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  The jungle clearing was suddenly deathly quiet. Apparently they were all either blown away or had fled into the trees. The commandos began to close in on the main palapa. They could hear the sporadic firing of Billy’s rifle in the underground bunker as he nosed around, but there didn’t seem to be any guerrillas left. They regrouped by the door, glancing quickly at one another to make sure they were still in one piece. Ramirez had bloodied his lip hitting the dirt, but otherwise Blain’s was the only injury.

  “Looks like a fuckin’ Purple Heart to me,” cracked Mac as he eyed Blain’s shoulder.

  “Yo, Billy!” called Schaefer into the palapa. “What you got down there?”

  “Looks like the friggin’ Pentagon, Major,” Billy shouted back—but just as he finished speaking there was a burst of machine-gun fire in the bunker.

  Schaefer and Ramirez bolted in and ran down the crude stairs The palapa was dug deeply into the soft earth, the walls reinforced with sandbags. A string of electric bulbs zigzagged across the trench at about shoulder height, powered by a small generator that wheezed and sighed in one corner. The underground space was maybe thirty by fifty feet, partitioned off by stacks of wooden crates full of supplies. It looked like the cellar of a hardware store.

  Schaefer and Ramirez darted between the aisles, sweeping every shadowy corner with their rifles cocked. About twenty feet along the center aisle was a door in the wall of earth. Savagely Schaefer kicked it open. He suddenly faced a wide-eyed guerrilla whom he flattened with a single bullet to the brain, since he wasn’t in the mood to talk.

  He and Ramirez hopped over the dead man and surveyed a long corridor that tunneled deep into the earth toward the stream. At the far end was another stairway which obviously led to an escape route. The two commandos barreled down the corridor just in time to see a wild-eyed rebel struggling to open the hatch. Ramirez tore off a full burst of bullets that exploded into the fleeing man. The force spun him around, and he took a last opportunity to fire, sending a scattering of bullets into the earthen roof which rained down dirt on the commandos’ heads. Then the rebel fell dead at the foot of the steps.

  Schaefer and Ramirez turned and headed back to the main chamber. As they came around into the central aisle a wounded man was crawling behind a stack of crates, dragging a bloody leg. Schaefer and Ramirez ducked as he drew down on them with a machine pistol. Schaefer heaved at the pile of crates and tipped it over, crashing several hundred pounds of ordinance on top of the man. The machine bullets veered off target.

  Then Schaefer rushed on the guy and bashed his head with the butt of his rifle, knocking him senseless.

  Jamming in a new clip the major scanned the palapa for other movements, then nodded to Ramirez to proceed along the aisle. Catlike, Ramirez covered the last twenty feet and came on a couple of bodies heaped at the foot of a last set of stairs that disappeared up into the jungle. There was no telling how many had escaped this way, though Billy had clearly nailed the two who hadn’t.

  “Billy musta gone up after ’em,” Ramirez called back to the major. “I’ll go cover his ass.”

  And he raced up the steps and disappeared into the trees. Dutch wasn’t worried about either of them. He’d rather have his men out there hounding the enemy to earth than wait and let the guerrillas creep back for a second round. Up above in the clearing Schaefer could hear Hawkins barking into the radio as Mac and Blain set up the portable satellite dish antenna.

  Otherwise there was stillness.

  S I X

  After the sudden gunfire and commotion the camp had taken on the aura of postwar calm, tense as the eye of a hurricane. The blasts and explosions had frightened all wildlife away or into silence, and the pulse of the jungle was weirdly flat in the oppressive heat of the late afternoon.

  Gazing around the palapa, Schaefer silently observed heaps of helmets and battle gear and crateloads of ammunition by the score. For the first time he was able to study the methodically warehoused interior of the cavernous chamber, the enormous stockpiles of weapons and equipment. It was obviously a major military stronghold, doubly so to be so deep in the mountains. It had taken weeks and a lot of money to cart all this shit in. They had enough combat supplies in here to level Brazil.

