Scorched Earth

10

In the last hour of morning, they met the Yaquis.

After the firefight Able Team had bandaged Davis, then outfitted themselves with weapons and gear from the dead Mexican soldiers. Lyons and Davis and Coral found folding-stock FN-FAL paratrooper rifles. Davis and Coral stripped the dead of knives and packs and clothing. They had marched for the rest of the morning and afternoon, watching signal mirrors flash from the cliffs and mountainsides above them.

Following the streambed north, they left the gorge and climbed trails cutting across the sides of mountains. Animal prints marked the trails, but they saw no human footprints. Yet they knew others walked in these mountains. The others watched them from ridgelines, signal mirrors flashing from mountain to mountain.

The introduction came abruptly. Lyons, sweating under his load of gear and weapons, had walked point for the preceding hour. He looked down to check the trail for tracks, then looked up to see the three young men.

Two of the young men carried M-16 rifles. The third carried what looked like a .30-06 Springfield rifle with a custom stock featuring a pistol grip.

Lyons knew that rifle, or a rifle like it, had saved them from the trap in the gorge.

Lyons let the FN-FAL rifle in his hands hang by the strap over his shoulder. He crossed his hands over the top of the receiver. He stood without moving as the others caught up with him.

Blancanales spoke first in Spanish. "Buenas tardes."

"We will speak English," the young man with the Springfield told the foreigners.

"Thanks for helping us," Lyons said. "Without you, we'd be dead now."

"Why are you in our mountains?"

"The Mexican army," Lyons explained, "or a gang dressed in the uniforms of the Mexican army, shot down our plane. We're walking to the railroad. We'll take the train down to the coast. Who are you?"

"Are you with the Ochoa family?"

Behind Lyons, Blancanales whispered quickly with Miguel Coral.

"Don't talk about it," the young man with the Springfield told them. "Answer."

Coral stepped forward. "I served Don Ochoa. But he is gone now."

"Do you serve now with Los Guerreros Blancos?"

"Those assassins!" Coral spat on the trail. "They killed my friends, they killed the children of my friends, they mutilated one of the sons of mi Padrino Ochoa. Juntarme con esos? Jamas primero muerto!"

"Who are you?" Lyons asked again. "Why are you asking about Los Blancos?"

The young man answered. "We are Yoeme. The Mexicans call us Yaquis. We also fight the White gang. Come."

"Yaquis?" Blancanales asked, incredulous. "Yaqui Indians?"

"I said, Yoeme. Yaquis. The Yoeme do not come from India. We are the people of this land."

The three Yaquis led the way.

"Broncos..."Miguel Coral told the North Americans. "Wild ones. The old men used to talk about Yaquis and Mayos and Tarahumaras who still fought in the Sierras, but that was when I was a boy. Even then no one believed it and that was thirty years ago."

"We go?" Lyons asked.

"Why not?" Gadgets answered. "We're here, let's make the scene."

Blancanales looked to the Yaquis striding away. "They said they're fighting the White gang, Los Guerreros Blancos. I think we have a lot to talk over with them."

"We came for information," Lyons said, nodding. He started after the young men. "And they've got it."

To keep pace with the Yaquis, Lyons forced himself to jog. He realized why he had not seen tracks. The Yaquis wore rags over the soles of their boots. Their footsteps were only vague smears on the sand. His boots, stamping into the trail with the combined weight of his body and the equipment and weapons, left deep imprints.

They walked for kilometers, over the crest of a ridge, through a canyon. The Yaquis led them through the zigzags of a switchback trail weaving up the slope of a mountain. Sweat soaked Lyons's fatigues and rained into the dust of the trail.

On the last switchback before the top, the young Yaquis disappeared. Lyons looked up to the ridge. He did not see them.

Lyons stopped and studied the mountainside. Thoughts raced through his mind. Ambush? No. The Yaquis had saved them. Had the Yaquis abandoned them? He followed the vague smears of the Yaquis's tracks to a rock formation of vertical slabs. He found a shoulder-wide space in the rocks. The tracks led through the space. Inside the mountain, he saw what appeared to be the interior of a cave, highlighted by late-afternoon sunlight that came through the ceiling.

