Nor had they found the missing helicopter.

The report from Culiacan contained several significant details.

Evidently a gringo had gone into Culiacan for fuel. He killed several federal agents in a street battle before disappearing into traffic.

An officer in the DEA identified the man as an "antiterrorist specialist" from the United States, one of three "specialists" flown in from San Diego to investigate Los Guerreros Blancos.

The DEA officer stated that the specialists had been shot down in the mountains east of Obregon.

Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez remembered the urgent command to set the trap for the specialists. Soldiers of the International Group had waited in trucks, their SAM-7 missiles ready and aimed, until the DEA jet flew over their position. They shot it down. But the passengers apparently had survived.

Then came the series of ambushes in the Sierra Madre, climaxing with the battles where the International Group lost six helicopters, an airplane and several squads of soldiers.

The soldiers searching the mountains had found the wrecks of five helicopters and the plane. One helicopter remained missing.

Now the gringo specialists from the downed DEA jet had appeared in Culiacan looking for fuel.

No one matching the description of the specialist had been seen at the Culiacan airport. No flights had been spotted at the several dirt airstrips in the area.

Only a helicopter could land without a runway.

Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez began to write down his thoughts. Eventually he went to the communications room and transmitted his notes to Mexico City.

Able Team and the Yaquis spent the night in a house a hundred meters from the parked helicopter. For five hundred pesos, the family of the orchard's caretaker had chased out the chickens and swept the dirt floor. Rain hammered the corrugated-steel roof all through the afternoon, then fell off to infrequent downpours.

Blancanales and Coral took a bus into Tepic and returned two hours later with boxes of groceries. They had arranged for aviation-quality kerosene to be delivered to the orchard.

"Any trouble?" Gadgets asked them.

Shaking his head, Blancanales passed out beers and dinners. The carnitasand tortillas came wrapped in banana leaves. Blocks of ice chilled several six-packs of beer.

In the opposite corner of the one-room house, Lyons interrogated Gunther. Since the capture of the Fascist International officer, Lyons had questioned Gunther at every opportunity, asking endless questions, considering the answers, then rephrasing his questions and asking again. Coral questioned Gunther in Spanish. Working together, Lyons and Coral attempted to trick Gunther into revealing details within the lies of his answers.

Now Lyons was done. He crossed the house to Coral and Blancanales. Coral asked him in a low voice, "What has he told you?"

"Nothing. It's a game. He knows what I'm doing."

"Now I talk with him." Coral went over to Gunther.

The rain pounding on the metal roof covered their voices. As Coral questioned Gunther in Spanish, Lyons briefed Blancanales.

"He's a professional. He probably knows interrogation techniques better than we do."

"What have you said about where we're going?" Blancanales asked. "What have you told him that we'll be doing with him?"

"I told him it depends on how much he helps us."

As Coral rephrased one of Lyons's questions in Spanish, Gunther watched the North Americans. The rain hammering on the roof filled the house with noise. No one heard him when he asked Coral a quick question, "Did you telephone?"

Coral answered quickly. "No. The Puerto Rican was with me every moment. The truck comes tonight. I will try to call tonight."

"He comes." Then Gunther raised his voice. "I know nothing about the operations in Mexico."

Lyons returned with a six-pack of Dos Equis and four dinners. He motioned Coral over to stand guard outside while he rearranged the ropes binding Gunther so that the prisoner could feed himself. The colonel waited until Coral left, then took the opportunity to propose a deal.

"American, I am your prisoner now. But the situation may be reversed in the future. The others cannot hear. Listen to my offer. The International pays better than any government. I get two thousand dollars a week, in gold. You could do very well for yourself."

"I don't fight for money," Lyons said matter-of-factly.

"You risk your life for ideals? Truth, justice and the American Way? But that is government propaganda. You are a professional. You know wars are fought only for money. And your own leaders are with us. Do you think we could move from country to country without their support? Don't be naive. That is for teenagers and charities."

Though Lyons freed Gunther's hands for eating, the prisoner's wrists remained linked by a length of nylon rope. Another length of rope linked the wrist-to-wrist rope to his feet, so that Gunther could not use the short length as a garrote. He was able to eat, but not fight or stand or kick.

The two men sat facing each other, drinking beer and eating tamales and strips of fried beef and chicken rolled into tortillas. The scents of the barbecued meat and cilantro and corn tortillas replaced the musty odors of the adobe house.

Gunther drained a beer in two gulps. "Mexican beer..." He belched. "An advantage of working in Mexico."

"That and the gold, right?"

"You could start at a thousand dollars a week. Are you interested, American?"

Lyons opened another beer for his prisoner. He glanced over his shoulder at his partners, then passed the beer to Gunther.

"I have my ideals."

"We all do. A thousand a week, paid in gold. A starting salary."

"Paid into a numbered account?"

"Automatically. Are you interested?"

Lyons nodded.

Twenty miles from the center of Washington, District of Columbia, in an electronics theater at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency, two officers studied a computer-enhanced video projection of the topography of the Sierra Madres Occidental. The senior NSA officer, a white-haired man with a face weathered by tropical sun, touched a key on a control panel.

The black-and-white satellite image expanded, the fracture patterns of lines and shapes becoming individual hills and canyons. A black mark broke the mottled grays of one area. When the senior officer touched the keys of the controls again, the image shifted to center on the black spot. Then the image expanded again.

Light reflected from the metal and glass in the wreckage of the Lear jet. The image expanded until the outline of the burned jet filled the screen.

The younger officer spoke. "Now follow the line of approach back.''

The image shifted to reveal the scar where the crash-landing jet had plowed through the desert brush.

"It landed intact," the young officer continued. "It went in under the pilot's control. After the plane got hit by the rockets, the pilot maintained control long enough to put the plane down. If we had the resolution, we could probably see their footprints going into the brush. I'm willing to bet they torched the plane themselves to confuse the ground forces."

"Did they get any messages out?"

"There was a Mayday call. They even said, 'We're going down. We are hit by rockets from the Mexican army.' We erased the tapes. No inquiry will ever hear that."

"Any messages to their superiors?"

"Didn't have the time or the transmission power. And they don't work that way. On their missions, they go in, they make their hit, they come out. Sometimes they hit targets of opportunity. Usually no one knows what they've done until the debriefing. Stony Man is a very special operation. Very loose."