Kill School

4

As the Air Force jet descended through clouds, Able Team looked out the ports to the vast flashing mirror of the Lago de Ilopango. Around the lake — actually the flooded crater of an ancient volcano — green fields checkerboarded the lush countryside. The clouds cast patches of darkness on the flatland fields. Brilliant sunlight on forests created scenes of luminescent green. To the southeast, the cones of volcanoes extended to the horizon.

"Wow," Gadgets gasped. "Amazing! What a postcard that would make."

Lieutenant Lizco laughed. "This is the first time you see my country? It is very beautiful. But when you learn the history, the five thousand years of cities and empires and peoples, then you will be very, very amazed."

Lining up on a runway, the jet dropped into a landing approach. The North Americans and the Salvadoran army officer took their seats and buckled their safety belts.

Despite the clouds of the approaching storm, the pilot glided down to a flawless landing. The jet taxied past the brilliant white and glass of the terminal to the white hangars at the far end of the airfield.

Everywhere on the blacktop, jetliners and private jets loaded and offloaded passengers and luggage. Gadgets pointed to the modern terminal.

"Things don't look very desperate. Could've bought a million rifles for the price of that place."

"Japanese money," Lieutenant Lizco told him. "General Romero wanted many tourists to come to our country. He built roads and hotels and the airport. But the people got nothing. And the war came down from the mountains. Now, I think only journalists use the airport. And they do not come to photograph beauty."

"No tourists?" Gadgets asked. "Look at all those tourists back there."

"They are Salvadorans. Returning from Miami and Los Angeles and New York."

Lyons watched a group of teenagers in designer jeans and silk shirts board a Lear jet. "Look at the kid in the tight pants. Doesn't your country have a draft or selective service?"

The lieutenant laughed cynically. "You expect the rich to fight for the privileges the rich enjoy? That is the duty of the poor. As it is in your country, yes?"

"No," Gadgets answered. "In Nam, I had a captain whose family was rich. Had gear from Abercrombie and Fitch in Manhattan. Shared his Chivas Regal with me. He was one brave dude. Lost a leg and eye trying to drag in a wounded grunt."

The Salvadoran apologized. "I am sorry. I should not assume your country is like mine."

"Then again," Gadgets added, "when the Army drafted all the poor kids and started calling in the rich kids, that's when the antiwar movement started. I saw thousands of rich kids on TV marching with NVA flags and posters of Uncle Ho-Ho, proclaiming the People's Republic of Yale."

"Do you know," the lieutenant mused, "that in my country's war, many of the Communist leaders are the sons and daughters of the rich. That is very strange, yes? A class contradiction, as the Marxists say."

The jet turned. Slowing, it eased into the shadowy interior of a hangar. A lurch signaled their arrival as the pilot hit the brakes for the last time. The lieutenant went to the cabin door.

"No more talk of politics," he announced. "I must arrange for our transportation to Morazan. It will take only a few minutes. Then we go."

A ramp clanked against the fuselage, and the door swung open. The lieutenant stepped out. Lyons leaned to Konzaki.

"While we put together our gear," he said, "go delay our friend. I want the Pol to be with him when he makes his calls."

"He's legit, Carl," Konzaki replied. "We checked him out. Excellent record at Fort Benning. We checked him all the way back to his high-school friends."

"You know who he's talking to? Did you check them? Did you check the telephone lines? Did you check..."

"All right, Carl, all right. I'm on my way." Konzaki gripped his aluminum canes and left as quickly as his plastic legs allowed. They heard him call out, "Lieutenant! One moment!"

Lyons leaned to Gadgets. "Got a minimike and a DF? I want that Lizco wired."

Gadgets faked a shocked expression. "But he's our friend! How could you suggest such a thing?"

"Because I don't trust..."

"Anybody," Gadgets finished the statement. He grinned as he took a hand-radio from the inside pocket of his sports coat. "Think I do?"

