'Most likely.'
'So I figure their radio's the same as the black box we found in the jeep. We'll send out a call to Gadgets and the lieutenant. They'll monitor it on the jeep's radio.'
'But if it's like the one we captured, it has a coded digital lock.'
'Oh, yeah… Ah, I don't know what...'
'Face it, Carl. We'll be on our own. Consider that before you open fire.'
'Yeah, yeah. But this ride is our ticket into the plantation. We got the chance to grab Quesada and drag him out.'
'Remember what the lieutenant told us. Concentric rings of defenses, electronic security, mines, bodyguards and militia on the inside, army react-units on call. Against two of us.'
'All those defenses face out,' Lyons said pointedly. 'We're going in quiet. If we can take Quesada, they won't know what's happening until it's too late.'
'We… shall… see…' Blancanales pronounced.
Taillights flashed ahead. Simultaneously, Lyons and Blancanales went flat, pressing themselves against the bundles of cargo. Brakes squealed.
The bus sounded its airhorn. Soldiers shouted back. Downshifting with a lurch, the bus slowed to a crawl. Lyons looked over the side.
A rush of black water surged against the side of the bus. Branches and forest flotsam struck the sheet metal. The engine revved and the bus tilted upward. The tail-lights lit a wash of rocks and broken concrete.
With a roar of engines, the troop trucks ahead picked up speed. The clouds of diesel soot stank even in the continuing downpour. The bus driver floored the accelerator and slammed through the gears.
Bouncing and shuddering on the flooded road, the bus raced the trucks. Lights appeared to one side. Lyons saw a lantern on the steps of a turquoise cantina. Headlights revealed whitewashed buildings and a narrow street paved with stones.
The bus swerved and accelerated. Lyons pressed himself to the roof and watched with one eye as the bus paralleled the troop trucks.
Quesada's assassins shouted from the bus windows, laughing and jeering at the soldiers. In the backs of the open trucks, with only plastic tarps around their shoulders to shelter them from the storm, the soldiers returned the jeers. Like two competing sports teams, the militiamen and the soldiers cursed one another and urged their drivers faster. The bus passed one truck, then the other.
Headlights illuminated the back of the bus. Belching diesel smoke, the bus pulled ahead of the trucks. The bus shook and rattled as it hurtled downhill. The tires sprayed mud higher than the windows. Careering through curves, the bus left the trucks far behind.
But other taillights appeared. Lyons raised himself to look ahead. In the headlights of the bus, he saw a jeep with M-60 machine guns mounted on pedestals, one in the front seat aiming forward, the other in the back. Four soldiers rode in the jeep.
The jeep's brake lights flashed. The bus slowed. The jeep whipped through a turn, the bus following a moment later. Now the vehicles traveled on a paved road.
Kilometers away, the lights of a small city shimmered through the rain and wind. Lyons heard rumbling and squeaking. He looked back to see the troop trucks pass the turnoff without slowing. He nudged Blancanales to rise.
'Can't be San Francisco Gotera,' Blancanales told him. 'The town hasn't had electricity for years.'
'Ricardo!' Lyons hissed.
The teenager spoke quickly to Blancanales. Blancanales turned to Lyons.
'That's the plantation,' he said. 'What happened back there on the road?'
'They had a race. That's a jeep up front there. I think it's the army officers. The troop trucks went straight. Going back to the garrison, I guess.'
'Like at the farmhouse.' Blancanales considered what he had observed. 'The soldiers stay in the trucks, the officers work with the militia leaders. Perhaps the officers will be meeting with Quesada.'
On the paved road, the jeep and bus maintained a steady hundred kilometers per hour. Only a few minutes after they left the mountain road, they saw the lights of a guard tower. The jeep slowed. Taking a last look, the two men of Able Team saw a sentry open a chain link gate topped with razor wire.
Praying that the guard in the watchtower could not distinguish their forms among the bundles and boxes of gear, Lyons and Blancanales and the teenage Ricardo pressed themselves flat on the roof of the bus. The vehicle slowed to a crawl as it lurched over a series of speed bumps. Voices called out, then the bus accelerated again, following a hundred meters behind the jeep.
They sped through the defenses of the Quesada family. When distance reduced the lights of the watchtower to a smear in the rain, Lyons moved to the edge of the roof. Below, the rain-polished asphalt blurred past at a hundred kilometers per hour.
'Pol! Ready to jump? First chance we get.'
Blancanales spoke quickly with Ricardo. The teenager crawled to the edge and looked down. He looked at the two North Americans. '
'
Mercury-arc lights on poles lit the road. Chain link and barbed-wire fences flashed past. Beyond the fences, a few lights shone from the shanties of lumber and tar paper that housed the plantation's field workers. Aluminum prefabs sheltered the overseers guarding the campesinos. But none of the miltiamen in the guard posts braved the storm.
On the other side of the road, rows of coffee bushes extended to the distance. Lyons pointed to the coffee fields.
'In there.'
'If you jump now,' Blancanales warned him, 'with those lights, at this speed, you're dead twice.'
'They've got to slow down sometime. First time there's enough darkness to cover us…'
The jeep and the bus continued at a hundred kilometers per hour on the brightly lit service road. Ahead, they saw a cluster of prefab buildings. Lights blazed over an asphalted area crowded with parked trucks and farm equipment.
Lyons cursed. 'Slow down! Give us some shadows!' he hissed.
As if the driver had heard, the bus slowed. Lyons braced himself to jump. Blancanales pulled him back, and down.
'Guards, there!'
Two militiamen in yellow raincoats opened the chain link and razor-wire gates to the vehicle yard. The jeep went through the gate. The bus slowed, but too late. It entered the vehicle yard.
The three intruders on the cargo rack went flat. Around them, they saw garages and parked trucks. Sentries paced the asphalt. The hammering of an air ratchet stopped as mechanics watched the returning squad from open-sided service buildings. In the brilliance of thousand-watt lights, nothing in the vehicle yard went unobserved.
As the bus slowed to a stop, men from the death squad stepped out of the passenger door. They called out to the militiamen. The army officers in the jeep drove on to one of the prefabs.
Lyons and Blancanales and Ricardo waited. The militiamen had stowed equipment on the bus roof. The militiamen would unload the equipment.
Flat on their bellies, Lyons and Blancanales unslung their assault weapons. They waited for the sound of boots on the steel rungs of the ladders.
15
Another rattle of static came from the hand-radio. Gadgets Schwarz listened for code-clicks or the voices of his partners. But the electronic noise obscured any message. Gadgets keyed a response. The bursts of static
