"I'm talking the facts."

"Hear this, crazyman. The Agency gave me total cooperation. I was very pleasantly surprised."

"Be ready for unpleasant surprises. You tell them where you were going with this helicopter?"

"Never tell anybody anything."

"Don't tell them where you take the bomber."

"I don't know about bombs," Grimaldi said, shaking his head. "Especially on short notice."

"Improvise," Lyons said. "Use your imagination. We need maximum effect. Otherwise we'll have a Nazi army chewing at us through the mountains."

Grimaldi pointed down. "We're over the coordinates of that town."

"Stay high. Circle out. I'll be sitting in the door looking out."

Lyons motioned to his partners. He went to a door and buckled on the safety straps. Cautioning the men around him, he eased the door open.

Cold night wind and rotor-whipped rain struck him. Thousands of feet below, he saw darkness and the tiny points of lights. But no patterns of lights. He scanned the depthless black of the unseen mountains for La Escuela. Gadgets's voice spoke through the intercom.

"Bear to the left…"

"Yeah, I see the lights," Grimaldi answered. "I'll take you past."

"What you see?" Lyons asked his partner in the other door.

"Airstrip lights. And the landing lights of a plane. Man, that is an installation."

The fighters turned to stare out at a mountaintop crowned with brilliant points. A rectangle of blue dots framed an asphalt runway. As they watched, a plane descended from the night, cones of white glare projecting from the wings.

When the plane taxied to a stop, the landing lights and the runway lights switched off. The blue rectangle faded to darkness.

A ring of white security lights remained on the mountain. Scattered points of incandescent glow indicated buildings. The scene wheeled into view as the helicopter continued in a slow circle. Grimaldi spoke through the intercom.

"That's the place you want me to bomb?"

"Don't look like there's anyplace else," Gadgets answered. "But we'll check it out."

"Put us down," Lyons told the flier. "And when you come back, come loaded."

22

Jon Gunther, chief of personal security for Klaust de la Unomundo-Stiglitz, listened with interest to the ravings of Colonel Roberto Quesada. The Salvadoran spoke with anger and bravado, yet Gunther knew the colonel lied.

In preparation for a conference of Central American military and political men loyal to Unomundo's International Alliance, Gunther and his aides had flown to La Escuela to review the staff's security procedures. Now, only minutes after their arrival, Gunther knew he must cancel the conference. To do otherwise — to accept the assurances of The School officers, to accept the pompous delusions of the colonel — would be to expose his leader to danger.

Colonel Quesada, his tailored fatigues soaked, paced the conference hall, motioning with his clenched fist for dramatic emphasis. He told a story of his soldiers betrayed and murdered in the United States. A Negro assassin impersonating a leftist journalist had lured his soldiers into an ambush on a residential street in San Francisco, California. North American mercenaries then lured two squads of his soldiers into death traps in the mountains of California and the slums of Los Angeles. Only with the help of Internationalists in the U.S. government had Quesada escaped a ridiculous arrest warrant issued by the United States Department of Justice.

But the mercenaries had relentlessly pursued him to El Salvador. There, this night, under the cover of the unnatural storm from the Pacific, forces led by North American commandos mounted suicide attacks on the defenses of La Finca Quesada. Despite his personal leadership in the firefights, the invaders breached the outer defenses, only to die, Quesada insisted, in heaps at the walls of the family's residence. He had left the counterattack on the fleeing cowards to his junior officers.

Despite the threats against his family and his properties, the colonel flew on to La Escuela. He knew his responsibility to the International Alliance. He would represent the Quesada family at the conference. Quesada paused in his long story, then delivered his declaration.

"The Fourteen Families of El Salvador, united in patriotism and courage, will join the leaders of the other nations of the Americas in the hemispheric victory of the International Alliance!" He snapped his fist to his chest, then extended his straightened hand and arm.

"Victory to the New Reich!"

Gunther restrained his laughter. Throughout the pompous colonel's speech, the security chief had mentally noted the lies.

"The Negro assassin impersonating a journalist" had, in fact, been a journalist. Floyd Jefferson, a twenty-two-year-old leftist with no military experience, had confronted and killed two of the four soldiers sent to kidnap him.

The mercenaries who "lured" Quesada's soldiers into death traps had demonstrated only basic military techniques. In the first "death trap," Quesada's death squad pursued the North Americans from the interstate highway. The North Americans turned off a road and waited in a narrow canyon. In complete disregard of caution, the death squad's three trucks drove into the ambush. In the second "death trap," the North Americans attacked the Salvadorans as they stood in a group in the center of a Los Angeles street.

Death traps? No. Only arrogant and stupid soldiers meeting death in a confrontation with intelligent, disciplined fighters.

But the assault on the fincaworried Gunther. On the eve of what would have been his leader's seizure of Guatemala, North Americans had infiltrated and destroyed the secret base of the army of Unomundo high in the Sierra de Cuchumantes. The assault had come virtually without warning: no firefights, no attacks on the perimeters; only an all-consuming ball of flame that killed a thousand soldiers in their barracks. A squad of Quiche Indians led by North American commandos had liquidated the survivors in a brief small-arms assault. By luck, Gunther had been airborne in a helicopter at the time of the attack. Of more than a thousand soldiers, assassins, officers, technicians and pilots, only Unomundo and Gunther and three soldiers plus the helicopter's pilots survived.

The new attacks seemed similar. Gunther questioned the Salvadoran.

"Colonel Quesada, I am familiar with your estate's very impressive security perimeter. Fences, towers, mine fields. All the modern devices. Even in the darkness and rain, I do not understand how they overwhelmed your perimeter defenses."

"I await a report," replied Quesada. "I will share that information with you the moment I receive it."

"They gained entry without an alarm sounding?"

"We suspect they parachuted agents into the coffee fields."

"Could they have had agents in your security forces?"

"No! My men are loyal. They know the penalty for treason."

"When did the fighting first break out?"

"As they assaulted the walls of the family compound..."

"They passed through all your defenses, all your forces? You did not know of the attack until they rushed the walls?"

"They are very cunning. We will question the prisoners..."

"Yes, the prisoners. Did you not personally question them?"

"My duties required my presence here."

"How many prisoners did your men take?"

"I await a report on the action."

"How many Communists did your men kill?"

"Many! I will report on the numbers killed when I receive the report."

"Did you kill the North Americans?"

"Certainly. They could not have escaped our counterattack."

"Did you see the North Americans?"

"In the confusion of the battle, I saw only the fighting."