90 Twelve

Jim Strunk spoke softly, meeting alone with Comandante Perro Loco in a cellar, an underground command room beneath the hacienda, a fortified space surrounded by maps on the wall and a bank of green radar screens.

“Their names were Reynaldo Soto and Jose Villareal,” he said. “They had their rifles aimed at you when you got out of the helicopter. I killed them. One of the houseboys overheard them plotting to shoot you. He told me about the plot only a few minutes before you arrived.”

“Someone got to them. We have to find out who, and why. I suspect the bastardo rebel commander El Gato Selva is behind this assassination attempt.”

“Both men were poor Belizian farmers,” Strunk said. “I have squads of men out picking up their families so we can question them, but I do not think we’ll find out anything. I suspect they did this on their own … for money, of course. Someone had to pay them to take this kind of risk. They were simple men who would not concoct such a scheme on their own. Someone paid them. I’m sure of it. Someone with ties to the American government.”

Perro Loco’s eyebrows raised. “Why do you say that, Commander Strunk?”

Strunk held up the Heckler and Koch rifle he’d been holding in his hand. “This is a very advanced, very expensive piece of equipment. Both of the assassins had one. I do not think El Gato Selva could acquire two of these weapons un-91

 

less he had help from someone in America. Hell, I’ve never even seen one before, and I’ve handled just about every type of rifle there is.”

“They may be tied to the pair of USA soldiers my men captured crossing the Yucatan border,” Loco said, a thoughtful expression on his face. “One of them says they are from President Osterman. They want to make a deal with an alliance of some kind between us and the government of the USA.”

“Why do we need a deal with a defeated government?” Strunk asked. “According to all radio reports, the Rebels smashed all the major military bases in the USA, and there is another report that President Claire Osterman is dead. How do we know who is telling the truth about Osterman? Is she dead, or alive? How do we find out?”

“We shall see,” Loco replied. “When the two Americans get here, we will question them.”

“Where is Paco?” Strunk asked.

“He is bringing them here, to the hacienda. One of them claims to have a code, a way to scramble a message to the USA if we agree to help them.”

“I don’t trust any of these fucking Americans,” Strunk said with heat in his voice.

“Neither do I,” Loco muttered. “I will kill one of the soldiers, to see if the other one will tell us the truth when he sees his companion die.”

“Good,” Strunk grunted, turning for the stairway. “Killing one of the Americans will make the other one tell us the truth about President Osterman. Maybe she is trying to play both sides of the fence, sending two men to talk to you of an alliance while simultaneously giving El Gato weapons with which to assassinate you.”

Strunk climbed the steps and went to the ground floor of the hacienda to await Paco’s arrival.

 

92

 

Paco Valdez had both American soldiers tied to chairs in an adobe room behind the hacienda where farm tools were kept. The chairs were bolted to the floor. Each prisoner had his hands and feet strapped to the chairs. The chairs were bolted to the floor in the dark, windowless room.

Jim Strunk and Paco Valdez stood on either side of the prisoners as Loco entered the adobe. Two more armed guards were flanking the doorway with AK-47’s cradled in the crooks of their arms.

“Tell me again,” Loco began, “about this offer you bring me from President Osterman. I am very curious, for all our reports indicate your President is dead.”

“She survived the crash,” the dark-haired prisoner named Arnoldo Mendoza said in a hoarse voice.

“Yeah. That’s right,” the redheaded soldier said, barely conscious after the blow to his scalp. Blood ran down his neck to his shirtfront.

Loco pulled a gleaming bayonet from a sheath on his belt and moved closer to the red-haired soldier. “What is your name, americano?”

“Randy. Randy Grimes.”

“Are you ready to die for what you told me, Senor Grimes?” Loco asked. “Do you believe that strongly in what you just told me about your President?”

“It’s the truth. President Osterman is alive. She wants to form an alliance with you.” Randy’s words were slurred, hard to understand.

“Do you know the scrambling code for the radio?” Loco kept on.

“No. Only Arnold knows it.”

“Then what do we need with you?” Loco demanded.

“I am the driver. I knew the way across Mexico so we could tell you about President Osterman’s offer. I have papers that let us pass through Mexican guard posts.”

“Only papers? Then we don’t need you now, do we?” Loco demanded.

 

93

 

Randy looked up at Loco, blinking away waves of unconsciousness. “I’ll need to drive the HumVee back,” he said. “I know who to talk to at the checkpoints … and where to

go.”

“But if your vehicle is not going back, then what purpose do you serve?”

Randy glanced down at the blade in Loco’s hands, his eyes filled with terror. “I’m the only one who can get us back across Mexico. Arnold doesn’t know this country.”

Loco placed the tip of his blade against Randy’s throat and gave it a gentle nudge. Blood trickled from the pinprick where the point of the bayonet pierced his skin.

“You ain’t gonna kill me, are you?” Randy asked, tears streaming from his eyes to trickle down his sunburned cheeks. “I’m part of the team sent to contact you. President Osterman wants us to join forces with you.”

Loco smiled. “If I do kill you, it will send a message to President Osterman … if she is still alive, that I will not tolerate bullshit.”

“Please don’t kill me. I’ve got a wife an’ kids back in Macon.”

“Don’t kill him,” Arnoldo said quickly in fluent Spanish. “I’ll never find my way out of here.”

“Who said you were leaving?” Loco asked Arnoldo. “What makes you think I’d let you leave here alive? You know where my headquarters is now. You could radio coordinates and before the sun comes up, bombs would be falling on my roof.”

“We were sent to offer you an alliance,” Arnoldo insisted, his dark face turning pale. “Why would you kill us when we came here with peaceful intentions?”

“I only have your word that your intentions are peaceful,” Loco replied, pressing the long knife blade a little harder into Randy’s throat.

“It’s the truth,” Randy protested as more blood came from his neck. “Why would we come here otherwise?”

 

94

 

“To spy on us,” Jim Strunk said, his brow knitted into a web of lines. “You could be handing us some bullshit story about the alliance. President Osterman is dead. We got confirmation on it a few days ago.”

“She is alive,” Arnoldo croaked. “All you have to do is contact her on the radio frequency and use the right scramble. I have the codes in my head … memorized, and the frequency is in my shirt pocket.”

“How will we know it is your President who answers us?” Paco wanted to know.

“It’s part of the code. I swear she’s still alive. Herb Knoff is her second in command. He’ll vouch for us and tell you everything you need to know to satisfy you as to who we are, and that we’re here on an official mission from the USA.”

“Perhaps,” Loco said. “But in order to be sure, I am going to kill this soldier named Randy. Unless you are telling us the truth, Arnoldo, you will be the next to die.”

“No!” Arnoldo cried, glancing over at his companion.

“There is no other way to be sure,” Loco told him. “This way, you will know how serious I am about finding the truth in what you’ve told us.”

Loco sent his knife plunging into the throat of Randy Grimes, and a stream of red came spitting forth from the jugular vein, squirting over Loco’s shirtsleeve. Grimes’s windpipe fell down on his chest, making a wet, whispering sound.

“No!” Arnoldo cried.

Loco laughed, the scar on his face twisted in an odd sort of way, like the wriggling motions of a snake.

“Die, bastardo!” Loco shouted, pulling his bayonet out of Grimes’s neck.

“Oh, no,” Arnoldo sighed, turning the other way.

Loco stared at him. “Is it hard to watch a friend die?” he asked. He leaned closer to Arnoldo, his eyes riveted on the young soldier’s face. “What will be much harder, compadre, is to feel your own lifeblood leaking down on your belly.”

 

95

 

“Kill the son of a bitch,” Paco said, licking his dry lips when he scented blood. “Kill both of the American motherfuckers now!”

Loco straightened up, examining the expression on Arnoldo’s face. “Not yet, Paco,” he said.

“Why not?”

Loco grinned, wiping the blood off his bayonet on his pants legs. “Because now, this one will tell us the truth. He knows we mean business.”

“I … swear … I’m telling the truth,” Arnoldo stammered as his companion slumped lower in the chair. “We were not lying to you in the first place.”

Loco regarded him for a moment. “But how were we to know you were telling the truth?” he asked.

Arnoldo Mendoza swallowed as Randy Grimes stopped breathing through his severed windpipe. “Because we came all the way down here. Why would we come at all, unless we were ordered to?”

Jim Strunk pushed away from the wall where he’d been watching the proceedings. “Ask him about the rifles, Loco.”

Perro Loco held out his hand and Paco Valdez handed him one of the Heckler and Koch sniper rifles. He showed it to Arnoldo. “Is this how your President offers an alliance? By giving rebels in our jungle these weapons with which they can kill me?”

Arnoldo shook his head. “I do not know what you are talking about,” he said. “I’ve never seen a gun like that before.”

“This could only come from America,” Loco persisted. “Are you saying that your President did not try to have me assassinated?”

Arnoldo shook his head again. “No, comandantel I do not know anything of that. We, Randy and I, were only ordered to come here to offer you a partnership with President Osterman. Why would she want you killed? She needs you to help defeat Ben Raines.”

