Nate went to the other men. He talked with them as they gathered their gear. A bottle of clear liquor went from man to man.

"Time to move, spooks," Nate told Able Team. He offered the bottle to them. "Aguardiente."

Lyons shook his head. Nate pushed the bottle into his hand.

"Drink. You are part of a very important occasion. Tonight we free Azatlan from Unomundo."

Gadgets took the bottle and gulped. Then he gulped air as he passed the bottle to Lyons. "It's only alcohol," he gasped. "About a hundred proof. But it ain't a drug. No super snuff on this trip. Last time Ironman participated in an Indian ritual, he got psychedelicized. And indigenized. But don't be afraid, take a swallow."

Lyons finally drank, then passed the bottle to Blancanales.

The appearance of a bloody young man stopped the laughter. He talked quickly in Quiche with Nate and the other men.

"Oh, God, not alive," Nate groaned. Then he translated for Able Team. "Unomundo mercenaries ambushed his brother and uncle. He thinks they were taken alive. We must hurry. Perhaps we can end their suffering."

Electronics guided the fighters — Guatemalan and North American — through the cool moonlit darkness of the forest. Nate and Lyons walked point. Lyons held the Atchisson ready, a 12-gauge shell in the chamber, his thumb on the safety. Nate carried the H&K MP5 silenced submachine gun, using the Starlite scope to penetrate the night. Knowing every trail and hill, every smell and sound of the valley of Azatlan, the ex-Marine rarely needed the Starlite's light-enhancing optics.

Gadgets followed with the Indians. Able Team's communications specialist also scanned the night with electronics — but not in the visual spectrum. He monitored the several frequencies used by the pro-fascist mercenaries, listening for the chatter of squads on patrol or the clicks of ambush units. He walked almost deaf, wearing two earphones. One went to the altered circuits of a mere walkie-talkie, the other to the hand-radio linking him to Lyons and Blancanales. Able Team did not fear the monitoring of their frequency. Sophisticated encoding circuits totally scrambled every transmission.

Blancanales walked at the end of the line, his M-16/M-203 cocked and locked, a 40mm fragmentation round in the grenade tube. In case of action or ambush, he would need to serve as a radioman and translator. Only Nate spoke English, Spanish and Quiche. The Indians spoke Quiche and some Spanish. Gadgets spoke very little Spanish, Lyons almost none. Only Lyons, Gadgets, and Blancanales had radios. The combinations and permutations of languages threatened the group with communications chaos. And in combat, failure to communicate often meant death.

Descending the rocky slopes, they saw the lights of trucks moving on the dirt road. They moved quickly down the slope, Nate leading the group across untraveled ground. He accepted the slight sounds of their legs moving through ferns, the soft crackling of their feet on the woodland mulch, rather than risk ambush on the trails.

They entered the trees. With the branches screening the moonlight, they now walked in total darkness. The line closed up, each man putting a hand on the shoulder of the man ahead. Only Nate, with the Starlite, had sight. He scanned the black from time to time to spot the trees and obstacles ahead, then walked through the darkness by memory.

As they neared the road, Lyons saw lights again, streaking toward him from the darkness like tracers or distant headlights. He flinched, then realized he had not heard a shot or a truck.

"What?" Nate whispered. He had felt Lyons's hand startle on his shoulder.

"Lights. I see… there! A light."

"Fireflies, spook man."

At the road, they went flat on the earth. Nate watched the tree lines with the Starlite scope. Gadgets monitored the mercenary frequencies. But they did not have time to wait for a mercenary unit to betray itself with movement or careless talk or a cigarette.

Nate turned to Lyons and pointed across the road. Then the ex-Marine went to two of his Quiche friends and whispered for them to follow the North American. When no autofire or Claymores cut down the first three men, more followed.

At the opposite tree line, Lyons crouched in the darkness. He knew the extreme danger the others faced as they crossed. An ambush unit would not hit the first few men. They would wait until the road divided the North Americans and Indians into two groups, then hit them both. Retreat would divide their group. Advance meant sacrificing men in the kill zone.

Fireflies and the cries of nightbirds teased Lyons' reactions. His eyes strained to find form or movement around them. His ears heard the boots and sandals of his companions on the gravel. Calming his breathing, he sucked down long, smooth breaths through his nose. He smelled only the pines and the dry grass and his own two-day odor.

Vibrations under his feet warned him. He keyed his hand-radio and whispered. "Truck coming."

Clicks answered. Then a voice sounded in the earphone he wore. "We're all across."

They moved into the trees. Hearing gravel rattle in fenders and the squeak of springs, they went flat as headlights came over a rise.

A bus passed them. More headlights, another bus. Then a flatbed stake-sided truck. The truck's headlight glare lit the interior of the second bus. They saw a gray-uniformed mercenary driving. A second mercenary stood in the door, his M-16 pointed into the night.

Blancanales and Lyons heard Gadgets whisper through their earphones.

"Like the Nazi in the cave said, trucks and buses. To take the Nazi soldiers to Guatemala City."

They answered with clicks, then moved again.

Jogging through the darkness, Lyons thought of the irony and desperation of this night. With Quiche Indian men whose names he did not know, whose language he did not speak, he went to fight Nazis. A few men against a thousand. A few North Americans and Guatemalans against an army of pro-fascist mercenaries — North American felons, Central American murderers, criminals from England and France and Germany — killing in order to impose a murderous, racist regime on the beautiful nation of Guatemala.

Carl Lyons, the blond North American, had come full circle from his European ancestry. His forefathers had fought and decimated the Indian nations so that they could impose their European culture on the New World. Now, only two hundred years later, he fought with Indians as allies against another invasion. Americans — Anglo and Quiche — fighting European dogma and hatred…

Emerging from the cavern, they heard the screams. Nate had led them through the labyrinth of passages and vast echoing chambers in a few minutes. This time they did not look down at the flat assembly area outside the hidden complex. They came out in the crevices and jumbled rocks level with the cave mouth. Only two hundred yards away, they saw the headlights of trucks. The glare of worklights from the huge cave lit the trees beyond the assembly area.

The screams tore the night. All of the fighters — North American and Guatemalan — heard them. Nate went to all the Indian men and whispered to them. Then he explained to the three men of Able Team: "I told them we can do nothing for the captives. Nothing until we blow the cave behind them. They must close their eyes and ears until then. And you, too."

When they planned the assault, Nate had briefed them on the terrain and security surrounding the complex. Because the four North Americans had the most training and experience, Nate and Able Team led the approach to the perimeter, the Quiche fighters following.

A cleared perimeter surrounded the complex. For a hundred yards around the truck park, only tree stumps remained of the forest. The grass had been burned to denude the earth. Mines and booby traps prevented intruders from crossing the perimeter.