Dick Stivers - Scorched Earth

As Lyons silently read the pages, Vato opened a bottle of pills. He took one and passed the bottle to the circle of men. Every man took a pill, swallowing it dry. A boy took the bottle to other men in the area. Every man or woman who carried a weapon got a pill.

Lyons looked up from the book. "What're those?"

"Megavitamins. So that the fighters will have night vision."

"You are a leader," Lyons said, nodding with admiration. He returned his eyes to the book and read aloud.

"Here, I read from the section on the use of guides. 'We should select the bravest officers and those who are most intelligent and keen, and using local guides, secretly traverse mountain and forest noiselessly, concealing our traces... we listen carefully for distant sounds and screw up our eyes to see clearly. We concentrate our wits so that we may snatch an opportunity...'"

Vato translated the reading to the others. When all the men understood, Lyons looked at them.

"That is what we will do," he said.

Carrying only weapons and water, they ran the mountain trails. Vato set the pace for the main group, his custom Springfield rifle slung muzzle-down over his back, the sling drawn tight to hold the heavy rifle against his body. Yaquis and the men of Able Team followed. Miguel Coral, physically fit but unaccustomed to long-distance running, slowed them. Vato stopped the group from time to time to allow the Mexican to catch his breath. Davis had stayed behind.

Able Team and Coral wore dust-colored cloaks over their fatigues. Wads of rags masked their boot-prints as they ran, and the lightweight cotton cloth of their desert camouflage flagged behind them.

Two formations of scouts preceded and followed the group. When the main group jogged through a valley, the scouts ran along the ridges to both sides, watching for ambushes or distant helicopters. When the group approached a mountainside, Vato waited for the flash of a forward scout's signal mirror before starting to the top. As they zigzagged up mountains, mirrors flashed behind them.

Despite the rest stops, they covered kilometer after kilometer in the clear, cool morning air. The long shadows of the mountains shielded them from the blinding desert sun. But as the sun rose higher, the oppressive heat slowed them to a quick march.

In one canyon, they passed a black scene of horror. Where several families had attempted to farm, using water from a hillside spring to irrigate the deep sand of a streambed, only ashes and scorched poles remained. An adobe wall showed bullet pocks. Blackened rows of corn stood in the fields. The people had been buried under a pile of stones marked with crosses.

"The army. Or Los Guerreros Blancos," Vato spat out. "A plane came with napalm. Without warning, they all died."

"Why?" Lyons asked.

"Who knows?" Vato answered.

As he surveyed the grim scene that lay before him, Lyons began to understand what motivated Vato and his Yaqui warriors.

After three hours of running and walking, following an animal trail through shoulder-high mesquite, a signal mirror flashed a coded message from the ridgeline. Vato turned to Lyons. "We go to there..." the young man pointed to the ridge "...and stop. Tell the others."

Lyons passed the word back to his partners. When they reached the mountainside, Vato turned again. "Very quickly now. We are close to the army."

The Yaquis ran up the trails. Coral and Gadgets straggled behind. Lyons slowed to keep the Yaquis ahead of him in sight while watching Blancanales behind him. Lyons also watched the scouts on the ridgelines for signals.

A shrill whistle alerted them. Lyons saw the mirror on the ridge behind the group flashing. His hand going to the radio clipped to his web belt, he tapped the transmit key quickly as he crouched down. Clicks answered him, then Gadgets's voice came on. " Que pasa ?" asked the Wizard.

"Get down!" Lyons suddenly yelled.

The unmistakable pulse of a helicopter pounded out its tattoo as it thundered over the ridge. Lyons pressed himself flat in the brush of the mountainside. He arranged his dust-colored camouflage, pulling the hood over his head, flicking the cloak over his legs. Only the bottom of his faded black fatigue pants and his boots remained uncovered.

A hundred feet above them, the chopper chewed its way across the desert sky. The noise of the rotors faded as the helicopter continued far into the distance. Then the rotor noise died down as the Huey troopship disappeared over a ridge in the east. Lyons searched the infinite blue dome of the sky for other aircraft.

"Just a commuter flight," Gadgets's voice whispered from the hand radio Lyons held.

"Can spy cameras work in Hueys?" Lyons asked his tech-specialist partner.

Gadgets gave it a moment's thought. "I've seen video cameras in helicopters. But the vibrations degrade the image."

"What about the super-close-ups at football games? They shoot from helicopters."

"Are you talking about Monday-night football or high-altitude ultraresolution surveillance? They ain't the same. Putting a spy camera in a chopper is a waste of time. But if they have a spy plane up there, we won't even see it before it snaps fifteen different close-ups of us."

Vato called out to the North Americans. "Quick! To the top!"

Lyons sprinted to the top and crouched. He had to study the ground to spot the Yaquis, flat on their bellies in the rocks and sand, their clothing the color of the dust. Behind him, he heard the others gasping and cursing as they crawled the last few meters to the crest. Lyons crept forward to join the Yaqui warriors.

They watched a scene over a thousand meters away. On the rocky ridgeline overlooking the gorge, the same ridge from where the Mexican riflemen and mortar team had fired down on Able Team the day before, dust swirled around the speck of a helicopter. Vato surveyed the scene through binoculars.

Snaking up beside Vato, Lyons opened his binocular case. A Yaqui stayed his arm, and Vato passed his own binoculars to Lyons.

"These will not reflect the sun," he said.

Lyons glanced at the front of the binoculars. Tubular extensions hooded the objective lenses. Like a sunshade on a camera lens, the extensions allowed only straight-line light to strike the front elements. The tin sheet and plastic tape extensions increased the length of the binoculars, but prevented the lenses from betraying their position with glints of sunlight.

Focusing on the distant scene, Lyons saw the vultures first. The black specks circled and swooped high over the ridge. Then he saw the helicopter rising from the dust of its rotor storm. A cargo net hung under the Huey troopship.

Though the binoculars could not define the image, Lyons knew dead soldiers filled that net. He gave the ridge a last scan. No soldiers remained behind to patrol the area. He saw only the returning vultures. He passed the binoculars to Blancanales.

The troopship and its load of corpses flew to the southwest. Lyons mentally calculated the direction of the Huey that had passed over them a few minutes before. That helicopter had gone to the east.

"All that running for nothing," Gadgets called out to his partners. "Too late to do anything here but get a suntan!"

"Brujo!" one of the Yaquis interrupted. The man pointed to a ridgeline behind them.

A signal mirror flashed the rapid code of an alert. Vato read the message.

"A helicopter comes. Be ready," he warned.

"Could it have seen us?" Lyons asked as he un-slung his FN-FAL paratrooper rifle.

"Who knows?" Vato replied as he slipped off his Springfield.

Around them, the Yaqui soldiers dispersed on the barren ridge. Some pressed themselves against rocks. Others flattened themselves in erosion cracks. One crawled into a tangle of mesquite. Everyone covered the distinctive lines and gleaming metal of their weapons with their bodies.