by Dick Stivers
Blancanales stopped Lyons with a muddy hand. They lay side by side in the unrelenting downpour, watching the tiny glow of a cigarette scratch the black of a bus window. Inside the bus, the cigarette flared as the smoker took a drag, then the red point inscribed another arc against the black as the smoker let his arm fall.
The Stony men crept forward, slowly easing through the last rows of cornstalks. The bus and farmhouse leaped from the night as lightning flashed above them, Lyons and Blancanales stopping in midmotion. Thunder came an instant later. They eased forward, had to freeze as lightning flashed again.
Only a few steps from the bus, they stopped to watch and listen. They lay in muddy rainwater and tangled cornstalks. Weeds and debris from the burned farmhouse littered the ground separating them from the bus.
The smoker flicked his cigarette butt into the rain. Moments later, he lit another, the lighter’s flare like a spotlight on his face. Blancanales and Lyons memorized the man’s features: slash lips, a sharp beak of a nose, a square forehead, his hair combed straight back.
Straining their ears, they listened for voices or movement above the incessant drumming of the rain on the sheet metal of the bus. Lyons reached into the mud in front of his face. Though his black bandana covered most of his features, his eyes and a band of skin inches wide remained uncovered. He had darkened his skin with blacking grease, but he took no chances. As he watched the bus and farmhouse for movement, he daubed the fertile black earth of El Salvador on his face. Then he tapped his partner and pointed to the bus.
Blancanales nodded. He slipped out his silenced Beretta as Lyons crossed the three meters to the bus. Lyons kept his belly and face to the mud, sucking in the rich scent of El Salvador with every slow, measured breath. Easing past a twisted sheet of corrugated-steel roofing, Lyons heard boots splash through mud.
Lyons froze. Sounds of splashes and crunching wood reached him. He waited for the voice of alarm or the slaps of Blancanales’s subsonic 9mm slugs punching into the death-squad soldier’s body.
The boots passed his outstretched arm. Steel tapped sheet metal. He heard voices.
“Vienen?”
“No. Jefe, porque no llama el capitan…”
“Vayase aca. Esperen en suposicion!”
Splashes and kicked trash sounded the militiaman’s path around the farmhouse. Lyons waited to the count of sixty before moving again. He silently wormed under the bus. He waited for lightning.
Above him, the metal floor of the bus squeaked as el jefeshifted in his seat. Lyons waited, watching the darkness, listening for other movements. On the other side of the bus, a boot scraped. Two men.
The night went white with lightning, two long flashes allowing Lyons to scan the area around the bus. He saw no sentries. Taking his hand-radio off his web belt, he keyed a click code to signal Blancanales.
Thunder blasted away the sounds of the rain and the boots above him. Lyons felt rather than heard the clicks answering his signal. He unwound the earphone wire and plugged the phone into his ear. Then he pulled his modified Colt Government Model from its spring-clip shoulder holster, thumbed back the hammer to full-cock and set the ambidextrous safety-fire-selector.
Blancanales snaked through the mud. A lightning flash exposed him in the open ground. Lyons saw the lines of the M-16/M-203 on his partner’s back, but the mud and moldy cornstalks clinging to his blacksuit made Blancanales look like a mound of soil and trash. The instant of light gone, Blancanales lunged across the last two meters, thunder covering the splashing of his hands and feet.
“That’s our man up there,” Lyons whispered. “I heard that goon call him ‘hef-fe.’ That means boss, right?”
“You’re positive? Couldn’t have been a name, like Jose? Jorge?”
“Most definitely positive. Then the boss ordered him to go back to his position. He said, ‘po-ze-shun.’”
“Position?”
“That’s it.”
“Then he is our man.”
“There’s another goon up there with him. We got to wait for one of them to step out. We only want the number-one goon.”
“We should confirm that second man,” Blancanales suggested.
“On my way. Watch my back.”
Lyons crabbed under the bus, his modified and sound-suppressed Colt autopistol cocked and locked in his hand. He went to the right rear wheel. The right side of the bus, only a step from the adobe wall of the ruined farmhouse, remained in darkness even when lightning flashed. Rain poured from the corrugated-steel sheets overhanging the bus, water splashing on the roof of the vehicle then flowing down the windows.