 

96

 

“He’s probably right, comandante,” Strunk said, watching the American’s eyes closely to see if he was telling the truth. “Why would they come into our territory … unless somebody ordered them to?”

“I don’t give a shit about their reasons,” Loco spat. “I want to know if they are spies.”

“I’m not a spy,” Arnoldo said, turning away from Grimes’s dead body. “I’m only following orders. I swear it.”

Loco gave Strunk a glance. “Prepare the radio. We shall see if the man is speaking true words. If he is not, I will kill him myself. Take the other one outside and bury him. Remove any papers he has in his pockets and bring them to me.”

 

97

 

Esmeralda Soto heard them coming, the sounds of gasoline motors grinding through the jungle. She came out of her palm hut to see who was driving the jungle road to their village. It was never good when a motorized vehicle came this way, for it was almost always soldiers who were looking for someone, or bandits coming to loot the village of what little they had in the way of food and clothing. Or to take away the young women who had no children.

Reynaldo had been acting strangely since the American man and woman came, the woman who appeared to be una India by her facial features. She and Reynaldo and Jose whispered among themselves too often while she was here, and even Anna noticed the change in Jose after she and her companion went to their hut at the edge of the village.

“Come inside,” Esmeralda said to her five-year-old son as he was playing in the dirt not far from their hut. Carlos had his father’s eyes. When she looked at little Carlos she saw Reynaldo when he was younger.

Carlos looked up. “But why, Mama?”

“Someone is coming up the mountain. I need to tell Anna we have visitors. Take your sister and go inside. It may be the soldiers.”

Carlos got up and dusted off his knees. “Come, Rosita,” he said to a tiny naked girl playing in the mud beside him. “Mama says it is time to go.”

Esmeralda watched the jungle trail, shading her eyes from

 

98

 

the sun with a hand. The noises made by the engines grew much louder. It would be soldiers coming, for the village was too far off main roads to be visited by anyone else.

In the past, rebel soldiers from Nicaragua and Guatemala and El Salvador had come to loot Belizian villages, looking for wild pig meat and fruit gathered by the mountain tribes. The tribes had so little and yet the soldiers came anyway, often shooting down tribal elders and anyone else who voiced a protest to the banditry.

But when Comandante Perro Loco took charge in Belize, most of the bandit gangs were killed off, or sent into hiding. The Mad Dog, as his name implied, killed anyone and everyone who stood in his way when he took command of the country. Some saw him as a Belizian hero … Esmeralda was not so sure. She wished with all her heart that Reynaldo had not become a guard at the Mad Dog’s headquarters in San Ignacio. He had changed so much in the months since he went to work as a hacienda guard. He hardly spoke to her now. They needed the money from his job, especially if they ever hoped to pay for Rosita’s operation, but Esmeralda worried that harm might come to her husband if he had a job guarding the comandante.

Anna, a slender Caribe Belizian girl with three children, came running from the jungle with an armload of breadfruit as she cast a worried look over her shoulder. She was only eighteen, too young to understand the political things going on in the capital city. And she was pretty, making her vulnerable to the soldiers’ demands.

“Who comes?” Anna asked, stopping in front of Esmeralda’s hut.

“Soldiers, or bandidos,” Esmeralda replied, still watching the jungle road. “Take your children inside and keep them there until we know who it is. Do not come outside for any reason until they are gone.”

“Why have Jose and Reynaldo not come home?” Anna asked. “I expected them last night.”

 

99

 

Esmeralda continued to stare at the road. “I do not know. Something may be wrong.”

Anna dropped the sack of breadfruit and raced for her hut to grab her children. Down deep, Esmeralda had a feeling that the motor sounds meant trouble for the villagers.

Coop stuck his head out of the hut he and Jersey were sharing as soon as he heard the growling of engines from the jungle.

He whirled and ducked back inside the hut. “Pack our shit as fast as you can, Jersey. Sounds like company’s on the way.”

Jersey quickly rolled up her bedroll and stuffed it in her pack as Coop did the same with his stuff. “You think it could be El Gato coming to tell us the hit went okay?” she asked.

“Uh-uh. Those motors sound like jeeps, an’ Gato drives a pickup. I’m very much afraid the shit’s hit the fan, an’ if we don’t get a move on, it’s gonna splatter all over us.”

“What about the villagers?” Jersey asked as they pulled their packs on, picked up their weapons, and melted into the jungle.

Coop shook his head. “Whatever happens to them, it’ll go a lot worse on ‘em if the soldiers find us hiding here. Get a move on!”

Sergeant Felipe Garza directed his driver toward the center of the village. A tripod-mounted fifty-caliber machine gun bolted to the rear floor was manned by Lupe Ozaro.

Garza signaled the drivers of the other vehicles to remain on the periphery of the village to guard their backs until they saw what they were up against. Loco had said there might be some foreigners stationed here and to be careful.

More than two dozen grass huts stood in the clearing on a high jungle mountainside. Garza saw no evidence of

 

100

 

armed resistance, so he had his driver proceed further into the village.

“Alto!” Felipe shouted.

The jeep ground to a halt.

Sergeant Garza jumped to the ground with his pistol drawn.

“Where is the wife of Reynaldo Soto?” he cried. “The wife of Jose Villareal?”

A small woman in a tattered cotton dress came slowly from the doorway in one of the huts.

“Who are you?” Felipe demanded.

“Esmeralda. Esmeralda Soto.”

Felipe strode across the clearing with his gun pointed at the woman. “Your husband? Where is he?”

“He … is a guard at the hacienda of Comandante Perro Loco in San Ignacio.”

Felipe smiled. “Yes. I know that. He is dead! He tried to assassinate the comandante.”

Esmeralda shook her head, her hands to her face and sudden tears springing to her eyes. “No. Reynaldo would not do such a thing.”

The tears streamed down her cheeks. Sergeant Garza found her tears amusing. “He was a traitor! So was his friend from this village, Jose Villareal. They were killed when they tried to kill our commander. Tell me, bitch, why they would do something like this?”

“It is not true … it cannot be true.”

“It is la verdad. They are both dead. Now tell me … who would pay them to do such a thing?”

“No one,” Esmeralda whispered. “Reynaldo was a good father and a good husband.”

“He was a murderer!” Felipe snapped.

“No. He has never killed anyone in his life.”

Felipe glanced around him. “Where is the wife of Jose Villareal?”

 

101

 

Esmeralda’s eyes flickered to the front door of Jose’s hut. “There,” she said softly.

Felipe turned to Corporal Lupe Ozaro. His eyes were hard, flat and uncaring. “Fire into the hut. Kill them!”

Before Esmeralda could scream a warning, the heavy chatter of machine-gun fire echoed across the village. Palm fronds erupted from the walls, tossed into the air by the power of lead slugs, shredding coconut leaves into pulp.

A child screamed as the hut was being cut to pieces by the hail of bullets.

Esmeralda sank to her knees, covering her face with her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

The shooting ended. Sergeant Garza grinned. “Now do you believe me, bitch?” he snarled. “Unless you tell me who paid your husband and his friend to assassinate Comandante Perro Loco, you and the others in this village will die.”

Esmeralda sobbed. “I do not know. I swear it. There was this woman … una India, only she spoke English. She came here with a man, un americano.”

“These americanos … who were they?”

“They did not give their names. They talked to Reynaldo and Jose in private,” she said, not even considering adding that El Gato Selva had also been there.

“What did they talk about?” Felipe demanded.

Esmeralda peered through her fingers when Anna came crawling out the door of her hut with blood covering her tattered dress. Her leg dangled behind her at an odd angle. Inside the hut the sounds of children crying filled the village.

“I do not know,” Esmeralda cried.

“You lying bitch!” Felipe hissed, his teeth clenched when he spoke. “Tell me the truth or I will blow a hole through your head.”

“I swear I do not know!” she screamed, looking around her as if she might find help from the other villagers. She saw no one. Everyone else in the small village was hiding behind closed doors.

 

102

 

Felipe cocked his automatic pistol, aiming down at the cowering woman. “This is your last chance to tell me what the woman said, and who she was.”

“She … gave Reynaldo something. Later on that night he went out and buried it behind our house. This is all I know. I swear it on the lives of my children.”

Anna Villareal rolled off the steps into her hut and landed on the ground. Felipe turned his gun on her and fired a thundering round.

His bullet split Anna’s skull in half. Her limbs jerked with death throes. Her broken leg thrashed helplessly behind her.

A small boy, no more than ten or twelve months old, came crawling to the door of the hut, staring down at his dying mother.

Sergeant Garza fired at the boy. The bullet went through his spine, flipping him over on his back as a shrill scream came from his lips.

“Now do you believe me?” Felipe asked, aiming his weapon down at Esmeralda. “Tell me who the americana bitch was, or you will die … and all your children will die!”

“She did not say her name!” Esmeralda pleaded. “I swear I am telling the truth!”

“Lying bitch!” he whispered. “What did your husband bury behind your house.”

“I do not know.”

“Show me where it is buried.”

Anna Villareal strangled on blood and lay still as Esmeralda got to her feet.

