Cursing her, he gave her two more climaxes before he collapsed, truly spent. He was too exhausted to look at her. The wind cooled the sweat on him as he lay in the sand. He felt raw and bloody.
Availa sat up, pulling the kimono closed. She drew a cigarette and lighter from a pocket. It wasn't tobacco. She smoked marijuana laced with cocaine base. She took several long drags and stared up at the star-strewn night sky.
Finally, he sat up. Less than a quarter mile above them, the lights of the mansion blazed against the shadowy mountains, lightspill from the windows and patios illuminating the jagged, convoluted mountainsides and cliffs in patterns of red rock and black. Far below them, the base lights formed a pattern of brilliant points on the desert plateau. In silence broken only by the soft rush of the warm evening wind, she asked: 'Do you love me?'
Furst didn't answer. She looked at him for a moment. 'Good,' she said. 'Now I don't have to pretend.'
She leaned to him, kissed him, her mouth open, hot and fluid, scented with narcotic. 'Next time bring more men.'
He startled back. 'What?'
'Or I will confess our love to my husband. Bring the other men, or you will know the wrath and revenge of Monroe.'
9
Through the side door's Plexiglas, Lyons watched the western horizon fade from red to violet. The Huey bucked and shuddered as the pilots maintained an altitude of fifty feet over the desert gorges and plateaus. Every thermal updraft and crosswind threw Lyons against the men on each side of him, or else back against the bulkhead. Lyons gripped the nylon and foam case for the M-14, and tried to keep the equipment of the other mercenaries from bumping the Starlite scope.
A man touched a lighter flame to a cigarette. Pardee's shout tore through the engine's roar:
The smoker threw the cigarette down, ground it out. Pardee leaned to Lyons, spoke with his head touching Lyons'.
'A night op, so what do they do? They smoke! Two months I've nursed these losers. I should have recruited Girl Scouts.'
Time went slowly. As the sky darkened to night, the terrain below them became black. The pilot took the helicopter higher. Now the swerves and lurches came infrequently. Twinkling lights appeared to the east, then the dark form of a mountain obscured the town. The monotonous vibration and night landscape lulled Lyons almost to sleep.
He had not slept since he'd seen Robert Furst, ex-army officer, ex-movie actor, ex-bank robber. After the gut-twisting near confrontation on the rifle range, Lyons and Pardee had returned to camp. They fitted the Starlite scope and a bipod onto an M-14, then Pardee made an unauthorized entry into the PX and carried out two six-packs of beer. Out in the hills, they drank the beer, then shot the cans to zero the rifle. Finally back in the barrack, Lyons had lain awake until dawn, figuring angles. How long could he avoid Furst? Could he risk Furst 'disappearing'? Where did Furst sleep? How could Lyons get the body past the sentries?
If Lyons wanted to live, if he wanted Blancanales and Gadgets to live, Furst had to meet with a fatal accident. But how? After brooding all night, Lyons knew he could do nothing, the guarantees were too slender. Therefore he had to avoid Furst until an opportunity for elimination arose later.
The men participating in the raid had had no duties during the day. At dawn, Lyons borrowed a set of high-powered binoculars. Telling the sentries he wanted to practice, he took the binoculars and the M-14 into the rocky hills overlooking the base. Until assembly time, he studied the camp, watching the sentries, noting the frequency of their patrols and when the shifts changed. He watched the camp operations. He watched jeeps and trucks shuttle between the airfield and the base.
At four in the afternoon, he returned to the barracks and gathered his equipment. Only the crowding and the confusion in the trucks and helicopters saved him from discovery. Furst and Monroe watched from a limousine as Pardee and the squad leaders checked details and counted soldiers. Lyons had hoped Furst would accompany the strike force... Furst would not have returned. But the man had stayed in the limousine, and waved as the helicopters lifted away.
For a moment after the helicopter touched down and the pilot killed the engine, there was silence and stillness. The rotor-throb of the other helicopters came and faded too. Pardee left his seat beside Lyons and squatted with his back to the closed side door.
'Listen up. There's no going back, you men. We're two hours into Mexico, and the helicopters have fifteen minutes of fuel left. Either we win, or we die, or we go to Mexican prisons. Right now we're going to take a walk. No talking, no noise, no smoking, no slack. When we get there, everything dies. Men, women, babies, pet lizards. You hear me?'
The squad mumbled its answer. Pardee threw open the side door and stepped smartly out. Red-lensed lights flashed from the three other helicopters. As the soldiers filed out of the Huey, cool desert air displaced the odors of fuel and sweat and face-blacking with the fragrance of chaparral and wild spices.
Lyons followed the others out. To the east, the silhouette of a mountain cut into the dome of stars. There was a very faint glow of light behind one ridge.
The glow came from the lights of the phony oil exploration airfield that concealed the doper base.
The squads formed into four lines. Then they moved. One squad took positions around the helicopters, the other three squads started the five-hour march over the mountain.
After a half-hour of stumbling through the dark, the soldier behind him jabbing Lyons every few minutes with the flash suppressor of his M-16, Lyons decided to volunteer to walk point. He jogged forward to find Pardee in the point squad.
'Do us all a favor,' he grunted. 'Let me and Marchardo take point.'
'The dopers might have heard the helicopters-there could be an ambush up there.'
'I think it'd be safer up front. Besides, if there is an ambush or there are guards up there, Marchardo and I have got a better chance than the rest of your stumblebums...'
Pardee chuckled. 'They're not my soldiers. Furst hired them.'
'Is it too late to trade them in on Boy Scouts?'
'Give your rifle to someone to carry. Here.' Pardee pressed a weapon and bandoleer of magazines into Lyons' hands.
By touch, Lyons identified the weapon as a MAC-10 with a suppressor. He slipped out the magazine, felt the first cartridge: .45-caliber hollow point. 'This'll put the hurt on someone. But I'll carry the rifle too. It might get lost.'
'Great. Get Marchardo, take the point.' Pardee sent Lyons forward with a slap on the back.
Moving silently up the path, Lyons found Blancanales at the head of the column, already walking point with a map and a penlight. 'Let's go, brother. You do the talking, I'll do the shooting.'
They moved fast, advancing a few hundred yards, then one of them staying forward while the other backtracked to the column. Lyons enjoyed the time alone. As they gained altitude, the panorama of hills, plateaus, and light-sequined desert expanded. An evening wind, carrying the scents of brush and desert soil, cooled him. He became part of the night, the distinction of where his skin touched the darkness fading, his breathing only an eddy of wind within the wind, his movement on the mountainside a mere shifting of shadows.
Leaving the clankings and rustlings of the column far behind him, Lyons continued up the trail. A pale sliver of moon rose above the mountain. Grinning to himself, he suppressed an urge to whistle. He wanted to laugh, to sing, to shatter the night and silence with his joy.
Then he smelled something. The stale odor of many cigarettes. Freezing, he sniffed the wind, listened. He dropped to a squat and crept forward. A few yards ahead, the trail went over a rise, then crossed a gravel road. Crouching there, he noted the slope beneath him to the road and the steep hill on the other side.
