"I mean, do we got our act together? El perfecto..." He pointed to his OD pack and his green-and-black camo suit. "Except that I've got the wrong color camouflage."

To the side, Lyons stripped off his sports coat, shoulder-holstered Colt Python and white shirt. He threw the street clothes into the empty trunk and put on a black long-sleeved fatigue shirt and black fatigue pants. He slipped into the shoulder holster and pulled the strap tight. He left on his gray slacks but changed from his neoprene-soled street shoes into black canvas-and-nylon boots. Like his clothes and boots, he also preferred black nylon for his backpack.

Then they opened their "guitar cases." Lyons strapped on a black web belt and a bandolier. He took out his Atchisson full-auto assault shotgun. He checked the weapon, then snapped in a magazine. An extra barrel for the Atchisson — a fourteen-inch "urban environment" barrel — and a Colt Government Model .45 automatic disappeared into the backpack.

From his case, Gadgets took almost identical web gear, but his belt carried a Beretta 93-R fitted with a silencer. He slung a Colt Automatic Rifle, with a short barrel and telescoping stock over his shoulder.

"Presto chango!" Gadgets exclaimed. "Convertible luggage for convertible dudes. From businessmen to hardcore tourists. Let those Mexicans come. They find us, it's their problem."

Davis stared. "What exactly were you going to do in Culiacan?"

"It's not whatwe were going to do," Lyons said laughing. "It's whowe were going to do."

Gadgets laughed also. "We always carry this, maybe more. Boy Scout motto..." Gadgets looked to Lyons.

They spoke simultaneously, "Always be prepared."

Blancanales pointed to a position on the map. "We're here. The Mexicans are between us and the nearest road back to the coast. Senor Coral suggests we walk to here..." He pointed to a line cutting through the mountains. "That's the Chihuahua al Pacifico. We'll walk there, then ride the train down to Los Mochis."

"How far?"

"A day. Two days."

Lyons shook his head. "Forget it. I only packed a liter of water. Let's kill those soldiers and take a truck."

"It's a one-day walk the other way," Blancanales countered. "And if we don't get a truck, we'll be walking through their territory. If we take the train back, our return will be a complete surprise."

"All right, we take the long walk. Time to move." Lyons glanced at his watch. "We've been on the ground seven minutes. We burn the jet?"

"Why?" Davis asked. "There's a chance it can be salvaged."

"That plane's a wreck. And when the Mexicans get here, they'll know we got out. I want to throw all this luggage..." he pointed to the empty shipping trunks and the guitar cases "...inside the plane and torch it."

"What a waste," Davis said, shaking his head.

"Waste or be wasted," Lyons told him.

Blancanales emptied his equipment cases. As he assembled his gear, Lyons returned to the shattered Lear. The area stank of spilled jet fuel. He threw the cases inside, one by one.

With Gadgets's blood-ruined sports coat, Lyons ran a few hundred meters from the plane. He dropped the bloody coat on the sand. He ran another hundred meters to a gully where insects buzzed around a stagnant pool of water seeping out of the sandbanks. Sliding down the side of the gully, Lyons ran downstream, through swarms of horseflies and turquoise-blue dragonflies. A hundred meters to the south, he scrambled up a rock slope.

He broke off a mesquite branch and swept away his bootprints as he returned to the plane. When he neared the wreck, he walked backward. The Mexicans would find two different false tracks leading away from the plane. Then he swept away his tracks to and from the gully where the others waited.

"Wizard!" Lyons called out as he slid down the embankment.

Gadgets Schwarz braced his CAR on the lip of the gully. "Ready?"

"Light it," Lyons barked.

The CAR popped once in the emptiness of the high desert. A rifle flare arced across the hundred meters of sand and mesquite, the magnesium charge an intense white for an instant. Then the fuel flashed and a ball of flame churned into the sky.

Leaving the column of flame and black acrid smoke behind, the survivors marched north, following the gully through the alluvial fan. A kilometer ahead, the sheer volcanic stone walls of the gorge towered above the desert.

From the mountains, three men watched the strangers and the burning jet. They sprawled in the rocks and windblown sand of a ridgeline. Their clothes matched the dust: simple hand-sewn cotton pants and shirts, colored first with dye, then stained again every day with sweat and dust and sometimes blood. They also wore boots taken from the Mexican army. Rags had been wrapped around the soles and secured with strings.

All of the young men carried rifles. Two wore Mexican army-issue M-16 rifles slung over their backs. The third carried an antique Springfield 1903-A3 bolt-action rifle with a stock carved from wood.

The young men had skin the color of the old rifle's stock, dark like rich walnut or mahogany. Their dark hair fell to their collars. Knives had cut their hair square at their shoulders.

The man with the Springfield watched the foreigners through Mexican army-issue binoculars. The other two waited for his instructions.

A rotor throb came from the south, distant and faint, heard, then gone, then heard again. The men searched the horizon for the helicopters. One man shielded his eyes from the glare and stared into the distance. He pointed.

Raising the binoculars, the third man found two OD Bell UD-1D military helicopters. The three young men watched for the next few minutes as the helicopters circled the burning jet.

One helicopter landed on the sandy flat while the other continued circling overhead. Like shadows in a storm of rotor-thrown dust, a skirmish line of soldiers in the green uniforms of the Mexican army searched the alluvial fan for survivors of the crash.

A soldier signaled to an officer. The officer and a radioman went to where the soldier stood. The three Mexicans thrashed through the mesquite to the gully cutting through the alluvial fan.

Above the search group, the command helicopter broke off its orbit of the wreck. The helicopter spiraled down to an altitude of a hundred meters from the desert, then followed the streambed south, in the direction of the road to the Pacific coast.

The Mexican soldiers re-formed into a skirmish line and swept south through the mesquite. In a rotor storm of sand, the second helicopter lifted away from the crash site and took a slow, hovering course parallel to the streambed.

The command helicopter flew to the south, the direction from which it had come, as if returning to base.

On the high ridgeline, the three young men watched the search. The watcher with the binoculars looked down to the base of the mountain. Through the high-powered optics, he saw the five foreigners, three in fatigues and carrying weapons, quick-marching to the north.

The watcher lost sight of the foreigners when they gained the concealment of the shadows and rocks of the gorge.

"Brujo, mira aquello," one of the young men said, pointing to the southwest.

El Brujo, the young man with the old Springfield rifle and the binoculars, scanned the horizon. He saw the speck of the command helicopter returning. But the helicopter came by a circuitous route, staying far in the distance. From time to time, El Brujo lost sight of the helicopter behind the mountains, but he continued to track the helicopter as it completed a half circle around the plateau where the private jet had crashed.

Finally, the helicopter disappeared into the mountain ranges in the north.

The young man the others called El Brujo returned his binoculars to their case. He issued quick instructions to one of the others. The young man nodded. He cinched the sling of his M-16 tight, then ran north along the ridgeline, his rag-wrapped feet kicking up puffs of dust as he ran, but leaving no tracks.