“It is beneath a clay pot where we boil our sugarcane and yam roots. Please do not kill my children …”

She led him to the pot behind the hut, where a bed of ashes surrounded the base of a bowl.

“Are you sure it was here?” Felipe demanded.

“Yes. Yes. Reynaldo did not know I was watching him that night when he dug the hole.”

Felipe walked over to the fire-blackened clay pot and gave

 

103

 

it a closer examination. “I will have Corporal Ozaro dig it up,” he said. “If there is nothing under it, I will kill you.”

Sergeant Garza motioned for Lupe Ozaro to climb down from the Jeep.

Esmeralda crept backward, resting on her knees.

“Dig here,” Felipe instructed.

Esmeralda closed her eyes.

Lupe Ozaro found a handful of gold American coins wrapped in a cloth at the bottom of the firepit. He gave them to Sergeant Garza.

Felipe turned abruptly and fired a bullet into Esmeralda’s chest, slamming her over onto her back in the jungle grass.

“Let us go now,” Felipe said, pocketing the coins. He would have to tell the comandante that the story about Reynaldo and Jose working for the Americans to assassinate him was true, but he would not mention the gold.

The gold would remain in Felipe’s pocket. After all, it was more than he could make in several years in the service of Perro Loco, and the gold would buy the favors of many senoritas.

He stopped, looking down at Esmeralda.

“Por favor, do not kill me,” she begged as bloody froth bubbled from her lips.

“I have no choice,” Felipe said. “You saw me dig up the gold.”

“I did not see anything.”

“I wish I could believe you,” Felipe told her. “I do not like killing women.”

“I saw nothing,” she stammered, coughing and holding her chest. “I have two small children who need me … now that I know Reynaldo will … not be coming home to us.”

“As you wish,” Felipe said, turning as if he meant to return to the jeep.

“Gracias, senor” Esmeralda replied, trying to get to her

 

104

 

feet, swaying from the pain in her chest where the bullet had entered. “There would be no one else to care for my children.”

“I understand,” Felipe remarked.

As he was rounding a corner of the hut, he wheeled and aimed his pistol at the woman. The bark of his weapon ended the quiet in the clearing.

Esmeralda Soto fell over on her back with a dark red hole in her forehead. The secret of the location of the gold coins was now between Felipe and Lupe Ozaro and their driver.

Just as Lupe climbed into the jeep, two more gunshots rang out in the forest.

Sergeant Garza did not intend to share his fortune with anyone else. He pushed Lupe’s and the driver’s bodies out of the jeep and drove off, already making plans on how he would explain the deaths of his companions to the others waiting in the jungle.

He would blame the americanos, saying they attacked them from hiding. He would order a search of the village in order to prove to Perro Loco that he was thorough in his assignment and that he had tried his best to avenge the deaths of Lupe and his driver.

Who knows? he thought. They might even find evidence of the americanos’ presence in the village.

 

105

 

Coop had to physically restrain Jersey when the fat sergeant ordered his man to fire into Jose’s hut. She put her M-16 to her shoulder, and would have blown the shit out of him if Coop hadn’t stopped her.

“What’s the matter with you, Coop?” she demanded angrily. “There’s only three of them in the village. We can take them easily.”

He shook his head. “I heard at least four or five jeeps, Jersey. The rest are covering the sergeant’s back. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“But…” she started to say as the sound of machine-gun fire shattered the quiet in the jungle, causing a flock of fruit bats to take wing over their heads.

“Goddammit!” she whispered hoarsely. “That son of a bitch is gonna kill them all.”

Coop gritted his teeth until his jaws ached. It galled him to stand by and do nothing, but it would do no good for him and Jersey to be killed and it certainly wouldn’t protect the villagers.

“Hang on, Jers,” he said, his voice tight. “We’ll get our time at bat and we’ll make the bastards pay, but now’s not the time.”

After Sergeant Felipe Garza shot his men, he jumped in the jeep and spun his tires, fishtailing in the soft dirt of the jungle floor as he raced out of the village.

 

106

 

He slid to a stop when he got to where the rest of his command was waiting just inside the thick foliage of the surrounding forest.

Corporal Beto, his second in command, stood up in his jeep, his hands on the fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on a post in the vehicle.

“What happened, Felipe?” he asked. “We heard shooting but got no call on the radio requesting help.”

“Americanos!” Garza shouted. “They ambushed us. There was no time to radio.”

Beto saw the blood on the seats of the jeep Garza was driving. “And Lupe and Jose?” he asked, referring to Garza’s driver.

“Killed,” Garza answered shortly. “I managed to drive the americanos back, but they may still be in the village. I want a complete search of every hut. Spare no one if you find evidence they were helping the americanos.”

Beto waved his arm, and the other four jeeps pulled into the village, just in time to see the last of the villagers fleeing into the jungle. No one was left behind.

The search didn’t take long; the buildings were all too small to hide anyone. When they came to the hut Coop and Jersey had been in, Garza stooped and picked up two empty MRE packets, holding them aloft for the others to see.

“The americanos were here, just as I said. I will radio Comandante Loco to see if he wants us to search the jungle or to return to base.”

After informing Loco of the presence of Americans in the jungle, Garza was ordered to return to base. Loco said other men better equipped for a jungle search would be sent to apprehend the traitors. He needed Garza to bring the aircraft fuel they’d picked up on their way into the jungle as soon as they could, for it would be needed in the upcoming offensive against the Mexican government.

 

107

 

Sergeant Felipe Garza rode at the front of the procession as they crossed jungle mountains toward San Ignacio and Loco’s hacienda. Five trucks with men loyal to the comandante drove the vehicles. The trucks loaded with aircraft fuel would be a star in his crown, a way to earn a promotion, as would his finding out that Americans were indeed involved in the recent assassination attempt on Loco’s life. The airplanes, especially the helicopters Comandante Perro Loco had, were in good mechanical shape, but they lacked the fuel to fly across Mexico to achieve the objectives the comandante wanted as he led his forces north to conquer the North Americans.

Corporal Beto spoke, still gripping the fifty-caliber machine gun with both hands while they moved through the jungle. “The comandante will be pleased,” he said. “The fuel will be very important.”

Felipe knew the comandante would be more than pleased to have the fuel he sought so desperately. “Yes. When we get to San Ignacio to show him what we have found, he may give us all a small bonus. He was very pleased that we chased the americanos into the jungle.”

“I could use the money,” Beto said. “My family is almost starving.”

“Many people are hungry in Central America,” Garza said as the jeep rolled over a hillside. “We are among the lucky ones who have jobs.”

“But this … job,” Beto argued, “it does not pay much and we don’t get our money very often.”

“Silencio!” Garza. said, glancing down at the driver, a Salvadoran named Julio Corte who spoke very little English. “If someone close to the comandante hears you say this, you will be executed by his bodyguards.”

“I know,” Corporal Beto murmured, keeping an eye on the jungle. “It is muy estupido to say anything against the comandante. A wise man keeps his mouth shut in all matters when you are around him.”

 

108

 

“Verdad” Garza replied.

A moment of silence passed.

“Tell me, Sergeant… what was at the bottom of the hole under the clay pot? It looked like small pieces of gold wrapped in the cloth.”

“How did you see that?” Garza asked. “You were supposed to be back in the jungle awaiting my command to enter the village.”

Beto shrugged. “I walked forward to make sure everything was all right after I heard your machine-gun fire. When I saw you dig up the small pouch, I returned to my men.”

Good, Garza thought, he didn ‘t see me shoot Lupe and Jose. Garza knew, however, it was still necessary to silence the only witness to what he had done.

“You think you saw gold?” he asked, letting his right hand slide down near his pistol.

“I saw something yellow … It glittered in the sun when you opened the cloth.”

“You saw too much,” Garza answered. “You should have been looking the other way.”

“What do you mean, Sergeant?”

Garza pulled his weapon. “You saw something gleaming in the sun,” he said. “It was a mistake to be looking at what I took from the cloth.”

Beto saw Garza lift his pistol, aiming for Beto’s head as the jeep moved over bumpy ground.

“No, Sergeant!” he cried.

“But you saw the gold.”

“No! I saw nothing!”

Private Corte looked up with both hands gripping the steering wheel… He knew something was wrong.

Felipe knew he would have to kill the driver as well as Beto, since Private Corte had overheard what was being said between them. He’d just have to blame it on the americanos again.

Garza was tightening his finger on the trigger, when the

 

109

 

roar of automatic-weapons fire came from both sides of the jungle road.

A series of molten bullets ripped through Sergeant Felipe Garza’s chest. He fell back in the seat of the jeep with his mouth full of blood.

Private Corte was torn out of his seat by the incessant pounding of machine-gun fire as it swept him off the driver’s seat in a hail of lead.

Corporal Beto fired at the muzzle flashes he saw in the jungle, moving the barrel of his fifty-caliber tripod-mounted weapon back and forth.

The recoil of the machine gun made his arms tremble, and for a moment he wasn’t sure he’d hit anything.

Then he felt a stabbing pain in his chest, as if someone had buried a knife below his ribs.

“Dios!” he cried, his trigger finger locked on the firing mechanism. The hammering sound of machine-gun fire filled the forest.

