Warlord of Azatlan

15

Electronics guided the fighters — Guatemalan and North American — through the cool moonlit darkness of the forest. Nate and Lyons walked point. Lyons held the Atchisson ready, a 12-gauge shell in the chamber, his thumb on the safety. Nate carried the H&K MP5 silenced submachine gun, using the Starlite scope to penetrate the night. Knowing every trail and hill, every smell and sound of the valley of Azatlan, the ex-Marine rarely needed the Starlite's light-enhancing optics.

Gadgets followed with the Indians. Able Team's communications specialist also scanned the night with electronics — but not in the visual spectrum. He monitored the several frequencies used by the pro-fascist mercenaries, listening for the chatter of squads on patrol or the clicks of ambush units. He walked almost deaf, wearing two earphones. One went to the altered circuits of a mere walkie-talkie, the other to the hand-radio linking him to Lyons and Blancanales. Able Team did not fear the monitoring of their frequency. Sophisticated encoding circuits totally scrambled every transmission.

Blancanales walked at the end of the line, his M-16/M-203 cocked and locked, a 40mm fragmentation round in the grenade tube. In case of action or ambush, he would need to serve as a radioman and translator. Only Nate spoke English, Spanish and Quiche. The Indians spoke Quiche and some Spanish. Gadgets spoke very little Spanish, Lyons almost none. Only Lyons, Gadgets, and Blancanales had radios. The combinations and permutations of languages threatened the group with communications chaos. And in combat, failure to communicate often meant death.

Descending the rocky slopes, they saw the lights of trucks moving on the dirt road. They moved quickly down the slope, Nate leading the group across untraveled ground. He accepted the slight sounds of their legs moving through ferns, the soft crackling of their feet on the woodland mulch, rather than risk ambush on the trails.

They entered the trees. With the branches screening the moonlight, they now walked in total darkness. The line closed up, each man putting a hand on the shoulder of the man ahead. Only Nate, with the Starlite, had sight. He scanned the black from time to time to spot the trees and obstacles ahead, then walked through the darkness by memory.

As they neared the road, Lyons saw lights again, streaking toward him from the darkness like tracers or distant headlights. He flinched, then realized he had not heard a shot or a truck.

"What?" Nate whispered. He had felt Lyons's hand startle on his shoulder.

"Lights. I see… there! A light."

"Fireflies, spook man."

At the road, they went flat on the earth. Nate watched the tree lines with the Starlite scope. Gadgets monitored the mercenary frequencies. But they did not have time to wait for a mercenary unit to betray itself with movement or careless talk or a cigarette.

Nate turned to Lyons and pointed across the road. Then the ex-Marine went to two of his Quiche friends and whispered for them to follow the North American. When no autofire or Claymores cut down the first three men, more followed.

At the opposite tree line, Lyons crouched in the darkness. He knew the extreme danger the others faced as they crossed. An ambush unit would not hit the first few men. They would wait until the road divided the North Americans and Indians into two groups, then hit them both. Retreat would divide their group. Advance meant sacrificing men in the kill zone.

Fireflies and the cries of nightbirds teased Lyons' reactions. His eyes strained to find form or movement around them. His ears heard the boots and sandals of his companions on the gravel. Calming his breathing, he sucked down long, smooth breaths through his nose. He smelled only the pines and the dry grass and his own two-day odor.

Vibrations under his feet warned him. He keyed his hand-radio and whispered. "Truck coming."

Clicks answered. Then a voice sounded in the earphone he wore. "We're all across."

They moved into the trees. Hearing gravel rattle in fenders and the squeak of springs, they went flat as headlights came over a rise.

A bus passed them. More headlights, another bus. Then a flatbed stake-sided truck. The truck's headlight glare lit the interior of the second bus. They saw a gray-uniformed mercenary driving. A second mercenary stood in the door, his M-16 pointed into the night.

Blancanales and Lyons heard Gadgets whisper through their earphones.

"Like the Nazi in the cave said, trucks and buses. To take the Nazi soldiers to Guatemala City."

They answered with clicks, then moved again.

Jogging through the darkness, Lyons thought of the irony and desperation of this night. With Quiche Indian men whose names he did not know, whose language he did not speak, he went to fight Nazis. A few men against a thousand. A few North Americans and Guatemalans against an army of pro-fascist mercenaries — North American felons, Central American murderers, criminals from England and France and Germany — killing in order to impose a murderous, racist regime on the beautiful nation of Guatemala.

Carl Lyons, the blond North American, had come full circle from his European ancestry. His forefathers had fought and decimated the Indian nations so that they could impose their European culture on the New World. Now, only two hundred years later, he fought with Indians as allies against another invasion. Americans — Anglo and Quiche — fighting European dogma and hatred…

Emerging from the cavern, they heard the screams. Nate had led them through the labyrinth of passages and vast echoing chambers in a few minutes. This time they did not look down at the flat assembly area outside the hidden complex. They came out in the crevices and jumbled rocks level with the cave mouth. Only two hundred yards away, they saw the headlights of trucks. The glare of worklights from the huge cave lit the trees beyond the assembly area.

The screams tore the night. All of the fighters — North American and Guatemalan — heard them. Nate went to all the Indian men and whispered to them. Then he explained to the three men of Able Team: "I told them we can do nothing for the captives. Nothing until we blow the cave behind them. They must close their eyes and ears until then. And you, too."

When they planned the assault, Nate had briefed them on the terrain and security surrounding the complex. Because the four North Americans had the most training and experience, Nate and Able Team led the approach to the perimeter, the Quiche fighters following.

A cleared perimeter surrounded the complex. For a hundred yards around the truck park, only tree stumps remained of the forest. The grass had been burned to denude the earth. Mines and booby traps prevented intruders from crossing the perimeter.

