"All that running for nothing," Gadgets called out to his partners. "Too late to do anything here but get a suntan!"

"Brujo!" one of the Yaquis interrupted. The man pointed to a ridgeline behind them.

A signal mirror flashed the rapid code of an alert. Vato read the message.

"A helicopter comes. Be ready," he warned.

"Could it have seen us?" Lyons asked as he un-slung his FN-FAL paratrooper rifle.

"Who knows?" Vato replied as he slipped off his Springfield.

Around them, the Yaqui soldiers dispersed on the barren ridge. Some pressed themselves against rocks. Others flattened themselves in erosion cracks. One crawled into a tangle of mesquite. Everyone covered the distinctive lines and gleaming metal of their weapons with their bodies.

The four outsiders — Able Team and Coral — strained their ears to hear the helicopter. They heard nothing. But following the example of the Yaquis, they became parts of the ridge, arranging their camouflage cloaks, concealing their weapons.

Seconds later, the chopper soared over the eastern ridge, its skids seeming to touch the rocks. Rotor throb came as suddenly as an explosion. The Huey followed the contour of the slopes down the mountain, skimming over the mesquite.

Gadgets laughed. "That guy's getting tricky."

Blancanales and Lyons nodded agreement. Unlike the pilot of a spotter plane, who could shut off the engine and glide silently, or fly so high that people on the ground could not hear the motor, a helicopter pilot could not eliminate or diminish the noise of the rotors. However, if the pilot rode the contours of the terrain, using mountains and ridge-lines to block the rotor noise, enemies in a valley would not hear the approaching helicopter until it was too late. The pilot of the approaching helicopter had attempted exactly that.

They watched as the troopship rose to a hundred feet. The pilot circled once in the valley, then continued directly for the ridge where the group of Yaquis and North Americans lay in the dust and rocks.

Rotor throb exploded past them, dust swirling, as the Huey pilot tried to surprise his enemies on the other side of the ridge. The pilot circled the area once, then veered to the north.

"They're looking for action," Gadgets said. "No doubt about it."

"Vato," Lyons called out.

The young man rose from the rocks, brushing sand from his hair. He duck-walked over to the North Americans.

"Do they use light planes for surveillance and spotting?" Lyons asked.

"Usually. That helicopter, it is nothing. The many dead from yesterday makes the Blancos crazy, so they fly around thinking they will take revenge."

"Crazy for payback," Gadgets agreed. "We know what they want. Us."

Vato nodded. "I know my enemy. It is the planes we must be wary of. That is why I take the precaution of many lookouts. When the lookouts are alone, there is no sound. They listen for the planes, they watch the sky as we move. We have seen planes, but the planes have never seen us."

"They didn't leave a patrol down there," Lyons said, pointing to the ridge where the Mexican army squad had been annihilated. "And we need to take prisoners. What now?"

Slipping the sling of his Springfield rifle over his shoulder, Vato looked around to the vast expanse of the Sierra Madres. He glanced to the western horizon. Then he said, "Be patient. We know they will come. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. But they will come."

For the return to the concealed Yaqui village, Vato reorganized the scouts and main group into a skirmish line several kilometers wide. Scratching a straight line and a curved line in the sand, Vato explained to the foreigners that the skirmish line would sweep the mountains in a wide arc. The slowest foreigner, acting as the line's pivot point, would return directly to the cave village by the easiest trails. At the opposite end of the line, the fastest Yaquis, who could run at twice the speed of the foreigners, would range through the mountains, searching for patrolling Blancos.

Vato matched Yaquis to the foreigners. Coral — who as a Mexican counted as a foreigner in the Sierra Madres — would be the pivot, walking with a middle-aged Yaqui who still limped from a bullet wound. A young man who spoke some English would walk and jog with Gadgets. A young woman who spoke excellent Spanish would guide Blancanales.

After mentally totaling the weight of his weapons, Lyons decided to run with the Yaquis.

"Can you run for six more hours?" Vato asked.

"I've done it."

"Then you'll run with me in the center."

Staying close to Vato, Lyons observed the Yaqui chieftain's techniques of command. When Vato spoke with other Yaquis, he took the time to carefully explain details — as he had with the foreigners — by sketching maps and formations in the sand to illustrate his instructions and by pointing to landmarks. The Yaquis nodded and followed his orders. Vato never lost patience.

As they ran, Vato watched the horizons for aircraft and flashing signal mirrors. The Yaquis who ran from the valleys to the ridgelines to the mountaintops maintained contact with one another using their mirrors. Points of light flashed from mountain to mountain as the line moved across a wide swath of the Sierra Madres. Vato acknowledged the flash codes from time to time, breaking pace for a moment to flash back with his own mirror, then continuing.

On a mountainside, Lyons saw why the Yaqui patrol maintained their continuous observation of the sky. They ran through a forest of tall mesquite trees, many over thirty feet high. Then suddenly, as they went over the ridge, all life disappeared.

Black mesquite stood like grotesque sculptures. Ashes made the earth black. Lyons scanned the spot of devastation for an explanation of the fire. He noticed nothing extraordinary.

"What happened here? Napalm?" he called out to Vato.

"We saw the plane drop the bomb. But there was no one here. Maybe it was a coyote they saw. Or a coludo."

"A what?"

"A magic coyote. A spirit coyote."

Lyons knew the Yaqui jived him. "Who knows?"

For hours, Lyons and Vato ran without a break. The heat became intolerable at midday. To protect himself from sunstroke, Lyons stripped off his black long-sleeved fatigue shirt and fashioned a turban, folding and rolling and knotting the shirt to create a visor to shadow his eyes. As Lyons squatted in the cool shade of rock overhang to make his hat, Vato watched.

"You should have brought a sombrero, americano."

"Should've brought a lot of things," Lyons answered. "But I didn't plan on getting shot down in the desert."

"You entered the territory of the enemy without calculation. You were very lucky to live."

"Sun Tzu?"

Vato nodded.

"What would Sun Tzu say about the DEA promising my team full cooperation in investigating the dope war, then sending us into an ambush?"

"All war is based on deception."

In the next hours, as they ran through the mountains of the Sierra Madres, Lyons, the ex-cop from Los Angeles, considered the concept of war as deception expressed by the ancient Chinese philosopher-warrior. In crime, deception concealed and confused.

War required other deceptions. Lyons thought of his missions with Able Team. He realized he had never systematically analyzed the role of deception in the actions. From Able Team's first counterstrike on terrorism in Manhattan to the Mexican army's rocket strike on their DEA Lear jet, deception — not weapons, not personnel, not information, not opportunity — created each action.

Deception created threats: the explosives packed into a passenger car, the silent pistol in the purse of the teenage girl, the trusted diplomat, the plutonium generator deep in the Amazon jungle.

Deception created responses: counterterrorist groups masquerading as taxi drivers and drunks and beggars, elite soldiers as diplomats, Able Team as international businessmen or tourists or mercenaries.