His eyes searching the darkness, Lyons eased from under the bus. A sheet of falling water washed over him as he rose to a crouch. His thumb on the safety of the silenced Colt, he listened to the rain beating on the bus and the corrugated steel. He stood and looked through a bus window.
He saw only darkness. At the front, the cigarette still glowed. Lyons waited. The cigarette flared, then dropped as the smoker’s hand moved. Lyons waited for lightning.
Metal rasped on metal. Even as Lyons dropped into the mud, his body flowing under the bus, Blancanales hissed a warning. Lyons inched sideways, the Colt pointed outward.
“In the field,” Blancanales whispered.
Lyons switched the Colt from his right to his left hand. He watched as a shadowy form shifted within the darkness. Lightning flashed.
In the instant of brilliance, they saw Ricardo on his hands and knees in the mud. His eyes startling white against his grease-blackened face, he looked around for death-squad sentries. As the thunder rolled, he scurried up to Lyons and Blancanales through the mud and trash to concealment under the bus.
Whispered Spanish invective greeted him. Lyons listened as Blancanales quietly vented his anger at the teenager’s disobedience. He had been instructed to stay in place at the tree line. But Ricardo interrupted the North American commando.
Lyons listened as the two whispered back and forth in Spanish.
Thumping on the soaked earth, many booted feet ran to the bus. The amber light of a battery lantern shone on the mud. Shouts came. A voice in the bus answered. Lyons heard the boots of the militiamen splashing around the bus. Blancanales and Ricardo eased over to Lyons. As the death squad crowded around the bus, Blancanales briefed him in an almost inaudible whisper.
“The army’s here. Ricardo saw the trucks coming, so he came to warn us. That’s the captain and a sergeant and two or three of the Quesada men out there. They don’t understand where the two vans of journalists could have gone.”
“What are they doing now?”
“El jefesaid he would radio for instructions. We’ll have to wait.”
“Damn right. Can’t go anywhere.”
Flashes of white light revealed muddy boots around the bus. Yellow light from the battery lantern glistened on the stock of an M-50. Lyons identified the Salvadoran soldiers by their green-patterned camouflage fatigues, the death squad of Quesada militiamen by their black fatigues.
Lyons studied the black fatigues. He realized they were not black, but gray. The gray cloth appeared black because of the soaking rain and the slime.
Gray, Lyons thought, like the uniforms of the army of Unomundo, the would-be Nazi dictator of Guatemala. As here in Morazan, the assassins loyal to Unomundo operated in the gray uniforms of a private army. The mercenary army of criminals and psycho racists hired and equipped by Unomundo even wore the same black nylon boots and web gear as Quesada’s gray-uniformed militiamen.
Lyons remembered the capitol reception where right-wing Salvadorans thought to be linked to Unomundo — the Stony Man intelligence sources had found no conclusive proof — laughed with United States senators and congressmen. Young Salvadoran soldiers in expensive suits had served as bodyguards for the wealthy Salvadorans at the high-society party. Later that same week, Able Team encountered those young Salvadoran soldiers in California. Mack Bolan had assigned Able Team to protect the Riveras, a family o
f Salvadoran refugees who had witnessed the murder of a North American journalist in Sonsonate province. Able Team fought death squads dispatched by Roberto Quesada to pursue and execute the Riveras before they could testify. Looking down at the face of a dead Salvadoran soldier sprawled in a Los Angeles street, Lyons had guessed the connection. An investigation spanning months and the uniforms surrounding him now confirmed his suspicions.
Quesada served Unomundo.
But that knowledge meant nothing if he died tonight. Lyons hissed to Blancanales, “What goes?”
“Quiet…”
Only two steps away, el jefeand el capitantalked. Blancanales and Ricardo listened. El jefeshouted an order to his squad. Around the bus, the boots scrambled. The Salvadoran army soldiers left. Soldiers shouted out their leader’s order to the assassins scattered in the roadside fields. At the road, the engines of the troop carriers roared.