Bullets sprayed the jungle canopy above the caravan as more shots came from drivers in the trucks, single bullets fired by pistols and carbines.

Felipe saw and heard what was happening without being able to lift a finger to help his men. All he could think about were the drums of fuel in the trucks, and the few gold coins in his pocket.

“Kill them, Beto!” he croaked. “Don’t let them take the gold or the fuel!”

The jeep sputtered and came to a halt without a driver at the controls.

“What the hell?” Felipe Garza asked, his chest filled with fiery pain.

He noticed that the driver’s seat was empty. He cast a glance back at Corporal Beto.

Beto’s mouth was a fountain of blood. He continued to fire the machine gun.

 

110

 

“Beto!” Garza shouted. “Kill these sons of bitches before we all are all killed!”

Corporal Beto’s eyes had a glazed look to them, although he continued to fire into the jungle in a blind way, spraying the treetops with lead.

“What the fuck are you shooting at?” Garza cried, holding his chest with both hands as if he could stop the crimson blood from leaving his body. “There is no one in the trees!”

It was then that Garza saw the bloody bullet holes in the front of Corporal Beto’s shirt. Blood leaked down over his belt and into his pants pockets.

“Keep shooting!” Garza ordered, trying to get up from the seat of the jeep in spite of the pains in his chest and deeper in his belly.

“I ordered you to shoot, Corporal Beto!” Garza bellowed as more bullets came from the jungle, shattering the windshield he gripped with his right hand.

A stinging pain entered his right armpit and it slammed him back into the seat of the jeep. For a moment he was stunned by the blow, not knowing what it was.

He glanced down at his khaki shirt and saw blood streaming from his sleeve. He stared at it for a time, unable to think clearly.

“They shot me, Beto,” he said. When he saw the front of his shirt, he knew he’d been wounded several times.

“Drive away from here!” he said, his voice muted by blood crossing his tongue.

He saw the driver, Private Corte, lying beside the jeep with a bullet hole through his head.

Garza cast a look at the jungle. Two dark shapes were moving toward him and the precious cargo some of the trucks carried.

“The gold,” he whispered, losing consciousness.

His final thoughts were of the coins hidden in his pocket. Then he went to sleep.

 

111

 

Coop and Jersey stood over the bodies strewn about the jungle path. Jersey reached over with her foot and kicked Garza in the mouth. “That’ll teach you to kill innocent women and children, you bastard!” she growled.

Coop glanced at her. He’d never seen her so furious. “You want to scalp the son of a bitch, too?” he asked.

She started to give a sarcastic answer, then hesitated, a thoughtful look on her face. “You know, Coop. Every now and then you come up with a pretty good idea, even if it is by accident.”

Jersey took out her K-Bar and squatted over Garza’s body.

“Hey, wait a minute, Jersey. I was just kidding …”

She looked up at him. “I’m not.” She bent and with a quick slash of the K-Bar made a circular incision around the top of Garza’s skull, then grabbed his hair and yanked a full scalp lock off in one squishy jerk.

“Damn!” Coop said, almost gagging at the horrible sight.

“Listen, Coop,” Jersey said, pausing to wipe her bloody hands on Garza’s shirt. “We’re stuck out here in the middle of a jungle, surrounded by hostiles, with no transportation and no way to ‘phone home.’ “

“We can take one of these …” Coop started to say, pointing to the jeeps in the path, until he saw bullet holes in all the hoods and steam coming from each and every motor.

“Good thought, Sherlock. Wanta try again?” Jersey asked.

“So, what does that have to do with scalping our enemies?”

“The only chance we have to survive is to put some fear in our opposition. The more barbaric and crazy we can seem, the fewer men who are going to be willing to come into the jungle after us.”

“You really think taking a few scalps will scare off men like these?” he asked, pointing to the dead lying around them.

 

112

 

“Not just scalping, but I have a few more ideas. Remember, I’m part Apache.”

Coop took a deep breath as he pulled out his own K-Bar. “Okay, Pocahontas, show me the way.”

 

113

 

Mike Post, Ben’s Chief of Intelligence, entered the office to find Ben and his team waiting for him.

“I hear there’s been some word from Belize,” Ben said.

Mike nodded, frowning. “Yes. Unfortunately, it’s not good news.”

“Let’s have it, Mike.”

“El Gato Selva, the intermediate between Jersey and Cooper and the assassins, radioed to say the entire mission was a bust. The assassins were killed, but not before they talked. Evidently, they gave away Jersey and Coop’s position and a hit team was sent in to take them out.”

Ben felt his chest tighten and his mouth go dry at the words. “Do we know what happened?”

Mike pulled up a chair and set down. He reached into his coat, pulled out his pipe, and began filling it as he talked. “Our intel is not one-hundred-percent reliable. Jersey and Coop were staying in a small village in the jungle. The hit squad killed six or eight of the villagers and reported back to Perro Loco that they were after two Americans who’d paid the assassins. Later that day, radio contact with the hit squad was lost, so we don’t know what’s gone on since then.”

Ben leaned back in his chair, a small smile on his face. “I can tell you what happened, Mike. Those soldiers made the mistake of messing with a buzz saw when it was busy cutting wood. Jersey and Coop took the hit team out.”

“That’s possible, but we won’t know for several hours.

 

114

 

This is all happening in a very remote part of the country and communications are difficult because of the mountains.”

“Well,” Ben said, “I’m not going to wait. I’m going to take a scout team in after Jersey and Coop.”

“But Ben,” Mike said, “you can’t leave. You’re right in the middle of negotiations between President Otis Warner and Cecil Jeffreys about the peace protocol.”

“That’s gonna have to wait. Two members of my team are in trouble, and I intend to see that they make it back.”

Mike fired up his pipe, sending clouds of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “Who’s going with you?”

Ben nodded his head at Anna, Corrie, and Beth, sitting across the room. “My usual team along with a couple of my best scouts.” He got to his feet. “They’re waiting outside.”

He crossed the room and opened the door. “Harley, Hammer, come on in.”

Two men entered the room, each seeming as big as a house. Ben put his hand on the shoulder of a six-foot-four-inch man with blue eyes and red hair in a single braid hanging down to the middle of his back. “This is Harley Reno,” Ben said. “He’s gonna take us in and bring us out. He’s the best scout in the Army.”

Reno nodded at the team as Ben stepped to the next man. Only marginally smaller than Reno, he stood six feet three inches and had coal-black hair and icy green eyes. “This is Scott ‘Hammer’ Hammerick. He’s our weapons expert, and also happens to be fluent in Spanish and knows Belize like the back of his hand.”

Hammer stepped forward. “The country we’re gonna be fightin’ in is high mountain jungle. Lots of thick foliage, not too many open spaces. That means we’re gonna make some changes in the weapons you carry. Your M-16s won’t be much use up there, an’ they’re much too heavy to carry up and down mountain passes.”

He reached down and wishing a small machine gun from the strap over his shoulder. “You women will be carrying

 

115

 

these Mini-Uzis. Fully loaded, they weigh only four kilograms, have forty-round detachable box magazines, and can fire six hundred fifty rounds per minute on full automatic.”

He nodded at Harley, who held out a shotgun with a pistol grip on it. “Ben, you and I and Harley will be carrying the SPAS Model 12. SPAS stands for Special Purpose Automatic Shotgun. It’s twelve-gauge, weighs 4.2 kilograms, has a seven-shot tubular magazine, and on full automatic can fire two hundred forty rounds per minute.”

“Wait a minute,” Corrie said. “Don’t shotguns have a very limited range?”

Hammer shrugged. “Depends. We have a variety of slugs available, from light bird shot to heavy metal slugs that’ll penetrate steel plate at a hundred yards.”

Corrie nodded and sat back.

“Now, as far as handguns, the old Colt .45’s are out of date. I prefer the Beretta Model 93R. It fires a 9mm Para-bellum bullet, has a twenty-round magazine, and can fire single-shot or in three-shot automatic bursts. On automatic fire, a small lever drops down in front of the trigger guard for the left hand to grab and steady your aim.”

Anna got to her feet. “This is all well and good, but while we’re standing here talking, Jersey and Coop are in trouble. When are we leaving?”

Harley Reno smiled at Anna. Evidently, she was his kind of woman-no bullshit, ready for action.

“As soon as you get suited up and pick up your weapons,” he said. “We’re going to make a HALO drop over the mountains in six hours.”

“HALO drop?” Corrie asked.

“High Altitude, Low Opening,” Harley said. “We’ll go out of the plane at ten thousand feet but we won’t open our chutes until we’re a few hundred feet off the ground so we won’t be picked up on radar.”

“Isn’t that cutting it awfully close?” she asked.

 

116

 

Harley smiled. “Yeah. A tenth of a second late an’ you’re hamburger.”

Hammer added, “But don’t worry, the chutes are fitted with automatic pressure gauges that open ‘em automatically … most of the time.”

Ben got to his feet. “Okay, team, let’s go. We’re burnin’ daylight and we’ve got an appointment with some friends to keep.”

Paco Valdez entered the main room of the hacienda to find Perro Loco and Jim Strunk discussing new security arrangements in light of the recent assassination attempt.

