by Dick Stivers
“Oh, yeah! Saw it. All the muchachosthink you’re fantastico. Ain’t seen you since… since…”
“Since I carried you to that ambulance. How’s your head?”
“Call me Fearless Fosdick. Thank God for my Irish skullbone. Had a concussion. But one in my ribs was the pits. Couldn’t take a deep breath for nine weeks.”
Blancanales walked around the jeep. He exchanged an abrazowith the Puerto Rican-Irish-Mexican-Indian-Anglo young man. Looking past Floyd, he asked quietly, “Who are they?”
Floyd turned. He saw the platoon of men in camou uniforms only steps away. He briefed Able Team quickly. “Democratic Liberation Front. Ex-Salvo soldiers and officers. They don’t fight, they kill. You saw. They’re specialists, just like you. Lizco will explain everything.”
“The lieutenant’s with them?” Lyons asked. “I thought so…”
“The other Lizco,” Gadgets corrected.
The Lieutenant Lizco whom Lyons knew came from the headlights. He had his M-16 slung over one shoulder. He joined the guerrillas crowding around Able Team.
“I introduce my brother, Captain Alfredo Lizco,” he said.
His older brother extended a hand to Lyons and Blancanales. “Pleased to meet you. Enemies of Quesada are my friends.”
“Mucho gusto, comrade,” Blancanales said.
“Amigo,” the captain corrected. “That other word is for other fighters.”
“You’re not Communists?” Lyons asked, shaking the captain’s hand with enthusiasm.
“No!” The older Lizco spat out the denial. “Now come. We talk too much here.”
Slowly, painfully, Lyons stepped back into the jeep. Captain Lizco caught his arm.
“Please,” he said. “Come with us in truck. We talk in truck.”
“Are we your prisoners?” Lyons asked.
“We do not take prisoners,” the captain stated simply.
Gadgets laughed. “The man talks straight. In the truck, Ironman. We got to make out of here, muy rapido.”
Two guerrillas got in the jeep. Pausing to find only empty Atchisson mags on the floor of the jeep, Lyons followed the others. He staggered a few steps to catch up with Guillermo Lizco, the lieutenant.
“Why didn’t you say your big brother was up here?” he said. “Me and my partner and Ricardo just took the kamikaze tour of the Quesada estate. With two M-60s, we ripped that place apart. But with your brother’s men, we could have taken Quesada and the plantation and all his people.”
“Until an hour ago,” the lieutenant answered, “I did not know my brother still lived.”
“You just bumped into him? By coincidence?”
“No,” the elder brother told him. Captain Lizco explained as they climbed into the back of a slat-side farm truck. “My commander send me here because my brother fights with Las Boinas Negras. I come to make contact with him. To stop the Stalinistas, those crazy Soviet rojoswho kill everyone. Farmers, soldiers, children.”
Able Team, the Lizco brothers and several guerrillas crowded into the truck. They had only plastic tarps to shelter them from the rain and the wind. The convoy of the truck and the two jeeps sped away from the burning hulks.
Guerrillas stuck the barrels of their autorifles and M-60 machine guns out the slats. One machine gunner watched each side of the road. A rocketman slipped a projectile into his RPG launcher and straightened the wire on the rocket’s safety cap.
“You killed the Stalinistas.” Captain Lizco continued. “But still there are many questions. The people tell us of soldiers and Communist assassins together. Many strange stories. Now we will not know the truth about the Communists and what they did. But I thank you for doing our work.”
Lyons looked to Blancanales and Ricardo, cautioning them to silence. “But the Communists are your allies. Why would you want them dead?”
“There are Communists, yes, in our alliance. There are Marxists, there are Socialists. Unionists, Christian Democrats, Indians, Jews, Buddhists, anarchists, Utopians. There are many ideologies. But they do not slaughter campesinos and their families. They do not kill every thing that lives. What the Stalinistas do is a crime against God. They are not our allies, they are not fighting for Salvador. They fight only to take. Like the Soviets. The Soviets are not Communists. They want only power. Communist, Soviet, Stalinist, fascist, Nazi. Only words. They are the same. They are terrormongers for power.”
