Warlord of Azatlan at-6

by Dick Stivers

  Rotorthrob exploded behind him. Gadgets went flat as a gray shape flashed over him. He radioed to the others.

  "Hit it! Helicopter! Looks like a Huey."

  He waited for the helicopter to drop below him before moving. Holding his hand-radio, Gadgets crawled to the edge of the cliff.

  A soldier squatted at the door of the gray-painted Huey troopship. Gadgets saw the mercenary searching the cliffs and trails with binoculars. The soldier pointed.

  Hundreds of feet below him, Gadgets saw the bright purple and red of the Indian woman. Caught in an open stretch of the trail, Lyons and Blancanales and the two Indians ran for cover. But too late.

  The helicopter veered for the cliffs. The soldier in the door pointed the swivel-mounted M-60. The muzzle flashed. Gadgets heard the hammering of the shots an instant later. Far below, dust puffed on the trail. But his partners and the Indians had gained cover. His hand-radio buzzed.

  "They caught us in the open," Lyons reported. "Now it's a shoot-out. If we don't make it, it's up to you to complete the mission."

  Over the radio, Gadgets heard the thumping and ricocheting of heavy-caliber slugs. Then the hammering of the M-60 drifted toward him.

  "Forget that kind of talk!" Gadgets told him. "We'll get them!"

  "With rifles?" Lyons asked him. "Might as well throw rocks. But we'll shoot at them until the Cobra shows up. Then we're dead. Over and adios."

  A few hundred feet below, the door gunner raked the cliffside trail with burst after burst. Gadgets knew what Lyons had said was the truth.

  When the Cobra came, his partners died.

  11

  The Huey seemed to float below him. Gadgets Schwarz considered his options. With his Galil, he might hit the door gunner. But from this angle, he could not expect the lightweight 5.56mm slugs to punch through the pilots' windshield. Even if he waited for a straight-on shot, the windshield would deflect the 5.56mm slugs at wild angles. He would have to kill the pilot and copilot simultaneously and instantly to drop the Huey. And if he did not make an instant kill, they would come to kill him. Like Lyons said, he might as well throw rocks.

  Rocks?

  As Gadgets watched, the helicopter made another pass at the trail, the door gunner spraying Lyons and Blancanales with a long burst. A soldier threw a grenade. The explosion puffed dust on the cliff face.

  Gadgets grabbed a fist-sized rock and threw it. He watched the angle of fall.

  He ran back from the edge. Frantically searching through the clutter of materials stacked around the unfinished house, he found rolls of barbed wire and chicken wire. Rough-sawn planks leaned against the house.

  He tore off the weather-rotted cardboard on the end of a roll of barbed wire. He dragged the roll of wire to the cliff.

  He watched the helicopter. The Huey had completed a circle and was veering in for another attack. The M-60 flashed fire.

  Strong with panic, Gadgets jerked up the barbed wire from the ground. He held it above his head, then threw it.

  The heavy roll of wire hit a rock and bounced far out from the cliff.

  Gadgets watched. The wire fell in erratic gyrations.

  It did not miss. The unraveling wire hit the circle of the Huey's rotorblades. It whirled in a tangle above the fuselage for an instant, then the blades started to buckle and twist as the wire was sucked into their spin.

  A rotor flew into space. The three remaining blades locked. The Huey fell straight down. The fuselage disintegrated on the rocks, then flame rose in a sheet.

  "Whoo-eee! The Wizard does it!" Lyons laughed through his hand-radio. "What a trick. Brought us back from the dead."

  "I don't believe it myself."

  "Watch for the Cobra," Lyons told him. "We're on our way up, double time. Maybe you'll get a chance to drop another surprise."

  Beside him, the Indian boy stared down at the burning helicopter. The boy looked from the helicopter to the chicken wire and planks stacked around the house, looked down to the wreckage again. Gadgets laughed.

  "When you eliminate the impossible…" he said.

  The Cobra came three minutes later.

  Lyons and Blancanales directed the woman and child to take cover. The Indians crouched behind a rock, the little girl crying, the mother sobbing and shrieking, her hands over her ears as the Cobra approached.

