"What do you think of that place, the rocks down there?" Davis asked through the intercom.
"You're driving," Lyons told him.
"One last look," Davis said.
Davis took the helicopter in a quick orbit of the hilltop. Lyons and the Yaquis sat in the door. In the valley beyond, more than three kilometers from the hilltop, they saw the geometry of farms: rectangular fields, the lines of cornstalks, the circles of ponds. Smoke drifted from trees concealing houses. But they saw no fields or trails near the flat hilltop itself.
Seconds later, the skids scraped rock. Dust and leaves swirled around the helicopter. Davis shut down the turbine. Only the rush of the slowing rotors broke the silence. Then the rotors stopped.
Wind carried away the odor of burned kerosene. The Yaquis straightened their uniforms and stepped from the gaping doors. Glancing at Gadgets, Miguel and Blancanales listening to the NSA radio, Lyons followed the Yaquis out.
Birds and insects broke the silence with their sounds. FN FAL paratroop rifles slung over their backs, the Yaquis walked into the forest. Jacom and Kino searched downhill, Ixto uphill. Lyons followed Vato. Staying two steps behind the slight young man, Lyons watched him move silently through the brush, listening for every sound, his head pivoting to scan the trees and lush foliage for any sign of observers.
Tropical trees blocked the sun. Spots of light glowed on ferns and flowering plants. Vato moved effortlessly through the foliage. He stopped. Lyons saw Vato watching something. Then he too saw it.
A hummingbird, resplendent in shimmering emerald-green feathers, hovered only an arm's reach from Vato. When the bird moved, flashing from shadow to sunlight, the young man followed. Vato and Lyons wove through the trees and ferns, around a clump of bayonetlike maguey cactus, and stopped at a sheer wall of rock overhung by trees.
Hummingbirds chattered. Lyons looked around and saw more of the tiny birds, hovering and darting around a flowering tree, their wings blurs, their bodies like jewels floating in the shadows and light.
Vato reached into the tree to pick a round yellow fruit. He passed one to Lyons.
"Zapote."
They sat among the ferns and grasses, eating zapotes. Inside a thin skin, a zapotehas flesh that tastes like mango, but with the consistency and texture of pudding. Vato smashed a zapoteon the rock beside him. He and Lyons sat still. Hummingbirds flocked to the zapotepulp and took the juices through their needle beaks, emerald wings blurring against the gray stone, the brilliant red of their breast feathers vivid against the soft yellow of the zapote.
Vato broke the peace of the moment. "You fear death?"
"I would if I thought about it. But I won't get the chance to think when it comes."
"You're not Christian? You don't believe in heaven?"
Lyons shook his head.
"Don't fear death. Look." Vato pointed to the brilliant blur of a hummingbird. "A warrior reborn. That is what the Nahuatls believe. The reward for a life of courage is rebirth as beauty."
Lyons thought of his lover and fellow warrior, Flor Trujillo, reduced to scorched bones and ashes in the desert outside San Diego.
He reached out to one of the birds with a hand that had caressed Flor, and the bird hovered around his hand. The needle beak touched him. A tongue flicked the zapotenectar from his fingers.
Flor had been Catholic. She had worn a crucifix and attended mass and gone to confession. Unconsciously, even though he rejected her beliefs, Lyons had thought of Flor's life and death within the tenets of her religion. He hoped that her God had granted her forgiveness and an eternity of peace. But she had made love without being married and had fought and killed — all sins to her church. Vato's Nahuatl mythology comforted Lyons. Instead of thinking of Flor condemned to an eternity of suffering and torment in the Catholic hell, now he would always imagine her reborn as one of these living jewels. Lyons laughed at his sentimentality.
"You laugh at what I tell you?"
"Thanks for telling me it," Lyons said, smiling, "but they're only birds."
Davis and the Yaquis carried cut branches to camouflage the helicopter. Sitting in the door, Gadgets and Coral and Blancanales listened to the NSA radio. On the other side of the troopship, separated from the radio by the transmission housing, Gunther still sat in the doorgunner's seat, tied, blindfolded, wads of cloth taped over his ears.
Lyons and Vato had returned from their patrol. Lyons went to Gadgets's side and asked in a whisper, "What do you have on the radio?"
"Voice of the Reich," Gadgets answered, his voice low.
"What's the plan?"
"I'm going into the city," Blancanales told Lyons. "Miguel will go with me. Davis's Spanish is good; he'll stay here with Gadgets to monitor. When we come back, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, we'll have cars. And clothes for Vato and the others. Then we'll do the DF number on the colonel."
"Vato's just told me he wants to try a chemical interrogation first," Lyons reported.
Blancanales looked to the Yaqui leader. "Chemical?" he asked him. "You mean drugs?"
Vato nodded. "Ancient drugs. There will be no marks on his body, but he will reveal everything."
"How long will it take? And what are the aftereffects?"
"A day. And maybe he will be confused and dizzy for another day. Like taking pills."
"It could help us," Lyons said, lowering his voice to a whisper. "We get what info we can, then let him escape. If he's disoriented, he's more likely to make a mistake and go straight to the International."
"What?" Vato asked. "Why will..."
"The plan is to release him. We'll put direction finders on him, then when he runs, we'll follow him."
"Electronic devices? What if he finds them? What if there is interference from the electricity and the radios and the buildings in the city?"
"That's a risk. But I think it will work."
"He'll expect a trick and take precautions."
"Best we can do, under the circumstances."
"No!" Vato protested. "You will not!"
Blancanales intervened. "So we'll try your drug interrogation first. There will be no torture? No physical damage?"
"When I joined my people," Vato told them, "the achaigave it to me. To learn about me. There is no harm."
Voices came from the NSA radio. Gadgets turned to Lyons and said, "Get Gunther out of here! He could hear this."
Coral motioned Lyons to stay put. "I will take him away," he said.
Leaving the others, Coral went around the helicopter. He untied the ropes securing Gunther to the doorgunner's seat. Then he untied one of the ropes binding the prisoner's ankles. Gunther required help to step down to the rocks. A second rope around Gunther's ankles served to hobble him.
Able Team took no chances with the six-foot-five, two-hundred-twenty-pound Gunther. When they had seen the karate-caused calluses on the striking edges of the fascist colonel's hands, they had known they could never allow Gunther to free an arm or leg.
Leading the blindfolded prisoner to the far side of the clearing, Coral tied him to a tree. Then he removed the wads of cloth covering Gunther's ears.
"We are near Mexico City."
"Where?"
"In the mountains. Southwest of the city. There is a problem. It is something I cannot stop."
"What?"
"They will interrogate you with drugs. They are talking about it now."