Lyons laughed. “That is the fact. You, sir, know an international truth. The kid there…” he pointed to Ricardo “…he was with the PLF. We wiped out the Commie unit, but we didn’t get their officer. When we infiltrated the plantation, Ricardo spotted his officer with the fascists…”
“What?” the captain asked.
“We saw La Vibora,” Blancanales repeated.
“Mr. Snake,” Lyons continued. “With a Salvadoran army officer. On their way to meet with that Nazi Colonel Quesada.”
“And I called you paranoid,” Gadgets commented to Lyons. “Maybe I don’t have the imagination for Salvadoran politics.”
“Who could?” Lyons answered.
“This La Vibora,” the captain asked, “he is still with Quesada?”
“He’s dead. Ricardo killed him with a frag.”
“That is a problem,” the captain said. “Many questions will not be answered. We will not learn who else collaborates with the families.”
“Ask Quesada,” Lyons told him.
Blancanales shook his head. “The mission’s over. Like you said, we lost the element of surprise. Now he knows we’re here.”
“He knew we were here…” Gadgets spoke up.
Lyons interrupted. “He thinks some mercenaries rescued a squad of soldiers. He still doesn’t know who hit him and why.”
“Ironman, Quesada Nazado knows!” insisted Gadgets. “That’s why he canceled the ambush of the journalists. The death-squad officer wanted to go find the reporters. But Quesada told him there were, and I quote, ‘North American agents sent to kidnap him.’ He wanted the officer, a Lieutenant Kohl, to attend a meeting. I got that right, Lieutenant?”
The younger Lizco brother made a correction. “He said you were ‘North American paramilitary agents.’”
“I knew it!” Lyons cursed. “I knew it. That’s why I won’t use Agency papers. That’s why I didn’t trust the lieutenant here. We can’t even trust our own government.”
“Not the government,” Blancanales told him. “Individuals within the government. Or the administration. Or Congress. Or the Agency. Somewhere, there’s someone working for the Salvadoran fascists. Someone with access to our mission information. Before the next mission, we’ll have to deal with the informer.”
Lyons shook his head no. “We’re not going back without the Man. We’ll ask him who the informer is. He’ll know.”
“I vote for a tactical withdrawal,” Blancanales stated. “They know we’re here. They know we’re after Quesada. The fincawill be locked down so tight it’d take a battalion of Marines to seize him. And you, we have to get you to a hospital for a few days’ observation.”
“I’m all right!” Lyons said.
“You hit that gate at eighty or ninety miles an hour. You could have a subdural hematoma. You could have a ruptured spleen. You could have a hundred internal hemorrhages. You could fall over dead any minute. Soon as the Wizard can put out the signal, we’re on our way back.”
“Hard to argue with that,” Gadgets told Lyons. “Second the motion. Don’t want to lose our shock-trooper.”
“Captain…” Lyons turned to the guerilla officer “…Quesada’s in that plantation. He has the answers to your questions. You want to go get that Nazi, I’ll go with you.”
The captain smiled. He looked to his younger brother. “Who are these men you brought to our country? They kill the Stalinistas, they kill the fascists. Other North Americans talk of democracy, but they…” he pointed at the three warriors of Able Team “…they fight for democracy.”
The brothers laughed
. The captain turned to his men and translated what had been said. Some laughed. Others gave Lyons the clenched-fist salute. One man talked with his leader for a moment. The captain turned to Able Team again.
“That man says to remember the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. When the Spanish people fought the Castilian fascists and the German Nazis, some North Americans joined the war. Perhaps if an Abraham Lincoln Brigade came to Salvador, we could make a democracy.”
“Captain,” Lyons told him, “what you want for your country is your business. I’m fighting for my country. To protect my country’s democracy. There are Nazis threatening my country and Quesada knows who they are. I want to put the question to that fascist scum-hole. It is a personal mission. I’m out for revenge and he is the first step. So what is it? Do we go in?”
“Hey, Ironman,” Gadgets broke in. “You are exceeding your authority.”
Blancanales spoke in a low voice. “You are not for revenge. Our mission here is to return Quesada for trial.”
