“But . . .” she started to say as the sound of machine-gun fire shattered the quiet in the jungle, causing a flock of fruit bats to take wing over their heads.

  “Goddammit!” she whispered hoarsely. “That son of a bitch is gonna kill them all.”

  Coop gritted his teeth until his jaws ached. It galled him to stand by and do nothing, but it would do no good for him and Jersey to be killed and it certainly wouldn’t protect the villagers.

  “Hang on, Jers,” he said, his voice tight. “We’ll get our time at bat and we’ll make the bastards pay, but now’s not the time.”

  After Sergeant Felipe Garza shot his men, he jumped in the jeep and spun his tires, fishtailing in the soft dirt of the jungle floor as he raced out of the village.

  He slid to a stop when he got to where the rest of his command was waiting just inside the thick foliage of the surrounding forest.

  Corporal Beto, his second in command, stood up in his jeep, his hands on the fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on a post in the vehicle.

  “What happened, Felipe?” he asked. “We heard shooting but got no call on the radio requesting help.”

  “Americanos!” Garza shouted. “They ambushed us. There was no time to radio.”

  Beto saw the blood on the seats of the jeep Garza was driving. “And Lupe and Jose?” he asked, referring to Garza’s driver.

  “Killed,” Garza answered shortly. “I managed to drive the americanos back, but they may still be in the village. I want a complete search of every hut. Spare no one if you find evidence they were helping the americanos.”

  Beto waved his arm, and the other four jeeps pulled into the village, just in time to see the last of the villagers fleeing into the jungle. No one was left behind.

  The search didn’t take long; the buildings were all too small to hide anyone. When they came to the hut Coop and Jersey had been in, Garza stooped and picked up two empty MRE packets, holding them aloft for the others to see.

  “The americanos were here, just as I said. I will radio Comandante Loco to see if he wants us to search the jungle or to return to base.”

  After informing Loco of the presence of Americans in the jungle, Garza was ordered to return to base. Loco said other men better equipped for a jungle search would be sent to apprehend the traitors. He needed Garza to bring the aircraft fuel they’d picked up on their way into the jungle as soon as they could, for it would be needed in the upcoming offensive against the Mexican government.

  Sergeant Felipe Garza rode at the front of the procession as they crossed jungle mountains toward San Ignacio and Loco’s hacienda. Five trucks with men loyal to the comandante drove the vehicles. The trucks loaded with aircraft fuel would be a star in his crown, a way to earn a promotion, as would his finding out that Americans were indeed involved in the recent assassination attempt on Loco’s life. The airplanes, especially the helicopters Comandante Perro Loco had, were in good mechanical shape, but they lacked the fuel to fly across Mexico to achieve the objectives the comandante wanted as he led his forces north to conquer the North Americans.

  Corporal Beto spoke, still gripping the fifty-caliber machine gun with both hands while they moved through the jungle. “The comandante will be pleased,” he said. “The fuel will be very important.”

  Felipe knew the comandante would be more than pleased to have the fuel he sought so desperately. “Yes. When we get to San Ignacio to show him what we have found, he may give us all a small bonus. He was very pleased that we chased the americanos into the jungle.”

  “I could use the money,” Beto said. “My family is almost starving.”

  “Many people are hungry in Central America,” Garza said as the jeep rolled over a hillside. “We are among the lucky ones who have jobs.”

  “But this . . . job,” Beto argued, “it does not pay much and we don’t get our money very often.”

  “Silencio!” Garza said, glancing down at the driver, a Salvadoran named Julio Corte who spoke very little English. “If someone close to the comandante hears you say this, you will be executed by his bodyguards.”

  “I know,” Corporal Beto murmured, keeping an eye on the jungle. “It is muy estupido to say anything against the comandante. A wise man keeps his mouth shut in all matters when you are around him.”

  “Verdad,” Garza replied.

  A moment of silence passed.

  “Tell me, Sergeant . . . what was at the bottom of the hole under the clay pot? It looked like small pieces of gold wrapped in the cloth.”

  “How did you see that?” Garza asked. “You were supposed to be back in the jungle awaiting my command to enter the village.”

  Beto shrugged. “I walked forward to make sure everything was all right after I heard your machine-gun fire. When I saw you dig up the small pouch, I returned to my men.”

  Good, Garza thought, he didn’t see me shoot Lupe and Joe. Garza knew, however, it was still necessary to silence the only witness to what he had done.