Taking a step back, Lyons studied a patchwork that stretched over the mountainside. The color of the cloth matched the sand. Splotches and patterns of gray matched the rocks and stone formations. Green plastic created the illusion of weeds. Planes or helicopters — or photo-recon satellites orbiting the earth — would see this mountain as no different from all the others in the Sierra Madres.

Lyons looked back. His partners and Davis and Coral struggled to catch up with him. Behind them, Yaqui children ran along the trail with mesquite branches, sweeping away the boot prints of the foreigners. A child laughed at a question from Blancanales, answering with a point to where Lyons stood.

Stepping through the gateway of stone, Lyons entered the shadowy interior. A fissure cut through the stone of the mountain. Along the sides of the fissure, three levels of caves had been cut into the stone. Stone steps led to the entrances of the caves. In addition to screening the interior of the mountain from airborne observation, the tent of camouflage, reinforced with spider works of rope inside, protected the village of caves from the sun and the wind.

Inside, Yaquis waited for the foreigners. Lyons saw young men and women, a few children, a few older people. Perhaps fifty people. Their faces showed neither welcome nor hatred, only interest. As Gadgets, Blancanales, Coral and Davis filed into the hidden village, Lyons noted details.

Like the three young men who had led them to the village, the men and most of the young women wore dust-colored cotton clothes. Many carried holstered revolvers and autopistols. Some of the men had dirt and bloodstains on their clothes. Sweat had streaked the crust of dust on their faces.

The interior smelled of cooking, but not of wood burning. Long ago, wood fires had blackened the tops of the caves with soot. But in a cave on the first level, Lyons saw pots bubbling on the gas burners of a clay stove. The cooking fire made no smoke.

In the same communal kitchen, white plastic pipe carried water to a sink made of fired clay. He saw a drainpipe under the sink. A woman making a meal from a stack of captured Mexican army rations looked directly into Lyons's eyes.

Above the crowd, people looked down from the second and third levels of caves. Clotheslines with pulleys ran from one side of the crevice to the other. High above the others, from above the third level of caves, a young woman in dust-colored clothes and web gear looked down. She wore binoculars around her neck, and held an M-16. Only the rise of her breasts under her shirt and the khaki scarf over her hair distinguished her from the males.

To one side of him, Lyons saw captured Mexican army equipment and weapons on a plastic tarp. Uniforms, web gear, boots, binoculars, a mortar and rounds, a few Uzi submachine guns, a stack of M-16 and FN-FAL rifles were all arranged and ordered like a quartermaster's display.

A stripped M-16 lay on a cloth. The Yaqui cleaning the assault rifle finished his task with a last flourish of an oily rag, then snapped the weapon together. He stood to watch the strangers arriving.

"These people have got their act together," Gadgets said behind Lyons.

Blancanales noted the weapons. "The mortar, the rifles. The food. They captured all that today."

"It's an invisible town," Lyons commented.

"Not a town," Blancanales corrected. "Almost all these people are fighters."

The young man with the Springfield rifle stepped out of a second-level cave, and an old man followed him. The old man paused to study the five strangers, then came down the stone steps.

The young man spoke to the elder in the Yaqui language. The old man nodded and smiled to the foreigners as he listened. Finally, the old man grasped the youth's shoulder and spoke quietly to him. Then the old man spoke to the foreigners. "He tells me you are friends of Senor Ochoa. Come to my room, tell us of the war in Culiacan. And I will tell you of the war in our mountains."

"Leave your weapons," the young man ordered.

The old man dismissed the order with a wave of his gnarled hand. "If you want, leave your packs here. The children will not touch them."

"Achai!" the young man protested. "Ellos no son de aqui. No son de confiar."

"Yes," the old man said, smiling. "Speak Spanish. Your Spanish is much better than your Yaqui. Come, boy. Come, my guests."

In the cave the old man found a lamp by touch. He flicked a disposable lighter and lit the gas lamp. A pale-yellow light illuminated the interior. He turned to his guests.

