Dick Stivers - Warlord of Azatlan

Tres huevos de la Cia . I think he will pay a hundred thousand dollars for you. What do you think? Should I take top price? I take quick hundred thousand Q. I will never again need to cut wood or plant corn or shear sheep. My wife will not live in a cave, my son will have school..."

Blancanales interrupted with soothing words. "Our friend asked the wrong question. It's just that we can't understand your one-man war against these invaders."

Despite the questions and the argument, Nate never broke pace. He led them relentlessly upward through the cold darkness of the caves. "What is there to understand? I live in this beautiful place, these mountains, in the forest. If a thousand murderers and rapists with machine guns came to your home, you would fight, yes?"

"I'm sorry," Lyons apologized. "Sometimes I don't understand the obvious. I only wondered why you hadn't just left like all the other people."

"Someone must fight." Nate ended the talk by striding far ahead. From time to time, he flashed his light back to guide them.

Gadgets hissed to Lyons: "Be cool, will you? He's got real sensitive feelings. Besides, I think he's got a grudge against the CIA."

"I cannot figure him. He's an American, but he's been up here for years. Maybe he's CIA. Maybe he's an agent who went crazy and disappeared."

"I don't care who he is," Gadgets snapped back. "He's our ticket to a quick hit. Don't piss him off."

"Until I know what his game is, we aren't secure. We don't know who he's working for."

"Dig it, dude, I too am a paranoid, but there is a limit." Gadgets jogged away from Lyons, leaving him to walk alone.

A few minutes later, they saw daylight.

"Wait here," Nate told them. "I check for men watching the cave, then I come back. It has happened before." He left the cave for the open air.

Lyons unholstered his silent autoColt. "I'm following him. He could be putting an ambush together."

Gadgets stared at Lyons for a moment, then turned to Blancanales. "Think we could kick his brain straight?"

Blancanales shook his head, no. "He was a policeman too many years. Go, Lyons. Go out there. Satisfy your suspicions."

Pistol in hand, Lyons slipped from the narrow cave mouth. Blinking against the afternoon glare, he pushed a wall of pine branches.

Rotorthrob shattered the quiet. Squinting against the light, Lyons looked up.

A gunship swooped down on him.

As the Cobra descended on him, as he sucked down the last desperate gasp of his life, Lyons pointed the silenced Colt at the gunship's armored underbelly. He knew the slugs would not even scratch the armor, but he would not die without...

A hand knocked the weapon aside, the burst of .45-caliber hollowpoints flying harmlessly into the distance. Nate pushed the autoweapon into the dust and rocks. With the weight of his body, he held Lyons motionless as the Cobra dropped past them. He shouted through the rotor roar, a storm of dust and leaves flying around them: "It is nothing! They do not see us!"

Waiting until the noise and rotorstorm faded, they crawled through a tangle of brush and pine branches. The mountainside dropped away. Looking over the cliff, they saw trucks.

Hundreds of feet below them, gray-uniformed soldiers loaded heavy military trucks. The Cobra floated down. But the soldiers did not clear the area. As the gunship's skids seemed to touch the trucks, it veered sideways into the cliff face.

"What the..." Lyons started.

"There is a cave under here. A big cave. Many helicopters and trucks in there. Many buildings."

"And nothing's visible from the air." Lyons's mind raced ahead. "Munitions?"

Nate understood. He shook his head. "Separate cave. Very secure. Bring your friends out. They must see."

When Blancanales and Gadgets joined them on the ledge, Nate continued the briefing. "There is no way in through the mountain. Walls of concrete block the caves."

Blancanales nodded. "Have you been in there?"

"At first, before they had so many mercenaries. Not since."

"We could walk straight in," Lyons suggested. "Pass as mercenaries."

"There are many guards. Identity cards. Very difficult to… fake it."

"Time for air strikes," Gadgets suggested. Lyons and Blancanales knew he meant Jack Grimaldi, the Stony Man ace pilot.

Staring down at the mercenaries and assembled trucks, Nate shook his head. "In Laos, in the Co Roc mountains, there was a cave like this. The NVA put one hundred fifty-two mikemike guns inside, hit Khe Sahn every day for months. We tried B-52s, fighter bombers, Laotian mercenaries. Nada , only noise and dead men. Then us. Twenty-four Marines in, one Marine out. Me. The guns still hit Khe Sahn."

He looked to the three men of Able Team. "I tell you this, Secret Agents. If you want to hit this place, I will help you. Nothing you can think of will do it. But I can. It costs you one hundred thousand dollars. What do you say?"

"Maybe," Lyons answered.

"Yes or no?"

"The money's no problem," Blancanales told Lyons.

"That's not it. We don't know the options. Let's go get our prisoners. Put some questions to them before we talk plans."

"There is a lookout on the top." Nate glanced toward the peak. "We go there."

Sheep trails crisscrossed the near-vertical slopes. Guiding them through the pines and ferns, Nate paused often to peer at the soft grasses.

Then he found a rectangle of discolored moss. He motioned Able Team back. He took a bit of wire and string from his knitted bag.

He hooked the moss and stretched out the string. Twenty feet away, he went flat. He pulled the string. Nothing happened.

Leaving cover, they saw that a square of moss had flipped over to expose a small land mine. Blancanales recognized it instantly.

"Bouncing Bettie."

"They have many. They have killed many sheep."

Taking only a few more seconds, Nate found the safety pin and slipped it through the housing. He checked the underside for secondary detonators, then pulled the mine from the hole. He concealed it a hundred yards farther along the trail, where he could retrieve it later.

Continuing to the top, they heard shots. Nate directed them to an animal trail running under the bushes and small trees. They covered the last two hundred yards on their bellies. The shooting — single shots, sometimes an auto-burst — continued.

The observation post overlooked the valley. Plastic bags filled with dirt, stacked waist high, formed a rectangle. A camouflage-patterned canopy protected a squad of mercenaries from the sun.

The mercenaries sprawled in the shade, drinking beer and playing cards. One man scanned the late afternoon panorama of the valley, the road, and the far mountain with a telescope on a tripod. Another man with an M-16 sniped at birds soaring in the thermal updrafts.

Somewhere else on the mountaintop, another rifle — a large-caliber weapon — boomed. The distant rifleman fired single shots, sometimes three quick semi-auto shots.

"These guys," Lyons whispered to the others, "are definitely jack-offs."

Blancanales and Gadgets nodded. Nate pointed toward the sound of the other rifle. Leaving his partners to watch the squad at the observation post, Lyons followed Nate along the ridge line. They crawled, then walked silently through the lengthening shadows.

They found two mercenaries in aluminum lawn chairs. A stack of sandbags supported the shooter's exotic Walther sniper-rifle as he squeezed off shots at a target over four hundred yards away. A spotter with a telescope sat beside him, calling his hits.

Lyons put his binoculars on the target. He saw a black-and-white life-size photograph of the president of Guatemala. As he watched, the rifle boomed three times. Three holes appeared in the photograph, all in the center of the president's chest. Lyons passed the binoculars to Nate.