In seconds, the lookouts sent an all-clear code on their radios. The men at the boats dragged the inflated crafts into the palms and camouflaged them with palm fronds and brush, then returned to the shore with branches and whisked away the marks of the boats and every bootprint.

Able Team unpacked and distributed equipment. Two contrasand the sentries who would remain with the boats received Pocketscopes. The passive night sights used second-generation image-intensification electronics to amplify the ambient light of the stars and moon.

As the Miskitos checked the scopes, Blancanales switched on the NVS-700 Starlite scope fitted to his M-16/M-203 over-and-under assault rifle/grenade launcher. He scanned the darkness, the light-amplification electronics turning the rainy night to brilliant green-and-white day. Then he slipped a suppressor over the muzzle of the M-16 and jammed in a magazine of Interdynamics reduced-charge 5.56mm cartridges. Though Blancanales, Gadgets and Lyons all carried silenced pistols, the combination of the Starlite and Interdynamics suppressor kit gave them the capability of invisible, silent attack over a range of two hundred meters.

Gadgets checked the multifrequency coded impulse generator. Tonight, though he would not even carry a rifle, he had the greatest responsibility. The Sandinistas had garrisoned hundreds of soldiers in the region: the satellite photos revealed barracks near the workshops and docks of the harbor. If a sentry or guard dog saw Able Team slip into town, the latter risked pursuit by a battalion of Nicaraguan soldiers commanded by Cuban and Soviet officers. Gadgets could not stop a battalion with the electronics and radio-triggered claymores he carried, but he could slow one down. Other than his heavy gear, he carried only a knife and a silenced Beretta 93-R.

Impatient, Lyons waited for the others, his eyes piercing the darkness. He carried his standard equipment: a four-inch Colt Python in a shoulder holster, a modified-for-silence Colt Government Model and a Konzak selective-fire 12-gauge assault shotgun. He had no faith in electronics, only in firepower.

"Ready to go," Gadgets whispered. He passed Lyons a backpack. Lyons shouldered it and stood, the weight of his weapons, ammunition and twenty kilos of explosive and steel forcing him to stoop. The pack contained ten of Gadgets's claymore mines and a reserve multifrequency transmitter.

Led by one of the young contraswho scanned the darkness with a night viewer, they moved along the beach. Wind thrashed the palms, covering the noise of their boots on the sand. Three times Gadgets stopped to lash claymores to the trees.

Beacon lights marked the entry to the lagoon, a kilometer-long spit of low hills and palms designed by East German engineers to create a harbor for freighters and patrol boats. The beacon on the eastern side was mounted on a steel tower. On the western side, where a steep hill descended almost to the beach, the beacon sat on a two-story concrete building. Gunports overlooked the lagoon and the passage into the Caribbean.

Looking through the night viewer, one of the Miskitos spotted two sentries. They stood in the building, scanning the storm-whipped ocean with binoculars. The contrapointman went flat in the sand and motioned Blancanales forward.

Rain streaming off his eyebrows, he watched shadows pace inside the beacon house. The revolution of the beacon light illuminated the night in a sweeping section of diffuse red. When the light beamed toward him, Blancanales saw nothing. When it beamed away, the soft red of the falling rain backlit the sentries in the beacon house. He saw three of them.

Replacing the caps on his Starlite scope, Blancanales crawled back to his partners. "No problem..."

Leaving the beach, they cut inland along a trail evidently used by patrols. Gadgets positioned another claymore. The trail twisted up the hill. As they approached the ridge, the pointman went flat and crept forward. A minute passed. Then the pointman motioned them on.

The ridge had been cleared of palms and brush. To the east, at the end of the ridge, was the beacon house. To the west, the naked ridge vanished into the night. To the north was the village and harbor.

Only poor fishermen and their families lived in La Laguna, no more than a line of shacks and a dirt road along a rain-flooded creek. But two hundred meters away, on the other side of a chain-link fence and security lights, Cuban and ComBloc advisors enjoyed the modern comforts of the harbor complex.

Prefabricated barracks housed the Cubans and ComBloc nationals. Diesel generators provided electricity to light the barracks, offices and warehouses near the piers. On three long piers, lit as bright as day by mercury-arc lamps, Able Team saw pairs of sentries in black plastic raincoats patrolling.

Despite the storm, a freighter with deck-mounted cranes was being unloaded. Workmen in bright yellow rain slickers attached cables to cargo containers, which were being hoisted onto diesel trucks with flatbed trailers on the dock.

Blancanales pointed to the junction of the creek and the lagoon. Then he traced the creek through the harbor-complex fence. Exactly as the anti-Soviet agents in La Laguna had described and as satellite photography had confirmed, the flooding creek provided an entry to the harbor facilities.

"The clerk got it right," Lyons admitted.

As the others surveyed the harbor, Gadgets placed three more claymores. He worked by the intermittent red glow of the beacon light, carefully positioning the claymores, then securing them to immovable backstops: a jutting rock, a palm stump, a rotting palm tree. When he finished, he crept back to the group.

"How many left in your pack?" Lyons whispered to him.

"Down to three."

"Then take some of mine."

"No way. Those are for down there." Gadgets pointed to the harbor complex. "Couldn't sort them out in the dark."

"What're you talking about? Just take five of them."

"And scramble the sequence? Forget it! You don't want to mess with the sequence."

Blancanales motioned Lyons forward. The Puerto Rican, a veteran of twenty years of war, pointed to a ridge less than a hundred meters from the fence. "I'm leaving one of our friends on that hillside there with this rifle and Starlite." He tapped the M-16/M-203 he carried.

"And two men at the fence?"

"No. He can cover us. The other goes with us."

Lyons nodded. One at a time, the men went downhill through the flowing mud as the rain splashed down. They reached the flooding stream minutes later.

Stripping off his bandolier of 5.56mm magazines and six 40mm grenades, Blancanales passed his M-16/M-203 to one of the contras. The teenager took it and climbed the hill to a point where he could cover their entry and exit.

They continued to the fence in single file, fighting the current and drifting debris. Where the stream passed under the fence was a tangle of branches and litter. The force of the surging water had bent the chain-link fence. Though the security lights illuminated the area, no one inside the complex or patrolling the perimeter could see the infiltrators in the stream.

Blancanales directed two of the young contrasto the banks, one to each side: they crawled to the top and watched for patrols. Then Lyons and the contrasripped into the tangle, pulling fronds aside, dragging branches clear. Lyons found a piece of lumber jammed in the streambed. He stood on the board and gripped the chain link.

Breaking the board, Lyons released the entire mass of debris. Gadgets grabbed Lyons's feet. Blancanales and a teenage contraclutched at the bank. Another contralost his footing and disappeared: Lyons saw him reappear, choking and sputtering, twenty meters past the fence. He immediately scrambled to the bank. Staying low, he swam back to the others, remaining hidden in the shadows.