On the trail, Lyons left his partners behind. He lagged only a few hundred meters behind Vato, keeping up with the line of Yaquis. He ran without thinking, oblivious to the slopes and the landscape floating past. His eyes focused only on the trail, luminous with moonlight, and the forms of the runners ahead.
Two hours after dark, a teenage messenger confirmed the alarm. A young boy, his eyes wild with desperation, talked with Vato. When Lyons appeared, the boy startled away. Vato stopped him and reassured him.
Lyons stood outside the group as the Yaquis questioned the boy. He closed his eyes and slept on his feet, the language of the indigenasaround him strange and incomprehensible, like voices in a dream. Finally he heard Vato's voice speaking English.
"Helicopters came with soldiers. He escaped by hiding. When he ran, he had heard rifles and explosions."
Without opening his eyes, Lyons concentrated on his questions. He tried to visualize the distant mountain village.
"Is the town on a hill or in a valley?" he asked Vato.
"In a canyon. Steep mountainsides to the north and south."
"Cliffs?"
"Impossible to walk at night."
"How many helicopters and where did they land?"
"Three helicopters." Vato turned to the boy, asked more questions and translated the boy's replies. "He says they landed on the hills. That way they could fire down into the pueblo."
"How many people in the village?"
"Only a few families. Perhaps a hundred campesinos and Yoeme. Perhaps more."
"Fighters?"
"The fighters are with us. Only a few stayed there."
"Do they know where the hidden caves are?"
"They will not betray us!"
Lyons opened his eyes. He had his plan. He forced himself not to simply issue instructions to the proud young Yaqui leader. He put his hand on Vato's shoulder, as if to steady himself.
"My friend, it would be reckless not to alert the others to the..."
"True," Vato interrupted. "But they are already on alert."
"Have you sent your fastest runners ahead to recon the scene? Then they can tell us what to expect. Warn them of trip wires, booby traps."
"Yes," Vato said with a nod. "If the soldiers are still there, they will fear attack in the night."
"And send the boy back to the caves. Tell him to tell Davis, the pilot, to come. We will attempt to capture not only soldiers and officers, but a helicopter too. Tell him to also tell my partners."
Vato laughed. "Yes! Very good! You have a pilot, we will have a helicopter. Amigo, you can continue now. I will instruct the boy and the runners."
Lyons ran again.
Mesquite branches shattered the distant scene with web works of blue lines. Keeping their bodies pressed flat, they moved slowly through the desert brush, snaking past mesquite, pushing aside branches and dry weeds. Lyons and Vato crawled to the ridgeline's drop-off to gain an unobstructed view of the pueblo below.
Hundreds of meters to the south, lanterns and flashlights illuminated a single street and two rows of adobe houses. The lights silhouetted soldiers and projected giant forms onto the near-vertical mountainside beyond the village. A fire burned between two houses, flames leaping up.
Voices carried to the warriors watching the scene. Laughter, shouts. Sometimes a woman shrieked.
Below Lyons and Vato the ridge fell straight into the rocks of a gully. Moonlight gleamed off water. From the stream, one switchback trail led to the west, to the ridgeline overlooking the pueblo. From the other side of the stream, other trails cut east, zigzagging up an embankment to the houses. The two rows of adobe houses, scattered on both sides of a north-south road, occupied the flat area in the narrow canyon.
Another woman screamed, but this time from the ridgeline. Helicopters were parked not more than a hundred meters from where the North American and the Yaqui sprawled in the brush.
Despite his mind-numbing exhaustion, Lyons felt a surge of rage. He suppressed his loathing and urge to kill, returning his attention to the problem of the infiltration and recapture of the village. He could do nothing for the people now.
But later, he resolved, he would give the soldiers over to the village. Let the families of the murdered and raped judge the raiders.
Shoulder to shoulder with Vato, Lyons sketched his plan in whispers. "The ones in the town can't see the helicopters. The ones at the helicopters can't watch the town. I believe we can take all of them at once. My team has radios. My team knows booby traps, and we have silenced pistols."
"Our knives are silent," Vato told him.
"But they cannot kill from a distance. When my partners come, I believe we should divide into three groups. One group for the helicopters. The second will enter the village from the south, the third from the north. Once we have closed on the soldiers, even if there is an alarm, we will take them."
Vato nodded in the moonlight. "Silenced pistols and walkie-talkies. Tonight we have the luxury of technology."
"Remember, your fighters must understand that we will take the officers alive. And the helicopter radios must be controlled. We cannot allow any of the soldiers to send a panic message."
"No one radios for help. No one escapes. No one lives."
"Only the officers."
They crawled back through the brush. Pausing at the rocky crest of the ridge, Lyons rose to a crouch. He looked downhill to where the three Huey troopships were parked on a wide, flat plateau like huge somnambulant insects. He watched for a minute as silhouettes crossed the glaring lights. Other forms stood around fires.
From the height of the crest, he searched the ridge for an avenue of infiltration. Directly in front of him, to the north of the helicopters, open ground denied access. To the east, any soldier looking up from the pueblo could have spotted Lyons and the Yaquis on the cliff face below the helicopters.
He saw a crease in the ridgeline. A shallow gully, erosion-carved during the torrential tropical rains of the summer, cut through the center of the camp, running southwest from the helicopters to the darkness of the mountainside. That erosion ditch would be his avenue through the perimeter.
Squinting against the lights and the leaping fire, Lyons searched for sentries. He saw one form pacing in the darkness.
Then a uniform took his attention. A soldier was squatted at the door of a Huey. Unlike the other soldiers, who wore the camouflage greens of the Mexican army, he wore a gray uniform. Silver insignia flashed like sequins from his collar. Lyons saw the gray-uniformed soldier raise a bottle and drink.
Lyons noted the soldier's helicopter, then followed Vato through the moonlit darkness. They scrambled down the mountainside to a trail that paralleled the ridgeline. In minutes they rejoined the group of Yaquis.
As Lyons cleaned and checked his silenced Colt Government Model, more Yaquis led in Gadgets and Blancanales.
For minutes the two ex-Green Berets walked in circles and stretched as their muscles cooled. With the arrival of the foreigners, Vato divided the Yaqui fighters into three groups. He began the detailed explanations of the upcoming action and the role of each of the three groups, sketching the action in the sand.
Gadgets found his backpack and sprawled against it, only one hand moving slowly to pull open the Velcro closures. His words came in a dry rattle from his throat. "Twinkies... I must have Twinkies..."
"What are you talking about?" Lyons demanded.
Gadgets pulled out a plastic box and eased off the lid. "Been thinking about this good stuff all day long. How long we been running today?"