Scorched Earth

13

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.

The four outsiders — Able Team and Coral — strained their ears to hear the helicopter. They heard nothing. But following the example of the Yaquis, they became parts of the ridge, arranging their camouflage cloaks, concealing their weapons.

Seconds later, the chopper soared over the eastern ridge, its skids seeming to touch the rocks. Rotor throb came as suddenly as an explosion. The Huey followed the contour of the slopes down the mountain, skimming over the mesquite.

Gadgets laughed. "That guy's getting tricky."

Blancanales and Lyons nodded agreement. Unlike the pilot of a spotter plane, who could shut off the engine and glide silently, or fly so high that people on the ground could not hear the motor, a helicopter pilot could not eliminate or diminish the noise of the rotors. However, if the pilot rode the contours of the terrain, using mountains and ridge-lines to block the rotor noise, enemies in a valley would not hear the approaching helicopter until it was too late. The pilot of the approaching helicopter had attempted exactly that.

They watched as the troopship rose to a hundred feet. The pilot circled once in the valley, then continued directly for the ridge where the group of Yaquis and North Americans lay in the dust and rocks.

Rotor throb exploded past them, dust swirling, as the Huey pilot tried to surprise his enemies on the other side of the ridge. The pilot circled the area once, then veered to the north.

"They're looking for action," Gadgets said. "No doubt about it."

"Vato," Lyons called out.

The young man rose from the rocks, brushing sand from his hair. He duck-walked over to the North Americans.

"Do they use light planes for surveillance and spotting?" Lyons asked.

"Usually. That helicopter, it is nothing. The many dead from yesterday makes the Blancos crazy, so they fly around thinking they will take revenge."

"Crazy for payback," Gadgets agreed. "We know what they want. Us."

Vato nodded. "I know my enemy. It is the planes we must be wary of. That is why I take the precaution of many lookouts. When the lookouts are alone, there is no sound. They listen for the planes, they watch the sky as we move. We have seen planes, but the planes have never seen us."

"They didn't leave a patrol down there," Lyons said, pointing to the ridge where the Mexican army squad had been annihilated. "And we need to take prisoners. What now?"

Slipping the sling of his Springfield rifle over his shoulder, Vato looked around to the vast expanse of the Sierra Madres. He glanced to the western horizon. Then he said, "Be patient. We know they will come. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. But they will come."

For the return to the concealed Yaqui village, Vato reorganized the scouts and main group into a skirmish line several kilometers wide. Scratching a straight line and a curved line in the sand, Vato explained to the foreigners that the skirmish line would sweep the mountains in a wide arc. The slowest foreigner, acting as the line's pivot point, would return directly to the cave village by the easiest trails. At the opposite end of the line, the fastest Yaquis, who could run at twice the speed of the foreigners, would range through the mountains, searching for patrolling Blancos.

Vato matched Yaquis to the foreigners. Coral — who as a Mexican counted as a foreigner in the Sierra Madres — would be the pivot, walking with a middle-aged Yaqui who still limped from a bullet wound. A young man who spoke some English would walk and jog with Gadgets. A young woman who spoke excellent Spanish would guide Blancanales.

After mentally totaling the weight of his weapons, Lyons decided to run with the Yaquis.

"Can you run for six more hours?" Vato asked.

"I've done it."

"Then you'll run with me in the center."

Staying close to Vato, Lyons observed the Yaqui chieftain's techniques of command. When Vato spoke with other Yaquis, he took the time to carefully explain details — as he had with the foreigners — by sketching maps and formations in the sand to illustrate his instructions and by pointing to landmarks. The Yaquis nodded and followed his orders. Vato never lost patience.

As they ran, Vato watched the horizons for aircraft and flashing signal mirrors. The Yaquis who ran from the valleys to the ridgelines to the mountaintops maintained contact with one another using their mirrors. Points of light flashed from mountain to mountain as the line moved across a wide swath of the Sierra Madres. Vato acknowledged the flash codes from time to time, breaking pace for a moment to flash back with his own mirror, then continuing.

