"And a last," Lyons muttered.
The high-frequency radio clicked with a coded message. Gadgets listened, then translated as he grabbed flares and flashlights.
"Jack will be here in a minute. Time to guide him in."
The Huey bucked through clouds and mountain winds. Crowded into the interior, the fourteen men sat shoulder to shoulder on the seats and on the floor. Autoweapons, ammunition, rockets tangled with the men. Floyd Jefferson flashed portraits of the guerrillas sitting quiet and thoughtful among their laughing and shouting compatriots.
Only a few seconds after they left the Morazan hillside behind, the intercom buzzed. Grimaldi, alone in the pilot's cabin, asked Able Team, "Hey, ah what goes on? Who are those troopers with you?"
Gadgets passed the headset to Blancanales. "You explain this."
"Not me." Blancanales passed the headset to Lyons.
Pressing through the mass of men and weapons, Lyons leaned forward to Grimaldi. Behind him a camera flashed. He shouted back, "No photos!"
Floyd responded. "Not taking pictures of you. Of the other guys."
"Interesting group of soldiers," Grimaldi said over his shoulder.
"Irregulars," Lyons told him.
"Uh-huh. Mercenaries?"
"No. But they're hot. They can pop hundred percent kill count ambushes."
"What do the initials DFL mean?"
"Democratic Front for the Liberation."
"Oh, shit, man. What are you doing? Are you involved in some kind of guerrilla action?"
"These guys aren't Reds," Lyons replied. "They're ex-army. Some of them were trained at Fort Bragg. Their officer was a captain in the army, a LRRP. He got involved in the land reforms. The Nazis sent a death squad, so he went to the mountains. I would've done the same thing."
Though he kept his promise of never showing the faces of Able Team, Floyd Jefferson allowed their nightsuits and weapons to appear in the photo frames. The high-quality uniforms and web-gear contrasted with the patched and hand-sewn uniforms of the Democratic Front fighters. The immaculate, high-tech weapons of the North Americans appeared behind the scarred and worry-lined faces of men who now fought against the government that the United States financed and armed. Every shot of the men had the background of the Huey panels and the rain-beaded Plexiglas side windows.
"Able Team's got the reputation for the weirdest, but this is the limit, you know that?" continued Grimaldi. "Do you realize these guerrillas are the enemies of your country? This is just totally..."
Lyons shouted down the Stony Man flier. "One, there has been no declaration of war, therefore they are not the enemies of my country. Two, whatever goes on between them and their government, I don't care. That's Salvadoran politics. And wait until you get the debriefing report on this mission compared to the scum-snakes we found down there, these guys are Boy Scouts. Three, we need fighters and they volunteered. Four, you're paid to fly. So fly."
"You got the exact location of this school?"
"We'll find it. There'll be an airfield and two helicopters. Lights. A perimeter. If we don't see it on the flyby, we'll get out and look for it."
"Then what?"
"Any chance you can come back with a B-52?"
"You serious? You want them bombed?"
"First we need to take Quesada alive. But then we'll waste the place. How can you help us?"
"The Agency's got cargo planes..."
"The Agency? Forget it. There's Nazi informers operating in the Agency. Quesada got warned we were coming. We've been betrayed by someone in the Agency or in the administration."
"I don't want to hear that talk! Running around with guerrillas, now you're sounding like a Commie."
"I'm talking the facts."
"Hear this, crazyman. The Agency gave me total cooperation. I was very pleasantly surprised."
"Be ready for unpleasant surprises. You tell them where you were going with this helicopter?"
"Never tell anybody anything."
"Don't tell them where you take the bomber."
"I don't know about bombs," Grimaldi said, shaking his head. "Especially on short notice."
"Improvise," Lyons said. "Use your imagination. We need maximum effect. Otherwise we'll have a Nazi army chewing at us through the mountains."
Grimaldi pointed down. "We're over the coordinates of that town."
"Stay high. Circle out. I'll be sitting in the door looking out."
Lyons motioned to his partners. He went to a door and buckled on the safety straps. Cautioning the men around him, he eased the door open.
Cold night wind and rotor-whipped rain struck him. Thousands of feet below, he saw darkness and the tiny points of lights. But no patterns of lights. He scanned the depthless black of the unseen mountains for La Escuela. Gadgets's voice spoke through the intercom.
"Bear to the left"
"Yeah, I see the lights," Grimaldi answered. "I'll take you past."
"What you see?" Lyons asked his partner in the other door.
"Airstrip lights. And the landing lights of a plane. Man, that is an installation."
The fighters turned to stare out at a mountaintop crowned with brilliant points. A rectangle of blue dots framed an asphalt runway. As they watched, a plane descended from the night, cones of white glare projecting from the wings.
When the plane taxied to a stop, the landing lights and the runway lights switched off. The blue rectangle faded to darkness.
A ring of white security lights remained on the mountain. Scattered points of incandescent glow indicated buildings. The scene wheeled into view as the helicopter continued in a slow circle. Grimaldi spoke through the intercom.
"That's the place you want me to bomb?"
"Don't look like there's anyplace else," Gadgets answered. "But we'll check it out."
"Put us down," Lyons told the flier. "And when you come back, come loaded."
22
Jon Gunther, chief of personal security for Klaust de la Unomundo-Stiglitz, listened with interest to the ravings of Colonel Roberto Quesada. The Salvadoran spoke with anger and bravado, yet Gunther knew the colonel lied.
In preparation for a conference of Central American military and political men loyal to Unomundo's International Alliance, Gunther and his aides had flown to La Escuela to review the staff's security procedures. Now, only minutes after their arrival, Gunther knew he must cancel the conference. To do otherwise to accept the assurances of The School officers, to accept the pompous delusions of the colonel would be to expose his leader to danger.
Colonel Quesada, his tailored fatigues soaked, paced the conference hall, motioning with his clenched fist for dramatic emphasis. He told a story of his soldiers betrayed and murdered in the United States. A Negro assassin impersonating a leftist journalist had lured his soldiers into an ambush on a residential street in San Francisco, California. North American mercenaries then lured two squads of his soldiers into death traps in the mountains of California and the slums of Los Angeles. Only with the help of Internationalists in the U.S. government had Quesada escaped a ridiculous arrest warrant issued by the United States Department of Justice.
But the mercenaries had relentlessly pursued him to El Salvador. There, this night, under the cover of the unnatural storm from the Pacific, forces led by North American commandos mounted suicide attacks on the defenses of La Finca Quesada. Despite his personal leadership in the firefights, the invaders breached the outer defenses, only to die, Quesada insisted, in heaps at the walls of the family's residence. He had left the counterattack on the fleeing cowards to his junior officers.
Despite the threats against his family and his properties, the colonel flew on to La Escuela. He knew his responsibility to the International Alliance. He would represent the Quesada family at the conference. Quesada paused in his long story, then delivered his declaration.
"The Fourteen Families of El Salvador, united in patriotism and courage, will join the leaders of the other nations of the Americas in the hemispheric victory of the International Alliance!" He snapped his fist to his chest, then extended his straightened hand and arm.