That left him with an electronic option. Boost the signal strength of his hand-radio. Could he use the longdistance transmitter with which they would signal Jack Grimaldi, the ace Stony Man pilot, in Honduras? No. That radio only transmitted digital code pulses on an ultra-high frequency. But Gadgets had other radios available. Pushing aside the tarp, he called into the rain and darkness.

"Lieutenant!"

The Salvadoran appeared. He had stood guard in the rain since nightfall. "Another radio message?"

"Nada. And man, that suggests a mucho bad problem."

Gadgets hooked a penlight to the dash. In the weak light, he searched through his kit and pulled out rolled metallic tape antenna. The antenna went with the ultra-high-frequency, long-distance transmitter. He kept one end and gave the lieutenant the roll. "This is an antenna. It has to go up the mountain."

Lieutenant Lizco nodded and disappeared into the downpour.

Opening the army radio console, Gadgets spliced the tape antenna's wires into the radio's antenna leads. Then he opened the case of his hand-radio. In the next few minutes, working carefully and exactly in the dim light, he wired the hand-radio's output with the microphone inputs of the army radio.

The army radio now served as a signal booster for the small hand-radio. The radio's encoded milliwatt output would be amplified by the high-wattage circuits of the army transmitter. With the jeep's whip antenna and the hundred feet of wire serving as a second antenna, Gadgets had a chance of overcoming distance and the storm's electrical interference to reach his partners' radios.

Looking into the darkness again, he called out: "Lieutenant! You got that antenna up there?"

Cold metal touched his ear. He knew what touched him even as he turned, infinitely slowly, to look.

The muzzle of an autorifle.

16

With the silenced Colt Government Model cocked and off safety in his hand, Lyons waited. Blancanales held his Beretta 93-R in one hand, his radio in the other. He desperately clicked the transmit key again and again, whispering into the microphone on the wild hope that he could raise Gadgets,

Blancanales and Lyons and Ricardo needed help. They needed a diversion. Anything.

They lay flat on the roof of the bus, waiting. Below them, the militiamen left the bus. They talked and joked with the sentries.

The bus had stopped in the center of the vehicle yard. Thirty meters of naked pavement surrounded the bus on all sides. A blacktop killing ground.

Lyons hoped to silently kill the men who came up to unlash the gear on top of the bus. But any noise or shout of alarm would trigger the firefight. And with the first burst of shots, Able Team lost any possible chance to kidnap Colonel Quesada.

Let alone live.

Waiting for the sound of boots on the steel rungs of the ladders, Lyons eased the MU-50G controlled-effect grenades out of his thigh pocket with his left hand. The tiny grenades, designed for the close-quarter combat of anti-terrorist actions, had a forty-six gram charge of TNT to propel 1400 steel balls. The reduced charge of explosive limited the hundred percent kill diameter to ten meters.

He passed the grenades to Ricardo. They had not allowed their teenage prisoner to carry a rifle. Lyons wished they had issued him one of the M-60s from the jeeps, with a thousand rounds of 7.62mm NATO. When the action started, it would be the Atchisson and the M-16/M-203 against every weapon of the Quesada militia.

They felt the bus shudder. Spewing diesel soot, the engine started again. The driver put the bus in gear and eased it toward a line of trucks. The squad of militiamen walked toward the prefab buildings.

"We got a chance," Lyons whispered to his partner. "We got a chance."

"Perhaps…" Blancanales answered.

The driver maneuvered the bus into a space between another bus and a truck. As the brakes squeaked with the stop, the intruders on the cargo rack felt the bus rock.

Now, boots came up the ladder.

As the militiaman's yellow rain hat appeared, Lyons lunged out and grabbed the man's raincoat. He jerked the militiaman's face against the suppressor of the auto-Colt and pulled the trigger.

The 185-grain slug smashed through the militiaman's eye socket at 1000 feet per second, liberating 400 footpounds of shockforce within the cranium. Blood and gray matter sprayed Lyons, bits of brain and bone and hair exploding into the rain. Lyons and Blancanales pulled the corpse onto the cargo rack.

"His raincoat, the hat, his uniform," Lyons hissed. "All of it. Get it on the kid."

Blancanales nodded. After explaining to Ricardo in Spanish, they stripped the corpse. Blood from the shattered skull colored their hands. Rain washed away the blood.

Ricardo took the dead man's web-gear and bandolier of autorifle magazines. Then the gray fatigue shirt. Then the boots and pants.

"Mario!" a voice called from below.

"Get the kid into that uniform!" Lyons whispered urgently.

The boots did not fit. Ricardo pulled on the gray pants. In the gray uniform and black web-gear, Ricardo looked like a Quesada militiaman.

Slipping out his Beretta 93-R, Blancanales returned to Lyons at the cargo rail. He pointed to his Beretta. Lyons nodded and put away the auto-Colt. They waited. The voice called out again.

"Mario!"

Another pair of boots came up the ladder. Lyons waited until the militiaman started over the rail, then clutched him simultaneously at the collar and the belt. The death squadder knew only an instant's panic before Blancanales put the Beretta to the side of the man's head and punched a 9mm hole through his temple.

The militiaman, one of the assassins from the mountain ambush, wore a black raincoat and hat over his gray uniform. His boots fit Ricardo. Blancanales put on the black slicker and hat to cover his nightsuit and weapons.

"You take the yellow raincoat and hat," Blancanales told Lyons.

A minute later, they climbed down the ladders to the blacktop. Across the service yard, the sentries stood with the mechanics in the shelter of the open-sided garage buildings.

An M-16 leaned against the bumper. Blancanales reached to the militia web-gear Ricardo now wore. The bandolier held M-16 magazines. He passed the rifle to the teenager.

With the hesitance and great care of someone recently trained, Ricardo double-checked the safety and the seating of the magazine, then eased back the bolt to peek at the round in the chamber. Lyons and Blancanales nodded their approval of this novice's good sense.

Lyons walked along the side of the bus, the yellow raincoat covering his slung Atchisson and gear. He also held the silenced auto-Colt under the raincoat. Glancing through the windows, he saw el jefeworking by a battery lantern's light.

Coiling a microphone cord, the death-squad leader returned the "black box" radio to its aluminum-and-foam carrying case. Lyons saw no one else in the bus. Looking back, Lyons motioned to Blancanales.

"What?" Blancanales asked, joining him beside the passenger door of the bus.

"The number-one goon," Lyons whispered. "With the NSA radio."

Blancanales snatched a look through the window. "How convenient. We take him."

"And he takes us to Quesada," Lyons added.

Metal squeaked. Footsteps crossed the bus. Lyons and Blancanales pressed themselves against the side. Blancanales pointed to Lyons, closed his hand into a fist. He touched his chest, then pointed to the Beretta he held. Lyons nodded and holstered his auto-Colt.

Carrying the aluminum case, el jefestepped from the bus. Blancanales jammed the Parkerized black suppressor of the Beretta under his chin. As the death-squad leader jerked back reflexively, Lyons pinned the man's arms.