Scorched Earth

14

Beneath the dome of stars, mountains floated in the moonlight. The sand of the trails shimmered pale blue. Lyons no longer felt his boots striking the earth as he ran. He floated over the trail, unaware of his body, his breathing or the pain of the hours of running without rest.

After learning about the spotter plane, Able Team had lightened themselves by passing their weapons to Yaqui warriors. Yaquis from the cave village carried their packs and ammunition and back-up weapons, including Lyons's Atchisson and the 40mm grenades for Blancanales's M-16/M-203.

Able Team only carried themselves. Miguel Coral had surrendered to his fatigue and remained behind in the caves with Davis.

Blancanales and Gadgets had agreed to the crosscountry race on one condition: runners would go ahead to check the pueblo. They did not want to run all night for nothing.

On the trail, Lyons left his partners behind. He lagged only a few hundred meters behind Vato, keeping up with the line of Yaquis. He ran without thinking, oblivious to the slopes and the landscape floating past. His eyes focused only on the trail, luminous with moonlight, and the forms of the runners ahead.

Two hours after dark, a teenage messenger confirmed the alarm. A young boy, his eyes wild with desperation, talked with Vato. When Lyons appeared, the boy startled away. Vato stopped him and reassured him.

Lyons stood outside the group as the Yaquis questioned the boy. He closed his eyes and slept on his feet, the language of the indigenasaround him strange and incomprehensible, like voices in a dream. Finally he heard Vato's voice speaking English.

"Helicopters came with soldiers. He escaped by hiding. When he ran, he had heard rifles and explosions."

Without opening his eyes, Lyons concentrated on his questions. He tried to visualize the distant mountain village.

"Is the town on a hill or in a valley?" he asked Vato.

"In a canyon. Steep mountainsides to the north and south."

"Cliffs?"

"Impossible to walk at night."

"How many helicopters and where did they land?"

"Three helicopters." Vato turned to the boy, asked more questions and translated the boy's replies. "He says they landed on the hills. That way they could fire down into the pueblo."

"How many people in the village?"

"Only a few families. Perhaps a hundred campesinos and Yoeme. Perhaps more."

"Fighters?"

"The fighters are with us. Only a few stayed there."

"Do they know where the hidden caves are?"

"They will not betray us!"

Lyons opened his eyes. He had his plan. He forced himself not to simply issue instructions to the proud young Yaqui leader. He put his hand on Vato's shoulder, as if to steady himself.

"My friend, it would be reckless not to alert the others to the..."

"True," Vato interrupted. "But they are already on alert."

"Have you sent your fastest runners ahead to recon the scene? Then they can tell us what to expect. Warn them of trip wires, booby traps."

"Yes," Vato said with a nod. "If the soldiers are still there, they will fear attack in the night."

"And send the boy back to the caves. Tell him to tell Davis, the pilot, to come. We will attempt to capture not only soldiers and officers, but a helicopter too. Tell him to also tell my partners."

Vato laughed. "Yes! Very good! You have a pilot, we will have a helicopter. Amigo, you can continue now. I will instruct the boy and the runners."

Lyons ran again.

Mesquite branches shattered the distant scene with web works of blue lines. Keeping their bodies pressed flat, they moved slowly through the desert brush, snaking past mesquite, pushing aside branches and dry weeds. Lyons and Vato crawled to the ridgeline's drop-off to gain an unobstructed view of the pueblo below.

Hundreds of meters to the south, lanterns and flashlights illuminated a single street and two rows of adobe houses. The lights silhouetted soldiers and projected giant forms onto the near-vertical mountainside beyond the village. A fire burned between two houses, flames leaping up.

Voices carried to the warriors watching the scene. Laughter, shouts. Sometimes a woman shrieked.

Below Lyons and Vato the ridge fell straight into the rocks of a gully. Moonlight gleamed off water. From the stream, one switchback trail led to the west, to the ridgeline overlooking the pueblo. From the other side of the stream, other trails cut east, zigzagging up an embankment to the houses. The two rows of adobe houses, scattered on both sides of a north-south road, occupied the flat area in the narrow canyon.

Another woman screamed, but this time from the ridgeline. Helicopters were parked not more than a hundred meters from where the North American and the Yaqui sprawled in the brush.

Despite his mind-numbing exhaustion, Lyons felt a surge of rage. He suppressed his loathing and urge to kill, returning his attention to the problem of the infiltration and recapture of the village. He could do nothing for the people now.

But later, he resolved, he would give the soldiers over to the village. Let the families of the murdered and raped judge the raiders.

Shoulder to shoulder with Vato, Lyons sketched his plan in whispers. "The ones in the town can't see the helicopters. The ones at the helicopters can't watch the town. I believe we can take all of them at once. My team has radios. My team knows booby traps, and we have silenced pistols."

"Our knives are silent," Vato told him.