Blancanales gave Lyons a hurried briefing. “Quesada canceled the ambush. He has ordered all the men back to thefinca. Immediately.”
Boots banged up the two steps of the passenger entry. Other boots rasped on the cargo ladder at the back of the bus. Men stowed gear on the rooftop rack.
The starter solenoid snapped into the gears to turn over the engine. The engine revved.
“Senors! Nos estamos…” Ricardo started to panic, his words coming in a rush. If the militiamen crowding into the bus had not been talking and banging equipment, they would have heard the frightened boy below them.
“He thinks we’re trapped,” Blancanales said into Lyons’s ear. “And we are. What if we just stay where we are, let them drive away. And pray to God they don’t back out.”
“No way. We’re going with them. To Quesada.”
14
Its engine raced as the levers and springs of the vehicle’s clutch operated only inches above their faces. The headlights and amber running lights flicked on. Diesel exhaust swirled around Lyons and Blancanales and Ricardo where they lay trapped under the bus.
Lyons threw himself onto his back, the muzzle of his slung Atchisson digging into the mud. The hot exhaust pipe touched his soaked sleeve with a hiss of steam. He glanced at the double rear wheels, judging their path.
Ricardo attempted to crawl clear. Blancanales jerked him back, shoved him sideways to lie next to Lyons. Lyons grabbed Ricardo’s muddy shirt to hold him still. Blancanales gave the teenager quick instructions in Spanish as he positioned himself.
The wheels had settled into the mud. Gunning the engine, the driver rocked the bus forward. The gears clanked as the driver shifted into reverse. As the bus rolled back, the engine roared to make torque.
Put it in forward, go straight ahead, Lyons screamed silently. I don’t want to die tonight, because I don’t want to leave Unomundo alive.
The gears clashed again and the bus lurched forward. The wheels rolled through the ruts, splashing water and mud. Lyons and Blancanales prepared to grab the rear bumper. Ricardo stared around him, panicked, his left hand in the mud, his right shielding his face from the hot exhaust blasting into his face. Lyons elbowed Ricardo, jerked his left arm up. He held the boy’s wrist as the undercarriage moved over them. Lyons felt a tire brush his shoulder.
Rain struck their faces as the rear bumper cleared them. Lyons slapped Ricardo’s hand onto the slick steel of the bumper, then clawed for his own handhold. His fingers hooked around the sharp inside edge. The bus pulled him to a sitting position and he stood.
In the red glow of the taillights, Lyons saw that the bus had two roof access ladders, one on each side of the rear emergency door. He grabbed a ladder and stepped onto the bumper. He stayed low, below the level of the rear windows. The clouding diesel smoke swirled red in the rain.
Blancanales moved as quickly, grabbing first the bumper, then climbing hand over hand up the first three rungs of the ladder.
But Ricardo desperately held the bumper. He let the bus drag him. Lyons hooked an arm through the rungs of the roof ladder and reached down to grab Ricardo’s left wrist again. As soon as Blancanales had secured his own handhold, he took Ricardo’s other arm. The two men jerked the youth up and steadied him until he braced his sneakers on the bumper.
Whining in first gear, the bus rocked over the cornfield. The three uninvited passengers clung to the rain-slick ladders.
Hundreds of meters down the road, the taillights of the troop trucks disappeared around a mountainside.
Lyons looked over to Blancanales and pointed up. Blancanales shook his head no. The Puerto Rican held up a hand and made the Mexican gesture of “wait a moment,” his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. Lyons nodded.
The bus turned onto the road, dropping down a slight embankment with a final violent swaying on its springs. They heard equipment on the bus roof crash from one side to the other. Straightening the wheels, the driver shifted and accelerated over the flooded road, the bus throwing waves of muddy rainwater into the fields.
Blancanales made a thumbs-up gesture. Lyons pointed to himself, then pointed out. He wiped his palms clean of mud as best he could before easing his head up to the window.
Inside the bus, soaked militiamen sprawled in the seats. Several cigarettes created a gray pall. Lyons saw the beak-nosed youth and another man standing at the front, examining a map by the light of an electric lantern. They talked with one another and the driver.
