Kill School

Send a crew to El Salvador, do a slow pan of the morgue. Father Network pronounces the latest body-count numbers. The numbers tell the story. Four hundred years of racial and class war explained between shampoo and hemorrhoids.

Got a story that takes a week to tell? Cut it down to thirty-five seconds of screen time. Film at eleven.

Lyons had considered the expediency of allowing the trucks transporting the newsmen and cameramen to trigger the ambush. The muzzle-flashes of the death squad's rifles would reveal their positions.

Maybe the press corps could document their annihilation on camera. Whip out the tape recorders. Zoom in on the bullet-shattered skull. Get those screams on tape. Record the sound of slugs slamming flesh. Catch the sound of a sucking chest wound. A slow pan of the sprawled bodies. Then make notes for the oh-so-somber commentary on the terrible incident. Ten seconds of philosophy and regret formatted for a cue card, then instant replay!

Blancanales had refused. Even if they lost the chance to grab the leader of the death squad, Blancanales considered warning the journalists a moral imperative.

What moral imperatives? What morals? After what he had seen and done, Lyons wondered why the word existed. A word for an unreal concept. After what he'd seen...

That's what he had said that last morning of Flor's life, that last time with her. In a motel bed in Malibu, only hours before she had died in the desert, her body reduced to ash and scorched bones, the last morning of laughter and touching and love…

'It's what you see,' he had told her. 'After that, dying, thinking about dying isn't the same. You recognize the advantages of being dead. No memories. No thinking…'

He'd said it only hours before she'd died — died because of his bravado and macho stupidity...

'Lyons!'

Blancanales gripped his shoulder. Shaking him, Blancanales whispered through the noise of the wind and beating rain, 'You hurt? What happened?'

'What?'

'You made a noise, you groaned. What's wrong?'

'Nothing's wrong. I'm great. I'm a killing machine. Lead the way. Dead meat is my business.'

In the faint light, Blancanales studied Lyons's face for a moment. Then he turned and continued uphill, a shadow moving through the shadows of the trees.

Lyons followed. He concentrated on the warm rain washing over his face and body. He touched the rough bark of the trees. He felt the ooze in his boots. He thought of the mission, only the mission.

Quesada.

11

As he stepped from his apartment, Colonel Robert Quesada turned back and promised the two French whores, 'Je reviens tout de suite.'

'Ah, oui, mon general,' begged the women. 'Vite. Vite. II est isole ici.'

Quesada followed the veranda around the building. Rain poured from the roof in a curtain of water He stayed close to the building to prevent the splattering streams from spotting his slacks and polo shirt.

In the garden, water covered the cobblestones of the walkway. Wind tore the silk trees and bougainvillea. The gusts created shifting patterns of color and shadow as the birds of paradise and orchids and copas de oroswayed in the decorative floodlights.

His Cuban heels clicking across Spanish-patterned tiles, Quesada followed the shelter of the verandas to the wrought-iron gate. Leaning into the storm, he washed his face with rain. He gulped a mouthful. He sloshed the water around in his mouth to wash away the brandy and the taste of the whores' perfumes.

The call from his militia commander had interrupted an afternoon and evening of pleasure. With Senora Quesada and the children remaining in the Colonia San Benito mansion, the colonel had allowed himself the luxury of the young Frenchwomen during his stay at his family's estate. Soon, he would continue on to La Escuela.

At 'The School,' military discipline ruled. Regulations denied diversions for the soldiers until they completed their course of instruction. The officers and staff enjoyed the pleasures and entertainment of Miami, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. Sometimes Quesada arranged for his South American friends to enjoy a night of comforts at his finca, only minutes from the installation by plane or helicopter. Though he reserved the two Frenchwomen for himself, Miami and Cancun furnished pale-skinned blondes and redheads — with their soft, pouting lips and creme-smooth yet disco-muscled thighs — for the Argentines and Chileans and exiled Bolivians in the guest rooms and beds of the Quesada finca.

If the storm had not swept in from the Pacific this afternoon, his superiors in the International Alliance would have expected him to continue on to La Escuela. Though his pilots had assured him the helicopter could make the thirty-minute flight to Reitoca in safety, he enjoyed the excuse of the weather delay. Meetings and planning sessions did not thrill him like the two young blondes. He would fulfill his duty to the International Alliance when the weather cleared.

This detail tonight would deny him the pleasures of the two Paris girls for only a few minutes.

Turning his back on the garden, he stepped to the security entry. His magnetically encoded identity card opened the steel gate.

As the electric motor whirred to roll the gate across, a hard-eyed young soldier glanced through the bulletproof glass of the guard post. He gave his colonel a sharp salute. Returning the salute, Quesada followed the walkway to the family offices.

Mendez waited with a report. A militia lieutenant feared for his pitiless violence, Mendez stood five foot six and weighed two hundred fifty pounds. The man's fat hid iron muscles. His smiling moon face hid the sadism of an inquisitor. Quesada had seen Mendez thumb out the eyes of a boy who would not betray his father.

Rainwater drained from the gray Finca de Quesada uniform that Mendez wore. Mud stained the man's pants up to and above the knee. In the hours since Quesada received the report of the foreigners in the Cadillac attacking the Popular Front Forces, Mendez had visited the roadside villages and isolated farmers in the area. If a shopkeeper or campesino or shepherd had seen the foreigners, they would tell Mendez.

'This is information on the foreigners?' Quesada asked.

'Yes, padron. I went to many places, questioned many people. They spoke only of a plane.'

'When?'

'Today, early in the afternoon.' replied Mendez. 'Down and then gone. But the colonel of Las Boinas Verdes radioed with much more. The foreigners talked with the soldiers. They said they were North American mercenaries traveling to Honduras to fight.'

'To Honduras?'

'Yes. They told the soldiers Honduras.'

'You have descriptions?'

'One, blond, blue eyes, tall. Another, darker, but also Anglo. The third, a North American who spoke Spanish. Graying hair, perhaps a Puerto Rican. There was a fourth. The soldiers think he is Indian. He did not speak to the soldiers. They all covered their faces.'

Quesada considered the information. Four foreign soldiers en route to Honduras. But if they went to fight the Sandinistas, why did they travel through Morazan? Contrascoming from Texas, Miami and New York flew to Tegucigulpa by jet, then took small planes to El Paraiso. From there, trucks took them to the war.

Could the foreign mercenaries be traveling to La Escuela? Quesada would radio the comandantewith the descriptions. Perhaps, through some incredible error or breach of security, they had intended to come to the finca.

Impossible. No officer at the school would give a recruit or hired instructor the location of the fincalanding strip. That would risk betrayal of Quesada and risk the secrecy of La Escuela.