“Okay!” Lyons snapped. “There it is. That’s our mission. We’ll do it. Stop this tactical retreat talk. So what if he knows we’re coming?”
The truck’s driver called back to his captain. “Aqui esta el carro de los norteamericanos.”
“Your other jeep,” Captain Lizco told them.
Two riflemen in black plastic ponchos left the cover of roadside brush when they saw their unit returning.
Blancanales called across the truck. “Floyd!” The young reporter had listened to the debate, quietly translating details for the Salvadorans. “You’re college educated. You’re in this. What do you say?” Blancanales asked him.
“Rick Marquez got me my first job. Without him, I’d still be a punk with a camera looking for work. And Quesada had him murdered. So don’t expect me to say anything… anything moderate. I say nuke Quesada.”
Gadgets ran back to the waiting truck. “Political! Things have changed! I set my gear to monitor and record and what did I catch? Quesada’s gone to someplace called Reitoca, in Honduras. To something called ‘The School.’ He ain’t hiding inside the plantation, and he won’t expect us to hit him in Honduras. What do you say?”
Lyons did not wait for Blancanales to answer Schwarz. The blond ex-cop turned to the Salvadorans.
“Where is Reitoca? How far? And can we get there tonight?”
20
Jack Grimaldi had landed in Tegucigalpa in the darkness and wind-driven rain of the storm from the Pacific. After a leisurely meal of reheated Air Force lasagna and stale white bread, downed with a six-pack of Honduran beer, he borrowed a raincoat and went to examine the men and aircraft available for his latest Stony Man assignment.
Sometime in the next three to seven days, Able Team would radio him for a lift out of El Salvador. Maybe they would radio from an airfield. Maybe they would radio from a clearing in the mountains. He needed mechanically dependable aircraft available twenty-four hours a day, with standby personnel to service the aircraft and man the flights.
At the military end of the airfield, the Central Intelligence Agency maintained a secret air force. An officer in the Agency’s Langley offices had agreed over the phone to furnish a helicopter or plane for the Able Team mission. But an Agency promise in Washington, D.C., did not mean a plane and crew in Tegucigalpa.
Interdepartmental rivalries! Grimaldi walked through the rain cursing the problems created by petty bureaucratic egotism. Army Intelligence won’t help Navy Intelligence. The Air Force won’t help the NSA. The State Department wages paper wars with the National Security Council. Fight the Reds, fight terrorism, fight Libya, maybe the Frenchies, too. But first, we fight each other.
Likely as not, they’ll tell me to type up an official request and send it to my congressman.
Continuing to the lighted window of a hangar’s office, Grimaldi tried the door. Locked. He knocked. No answer. He knocked on the window. Condensation on the glass allowed him only a fuzzy view of the interior. After he pounded on the sheet-steel door with his fist, a face appeared at the window.
“Who’s that out there?” a voice shouted.
“The name’s Jack Eagle. You got a cable about me.”
The door opened. A tall, bearded man with T-shirt bulging over a beer belly motioned him inside. “Been waiting all day for you, Jack. They buzzed us from up north that you’d be doing some taxi work.”
“Here’s my identification.” Grimaldi displayed authorization papers complete with signatures and carbon copies.
“Well, yeah. Those look good. Got the right John Hancock down there. Recognize the name. Not that papers mean shit. You can call me Tennessee, Jack.”
“Thanks for the cooperation, Tennessee. I need to take a trip into the mountains.”
The other man laughed. “Yeah, that’s what we do here. In fact, that’s all we do. Question is, fixed wing or rotor?”
“Both, whatever…”
“We don’t have any of those!” Laughing again, Tennessee led him through the office and into the hangar. “Least, not this week.”
“I mean, I won’t know until I get the signal. I’ll need a standby helicopter and a standby plane. And personnel.”
“Daylight or night pickup?”
In the dark interior of the hangar, Grimaldi saw a war-surplus Huey painted with midnight-blue enamel and corporate logos. Bullet holes pocked the panels. Beyond that helicopter, other Hueys waited in various stages of maintenance. Masking tape and gray primer paint covered the side of one helicopter.
“Twenty-four-hour standby,” Grimaldi said.
