Unfolding a satellite map of the area, Blancanales showed Luis a safe route back to the highway. "Over this mountain, follow the ridgeline of the next line of hills east. Even with the woman slowing you down, you should reach the road before dark."

"She will not slow me."

They knew what Luis intended. Lyons shook his head.

"Don't you kill her..."

"Why do you protect the fascist whore?"

"Let Unomundo take her," Lyons said. "Give us a few hours head start, then let her go where the meres can find her. They'll be searching for us, but they'll find her. People in the town saw her lead us here. Think of it as justice."

"Tell me of justice! They took machetes to my baby, then to my wife. Her feet, her legs, her hands, her arms. I will not give this whore to Unomundo. She is mine. She will suffer myjustice."

Lyons went to the Dodge. He jerked the woman from the car. A shove sent her staggering down the hillside. "Run! This is the last chance you get."

She sprawled in the grass. Blood matted her hair. Her throat was choked with sobs. Crying, she stared around her at the men she thought would kill her.

But the three men of Able Team shouldered their packs and walked into the trees. Marching through the cool wind-swayed shadows of the pines, Lyons turned.

He saw Luis open the trunk of the Dodge. The young man took out a machete and a tangle of rope. Luis moved toward Senora Garcia. The Nazi courier staggered to her feet and stumbled away. Luis pursued her down the hill. Lyons turned away and followed his partners into the mountains.

They heard screams.

"He's chopping her up," Lyons told Gadgets and Blancanales.

Rotorthrob drowned out the screams. Instinctively, Able Team dropped into the dusty grass. Each one of them looked up to see a Cobra gunship skim the treetops.

Blancanales squinted into the branch-broken sky as the throb diminished. "They couldn't have spotted us!"

But as he spoke, the rotornoise changed. The Cobra was returning.

Wheeling against the sky, the Cobra gunship dropped down to treetop level. The ripsaw sound of mini-Gatlings firing six thousand rounds a minute of 7.63 NATO struck a particular fear in Gadgets and Blancanales. During the Vietnam War, they had seen the mini-Gatlings of gunships reduce People's Army of Vietnam soldiers into nauseating heaps of chopped flesh and rags. Now, in the Sierra de Chuacus of Guatemala, a Cobra came at them.

Fire flashed from the gunship's rocket pods.

But the rockets exploded three hundred yards downslope. Gasoline flames rose into the sky.

"It's Luis they spotted!" Blancanales shouted out. "Not us. They're hitting the cars."

"Time to make distance." Lyons broke into a jog.

Laboring against gravity and thin oxygen, they force-marched uphill. They followed woodcutter trails overgrown with grass. Behind them, the Cobra ripped into the mountainside again and again with its mini-Gatlings. Flames sent a black column of smoke into the clear morning sky.

The ridge crest offered a vista of the valley. They dropped their packs and found concealment. Binoculars revealed the Cobra's markings. On the gray-painted fuselage, the black letters stood out: UNO.

From the mountains to the west, gray troop trucks raced into the valley in a cloud of dust. One truck stopped to offload a platoon of gray-uniformed soldiers. Two other trucks cut across the fields, their wheels leaving deep ruts.

"The goons on the road are the blocking force," Blancanales told Lyons. "The other two squads will sweep down from the hills. We have to watch for troopships dropping ambush teams up ahead of us."

Circling the flaming truck and car, the Cobra fired two more rockets. Metallic fire enveloped the hillside.

Gadgets whistled. "They ain't messing around. White phosphorous."

"Well, sports fans," Lyons ended their minute of observation, "we're wasting time. Think Luis got away?"

Blancanales shook his head. "Ashes to ashes."

They left the ridge crest. Following overgrown sheep trails along the south face of the mountain, they left the Cobra and the burning forest miles behind. The pines grew thicker. Clouds swept over the mountain slopes. Able Team walked from brilliant midday sunlight to swirling mist to cool shadowy forest. Like flames in the half-light, the red and pink and soft purple of the orchidlike flowers called Bromeliad graced branches above the trail.

Walls of black volcanic stone stopped them. Hiking north, they returned to the ridge crest that overlooked the valley of Azatlan. They crouched in a tangle of ferns to consider their next move.

Lyons pointed to the valley below them. "If we follow that road..."

"Unomundo's meres will spot us," Blancanales told him.

Lyons offered another idea. "If we can find a trail up those cliff faces, we might come down behind the base. It only took a few minutes for his troops to show up once they got the alarm. I figure the base is maybe five miles to the west. What's the vote? We climb?"

Gadgets nodded. "Beam me up, Scottie, I'm tired of walking."

Laughing, Able Team searched for a trail. When they found the pathway leading up the cliffs, what they saw stopped their jokes.

A macabre display faced them.

An M-16 rifle with a twisted, corroded receiver had been jammed butt-down into the rocks. A skull and arms had been wired to the foresight, the wire securing the upper arm bones together like the horizontal of a cross. The bones of the lower arms and hands dangled down. The skull and hanging arms created a crab creature with a grinning face and empty, staring eye sockets. Cloth torn from gray fatigues added a bow-tie beneath the skull. Shreds of sun-withered flesh and sinew still clung to the bones.

"Oh, man…" Gadgets shook his head. "Mucho, mucho weirdo."

"One of Unomundo's goons," Lyons decided. He stepped closer.

"DON'T!" Blancanales shouted out. The ex-Green Beret pulled Lyons back. "Stand back, just stand back."

While Gadgets and Lyons watched Blancanales surveyed the dust and rocks. The rifle and bones stood a few steps to the side of the trail. Blancanales circled around the rocks that held the rifle's plastic stock. He nodded to himself. Pointing into the rocks, he told them: "Don't move. Look around for any sinkholes in the trail."

"Booby traps?" Gadgets asked.

"Probably not on the trail. People with sandals have walked the path in the last day or so. But there's a land mine in front of Mr. Bones here and a grenade attached to the rifle."

"Someone around here," Gadgets said, circling a gaze at the pine forest and volcanic cliffs, "doesn't like Nazis…"

"And they're willing to do something about it," Lyons mused, playing with the philosophy, with his recent thoughts.

"Schwarz, look at this," Blancanales said. "Doesn't this look like something the Rhade would do?"

"What a flash! A freaked-out Montagnard spook show to make the 'Pavin' jump and twitch." Gadgets meant the People's Army of Viet Nam. "Most definitely indigenous ju-ju."

"Hate to break up this trip down memory lane," Lyons interrupted, "but us foreigners are standing out here in the open. Just like Mr. Bones there did, once upon a time."

"Yes, Mr. Lyons," Blancanales agreed. "That is a point. We go."

Grunting with the weight of their gear and weapons, they climbed high above the valley. A cool wind chilled the sweat that soaked their camouflage fatigues.

Sometimes clouds touched the sheer cliffs, like huge surges of white water breaking against a seawall.

The mist concealed them for minutes, shaded them from the searing tropical sun, then swept past as the gentle wind carried the clouds away.

Far below, through their binoculars, they saw trucks on the road. Even with the eight-power optics, Azatlan remained only a pattern of white specks. Lyons scanned the panorama of valley and hills and forest. He grinned to his partners.