"The army. Or Los Guerreros Blancos," Vato spat out. "A plane came with napalm. Without warning, they all died."
"Why?" Lyons asked.
"Who knows?" Vato answered.
As he surveyed the grim scene that lay before him, Lyons began to understand what motivated Vato and his Yaqui warriors.
After three hours of running and walking, following an animal trail through shoulder-high mesquite, a signal mirror flashed a coded message from the ridgeline. Vato turned to Lyons. "We go to there..." the young man pointed to the ridge "...and stop. Tell the others."
Lyons passed the word back to his partners. When they reached the mountainside, Vato turned again. "Very quickly now. We are close to the army."
The Yaquis ran up the trails. Coral and Gadgets straggled behind. Lyons slowed to keep the Yaquis ahead of him in sight while watching Blancanales behind him. Lyons also watched the scouts on the ridgelines for signals.
A shrill whistle alerted them. Lyons saw the mirror on the ridge behind the group flashing. His hand going to the radio clipped to his web belt, he tapped the transmit key quickly as he crouched down. Clicks answered him, then Gadgets's voice came on. "Que pasa?" asked the Wizard.
"Get down!" Lyons suddenly yelled.
The unmistakable pulse of a helicopter pounded out its tattoo as it thundered over the ridge. Lyons pressed himself flat in the brush of the mountainside. He arranged his dust-colored camouflage, pulling the hood over his head, flicking the cloak over his legs. Only the bottom of his faded black fatigue pants and his boots remained uncovered.
A hundred feet above them, the chopper chewed its way across the desert sky. The noise of the rotors faded as the helicopter continued far into the distance. Then the rotor noise died down as the Huey troopship disappeared over a ridge in the east. Lyons searched the infinite blue dome of the sky for other aircraft.
"Just a commuter flight," Gadgets's voice whispered from the hand radio Lyons held.
"Can spy cameras work in Hueys?" Lyons asked his tech-specialist partner.
Gadgets gave it a moment's thought. "I've seen video cameras in helicopters. But the vibrations degrade the image."
"What about the super-close-ups at football games? They shoot from helicopters."
"Are you talking about Monday-night football or high-altitude ultraresolution surveillance? They ain't the same. Putting a spy camera in a chopper is a waste of time. But if they have a spy plane up there, we won't even see it before it snaps fifteen different close-ups of us."
Vato called out to the North Americans. "Quick! To the top!"
Lyons sprinted to the top and crouched. He had to study the ground to spot the Yaquis, flat on their bellies in the rocks and sand, their clothing the color of the dust. Behind him, he heard the others gasping and cursing as they crawled the last few meters to the crest. Lyons crept forward to join the Yaqui warriors.
They watched a scene over a thousand meters away. On the rocky ridgeline overlooking the gorge, the same ridge from where the Mexican riflemen and mortar team had fired down on Able Team the day before, dust swirled around the speck of a helicopter. Vato surveyed the scene through binoculars.
Snaking up beside Vato, Lyons opened his binocular case. A Yaqui stayed his arm, and Vato passed his own binoculars to Lyons.
"These will not reflect the sun," he said.
Lyons glanced at the front of the binoculars. Tubular extensions hooded the objective lenses. Like a sunshade on a camera lens, the extensions allowed only straight-line light to strike the front elements. The tin sheet and plastic tape extensions increased the length of the binoculars, but prevented the lenses from betraying their position with glints of sunlight.
Focusing on the distant scene, Lyons saw the vultures first. The black specks circled and swooped high over the ridge. Then he saw the helicopter rising from the dust of its rotor storm. A cargo net hung under the Huey troopship.
Though the binoculars could not define the image, Lyons knew dead soldiers filled that net. He gave the ridge a last scan. No soldiers remained behind to patrol the area. He saw only the returning vultures. He passed the binoculars to Blancanales.
The troopship and its load of corpses flew to the southwest. Lyons mentally calculated the direction of the Huey that had passed over them a few minutes before. That helicopter had gone to the east.
"All that running for nothing," Gadgets called out to his partners. "Too late to do anything here but get a suntan!"
"Brujo!" one of the Yaquis interrupted. The man pointed to a ridgeline behind them.
A signal mirror flashed the rapid code of an alert. Vato read the message.
"A helicopter comes. Be ready," he warned.
"Could it have seen us?" Lyons asked as he un-slung his FN-FAL paratrooper rifle.
"Who knows?" Vato replied as he slipped off his Springfield.
Around them, the Yaqui soldiers dispersed on the barren ridge. Some pressed themselves against rocks. Others flattened themselves in erosion cracks. One crawled into a tangle of mesquite. Everyone covered the distinctive lines and gleaming metal of their weapons with their bodies.
The four outsiders — Able Team and Coral — strained their ears to hear the helicopter. They heard nothing. But following the example of the Yaquis, they became parts of the ridge, arranging their camouflage cloaks, concealing their weapons.
Seconds later, the chopper soared over the eastern ridge, its skids seeming to touch the rocks. Rotor throb came as suddenly as an explosion. The Huey followed the contour of the slopes down the mountain, skimming over the mesquite.
Gadgets laughed. "That guy's getting tricky."
Blancanales and Lyons nodded agreement. Unlike the pilot of a spotter plane, who could shut off the engine and glide silently, or fly so high that people on the ground could not hear the motor, a helicopter pilot could not eliminate or diminish the noise of the rotors. However, if the pilot rode the contours of the terrain, using mountains and ridge-lines to block the rotor noise, enemies in a valley would not hear the approaching helicopter until it was too late. The pilot of the approaching helicopter had attempted exactly that.
They watched as the troopship rose to a hundred feet. The pilot circled once in the valley, then continued directly for the ridge where the group of Yaquis and North Americans lay in the dust and rocks.
Rotor throb exploded past them, dust swirling, as the Huey pilot tried to surprise his enemies on the other side of the ridge. The pilot circled the area once, then veered to the north.
"They're looking for action," Gadgets said. "No doubt about it."
"Vato," Lyons called out.
The young man rose from the rocks, brushing sand from his hair. He duck-walked over to the North Americans.
"Do they use light planes for surveillance and spotting?" Lyons asked.
"Usually. That helicopter, it is nothing. The many dead from yesterday makes the Blancos crazy, so they fly around thinking they will take revenge."
"Crazy for payback," Gadgets agreed. "We know what they want. Us."
Vato nodded. "I know my enemy. It is the planes we must be wary of. That is why I take the precaution of many lookouts. When the lookouts are alone, there is no sound. They listen for the planes, they watch the sky as we move. We have seen planes, but the planes have never seen us."