by Dick Stivers
Far into the mountain, they questioned the prisoners. Lyons cut their gags.
"Why the pictures of the president?" he asked.
The rifleman laughed. "Why do you think?"
Blancanales squatted in front of them. "If you cooperate, you live."
The pro-fascist mercenaries looked to one another. The spotter spoke first.
"We don't get paid enough to die. What do you need to know?"
"Why the pictures of the president?" Lyons repeated.
"To hit that preacher."
"Unomundo intends to assassinate the president?"
The rifleman interrupted. "Mister, you're on the wrong side. Unomundo's going to kick ass tomorrow. As the man says, The New Reich Shall Rise."
14
Deep in the volcanic mountain, only their flashlights breaking the absolute night, they continued their questioning of the Nazi assassins. They squatted in a half-circle on a ledge. The cavern dome arched above them. Behind them, a chasm dropped into darkness.
"What happens tomorrow?" Lyons demanded.
"The Reich," the rifleman repeated. "Tomorrow we make a nation for all the dispossessed white people of the world. We will annihilate all the Commies and Christians, and start an empire of the strong and pure."
"Where are you from?" Blancanales asked him.
"Born in Texas. But I'm Rhodesian. Let me take you to Unomundo. He'll need men like you tomorrow. There's a place for you in the Reich. You'll live like princes."
"What happens tomorrow?" Lyons asked him again.
"There's still time to join. We leave after dark for the capital, my spotter and me. We're going to grease El Presidente Preacher in the morning when he goes out to pray. Our squads will kill the politicos in their beds. Then the gunships and airborne teams will hit the government buildings and the army garrisons. Then buses and trucks will roll in with troops to secure the city."
Lyons led them on. "What kind of money can we get up front?"
"A few thousand. The real payoff comes after the victory, when we divide up the country. Everybody gets an estate. And money. And Indians as slaves. And the Indian girls for whores. How does that compare with a salary and a pension after thirty years?"
"You think he'd hire us, even after we killed the men up there?"
"Positive. You killed losers. He needs men like you. Untie us and we'll take you to him."
"Right now? We could talk to him tonight?"
"Right now. He's briefing the commanders. And he'll be going in with the gunships tomorrow. He's no bigmouth lying politician, sending us to die, then rubbing bellies with the niggers and Commies. He'll lead his army from the front. Let's go! Right now. You can be on the winning side for a change."
Taking his partners aside, Lyons asked them: "We got enough from these monsters? I'm throwing them in that hole." He flicked a rock into the darkness of the chasm. Seconds later, far, far below, they heard the rock strike stone.
"Maybe they know where Unomundo is in the compound," Blancanales suggested. "Then we hit him with that Walther rifle."
Nate shook his head. "The officers' quarters don't face out. There is no clear shot. My way is better. I will kill them all at once."
"You got the plastic?" Gadgets asked. "We only brought a kilo of C-4 and some radio detonators."
"It is there."
"You said the munitions are in another cave," Lyons reminded Nate.
"They are. Listen. I wanted to do this alone. But together we must do it tonight. I will contact my friends. A few men."
"Who are they?" Blancanales asked.
"Friends. Guatemalans. But I take the Nazis. They are mine. One hundred thousand dollars and two Nazis. Very cheap."
"But where's your explosive?" Gadgets asked him.
"In the cave. They have a five-hundred-gallon tank of propane..."
"Righteous!" Gadgets laughed with excitement. "If the conditions are right, that's better than TNT. You got my vote."
Lyons handed Nate his silenced Colt. "No torture session. We don't have the time."
"All I need is rope."
Nate returned to the two tied Nazis.
"What are you doing?" the rifleman demanded to know. "Man, you're an American, don't you..."
Cinching their gags tight, Nate stopped the talk. He kicked the pro-fascists onto their stomachs. Untying the nylon cords around their necks, he triple-tied their wrists behind their backs, then linked the two men by all the remaining rope, perhaps forty feet. As he worked, he pronounced sentence on them.
