Warlord of Azatlan

12

Mist swirled through the shadowed pines. The boy ran through the flowers. He called out again and again in his Indian language. He shielded the North Americans with his body as he shouted to the ambushers.

A voice answered. "Congratulations. Xagil tells me you're okay. For that, you stay alive. But put down the rifles, please."

"Who are you?" Lyons shouted. He did not lay down his Atchisson.

"I am coming out. If you shoot, my friends kill you all."

Blancanales flipped up the safety of his M-16/M-203. He slung the weapon over his shoulder. He looked to his partners.

"Wizard, Ironman. Be polite. Lock up."

Lyons and Gadgets set their safeties also. But Lyons held the assault shotgun ready.

A man walked from the mist. Six foot, barrel chested, he wore gray fatigues. Old bloodstains splotched the Nazi uniform like camouflage patterns. He held a Heckler & Kock G-3 rifle fitted with a three-power scope. He had a tiny 9mm Ingram machine-pistol in a hand-made leather belt holster. On his back, they saw a steel crossbow.

Though he appeared to be Indian, with dark hair and a face as dark as mahogany, a faded tattoo on his left forearm identified his nationality and told of his past:

USMC DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.

Blancanales stepped forward and extended his hand: "Pleased to meet you, sir. I'm Rosario."

"I am Nate." The ex-Marine spoke oddly, the inflections and rhythm of his English somehow different.

"How long since you spoke English?" Blancanales asked.

"A long time. I speak Quiche now. Sometimes Castilian — Spanish."

Lyons stared, his mouth gaping open. Gadgets slung his Galil. Hooking his thumbs in the straps of his backpack, he walked in a circle around Nate. He saw the carved wood and hand-hammered steel of crossbow and a quiver of short arrows. A knitted bag displaying the stylized figure of a prancing horse held magazines for the G-3 and Ingram.

Nate glanced at the stranger eyeing him. Gadgets laughed.

"This guy is indigenized!"

"Who are you?" Lyons finally asked.

"I told you. Nate."

"I mean, who are you with?"

"We don't have time to talk," he answered, his words coming awkwardly. He pointed into the pines. "A world of shit comes. If you want to live, we move. Follow Xagil. I follow."

Nate and the woman spoke quickly in Quiche. The boy, Xagil, led Able Team through the pines. As they walked down into a ravine, the forest became dark with lush growth. Pushing aside a curtain of vines, Xagil followed a trail that tunneled through tangled vines and brush and bromeliad. Nate, the woman and the little girl walked soundlessly behind them.

After hundreds of yards without sight of the sun, they came to a crevice dropping into the interior of the mountain. A trail down a narrow ledge led to the fissure in the black stone.

Some distance along the ledge, they entered a cave. Xagil disconnected the monofilament triplines of booby traps. After Able Team and the Indians passed, Nate reconnected the monofilament lines.

Blancanales waved a flashlight over the interior of a cavern. Bats squeaked and fluttered in the shadows. The bats' eyes refracted the light like a thousand red stars.

"Where are your friends?" Lyons asked the ex-Marine.

Nate ignored the question. He went to one of the many shadows on the cavern wall and disappeared into the voids.

"Come!"

The flashlight that Blancanales held threw a weak glow on glistening black stone. The passage had once been a bubble in the molten magma of the flowing mountain. Now, the line of North Americans and Indians filed through it. Nate walked through the total darkness by memory. Able Team followed Blancanales's flashlight.

Wind rushed into their faces. Blinking against the daylight, Able Team stepped into a cave mouth that overlooked a forested valley and mountains.

Lyons went to the edge and looked down. Hundreds of feet below, clouds drifted against the vertical wall of volcanic rock. He could see nothing above them but more rock.

Another Indian woman, actually a teenager with fine-boned, austere features, greeted Nate in Quiche. She went silent when she saw Able Team and their camouflage uniforms. Reflexively, her hand went for a pistol hidden under her huipile. Nate spoke to her in the Indian language as he stripped off his weapons and ammunition. He made introductions.

"My wife Marylena. Her sister Maria. Her son Xagil. And my son..."

He took a bundle from his wife's back. A baby stirred inside.

"...Tecun." He pointed to Blancanales. "Rosario. I don't know your names…"

"I'm the Wizard," Gadgets told them. He looked to Lyons. "And he's the Ironman."

Nate nodded. He spoke quickly to his wife. She went to an adjoining chamber. "We eat while we talk."

