Dick Stivers - Warlord of Azatlan

Easing over on his back, Lyons searched through the grass and forest leaves for stones. He piled a handful on his stomach.

Tossing a pebble toward the road, he hit a tree fifty feet away. He waited, listening.

"Another one," Gadgets whispered.

The second stone pattered on leaves. Gadgets whispered again.

"Ten feet to the right this time."

The next rock bounced on stone. "One merc's telling the others to stop throwing rocks at him. Throw to the left."

A clink.

"Quit it!" a voice called out in English.

"What?" another voice answered.

"The rocks, you shit."

"I didn't throw any..."

"Estupidos, silencio!"

Slipping out his silenced autoColt, Lyons crawled toward the voices. Blancanales shrugged off his backpack of gear and weapons, and followed. They moved infinitely slowly, gently pushing through the grass, advancing a few inches at a time. Minutes passed as they snaked closer and closer to where the pro-fascists hid in the darkness.

Blancanales heard a man shift positions in front of him, a boot squeaking, a buckle scraping across the metal of a rifle. He flicked his eyes back and forth, trying to find the man's form with the edges of his vision.

Only five feet away, the luminous numbers of a watch appeared. Twenty feet away, another man cleared his throat. Blancanales continued forward, feeling the ground ahead of him with his left hand, the Beretta in his right.

The man to his side cleared his throat again. Blancanales heard a boot scrape on a rock a mere arm's reach away from him.

A slap, like a fist against flesh, startled the man in front of him. The noise had come from where Lyons had gone. Blancanales heard the man click a walkie-talkie's transmit key, then whisper: "What was that?"

A bullet through the brain answered him. The walkie-talkie clattered from the dead man's hand. Blancanales picked up the small radio and listened.

"Meyers?" A voice asked.

Blancanales hissed a reply. "Yeah?"

"Devlin here. Lupo?" The voice asked.

"Here." A Spanish accented voice answered.

"Cole?"

"Yeah?" Another hissed answer. Lyons.

A roll call. Three men and their leader. Two already dead.

On the road, a bus neared the guard post. An out-of-line headlight flashed through the trees. Blancanales saw the silhouette of the next man in the ambush unit. He braced his Beretta on the corpse in front of him. He lined up the dash-dot-dash of his Beretta's betalight nightsights, and waited.

As the next buses came up the road, dust diffusing the high beams, Blancanales snapped two shots into the silhouette. One of the ejected casings clinked on a rock. He waited.

A hideous wavering scream came from the parked trucks.

Guffaws came from the darkness. "Listen to 'em fuckin' up those peons," said a muttered voice.

Blancanales pointed his Beretta at the voice and sprayed the lone laughing Nazi mercenary with a three-round burst. Two rounds slapped flesh, one slug skipped off stone and hit a tree.

The laughter became a gasp. Blancanales fired another burst, heard a bullet strike plastic and flesh. He fired again. He heard blood gurgle in a throat.

Then he picked up the walkie-talkie and whispered:

"Meyers?" No answer.

"Lupo?" No answer.

"Cole?" No answer.

"Devlin?" No answer.

He whispered into his hand-radio. "Wizard. Anything?"

"There's an ambush unit on the other side of the road. Using another frequency."

Lyons broke in. "Forget them. The road."

Signaling Nate and the Indians forward, the group crawled a hundred feet to the road. They reassembled opposite the guard post.

Two mercenaries manned the post, their M-16 rifles slung over their shoulders. As each bus or truck passed, they pointed their flashlights at the drivers, then waved them past. Most of the drivers did not slow for the inspection.

Able Team sighted their silenced pistols on the two meres. Nate aimed the MP-5. A bus sputtered past the two meres. Blancanales watched the road. He saw no headlights downslope.

"Now!"

Slugs punched into the meres' heads and chests, staggering them back with impacts.

As they fell, Gadgets and Blancanales dashed across to them and picked up the flashlights. Lyons and Nate followed. Still no headlights downhill. Nate waved the Indians across.

Gadgets and Blancanales manned the guard post.

A truck approached. Blancanales stepped out into the road, waving his flashlight. As the truck slowed, he put the beam on the gray-uniformed driver. Blancanales stepped back out of the road.

The truck shifted, the engine revved, then it continued up the road, regaining speed.

Lyons and Nate rode the truck's rear bumper to the cavern fortress of Unomundo.

Like the yawning mouth of a skull, the vast cavern exposed the interior of the mountain. Thousand-watt worklights illuminated the complex of barracks, offices, equipment yards and helipads. The mouth of the cavern opened to the east, exactly as Nate had described.

On the south end, prefabricated steel barracks rose three stories from the concrete and naked stone of the cave floor. Other steel buildings clustered at the west end where the ceiling of the cavern curved down. A concrete wall sealed the west end from the maze of passages and chambers within the volcanic mountain.

On the north end, steel aircraft hangars served as workshops for mechanics and welders. Trucks and two bulldozers lined the north wall.

In the center, where the arcing dome of the cavern created a two-hundred-foot-high airspace between the floor and the apex, Cobra gunships and Huey troop carriers waited for the next day's assault. Mechanics and ordnance technicians moved from helicopter to helicopter, servicing the engines, loading the multi-million-dollar weapon systems.

Lyons and Nate stood in the back of a stake-bed truck, surveying the fortress and the army of the Nazi warlord. Trucks and buses parked around them, mercenaries driving the vehicles to the wide, flat parking area scraped from the hills. Mercenaries walked past the truck where they stood without giving the two men a glance. With their European faces and gray uniforms, the two infiltrators passed as Nazis.

Beyond the gravel area, a hundred yards of scorched hillside separated the base from the forest. Only the road breached the perimeter.

Lyons squatted in the shadows with his hand-radio.

"Ironman speaking. We're in. There's no other way in but the road."

"Won't be a problem," Blancanales responded.

"The trucks and buses enter and park in rows. No one checks the interiors. No sentries. A few meres wandering around. Everyone else is busy…"

A scream, then laughter came from the center of the parking area. Lyons and Nate could not see the scene of torture from the truck where they surveyed the complex. But the screams told them of the terror and suffering. Lyons took one of the radio-fused charges from under his gray fatigue shirt and passed it to Nate. Now they each had a pound of C-4 plastic explosive hidden under their belts.

"Wizard," Lyons whispered into his radio.

"Here. Nothing crazy yet. Monitoring it all."

"You're not hearing what I'm hearing. Do us a favor. If they take us, push the button on the radio charges. Understand?"

"Understand. Over and adios, brother."

Blancanales's voice came on. "Nate. Ironman. Good luck."

Lyons clicked off. Nate dropped to the gravel. Lyons followed a moment later. They walked through the vehicles, double-checking for sentries. In the shadows and glaring lights, pro-fascist mercenaries passed Nate and Lyons. But their uniforms and weapons concealed them. Still, Nate kept his left hand near the pistol grip of his M-16. He kept his right arm tucked into his belt, only six inches from a holstered Colt Government Model on full-cock. Lyons folded his arms over his Atchisson to conceal the oversized receiver group and magazine. He had seen mercenaries carrying G-3s, Galils and Remington 870s. Though he did not fear that the Atchisson would betray him, he did not want mercenaries to question him about his avant-garde full-auto assault shotgun.