"You are not animals, you are not insects. You are less than shit. You are poison. You have poisoned this beautiful place with your European sickness. Eight years I lived here in peace. Now you come with slavery and death. My wife is Indian. My son is Indian. My friends are Indian. If there is a hell, I send you there. But first, you know hell here..."
Blancanales slipped out his Beretta. As he clicked off the safety to give the prisoners the mercy of a quick death…
Nate looped the rope over a jutting rock and kicked the Nazis off the ledge. In the unnatural quiet of the volcanic chambers, they heard the Nazis' arms pop backward out of their shoulder sockets when the rope snapped taut.
They heard the guttural choking and thrashing of the gagged Nazis. Nate shouted down to them.
"It will take a week for you to die. When your arms rot off, you fall."
"Oh, wow," Gadgets sighed. "That one's straight out of a nightmare. Think they'll live a week?"
Lyons and Blancanales said nothing as Nate assembled his equipment. Below, the choking and thrashing continued. Finally, Lyons went to Nate.
He spoke softly as he slipped out a knife. "We're not like them. No matter what they do, we're not them."
"That is how they killed Xagil's father. The husband of my wife's sister. For them to suffer is justice."
"No, it's only revenge. And if we stop to avenge every murder, every atrocity, they will take the world. It is not victory to torture the torturers."
Lyons cut the rope. A moment later, the Nazis smashed on the rocks.
None of them spoke. Nate turned away. Able Team followed him through the maze of the mountain's interior.
* * *
Two hours later, they returned to the sanctuary of the cave overlooking the valley. Nate dispatched Xagil to gather the men from hidden farms scattered throughout the mountains.
"I told him to run," Nate reported to Able Team, "but it will be hours before they all come. Now we plan the attack."
Drawing with charcoal on the wood of his handmade table, the expatriate Nam vet sketched the complex of barracks and equipment yards. A tiny helicopter indicated the scale of the vast cavern of Unomundo.
"It faces east." Nate pointed to each position. "Here, they have three levels of pre-fab bunkhouses. Here and here, where the ceiling is high, they put down the helicopters."
Lyons interrupted. "And that's where Unomundo lands his helicopter?"
"Always."
"Does he have bodyguards?"
"Always. His soldiers. Traitors from the Guatemalan army."
"Does he have his own helicopter? Or just one of their gray Hueys?"
"It is blue and white. Like a company helicopter."
"We can't do anything unless we're sure he's in the cave," Lyons told his partners. "If we kill only his people, he can buy more. I'm asking about the bodyguards and helicopter because I want to hit him first. We've got to get him if..."
Blancanales stopped Lyons. "Let's get the details. Nate, please continue."
"They park heavy equipment and trucks on the north side. The passage to the cave where they store the munitions goes through the north side.
"In the west end of the cave, there is a mess hall and rec area. The propane is behind the mess hall. Once we get to the tank, no one will see us. No one can see it where it is. But there will be many guards. You know how a propane bomb works?"
"Oh, yeah," Gadgets told him. "In Nam, they'd use it to neutralize lan
ding zones. Drop a fifty-gallon tank of it into the jungle, give the stuff time to spread out, then a time-delay fuse sets it off. Just like det-cord and napalm wrapped around a thousand trees going off all at once. Turned jungles into parking lots. Except if we had wind, that would..."
Nate nodded. "But there won't be wind tonight from midnight until dawn."
"Are you positive?" Lyons demanded.
"I live here. I know the weather. I have planned this for months. I am positive. What we must do is get in there quiet, close the main valve, wait, then hacksaw the line. After that we try to get out. We cannot shoot on the way out..."
"If we want to live through it," Gadgets concluded for him.
"Why close the valve first?" Lyons asked.
Gadgets filled in some technical details. "Like a pilot light on a kitchen stove. If the gas only goes a small distance before it catches, no blast. Just a fire. We want the gas everywhere in the cave before it goes. This man's given us a great way to fix those Nazis. Short of zipping a missile in there, this is it."
"What about cigarettes?" Blancanales asked. "Someone in the cave or bunkhouse is going to be smoking."
"A cigarette won't ignite propane," Gadgets continued. "Has to be a flame. Or C-4..."
