The men participating in the raid had had no duties during the day. At dawn, Lyons borrowed a set of high-powered binoculars. Telling the sentries he wanted to practice, he took the binoculars and the M-14 into the rocky hills overlooking the base. Until assembly time, he studied the camp, watching the sentries, noting the frequency of their patrols and when the shifts changed. He watched the camp operations. He watched jeeps and trucks shuttle between the airfield and the base.

At four in the afternoon, he returned to the barracks and gathered his equipment. Only the crowding and the confusion in the trucks and helicopters saved him from discovery. Furst and Monroe watched from a limousine as Pardee and the squad leaders checked details and counted soldiers. Lyons had hoped Furst would accompany the strike force... Furst would not have returned. But the man had stayed in the limousine, and waved as the helicopters lifted away.

For a moment after the helicopter touched down and the pilot killed the engine, there was silence and stillness. The rotor-throb of the other helicopters came and faded too. Pardee left his seat beside Lyons and squatted with his back to the closed side door.

"Listen up. There's no going back, you men. We're two hours into Mexico, and the helicopters have fifteen minutes of fuel left. Either we win, or we die, or we go to Mexican prisons. Right now we're going to take a walk. No talking, no noise, no smoking, no slack. When we get there, everything dies. Men, women, babies, pet lizards. You hear me?"

The squad mumbled its answer. Pardee threw open the side door and stepped smartly out. Red-lensed lights flashed from the three other helicopters. As the soldiers filed out of the Huey, cool desert air displaced the odors of fuel and sweat and face-blacking with the fragrance of chaparral and wild spices.

Lyons followed the others out. To the east, the silhouette of a mountain cut into the dome of stars. There was a very faint glow of light behind one ridge.

The glow came from the lights of the phony oil exploration airfield that concealed the doper base.

The squads formed into four lines. Then they moved. One squad took positions around the helicopters, the other three squads started the five-hour march over the mountain.

After a half-hour of stumbling through the dark, the soldier behind him jabbing Lyons every few minutes with the flash suppressor of his M-16, Lyons decided to volunteer to walk point. He jogged forward to find Pardee in the point squad.

"Do us all a favor," he grunted. "Let me and Marchardo take point."

"The dopers might have heard the helicopters-there could be an ambush up there."

"I think it'd be safer up front. Besides, if there is an ambush or there are guards up there, Marchardo and I have got a better chance than the rest of your stumblebums..."

Pardee chuckled. "They're not my soldiers. Furst hired them."

"Is it too late to trade them in on Boy Scouts?"

"Give your rifle to someone to carry. Here." Pardee pressed a weapon and bandoleer of magazines into Lyons' hands.

By touch, Lyons identified the weapon as a MAC-10 with a suppressor. He slipped out the magazine, felt the first cartridge: .45-caliber hollow point. "This'll put the hurt on someone. But I'll carry the rifle too. It might get lost."

"Great. Get Marchardo, take the point." Pardee sent Lyons forward with a slap on the back.

Moving silently up the path, Lyons found Blancanales at the head of the column, already walking point with a map and a penlight. "Let's go, brother. You do the talking, I'll do the shooting."

They moved fast, advancing a few hundred yards, then one of them staying forward while the other backtracked to the column. Lyons enjoyed the time alone. As they gained altitude, the panorama of hills, plateaus, and light-sequined desert expanded. An evening wind, carrying the scents of brush and desert soil, cooled him. He became part of the night, the distinction of where his skin touched the darkness fading, his breathing only an eddy of wind within the wind, his movement on the mountainside a mere shifting of shadows.

Leaving the clankings and rustlings of the column far behind him, Lyons continued up the trail. A pale sliver of moon rose above the mountain. Grinning to himself, he suppressed an urge to whistle. He wanted to laugh, to sing, to shatter the night and silence with his joy.

Then he smelled something. The stale odor of many cigarettes. Freezing, he sniffed the wind, listened. He dropped to a squat and crept forward. A few yards ahead, the trail went over a rise, then crossed a gravel road. Crouching there, he noted the slope beneath him to the road and the steep hill on the other side.

A metallic clink broke the silence. Lyons heard water slosh in a canteen. Someone cleared his throat, then the clink came again.

Lyons eased back. He squat-walked back twenty yards, the MAC-10 pointed into the darkness. Then he moved fast, walking as quickly as he could without betraying himself. A hundred yards down the mountainside, Blancanales' hand stopped him.

"What's the rush?"

"Ambush up there."

They returned to the column, told Pardee.

"You sure?"

"Postive. We could go around it, but I say we go up with knives and silencers. If we can get a prisoner, we can rush the top. Otherwise, it's crawl along looking for booby traps and more ambushes."

"All right, Morgan. You volunteering?"

"Me and you and Marchardo could do it."

* * *

Leading the other two men up the mountain, Lyons left the trail a hundred yards from the gravel road. Crawling on their bellies along a rabbit track, they kept a rise between them and the ambush. They crept across the road. In the brush again, they searched for a trail or animal track paralleling the road. They could not find one. They crawled again, staying high on the mountainside.

Pardee stopped Lyons. Lyons stopped Blancanales. Below them, voices muttered in Spanish. A penlight flashed on a map. The sudden squawk of a walkie-talkie broke the silence. Blancanales crept down the slope. Pardee and Lyons waited.

They heard a grunt, then thrashing. Silence. A voice called out softly in Spanish. Another voice answered in Spanish. Silence returned.

A pebble hit Lyons' arm. "Hssst!" A second pebble bounced off Lyons. Lyons nudged Pardee. They went down the slope.

In dry grass and rocks, Blancanales lay next to a Mexican gunman, his knife at the gunman's throat and his hand over the man's mouth. Blancanales motioned them close, whispered: "This'll be my game. He's told me there's three more out there. Sit on him while I take them. If I throw a rock, it means I've got another prisoner and I want you to..."

"We've got one," Pardee interrupted. "No more. Use your Spanish, then kill them."

Blancanales hesitated. "Whatever." Then he slithered through the weeds.

Thumbing forward the MAC-10's safety, Lyons touched the bolt to make sure it was back, then kept his trigger finger alongside the guard.

Ten yards away there were whispers. A soft laugh. They heard only a quick gasp when the man died. Blancanales returned five long minutes later.

"Like he said," Blancanales muttered. He kept his voice low, but no longer whispered.

"We need to make time," Pardee told Blancanales. "Put the questions to him."

Blancanales spoke in quiet Spanish. The gunman answered questions without hesitation.

"They thought we were the Mexican Army, coming in to lean on the gang for another few hundred thousand. He says they've got two or three other ambushes on the mountain, plus booby traps. A total of ten or twelve men out here. Another twenty up at the airfield. He'll lead us up if we'll let him live."

"Sure," Pardee replied. "Promise him anything."

* * *

At the end of a twenty-foot rope, the bound and gagged gunman led the column the last few miles to gang base. On a rise overlooking the landing strip, Pardee halted the column.