On a mountainside, Lyons saw why the Yaqui patrol maintained their continuous observation of the sky. They ran through a forest of tall mesquite trees, many over thirty feet high. Then suddenly, as they went over the ridge, all life disappeared.

Black mesquite stood like grotesque sculptures. Ashes made the earth black. Lyons scanned the spot of devastation for an explanation of the fire. He noticed nothing extraordinary.

"What happened here? Napalm?" he called out to Vato.

"We saw the plane drop the bomb. But there was no one here. Maybe it was a coyote they saw. Or a coludo."

"A what?"

"A magic coyote. A spirit coyote."

Lyons knew the Yaqui jived him. "Who knows?"

For hours, Lyons and Vato ran without a break. The heat became intolerable at midday. To protect himself from sunstroke, Lyons stripped off his black long-sleeved fatigue shirt and fashioned a turban, folding and rolling and knotting the shirt to create a visor to shadow his eyes. As Lyons squatted in the cool shade of rock overhang to make his hat, Vato watched.

"You should have brought a sombrero, americano."

"Should've brought a lot of things," Lyons answered. "But I didn't plan on getting shot down in the desert."

"You entered the territory of the enemy without calculation. You were very lucky to live."

"Sun Tzu?"

Vato nodded.

"What would Sun Tzu say about the DEA promising my team full cooperation in investigating the dope war, then sending us into an ambush?"

"All war is based on deception."

In the next hours, as they ran through the mountains of the Sierra Madres, Lyons, the ex-cop from Los Angeles, considered the concept of war as deception expressed by the ancient Chinese philosopher-warrior. In crime, deception concealed and confused.

War required other deceptions. Lyons thought of his missions with Able Team. He realized he had never systematically analyzed the role of deception in the actions. From Able Team's first counterstrike on terrorism in Manhattan to the Mexican army's rocket strike on their DEA Lear jet, deception — not weapons, not personnel, not information, not opportunity — created each action.

Deception created threats: the explosives packed into a passenger car, the silent pistol in the purse of the teenage girl, the trusted diplomat, the plutonium generator deep in the Amazon jungle.

Deception created responses: counterterrorist groups masquerading as taxi drivers and drunks and beggars, elite soldiers as diplomats, Able Team as international businessmen or tourists or mercenaries.

Running through the Sonora desert, sweat salt crusting his face, Lyons accepted the truth of the ancient precept of Sun Tzu.

The principle of deception applied to every military action or terrorist attack in Lyons's personal experience. Even now, he had told the DEA he would investigate the dope gang known as Los Guerreros Blancos; in truth, he wanted only revenge. The DEA had promised full cooperation; in truth, they prepared to murder him.

Thinking of these things, Lyons ran throughout the day, following the young Yaqui from Tucson who read ancient Chinese philosopher-warriors. At dusk, a signal mirror flashing from a mountain stopped Vato.

Vato stood in the trail, watching the point of sunset-red brilliance blink in code. Lyons disentangled his sweat-soaked shirt from his head and slipped it on, the wet shirt cold on his overheated body. The temperature of the desert air dropped sharply with the approach of night.

"What is it?" Lyons asked.

Without looking at the American, Vato motioned him to wait. The message continued. Lyons drank the last of his water with a few salt tablets. Soon he would have the comfort of taking off his boots. Soon he would have the comfort of a cold-water bath. Only another few minutes, he thought to himself, over and over again as he waited. Finally Vato turned to him.

"A plane spotted a pueblo, a village of many families. They think the Guerreros will return with soldiers," he said

"They're positive the plane saw the village? It wasn't just an overflight?"

"The plane circled. The messenger fears that the soldiers will already be there."

"Then let's go." Lyons reached for his hand radio. If the distances permitted, he would brief his partners immediately.

"It is another five hours running."