Mist formed on the window. Lyons noticed a drop of condensation coursing down the inside of the glass. The sweating men, in their soaked uniforms and boots, had heated the interior with their bodies. The superhumid air condensed on the rain-cooled windows.
Lyons eased down. He signaled Blancanales with the Mexican “wait a moment” hand gesture. Blancanales nodded. For another minute or two, they squatted on the bumper, swaying as the bus low-geared through mud and flowing streams. Ricardo crouched, stricken with fear, close to the ladder that held Blancanales.
In the light from the bus headlights, Lyons watched the roadsides. They passed burned-out shacks and the ruins of small farms. Unharvested corn and vegetables rotted in the fields. A cluster of small whitewashed crosses had been placed in front of a charred house.
A dead family, Lyons thought. Maybe they made the mistake of talking democracy, maybe they talked socialism. Maybe they didn’t talk at all. Maybe they only wanted to live and work their fields without ideology. So they died.
As the pathetic vignette of tragedy returned to the night, Lyons eased his head up again. He saw the window had fogged over. He signaled Blancanales. Lyons checked his nightsuit and bandoliers for any loose gear that might strike the ladder’s steel rungs. Then he went up, his neoprene-soled boots squeaking faintly on the slick steel.
He crawled onto the roof, forcing himself to move slowly, to distribute his weight on the sheet metal without the roof buckling or popping. He turned slowly and looked down to Blancanales and Ricardo. Blancanales whispered a last instruction to the teenager, then prodded him up.
Ricardo moved quickly and silently, his teeth clenched now with determined courage. He scrambled onto the roof. Lyons motioned him flat. The teenager obeyed instantly. As the bus swayed, he sideslipped down the rain-slick enamel of the roof. He reached out with a hand and a foot and braced himself against the cargo rack’s side rail.
A moment later, Blancanales followed.
“No problems?” Lyons whispered.
“I had my ear against the bus. No noise, no questions.”
“All right! We’re on our way.” Lyons crept across the roof to bundles of gear. He checked the bundles by touch. He felt plastic and cloth in one. Tents? Camouflage tarps for the bus? His hands found heavy boxes — perhaps boxes of ammunition. Leaning against the bundles, he hooked his boots around the cargo rail.
Loosing the sling, he eased his Atchisson off his back. He checked the safety, then dropped out the magazine and pocketed it. He pulled back the actuator to eject the chambered shell into his hand. The action locked back. He put a finger in the chamber and felt
gritty mud.
He turned the autoshotgun muzzle down and shook it. A plug of mud plopped out of the barrel. Hinging the weapon open, he held the receiver group to the sky, letting the rain wash the mechanism. Then he turned the chamber upward. With his cupped hand, he funneled rainwater into the chamber. Rain poured into the barrel and flowed out the muzzle.
In instants of lightning white, Blancanales watched, smiling. “Not the way to clean a weapon, mister.”
“Then pass me your cleaning rod.”
“Didn’t bring one.”
“I suggest you check your own barrel for obstructions.”
“Next time you go for a roll in the mud,” Blancanales instructed his partner in a whisper, “use a rubber band to secure a bit of cellophane or plastic over the barrel. Trick I learned in the monsoons.”
“You got cellophane over the barrel of your two-oh-three?”
“No.”
In a flash of lightning, he saw Blancanales cleaning mud out of his M-203 grenade launcher.
With a low laugh, Lyons snapped the Atchisson closed. He slipped the shell into the chamber and eased the bolt closed. Slapping in the magazine, he slung the autoshotgun over his shoulder and checked the auto-Colt and Colt Python. He continued his preparation by touch-checking his bandolier of ammunition and the grenades in his pockets.
When they went through the gates of the plantation-fortress, he would need all his firepower. No doubt about it.
Beside him, he heard Blancanales whispering into his hand-radio, “Wizard. Wizard. Political here.”
Lyons monitored the transmission on his own radio.
He heard Blancanales’s voice. But only snatches of static answered. Blancanales tried key code.