Loco glanced up from a map of the grounds when Paco entered. “What news have you of the squad with the aircraft fuel?”

Paco shook his head. “There has been no radio contact for some hours now, comandante.”

Loco slammed his hand down on the desk, making even the imperturbable Jim Strunk jump. “I want to know what is happening, and I want to know it now!”

“Si, mi comandante,” Paco answered hastily. “I will have the helicopter fly over the area immediately. The good news is there has been no signs of smoke in that region, indicating the fuel was not exploded.”

Loco turned to Strunk. “Jaime, go with Paco and make sure that the fuel is found and delivered back here safely. If it is lost, it will seriously delay my offensive against Mexico City.”

An hour and a half later, Strunk and Paco Valdez climbed out of the helicopter they’d landed in the center of the village where Felipe Garza had been when he’d last made contact. They were followed by fifteen handpicked troops who’d ridden in the big Huey with them.

Strunk grabbed his AK-47 and led the way down the jungle path, following the tire marks of Garza’s caravan. Valdez

 

117

 

strolled at his side, a short-barreled shotgun in his arms loaded with 00-buckshot.

They’d traveled only two miles when they saw the remains of the convoy. The jeeps were sideways in the trail, crippled by hundreds of bullet holes, motors still smoking and sending up steam.

“Mary Mother of God,” Paco whispered, and unconsciously crossed himself at the sight of the bodies of Garza and his men.

Sergeant Felipe Garza had been scalped and was sitting spread-eagled with his arms tied outstretched to a tree. His abdomen was sliced open and his entrails were in a circle around him.

Corporal Beto was tied down over an army-ant bed and was systematically being eaten by the hungry insects-his eyes and most of his face already gone.

Another man was strung upside down from a tree, his head only inches above a bed of coals, which was cooking his brains.

Several of the soldiers with Strunk and Valdez bent over on the trail and vomited on their boots; others just turned their heads, mumbling quiet prayers to themselves as they stared into the surrounding jungle with fear in their eyes, gripping their weapons so hard their knuckles were white.

“Who would do such a thing?” Valdez asked.

Strunk gave a lopsided grin of admiration. “Someone who wants to put fear into our troops … someone very smart. I’ve done the same thing a time or two, back in Africa when I was with the SAS. It’s very effective if done right.”

“I will inform the men they are not to discuss what they have seen here,” Valdez said.

Strunk gave a short laugh. “You can tell ‘em anything you want, Paco. They’re still gonna talk about this.”

“At least they weren’t smart enough to destroy the aircraft fuel,” Paco said.

 

118

 

Strunk’s face became troubled. “Yeah, that was a mistake.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand why they didn’t…”

“You men,” Paco interrupted, pointing at a group of men standing near the jeeps. “Start unloading the drums of fuel. I will radio for additional trucks to come haul it away while you stand guard.”

As two of the men walked to the nearest jeep and took hold of a drum, Strunk suddenly said, “Hold it! It’s a trap!”

He was too late. The men tipped the drum up on one edge to roll it off the jeep, and a hand grenade that had been wedged beneath it popped free, its pin already removed.

Strunk grabbed Valdez and dived to the ground behind a large banyan tree just as the grenade exploded, igniting the fuel drums in a giant fireball.

Trees were leveled for a hundred yards and every one of Valdez’s squad was incinerated into ash in a split second of intense heat.

Strunk woke up a half hour later, blood streaming from both ears and his nose. It took him another twenty minutes to free his legs from the banyan tree trunk where it’d fallen on him and Valdez.

Paco Valdez was conscious but incoherent, and both men were still deaf from the explosion. By the time they got back to the helicopter, it was almost dark.

“Loco is going to be very angry,” Paco said in a loud voice so Strunk could hear him.

Strunk nodded. “We’d better come up with a good explanation for why we didn’t check the fuel drums for booby traps before we tried to move them.”

“But Sefior Strunk, we didn’t try to move the drums,” Paco said with a sly grin as he sleeved blood off his face. “We were about to examine them when one of my clumsy men stumbled over a trip wire and set the explosion off.” He spread his hands, an innocent look on his face. “There was nothing more we could have done.”

 

119

119

 

Strunk nodded. “”Yeah, that’s the way I remember it, too, Paco.”

They climbed into the helicopter and the pilot started the engines.

“I believe I will radio the comandante and tell him the bad news over the air,” Paco said, reaching for the microphone. “I am very much afraid if I tell him in person, he will shoot me before I can make my excuses.”

“Good idea, Paco. That way he’ll have plenty of time to calm down before we get back to camp.”

“You, my friend, had better use the time to come up with a plan for capturing these americanos before they do more damage to our forces, or no matter what excuses we come up with, Loco will have our heads.”

 

120

 

Ben and his team looked like something out of a space movie as they gathered near the door of the C-130 transport plane. They were dressed all in black, with faces enclosed in Plexiglas helmets to give them oxygen until they fell far enough to be able to breathe on their own. Harley had said they would be at terminal velocity, 120 miles per hour, for several minutes prior to their chutes opening.

“It’s almost impossible to breathe at that speed, so leave your helmets hooked up until your chute opens. After that, if the shock of the sudden deceleration doesn’t knock you out, you can jettison your helmets and get your weapons ready to fire. We don’t know what we’re gonna find when we land.”

“What if we get hung up in the jungle canopy too far to drop from our chutes?” Ben asked.

Harley pointed to Ben’s chest. “That’s what that nylon cord on the front of your HALO suit is for. Just attach it to your harness, hit the release button, and climb down the rope to the ground.”

“And if the rope doesn’t reach the ground?” Corrie asked.

“Then you’re SOL,” Harley replied with a grin.

“SOL?” she asked.

“Shit outta luck,” he replied, and turned to watch the lights at the front of the transport, waiting for the jump light to turn from red to green.

 

121

 

Perro Loco paced the main room of his hacienda cursing and asking God why He had forsaken him on his glorious quest to save the poor working peasants from the overlords of capitalism. Paco Valdez and Jim Strunk sat across the room watching him. Both were thinking the same thing. Horseshit!

Finally, when Perro had exhausted his vocabulary of curse words, he stalked over and sat at his desk. He pulled a Cuban cigar out of a humidor, lit it, and he leaned back with his feet on the corner of the desk.

Pointing the cigar like a pistol, he asked Valdez, “Paco, have you got our commanders in Nicaragua and Costa Rica moving toward Mexico?”

“Si, mi comandante,” Valdez answered. “All of our battalions are massing on the border as we speak. The Mexican presidente has protested strongly to the United Nations, but we have told them it is merely military exercises.”

“By the time the Secretary General of the UN., Jean-Francois Chapelle, gathers the courage to act, we will be well on our way to Mexico City,” Strunk said, grinning.

“And have you figured out a plausible excuse for the attack on Mexico?” asked Valdez, peering at them through blue clouds of aromatic cigar smoke.

Strunk laughed out loud. “That’s the best part. One of our squads has stolen a Mexican Army helicopter. When you give the order, we’ll have one of our own men pilot it and attack the Presidential Palace in Nicaragua, giving us the perfect reason to join the oppressed people of Nicaragua when they arise and retaliate against the Mexican aggressors.”

Perro Loco nodded, smiling for the first time since he heard about the loss of the aircraft fuel. “Good. Very good. And one of the first orders of business for our troops will be to capture the fuel dumps south of Mexico City. Without that aircraft fuel, our attack will be short-lived. We need our attack helicopters to lead the way to Mexico City.”

Valdez cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair. “Comandante, I know the United Nations will fail to act-

 

122

 

they always do-but what about this Ben Raines of the SUSA? When he hears we are advancing on Mexico City, he will surely come to their aid.”

“That is why I am going to accept Osterman’s offer of an alliance. She says she can keep Raines busy by resuming an attack on the SUSA from the north while I move from the south.” He shrugged. “Even if she only delays his actions a few weeks, it will be enough. We will be in Mexico City and will have declared ourselves the rightful government by the time he finishes her off and turns his attention to us.”

“And once we have Mexico, it is but a short step to the United States,” Strunk added, rubbing his hands together.

“Si. Now, bring me the americano who has the scrambler codes in his head. I wish to speak to Presidente Osterman at once.”

123 “Goddamnit, Harlan, quit sniveling,” Claire growled at Harlan Millard as she finished her twenty-fifth sirup. She was proud of her “new body” and in her enthusiasm for fitness, had decreed that all of her new cabinet members would also get in shape.

Harlan, after only ten sirups, was holding his groin and moaning. “I swear, Claire, I have a hernia and this exercise is aggravating it,” he cried.

Herb Knoff, in the other corner, was doing pushup after pushup and barely working up a sweat. Claire noticed the way his arm muscles were bulging, and had to force her mind back to business and off his magnificent body, and the things he did to her with it.

Claire grabbed a towel off the counter and sat behind her desk. “All right, gentlemen, let’s have a status report.”

Harlan breathed a silent sigh of relief and crawled to his feet, wincing as he stretched muscles tight and sore from the exercise. He collapsed into a chair across from Claire and Herb sat next to him.

