Tracers touched a wing, then the line of 7.62mm NATO slugs found the engine. Black smoke and bright-orange flames erupted from the cowling vents.

A hand pulled Lyons down to cover. Lyons and Vato watched the bomb come. Flashing as it fell end over end, the canister of napalm came down at their faces.

Vato screamed out a prayer in the last instant of his life. "Huitzil!"

The aluminum of the canister almost grazed Lyons's hair as it hurtled past and continued into the void of the canyon. Lyons turned to see the canister fall into the pueblo, the splash of avgas and styrene engulfing the few houses in a holocaust of flame.

"The prisoners..." Vato pointed into the fires. The mud-plastered hut holding the Mexican and European officers was a raging inferno.

"Lost them," Lyons answered as he left the fighting hole. He stood over the unconscious Fascist officer. He saw the eagles and SS insignia on the gray fatigues. "But we got a colonel."

Lyons scanned the area. No weapons fired. He saw Blancanales and the Yaquis leaving their positions. They waved across the distance to the hilltop. Lyons turned to Vato.

"What's Huitzil?" he asked.

"Huitzilopochtli. The god of war. I offered myself so that I could fight in the next world. To kill as a spirit warrior."

"You want to keep fighting?"

"Until all of them are dead."

"Then come with us."

Before the fires on the Hill of the Dead cooled to ashes, Able Team and the Yaqui warriors flew south in the captured troopship. Guided by the defeated colonel, armed with the weapons of the Mexican army, they would enter a maze of treason and conspiracy to strike at the heart of the Reich of the Americas.