First signaling Lyons and the others, they went through the inner fence. Blancanales went flat on asphalt and braced his Beretta in both hands. He watched the expanse of roads and runway for sentries. Gadgets faced the opposite direction, watching the walkway and the windows of the guard tower. Nothing moved.

Behind them, exploiting the periods of darkness between the sweeps of the searchlight, the squad negotiated the mine field. They slipped through the chain link and formed a wide half circle.

Lyons came last. Black clad, his gear smeared with mud and grass, the narrow band of his exposed skin darkened with grease, he looked like soil in motion. He pointed to himself and Blancanales, then to the tower.

Blancanales shook his head no. He pointed to the center of the mountaintop military base. Lyons crawled close to his Puerto Rican partner.

"Straight in?" he asked in a whisper.

Blancanales paused. "Except that we can't expect to go out this way," he brooded. "This will probably be another Carl Lyons exit."

"No more crashes tonight for me."

"Are you okay?"

"I hurt. Oh, man, do I hurt."

"Too late to medevac."

"Did I ask for it?" Lyons glanced to the lights of the buildings. "If we can't take Quesada out alive, we snuff him, right?"

"Can't put a dead man on trial," warned Blancanales.

"You actually think Washington would let it go that far?" Lyons sneered. "He'd just get another ticket back to Salvador. The most I hope for is to put some questions to him. Everything else is dreaming..."

Lyons slithered away, his silent auto-Colt in his right hand. He paralleled the walkway, his left shoulder to the concrete. The cast concrete stood a few inches above the mud. He stopped when the mechanical searchlight approached, pressing himself against the edge of the walkway, becoming only a shadow. He gained a hundred meters, the squad following in a line behind him. They left the aircraft area.

Ahead, Lyons saw another chain link fence. Topped with concertina wire, the fence separated the airstrip from the main area of buildings. Lights bathed the fence in daylight bright glare. On high poles, videocameras scanned the area.

Two guards patrolled the fence. At the far side of the asphalt, several hundred meters away from where the infiltrators lay in the mud and shadows, the guards walked the fence with a Doberman. Lyons keyed his hand-radio.

"No quiet way through this."

"A diversion?" Blancanales suggested.

Gadgets broke in. "You guys want a diversion? It means we can't go out through those holes in the fences."

"We decided a silent exit is unlikely," Blancanales whispered through the radio.

"Who decided? No one told me that. I got an electronic backup squad prepositioned back there."

"What do you mean?" Blancanales asked.

"You want a diversion? Yes or no? I'll make that guard tower… disappear!"

Lyons watched the sentries pace to the end of the fence. They turned. "Okay. Do it."

"Stand by for a big bang…" Gadgets laughed.

The Doberman barked. On the far side of the hangars, another dog barked. In seconds, dogs barked and wailed everywhere in the darkness.

Behind the squad of North Americans and Salvadorans, a second searchlight blazed from the guard tower. A guard swept the searing xenon beam along the outer perimeter.

A flash. The guard tower disintegrated in a spray of glass and wood and flesh. Where there had been lights and a tower, only darkness remained.

Sirens screamed. Headlights appeared on the far side of the airstrip. A Land Cruiser raced across the runway, spotlights on its roof revolving to illuminate the darkness in slow circles.

Other headlights stopped at the interior security fence. A remote-controlled gate rolled aside for an open truck crowded with soldiers. Some wore yellow raincoats, other black slickers. Others wore only gray fatigues. One man stood on the passenger-side cab step. Holding on to the door, he buckled on web-gear as the truck raced to the attack.

Lyons braced his silenced auto-Colt in both hands.

He sighted on the nearest of two videocameras surveilling the gate. As the truck accelerated through the gate, Lyons squeezed off a shot. He heard the slug skip off the camera housing and whine into the night. He adjusted his aim, fired again. The slug smashed the camera. Then he destroyed the second camera.

Sighting on the electric motor controlling gate, Lyons smashed it again and again with slugs. The gate jammed open. He keyed his hand-radio.

"Politico! The lights with your Beretta."

A light went dark. One by one, the nearest lights broke. Lyons heard tires squeal on asphalt. He turned to see the Land Cruiser and troop truck brake to a stop at the hole in the fence. Gray uniformed soldiers crowded from the truck.

Then a flash wiped them away. The battered, windowless hulks of the Land Cruiser and the truck rocked on their springs, surrounded by ruptured, smoldering flesh. Screams rose from the dismembered.

Blancanales sighted his M-16/M-203 and fired a high-explosive 40mm frag. The shell popped in the midst of the wreckage, gasoline flashing. The fireball rose into the darkness.

Lyons shouted out, "The gate!"

Other voices shouted in Spanish. Moving in one rush, the fourteen men sprinted through the flame-lit night.

24

Dropping down through the clouds in the borrowed DC-3, Grimaldi saw the flames. He eased into a wide circle around the mountaintop and watched the desperate firefight. From three thousand feet, he could see only the flashes of grenades and rockets. Streams of tracers streaked through the darkness. But he knew how many men — Able Team and their allies-of-expedience — he had dropped on a Honduran pasture. Those men now fought hundreds. When he returned with the Huey, he knew he would not take fourteen men out.

Grimaldi unplugged his headset. He slipped off the headphones and spoke into a Stony Man hand-radio.

"Able Team, this is the Eagle. Able Team, this is the Eagle. I'm up here with a surprise. Able Team, this is the..."

Lyons answered. Noise and autofire almost drowned out his voice. "What took you so long?"

Grimaldi glanced back to the cabin door before speaking again. No one had entered the pilot's cabin. "I got Agency people with me. They think we're over Ocotal, Nicaragua. How's it going?"

"Not too good. Had to shoot our way in. Still haven't found our man."

"Find him quick. I'm up here with five thousand liters of av-gas high-octane in plastic bladders. Give me a target. Won't make any bangs, but believe me, that place is going to be gone!"

"Stand by," Lyons told him. "We got to get organized. Over."

Replacing his headset, Grimaldi spoke into the intercom. "Gentlemen, prepare to crisp those Commie critters."

On his back behind the concrete foundation of a prefab barrack, Lyons hooked his hand-radio onto his web belt. Autofire continued from the offices across the wide asphalt traffic circle. A Toyota Land Cruiser sat on its rims, its tires shot flat, its windows shot out, the bullet-ripped bodies of the soldiers jerking as crisscrossing autofire from both sides of the lane smashed it again and again.

The School had been constructed around the central lane. Branching out from the center lane, side streets led to auditoriums and classrooms and service buildings. In the center, offices clustered around the traffic circle. Beyond the offices, rows of barracks occupied the other half of the mountaintop.

Fighting past the classrooms, the squad of North Americans and Salvadorans met the concentrated fire of hundreds of gray-uniformed soldiers pouring from the barracks. The surprise attack had killed scores of the surprised soldiers, but the attack had failed. Alerted by the airfield alarm, the fascist officers had gathered their troops to annihilate the few infiltrators.