  As he finished a cursory inventory and headed up the steps to the clearing he wondered why they had centralized such a reservoir of sophisticated equipment. He figured most of it was stolen from ship’s cargos en route to opposing armies, or bartered from shaky third world regimes that supported the attempted takeover. But already he realized there had to be a reason, a highly explosive reason, to go to all this trouble to arm a camp in the middle of nowhere. Even as he absorbed the evidence, his instincts began to shiver with suspicions he couldn’t yet identify or explain. But as he threw back the curtain and stepped out into the clearing Dillon came to mind with a sour taste. He filed another red flag as Mac jogged over to him.

  “Any sign of the hostages?” Schaefer inquired with narrowed eyes.

  Mac was agitated. “We found all three of ’em, Major. Dead,” He pointed across the clearing to one of the huts. “The gear from the chopper too. Listen, if those guys are Central American, I’m a fuckin’ Chinaman. By the look of ’em I’d say CIA.”

  Schaefer’s eyes were like slits as he darted a look at Dillon, who huddled over the radio next to Hawkins, trying to shout their coordinates.

  “Oh, another thing, Major,” Mac added. “We got lucky. Couple these guys we waxed are Russians. Got their transport papers right in their hip pocket. Some kinda counterespionage unit. There was major shit about to get goin’ here.”

  As Schaefer listened to Mac’s casual speculations his face began to tighten and redden with anger. The fragmented image of his vague suspicions began to take a shape. But still he kept his thoughts to himself, not revealing a glimmer of a reaction to Mac’s brute irony.

  “Good work. Mac,” he said brusquely. “Clear the area—no traces. Then get the men ready to move.”

  Blain had been nosing among the flattened huts, and now he whistled to the major, hailing Schaefer with the wave of an arm. Now what, Schaefer thought grimly as he stepped around Dillon and Hawkins hunched at the radio and crossed through the blasted wreckage of the huts. Blain was pointing his cocked rifle at the inert form of a guerrilla who lay in the twisted thatch work. The enemy wore fatigues and a cap that hid most of his face, but even the hard army clothes didn’t hide the fact that this contra was hardly out of his mid-teens. It crossed Schaefer’s mind as it had in Indochina: kids did the dying in hopeless wars.

  “He’s still breathin’,” Blain said flatly, as unsentimental about enemy kids as he was about everything else. Blain’s world was good guys and bad guys. There were no good bad guys.

  Schaefer waved him away, then pulled out his revolver. Carefully he rolled out the chamber and with the swift technique of a combat vet he filled it with six lead bullets. Then he knelt beside the enemy soldier. This kid, he was thinking, might have some answers his captains didn’t even know—if he could be revived. Schaefer lifted the boy’s hand to check for pulse. It was, oddly, a narrow hand with long tapered fingers, delicate yet strong. The major’s eyes moved up to the face, now visible under the cap—the face of a girl.

  Probably in her mid-twenties, her hair tied back and tucked under the cap, she looked lost in the loose-fitting fatigues. Because of the clothes, and with her cheeks streaked with dirt and blood, it was no wonder Blain hadn’t noticed her gender.

  Schaefer stared at her intently, as if he couldn’t make this fit with the three bodies flayed and hanging from the tree, even though he had seen children toss bombs and run away laughing. She was beautiful with a tawny complexion and thick black hair. She had a strong narrow face, the jaw tight and the sensuous mouth pouting defiantly. Even as she lay unconscious he could see the rebellious spirit in her expression. The haughty romantic, the angry commitment to the cause would be there when she awoke, he knew.

  Schaefer was well aware
that for a woman to be on active duty in the top rebel force in this chauvinistic, Catholic backwater of a country—where the men really did keep their women barefoot and pregnant—this had to be one extraordinarily talented and well-connected lady. As much as he despised the barbaric tactics and the inhuman style of the rebels, he had to smile a little here, as if with a momentary glint of respect.

  Her pulse was stable. He pulled off the cap and turned her head. Apparently she had been knocked unconscious by the falling roof of the hut, but there was no evidence of serious injury other than a nasty head gash. She’d be all right.