  Lyons jerked his folded black nylon windbreaker from his backpack. He crawled to the woman and the girl. Opening the jacket, he spread it over the woman's shoulders to cover the beautiful purple-and-red weaving she wore. He touched the black rocks around them, touched the black jacket, pointed to the sky.

  The crying woman nodded. She held her daughter in her arms and enfolded her brilliant colors.

  Blancanales radioed Gadgets. "What's the Cobra doing?"

  "Skirting the cliffs. Staying back. It's — get ready."

  "Ironman!" Blancanales called out.

  "I know…"

  Lyons shielded the woman and child with his body as the Cobra roared past. A section of the trail erupted in a string of explosions as the gunship strafed it with 40mm grenades. Rocks and bits of steel wire — spent shrapnel — showered them.

  The Indian woman screamed. Lyons held her against the rock, protecting and restraining her. If she panicked...

  Mini-Gatlings tore another section of trail. A one-second burst saturated a shadow with high-velocity slugs. Tracers made an orange line between the Cobra and the cliff face. Then the gunship veered away.

  Their hand-radios buzzed. "It's trying to freak you," Gadgets's voice said .

  "It has succeeded," Lyons answered.

  "Lay cool, bro'. That ain't all it wants to do."

  They heard the gunship's autogrenades rip the foothills below them, as black smoke from the burning Huey wreck drifted up the cliff face. Gadgets buzzed them again.

  "Think it just killed Mr. Bones."

  Easing his head from behind the rocks, Lyons looked down to see the Cobra veer away. Streaking over the valley, it disappeared behind clouds. The walls of clouds approached the cliff.

  "Where'd it go?" Blancanales asked Gadgets.

  "Off toward the town. You got cloud cover coming. That'll be your chance to run for it."

  "Then that's the plan," Lyons agreed.

  Waiting a few minutes, they did not hear the rotor-throb return. When the wall of mist enveloped the black volcanic cliff face, hiding them from airborne observation, they rushed to the top of the mountain.

  Gadgets and the boy met them. Leading them under the cover of the pines, the boy stopped in a small meadow speckled with yellow wild flowers. Lyons motioned to Blancanales.

  "Tell him to keep moving. They know we're here somewhere. We got to get gone."

  A voice shouted from the forest. "No move! Drop weapons! Move quick, you die!"

  The woman and the girl hurried away from the three North Americans. Able Team stood alone in the kill zone.

  12

  Mist swirled through the shadowed pines. The boy ran through the flowers. He called out again and again in his Indian language. He shielded the North Americans with his body as he shouted to the ambushers.

  A voice answered. "Congratulations. Xagil tells me you're okay. For that, you stay alive. But put down the rifles, please."

  "Who are you?" Lyons shouted. He did not lay down his Atchisson.

  "I am coming out. If you shoot, my friends kill you all."

  Blancanales flipped up the safety of his M-16/M-203. He slung the weapon over his shoulder. He looked to his partners.

  "Wizard, Ironman. Be polite. Lock up."

  Lyons and Gadgets set their safeties also. But Lyons held the assault shotgun ready.

  A man walked from the mist. Six foot, barrel chested, he wore gray fatigues. Old bloodstains splotched the Nazi uniform like camouflage patterns. He held a Heckler & Kock G-3 rifle fitted with a three-power scope. He had a tiny 9mm Ingram machine-pistol in a hand-made leather belt holster. On his back, they saw a steel crossbow.

&
nbsp; Though he appeared to be Indian, with dark hair and a face as dark as mahogany, a faded tattoo on his left forearm identified his nationality and told of his past:

  USMC DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.

  Blancanales stepped forward and extended his hand: "Pleased to meet you, sir. I'm Rosario."

  "I am Nate." The ex-Marine spoke oddly, the inflections and rhythm of his English somehow different.

  "How long since you spoke English?" Blancanales asked.

  "A long time. I speak Quiche now. Sometimes Castilian — Spanish."

  Lyons stared, his mouth gaping open. Gadgets slung his Galil. Hooking his thumbs in the straps of his backpack, he walked in a circle around Nate. He saw the carved wood and hand-hammered steel of crossbow and a quiver of short arrows. A knitted bag displaying the stylized figure of a prancing horse held magazines for the G-3 and Ingram.

