by Dick Stivers
Warlord of Azatlan
( Able Team - 6 )
Dick Stivers
Dispatched by the President to investigate a multimillion-dollar weapons-for-drugs exchange, Able Team probed deep into the wilds of Guatemala. There, The Executioner' s top squad of death dealers fell into a bloody maze of terror.
Unexpected allies led the three hotshots to the source of a conspiracy to assassinate the Christian leader of Guatemala and to annihilate that nation's newborn forces of democracy and liberty.
Surrounded by genocidal war and devoted courage, Able Team discovered the greatest horror yet in the campaign against international terrorism: a fascist plot to seize all of Central America and then all the nations of the new world... for the resurrection of the Third Reich!
Dick Stivers
Warlord of Azatlan
Proofed by an unsung hero.
1
Above the horizon-spanning desert of Crockett County, Texas, lightning flashed against the sunset. Black thunderheads, touched by red and amber, stood like mountains against the sky.
Sudden raindrops splattered on the windshield of the Dodge. Al Horton, Federal Bureau of Investigation field agent, switched on the wipers. The rain died away as quickly as it had come. Horton flicked off the wiper switch and rolled down the window. The scents of rain and dust and mesquite filled the car.
Two miles ahead on Highway 10, silhouetted against the bloodred western sky, the semi-tractor trailer maintained a steady eighty miles an hour.
Horton glanced at a road map. He eased off on the accelerator. A thin, balding man, forty-three years old with a master's degree in public administration, a father of three children, Horton had no interest in tailgating a truck that was loaded with high-explosive ammunition.
The bureau's San Antonio office had issued a detailed directive to the four agents secretly tailing the truck:
Follow the shipment of weapons and ammunition. If the truck stops, radio the coordinates. If the truck stops at an airfield, radio the coordinates, wait for backup. If the truck nears the Mexican border, radio the coordinates, wait for backup. Under no circumstances attempt to arrest the occupants or seize the truck's cargo.
They didn't need to tell us that, Horton thought, smiling to himself. Four middle-aged office men with pistols and shotguns against gunrunners with automatic weapons? Right, boss, no heroes this week.
In the rearview mirror, Horton saw the headlights of the second car. He nudged his partner.
Lou Butterfield awoke, startled. He stared around blinking at the landscape of sand, creosote bushes and cactus that blurred past the car. "What's happening? Have they stopped?"
"Not them. What do you say we switch with Allan and Diehl? Let them take the lead for the next hundred miles?"
Butterfield took the map. He glanced at his watch then at the odometer to calculate the distance they had covered while he slept. Then he took the car's radio microphone. He faked an Old West voice.
"Well, partners, this is Deputy Butterfield. What say you all mosey on yonder. We'll meet up with ya at the Pecos."
A voice answered in somber tones. "This is a radio frequency reserved for the official communications of federal employees only. Persons engaged in unauthorized transmissions are subject to prosecution under sections..."
Laughing, Butterfield cut the other agent off. "Who is that talkin' back there? Sounds like one of them dudes from Washington, D.C."
The voice continued. "I will be brief. Will all the would-be cowboys get the hell off?"
"Cuttin' for the trailside," Butterfield continued. "Hasta la vista, cowpokes."
Recently transferred from the New York office, Lou Butterfield enjoyed taunting the Texan agents with AM radio cowboy jargon and pranks in the field. As Horton slowed the big Dodge, Butterfield joked about one of his cowboy pranks.
"Remember last month, maybe two months ago, we're following that low-life dope prince around town? And I show up for my shift in the sheriff suit?"
Horton laughed. Butterfield had arrived at the stakeout of the suspect's apartment wearing boots, faded jeans, leather chaps, a plaid shirt, leather vest, lawman's star and a ten-gallon hat. Diehl had threatened Butterfield with on-the-spot dismissal from the bureau if he did not change into a regulation three-piece suit immediately. But Butterfield, knowing from the previous night's monitoring of the phone that the suspect would meet friends at an "Old West" bar, refused to change clothes. At the bar, all the patrons wore phony Western gear. Of the four agents, only Butterfield could enter without inviting stares. He made the arrest, and received a commendation for his foresight in wearing the costume.
