugged barrel. The other was a stubbier snub-nosed revolver cast in a dark Parkerized finish. Both had fat cylinders, each holding eight rounds of .357 Magnums, one to be hidden more completely than the other. Though they had the polish and action similar to Lyons’s old .357 Magnum Colt Python, they were converted .44 Magnum Anacondas, cylinders altered to hold an extra two rounds in the larger design. Kissinger and Lyons dubbed it the “Python Plus.”

Manning’s, on the other hand, was a long, sleek, camouflage-gray revolver with a six-inch barrel and weights. It looked as if, somewhere in its family tree, an ancestor’d had relations with a Desert Eagle, with flat, high-tech angles and facets along the barrel’s length.

“Nice coloring on yours,” Lyons said, admiring the big gun. Naturally, the Canadian woodsman would have preferred a hunting-size revolver. All the horsepower of a Magnum bullet meant nothing if you couldn’t hit with it. “I usually don’t have problem with my four-inch revolvers, but, man, the only sucker who could miss with this puppy is the one with the bread to afford it.”

Manning chuckled. “I also like a little bit of reach with my weapons. You’re good out to a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards with yours. This, I’ve hit steel ram targets at three hundred yards.”

“Okay...that’s impressive,” Lyons admitted. He didn’t have to try out the trigger pull on the big .357. It was hand built by John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man’s armorer, an artist of steel and springs. His personal revolvers were slick and smooth, parts gliding across each other as if ice skating. They were also coated and treated against even the harshest of elements, further protecting their inner workings from hitches and imperfections that would ruin accuracy or speed of shooting.

“Just be careful out there,” Lyons said, trading Manning’s hog leg back for his pair.

The brawny Canadian nodded in return. “Careful? Or just do it as we’ve always done it? Because, pardon my linguistic torture, careful don’t do the job.”

“Yeah,” Schwarz admitted, interjecting. “We tend to err on the side of wild-ass hijinks. But this time, we’ve got the Farm under attack from an outside source. One we just can’t shoot up.”

“Well, we could, but then we’d be on the run for blowing a renegade congressman in two,” Hawkins added.

“It worked for Mack,” James offered. “On the run...convicted of a crime—they pretty much pulled—they operate in the Los Angeles underworld. If you have a prob—”

“Please. We got enough of that when the movie remake came out,” Blancanales groaned. Even so, he got a smile out of James.

“I’m not going to lie and say we don’t each have our own exit strategies.” McCarter spoke somberly. “But right now the only way out we need to concentrate on is getting Amanda Castillo back together with her children.”

“Don’t worry. We’ve never let a kid down,” Schwarz said. “And you five are pretty damn good yourselves. You’ll free her.”

“First things first,” Encizo added. “We bust down the doors of a Caballeros Cartel smuggling tunnel and get into Mexico the hard way.”

“Always with the negative vibes, Rafe,” Blancanales quipped. “To us, it’d be the fun way.”

“We’d also like to not level half of Nogales, Arizona, though,” Encizo countered.

“Don’t worry about that,” McCarter calmly assured. “We’ve got Gary. Even if we go with a nuclear option, he’ll make sure no bystanders are hurt.”

“Just Los Lictors and the Caballeros de Durango,” Manning added with emphasis.

“And in this case, since I’m better with Mexican-dialect Spanish, I’ll take the lead,” Hawkins, the Texan, said. He continued in the language he indicated, “Or don’t you think I’ll be convincing?”

“You know, Gadgets, I think we’ve been coveting the wrong member of Phoenix for Carl’s replacement on Able,” Blancanales joked.

Schwarz grinned. “We’d be golden even with a member of the Lollipop Guild if we wanted.”

Lyons scratched his head with his middle finger, extended as a beacon to his two wisecracking buddies.

“If any cartel is going to have a light, Caucasian-looking gent, no matter how well tanned, it’ll be the Durango mob,” Encizo admitted. “Especially with their ties to Accion Obrar.”

“Those bastards smell awful familiar,” Lyons said. “Like our old sparring partners. Remember Miguel Unomundo?”

“The Fascist International had a minor resurgence a while back. Remember the Ankylosaur robots?” Hawkins asked.