"Same story," Lyons radioed Blancanales. "She takes it to the police. But if the local cops are any good, they'll know where the place is, even if Unomundo won't tell the police captain. We'll put questions to them."

Low-gearing through the village, they saw boarded-up windows, streets without people. In the central square, no vendors displayed goods or vegetables or meats in the market stalls. A face peered quickly from a window, then a shutter slammed shut.

Patterns of bullet holes dotted the whitewashed church. Sheet-metal doors bore the dents and holes of autofire. Across a dirt street from the church, an Anglo pro-fascist talked with a policeman. The Anglo wore an unfamiliar uniform, not green camouflage like the other mercenaries but gray. The policeman and the mercenary looked up at the approaching car and pickup truck. Lyons turned to Senora Garcia and warned her: "We're walking straight in. You make a problem, you die on the spot."

As Luis parked, Lyons watched the policeman and the mercenary. An M-l carbine leaned against the wall of the police station. The mercenary wore a Colt .45 in a black nylon holster and web belt. The two men returned to their conversation.

Lyons warned Senora Garcia one more time. "We've got your children and your husband back in the city. Walk straight in, help us get the man we want, and you can go home to your family."

Leaning over the seat, Lyons put his knife to the plastic bands looped around her ankles. He freed her ankles, then her wrists.

She threw open the door, screamed. "Comunistas! Ayudeme!The Communists took me prisoner! Kill them!"

A three-round burst from the Atchisson tore the policeman and the pro-fascist apart, spraying blood and shredded flesh over the white wall.

Sprinting after the woman, Lyons caught her in the doorway of the police station. He smashed the rubber-padded steel butt of the assault shotgun down on her head to stun her.

Inside, a policeman grabbed a long-barreled Remington shotgun from a wall rack and pumped the action. A blast of steel ripped his head away. Lyons scanned the room. He saw a heavy locked door with a barred window. A second door had a sign: CAPTAIN.

Kicking the police captain's door, Lyons ducked back. Three pistol shots popped inside. Plaster fell as the bullets punched into the ceiling.

"Give up or die!" Lyons yelled.

No more shots came. Lyons threw a chair into the office. No shots. He snapped a glance inside, and saw an open window.

Autofire suddenly hammered the outside wall, slugs breaking the window glass and punching into the interior of the office. Lyons took another quick look into the room to make sure the captain was not waiting against the wall. No one there.

Lyons dashed outside. The captain of police lay dead outside the window. As Lyons arrived, Luis fired a burst through the man's head, disintegrating the skull.

"You dumb bastard!" Lyons screamed at him.

"He tried to escape."

Rushing back to the front entrance, Lyons looked for Gadgets and Blancanales. He did not see their pickup truck. He keyed his hand-radio.

Blancanales kicked down the door of an abandoned house. He moved to a window and smashed out the nailed-closed shutters. Gadgets carried in the captured M-60 machine gun.

The window looked out onto the road into town. Blancanales keyed his hand-radio to answer Lyons.

"We're on the other side of the square. We're..."

The jeep raced toward the sound of gunfire at the police station. Its fascist force of four leveled their rifles to fire across the square at Lyons. Gadgets sighted the M-60 and pulled the trigger.

Slugs slammed the jeep. The windshield shattered. The continuous line of high-velocity 7.62 NATO punched through the mercenaries in the front seat and continued through the bodies of the men in the back. Gadgets held the trigger back, the heavy weapon jackhammering in his hands, Blancanales guiding the belt of cartridges. Tracers passed through bodies, ricocheted off steel, streaked into the distance.

The jeep hurtled out of control through the square, the soldiers aboard dead, their chests and heads masses of torn meat. Gadgets swung the M-60 around and gave the jeep a last burst through the side. Gasoline flamed. The jeep crashed into the square's stone fountain. It burned.

Blancanales keyed his hand-radio. "Got them."

Lyons whooped into his radio. They heard his voice simultaneously from their hand-radios and from across the square. "Let's get out of here!"

Dragging the unconscious woman to the Dodge, Lyons threw her in and slammed the door. Luis ran from the alleyway. He got in and started the engine. Lyons glared at him as he accelerated backward.

"You could have taken the captain alive."

"Why should the fascists live?" Luis asked. Whipping the wheel around, he jammed the shift into drive and put the gas pedal to the floor. Tires screeched as the stench of burning rubber filled the car.

"Not the highway!" Lyons shouted. "West. Take the dirt road to the west."

The Dodge careered through the narrow streets, bouncing on its heavy-duty suspension. Luis whipped the steering wheel from side to side to swerve around potholes. Rocks gouged at the oilpan and undercarriage. Blancanales and Gadgets followed only seconds behind.

They left Azatlan at sixty miles an hour. Passing through dry, untended cornfields, the well-maintained dirt road went due west toward the forest. In minutes, they had passed over two hills and left the village far behind.

Clusters of abandoned houses, their walls scorched, their burned roofs collapsed, dotted the fields. Rutted lanes linked the houses to the road. But Lyons saw that trucks had not followed the lanes. Instead, tire tracks scarred fields hand-tended and nurtured for generations. He spoke into his radio.

"We're cutting for the tree line. Konzaki said these Nazis have helicopters. We've got to get out of sight."

"Second the motion," Gadgets answered.

"There!" Lyons pointed to a narrow dirt lane cutting between two abandoned cornfields.

Slowing, Luis eased the big Dodge between two walls made of piled volcanic stone. Metal shrieked as rocks scraped the bodywork. Lyons snapped a full magazine into his Atchisson. He thumbed more shells into the spent magazine, then replaced it in the bandolier.

Blancanales drove straight across the cornfields. Bouncing and slamming over the rows, the pickup overtook the Dodge. Luis maintained the best speed he could without destroying the car. They passed stands of banana and avocado trees. In the yards of abandoned farms, unpicked fruit broke the branches of small trees. The lane meandered from farm to farm. Every group of houses had been burned. Walls were pocked with bullet and grenade-fragment scars.

They reached the pines. The forest showed the care of generations of woodcutters. No brush or fallen branches tangled the forest. Trees grew in spaced intervals. Near each stump, the peasant foresters had planted saplings to replace the harvested tree.

With the transmission in first and the accelerator floored, the torque of the Dodge's engine pulled the heavy sedan up the grassy slopes of the forested foot-hills. Luis maintained an angle almost parallel to the hillside. Soon the Dodge tilted sideways at forty-five degrees. Every bump and lurch threatened to roll the car.

But the pines did not screen them from airborne observation. Lyons called his partners.

"Think the pickup can keep going uphill?"

"Not much," Blancanales answered.

"Time to walk."

Luis found the best overhead cover and parked. Blancanales stopped beside the Dodge. Able Team assembled their gear. In addition to the gear issued by Stony Man Farm, they now had the weight of captured weapons and ammunition. Gadgets carried a folding-stock Galil rifle. Lyons packed an Uzi captured at the roadblock as a backup assault weapon.