  Nate glanced at the stranger eyeing him. Gadgets laughed.

  "This guy is indigenized!"

  "Who are you?" Lyons finally asked.

  "I told you. Nate."

  "I mean, who are you with?"

  "We don't have time to talk," he answered, his words coming awkwardly. He pointed into the pines. "A world of shit comes. If you want to live, we move. Follow Xagil. I follow."

  Nate and the woman spoke quickly in Quiche. The boy, Xagil, led Able Team through the pines. As they walked down into a ravine, the forest became dark with lush growth. Pushing aside a curtain of vines, Xagil followed a trail that tunneled through tangled vines and brush and bromeliad. Nate, the woman and the little girl walked soundlessly behind them.

  After hundreds of yards without sight of the sun, they came to a crevice dropping into the interior of the mountain. A trail down a narrow ledge led to the fissure in the black stone.

  Some distance along the ledge, they entered a cave. Xagil disconnected the monofilament triplines of booby traps. After Able Team and the Indians passed, Nate reconnected the monofilament lines.

  Blancanales waved a flashlight over the interior of a cavern. Bats squeaked and fluttered in the shadows. The bats' eyes refracted the light like a thousand red stars.

  "Where are your friends?" Lyons asked the ex-Marine.

  Nate ignored the question. He went to one of the many shadows on the cavern wall and disappeared into the voids.

  "Come!"

  The flashlight that Blancanales held threw a weak glow on glistening black stone. The passage had once been a bubble in the molten magma of the flowing mountain. Now, the line of North Americans and Indians filed through it. Nate walked through the total darkness by memory. Able Team followed Blancanales's flashlight.

  Wind rushed into their faces. Blinking against the daylight, Able Team stepped into a cave mouth that overlooked a forested valley and mountains.

  Lyons went to the edge and looked down. Hundreds of feet below, clouds drifted against the vertical wall of volcanic rock. He could see nothing above them but more rock.

  Another Indian woman, actually a teenager with fine-boned, austere features, greeted Nate in Quiche. She went silent when she saw Able Team and their camouflage uniforms. Reflexively, her hand went for a pistol hidden under her huipile. Nate spoke to her in the Indian language as he stripped off his weapons and ammunition. He made introductions.

  "My wife Marylena. Her sister Maria. Her son Xagil. And my son..."

  He took a bundle from his wife's back. A baby stirred inside.

  "...Tecun." He pointed to Blancanales. "Rosario. I don't know your names…"

  "I'm the Wizard," Gadgets told them. He looked to Lyons. "And he's the Ironman."

  Nate nodded. He spoke quickly to his wife. She went to an adjoining chamber. "We eat while we talk."

  They sat at a hand-sawn and -crafted table on chairs of rough pine. Marylena returned with fruit and steaming patties of corn dough.

  Gadgets held up one of the corn patties. "What are these?"

  "Tamalitas. Now, you three men with false names, we will discuss why you are here."

  "Unomundo's gang killed four Federal agents in Texas," Lyons briefed Nate. "We've come to kill him."

  Nate laughed. He called out to the women in Quiche, translated what the North American had said. The women laughed. He returned his attention to Able Team.

  "Three men against a thousand?"

  Lyons choked on a mouthful of mango. "A thousand!"

  "He's got an army up here?" Gadgets asked.

  Nate did not answer. "You have money?"

  Blancanales sliced an avocado with his double-edged Gerber knife. "You'll sell us information?"

  The ex-Marine's lip rose in a sneer. "La CIA. C-I-A. Always the same."

  "Not us, man." Gadgets denied the charge. "We don't associate with those Harvard spooks."

  "I know," Nate nodded. "You are Boy Scouts. Collecting butterflies. Ha, ha, ha. Now, we talk truth. I have lived here many years. It was good here. A few bandits. I killed them. A few EGP. I killed them. The army were my friends. They did not ask for my passport. Very peaceful. Then Unomundo came. For six months, it has been very bad. We cannot plant corn. They shoot our sheep and cows. Shoot many families..."

  "What about the army and the police?" Lyons interrupted.

  "Unomundo paid gold. Those who did not take the gold died. Men go to tell the government, but never return. Everyone is afraid. They move away."

  "Why not you?" Blancanales asked.