"You please call me, achai. It means grandfather. I apologize for the boy. El Brujo is mucho macho, but very clever."

"Why do you call him El Brujo?" Blancanales asked.

"A joke, my friend."

The young man entered and answered, "Because I am educated in the ways of my people and in technology. I can do what no one else can do."

The achaipointed to the light. "He made that lantern. We shit and a machine makes gas for the lanterns."

"Biogas," the proud young man declared. "I read about it in a book from China and then I made the machine. Now the children and the women do not search for wood. They are safe when the helicopters and planes look for us. And no one coughs from smoke in their lungs."

Gadgets nodded. "Anaerobic decomposition of waste to liberate methane which can then be used as heating or lighting gas. Odorless, smokeless. That's natural."

"He is a very smart boy," the achaisaid, nodding. "And he kills many of the Blancos. But call him 'Vato.' He is too young to have earned the title of El Brujo — the Sorcerer. Maybe in a few more years. Sit, my guests. I do not have chairs for my cave. But there are no scorpions. I think I killed them all. Sit."

Davis, exhausted from the all-day hike, took a place where he could doze against the cool stone of the cave wall. Gadgets studied the stone floor with a penlight before he sat down.

Lyons sat near the cave mouth. While he watched the faces of the old man and Vato, he listened to the people outside, their shouts, their laughter and the singsong of the children's voices. The scraping of a bore-rod continued as a Yaqui cleaned the captured rifles. Then he noticed Miguel Coral intently studying Vato. Blancanales resumed questioning the old man.

"Why is there fighting?" the Politician asked.

"We fight for the rights of the Yaqui people," Vato declared. "To free..."

The achaiheld up a hand to stop the young man's speech. "We fight because the army and the White Warriors gang terrorize our people. They burn our farms. They will not let us live in peace."

"Does the army work with the White Warriors?" Blancanales asked.

"These soldiers are not of the army of Mexico. We knew the soldiers before. But they are gone. And these men in uniforms come. We think the soldiers and the White Warriors are the same."

"Just who are the White Warriors?" Gadgets interrupted.

"You ask us?" the achaiexclaimed, amazed. "But you fought them in Culiacan, why..."

Vato interrupted. "He said that he worked for Senor Ochoa." The young man pointed to Coral. "But you others, who are you?"

Coral answered. "Ellos solo buscan a Los Guerreros Blancos, no les importan ni sus propiedades, ni su dinero."

"Who are you?" Vato repeated.

"He is a pilot for the American DEA," Coral said, pointing to Davis. The Mexican's arm motioned to Able Team. "They are different than the DEA. I think they are secret agents."

"Spies?" the achaiasked, confused, incredulous. "Why do you come to spy on us? What do you want to know, Americans? How to be hungry? How to suffer injustice? How to be with sorrow? How to be without hope? Spies!" The old man laughed. "If you are lucky, you will never know what we know."

"Grandfather," Coral explained. "They will not interfere with you. They want Los Guerreros Blancos — the White Warriors. Only the White Warriors. And I am here to help them. I trust them." Coral turned to the young man. "You, you know who I am. I stood at the side of Don Ochoa. I know you saw..."

Vato sneered back an answer. "But now you are with the Americans. Did they offer you a deal? Turn informer, send others to prison, so you do not go?"

Coral laughed, his eyes narrowing to slits, his hands closing. In the soft yellow light and shadows of the cave, the men of Able Team saw the face of Miguel Coral the hardcore killer, no longer the family man negotiating for the safety and future of his family and his freedom. Now they saw the cold, calculating assassin who had survived twenty years of gang wars, ten years as the personal protector of the most hated, feared and respected gang patriarch on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

"Boy," Coral said, smiling like death. "Be quiet." Then he turned to the achai. "They do not care about your farms. If you help us, we will attack Los Guerreros Blancos. These men are a law unto themselves. And behind them, they have all the money and the weapons of America. If you want your enemies, who are also my enemies, destroyed, then we will fight together. It is agreed?"

Coral turned to Able Team.

"You see, these people... the soil of their mountains is very poor. There is no water. The corn does not grow. They could never feed their children. So on their farms, they grow opium."