"You know how it is at Langley," was the statement Clark used to dismiss the observation.

You're a pilot , Clark didn't say. You've never humped afield pack in the boonies. I have . If Larson had known his background, he could have made an intelligent guess, but what Clark did for the Agency, and what he'd done before joining, were not widely known. In fact, they were hardly known at all.

"Need- to-know, Mr. Larson," Clark said after another moment.

"Roger that," the pilot agreed over the intercom.

"Let's do a photo pass."

"I'll do a touch-and-go at the airport first. We want to make it look good."

"Fair enough," Clark agreed.

"What about the refining sites?" Clark asked after they headed back to El Dorado.

"Mainly southwest of here," Larson answered, turning the Beech away from the valley. "I've never seen one myself - I'm not in that part of the business, and they know it. If you want to scout them out, you go around at night with imaging IR equipment, but they're hard to track in on. Hell, they're portable, easy to set up, and easy to move. You can load the whole assembly on a medium truck and set it up ten miles away the next day."

"Not that many roads..."

"What you gonna do, search every truck that comes along?" Larson asked. "Besides, you can man-pack it if you want. Labor's cheap down here. The opposition is smart, and adaptable."

"How much does the local army get involved?" Clark had been fully briefed, of course, but he also knew that a local perspective might not agree with Washington's - and might be correct.

"They've tried. Biggest problem they have is sustaining their forces - their helicopters don't spend twenty percent of their time in the air. That means they don't do many ops. It means that if anyone gets hit he might not get medical attention very fast - and that hurts performance when they do run ops. Even then - you can guess what the government pays a captain, say. Now imagine that somebody meets that captain at a local bar, buys him a drink, and talks to him. He tells the captain that he might want to be in the southwestern corner of his sector tomorrow night - well, anywhere but the northeastern sector, okay? If he decides to patrol one part of his area, but not another, he gets a hundred thousand dollars. Okay, the other side has enough money that they can pay him up front just to see if he'll cooperate. Seed money, kind of. Once he shows he can be bought, they settle down to a smaller but regular payment. Also, the other side has enough product that they can let him do some real seizures once in a while, once they know he's theirs, to make him look good. Someday that captain grows up and becomes a colonel who controls a lot more territory... It's not because they're bad people, it's just that things are so fucking hopeless. Legal institutions are fragile down here and - hell, look at the way things are at home, for Christ's sake. I -"

"I'm not criticizing anybody, Larson," Clark said. "Not everybody can take on a hopeless mission and keep at it." He turned to look out the side window and smiled to himself. "You have to be a little crazy to do that."

5. Beginnings

CHAVEZ AWOKE WITH the headache that accompanies initial exposure to a thin atmosphere, the sort that begins just behind the eyes and radiates around the circumference of one's head. For all that, he was grateful. Throughout his career in the Army, he'd never failed to awaken a few minutes before reveille. It allowed him an orderly transition from sleep to wakefulness and made the waking-up process easier to tolerate. He turned his head left and right, inspecting his environment in the orange twilight that came through the uncurtained windows.

The building would be called a barracks by anyone who did not regularly live in one. To Chavez it seemed more of a hunting camp, a guess that was wholly accurate. Perhaps two thousand square feet in the bunk room, he judged, and he counted a total of forty single metal-frame bunks, each with a thin GI mattress and brown GI blanket. The sheets, however, were fitted, with elastic at the corners; so he decided that there wouldn't be any of the bouncing-quarter bullshit, which was fine with him. The floor was bare, waxed pine, and the vaulted ceiling was supported by smoothed-down pine trunks in lieu of finished beams. It struck the sergeant that in hunting season people - rich people - actually paid to live like this: proof positive that money didn't automatically confer brains on anyone. Chavez didn't like barracks life all that much, and the only reason he'd not opted for a private apartment in or near Fort Ord was his desire to save up for that Corvette. To complete the illusion, at the foot of each bed was a genuine Army-surplus footlocker.

He thought about getting up on his elbows to look out the windows, but knew that the time for that would come soon enough. It had been a two-hour drive from the airport, and on arrival each man had been assigned a bunk in the building. The rest of the bunks had already been filled with sleeping, snoring men. Soldiers, of course. Only soldiers snored like that. It had struck him at the time as ominous. The only reason why young men would be asleep and snoring just after ten at night was fatigue. This was no vacation spot. Well, that was no surprise either.

Reveille came in the form of an electric buzzer, the kind associated with a cheap alarm clock. That was good news. No bugle - he hated bugles in the morning. Like most professional soldiers, Chavez knew the value of sleep, and waking up was not a cause for celebration. Bodies stirred around him at once, to the accompaniment of the usual wake-up grumbles and profanity. He tossed off the blanket and was surprised to learn how cold the floor was.

"Who're you?" the man in the next bunk said while staring at the floor.

"Chavez, Staff Sergeant. Bravo, 3rd of the 17th."

"Vega. Me, too. Headquarters Company, lst/22nd. Get in last night?"

"Yep. What gives here?"

"Well, I don't really know, but they sure did run us ragged yesterday," Staff Sergeant Vega said. He stuck his hand out. "Julio."

"Domingo. Call me Ding."

"Where you from?"

"L.A."

"Chicago. Come on." Vega rose. "One good thing about this place, you got all the hot water you want, and no Mickey Mouse on the housekeeping. Now, if they could just turn the fucking heat on at night -"

"Where the hell are we?"

"Colorado. I know that much. Not much else, though." The two sergeants joined a loose trail of men heading for the showers.

Chavez looked around. Nobody was wearing glasses. Everybody looked pretty fit, even accounting for the fact that they were soldiers. A few were obvious iron-pumpers, but most, like Chavez, had the lean, wiry look of distance runners. One other thing that was so obvious it took him half a minute to notice it. They were all Latinos.

The shower helped. There was a nice, tall pile of new towels, and enough sinks that everyone had room to shave. And the toilet stalls even had doors. Except for the thin air, Chavez decided, this place had real possibilities. Whoever ran the place gave them twenty-five minutes to get it together. It was almost civilized.

Civilization ended promptly at 0630. The men got into their uniforms, which included stout boots, and moved outside. Here Chavez saw four men standing in a line. They had to be officers. You could tell from the posture and the expressions. Behind the four was another, older man, who also looked and acted like an officer, but... not quite, Chavez told himself.

"Where do I go?" Ding asked Vega.

"You're supposed to stick with me. Third squad, Captain Ramirez. Tough mother, but a good guy. Hope you like to run, ' mano ."