  As an automatic precaution he picked up the pistol she’d dropped at her side and ejected the clip. Then, with a hunger for some answers, he began to rummage through papers scattered in the wreckage around her, impatient for information about the place he had just destroyed. Frustrated and tired, he tossed the irrelevant sheets of paper back on the ground—lists of supplies in Spanish, newspapers, propaganda leaflets. Then suddenly he paused at one torn page in his hand and began reading intently.

  It was a form he couldn’t translate entirely, but one he knew the meaning of immediately. It was orders to launch a major offensive on the Conta Mana capital; to level the city if need be—no prisoners, mass execution. Schaefer had seen the same kind of combat orders in five different languages. People always blew their country up in words that fit on a single page. And according to the document the whole offensive was to begin in just three days.

  The pieces began to fall together. Suddenly Schaefer realized he was standing at the epicenter of the guerrillas’ pivotal invasion tactic. The war that had been just skirmishes and incidents—pipe bombs thrown in alleys, peasants disappeared—was about to become a full-scale conflagration on the international scale. The tough-guy munitions and radar equipment littered the jungle camp like the remnants of a lost culture that prayed to a deaf god. Before Schaefer and his men had barreled in it was all poised to stream through the jungle toward a final battle.

  It was clear as day now: Phillips’s so-called mission to rescue three politicos was a ruse to manipulate Schaefer and his men to block the rebel invasion. Dillon, Phillips, the full fucking central command—they all must’ve gotten wind of the plan before Schaefer was ever summoned.

  Oh, yes. Schaefer was going to get some answers now. And then he would cram them down everyone’s throat all the way from here to Langley.

  Ramirez moved lightly among the rubber trees, chasing a bunch of rebels who’d managed to escape. They were so sloppy in their scramble to retreat that they left a trail a Girl Scout could have followed. The moss was torn and the lower branches trampled. One of the guerrillas had dropped a revolver by the stump of a tree, as if even weapons were a burden now. These last survivors of the camp just wanted out.

  Maneuvering through a thicket, Ramirez emerged into a small clearing. At the far edge was a sheer cliff shooting up about fifty feet, with a trickle of water trailing scum across the face of the rock. At the top was a ledge which trailed off to another level of jungle. As Ramirez approached the dead-end spot at the base of the cliff he could see that the rock was hollowed out here and there with shallow caves, the trails of moss and slime half obscuring the openings.

  Suddenly he noticed movement above, and he ducked behind an outcropping of rock just as the echoing zing of bullets careened off the ground around him. One of the bullets grazed his upper arm as he leaped for the protection of a larger boulder. From there he could see that at least two guerrillas had taken cover in the cliff hollows.

  As one of them crouched to reload, thinking Ramirez was down, the commando took aim and returned the fire. He clipped the guerrilla on the side of the head before he could duck in the cave. The rebel screamed once, then toppled backward down the rock face, hitting the mossy ground below about five feet from Ramirez. The Chicano hastily crossed himself, thinking as he stared in the dead man’s eyes how they could’ve been cousins. Ramirez didn’t like killing brown men, not unless they lived in the Middle East.

  The other rebel was still holed up in a higher cave with better protection. With the advantage of elevation over Ramirez he was able to keep the commando pinned behind the boulder with minimum fire. The feisty Chicano quickly shook his brotherly feelings. He hated being treated like a cornered rat.

  Just then Blain broke through the underbrush, hesitating before he entered the clearing. Ramirez, making eye contact, motioned to the dead man, then up above to the enemy, alerting his buddy so he wouldn’t stumble into a downpour of bullets. Then he made a beckoning motion, indicating he would cover Blain so the latter could join him behind the boulder. Knowing the rebel would hunker down in the cave under rapid fire, Ramirez opened up, making the trails of moss dance along the cliff face and giving Blain the precious seconds to run to his side.

  Right away, Ramirez noticed Blain’s torn and bloody shirt. “You shithead, you’re hit! You’re bleedin’ all over me, man!”

  “Goddam grenade blew while I was coverin’ Billy,” the big man explained, glancing down at the caking blood. “Anyway, I ain’t got time to bleed.”

  He was right about the time. Half a second later a grenade exploded a few feet away, blowing a leg off the dead rebel. A round of automatic fire followed. The spray of dirt coughed up was as thick as a Saigon mud storm.