“Mr. Secretary of State,” she said to Harlan, “what progress are we making in our negotiations with the U.N.?”

“Jean-Francois Chapelle has agreed to take the matter up with the Security Council, but he did state that he felt the answer would be not to interfere in the governmental process of a sovereign nation.”

“That’s bullshit!” Claire said, slamming her hand down

 

124

 

on her desk. “Those bastards tried to assassinate me and then they took over my country.”

Harlan nodded. “You’re right, of course, Madame President, but if we can’t get Chapelle to push it for us, we stand little chance of any help from the U.N.”

Claire turned angry eyes on Herb Knoff. “Mr. Vice President?”

In a confident voice, Herb said, “I don’t think it’s gonna matter, Claire. We’re getting stronger every day. More and more of the old Blackshirt and FPPS squads are joining us, and even a lot of the regular troops that hate the prospect of losing their jobs with the new peace proposals.”

“What about equipment and supplies?” she asked.

“Also no problem. Every man that comes has to bring something with him to get in. We now have over ten helicopters, five battle tanks, and even a couple of older-model jet fighters.”

“Are we strong enough to go up against Otis Warner and his Army yet?”

“No, but if we can survive another month, I think it’ll be possible.”

Harlan cleared his throat. “Uh, Herb, why haven’t they tried to attack us here at our home base? They must know what we’re doing by now.”

“Oh, they know, all right, and I’ll bet it’s got them plenty worried. Their problem is they don’t know where we are. I’ve kept the original men who were stationed here on the communications gear, so as far as they know, all is well here. Warner and his crowd know we’re out here, and they know we’re actively recruiting and stealing men and equipment. They just don’t have a clue as to where we are.”

“All right, men, I think it’s time we upped the ante in this game. Herb, I want you to work with General Bradley Stevens and have him send out some teams to begin a campaign of sabotage against the bases still controlled by Warner. Nothing too severe-I don’t want to cripple too much equipment we

 

125

 

might need when we go up against Raines and the SUSA later-but concentrate more on killing key personnel-officers and men who have shown their disloyalty to me.”

“Got you,” Herb said. “It shouldn’t be too difficult since we can forge passes for the assassination teams that will allow them to pass freely through the countryside.”

“I also want a team of your very best men to see if they can get close enough to Warner to take him or General Winter out,” she added. “If Warner were to be executed, it would make it that much easier for me to resume my previous position as head of the government.”

Herb frowned. “That’s gonna be awfully difficult. Since hels become aware of your survival, my intel tells me he’s doubled his normal security and no one is allowed even near his quarters unless they’re known to be loyal to him.”

She nodded. “I’m well aware it won’t be easy, Herb, but see what you can do. He’s got to stick his head up sooner or later if he’s going to meet with Raines and Cecil Jeffreys to discuss the peace protocol. He’ll be most vulnerable when he’s traveling.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Before she could continue, General Stevens knocked and entered the office, a look of excitement on his face.

“Claire, Perro Loco’s on the horn, calling from Belize.”

“Is it scrambled?” she asked.

“Yes. He’s using the codes our men gave him.”

“Put him on.”

Stevens flipped a switch on the phone on Claire’s desk, putting the call on a speaker-phone.

“Perro Loco, this is President Claire Osterman speaking. How are you?”

“I am fine, Madame President. I have received your offer of an alliance and wish to discuss the terms.”

Claire was a bit surprised at how well the bandido spoke English. She had figured him for some South American

 

126

 

clown who was barely literate, and now could barely discern an accent to his speech.

“Well, Perro Loco, the terms are simple. If you agree to attack Mexico immediately, I will agree to let you keep everything south of the Rio Grande River as your country.”

“But Madame President, I will already have that without your assistance. What are you offering to do for me?”

Claire cocked an eyebrow at Stevens. This jungle idiot was smarter than she thought. “In the first place, Perro Loco, under the present status quo, you won’t stand a chance of succeeding by yourself. If the USA and the SUSA are not at war, Ben Raines and his Army will be free to help Mexico, and with Raines on their side, Mexico will kick your butt all the way back to Nicaragua.”

There was a pause, and Claire wondered if she’d gone too far. She knew these Latin types were very proud and wouldn’t accept a slur on their macho manhood.

Finally, he came back on the line. “That may well be true. Mexico aligned with the SUSA would be a formidable opponent. Do you think you are in a strong enough position to keep that from happening, considering your … ah, recent problems?”

Claire had to bite her lip to keep from shouting back at the arrogant bastard. “Don’t you worry about that, Perro Loco. Even now we are in the process of planning attacks against SUSA which will stop the peace process in its tracks. Once Raines has to worry about a possible resurgence of the hostilities between the USA and the SUSA, he will be forced to keep a large portion of his troops stationed on the borders up here and won’t be able to send them against you.”

“That is comforting, Madame President. If that turns out to be the case, then I am sure we can come to a mutually agreeable arrangement later. For now, on my part, I will agree to move my troops against Mexico immediately. If you can manage to keep Ben Raines out of the fight, then we have an agreement.”

 

127

 

“Thank you, Perro Loco. I will be in touch.”

After General Stevens pushed the button terminating the call, Claire growled, “That arrogant bastard. Who does he think he is to give ultimatums to me?”

Stevens took a seat across from Claire. “He’s right on one point, Claire. We may not be strong enough at the present to keep Raines from helping Mexico.”

“Bullshit!” She turned to Knoff. “Herb, you said we had a couple of fighter jets?”

“Yeah.”

“I want them loaded to the gills with as much armament as possible and I want them to attack someplace in the SUSA. If they can manage to get past Raines’s defenses now that they’re not expecting an attack, it should get his attention.”

“He’s got a couple of battalions in Arkansas,” Stevens said. “They’re mostly infantry and won’t have a lot of air defenses set up now that they think peace is at hand. We might be able to do a quick hit-and-run there.”

“Then let’s do it,” she said. “It’ll serve two purposes. Raines won’t know for certain if Warner ordered it or I did, and Perro Loco will see that we can do our part to freeze Raines’s troops in their present positions.”

Stevens stood up. “I’ll get right on it, Madame President.”

“Herb,” she said, pointing her finger at him, “I want those assassination teams on their way by the end of the week. Okay?”

“You got it, Claire.”

 

128

 

Several thousand miles away, Perro Loco leaned forward and pushed the disconnect button on his phone. He took a deep drag on his Cuban cigar, blew dark smoke toward the ceiling, then looked at his companions across his desk.

“Paco, what do you think?”

Paco Valdez shrugged. “I think the lady may have some trouble doing all that she says she can. My information is that she is barely hanging on to her present position. She may sometime be able to take her government back, but not for a while yet.”

“Mr. Strunk?”

“I agree,” Jim Strunk said. “Even if she does manage to create some tensions between the SUSA and the USA, and Raines is forced to keep his troops on the border, that still leaves him with several battalions in Texas he can send against us. I think we’d better figure on having to fight both Mexico and Ben Raines.”

“What do we know about him and his tactics?” Perro asked.

Strunk leaned over and pulled a thick sheaf of papers from a briefcase on the floor. “That American you killed, the one sent by Osterman, had these in his knapsack. They’re copies of some journals kept by Raines during his African campaign, along with some article written by a newspaper correspondent who accompanied him during his fight down there. They

 

129

 

seem to give some good insight into how he thinks and the strategy he employs in certain situations.”

Loco held out his hand and took the papers from Strunk. “Good. I will study Mr. Ben Raines. I have learned, the more one knows of one’s enemies, the easier to defeat them.”

“Comandante,” Valdez said, “do you want to begin the attack on Mexico?”

Loco nodded. “Yes. It is time to unleash our troops against our neighbors to the north. Send some air strikes to disable their radar and begin to move our men forward on all fronts. Meanwhile, I will read about Ben Raines to learn how he thinks and to see how he can be beaten.”

The Apache helicopter gunship hugged the desert terrain of southern Mexico, flying at less than a thousand feet across the Guatemalan border near San Felipe where a Mexican radar installation swept the skies.

Captain Raul Rosales kept both hands on the controls, the yoke and the collectives, his feet applying just the right amount of pressure on the rotor pedals to keep the ship stable at low altitudes.

Captain Roque Vela sat in the gunner’s position in front of the pilot.

“I have the radar signal on my HUT,” Vela said, reporting what he could see on his Heads Up Targeting, a projection of a target signal that appeared to be displayed on the windshield of the gunship.

“Wait a moment longer,” Rosales replied. “Comandante Perro Loco insists that this radar site must be taken out before the campaign to move northward across Mexico begins. San Felipe is the only radar installation the Mexicans have in this sector of the Yucatan.”

“If they have missiles, we can’t wait much longer,” Vela said into his headset. “If we are to be sure of our safety, I should fire a missile soon.”

 

130

 

“We have no missiles to waste, Roque. Wait until you are certain of your target.”

“They may be tracking us on radar at his very moment,” Vela replied. “It could be dangerous to wait much longer. They may be able to shoot us down from here. I say we should fire one missile and let it track the radar beam.”