Nate pointed to the sketch. "The bunkhouses are raised up from the rock. Three feet, some places six feet."
"Liquid petroleum gas isn't like natural gas." With enthusiasm, Gadgets took over Nate's plan. "Natural gas is lighter than air. Propane is heavier than air, and it'll be cold. It'll stay down for a few minutes, then start to dissipate. We'll put two doses of C-4 plastic on the tank, with radio-triggers. A main charge and a backup."
"My friends will be outside," Nate continued. "It would be a miracle if the blast killed every Nazi."
"Right," Lyons agreed. "We'll throw a circle of rifles around the loading area. Plus we've got that rifle with the Starlite scope..."
"My Heckler & Koch," Gadgets interrupted. "I've carried it long enough. Time to use it again."
"And the Walther?" Lyons meant the Walther .300 Magnum sniping rifle captured from the Nazi assassins.
"No," Blancanales shook his head. "If you're going into the cave, we'll be carrying your equipment. Your armor, bandoliers, grenades. Can't carry that weapon."
"But for any of them that get out of the cave…" Lyons suggested. "We'll need to knock them down with rifle fire."
"At that distance," Blancanales answered, "the M-16s will do it. That Walther, the range increments start at three hundred yards."
"Yeah, you're right."
Gadgets jived him. "Don't cry, Ironman. Take the space gun home as a souvenir."
Nate stopped their laughter. "Here is a problem. Other than us four, I have only two men who can hit a running target. All my friends are brave, and they have served in the Civil Guard, but they don't have enough training."
As the hours passed in discussion of small details and contingencies, the men from the village and farms joined them, arriving one and two at a time. Every man carried an M-16 and a machete. Like Nate, they carried their grenades and spare magazines in hand-knitted bags. Instead of captured fatigues, they wore traditional clothes: embroidered peasant pants, bright colored shirts, coats of black wool, all hand-woven and embroidered.
Lyons stopped the planning. "Nate, those men need uniforms."
"We know what to wear," Nate told him. "You think we should all wear Unomundo's uniforms? You want us to face our god wearing rags stolen from Nazi soldiers?"
"This isn't some kind of religious expedition," Lyons protested. "We're going into a night attack. And you, you're talking about going into the complex."
"Okay, I'll be wearing the gray uniform. But they wear what they want."
Nate's Mayan wife bathed his wound. After Blancanales applied a sterile dressing, Marylena bound the dressing with a length of hand-embroidered cloth. She helped him slip a gray shirt over the cloth.
"Dig it, Ironman," Gadgets commented. "The cloth is magic. Like genipap and jockstraps..."
Flipping open his wallet, Gadgets took out a dogeared snapshot taken in the Bolivian Amazon. He gave it to Nate.
"That's the Ironman wearing his magic."
Nate looked at the photo, then at the blond ex-cop across the table. The snapshot showed Lyons wearing only a loincloth, a pistol belt, and bandoliers. Sandals protected his feet. His hair had been cut into a bowl. Blacking covered his entire body except at the shoulders, where two patches of red paint added brilliant color.
Laughing, Nate passed the snapshot to his wife. She stared. She looked at Lyons. Her sister leaned over her shoulder. They both laughed. Xagil took the photo and laughed. He ran across the cave to the knot of Indian men. In seconds, everyone in the cave laughed.
Nate went to the other men. He talked with them as they gathered their gear. A bottle of clear liquor went from man to man.
"Time to move, spooks," Nate told Able Team. He offered the bottle to them. "Aguardiente."
Lyons shook his head. Nate pushed the bottle into his hand.
"Drink. You are part of a very important occasion. Tonight we free Azatlan from Unomundo."
Gadgets took the bottle and gulped. Then he gulped air as he passed the bottle to Lyons. "It's only alcohol," he gasped. "About a hundred proof. But it ain't a drug. No super snuff on this trip. Last time Ironman participated in an Indian ritual, he got psychedelicized. And indigenized. But don't be afraid, take a swallow."
Lyons finally drank, then passed the bottle to Blancanales.
The appearance of a bloody young man stopped the laughter. He talked quickly in Quiche with Nate and the other men.
