In the red light of sunset, vultures feasted on the bodies of the soldiers who had died on the high ridge. The squat black creatures, their heads and necks glistening red with gore, paused in their feeding to look up at the helicopter. One vulture pulled its head out of the chest cavity of a naked corpse, a torn mass of lung tissue flopping in its beak. The vultures flapped their blood-splashed wings to drive off the huge mechanical insect descending onto the ridge.

Dust gusted. The rotor storm swirled red in the sunset as the chopper settled on its skids. Inside, Colonel Gonzalez, Lieutenant Colomo and a squad of soldiers looked through the Plexiglas of the sliding doors as the mountain wind carried away the dust. Without speaking, they watched as the dust-grayed vultures returned to the dead men.

The lieutenant threw open the door. Jerking out his autopistol, he fired at the vultures, the rapid-fire popping of the 9mm cartridges insignificant in the vast expanse of shadowy mountains and red sky.

Awkward, their gullets heavy with Mexican flesh, the vultures flapped away, squawking into the canyon.

Except one. The lieutenant's wild shooting had broken the wing of one vulture. Flailing the disjointed wing, the crippled carrion bird screeched and waddled away, its good wing fanning swirls of dust. The lieutenant rushed the vulture and executed it with three point-blank shots to the head, then launched a vicious kick at the gore-splashed headless creature.

Cursing, muttering prayers to their Catholic saints and God, the soldiers jumped out of the helicopter. They moved through the dead, groaning at the sight of vulture-mutilated faces with empty eyesockets and torn-away noses and lips. Soldiers shouted out to one another as they found dead friends.

Men forgot their machismo, their curses and obscenities becoming sobs.

Snapping his riding crop against his jackboot, the colonel finally took command. "Search the area! Perhaps someone survived and is hiding. Look for the bodies of the ones who did this. Look for weapons. Anything. We cannot take revenge until we know who committed this massacre and find them. Now! Soon it will be dark."

"The gringos did this!" the lieutenant declared. "We will search the mountains and make them pay. They will wish they were never born."

"It could not have been them," the colonel told his junior officer. "Sergeant Mendoza reported the gringos in the canyon, down there..."

Walking to where the ridge ended, Colonel Gonzalez pointed with his leather crop into the darkness of the gorge. "The ambush trapped the DEA men there. Sergeant Mendoza reported fighting between the gringos and Sergeant Orlando's platoon. Then Mendoza opened fire. The helicopter went down to make the kill. That is when the others attacked here."

The two officers looked at the twisted, gory bodies scattered around them on the ridge. The colonel continued his analysis. "The gringos could not have done this. Someone else. A force that came down from there..."

Like a professor lecturing, the colonel pointed to the mountain engulfed in shadows behind them. "They came from there. That would also explain how the pilot was wounded. Perhaps another group helped the gringos in the canyon."

"But how is that possible?" the lieutenant asked. "After we shot them down, they had no time to send for help."

Colonel Gonzalez surveyed the range of mountains. In the east, the night already held the Sierra Madres in its dark, cool grip. In the west, patches of red sunlight glowed from peaks.

"We have enemies here. Enemies of our organization and of our New Order. But they will not survive. Nothing will be allowed to resist the International. We have the helicopters, we have the soldiers, we have the bombs, the napalm, we have the satellites of our allies in Washington. They cannot escape. We will find them and exterminate them!"

An hour later, the helicopter returned to the asphalt airfield of Rancho Cortez, the temporary garrison facility commanded by Colonel Gonzalez. While his superiors in the capital completed the ouster of the army and federal officials who refused to swear allegiance to the New Order, the elite International Group occupied the sprawling ranch on the Pacific coast. The complex of dormities, warehouses and air-craft hangars that dotted the ranch had been used throughout the century for a succession of causes. First came the free enterprise of the Yankee sugarcane processors, then the revolutionary forces of General Emilio Flores. Mafia bootleggers followed during Prohibition and, decades later, the airborne commandos of Operation Condor found a hospitable home. Every user had contributed improvements to the facilities of the Rancho.

Generators powered electric lights and machines and air conditioners. Wells pumped water. Concrete roads linked the Rancho to the highway and railroad. Docks provided for the transfer of cargo to and from ships. The paved airfields offered the convenience of year-round air travel, regardless of weather or politics or international laws. The dormitories could house thousands of soldiers or campesinos.

Now Rancho Cortez housed the hundreds of soldiers and officers and technicians of the International Group. Every man had been screened for racial purity and political beliefs. Every man had sworn an oath of loyalty to the New Order. Though still serving in the army of the Republic of Mexico, they had been assigned from their original units to create the elite International Group.

Advisors from El Salvador, Argentina, Chile and Paraguay instructed the Group in the ideology of the New Order. They taught organization and counter-insurgency. The advisors also served as liaison with the special units restructuring the heroin trade in the states of Sonora, Sinaloa and Chihuahua.

When the special units in Culiacan or Hermosillo or the Sierra Madres required military assistance, the group provided reinforcements and aircraft. Sometimes the soldiers went to battle in the street clothes of gangsters. Sometimes they wore the uniform of the army of Mexico. But they always served the International Group.

The Group and the special units had succeeded in destroying or defeating every drug gang in western Mexico. All state and federal opposition had been bribed, liquidated or politically neutralized.

Los Guerreros Blancos now controlled all heroin flowing north from the western states of Mexico. Every American dollar from the addicts and the drug enchanted of the United States went into the transnational banks of the International.

However, difficulties still arose from time to time. The escape of the North American DEA agents and the annihilation of two Group units represented the single most alarming incident since Colonel Gonzalez had assumed command. If he did not counter the threat presented by organized and deadly resistance in the mountains, his promotion to general would be uncertain.

From the landing field, Colonel Gonzalez went first to the hangar where technicians repaired the damaged helicopter. A worker scrubbed crusted blood from the cockpit as others replaced the Plexiglas windshield. The staff sergeant in charge of the technicians immediately reported to the colonel.

"It appears to be a bullet from a thirty-caliber weapon."

He gave the colonel a misshapen lump of copper-jacketed lead. The nose had been smashed flat by impact, but the base remained circular. Rifling marked the diameter.

"A machine gun fired this?"

"I don't know, sir. Perhaps an expert with a microscope would be able to tell."

The colonel hurried directly from the airfield to the communications room of Rancho Cortez. He dismissed the technician on duty and unlocked the sophisticated radio linking the Group to his superiors in Mexico City.