“This gunship is more important than the missiles we carry,” Rosales said, dropping lower, to eight hundred feet, when his altimeter sounded an alarm. “This is a dangerous mission, Roque. We cannot fail … We must not fail. The radar installation at San Felipe has to be taken out.”

“I understand, Captain.”

“What do you see on your HUT?”

“Only the radar beams.”

“We have to get closer. We must be sure.”

The rhythmic chum of the rotor blades filled a moment of silence.

“What do you see now?” Rosales asked again.

“Only the signal, and it is weak.”

“Do nothing,” Rosales said. “We are below their targeting … even if the stupid Mexicans are awake so early in the morning to see that we are coming.”

The altimeter read 750 feet as they flew across the southern fork of the Rio Candelaria, a dry riverbed this time of year. Below, there was nothing but rolling desert hills and flats. The Mexican military outpost at San Felipe was only a few miles away.

“I see something,” Vela said.

“What is it?”

“I do not know. A spot on the display. It is moving toward us.”

“A SAM,” Rosales whispered into the microphone. “Find the target and fire a rocket. I’ll drop down to five hundred feet and we’ll see what happens. It won’t be able to track us at low altitude.”

Rosales slowed the rotor and tail turbine, losing altitude

 

131

 

as beads of sweat began to form on his brow. This was the tricky part… shooting down an enemy missile while avoiding a rocket fired from the ground. The older American-made Apaches were all but invisible to many radar screens. Only a few Soviet radar posts had the capability of seeing an incoming Apache above a thousand feet.

“I do not know how they spotted us,” Vela said, fixing his targeting display.

“It will not matter how they did it,” Rosales said. “Fire a rocket. Take the installation out or we will both be killed by their SAMs.”

Captain Vela did as he was instructed. He pulled the trigger on one air-to-ground missile mounted on the belly of the Apache.

A trail of rocket vapor darted away from the craft. The Sparrow rocket traveled at speeds too fast for the naked eye to see.

Desert sands swirled upward from the prop-wash of the rotor blades.

“What do you see?” Rosales demanded, holding the ship at four hundred feet.

“Only the spot on the screen. It is headed straight for us.”

Captain Rosales knew he had to take evasive action. He let the gunship drop lower … three hundred feet, and then two hundred feet.

Directly below them, from a grove of mesquite trees, he heard the stutter of machine-gun fire.

“Who the hell is shooting at us?” Captain Vela shouted, as the floor of the chopper rattled with the impact of bullets. “Dios! My left foot…”

A tuft of lint swirled away from the rear of Captain Vela’s seat, followed by a stream of blood.

A change occurred in the sounds made by the helicopter, a clanging noise from the rear of the craft. Suddenly the ship began to swing in a circle.

 

132

 

“They shot out the rear turbine!” Rosales cried, tying to steady the chopper with the collectives.

Vela did not answer him … his head was lolled back against the seat, his hands free of the firing controls, resting in his lap.

“Son of a bitch!” Rosales roared when the Apache did not respond to the yoke or rotor pedals.

The heavy gunship plummeted downward at an odd angle, its nose pointed toward the ground while the tail made big looping circles.

“Shit!” Rosales spat, fighting the pull on his yoke, making every adjustment he had been trained to make when a helicopter lost its tail rotor.

The earth rushed toward him and Raul Rosales knew he was about to die.

“Dios,” he screamed, then he began saying Hail Marys as fast as he could mouth the words, a prayer he knew from his childhood.

A shuddering crash sent him forward in the cockpit and his head slammed into the rear of Captain Vela’s seat. He smelled fuel… and fire.

The main rotor chewed into the desert sands until it broke apart; then the main turbine stopped.

Rosales slumped forward upon impact and wondered about the silence around him.

His eyes batted shut.

Perry Osborn examined the wreckage, an M-16 dangling below his shoulder on a leather strap.

Justin Law approached what was left of the aircraft with his automatic rifle aimed in front of him. “You need to radio Ben. There are no markings on this Apache, so we don’t know who it belongs to.”

“I’m fairly sure it’s part of the Nicaraguan’s fleet,” Perry replied.

 

133

 

“Then there may be something to all this bullshit about Mad Dog forming an army … Comandante Mad Dog.”

“General Raines says our intelligence is good. The bastard calling himself Perro Loco is planning to move north. He’ll take Mexico. Unless we stop him.”

“Where do they come up with helicopter gunships like this?” Justin wanted to know.

“Captured after the drug wars in Colombia,” Perry said, a keen eye on the chopper before they moved away from the mesquite thicket. “The old United States government sent dozens of these things down to help with the cocaine problem. Then all hell broke loose and nobody was left to keep track of where the Apache and Comanche gunships were.”

“Then we’re basically fighting our own technology,” Justin remarked.

“It’s technology from the past,” Perry said. “But it still can be effective. Ben was right to send us down here after he heard what was going on.”

“We need to let him know he was right about Perro Loco starting to move on Mexico.”

Perry shook his head. “We can’t. He’s on a secret mission someplace to rescue one of his team.”

“The woman … what was her name?”

“I heard it was Jersey, but no one’s saying for certain. I do know she’s very close to General Raines, whoever she is. Since General Raines is out of pocket, we’ll inform Intel about the raid; they’ll get the message to him.”

“Let’s make sure the sons of bitches aboard this thing are dead,” Justin said.

“Nobody could have lived through this crash,” Perry said in a low voice. “But like you say, we need to make damn sure there are no survivors.”

“I’ll come in from the other side,” Justin whispered as they left the grove.

“Shoot anything that moves,” Perry instructed. “We’ll take any identification papers we find off the pilot and the gunner.

 

134

 

Damn lucky that this thing didn’t explode when it hit the ground as hard as it did.”

Raul woke up by degrees. At first he saw nothing but fog before his eyes. He heard voices… faint, far away, and his nostrils caught the strong scent of aircraft fuel when he came closer to consciousness.

“What happened?” he asked aloud, expecting an answer from Captain Vela.

Vela did not reply. Raul could see his helmet lying against the back of the gunner’s seat.

“Roque?”

Raul became increasingly aware that his flight jacket and pants were doused with helicopter fuel. It was rare to survive a crash in a chopper, and even more unlikely that the ship had not exploded upon impact.

“Roque?” The voices were louder now, and Raul was sure he heard them distinctly… but Roque was not moving. Who was talking to him?

The enemy, he thought. A squad of Mexican machine-gunners had shot them down and now they were coming for him. There was no other explanation for the voices.

Numbed by the impact of the crash, he reached for his Luger 9mm pistol belted to his side.

“Be careful,” a voice said in English.

Raul drew his pistol.

“One of them’s still moving. I can see his head bobbing up and down.”

And now Rosales knew he was surrounded by the enemy. But why were they speaking English?

He lifted his weapon and aimed through a splintered side window of the Apache.

“Look out!” a voice cried. “One of them’s alive and he’s got a gun!”

 

135

135

 

Rosales blinked. He tried to find a target in the blur of brush and trees outside the helicopter.

“Don’t waste a shot,” another, deeper voice said. “A match will do a better job.”

Rosales heard a match being struck. Then he saw a billowing cloud of flames.

“Ayiii!” he shrieked as his flight suit erupted in a ball of fire.

The crackle of spreading flames was the last sound Captain Raul Rosales heard. He was consumed by an inferno, and when he opened his mouth to scream, he inhaled a mouthful of fire that made his lungs feel like burning cinders.

 

136

 

Harley Reno walked down the belly of the C-130 checking each member of the drop team’s oxygen masks and rigging for the HALO drop.

“Remember,” he shouted to be heard over the roar of the four big engines of the aircraft, “watch your altitude gauge on your wrists. If the automatic pressure release doesn’t work, you’ve got about five seconds to do it manually; otherwise it’s adios, amigo and we’ll be picking you up in a sponge.”

Anna glanced at Ben, standing next to her. “That’s a cheerful thought,” she said.

Ben nodded, his mind already on the planned meeting with their contact in Belize, El Gato Selva. Gato had radioed them coordinates for the drop, and promised to meet them and hopefully lead them to the area where Coop and Jersey had disappeared. Ben hoped they weren’t dropping into a trap, for he knew little about Gato other than he hated Perro Loco and wanted him dead.

Reno stepped to the open cargo door of the big airplane and stood next to Scott Hammer Hammerick, who would be the first to jump. All eyes in the plane were on the twin lights at the front of the cabin, waiting for red to change to green signaling a go.

When the green light began flashing, Reno tapped Hammer on the shoulder and he dove out of the door. Anna was next, then Corrie and Ben. Reno went last, dipping his head in a dive that was to last almost five miles.

 

137

 

As he arrowed down through air that was seventy degrees below zero at that altitude, Ben wondered briefly if he was crazy to be doing such a stunt at his age. Who says they can’t teach an old dog new tricks, he thought as he gripped his chute-release button in bis right hand and stared fixedly at me altitude meter on his left wrist. He didn’t dare look at the green jungle rushing up at him at almost two hundred miles an hour. Reno had said more than one sky diver had been killed when so mesmerized by the sight of the onrushing ground that he failed to open his chute in time.