"Oh, God, not alive," Nate groaned. Then he translated for Able Team. "Unomundo mercenaries ambushed his brother and uncle. He thinks they were taken alive. We must hurry. Perhaps we can end their suffering."
15
Electronics guided the fighters — Guatemalan and North American — through the cool moonlit darkness of the forest. Nate and Lyons walked point. Lyons held the Atchisson ready, a 12-gauge shell in the chamber, his thumb on the safety. Nate carried the H&K MP5 silenced submachine gun, using the Starlite scope to penetrate the night. Knowing every trail and hill, every smell and sound of the valley of Azatlan, the ex-Marine rarely needed the Starlite's light-enhancing optics.
Gadgets followed with the Indians. Able Team's communications specialist also scanned the night with electronics — but not in the visual spectrum. He monitored the several frequencies used by the pro-fascist mercenaries, listening for the chatter of squads on patrol or the clicks of ambush units. He walked almost deaf, wearing two earphones. One went to the altered circuits of a mere walkie-talkie, the other to the hand-radio linking him to Lyons and Blancanales. Able Team did not fear the monitoring of their frequency. Sophisticated encoding circuits totally scrambled every transmission.
Blancanales walked at the end of the line, his M-16/M-203 cocked and locked, a 40mm fragmentation round in the grenade tube. In case of action or ambush, he would need to serve as a radioman and translator. Only Nate spoke English, Spanish and Quiche. The Indians spoke Quiche and some Spanish. Gadgets spoke very little Spanish, Lyons almost none. Only Lyons, Gadgets, and Blancanales had radios. The combinations and permutations of languages threatened the group with communications chaos. And in combat, failure to communicate often meant death.
Descending the rocky slopes, they saw the lights of trucks moving on the dirt road. They moved quickly down the slope, Nate leading the group across untraveled ground. He accepted the slight sounds of their legs moving through ferns, the soft crackling of their feet on the woodland mulch, rather than risk ambush on the trails.
They entered the trees. With the branches screening the moonlight, they now walked in total darkness. The line closed up, each man putting a hand on the shoulder of the man ahead. Only Nate, with the Starlite, had sight. He scanned the black from time to time to spot the trees and obstacles ahead, then walked through the darkness by me
mory.
As they neared the road, Lyons saw lights again, streaking toward him from the darkness like tracers or distant headlights. He flinched, then realized he had not heard a shot or a truck.
"What?" Nate whispered. He had felt Lyons's hand startle on his shoulder.
"Lights. I see… there! A light."
"Fireflies, spook man."
At the road, they went flat on the earth. Nate watched the tree lines with the Starlite scope. Gadgets monitored the mercenary frequencies. But they did not have time to wait for a mercenary unit to betray itself with movement or careless talk or a cigarette.
Nate turned to Lyons and pointed across the road. Then the ex-Marine went to two of his Quiche friends and whispered for them to follow the North American. When no autofire or Claymores cut down the first three men, more followed.
At the opposite tree line, Lyons crouched in the darkness. He knew the extreme danger the others faced as they crossed. An ambush unit would not hit the first few men. They would wait until the road divided the North Americans and Indians into two groups, then hit them both. Retreat would divide their group. Advance meant sacrificing men in the kill zone.
Fireflies and the cries of nightbirds teased Lyons' reactions. His eyes strained to find form or movement around them. His ears heard the boots and sandals of his companions on the gravel. Calming his breathing, he sucked down long, smooth breaths through his nose. He smelled only the pines and the dry grass and his own two-day odor.
Vibrations under his feet warned him. He keyed his hand-radio and whispered. "Truck coming."
Clicks answered. Then a voice sounded in the earphone he wore. "We're all across."
They moved into the trees. Hearing gravel rattle in fenders and the squeak of springs, they went flat as headlights came over a rise.
A bus passed them. More headlights, another bus. Then a flatbed stake-sided truck. The truck's headlight glare lit the interior of the second bus. They saw a gray-uniformed mercenary driving. A second mercenary stood in the door, his M-16 pointed into the night.
