"How'd you do it?" Pardee pressed.

The invention burned on. "Told a recon I knew that I wanted Chicom 82mm mortar. Then I put an electric Claymore's blasting cap on the fuse, and hid it just a little bit inside one of the sandbags topside. He went topside, I popped him, then I pulled the wires clear. I jammed them in my pocket as I went to help him. I tied off what was left of his legs and arm but he bled to death before he got to triage. His replacement had a more realistic attitude."

"I was in Operation Pegasus," Pardee commented. "Never saw a more fucked-up place than Khe Sanh. When did you say you met Mr. Marchardo?"

Blancanales interrupted. "Pardee, can't you lighten up? Luther and I go back years and years."

Luther. Luther Schwarz.

"Gentlemen," Pardee told them, looking at each of them. He smiled his death's-head grin. "You answer all the questions I ask you. Or you take a walk. Do we understand each other?"

"No problem here," Lyons told him.

"Thank you, Mr. Morgan."

Carl Morgan.

Outside, the jagged spines of mountains towered on both sides. Air turbulence shook the Beechcraft.

"When did you meet Mr. Marchardo?"

Gadgets looked to Blancanales. "When was it? A couple of years ago. The time the coast guard played tracer-tag with that yacht full of hippie dopers..."

"Oh, man..." Blancanales laughed.

"Were you there, Mr. Morgan?"

"No."

"How long have youworked with your friends?"

"This year."

"Tell me all about it."

"Sometimes we're on boats. Sometimes we fly. Sometimes I get a G-3. Sometimes it's a Mattie Mattel. Always I got my Python. What else you interested in?"

"Who you really are."

Lyons didn't answer for a second. Gadgets looked out the window, watched the morning sun light the rocks. If Lyons couldn't handle this questioning...

"I'm past that." Lyons spoke like an old man.

"What?" Pardee looked piercingly at Lyons. "Just give me a straight answer."

"I'm Carl Morgan. I've got a phony passport and a Colt Python with a magnaported six-inch barrel. Issue me a rifle, I'll carry it. What else can I tell you?"

"You and me just might get along, Morgan," Pardee said. "Last night, I asked your pal for references. He said he couldn't talk about it. But you two will. I want the names of people you worked for. You're on the payroll, but until I check you out, you don't get weapons, briefings, nothing. Understand?"

"No problem here," Lyons told him.

"I understand," Gadgets agreed.

The intercom interrupted them. "One minute until landing. One minute."

The three men of Able Team looked out as the base flashed beneath them. They saw rows of steel prefab buildings, asphalt streets, gravel assembly areas, and a two-lane highway. The highway cut through the rocky hills around the camp, continued past the camp to a mansion set on the peak of a distant hill. Two fences surrounded the base. A blockhouse guarded the only gate.

"There is something you should know," Pardee cut off their sight-seeing. "Texas has a whole different attitude about private property. Somebody goes someplace, and they ain't supposed to be there, that's trespassing. And like the sign on the fence down there says, 'Trespassers Will Be Shot.' " The Beechcraft's wheels touched the landing strip.

* * *

Below his office window in La Paz, waves of flowers rolled across the red clay tiles of the restaurant roof. Parrots squawked on the patio. The flowers attracted hummingbirds.

Bob Paxton turned from his desk to watch the emerald-green birds flit through the flowers. Once, when ravens had raided the nests of the tiny birds, eating the eggs and chicks, Paxton had taken his silenced Ruger .22 and dropped the ravens, one by one.

Now he held the Ruger under his desk. The footsteps on the creaky stairs continued to his door. Before the visitor knocked, Paxton crossed the office, his feet silent on the tiles except for the slight squeak of the ankle on his plastic leg.

Knock. "Senor Paxton, this is Lieutenant Navarro."

Paxton slipped the Ruger in his belt at the small of his back. He opened the door for the young lieutenant. The two men presented a contrast in military traditions: Paxton, the ex-gunnery sergeant with his beer belly and cocaine habit; Navarro, slim and formal in his tailored polyester. Yet Navarro respected the boozy retired non-com. Unlike Navarro, Paxton had distinguished himself in combat. Navarro knew he would never have the opportunity.

"How can I help you, Lieutenant?"

The young Latin handed him a folder. Paxton glanced through the eight-by-ten black-and-white blow-ups.

"I need to know the names and nationalities."

"I don't know about these three, I'll have to check my files," said Paxton. "But this man..." He limped to his desk, spread out the photos. "I can tell you who he is, right now."

Paxton put his finger on the glossy black-and-white photo of Hal Brognola.

A closed van waited only steps from the jetprop. Scanning the scene as they left the plane, they saw the concrete landing strip, strips of landing lights, the steel prefab hangars at the far end. Double chain link fences topped with razor wire encircled the area.

"Move it!" Pardee shouted. "No tourism! In the truck."

Sitting on the floor of the van, Blancanales felt the air compress as Pardee slammed the van doors shut on them. "Reminds me of prison."

Gadgets touched his ear, pointed to the walls of the van. Blancanales and Lyons nodded. "Way I see it," Gadgets said clearly, "they run a tight operation. And I'm glad. Most of the gangs down South don't get busted from the outside, it's always a Fed or an informer on the inside. So a tight operation is all right with me."

The van took them first to an infirmary. Again, in the few steps between the van and the door of the prefab infirmary, they saw almost nothing of the base: chain link fencing topped by razor wire, and a blacktop road.

"Strip down," an orderly told them. He gave them each a deep plastic tray. "All your clothes and personal things in the trays. And I mean everything. Rings, dogtags, all of it."

"When do we get it back?" Lyons asked. "And where's our luggage?"

"Hey, man," the bone-thin blond orderly drawled in his southern accent. "Until you clear Security, that's the least of your worries."

Naked, they waited until a doctor took them one by one into an examination room. A middle-aged man with the gray skin and ravaged body of an alcoholic, the doctor did not introduce himself nor question them on their medical histories. Speaking only in monosyllables, he took full-body photographs of them, complete X rays, then blood samples.

Next, the orderly gave them each day-glow orange fatigues and tennis shoes, and hurried them back to the van.

"Dig these jazzy uniforms," Gadgets sighed.

"Camouflage," Lyons said. "For an invasion of Las Vegas."

Another short ride and the van dropped them at their barrack. The building sat at the edge of the base. It looked like a prison unit. Two electric gates and a glass-walled guard booth completed the impression created by the chain link fence and razor wire.

A man standing six-foot-eight stomped from the barrack door. "Stop rubbernecking, new meat. In here!"

They filed through. The interior was one large room. Two rows of ten steel bunk beds ran the length of the barrack. Though there were scuffs in the linoleum and chips in the paint of the steel beds, the place had the smell of a new house trailer, just months old. The sheet steel walls had the original enamel. Not one of the windows was cracked.

"I am Sergeant Cooke," the three-hundred-pound soldier told them. "Until Captain Pardee is positive on your identities, you stay here. When you clear Security, you will join the other men. Until then, you sweat. Here are the supplies you need for the next few days."