They would not let him pass. The mercenary shouted past them to one of the fascist leaders leaving an office: 'His men won't let me go back to my office.'
The mercenary from the office, his fatigues starched and pressed, a badge of rank on one shoulder, called down to the bodyguards: 'That soldier's on the staff. He's authorized.'
The bodyguard stood aside. Lyons realized that none of the mercenaries he saw on the office walkways carried weapons. He saw no M-16s, no side arms.
Lyons returned to the mess hall. Following the walkway past the kitchens, he saw that the rear of the building butted against the irregular stone of the cavern's south wall. He slipped into the dark space.
The shadows became darkness. He stumbled over pipes and scraps of wood and sheet metal. Light from office interiors shone through ventilator grilles.
A voice came from the ventilators of a second floor. The speaker raved in Spanish. Lyons damned his ignorance of the language. Yet he knew he heard Unomundo. The rhythms, the exclamations, the modulation of the tones indicated the professional rhetoric of a politician. But he had to confirm his guess.
At the end of the office building, he crossed to the barracks. He rushed to the end of the barracks walkway. Twenty feet away, the bodyguards stood at the steps to the offices.
Keeping his right hand on top of his Atchisson's receiver, his left hand in the open, Lyons jogged to them. Their eyes narrowed as the mercenary with the auto weapon rushed to them. Lyons saluted.
'Got a message for Unomundo. The
The Hispanics listened without speaking. One looked to the other, glanced toward the offices. The second man nodded, then ran up the stairs.
'Wait,' the bodyguard told Lyons.
'I'll come back. I must get my colonel.'
Flashing another salute, Lyons jogged to the mess hall. He glanced back. The bodyguard watched him. He went around the corner to the kitchens. He saw no one in the area. In a few seconds, he squatted beside Nate.
'He's here.'
Only a fraction of a centimeter of steel linked the two sections of pipe. Nate grabbed the valve and wobbled it, attempting to break the pipes apart. Lyons kicked the pipe, once, twice, stood on it and jumped.
The pipe broke. Lyons spoke into his hand-radio.
'We've cut the line. And we've confirmed Unomundo's here. Are you ready?'
'Affirmative,' Blancanales answered. 'We're in. The men are moving into position.'
'This is it. Over.'
Nate opened the valve. A colorless gas rushed from the severed pipe. Looking through the spreading gas, they saw the shadowy rocks waver as the flow spread. White frost formed instantly on the valve and pipe and the rocks.
Lyons and Nate ran. At the mess hall walkway, they forced themselves to slow to a quick walk. Lyons pointed to the center of the complex.
They strode toward the helicopters. Lyons looked back once at the offices. Bodyguards, pro-fascist mercenaries and Guatemalan army officers — the traitors' chests bright with medals — crowded from a door. All the Nazis attempted to speak with one person, a tall, blond man with the sharp sculpted features of an aristocrat. Wide-shouldered bodyguards knotted around him.
'Unomundo,' Lyons told Nate.
Nate glanced back at him and smiled. 'Soon he burns in hell.'
A bodyguard spoke with Unomundo. The Hispanic pointed into the night to the searing light of the welding torch torturing the two Quiche men. Unomundo spoke with a mercenary officer. The officer led Unomundo and a knot of bodyguards down the steps.
Lyons and Nate maintained their stride. They passed Hueys and Cobras. Technicians loaded rocket pods. Other men pumped aviation fuel into the helicopters' tanks. Nate smiled to Lyons.
Leaving the brilliant light of the cavern, they saw a flashlight blink from the top of a parked bus.
The crowd of drunken mercenaries laughed. A scream rose, wavered, faded. Lyons's hand-radio buzzed.
'Give the signal!' Gadgets told him, his voice seething with anger and frustration. 'Time to put that goon gang down!'
The rotorthrob of a helicopter approached from the sky. With his thumb on the transmit key, Lyons looked up at the black silhouette of a Huey against the stars. He looked back to Unomundo.
Leaving the cavern, Unomundo and his bodyguards hurried to the horror. The Hispanic bodyguard who had listened to the faked message about the CIA and the Indians pointed to Lyons. Unomundo and all the bodyguards turned.
Lyons hissed into the hand-radio. 'Wizard, do it! He's getting out!'
Swinging the barrel of his Atchisson around, Lyons flicked down the safety and sprayed full-auto high- velocity steel at the Nazi warlord.
A great wave of flame churned from the cavern.
17
A roar came, then heat, but no explosion. Uncompressed and too cold to mix with the air, thus lacking the correct oxygen-to-gas ratio, the liquid petroleum gas — unlike a true explosive — failed to flash instantaneously into the heat and combustion wastes. Yet the gas had spread under and beyond the kitchen and mess hall areas, to the command offices, and to the barracks and the helicopters.
In the first milliseconds of the fire, half the cavern was enveloped in a single flame. The initial instant of fire heated the inches-thick layer of cold gas that coated the floor of the cavern, causing the unburned gas to expand rapidly into the flames. As the heat of the flames accelerated the rate of combustion, and the heat produced churning air currents that intermixed the flames and expanding gas with more oxygen, the flames rose still higher. This happened in the first fifteen-hundredths of a second after Gadgets Schwarz detonated the radio-fused plastic explosive.
The exploding charge also tore open the steel tank that held hundreds more gallons of liquid gas. Encountering the superheated atmosphere, the fuel expanded into gas. In the absence of oxygen — the available atmospheric oxygen had been consumed by the first flash of flame — the unburned gas surged outward. When it mixed with the atmosphere, it also flamed.
Though the Nazi personnel did not suffer dismemberment, all of the personnel in the south half of the cave received instantaneous third-degree burns. Then the wave of flame enveloped the helicopters and aviation fuel.
Av-gas became superheated. It burned, radiating a flash-temperature of three thousand degrees Centigrade. Every combustible object or substance — wood, hoses, insulated wires, tires, fuel, clothing, hair, skin fat — burst into flame.
In the center of the flames, the staff offices became the crematorium of the Nazi commanders and the handful of Guatemalan army officers who had betrayed their country to Unomundo's European doctrine.
The hired commandos sleeping in the steel barracks knew a few seconds of confusion and agony as they woke to red hot walls and superheated air. When they screamed at the shock of their waking nightmare, they scorched their lungs, and died choking seconds later. As the flames and heat continued, the glowing barracks baked the dead men's bodies. Fat flowed and burned, contributing to the inferno.
Mercenaries and technicians in the open felt only an instant of pain before their bodies became ash.
Outside, a few of the mercenaries near the mouth of the cavern turned to the roar. The heat-flash melted their faces. Others threw themselves down. Those near the fire received third-degree burns, their uniforms first smoking, then bursting into flame.
Unomundo sprawled under the corpses of three of his bodyguards. Stunned by a head wound caused by a
