As a leftist lawyer assisting a liberal congressman, Prescott received a warm welcome to the homes and offices of expatriate Salvadorans. He reported their words and thoughts to the Salvadoran fascists.

But he regretted the day he took their Krugerrands. Dead Salvadorans meant nothing to him. The murder of North Americans, however, was a different matter. The cover of vigilantism could barely protect him from the repulsion that would strike when each kill was broadcast.

Now, as he pressed the elevator button for the upper floors of the Sheraton, his body quivered with fear. When the elevator stopped at the lobby, Prescott expected Federal Bureau of Investigation officers to step in and seize him. Instead, four drunken tourists in party hats stumbled inside, continued their disco dancing.

As the elevator doors slid open on the sixth floor, Prescott shoved past the tourists. His imagination put federal agents behind every door. They waited for him at every corner in the corridor.

Striding toward the room where Captain Madrano waited, Prescott saw a Hispanic bellboy pushing a cart of dirty dishes and beer bottles. A federal agent? Prescott turned his back to the young man. Fumbling in his pocket, Prescott pretended to be searching for his room key. When the bellboy wheeled the cart around a corner, Prescott broke into a run. He beat on Captain Madrano's door.

"Quien esta alla?"

Prescott's fear would not allow him to say his name out loud. But he would speak the Salvadoran's name for the hidden microphones. "Madrano?"

A man spoke Spanish, then the laughter of several men exploded inside. The door opened. Captain Madrano received Prescott with a sneering smile. Dapper in tailored slacks, a Ralph Lauren tapered shirt and a black leather shoulder holster carrying a Beretta, the ORDEN officer sipped at a tumbler of bourbon.

Ten other Salvadorans watched the North American traitor enter. In front of them, open suitcases exposed Uzi submachine guns. The Salvadorans looked at the nervous, sweating lawyer, then returned to their bourbon and magazine loading. A wooden case of PMC 9mm cartridges lay on a coffee table. Most of the men loaded Uzi mags. One man inventoried the contents of another suitcase.

Glancing into the cluttered suitcase, Prescott could not identify the objects.

"So. You are ready?" Captain Madrano demanded of the North American.

"Isn't it dangerous to meet here?" Prescott asked, hearing his voice quaver. "Someone could see us. A policeman. A bellboy. A clerk. Anyone."

Captain Madrano turned to his men. "El puto norteamericano piensa que un hotel Sheraton es peligroso." The other men laughed at what the captain had said. He turned back to Prescott. "Of all places, it is secure here."

"Where do I take them?" Prescott asked.

A man brought him a map of Los Angeles. Red ink marked a location in Lennox. Prescott recognized the area where the State of California Department of Transportation had planned the Century Freeway, condemning and purchasing thousands of homes, then canceling the project due to the onslaught of environmentalists and OPEC gasoline prices. The strip of abandoned neighborhoods had become a wasteland of vandalized and burned homes, a no-man's-land where street gangs fought wars, and sexual psychopaths took kidnapped young girls for orgies of sadistic sex. Prescott realized the Salvadorans employed other Californians. No tourist book or city map touted that slash of desolation.

"From Main Street," Captain Madrano instructed, "you will go south on the Harbor Freeway, to Century Boulevard. They will not suspect. Even if they have a map, they will see the jet planes in the sky. If they question you, say you are not familiar with Los Angeles. Here, you will make a wrong turn. You will say you made a wrong turn, then you make more wrong turns. We will wait."

"What if I actually do get lost?"

"We have thought of that. Here." The captain gave Prescott a small walkie-talkie. "Put it in your coat. If you have a problem, you can switch on the radio, like this. Then talk of the problem. Say, 'This street, that street.' Stop and examine your map. We will come and take them. But I tell you, there will be no problem. You will be done with this very quickly. But they will not…"

As the young Salvadoran officer ended his instructions with a laugh, the man searching through the cluttered suitcase also laughed. The man took something out of the interior.

"Three girls and a mother?" the man asked.

"Si." The captain nodded.

Prescott saw what the man held. Four waterproof highway flares. The man smiled, then sang as he set the flares aside: "Your love is burning, burning, a fire deep inside me, burning, burning…"

The image of what the Salvadorans intended struck Prescott. He staggered back, fell against the door, his mind spinning, vomit acid in his throat. Captain Madrano and the other ORDEN soldiers laughed. Madrano dismissed Prescott with a sneer.

"Go. We expect you within an hour. If you fail us, we take you. Understand, gringo?"

Nodding, Prescott fumbled for the knob. He fell out the door. He put one hand against the corridor wall, breathed deeply for a moment. He sought comfort in the sterile decor and computer-determined colors of the Sheraton corridor. When his panic and nausea faded, he stumbled to the elevators.

Arrest by federal agents no longer panicked him. The thought of prison no longer made his body shiver. Now he thought of prison as a sanctuary.

As the elevator dropped silently to the garages, Prescott closed his eyes. He focused on the nothingness behind his eyelids, hoping the darkness would bring peace.

But he only saw an image from one of the shocking films smuggled out of El Salvador: the shattered skull of a young woman, the machete-carved flesh of her face curling back from the long wounds, her eyes swarming with flies.

Even when his eyes snapped open, even when he stared at the chrome floor-indicator flashing with the back-lit plastic numbers, he could not help but zoom in on that girl's shattered skull, the blood-clotted matted hair tangled around a vast bullet exit wound. Like the camera, his mind zoomed in to focus on the secret of El Salvador: a human brain feeding a squirming mass of translucent worms.

Now Prescott truly understood the men who paid him Krugerrand gold.

29

In the room, Captain Madrano spoke into a walkie-talkie. "He has left. Can you hear him?"

FBI Agent Gallucci watched Prescott stagger from the elevator. The San Francisco lawyer fell to his hands and knees on the garage floor and vomited. The minitransmitter built into the walkie-talkie that Prescott carried sent every breath and gasp to the receiver in Gallucci's ear.

"I can hear him, I can see him. What did you give him to drink?"

"I would not drink with him."

"He's puking."

"Con miedo." Captain Madrano laughed.

"What's he got to be afraid of?"

"Us, if he fails."

Gallucci laughed also. "He's going to his car. It's a blue Dodge. A rented one. In case he does screw up, you got some men who can find their way around Los Angeles?"

"Of course. One of my lieutenants went to UCLA."

"It won't be good, but those illegals have got to go. Tell your men to do it fast and get out. Main Street has a one-minute response time, once the police switchboard gets a call. If anyone bothers to call. There he goes. On my way."

"I see you later."

"You bet on it. One of the girls is a teenager, right?"

"Thirteen years or fourteen. A Communist beauty."

"I won't miss the party. Over and out, amigo."

Starting his unmarked agency car, Gallucci eased out of his parking place. He accelerated into traffic, following the taillights of Prescott's rented car. Gallucci realized the car looked much like his own, a solid gray Dodge four-door. Only the colors differed.