A long burst of auto fire ended the firelight. Blancanales called out.

"It's all over here."

Lyons sprinted into the trees. He saw the sniper and spotter still running. Coughing dust, his shoulder aching, he pursued them. Still linked by the rope around their necks, one man's hands still tied behind his back, they stumbled through the undergrowth. He caught them in thirty seconds. He dragged them back to the others.

Blancanales and Gadgets tended to Nate's wound. Gadgets looked up at the returning captives.

"Great. Two of them." He pointed toward the lookout position. "Nothing up there's alive. It got dangerous."

"What happened?" Lyons asked him. "When I buzzed you..."

"Everything cut loose." Blancanales ripped open Nate's blood-soaked shirt. "Another platoon came up the trail. They joined up with the observation detail. I'm about ten yards away, hoping I'm in-visible under a bush. One of them comes over and makes like a dog just as you buzz me. He heard the radio."

"No wounded?"

Gadgets shook his head. "All the wounded are dead. Then I gave their telescopes and binocs the gravity test. Over the cliff. The radio set, too. I kept some walkie-talkies for electronic countermeasures, maybe."

"How bad am I hit?" Nate asked.

"The bullet killed your crossbow." Blancanales held up the bullet-splintered stock. "But the bullet didn't get you. It's this..."

Blancanales touched a four-inch shaft of wood protruding from Nate's back. "It's a splinter from your crossbow, jammed in under your shoulder blade, maybe into your ribs. You want some morphine before I jerk it out?"

Lyons stopped Blancanales as he slipped out a syrette of painkiller. "We don't have time. Besides, we can't have him stumbling around stoned."

As he spoke, Lyons put his knee on Nate's back. He grabbed the splinter. As he pulled, Nate screamed, convulsed with pain: "Goddaaaaaaaaaaamn you! You torturing bastard!"

Lyons laughed. He gazed at the bloody blade of hardwood. "I don't know what you're screaming about, didn't hurt me at all."

"Here, take some antibiotics." Blancanales passed Nate a palmful of pills.

"Forget the post-operative care," Lyons snapped. "We got to move."

Despite his injuries, Nate walked point down the mountain pathways. Only he knew the trail. He pointed his tiny 9mm Ingram ahead of him, his right arm bound against his body with strips torn from a dead merc's uniform. Lyons stayed close behind with his Atchisson.

"Thanks, spook man," Nate told him. "For helping me."

"Then stop calling me 'spook man.' We're not with the Agency."

"I know. No CIAwould have helped me. But I call you anything I want. Don't like it, go home."

"Anything you say, Geronimo."

Nate laughed. "You and me, we could be friends."

The captured sniper and spotter slowed them as they raced against dusk to the crack in the stone above the cave-fortress of Unomundo. Finally, Nate found the entrance by moonlight.

Far into the mountain, they questioned the prisoners. Lyons cut their gags.

"Why the pictures of the president?" he asked.

The rifleman laughed. "Why do you think?"

Blancanales squatted in front of them. "If you cooperate, you live."

The pro-fascist mercenaries looked to one another. The spotter spoke first.

"We don't get paid enough to die. What do you need to know?"

"Why the pictures of the president?" Lyons repeated.

"To hit that preacher."

"Unomundo intends to assassinate the president?"

The rifleman interrupted. "Mister, you're on the wrong side. Unomundo's going to kick ass tomorrow. As the man says, The New Reich Shall Rise."

Deep in the volcanic mountain, only their flashlights breaking the absolute night, they continued their questioning of the Nazi assassins. They squatted in a half-circle on a ledge. The cavern dome arched above them. Behind them, a chasm dropped into darkness.

"What happens tomorrow?" Lyons demanded.

"The Reich," the rifleman repeated. "Tomorrow we make a nation for all the dispossessed white people of the world. We will annihilate all the Commies and Christians, and start an empire of the strong and pure."

"Where are you from?" Blancanales asked him.

"Born in Texas. But I'm Rhodesian. Let me take you to Unomundo. He'll need men like you tomorrow. There's a place for you in the Reich. You'll live like princes."

"What happens tomorrow?" Lyons asked him again.

"There's still time to join. We leave after dark for the capital, my spotter and me. We're going to grease El Presidente Preacher in the morning when he goes out to pray. Our squads will kill the politicos in their beds. Then the gunships and airborne teams will hit the government buildings and the army garrisons. Then buses and trucks will roll in with troops to secure the city."

Lyons led them on. "What kind of money can we get up front?"

"A few thousand. The real payoff comes after the victory, when we divide up the country. Everybody gets an estate. And money. And Indians as slaves. And the Indian girls for whores. How does that compare with a salary and a pension after thirty years?"

"You think he'd hire us, even after we killed the men up there?"

"Positive. You killed losers. He needs men like you. Untie us and we'll take you to him."

"Right now? We could talk to him tonight?"

"Right now. He's briefing the commanders. And he'll be going in with the gunships tomorrow. He's no bigmouth lying politician, sending us to die, then rubbing bellies with the niggers and Commies. He'll lead his army from the front. Let's go! Right now. You can be on the winning side for a change."

Taking his partners aside, Lyons asked them: "We got enough from these monsters? I'm throwing them in that hole." He flicked a rock into the darkness of the chasm. Seconds later, far, far below, they heard the rock strike stone.

"Maybe they know where Unomundo is in the compound," Blancanales suggested. "Then we hit him with that Walther rifle."

Nate shook his head. "The officers' quarters don't face out. There is no clear shot. My way is better. I will kill them all at once."

"You got the plastic?" Gadgets asked. "We only brought a kilo of C-4 and some radio detonators."

"It is there."

"You said the munitions are in another cave," Lyons reminded Nate.

"They are. Listen. I wanted to do this alone. But together we must do it tonight. I will contact my friends. A few men."

"Who are they?" Blancanales asked.

"Friends. Guatemalans. But I take the Nazis. They are mine. One hundred thousand dollars and two Nazis. Very cheap."

"But where's your explosive?" Gadgets asked him.

"In the cave. They have a five-hundred-gallon tank of propane..."

"Righteous!" Gadgets laughed with excitement. "If the conditions are right, that's better than TNT. You got my vote."

Lyons handed Nate his silenced Colt. "No torture session. We don't have the time."

"All I need is rope."

Nate returned to the two tied Nazis.

"What are you doing?" the rifleman demanded to know. "Man, you're an American, don't you..."

Cinching their gags tight, Nate stopped the talk. He kicked the pro-fascists onto their stomachs. Untying the nylon cords around their necks, he triple-tied their wrists behind their backs, then linked the two men by all the remaining rope, perhaps forty feet. As he worked, he pronounced sentence on them.

"You are not animals, you are not insects. You are less than shit. You are poison. You have poisoned this beautiful place with your European sickness. Eight years I lived here in peace. Now you come with slavery and death. My wife is Indian. My son is Indian. My friends are Indian. If there is a hell, I send you there. But first, you know hell here..."