They sat at a hand-sawn and -crafted table on chairs of rough pine. Marylena returned with fruit and steaming patties of corn dough.

Gadgets held up one of the corn patties. "What are these?"

"Tamalitas. Now, you three men with false names, we will discuss why you are here."

"Unomundo's gang killed four Federal agents in Texas," Lyons briefed Nate. "We've come to kill him."

Nate laughed. He called out to the women in Quiche, translated what the North American had said. The women laughed. He returned his attention to Able Team.

"Three men against a thousand?"

Lyons choked on a mouthful of mango. "A thousand!"

"He's got an army up here?" Gadgets asked.

Nate did not answer. "You have money?"

Blancanales sliced an avocado with his double-edged Gerber knife. "You'll sell us information?"

The ex-Marine's lip rose in a sneer. "La CIA. C-I-A. Always the same."

"Not us, man." Gadgets denied the charge. "We don't associate with those Harvard spooks."

"I know," Nate nodded. "You are Boy Scouts. Collecting butterflies. Ha, ha, ha. Now, we talk truth. I have lived here many years. It was good here. A few bandits. I killed them. A few EGP. I killed them. The army were my friends. They did not ask for my passport. Very peaceful. Then Unomundo came. For six months, it has been very bad. We cannot plant corn. They shoot our sheep and cows. Shoot many families..."

"What about the army and the police?" Lyons interrupted.

"Unomundo paid gold. Those who did not take the gold died. Men go to tell the government, but never return. Everyone is afraid. They move away."

"Why not you?" Blancanales asked.

Nate ignored the question. "Sometimes we fight Unomundo. Then his soldiers kill everyone they find. Women, families, children, no difference. We need friends, but we need money, too. You are CIA. You have money. First, you pay for my barbed wire."

"That was your place on the cliff? What a view!" Gadgets exclaimed through a mouthful of tamalita.

Rotorthrob echoed in the cave. The men of Able Team jerked around, starting from their pine chairs. In the distance, they heard explosions, then the ripsaw of mini-Gatlings. Nate laughed.

"They chop down trees with their fire superiority. Get a body count on shadows. But it is good that Xagil found you. Otherwise the fascistaswould have found you. And God have mercy if they take you alive."

Lyons ended the conversation. "Where is Unomundo?"

"Perhaps at his base. Maybe no."

"Where is the base?" Lyons pressed.

"Want to go there? I give you the guided tour. One thousand dollars each. Plus free prisoner for questions."

Blancanales laughed as he opened his pack. "It's a deal."

"In advance. Money stays with Marylena in case I do not return."

They counted out hundred-dollar bills.

Descending through a maze of volcanic formations and caverns, Nate led them deep into the mountain. Water trickled in the darkness beyond their flashlights. When they kicked rocks from the path, the rocks fell for seconds before hitting stone. Some-times, the rocks fell into the void and no sound came. Nate led them through the twisting passages. From time to time, he stopped to disarm booby traps.

They came to a chamber he used as a storeroom. As their flashlights swept across neat stacks of Unomundo materiel — uniforms, tools, boots, rations, radios — Nate diffused devices scattered throughout the equipment. He selected uniforms for Able Team.

"At the base, they wear a gray uniform," he explained. "Those green ones, they only wear those to look like the army."

All the uniforms showed bloodstains. Blancanales saw a pile of wallets and other personal effects. He glanced through a wallet.

An identity card printed in German carried a photo of a young blond man. Another wallet held the card of a dead man from New Jersey. Another identified a soldier from El Salvador. Blancanales passed the wallets to Lyons and Gadgets.

"All foreigners."

"Most of his soldiers are not Guatemalan," Nate told them. "But some are."

Lyons changed into a uniform with a bullet hole in the left chest pocket. "How many of his meres have you put down?"

"Count the uniforms. Plus many I could not strip."

"You do Mr. Bones?" Gadgets asked him.

"What?"

"The skull on the rifle."

"Yes. He was a Frenchman who raped and tortured. I made a joke of him."

"And what was their response?" Lyons buckled on his web belt and bandoliers, then bounced on his toes to test for metal tapping against metal.

"They patrol. They try to ambush. But they are not good soldiers. They do not fight, they murder."

"And what about the weapons?" Lyons pointed to the stacked uniforms, then the three that Able Team wore. "Fourteen sets of fatigues and gear, but no rifles, no pistols. No ammunition..."