  As the grit settled on the two commandos Ramirez quickly replaced the 40mm rounds in his six-shooter. Then he leaped over the boulder and threw himself into the line of fire.

  “Come back here, you stupid spic!” shouted Blain.

  Ramirez blasted six rapid-fire rounds on a high-arc trajectory toward the enemy cave above. Then, just as quick as he went, he scrambled back to the protection of the rock, squatting next to Blain.

  “We call that a Tijuana yoyo,” he said, then grinned as he popped his fingers in his ears.

  Blain grimaced and ducked his head—just as the whole cliffside exploded.

  An instant later enormous chunks of rock rumbled down like meteorites. Then a torrent of vegetation rained down on their heads, mixed with the dying screams of several rebels holed up in the cliff. For a few long seconds nothing was visible but the avalanche of shredded jungle matter pouring into the vortex. The stream on the rock face spewed like a broken hose. Then a dead calm followed like a windless sea, and the jungle froze. For half a mile around nothing made a peep.

  Then Blain’s voice rose from the wreckage. “You stupid spic!” he crowed, but this time it was a cry of triumph.

  Schaefer still stood by the unconscious woman, his weapon hanging slack from one arm, the telling paper clenched in his fingers as if it were the pivotal evidence in a sensational trial. Except here in the jungle waste there was neither judge nor jury, and the only law that worked lay crouched in the bush, ready to spring for the throat.

  Dutch stared silently fuming at the ruined huts. He didn’t notice the black man moving toward him, poking at the ground for classified stuff. Dillon scarcely looked at the girl as he knelt and began sorting through the papers Schaefer had already scoured. Dutch made no attempt to tell him he was wasting his time. He simply watched the back of the black man’s head for a long moment, trying to remember exactly where it was in Indochina that he’d felt the blood bond for his comrade. Sometimes the countries just seemed to blur—dirty and thick with flies, the sick whores and the rotten politicians, the wars that went on for decades.

  Dillon broke the silence. “We did it, Dutch, we did it,” he said excitedly, methodically sorting through stacks of paper. He might have been sitting at his desk at that moment. Every scrap of paper seemed to have meaning to him—even the bills for printing the antigovernment posters. “This is beautiful!” he exclaimed. “More than we even expected. We got the bastards cold!”

  Schaefer crouched, leaned across the body of the unconscious girl, and handed Dillon the one sheet he had culled from the mess. “Hey pal, I think this is the one you’re lookin’ for,” said the major with a steely edge.


  Dillon took the paper and read intently, his eyes widening. “Three days—that’s all we had,” he said with a shake of his head. “Not a fuckin’ minute to waste, Dutch. In three days you would’ve had hundreds of these geeks in here. Equipped up the ass,” he added, sweeping his hand and taking in the entire routed camp. “Once they crossed the border they would’ve been home free. It’d take a year to stop ’em.”

  Dillon put a solemn hand on Schaefer’s shoulder and continued sanctimoniously. “You guys have averted a major rebel invasion, Dutch. They’re gonna know about this all the way to the Big House, I promise you.”

  Schaefer stood abruptly, throwing off Dillon’s hand. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and he stared defiantly into the black man’s face. Venom seethed through his words. “It was all bullshit—all of it! Right from the start, huh? You set us up,” he sneered. “Brought us in here to fight your dirty little nonpartisan war. I guess we’re what you call technical advisers—ain’t that the polite word for it, or have you figured out somethin’ even better? Somethin’ that makes your shit smell real clean, right? You fuckin’ sonuvabitch!”

  Dillon retorted angrily. “Hey gimme a break, Dutch. So the Company set you up. So who do you believe in—the Easter Bunny? We had a goddam good reason. You’re the best there is, Dutch. I needed you.”

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me what was goin’ down?”

  Dillon shrugged. It was the shrug of every bureaucrat the world over. “Couldn’t, Dutch. Had little blue tags all over it—National Security, White House only. I didn’t even know all the details myself till I was on the plane. They asked me who could take out a guerrilla camp, and I said you guys. I had to give you a cover story. Orders right from the Oval Office—swear to God, Dutch.”