Warlord of Azatlan

'I am Nate.' The ex-Marine spoke oddly, the inflections and rhythm of his English somehow different.

'How long since you spoke English?' Blancanales asked.

'A long time. I speak Quiche now. Sometimes Castilian — Spanish.'

Lyons stared, his mouth gaping open. Gadgets slung his Galil. Hooking his thumbs in the straps of his backpack, he walked in a circle around Nate. He saw the carved wood and hand-hammered steel of crossbow and a quiver of short arrows. A knitted bag displaying the stylized figure of a prancing horse held magazines for the G-3 and Ingram.

Nate glanced at the stranger eyeing him. Gadgets laughed.

'This guy is indigenized!'

'Who are you?' Lyons finally asked.

'I told you. Nate.'

'I mean, who are you with?'

'We don't have time to talk,' he answered, his words coming awkwardly. He pointed into the pines. 'A world of shit comes. If you want to live, we move. Follow Xagil. I follow.'

Nate and the woman spoke quickly in Quiche. The boy, Xagil, led Able Team through the pines. As they walked down into a ravine, the forest became dark with lush growth. Pushing aside a curtain of vines, Xagil followed a trail that tunneled through tangled vines and brush and bromeliad. Nate, the woman and the little girl walked soundlessly behind them.

After hundreds of yards without sight of the sun, they came to a crevice dropping into the interior of the mountain. A trail down a narrow ledge led to the fissure in the black stone.

Some distance along the ledge, they entered a cave. Xagil disconnected the monofilament triplines of booby traps. After Able Team and the Indians passed, Nate reconnected the monofilament lines.

Blancanales waved a flashlight over the interior of a cavern. Bats squeaked and fluttered in the shadows. The bats' eyes refracted the light like a thousand red stars.

'Where are your friends?' Lyons asked the ex-Marine.

Nate ignored the question. He went to one of the many shadows on the cavern wall and disappeared into the voids.

'Come!'

The flashlight that Blancanales held threw a weak glow on glistening black stone. The passage had once been a bubble in the molten magma of the flowing mountain. Now, the line of North Americans and Indians filed through it. Nate walked through the total darkness by memory. Able Team followed Blancanales's flashlight.

Wind rushed into their faces. Blinking against the daylight, Able Team stepped into a cave mouth that overlooked a forested valley and mountains.

Lyons went to the edge and looked down. Hundreds of feet below, clouds drifted against the vertical wall of volcanic rock. He could see nothing above them but more rock.

Another Indian woman, actually a teenager with fine-boned, austere features, greeted Nate in Quiche. She went silent when she saw Able Team and their camouflage uniforms. Reflexively, her hand went for a pistol hidden under her huipile. Nate spoke to her in the Indian language as he stripped off his weapons and ammunition. He made introductions.

'My wife Marylena. Her sister Maria. Her son Xagil. And my son...'

He took a bundle from his wife's back. A baby stirred inside.

'...Tecun.' He pointed to Blancanales. 'Rosario. I don't know your names…'

'I'm the Wizard,' Gadgets told them. He looked to Lyons. 'And he's the Ironman.'

Nate nodded. He spoke quickly to his wife. She went to an adjoining chamber. 'We eat while we talk.'

They sat at a hand-sawn and -crafted table on chairs of rough pine. Marylena returned with fruit and steaming patties of corn dough.

Gadgets held up one of the corn patties. 'What are these?'

'Tamalitas. Now, you three men with false names, we will discuss why you are here.'

'Unomundo's gang killed four Federal agents in Texas,' Lyons briefed Nate. 'We've come to kill him.'

Nate laughed. He called out to the women in Quiche, translated what the North American had said. The women laughed. He returned his attention to Able Team.

'Three men against a thousand?'

Lyons choked on a mouthful of mango. 'A thousand!'

'He's got an army up here?' Gadgets asked.

Nate did not answer. 'You have money?'

Blancanales sliced an avocado with his double-edged Gerber knife. 'You'll sell us information?'

The ex-Marine's lip rose in a sneer. 'La CIA. C-I-A. Always the same.'

'Not us, man.' Gadgets denied the charge. 'We don't associate with those Harvard spooks.'

'I know,' Nate nodded. 'You are Boy Scouts. Collecting butterflies. Ha, ha, ha. Now, we talk truth. I have lived here many years. It was good here. A few bandits. I killed them. A few EGP. I killed them. The army were my friends. They did not ask for my passport. Very peaceful. Then Unomundo came. For six months, it has been very bad. We cannot plant corn. They shoot our sheep and cows. Shoot many families...'

'What about the army and the police?' Lyons interrupted.

'Unomundo paid gold. Those who did not take the gold died. Men go to tell the government, but never return. Everyone is afraid. They move away.'

'Why not you?' Blancanales asked.

Nate ignored the question. 'Sometimes we fight Unomundo. Then his soldiers kill everyone they find. Women, families, children, no difference. We need friends, but we need money, too. You are CIA. You have money. First, you pay for my barbed wire.'

'That was your place on the cliff? What a view!' Gadgets exclaimed through a mouthful of tamalita.

Rotorthrob echoed in the cave. The men of Able Team jerked around, starting from their pine chairs. In the distance, they heard explosions, then the ripsaw of mini-Gatlings. Nate laughed.

'They chop down trees with their fire superiority. Get a body count on shadows. But it is good that Xagil found you. Otherwise the fascistaswould have found you. And God have mercy if they take you alive.'

Lyons ended the conversation. 'Where is Unomundo?'

'Perhaps at his base. Maybe no.'

'Where is the base?' Lyons pressed.

'Want to go there? I give you the guided tour. One thousand dollars each. Plus free prisoner for questions.'

Blancanales laughed as he opened his pack. 'It's a deal.'

'In advance. Money stays with Marylena in case I do not return.'

They counted out hundred-dollar bills.

Descending through a maze of volcanic formations and caverns, Nate led them deep into the mountain. Water trickled in the darkness beyond their flashlights. When they kicked rocks from the path, the rocks fell for seconds before hitting stone. Some-times, the rocks fell into the void and no sound came. Nate led them through the twisting passages. From time to time, he stopped to disarm booby traps.

They came to a chamber he used as a storeroom. As their flashlights swept across neat stacks of Unomundo materiel — uniforms, tools, boots, rations, radios — Nate diffused devices scattered throughout the equipment. He selected uniforms for Able Team.

'At the base, they wear a gray uniform,' he explained. 'Those green ones, they only wear those to look like the army.'

All the uniforms showed bloodstains. Blancanales saw a pile of wallets and other personal effects. He glanced through a wallet.

An identity card printed in German carried a photo of a young blond man. Another wallet held the card of a dead man from New Jersey. Another identified a soldier from El Salvador. Blancanales passed the wallets to Lyons and Gadgets.

'All foreigners.'

'Most of his soldiers are not Guatemalan,' Nate told them. 'But some are.'