The Dodge slowed to a stop on the highway's gravel shoulder. Diehl and Allan sped past in their Volvo station wagon. In the distance, perhaps two or three miles ahead of the semi-tractor trailer they had been following, Horton saw approaching headlights. He thought nothing of it.
Horton walked from the highway, a moist desert wind chilling his sweat-damp slacks and white dress shirt. Around him, he saw the endless expanse of Texas leap from the darkness as lightning flashed.
Emptying his bladder into the sand, he surveyed the panorama of lightning and desert night. He searched the northern sky for the glow of the city lights of Midland and Odessa, more than one hundred miles away. Too early for that, he realized. He looked to the west and saw the last pink streaks of sunset fading from the horizon's storm clouds.
What a great place for a weekend, Horton thought. Rent an RV, take a side road way out to nowhere. Let the boys run wild. Him and Evelyn could carry Julie in a kiddie backpack. Take some long walks. Get away from all this bureau cops-and-robbers crap. Depending on the time of year. Later this month would be great. While it was all green. Before the sun and the heat burned it brown.
On the highway, the headlights of the approaching vehicle passed the semi-truck. The headlights drew nearer the car of the bureau agents following the truck.
Flame flashed from the headlights and the agents' Volvo exploded. The churning ball of gasoline fire rolled across the desert as the gutted car careered out of control.
"Butterfield!" Horton screamed. "The radio! They killed Allan and Diehl..."
Horton's smooth-soled wingtipped shoes slipped in the sand. He stumbled to his hands and knees, felt cactus spines jab his leg. At last he sprinted back to the Dodge.
Staring at the column of smoke in the distance, his eyes wide with panic, Butterfield was shouting into the microphone.
"This is Agent Butterfield on Highway Ten. They just rocketed the lead car. Repeat, rocketed. Diehl and Allan are dead. And now they're coming for us…"
"Out!" Horton screamed at his partner. "Get your shotgun."
Horton grabbed his eight-shot Ithaca 12-gauge from under a blanket on the back seat. He paused only to take a flashlight, then ran for the open desert.
Behind him, Butterfield shouted the number of highway miles from the last town, Ozona. Then he, too, grabbed his shotgun and sprinted through the gravel and mesquite.
"They said at least fifteen minutes before they can get a helicopter out here."
"Out there," Horton corrected him, pointing into the desert.
"Right!"
They ran through the darkness, distant lightning flashes throwing long shadows behind them. Horton, more agile and more familiar with Texas terrain, led the way. He dashed through gaps in the creosote brush, following the white pathways of sand. A lightning flash revealed the black slash of a gully.
Horton stepped off into it, sidesliding a few feet to the tangle of dry weeds and sand at the bottom. Butterfield hopped down an instant later.
A rocket shrieked. Punching through the Dodge, the warhead sprayed thousands of bits of explod
ing white-hot fragments into the night. An instant later, flames engulfed the hulk.
Tires screeched as a four-wheel-drive pickup fish-tailed to a stop on the asphalt. Four autoweapons flashed from the back of the pickup, the gunmen sweeping the burning Dodge and the roadside with bursts.
Crouching low in the gully, the two FBI agents ran north. Overweight and out of shape, Butterfield panted, stumbled. Acrid black soot from their burning car's tires clouded into the air above them. They heard the clang-crumpof 40mm grenades.
Horton caught his partner's shoulder and shoved him against the gully side. He put a hand into the sand and silt to find moisture.
"Rub this mud on my shirt," Horton whispered. He slapped the white short-sleeved dress shirt he wore.
Butterfield understood. He wore a dark sports coat over his white shirt. But Horton, in bleached and starched white, would stand out like a beacon.
They slapped mud on one another, on their faces and shirts, as the pickup bounced over the desert. His face masked desert-brown, Horton eased his eyes above the gully.
Against the light of the flaming car, he saw a skirmish line of four men heading toward them. The truck paced them, high beams and side-mounted spotlights bathing the desert. A weapon popped from the pickup bed.