The road wound around the mountain to approach the complex from the west. Trucks and buses passed a guardpost at the tree line, then continued up the slope to the complex.

As the group crept through the forest, Gadgets stopped. Signaling his Able Team partners with three clicks of his hand-radio, he halted the group. He whispered into his hand-radio.

"Ambush."

Lyons grabbed Nate to stop him. Flat on the ground, he hissed: "Ambush. Wizard caught it on the walkie-talkie."

"Need the Starlite?"

"Come on."

Lyons and Blancanales snaked over to their electronics specialist. Nate followed a moment later. They met in a tight knot, their heads touching, their whispers lost in the noise of the trucks only a hundred feet away.

"Where?" Blancanales hissed.

"Don't know. One mere radioed another."

"They hear us?" Lyons asked. "See us?"

"No. One checked with the other. A wake-up call. Could be on the other side of the road."

"Here's the Starlite." Nate passed the silenced MP-5 to Gadgets. "Signal us when." Nate crawled back to the Indians to halt them.

Gadgets flicked on the Starlite's power. Lyons felt his partner lay the Heckler & Koch submachine gun across his back. Gadgets swept the darkness with the electronics.

"Can't see... Grass is too high and they've got cover. Not moving."

Able Team considered the options in silence. Wait? Retreat? Risk it?

"A rock," Lyons decided.

"Stay low," Gadgets cautioned him. "We could be in the kill zone right now."

Easing over on his back, Lyons searched through the grass and forest leaves for stones. He piled a handful on his stomach.

Tossing a pebble toward the road, he hit a tree fifty feet away. He waited, listening.

"Another one," Gadgets whispered.

The second stone pattered on leaves. Gadgets whispered again.

"Ten feet to the right this time."

The next rock bounced on stone. "One merc's telling the others to stop throwing rocks at him. Throw to the left."

A clink.

"Quit it!" a voice called out in English.

"What?" another voice answered.

"The rocks, you shit."

"I didn't throw any..."

"Estupidos, silencio!"

Slipping out his silenced autoColt, Lyons crawled toward the voices. Blancanales shrugged off his backpack of gear and weapons, and followed. They moved infinitely slowly, gently pushing through the grass, advancing a few inches at a time. Minutes passed as they snaked closer and closer to where the pro-fascists hid in the darkness.

Blancanales heard a man shift positions in front of him, a boot squeaking, a buckle scraping across the metal of a rifle. He flicked his eyes back and forth, trying to find the man's form with the edges of his vision.

Only five feet away, the luminous numbers of a watch appeared. Twenty feet away, another man cleared his throat. Blancanales continued forward, feeling the ground ahead of him with his left hand, the Beretta in his right.

The man to his side cleared his throat again. Blancanales heard a boot scrape on a rock a mere arm's reach away from him.

A slap, like a fist against flesh, startled the man in front of him. The noise had come from where Lyons had gone. Blancanales heard the man click a walkie-talkie's transmit key, then whisper: "What was that?"

A bullet through the brain answered him. The walkie-talkie clattered from the dead man's hand. Blancanales picked up the small radio and listened.

"Meyers?" A voice asked.

Blancanales hissed a reply. "Yeah?"

"Devlin here. Lupo?" The voice asked.

"Here." A Spanish accented voice answered.

"Cole?"

"Yeah?" Another hissed answer. Lyons.

A roll call. Three men and their leader. Two already dead.

On the road, a bus neared the guard post. An out-of-line headlight flashed through the trees. Blancanales saw the silhouette of the next man in the ambush unit. He braced his Beretta on the corpse in front of him. He lined up the dash-dot-dash of his Beretta's betalight nightsights, and waited.

As the next buses came up the road, dust diffusing the high beams, Blancanales snapped two shots into the silhouette. One of the ejected casings clinked on a rock. He waited.

A hideous wavering scream came from the parked trucks.

Guffaws came from the darkness. "Listen to 'em fuckin' up those peons," said a muttered voice.

Blancanales pointed his Beretta at the voice and sprayed the lone laughing Nazi mercenary with a three-round burst. Two rounds slapped flesh, one slug skipped off stone and hit a tree.

The laughter became a gasp. Blancanales fired another burst, heard a bullet strike plastic and flesh. He fired again. He heard blood gurgle in a throat.

Then he picked up the walkie-talkie and whispered:

"Meyers?" No answer.

"Lupo?" No answer.

"Cole?" No answer.

"Devlin?" No answer.

He whispered into his hand-radio. "Wizard. Anything?"

"There's an ambush unit on the other side of the road. Using another frequency."

Lyons broke in. "Forget them. The road."

Signaling Nate and the Indians forward, the group crawled a hundred feet to the road. They reassembled opposite the guard post.

Two mercenaries manned the post, their M-16 rifles slung over their shoulders. As each bus or truck passed, they pointed their flashlights at the drivers, then waved them past. Most of the drivers did not slow for the inspection.

Able Team sighted their silenced pistols on the two meres. Nate aimed the MP-5. A bus sputtered past the two meres. Blancanales watched the road. He saw no headlights downslope.

"Now!"

Slugs punched into the meres' heads and chests, staggering them back with impacts.

As they fell, Gadgets and Blancanales dashed across to them and picked up the flashlights. Lyons and Nate followed. Still no headlights downhill. Nate waved the Indians across.

Gadgets and Blancanales manned the guard post.

A truck approached. Blancanales stepped out into the road, waving his flashlight. As the truck slowed, he put the beam on the gray-uniformed driver. Blancanales stepped back out of the road.

The truck shifted, the engine revved, then it continued up the road, regaining speed.

Lyons and Nate rode the truck's rear bumper to the cavern fortress of Unomundo.