Dick Stivers - Warlord of Azatlan

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.

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.

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.