"But they cannot kill from a distance. When my partners come, I believe we should divide into three groups. One group for the helicopters. The second will enter the village from the south, the third from the north. Once we have closed on the soldiers, even if there is an alarm, we will take them."

Vato nodded in the moonlight. "Silenced pistols and walkie-talkies. Tonight we have the luxury of technology."

"Remember, your fighters must understand that we will take the officers alive. And the helicopter radios must be controlled. We cannot allow any of the soldiers to send a panic message."

"No one radios for help. No one escapes. No one lives."

"Only the officers."

They crawled back through the brush. Pausing at the rocky crest of the ridge, Lyons rose to a crouch. He looked downhill to where the three Huey troopships were parked on a wide, flat plateau like huge somnambulant insects. He watched for a minute as silhouettes crossed the glaring lights. Other forms stood around fires.

From the height of the crest, he searched the ridge for an avenue of infiltration. Directly in front of him, to the north of the helicopters, open ground denied access. To the east, any soldier looking up from the pueblo could have spotted Lyons and the Yaquis on the cliff face below the helicopters.

He saw a crease in the ridgeline. A shallow gully, erosion-carved during the torrential tropical rains of the summer, cut through the center of the camp, running southwest from the helicopters to the darkness of the mountainside. That erosion ditch would be his avenue through the perimeter.

Squinting against the lights and the leaping fire, Lyons searched for sentries. He saw one form pacing in the darkness.

Then a uniform took his attention. A soldier was squatted at the door of a Huey. Unlike the other soldiers, who wore the camouflage greens of the Mexican army, he wore a gray uniform. Silver insignia flashed like sequins from his collar. Lyons saw the gray-uniformed soldier raise a bottle and drink.

Lyons noted the soldier's helicopter, then followed Vato through the moonlit darkness. They scrambled down the mountainside to a trail that paralleled the ridgeline. In minutes they rejoined the group of Yaquis.

As Lyons cleaned and checked his silenced Colt Government Model, more Yaquis led in Gadgets and Blancanales.

For minutes the two ex-Green Berets walked in circles and stretched as their muscles cooled. With the arrival of the foreigners, Vato divided the Yaqui fighters into three groups. He began the detailed explanations of the upcoming action and the role of each of the three groups, sketching the action in the sand.

Gadgets found his backpack and sprawled against it, only one hand moving slowly to pull open the Velcro closures. His words came in a dry rattle from his throat. "Twinkies... I must have Twinkies..."

"What are you talking about?" Lyons demanded.

Gadgets pulled out a plastic box and eased off the lid. "Been thinking about this good stuff all day long. How long we been running today?"

"It's already tomorrow." Blancanales gasped. "I'm getting too old for this..."

Cellophane crinkled. Lyons heard the tear of a pop top and the soft hiss of escaping pressure as his partner opened a can.

"Orange soda and some Twinkies, man. This is it. I am now ready. Mr. Wizard reporting for duty. Here, here's some quick energy for you dudes."

Lyons shook his head. "I don't want any of that junk-food shit."

"This ain't food. These are bennies. And aspirin. If you feel like me, you could pass out on your feet any second now."

"Benzedrine? Forget that! I'm good for another hour or so."

Blancanales accepted a tablet of each. He gulped them down with water. "Take it, Ironman. Dr. Politician says so. You've been running for sixteen hours straight. Consciousness at this moment is a medical impossibility. Take it."

Gadgets laughed. "Proven effective in highway tests by two million truck drivers."

"It could affect my judgement," Lyons said as he swallowed a tablet of the Benzedrine with two tablets of aspirin. If Blancanales, the ex-Green Beret medic, thought the stimulant necessary, Lyons would take it. But he didn't like any drugs, for any reason.

Gadgets laughed as he dug through his pack. "Maybe it'll make you extremo dien cai dau loco. Me, boppin' along packed with bennies and Twinkies... there's no hope for those goons, I'm gonna be one totally murderous dude."

"They deserve it." Lyons briefed them on the situation and the positions of the soldiers. As he detailed the infiltration, Blancanales and Gadgets checked their silenced Beretta 93-R autopistols.

Then Gadgets prepared his CAR for the silent attack. Popping open his munitions kit, he took out a Parkerized black silencer tube and two Colt magazines. He dropped the 30-round magazine out of the CAR and snapped in one of the replacement mags of twenty Interdynamic 5.56mm cartridges. The Interdynamic cartridges contained reduced powder charges that propelled 85-grain slugs at the subsonic velocity of two hundred and ninety-five meters per second. The silencer slipped down over the flash suppressor and locked. The reduced charges of the cartridges did not generate the chamber pressure to cycle the bolt, therefore totally eliminating mechanical noise. Together, the Interdynamic cartridges and the Maxim multibaffle silencer converted the CAR to a silent rifle with deadly accuracy out to two hundred meters. Gadgets slapped the base of the magazine to check its seating.

"Ready to go," he rasped.

The North Americans joined the groups of Yaquis. With modern weapons and knives, they went to liberate the pueblo.