With a flick of a switch, the voices of Konzaki and Lieutenant Lizco came from the radio. "How exactly will you travel? Should the men change into casual clothes? Or should they wear coats and ties. I'm thinking about checkpoints. Perhaps they should wear their suits to impress the authorities."

Lyons laughed. "Okay. This is what we're going to do. The Wizard has him wired. We're going to listen to what he does and what he says."

Leaving the North American ex-Marine, Lieutenant Lizco jogged from the hangar. Outside, he started to the far end of the airfield, where private planes clustered around other hangars and mechanical shops. He saw a gasoline tanker bumping along a service road. Sprinting a hundred meters, the lieutenant leaped onto the rear bumper and rode to the private planes.

In a row of charter aircraft, he saw the blue-and-white six-passenger Cessna his friend owned. Though Garcia, the owner-pilot, had been a trusted lifelong friend of his father's, the lieutenant had no intention of telling Garcia the identities of the three North American passengers he would carry this morning. As the truck slowed to a stop at a fuel pump, Lieutenant Lizco stepped off.

He jogged through the parked Pipers and Cessnas and Beechcrafts. The middle-aged, pot bellied Garcia stood at his plane supervising the work of a mechanic. Lieutenant Lizco stopped short. He picked up a bit of asphalt from the blacktop and flicked it.

Garcia turned. He recognized the young man. The lieutenant motioned to the rows of planes. Garcia nodded. As the Salvadoran army officer wove through the parked planes, Garcia spoke with the mechanic for a moment before leaving him. He started toward the hangars, then doubled back. He glanced around the airfield before joining the lieutenant in the shadow of a Beechcraft's wing.

"The journalists are here, Guillermo?" Garcia asked.

The lieutenant nodded. "Is there a problem with the plane?"

"Routine work. When do we go?"

"When will the plane be ready?"

"A few minutes. How do we do this?"

"They cannot be seen. If possible, I would not involve you. You risk your life and your family. But there is no other..."

"This is for your father? For Alicia? For Luis and Anna?" Garcia crossed himself as he spoke the names of the "disappeared."

"What is the world without my friends? Without the children who laughed with my children? We must fight the assassins. If these journalists have the balls to expose Quesada and his gang, I would be a coward not to help them. It is an honor to take them to San Miguel. I am not afraid."

"Thank you. I will go make them ready. When your plane is finished, prepare to leave. I will bring them in a car."

He shook Garcia's hand and left. Watching the hangars and work sheds, the lieutenant dodged from plane to plane. No one saw him leave the pilot. At the end of the lines of parked aircraft, he cut across the blacktop to the access road. This time no trucks provided a ride.

Walking along the access road, he glanced at the hangars and trucks he passed. He could not allow anyone to observe him. A junior officer on leave had no reason to meet with North Americans. If a treasury agent or guardia officer or national-guard intelligence operative saw him with the North Americans and somehow identified him, he faced "disappearance" days of torture and mutilation in the basement of a police station, then the dumping of his faceless, sexless, anonymous corpse in a ditch or river, or on the desolate lava wasteland of El Playon.

To join the scattered bones of the thousands of unknown dead… To join his father in the soil of a corrupt and ravaged country.

A light green Dodge sedan cruised slowly toward him. Rifle barrels extended from both rear-door windows. Keeping his hands in the open, the lieutenant continued his stride.

The Dodge slowed to a stop and waited. Mirrored sunglasses watched him, the faces of the four national-police officers impassive as stones. Inside the car, a police dispatcher's voice squawked in competition with the blaring voices and trumpets of a Mexican pop song. The lieutenant attempted to ignore the police.

"Halt."

Lieutenant Lizco waited as the doors flew open. The muzzle of a G-3 jammed into his ribs. He heard clicks as the policeman flicked the rifle's safety on and off. Behind him, another safety clicked off.

"Identification," a police sergeant demanded. He rested his right hand on his holstered .45 automatic and extended his left hand.

Opening his sports coat wide before he reached for his wallet, the lieutenant felt his hand shaking. Not with fear, but with rage.