“Hot or cold?”
Grimaldi glanced at the maintenance logs on the midnight-blue “corporate shuttle” helicopter. He compared the air hours to the dates of the service. “What do you mean?”
“The LZ.”
“Won’t know until I get the signal. In fact, it could change by the time I get to the landing zone.”
“How many passengers returning? And what’s the approximate weight of returning equipment?”
“Three for sure. Maybe two others. And hand luggage.”
“Those numbers are subject to cancellation, right? We get calls to take out ten passengers. We show up, and three and four have been ‘canceled’ by the time we get there.”
“No cancellations possible. I hope.”
“We don’t deal in hopes. We deal in lift weight. But if you’re talking helicopters, five men or one man, it don’t make that much difference. All we got is Hueys. But in planes, it means something.”
The maintenance records of the blue Huey indicated the mechanics had dedicated themselves to keeping the helicopter airborne. Routine work exceeded requirements. When one hydraulic hose showed a crack, the mechanics replaced all the hoses and refilled the system with new fluid. Mechanics replaced control cables before even one strand frayed.
“I want this one,” Grimaldi told Tennessee.
“Don’t you want to wait on the bodywork?” Tennessee pointed to the bullet holes. “Isn’t it amazing what birds can do to aluminum? Fly into an aircraft, punch their little beaks through the sheet metal. Sure messed up the company paint job. You’d think it was deliberate.”
The Stony Man flier put the tip of his finger into one dent. “Seven-point-six-two-millimeter beaks. The birds must be Kalashnikov snow storks. Didn’t think their migratory patterns took them through Central America.”
The Agency man laughed. “Pesky critters. Flying around everywhere these days.”
“The birds get to any of the workings?”
“No mechanical damage whatsoever, sir. No, sir. Would’ve fixed that first. We worry about sheet metal and paint last around here. But while you’re waiting for your passenger signal, we’ll do the touch-ups.”
“And what other equipment can I requisition? Like some guns for the doors. To keep those snow storks back.”
“M-60s do? Got mini-Gatlings. Or 40mm machine guns. Those Gatlings put down a flock at a time.”
“Inter
esting. What happens if I need additional equipment and aircraft? Maybe my people will need some kind of backup.”
“Whatever you want, Mister Eagle. We got it all. Personnel on one-hour call. Give us a ring, we wake them up.”
The pager at Grimaldi’s belt buzzed. The signal meant the ultra-high-frequency radio in his plane had received a burst transmission. The transmission meant something had gone wrong.
Fifteen minutes later, Grimaldi piloted the midnight-blue Huey into the storm.
21
All the Democratic Front fighters volunteered to join in the assault on the fascist stronghold in the Honduran mountains. But the Huey could carry only the weight of fourteen men and their weapons. The former Salvadoran army officers and soldiers drew lots to determine who would accompany the North Americans across the Honduran border.
A plastic tarp sheltering them from the drizzling rain, Able Team went through all their weapons and equipment by the light of an electric lantern. The three North Americans took only what they needed for the assault. Their suitcases, backpacks, rations and field equipment would remain with the Democratic Front fighters who stayed behind.
“You know what happens if the politicians ever find out about this?” Gadgets asked his partners. “Foreign policy nightmare.”
“About what?” Lyons asked. “Us killing fascists? You got it. Hope it starts an international fad.”
“No! This stuff. We’re giving it to guerrillas. Even if they aren’t Commies, they’re antigovernment.”
“We need their help,” Lyons said. “If Quesada ran off to someplace safe, I figure that place will have more defenses than his plantation did.”
“Elementary, my dear Ironman. They teach you to think like that in college?” Gadgets countered. “But think about this. We’re donating this gear to the guerrillas. The guerrillas are fighting the government of El Salvador. The government of El Salvador is a regional ally of the United States…”
“No ally of mine! How many U.S. citizens have the Salvos murdered so far? Nuns, social workers, lawyers, reporters, tourists! All the killers were army or national guard. Any of those goons go to trial? Captain Lizco says his men specialize in wiping out death squads. I don’t mind helping his people, not at all. Wish I could donate a ton of ammunition.”