Just as Ben started to punch his release button, thinking his altitude sensor had failed, his chute deployed, almost jerking his head off.

He hit the ground going twenty miles an hour, and tucked and rolled as he’d been taught years before in paratrooper school. As he came to his feet, he whipped his SPAS 12-gauge assault shotgun around his body and cradled it in bis arms, crouching and looking around for enemies.

The coordinates Gato had given them were for a large, open field, to minimize the danger of injury from attempting to land in the rain-forest canopy. Ben squatted and glanced around him. He was standing in a field of poppies. Evidently, growing the plant that heroin was made from was one of the ways Gato financed his insurrection attempts against Perro Loco.

Ben shook his head, a dark smile on his face. He wasn’t crazy about teaming up with a man who grew and presumably sold heroin, but he knew war made for strange bedfellows. Besides, Ben was a nihilist about such things as drug control. He figured if a person wanted to ruin his life for a temporary high, that was his business, as long as they didn’t try to finance their habit by robbing other people. Drug use was the mark of a stupid person, and Ben had no use for stupid people.

Within ten minutes, the team had gathered in a loose-knit

 

138

 

group, not standing too close together in case they came under attack.

Reno stepped to Ben’s side. “We’d better get out of the open and under cover, Boss,” he said.

Ben shook his head. “Harley, on this mission, you’re the boss. This is your neck of the woods and you and Hammer are the resident experts in scouting, so take the point.”

Reno nodded and waved his hand over his head, leading the others toward the safety of the thick jungle ahead. Just prior to reaching it, a man in khaki BDUs (Battle Dress Uniform) stepped from the forest, his hands over his head to show he was not a hostile.

“Welcome, General Raines,” El Gato said.

Behind Gato they could see several men, all of whom looked thoroughly dangerous in their jungle cammies carrying Russian-made AK-47’s in their arms.

Ben nodded and shook hands with Gato. “This is Harley Reno, my team leader. He’s familiar with this country and he will be leading my team until we’re extracted,” Ben said.

Gato spoke a couple of sentences in rapid Spanish to Reno, and grinned when Reno answered him in an equally fluent manner.

“Bueno,” Gato said, then waved his arm and added, “Vamos!”

As Gato’s men led the way down barely discernible jungle trails, Reno asked him, “Do you have a probable location for our people?”

Gato smiled. “Yes. A convoy carrying considerable amounts of airplane fuel was destroyed a couple of days ago, and all of the men in the convoy were not only killed, but mutilated.”

Reno nodded. He knew it was the work of Jersey, using a well-known scouting technique to spread fear and terror among natives.

“Not only that,” Gato continued, “but the fuel was … how you say … booby-trapped. The explosion came within

 

139

 

inches of killing two of Perro Loco’s most important men, and did manage to wipe out the entire force sent to rescue the fuel.”

Ben laughed. “I knew Coop and Jersey wouldn’t go quietly into the night. Leave it to them to kill a bunch of the enemy to let us know where they are.”

Gato cut his eyes at Ben. “Then you also believe this attack was a deliberate attempt to advise us of their position in the jungle?”

“Of course,” Ben answered. “If they wanted to stay under cover, all they had to do was avoid the patrols.” He shook his head. “No. The communications equipment they have is only useful up to a distance of about five miles, maybe less in this mountainous region. They knew we’d be coming after them and had to give us an approximate location to start our search.”

Gato nodded approvingly. “Your people are very well trained to be able to anticipate your moves.”

“We’ve been together a long time and been through a lot together. They knew I’d never leave a member of my team hanging.”

Gato pointed. Up ahead Ben could see several vehicles covered with camouflage paint parked under a canopy of trees so they wouldn’t be visible from the air. They looked to be vintage World War II jeeps.

“There is our transportation. We should be at the approximate location within two hours,” Gato said.

“Good. The sooner the better,” Ben replied as he climbed into the back of a jeep.

Coop slapped at his neck and softly cursed as he and Jersey walked through jungle as thick as any he’d ever seen in Africa. “Damn bugs think I’m a walkin’ buffet,” he said.

Jersey, who was in the lead, glanced back over her shoulder. “Quit whining, Coop. It could be worse.”

 

140

 

“Oh? And how is that?”

She smiled wickedly. “There could be snakes,” she purred, referring to Coop’s well-known phobia of snakes. In Africa, during the campaign against the Neo-Nazis, he’d been attacked by a snake, and in his terror fallen into a river and gotten washed downstream and lost in the jungle. Jersey had vowed to never let him forget that episode.

He stopped and pointed a finger at her. “You promised not to mention that again.”

She kept walking, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t. You asked me not to, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”

“Bitch,” he muttered as he scrambled to catch up with her.

“Asshole,” she replied without turning around.

Both were smiling.

Sounds of a motorized vehicle up ahead caused Jersey to hold up her hand and duck down behind foliage. Coop followed suit, swinging his M-16 around and slowly cocking it.

Crawling on hands and knees through thick underbrush, Jersey made her way forward until she could peer out from behind a giant elephant-ear plant. They were on the outskirts of a small village-only half a dozen grass-covered huts in a circular clearing.

A road that wasn’t much more than a footpath led off to the side, and two jeeps were standing empty at the edge of the clearing.

Angry voices could be heard coming from the village, but from where they sat they couldn’t see anything. Suddenly a woman screamed and a gunshot rang out.

Jersey turned an angry face toward Coop. “You ready to dance?”

He nodded. “Damn right, podna.”

They eased out of the brush and made their way toward the sounds, keeping a hut between them and the soldiers they knew were on the other side.

 

141

 

As they looked around the wall, they saw six soldiers standing in front of about fifteen natives. One of the women was trying to hold the torn remnants of her dress together as she wept hysterically and stared at an older man lying dead on the ground next to her.

“He should not have interfered,” a soldier with sergeant markings on his sleeve said. He stepped forward and forced her hands down, letting her dress open and expose her breasts.

He grabbed them with both hands and roughly kneaded them, as if he were trying to make bread dough. “How you like this, bitch?” he snarled. “Now that your man is dead, maybe I come back and show you good time, huh?”

Another man stepped forward, holding his hands out. “We told you, senor, we have not seen any americanos. We are but a poor village. We have done nothing wrong.”

“Let’s go,” Jersey whispered. “I’ll take the one on the left.”

“Got’cha,” Coop answered.

They stepped out into the open, M-16’s leveled in front of them. Of the six soldiers, only two had weapons drawn and ready.

Coop and Jersey’s rifles barked, sending the two men to Hell as slugs ripped them apart.

As the other soldiers reached for their weapons, Coop raised his carbine and yelled, “Freeze!”

One didn’t; instead he clawed at a pistol on his belt. Coop shot him in the face, snapping his head back and throwing him spread-eagled in the dirt.

The other three slowly raised their hands, fear-sweat covering their faces and staining their khaki BDUs.

“Who is in command here?” Jersey asked.

The men looked at each other; then the one with sergeant stripes said, “I am.”

“What is your name?”

“Sergeant Miguel Hernandez.”

She looked at the woman holding her dress. “Is this the man who shot your husband?” she asked.

 

142

 

The native woman nodded once, her eyes glittering with hate at the sergeant.

Jersey looked back at Hernandez. “Are you currently at war with these people?”

“Huh?”

“You heard me.”

“Uh … no.”

“Then you’ve committed murder, and I sentence you to death.”

“What?”

Jersey pulled her K-Bar and glanced at the crying woman, her eyebrows upraised as she held out the knife.

Without a word the woman grabbed the knife and plunged it into the gut of the sergeant, twisting and jerking it as he screamed and doubled over in pain. He looked up at the woman and she spat in his face. Then he fell to the ground and died.

“Muchas gracias,” she whispered to Jersey, before leaning over her dead husband and cradling his head in her arms.

Jersey bent over and pulled her K-Bar from Hernandez’s stomach, wiping the bloody blade on his shirt.

Coop picked up one of the soldiers’ AK-47’s and handed it to the villager who’d spoken up earlier. “We’ll leave these two in your care.”

When the man gave him a questioning look, Coop added, “You know you can’t let them go back alive after this.”

The man nodded, a slow grin on his face. “The jungle is a very dangerous place. There are many big animals.”

Coop grinned back. “We’ll take both of the jeeps and get rid of them a long way from here.”

“Gracias, senor!’

As Jersey and Coop climbed in the jeeps, one of the soldiers yelled, “Please, don’t leave us here with them!”

Jersey glanced at Coop. “I always say, let the punishment fit the crime.”

Coop nodded and picked up the handset to the radio in

 

143

143

 

the jeep. He thumbed the microphone and said, “Hey, Perro Loco. This is the man you’re lookin’ for speakin’. If you want me, you’re gonna have to send better men than this, you stupid I son of a bitch.”

Jersey grinned as she climbed in the other jeep and started | the motor. “Oh, that ought to get his attention.”

“You think so?” Coop asked, starting his jeep. “I’ll race [ you to the river.”

Jersey looked puzzled. “What river?”

He shrugged. “This is a jungle, Jers, there’s always a river.”