Surrounded by death, the colonel lay in the dust, his hands tied behind his back, a rope around his neck. Flies found his open wounds and the blood clotting on his gray uniform. His North American and Yaqui captors stood in a circle around him, automatic rifles in their hands.

Black, choking smoke drifted from the wreckage of burning helicopter troopships. Here and there, the white fire of magnesium blazed in the hulks. Molten aluminum flowed from the wrecks. In the ashes, the aluminum puddled in shimmering iridescent mirrors.

A Mexican soldier dying of burns screamed until a single rifle shot silenced him. Only skeletons and charred meat remained of the other Mexican soldiers who had died in the explosions.

Minutes before, on this ridge in the desert wilderness of the Mexican state of Sonora, Able Team and a group of teenage Yaqui Indians had annihilated two squads of elite airborne commandos. Rosario Blancanales, the Puerto Rican ex-Green Beret, called The Politician by his fellow warriors, triggered set charges of explosives and kerosene to destroy the squads as they left their Bell UH-1 Huey troopships. On a hilltop to the east, ex-LAPD officer Carl Lyons faced a third Huey. Of the squad of soldiers in that troopship, only the colonel survived.

Carl Lyons asked the first question of the interrogation. "What's your name, Colonel?"

"Gunther. I'm Colonel Jon Gunther. I was assigned to help the Mexicans capture you."

"Who assigned you?"

"My commander, General Mendez."

"Where is your base?"

"To the west. There is a place called Rancho Cortez on the coast. It was used by Colonel Gonzalez as his base."

"Is General Mendez there?"

"No. The general issued his instructions by telephone."

"Where is General Mendez?"

"I don't know. He could have called from Culiacan."

"How many soldiers at the Rancho?"

"Hundreds. There are barracks. There is an airfield. There is..."

"Can you draw a map?"

"Yes."

Rotorthrob came from the east. Silhouetted against the rising sun, a Huey troopship flew in a slow circle over the ridges. The helicopter had been captured in an action the night before. Piloted by an agent from the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, the helicopter would carry Able Team and their allies to the next fight.

The hand-radios carried by Lyons and Blancanales buzzed.

"Looks like you did it to them," the voice of Gadgets Schwarz commented.

As the electronics specialist of Able Team, Gadgets had stayed with the captured helicopter and monitored the radio frequencies of the Mexican army units during the fighting.

"It's time to move," Gadgets told them. "The action's picking up. A flight of goons..."

Lyons spoke into his hand-radio to interrupt his partner. "Tell me later. We got a prisoner listening. Any radio calls to out here?"

"Their base called for a report. But no one answered, and they think that's strange. I think it's time to get out."

"Ready to go. There's nothing left here."

Rotor wind threw dust and ashes as the helicopter descended to the ridge. Inside, Gadgets Schwarz and Miguel Coral — a Mexican gang pistolerocooperating with the DEA and Able Team — sat on the troop bench with several radios. Coral slipped off his headphones and reached out to help Lyons and Blancanales with the prisoner. Lyons motioned Coral back to the radios.

"Stay on those radio frequencies," Lyons commanded. "That's more important. We'll load up."

Coral nodded. Only days before, Coral — with his wife and three of his young children, escorted by a truckful of gunmen — had attempted to escape from the drug wars of Northern Mexico by crossing into the United States. Able Team had teargassed his bodyguards, then captured Coral. To gain his freedom from prison and sanctuary for his family, Coral agreed to lead Able Team against Los Guerreros Blancos, a new heroin syndicate using military weapons and Mexican army troops to eliminate the other drug gangs, including the syndicate Coral had served for decades, the Ochoa Family.

Yaquis helped Lyons and Blancanales push the six-foot-five, two-hundred-twenty-pound Colonel Gunther through the door. Blancanales lashed the prisoner into a safety harness to prevent a suicide dive from the airborne troopship. Yaquis loaded M-60 machine guns and steel cans of ammunition into the helicopter.

Pete Davis, the DEA pilot, shouted to them, "Now back to the camouflage?''

Lyons nodded. "Conference time."

In seconds, the helicopter — overloaded with men and weapons and equipment — left the ridge line. Lyons looked back to see a line of Yaquis jogging down the mountainside. The group would join them later.

The helicopter veered to the north. In three directions, the vast panorama of the Sierra Madre Occidental extended to the horizon. To the west, the direction of the Pacific Ocean and the coastal cities, the mountains became foothills and desert plains. Distance and haze denied any sight of the coast.

Dropping below the ridge lines, the pilot followed a snaking canyon. Panicked birds shot from the mesquite and cactus as the thundering machine flashed past, the rotors throwing dust and leaves to swirl behind the helicopter. After a few kilometers, the helicopter descended to a sandy river bottom shaded by cottonwoods.

The rotors spun to a stop. Yaquis emerged from the cottonwood dragging screens of lashed-together branches. They quickly covered the helicopter. The camouflage screens concealed the helicopter from airborne observation and shaded the OD-green troopship from the desert sun.

Lyons dumped Colonel Gunther onto the riverbed's sand. Then he turned to Gadgets and Coral. He asked them in a whisper, "What about the transmissions you monitored?"

"One was very interesting. It came in on this black box." Gadgets touched the radio designed and manufactured by United States National Security Agency. The Mexican army unit used the secure-frequency radio to communicate with their base. Similar to the hand-radios Able Team used, but with more frequencies and range, the radio employed encoding circuits to scramble every transmission, decode every message received. Without a matching radio, anyone scanning the bands would intercept only bursts of electronic noise.

"A planeful of goons came in from Mexico City. They wanted to report directly to Colonel Gunther. A Mexican army officer said Colonel Gonzalez commanded the operation. The goons said they'd radio their general in Mexico City for instructions. But then the Mexicans said Gunther was with Gonzalez and the goons went ahead and landed." Gadgets turned to Coral. "I get that right?"

Coral nodded. "The soldiers from Mexico City would not accept orders from Mexican army officers."

"Mexico City? That's where their general is?" Lyons asked.

"Yeah."

"Anything else?"

"Just calls to ones that got wasted."

"A general in Mexico City..." Lyons considered the information. He stepped from the helicopter.

Blancanales watched as Gunther sketched a map of Rancho Cortez. A Yaqui teenager named Ixto stood two steps back from Gunther, an FN FAL rifle pointed at the prisoner's head.

"The barracks." Colonel Gunther pointed to the line of rectangles he had drawn. "The administrative buildings, the landing field, the aircraft hangars. Fuel tanks. The building for the electric generators. The road to the dock. A rifle range. Here is the beach."

"And the perimeter?" Blancanales prompted.

"Outside, a barbed-wire cattle fence. Then a cleared area. Then an eight-foot chain link fence with concertina wire."

"That's the highway?" Blancanales pointed to the edge of the paper. "What's that other line?"