Nate understood. He shook his head. 'Separate cave. Very secure. Bring your friends out. They must see.'
When Blancanales and Gadgets joined them on the ledge, Nate continued the briefing. 'There is no way in through the mountain. Walls of concrete block the caves.'
Blancanales nodded. 'Have you been in there?'
'At first, before they had so many mercenaries. Not since.'
'We could walk straight in,' Lyons suggested. 'Pass as mercenaries.'
'There are many guards. Identity cards. Very difficult to… fake it.'
'Time for air strikes,' Gadgets suggested. Lyons and Blancanales knew he meant Jack Grimaldi, the Stony Man ace pilot.
Staring down at the mercenaries and assembled trucks, Nate shook his head. 'In Laos, in the Co Roc mountains, there was a cave like this. The NVA put one hundred fifty-two mikemike guns inside, hit Khe Sahn every day for months. We tried B-52s, fighter bombers, Laotian mercenaries.
He looked to the three men of Able Team. 'I tell you this, Secret Agents. If you want to hit this place, I will help you. Nothing you can think of will do it. But I can. It costs you one hundred thousand dollars. What do you say?'
'Maybe,' Lyons answered.
'Yes or no?'
'The money's no problem,' Blancanales told Lyons.
'That's not it. We don't know the options. Let's go get our prisoners. Put some questions to them before we talk plans.'
'There is a lookout on the top.' Nate glanced toward the peak. 'We go there.'
Sheep trails crisscrossed the near-vertical slopes. Guiding them through the pines and ferns, Nate paused often to peer at the soft grasses.
Then he found a rectangle of discolored moss. He motioned Able Team back. He took a bit of wire and string from his knitted bag.
He hooked the moss and stretched out the string. Twenty feet away, he went flat. He pulled the string. Nothing happened.
Leaving cover, they saw that a square of moss had flipped over to expose a small land mine. Blancanales recognized it instantly.
'Bouncing Bettie.'
'They have many. They have killed many sheep.'
Taking only a few more seconds, Nate found the safety pin and slipped it through the housing. He checked the underside for secondary detonators, then pulled the mine from the hole. He concealed it a hundred yards farther along the trail, where he could retrieve it later.
Continuing to the top, they heard shots. Nate directed them to an animal trail running under the bushes and small trees. They covered the last two hundred yards on their bellies. The shooting — single shots, sometimes an auto-burst — continued.
The observation post overlooked the valley. Plastic bags filled with dirt, stacked waist high, formed a rectangle. A camouflage-patterned canopy protected a squad of mercenaries from the sun.
The mercenaries sprawled in the shade, drinking beer and playing cards. One man scanned the late afternoon panorama of the valley, the road, and the far mountain with a telescope on a tripod. Another man with an M-16 sniped at birds soaring in the thermal updrafts.
Somewhere else on the mountaintop, another rifle — a large-caliber weapon — boomed. The distant rifleman fired single shots, sometimes three quick semi-auto shots.
'These guys,' Lyons whispered to the others, 'are definitely jack-offs.'
Blancanales and Gadgets nodded. Nate pointed toward the sound of the other rifle. Leaving his partners to watch the squad at the observation post, Lyons followed Nate along the ridge line. They crawled, then walked silently through the lengthening shadows.
They found two mercenaries in aluminum lawn chairs. A stack of sandbags supported the shooter's exotic Walther sniper-rifle as he squeezed off shots at a target over four hundred yards away. A spotter with a telescope sat beside him, calling his hits.
Lyons put his binoculars on the target. He saw a black-and-white life-size photograph of the president of Guatemala. As he watched, the rifle boomed three times. Three holes appeared in the photograph, all in the center of the president's chest. Lyons passed the binoculars to Nate.
The spotter spoke into a walkie-talkie. Down-range, a blond soldier left cover to change targets. He stapled another life-size photo of the President to a splintered sheet of plywood.
'This fellow is a serious shooter,' Lyons told Nate. 'He's bound to have some interesting information. Like why he's using that particular target.'
'And the others at the lookout?'
'We'll take these two, and we'll get out without those lizards even knowing we were here.'
Nate grinned. 'We go, spook man.'
Lyons dusted off his gray uniform. He slung his Atchisson behind him. The silenced .45 went into his belt at the small of his back. He left his Python in his shoulder holster. He left cover.
He made no effort at silence as he walked up behind them. As the rifle boomed three times, the spotter turned.
'Now what?'
'Special interrogation session,' Lyons told him, smashing him in the side of the head with his heavy- barreled Python. The other man grabbed at a flap-holstered Colt. The Python came down on his skull.
Nate rushed to the stunned men. In seconds, they tied the hands of both men behind them, then linked their prisoners together with ropes around their necks. Nate ripped off one man's shirt, tore it in strips, used it for blindfolds and gags.
'And the man there?' Nate pointed to the soldier changing the target.
Glancing to the western horizon, Lyons guessed they had an hour until dusk. 'We got two prisoners.'
'Can't leave him. He has a radio. He will...'
Lyons took the rifleman's chair. He examined the Walther 2000 semi-automatic rifle. The bulky, ultramodern weapon utilized the 'bullpup' configuration; the designers had placed the receiver group and the magazine in the buttstock, behind the grip and trigger housing. Looking at a box of cartridges, he saw that the rifle fired not 5.56mm or 7.62 NATO slugs, but Winchester .300 Magnum. He found the safety and magazine release, then dropped out the box magazine to check the cartridges. He slapped back the magazine.
Taking the walkie-talkie, he pressed the transmit, said only: 'Ready?'
'Yes, sir.'
He put the rifle to his shoulder. As the spotter moved away from the new photo of the president of Guatemala, Lyons put the reticle of the Leatherwood 3x-9x ART scope on the center of the man's back.
Three slugs bounced the soldier off a tree. He died before he fell.
'That'll teach him to hang around in the line of fire.'
A few seconds later, after gathering up all the ammunition and packing the Walther rifle into its fiberglass and foam case, Lyons and Nate dragged their prisoners off. Nate slung his crossbow. They cut away from the lookout and followed a trail through the deep shadows of pines and chest-high ferns. Lyons walked point with his Atchisson. He buzzed Blancanales and Gadgets and whispered into his hand-radio.
'Pol, Wizard. Pull out. We got our prisoners.'
Shouts came from the lookout post. Automatic fire ripped through the pines. They jerked the tied and blindfolded mercenaries to cover. Lyons spoke again into the hand-radio.
'What's going on?'
No answer. Pulling the groggy, gagged prisoners along by the rope, Nate crouch walked to Lyons.
'To the trail!'
'Moving.'