  Nate ignored the question. "Sometimes we fight Unomundo. Then his soldiers kill everyone they find. Women, families, children, no difference. We need friends, but we need money, too. You are CIA. You have money. First, you pay for my barbed wire."

  "That was your place on the cliff? What a view!" Gadgets exclaimed through a mouthful of tamalita.

  Rotorthrob echoed in the cave. The men of Able Team jerked around, starting from their pine chairs. In the distance, they heard explosions, then the ripsaw of mini-Gatlings. Nate laughed.

  "They chop down trees with their fire superiority. Get a body count on shadows. But it is good that Xagil found you. Otherwise the fascistaswould have found you. And God have mercy if they take you alive."

  Lyons ended the conversation. "Where is Unomundo?"

  "Perhaps at his base. Maybe no."

  "Where is the base?" Lyons pressed.

  "Want to go there? I give you the guided tour. One thousand dollars each. Plus free prisoner for questions."

  Blancanales laughed as he opened his pack. "It's a deal."

  "In advance. Money stays with Marylena in case I do not return."

  They counted out hundred-dollar bills.

  Descending through a maze of volcanic formations and caverns, Nate led them deep into the mountain. Water trickled in the darkness beyond their flashlights. When they kicked rocks from the path, the rocks fell for seconds before hitting stone. Some-times, the rocks fell into the void and no sound came. Nate led them through the twisting passages. From time to time, he stopped to disarm booby traps.

  They came to a chamber he used as a storeroom. As their flashlights swept across neat stacks of Unomundo materiel — uniforms, tools, boots, rations, radios — Nate diffused devices scattered throughout the equipment. He selected uniforms for Able Team.

  "At the base, they wear a gray uniform," he explained. "Those green ones, they only wear those to look like the army."

  All the uniforms showed bloodstains. Blancanales saw a pile of wallets and other personal effects. He glanced through a wallet.

  An identity card printed in German carried a photo of a young blond man. Another wallet held the card of a dead man from New Jersey. Another identified a soldier from El Salvador. Blancanales passed the wallets to Lyons and Gadgets.

  "All foreigners."

  "Most of his soldiers are not Guatemalan," Nate told them. "But some are."

  Lyons changed into a uniform with a bullet hole in the left chest pocket. "How many of his meres have you put down?"

  "Count the uniforms. Plus many I could not strip."<
br />
  "You do Mr. Bones?" Gadgets asked him.

  "What?"

  "The skull on the rifle."

  "Yes. He was a Frenchman who raped and tortured. I made a joke of him."

  "And what was their response?" Lyons buckled on his web belt and bandoliers, then bounced on his toes to test for metal tapping against metal.

  "They patrol. They try to ambush. But they are not good soldiers. They do not fight, they murder."

  "And what about the weapons?" Lyons pointed to the stacked uniforms, then the three that Able Team wore. "Fourteen sets of fatigues and gear, but no rifles, no pistols. No ammunition..."

  Nate stopped the questioning. "Time to go, tourists."

  A few minutes later they emerged from one of the thousands of crevices and caves that pitted the mountain. Rocky hillsides sloped down to a narrow valley. Unomundo's road slashed through pine and deciduous forest. The few cleared fields had been burned.

  Beyond, perhaps two miles from where they stood, the black wall of another mountain rose into the clouds. Nate pointed out the path they would take.

  "There is the road to Azatlan. It goes around that mountain. Unomundo's base is on the north side. We will cross the valley and go into the mountain. The caves will take us to Unomundo."

  Carrying only the weight of their weapons, the four men moved quickly. Able Team labored to maintain a steady jog despite the thin air. Nate allowed them to rest every few minutes while he ranged ahead in the forest. They crossed the dirt road without sighting mercenaries.

  Distant rotorthrob drifted to them from time to time. They stayed under the cover of the trees.

  Once, as they approached a clearing, their eyes searching the sky, they heard metal clanking in the rhythm of steps. Nate turned to signal Able Team, but they had already disappeared into the grass and brush.

  A line of fifty gray-clad mercenaries passed.

  Minutes after the voices and footsteps had faded away, Nate saw Able Team rise silently from cover. With hand signals, he directed them to double-time. A five-minute run took them to the mountain.