His chest heaving, Carl Lyons sucked down cool air heavy with forest scents and the wet-earth smell of the roads and pathways still muddy from the spring rains. The cynical ex-cop, hardened and scarred by wars in the streets of Los Angeles, and more recently, in the secret dirty wars fought by Able Team, watched the wind caress the Virginia landscape. He saw Rosario Blancanales leave the farmhouse. In an easy jog, his Puerto Rican partner started across the hundreds of yards of pasture toward Lyons.
Lyons returned to his karate exercises. A heavy bag swung from one of the oak's lower branches. Four feet long, eighteen inches in diameter, the vinyl bag weighed a hundred pounds. To hit it approximated hitting a standing two-hundred-pound opponent. Lyons had raised the bottom of the bag to the level of his own crotch. The top twelve inches of the bag represented the opponent's head and face. In the hour of his workout, he had progressed through punches, elbow strikes, knee lifts, and right-leg front kicks. Now the left-leg kicks…
He gave the bag a shove to get it swinging. In appropriate stance, he waited as the bag swung back, then snapped his left foot into the crotch zone. The second kick slammed the bag back an instant later. The third kick came as fast as Lyons could drive it into the rag-packed bag.
Kicking fast and hard, Lyons never let the bag swing forward. It hung at an angle as his kicks slammed the heavy bag back. After twenty-five kicks, he let his momentum carry him forward. He slammed his left elbow into the throat zone, stepped past the bag and whirled to drive his right fist into his imaginary opponent's kidney even as his left arm screamed with pain. Ignoring the pain, he wiped sweat from his eyes as Rosario Blancanales jogged up.
"Ready for a party?"
Lyons reached for his sweat shirt. "Mack sending us out again?"
"I'm serious. A party." Blancanales looked at the huge bruise on Lyons's left arm. A calm, quiet ex-Green Beret born in Puerto Rico, Blancanales served as medic, interpreter and indigenous-operations specialist for Able Team.
A week before, in the Sierra de Chucus of Guatemala, Lyons had assaulted a Huey troopship in an attempt to block the escape of the would-be Nazi dictator of Central America, Miguel de Unomundo. While Blancanales and Gadgets and a squad of Quiche Indians annihilated the last soldiers of Unomundo's army of Fascist mercenaries, Lyons dueled with the troopship's doorgunners — his full-auto twelve-gauge Atchisson against an M-60. Lyons killed one gunner, then another, but suffered a wound: as he took cover behind a burning truck, a burst from the dying gunner's weapon smashed through the door and windshield of the truck, a slug throwing the truck's rearview mirror into Lyons's arm.
"Why don't you take a break?" Blancanales said. "Let that heal before..."
"It's nothing," Lyons told him.
"Yeah? It's okay already?" Blancanales poked a fingertip into the wound. "How's that feel?"
Lyons recoiled, his left hand clawing with pain, his face going tight. He clenched his right fist. "Son of a bitch!"
"How's it feel when you're slamming it into that punching bag? You getting into pain? Macho masochism?"
Lyons grinned against the pain. "Nerve noise. Just nerves transmitting noise to my brain. Nothing real."
Blancanales cocked back his fist. "Ignore this one!"
Deflecting the fist with his shoulder, Lyons hooked a foot behind his partner's right foot, dropped him onto the grass. He went into a down-strike, as if to finish Blancanales with a fist to the temple. As the fist came down, Blancanales rolled to the side, scissored his legs around Lyons's legs, dropped him.
On his ass in the grass, Lyons laughed. "You know all the tricks. So what's this party you're talking about? April set us up with some of her friends? No thanks!"
"No, this is a Washington party. A reception."
"Politicians? Bureaucrats? Only if I can take my Atchisson. Do some rat killing."
"You're positively antisocial..."
"Nah, man. I just know who's bringing this country down."
"It's a reception for a retired Salvadoran general. He's merging his shipping company with an American multi-national corporation."
Lyons stopped his cynical jokes. Squatting now, he waited for more information.
"You remember the briefing on Unomundo?" Blancanales asked. Lyons nodded. "I read through this general's background file. There wasn't anything definite, but there are most definitely some questions as to how the general financed his operations. He also associates with a clique of colonels and landowners in self-exile from El Salvador. We could meet some very interesting people."
"Brognola assign this to us?" Lyons asked. Standing, he paced the pasture. The pasture's mud stained his sweat pants.
"It's not an assignment. Seems the Salvadorans invited a senator friend of Hal's. But the senator can't stomach these people, so he passed the invitations to Hal, and he passed them to me. He sent a set of Senate credentials with the tickets. We'll be the senator's personal aides. What do you say? It's free."
"Could be a mistake. If we ever go undercover on an Unomundo operation, one of the general's people could remember us from this reception."
"How could you ever go undercover in El Salvador? They look at you, they know where you're from. You don't even speak the language."
"All right, I'll chance it. I want to see what they look like. We take weapons?"
Blancanales laughed as he got to his feet. "Hey, Carl. It's a party. Drinks. Food. Good times."
"Sounds more like a recon to me."
Blancanales nodded. "That, too."
6
Union musicians played instrumental renditions of Beatles songs. Near the bandstand in the hotel reception hall, couples danced. The women wore designer gowns and flashing jewelry, the men formal attire.
In rented tuxedos, Lyons and Blancanales stood at the bar. A hotel bartender in a white coat served drinks to the crowd of guests.
Annoyed by the starched collar of his formal shirt, Lyons twisted his head from side to side. He hooked a finger inside the collar and pulled. But the stiff collar and the bow tie did not stretch.
"Go dance with someone," Blancanales suggested. "A bit of sweat will make the collar softer."
"How do you say it in Spanish?"
"Don't try to fake it, you might say something weird. English is good enough."
"Most of these people are speaking French," Lyons commented.
"And Castilian," Blancanales added.
"Who are all the Europeans?" Lyons asked, looking at a tall blond woman in a sequined red gown. "I thought this was a Salvadoran party."
"Rich Salvadorans. They want us to think they're Europeans, but they're not."
The blond woman — lithe, perhaps twenty-five years old, her face a perfect oval of finely sculpted features touched with powder and rich red lipstick — laughed with a group of men. Two stocky men, one blond and balding, the other with crew-cut salt-and-pepper gray hair, spoke loud in English. The blond woman turned to her escort, whispered to him. The middle-aged Latin, his hair glistening with pomade, smiled. The blond saw Lyons watching her.
Her lips froze in midword as her eyes examined the stranger. The Latin man waited for her to complete her whispered confidence. Then he looked from her face to Lyons. The Latin scowled.
Lyons laughed at the middle-aged man's jealousy. A hand jerked Lyons aside.
"Be cool, Ironman," Blancanales hissed. "That's the general."
"Who's the beauty?"
"How should I know?" Blancanales pushed Lyons through the crowd. "One thing I do know, it's less than diplomatic to make eyes at the main man's girl friend."