Gadgets nodded. "On our way to play zap-zap with the Nicos. Makes sense to me."

"They will believe you are professional soldiers," the lieutenant stressed.

"That's what we'll tell them," Lyons agreed.

The lieutenant tore strips of OD green cloth from a captured uniform. "Cover your faces. They will understand."

"Who were those masked men!" Gadgets took a green strip and covered his face.

"Pol, we've got to question those prisoners." Lyons tied a strip over his face. "Wizard, Lieutenant, if you two can dump all this equipment and get us ready to move…"

The Salvadoran soldiers stood around the three surviving guerrillas. They abused the prisoners, taunting them, kicking their wounds. Some of the soldiers pointed their rifles at the guerrillas' heads. Crossing the clearing in a jog, Lyons called out, "No! No shoot!"

"No dispare!" Blancanales shouted in Spanish.

The two North Americans pushed through the group of Salvadorans. The prisoners lay against the gravel pile. Flies swarmed on their wounds. One had passed out from blood loss, his life draining away from through-and-through buckshot wounds to his legs. Blancanales quickly slipped out his knife and cut away the man's pant legs. He used the cloth to make pressure bandages. The other seriously wounded guerrilla had a bullet-shattered forearm, but had already bandaged it himself. The third prisoner, the panicked teenager Lyons had clubbed with the G-3, stared around at the soldiers like a trapped animal.

One of the Salvadoran soldiers spoke to Blancanales in rapid Spanish. Blancanales answered. Then the soldier spoke again with a sneer.

"He asked me why I help the Communists," Blancanales translated for Lyons. "And I told him they'd die otherwise. He said they're dying no matter what."

The arm-wounded guerrilla spoke to the frightened boy. The boy crossed himself. The wounded guerrilla laughed at the Catholic gesture. He raised his clenched fist in a defiant proletarian salute. Blancanales pushed the man's arm down and spoke to him quickly. The guy laughed again.

Lyons stepped forward and put his foot on the man's good arm. The man shook his head, then glanced around to the crowd of soldiers to emphasize the point.

"Tell this Commie to go easy on the provocations," Lyons told Blancanales. "And tell the soldiers that we took these prisoners. What happens to them is our decision."

"We don't want to tell them that." Blancanales gave the problem a moment of thought. Then he spoke to the soldiers in careful, evenly spoken words as he examined the shattered arm of the second guerrilla.

The soldiers argued with Blancanales. The loudest soldier stepped forward. His G-3, pointed at the wounded prisoners, boomed twice before Blancanales knocked the weapon aside. Lyons grabbed the rifle and pushed the soldier away.

Holding up his clenched fist one last time, his blood fountaining from his heart, the wounded guerrilla died. The corpse thrashed, and in death it gasped air through the hole in its chest. The other wounded prisoner, the unconscious one, also died, but without spasms.

Lyons threw the G-3 aside and unslung his Atchisson in one motion. His face masked, he faced the Salvadorans with the assault shotgun, the fire-selector on full-auto, his finger on the trigger. He heard movement behind him. "Pol! Watch my back..."

"It's me, it's me," said the lieutenant.

Holding up his knife, Blancanales made eye contact with all the Salvadorans. Then he indicated the wounded boy at his feet and spoke calmly to the soldiers. The soldiers, only moments ago enraged, now laughed.

The lieutenant stepped up behind Lyons and whispered a translation. "He said the guerrilla will pray for a bullet before he dies."

Blancanales slowly leaned to the bloody boy and helped him to his feet. He turned the boy around. While all the soldiers watched, Blancanales tore a tourniquet off a dead guerrilla and tied the boy's hands behind him. Then he shoved the boy toward the jeeps.

"Watch my back, Ironman," Blancanales whispered as he passed. "Those punks are crazy."

Keeping his eyes on the soldiers, Lyons backed up, the muzzle of the Atchisson threatening the group with death by high-velocity steel. The loud-mouthed soldier who had killed the two wounded men spat at Lyons, but the other soldiers grabbed him and restrained him.

Another soldier stepped toward Lyons. Lyons swiveled the autoshotgun to point at the teenager's chest. The soldier put up both hands, palms open. Then he reached up and took off his OD green beret. He held it out to Lyons.

"Muchas gracias por su ayuda, guerrero."

Taking his left hand off the foregrip of the Atchisson, Lyons motioned the young soldier forward. The soldier gave him the beret. Lyons flipped it onto his head. He set it at a rakish angle, like a movie-star hero, as he continued backing away.

Behind him, he heard the engines of the jeeps start. Lyons gave the group of soldiers a left-handed salute. But he did not turn his back.

"Come get me," he called out.

A jeep bumped backward to him. Not taking his eyes from the Salvadorans, Lyons stepped into the jeep. He put his knee in the seat and braced the Atchisson on the backrest.

As Able Team left the kill zone behind, the Salvadoran soldiers waved. The jeeps followed the road over the rise and around a bend. Only then did Lyons click up his Atchisson's safety. His hand-radio buzzed. Lyons set down his weapon and searched through his pockets.

"Wiz-a-rado a-qui," Gadgets jived through the electronic encoding circuits of the NSA equipment. Any counterinsurgent operatives monitoring radio communications would intercept only bursts of static as the encrypting circuits of Able Team's hand-radios instantaneously coded and decoded every transmission. "Que pasa? Gonna do any more favors for people?"

"Favors for who?" Lyons watched the forested hillsides above the road as he spoke into his hand-radio. "That Commie? Fighting is one thing, but torturing and murdering fifteen-year-olds is something else."

"Hey, man," Gadgets's voice responded with a laugh. "Ricardo and me are already buddies. I meant those Salvos back there — first we save them, then they want to off us."

"I didn't do anything for them," Lyons answered. "We needed these jeeps. Ricardo's the kid's name?"

"Yeah," replied Gadgets's voice. "And he is fifteen. Jesus, I been here three hours and the Pol said it straight last night. 'Salvador is the asshole of the world.' I want to go home, where teenagers smoke grass and screw their teenybop girlfriends. This scene down here is heavy."

"Do your job, Wizard," muttered Lyons. "Sooner you do it, sooner we go back."

"I'm doing my job. Have you checked out the radios in these jeeps? Ask the lieutenant to look at the frequencies."

Lyons looked over to the lieutenant. He had heard everything Gadgets Schwarz said over the hand-radio. He clenched his jaw with anger. He pointed to the dial of the jeep's radio console.

"That radio. That number is the frequency of the Boinas Verdes. That is the frequency of the army's helicopters. That radio. I do not know about the other radio. I have never seen it before."

After Lyons relayed the information, Gadgets asked, "What other radio?"

"There's another set here. Looks like a civilian unit.

No brand name, no model names or numbers. Only numbers on the dials. A black radio, with a dial and a microphone. Nothing else."

"Stand by to stop," Gadgets told Lyons. "I want to check out that black box. Maybe we could monitor Commie frequencies. The Pol will pull when he sees good cover."

Unable to contain his anger, Lieutenant Lizco spoke suddenly. "To slander my country is easy. We have many troubles. The hatred and the violence of four hundred years make the politics of my country insane. But hear me, norteamericano. Your country makes it worse. One president talks of human rights and the next president talks of making war to make peace. But it is all only noise for the television..."