Nate stopped the questioning. "Time to go, tourists."

A few minutes later they emerged from one of the thousands of crevices and caves that pitted the mountain. Rocky hillsides sloped down to a narrow valley. Unomundo's road slashed through pine and deciduous forest. The few cleared fields had been burned.

Beyond, perhaps two miles from where they stood, the black wall of another mountain rose into the clouds. Nate pointed out the path they would take.

"There is the road to Azatlan. It goes around that mountain. Unomundo's base is on the north side. We will cross the valley and go into the mountain. The caves will take us to Unomundo."

Carrying only the weight of their weapons, the four men moved quickly. Able Team labored to maintain a steady jog despite the thin air. Nate allowed them to rest every few minutes while he ranged ahead in the forest. They crossed the dirt road without sighting mercenaries.

Distant rotorthrob drifted to them from time to time. They stayed under the cover of the trees.

Once, as they approached a clearing, their eyes searching the sky, they heard metal clanking in the rhythm of steps. Nate turned to signal Able Team, but they had already disappeared into the grass and brush.

A line of fifty gray-clad mercenaries passed.

Minutes after the voices and footsteps had faded away, Nate saw Able Team rise silently from cover. With hand signals, he directed them to double-time. A five-minute run took them to the mountain.

Once they had entered the darkness of the subterranean passages, Nate finally spoke.

"You have been in the jungle before. Where?"

Blancanales numbered the wars and countries on his fingers. "Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia..."

"Bolivia, Brazil..." Gadgets added.

"Los Angeles," Lyons added.

Nate smiled at Lyons's joke. "I wish I had ten friends like you. We could have killed all the mercenaries."

"Doesn't say much for the quality of Unomundo's men."

Leading Able Team through the darkness of the caves, the ex-Marine answered with a sneer. "They are the best money can buy."

"What about you?" Lyons asked him. "Why aren't you working for Unomundo? Won't he pay your price?"

Lyons's question offended even the tolerant Gadgets Schwarz. "What an idiot thing to ask," he said. "Leave it to a cop to ask a question like that. Why don't yousign up with that Nazi warlord, Lyons?"

Nate spat out an answer. "Unomundo has a bounty on me. Ten thousand quetzales. That is ten thousand dollars, United States. And this is for me. A man with no country. But you, you are special.

Tres huevos de la Cia. I think he will pay a hundred thousand dollars for you. What do you think? Should I take top price? I take quick hundred thousand Q. I will never again need to cut wood or plant corn or shear sheep. My wife will not live in a cave, my son will have school..."

Blancanales interrupted with soothing words. "Our friend asked the wrong question. It's just that we can't understand your one-man war against these invaders."

Despite the questions and the argument, Nate never broke pace. He led them relentlessly upward through the cold darkness of the caves. "What is there to understand? I live in this beautiful place, these mountains, in the forest. If a thousand murderers and rapists with machine guns came to your home, you would fight, yes?"

"I'm sorry," Lyons apologized. "Sometimes I don't understand the obvious. I only wondered why you hadn't just left like all the other people."

"Someone must fight." Nate ended the talk by striding far ahead. From time to time, he flashed his light back to guide them.

Gadgets hissed to Lyons: "Be cool, will you? He's got real sensitive feelings. Besides, I think he's got a grudge against the CIA."

"I cannot figure him. He's an American, but he's been up here for years. Maybe he'sCIA. Maybe he's an agent who went crazy and disappeared."

"I don't care who he is," Gadgets snapped back. "He's our ticket to a quick hit. Don't piss him off."

"Until I know what his game is, we aren't secure. We don't know who he's working for."

"Dig it, dude, I too am a paranoid, but there is a limit." Gadgets jogged away from Lyons, leaving him to walk alone.

A few minutes later, they saw daylight.

"Wait here," Nate told them. "I check for men watching the cave, then I come back. It has happened before." He left the cave for the open air.

Lyons unholstered his silent autoColt. "I'm following him. He could be putting an ambush together."

Gadgets stared at Lyons for a moment, then turned to Blancanales. "Think we could kick his brain straight?"

Blancanales shook his head, no. "He was a policeman too many years. Go, Lyons. Go out there. Satisfy your suspicions."

Pistol in hand, Lyons slipped from the narrow cave mouth. Blinking against the afternoon glare, he pushed a wall of pine branches.

Rotorthrob shattered the quiet. Squinting against the light, Lyons looked up.

A gunship swooped down on him.