No, not a weapon, not a rocket or a grenade launcher, Horton realized as a white sun seared away the night.
A flare.
He turned to Butterfield and saw him staring up at the blazing magnesium. "Don't look at it! It'll kill your night-vision..."
"Oh, God, Al," Butterfield groaned. "We're up against paramilitaries..."
"It's all right, it's all right. It's a big desert and they only have fifteen minutes to find us. We don't have to shoot it out. We just have to stay out of sight."
Slugs ripped through the brush above them. Butterfield flinched, then scrambled away on his hands and knees, dragging his shotgun through the sand and grit. The barrel and stock clattered on rocks. The shadows around him shifted rhythmically as the flare swung on the end of its miniature parachute.
Horton waited until the flare sputtered out, then ran after Butterfield. He heard another flare pop. He threw himself down on his panicked friend. As the second flare's white glare lit the area, Horton held Butterfield down and whispered to him.
"Don't move while the flares are up. They can only see us if we move while the flares are up. It's a big desert, thousands of square miles, they can't find us. Keep cool, they can't find us."
Autobursts ripped through the brush. High-velocity slugs zipped into the distance. Ricochets hummed past. They heard the clang-popof more 40mm grenades. A grenade rushed over them, exploded twenty yards away. Bits of steel showered them.
"They're just shooting wild, it's just dumb shit recon-by-fire. Wait until the flare..."
Darkness returned. Horton ran again, keeping his back below the level of the gully walls. He heard Butterfield stumbling behind him.
Shotgun blast! Horton threw himself flat as another flare burst above him. He looked back to see Butterfield crawling over a tangle of rocks and windblown creosote branches.
He knew what had happened. Butterfield had fallen and hit his shotgun on a rock. Ithacas do not have a dependable safety. Cocked and with a round in the chamber, the weapon had discharged.
Horton pumped his weapon to chamber the first shotshell. Now they would fight. Because of Butterfield's stumbling and the accidental discharge, they would fight. Two men with .38 pistols and shotguns against a squad of paramilitary gunmen with automatic weapons and grenades and illumination. Horton thought of abandoning Butterfield to die alone. No. Never.
Never leave your wounded, never leave your men to the enemy. Horton could not disobey his Airborne discipline, no matter how many years ago the Fort Ord instructors had screamed the words into his head. He could not leave a man he had worked with for months, who had covered him, who had faced death in the doorways and alleys of the drug world with him. Bursts of high-velocity slugs ripped over them. Twigs fell, rocks clattered. A grenade popped only a few feet away, the shrapnel tearing through the brush above them. But the gully sheltered them.
Horton attempted a joke. "Get with it, partner. This is the shoot-out. Make them eat lead."
As the flarelight sputtered away, Horton crawled to the gully side. He looked up. He saw the flashing barrel of a gunman silhouetted against the 4WD's headlights. Pushing in his Ithaca's safety, he put the shotgun's front sight on the center of the gunman's chest, and squeezed the trigger.
The man dropped. Horton slid down as burst after burst searched for him. A grenade flashed, throwing dirt and chopped mesquite over him. Butterfield crawled to him. Horton gave him commands in a hiss.
"Keep moving! That way. Dump the sand out of that barrel before you try to fire it."
Butterfield tried to speak, but could not. Horton shoved him on as bullets puffed dust only an arm's length above them.
A form jumped into the gully. Horton lay still, watching the darkness, his shotgun on line.
Light bathed the brush and rocks. Horton saw a shoulder and the side of a head above a tangle, twenty yards away. He sighted, and he waited.
The gunman raised his M-16. Horton fired a blast of Number Six birdshot into the man's face.
Screaming, his face and part of a hand gone, the gunman thrashed in the dust. Blood sprayed from his destroyed mouth as he called out in Spanish to the others.
Horton pumped his weapon to chamber another round, and waited for the flarelight to give him another target.
The air above him exploded with shrapnel and slugs. A heavy-caliber machine gun hammered at the gully, the dirt exploding with the impacts of slugs and grenade blasts.
