Dick Stivers: Warlord of Azatlan

"That's why we don't understand about the Hueys and Cobras. The Guatemalan army doesn't need to buy them on the international market. Maybe next week they could get the helicopters at a Congressional discount. We thought maybe they were going to the Salvadoran army, as an indirect way of getting around the liberals in Washington. But they haven't shown up there."

Lyons pointed to the satellite photos. "How do you know it's this Unomundo who's smuggling the helicopters?"

"You figure it out. He's running tons of 7.62 NATO prepacked in canisters for gunship mini-Gatlings. Either the helicopters are his, or he's supplying whoever's got them. What you men have to do is go in and close him down. The Guatemalans are allowing you into the country because his gang hit FBI men."

"Then we're official?" Blancanales asked.

"Semi-official. You'll have a liaison officer, cars, and people working behind the scenes to keep the army and police away from Quiche long enough for you to find his airstrip and stockpiles. Hit the gang, destroy the weapons, hit Unomundo.

"But remember — the Guatemalans are going way out on the international limb to let you chase Unomundo, hot pursuit or not. If the newspapers or the international media find out about you three, it could be a real embarrassment to the new Guatemalan government. So if you can't do this quick and clean and very, very discreetly, you pull out. The Guatemalans will take the job over. Agreed?"

The three men of Able Team nodded.

"Lyons, you understand?" Konzaki stressed. "We've gotten some reports of very extreme behavior in Cairo. We sent you there to resolve a problem and you liquidated the problem."

"Resolve, liquidate, what's the difference?"

"Torture is not the American way."

"You weren't there!" Lyons snapped back. "I explained it all to Mack. Even he went with it. It had to happen."

"Mack said that?" Konzaki asked.

"It wasn't torture. Justice and torture are two different things. And victory is something else entirely. You'll never see me pulling some crap just to make someone hurt. But you'll never see me stop when someone's between me and the mission. You understand that?"

"All right, all right," Konzaki nodded. Enough had been said. "Here are maps. Satellite photos of the topography of Quiche. A dictionary of the language. The mass of the people don't speak Spanish. Maybe the village leaders and the merchants speak Spanish."

"Key-chay, key-chay, key-chay," Lyons repeated, learning to say the unfamiliar word.

"Here's a book on the life-styles of the Indians, here's a book on their traditional weaving, here's a book on modern Guatemala."

Blancanales took the weaving book and leafed through the color illustrations of Indian men and women in Mayan clothes. Painted in watercolors, the illustrations captured scenes from a culture that predated the civilizations of Europe. Women wore designs thousands of years old, men sported the same costumes their ancestors wore to battle the Spanish marauders. They had lost their freedom not because of ignorance or poverty or weakness, but because they did not have the modern weapons of the Europeans. The Mayans had only copper and gold knives against steel swords and armor, only stone clubs and arrows against muskets and cannons. Hence they became slaves.

Yet the Mayan culture survived the long horror of the European overlords. With the Revolution, all Guatemalans — those descended from the Spanish masters and those who had survived as property — became citizens of a New World nation, equal under the law, yet as different and distinct as peoples from different planets.

As he leafed through the pages, Blancanales heard someone's breath catch. Lyons was staring over his partner's shoulder, his eyes fixed on the paintings of lovely mahogany-skinned women, proud barrel-chested men, children playing in priceless handwoven clothes that in North America would only be seen in museums.

Even Gadgets, the technological wizard, stared. "The places we go, wowie-zowie."

"Here are your weapons," Konzaki announced, lifting a large fiberboard carrying case onto the conference table.

Blancanales gave the book to Lyons and turned his attention to the gear they would carry into the mountains of Guatemala.

Konzaki passed him an M-16/M-203 hybrid assault-rifle and grenade launcher. The rifle part of the over-and-under weapon fired 5.56mm slugs in single shots, three-round bursts, or full-auto through the new quick-twist NATO barrel. The lower tube fired 40mm grenades. In addition to the three-mode sear mechanism, the Stony Man weaponsmith had added luminous nightsights.

"With buckshot rounds?" Blancanales asked.

Konzaki nodded. He took out a Heckler & Koch MP-5SD3 submachine gun. A small weapon that fired 9mm slugs, the weapon featured integral silencing and Starlite scope. "Notice the scope mounts. They're quick-release, positive-lock. If the going gets rough, put the Starlite in its protective case. And here's the Atchisson."

The weaponsmith lifted out Lyons's favorite assault weapon. Looking much like a standard M-16, but heavier, larger, the Atchisson fired twelve-gauge shells in semi-auto, three-shot burst, or full-auto modes from a seven-round box magazine. Konzaki hand-loaded the shells, cramming a mixed load of double-ought and Number Two steel balls into each shell.

"Hey, Ironman," Gadgets jived. "Your true love just made her entrance..."

Lyons didn't take his eyes from the colors and Mayan faces of the book.

"Hey! Listen up!" Konzaki ordered.

"What?"

"Briefing isn't over yet. Here's your LCKD — The Lyons Crowd Killing Device," he said as he passed the Atchisson across the aisle. "Pay attention, or someday you just might not come back."

"Someday I might find someplace I don't want to comeback from."

"Look at him," Gadgets told the others. "He likes that book."

"I like what I see. Maybe this is the place I don't come back from."

"Ironman the Romantic," Gadgets laughed.

"And Mr. Schwarz," Konzaki continued. "You're carrying the radios and electronic gear. We thought of assembling the same package of components you took into the Amazon, but I rejected the idea. Anywhere in Guatemala, you've only a three-or four-hour drive from phones with microwave links to international lines."

"Thank God. That satellite radio must've weighed fifty pounds on its own."

"Everything else is standard. The Beretta 93-Rs. Radio detonators and a kilo of C-4. Battle armor. Bandoliers. Ten thousand dollars cash for expenses. Except for the long guns, everything's in backpacks, ready for a hike. So, gentlemen, questions?"

Lyons looked from the beauty of the Mayans to the weapons, the ammunition, the explosives. He looked at the other military gear. An uncharacteristic sadness touched his face. Then his eyes returned to the book. He read the strange and beautiful words aloud:

"Qui-che. So-lo-la. Cak-chi-quel. Tzu-tu-jil."

"And Lyons, remember what Bolan told you," Konzaki concluded. "Put your mind into your work. No recklessness."

Smoke swirled from burning cornfields and obscured the valleys. In the ninety seconds of their approach to La Aurora International Airport, Able Team saw volcanoes crowned with clouds, jungle patterned by scorched fields and yellow-dust roads, the raw earth of new subdivisions carved from the hills and ravines around Guatemala City. Then their jet's wheels screeched on the blacktop.

The jet taxied past the passenger terminal and continued down the runway to the private and corporate planes at the far end of the field. Passing parked Pipers, Beechcrafts and Lear jets, the pilot halted their plane only a few steps from an open hangar.

Konzaki said farewell to the three men of Able Team. "See you next week. Do the best you can and be discreet."