How many guerrillas had these police created? How many young men and women despised their country and their government because of these… these… The lieutenant did not want to use the word police. While he fought in Morazan, these middle-aged goons threatened and insulted and beat, sometimes raped or murdered the young people of the city.

"He is a lieutenant in the army," the fattest goon told the others. "Why are you here, soldier? The Communists are in the mountains."

"I need a plane to get back to my unit. If the Communists are in the mountains, why are you here?"

The fat sergeant laughed. "Subversives are everywhere. We search for them."

A policeman with a G-3 laughed. "Maybe we find a pretty one."

"Go, soldier."

Restraining himself from speaking again, the lieutenant walked away. His body tensed with the expectation of a bullet in his skull. He forced himself not to look back. When he heard the car doors slam, he allowed himself the luxury of anger, his rage becoming a long monologue of obscenities and curses. He glanced back to the Dodge as it continued to the hangars of the private planes.

"After the Communists, I fight you, pigs!"

Monitoring the minimike, Blancanales translated the threat.

"Is he okay?" Gadgets laughed. He punched Lyons in the shoulder, his karate-hardened fist hitting a deltoid of iron. "I mean, is he okay? He's okay in my book."

Lyons's eyes narrowed to slits. "Disrespect for police officers indicates subversive tendencies..." Then the ex-LAPD detective laughed also. "All right, enter Lizco's name in The Book of the Cool."

Able Team had watched the young officer's encounter with the national police from a window in the aircraft hangar. The minimike had transmitted every word to Blancanales, who translated the words of the police, then the obscenities and threats of the lieutenant.

The lieutenant approached the hangar and the steel doors slid open. A North American technician, who Konzaki had told them had embassy security clearance, attached a truck's tow bar to the tail of the Air Force jet. Able Team turned their faces away as the technician pulled the jet from the cool darkness of the hangar.

"But," Lyons continued, "the minimike stays on him. How long is it good for, Wizard?"

"Indefinitely. I can switch it on and off to save the battery."

"Good. We'll go along with this kid. But all the identification we brought from Stony Man — the passports, the credit cards, the media identification — we can't use it."

"Carl, we need that identification to move through the country," Blancanales told his partner.

"That's why we've got the ten grand in cash. We'll buy forged id. Chances are the Agency printed the identification for Stony Man. Which means every Nazi and death squad in the country has it. If we show it to a soldier or cop, they'll take us."

"The Central Intelligence Agency works for the United States," Blancanales countered. "Not the Salvadoran fascists."

"Oh, yeah? Who were those crew-cut types who killed..." Lyons's voice caught with an instant of grief "...who killed Flor?"

"Man, nobody knows about them," Gadgets broke in. "Just because they lookAgency doesn't mean they areAgency. Could've been Russians, maybe Albanians. Could've been Martians for all we know."

"Quit the jive," Lyons told him. "I know."

Blancanales stopped their talk. "Here he comes."

The lieutenant stepped through the office door. He glanced to the truck towing the Air Force jet. When he saw no one observing him, he crossed to the North Americans.

"We go to Morazan. The plane waits."

The three Stony warriors took their heavy cases of weapons and gear.

In the truck towing the Air Force jet, the blond, blue-eyed technician watched the three North Americans leave with the Salvadoran. He noted the obvious weight of the cases that the tall, hard-muscled men carried. Then the technician continued with his work. He towed the jet to the fuel station. While the Salvadoran workers refueled the plane, the tow-truck operator went to a telephone.

"This is Scott. They're here."

A Spanish-accented voice questioned him. "You are positive? Describe them."

"They match the photos. The Latin, the blond-haired Anglo, the dark-haired Anglo with the mustache. They arrived with the one without legs. In a jet. No company markings. A Salvo national took them away in a car."

"To where?"

"I don't know. They were very cautious, I couldn't overhear them. I attempted to plant a bug, but they never left their equipment for a second."

"What equipment?"

"Heavy, heavy suitcases. Oversized, long enough for rifles. I couldn't get any other information. They were all watching me."

A laugh came through the phone. "So now we will watch them."