Behind Horton, Butterfield fired his shotgun once, twice. Then a tight-throated whine became a scream as an autoburst raked Butterfield's legs. Horton scrambled as he saw a form with a flashing muzzle.
Raising his shotgun, Horton fired at the same instant as his target, hundreds of tiny lead balls racing to kill the gunman even as a 40mm fragmentation grenade struck only inches from Horton's feet.
His legs were instantly shredded. Blood gushed from a thousand wounds. He struggled to work the shotgun's pump action. But his left arm did not function.
Dropping the shotgun, he jerked the .38 pistol from the holster at the small of his back.
A boot stomped down on his arm. Horton looked up into the muzzle of an M-16. He never saw the flash, never felt the burst that ended his life.
2
Gray in the first minutes of dawn, the boulevards, parks and public buildings of Washington, D.C. wheeled below as the Air Force jet banked and took a route to the south-southwest.
Hermann "Gadgets" Schwarz, electronics and communications specialist for Able Team, looked to the east. He saw the incandescent disk of the sun rising above light-marked suburbs in Maryland and Delaware. Headlights streaked the expressways as commuters traveled to the capital. The ex-Green Beret radioman, veteran of wars in Southeast Asia, the Americas and the Middle East, smiled at the irony.
All we government employees, on our way to work. You to your offices. Me to...
"Guatemala," Andrzej Konzaki said from the conference table. The wide-shouldered, legless ex-Marine put a pointer to Central America. "You'll be landing in five hours at Guatemala International."
"This an official visit?" Rosario Blancanales asked. A calm, quiet ex-Green Beret born in Puerto Rico, Blancanales served as medic, interpreter and indigenous operations specialist for Able Team. Like Gadgets, Blancanales still wore his pajamas. The call to Stony Man had awakened them at 4:00 a.m.
Carl Lyons interrupted before Konzaki could answer Blancanales. The cynical ex-LAPD officer, hardened and scarred by wars in the streets of Los Angeles, and more recently in the secret dirty wars fought by Able Team, had a reputation that did not include courtesy.
"What does Guatemala have to do with Texas? The call said something happened in Texas."
"To paraphrase
an old English preacher," Konzaki told them. " 'No nation is an island.' Even those surrounded by water. Not anymore. What happened is this..."
Konzaki read from a notebook of photocopied documents and top-secret memos. "Throughout the past several months, in fact the last few years, the FBI has been working on several gangs running weapons into Central America. They've traced the serial numbers of weapons captured in El Salvador back to Miami and Los Angeles..."
"Commies are killing people with American weapons?" Lyons broke in.
"Everybody's killing people with American weapons," Konzaki told him. "Castro took Cuba with M-1s, Thompsons and Brownings. The Sandinistas took Nicaragua with rifles bought in Miami gun-shops."
"First good reason I've ever heard for gun control." Lyons took off a pale blue sports coat, then unbuttoned his bright red shirt. His pager had beeped from the bedside of a young woman in Georgetown; he had taken a taxi to the airport to wait for the others to arrive by helicopter from the Great Smoky Mountains.
Konzaki continued. "The FBI have a special task force of officers following the flow of weapons from the United States to the death squads in El Salvador. We're trying to stop those crazies before they murder everyone down there.
"What the FBI have found are huge shipments of ammunition and weapons going south. Not just pistols and rifles. Machine guns, grenades, rockets. Tons of ammunition..."
"Sounds like someone's going into politics," Lyons joked.
The interruptions irritated Konzaki. He stared at Lyons for a moment, then looked to the others. "How do we shut him up? I've got a briefing to deliver, and you've only got five hours before you hit the ground."
Blancanales considered the question. "Shoot him. Back when one of those bikers on Catalina got lucky and hit him with a slug from an M-60, I didn't see Lyons moving or talking for at least two minutes. It was all he could do to breathe..."
Gadgets disagreed. "Don't shoot him. He's a good pointman. Always blundering into things, stirring up trouble long before we show up. Gives us time to plan something intelligent. Maybe we could kick him in the head for a while..."