  “You think you saw gold?” he asked, letting his right hand slide down near his pistol.

  “I saw something yellow . . . It glittered in the sun when you opened the cloth.”

  “You saw too much,” Garza answered. “You should have been looking the other way.”

  “What do you mean, Sergeant?”

  Garza pulled his weapon. “You saw something gleaming in the sun,” he said. “It was a mistake to be looking at what I took from the cloth.”

  Beto saw Garza lift his pistol, aiming for Beto’s head as the jeep moved over bumpy ground.

  “No, Sergeant!” he cried.

  “But you saw the gold.”

  “No! I saw nothing!”

  Private Corte looked up with both hands gripping the steering wheel . . . He knew something was wrong.

  Felipe knew he would have to kill the driver as well as Beto, since Private Corte had overheard what was being said between them. He’d just have to blame it on the americanos again.

  Garza was tightening his finger on the trigger, when the roar of automatic-weapons fire came from both sides of the jungle road.

  A series of molten bullets ripped through Sergeant Felipe Garza’s chest. He fell back in the seat of the jeep with his mouth full of blood.

  Private Corte was torn out of his seat by the incessant pounding of machine-gun fire as it swept him off the driver’s seat in a hail of lead.

  Corporal Beto fired at the muzzle flashes he saw in the jungle, moving the barrel of his fifty-caliber tripod-mounted weapon back and forth.

  The recoil of the machine gun made his arms tremble, and for a moment he wasn’t sure he’d hit anything.

  Then he felt a stabbing pain in his chest, as if someone had buried a knife below his ribs.

  “Dios!” he cried, his trigger finger locked on the firing mechanism. The hammering sound of machine-gun fire filled the forest.

  Bullets sprayed the jungle canopy above the caravan as more shots came from drivers in the trucks, single bullets fired by pistols and carbines.

  Felipe saw and heard what was happening without being able to lift a finger to help his men. All he could think about were the drums of fuel in the trucks, and the few gold coins in his pocket.

  “Kill them, Beto!” he croaked. “Don’t let them take the gold or the fuel!”

  The jeep sputtered and came to a halt without a driver at the controls.

  “What the hell?” Felipe Garza asked, his chest filled with fiery pain.

  He noticed that the driver’s seat was empty. He cast a glance back at Corporal Beto.

  Beto’s mouth was a fountain of blood. He continued to fire the machine gun.

  “Beto!” Garza shouted. “Kill these sons of bitches before we all are all killed! ”

  Corporal Beto’s eyes had a glazed look to them, although he continued to fire into the jungle in a blind way, spraying the treetops with lead.

  “What the fuck are you shooting at?” Garza cried, holding his chest with both hands as if he could stop the crimson blood from leaving his body. “There is no one in the trees!”

  It was then that Garza saw the bloody bullet holes in the front of Corporal Beto’s shirt. Blood leaked down over his belt and into his pants pockets.

  “Keep shooting!” Garza ordered, trying to get up from the seat of the jeep in spite of the pains in his chest and deeper in his belly.

  “I ordered you to shoot, Corporal Beto!” Garza bellowed as more bullets came from the jungle, shattering the windshield he gripped with his right hand.

  A stinging pain entered his right armpit and it slammed him back into the seat of the jeep. For a moment he was stunned by the blow, not knowing what it was.

  He glanced down at his khaki shirt and saw blood streaming from his sleeve. He stared at it for a time, unable to think clearly.

  “They shot me, Beto,” he said. When he saw the front of his shirt, he knew he’d been wounded several times.

  “Drive away from here! ” he said, his voice muted by blood crossing his tongue.

  He saw the driver, Private Corte, lying beside the jeep with a bullet hole through his head.

  Garza cast a look at the jungle. Two dark shapes were moving toward him and the precious cargo some of the trucks carried.

  “The gold,” he whispered, losing consciousness.

  His final thoughts were of the coins hidden in his pocket. Then he went to sleep.

  Coop and Jersey stood over the bodies strewn about the jungle path. Jersey reached over with her foot and kicked Garza in the mouth. “That’ll teach you to kill innocent women and children, you bastard!” she growled.

  Coop glanced at her. He’d never seen her so furious. “You want to scalp the son of a bitch, too?” he asked.

  She started to give a sarcastic answer, then hesitated, a thoughtful look on her face. “You know, Coop. Every now and then you come up with a pretty good idea, even if it is by accident.”

  Jersey took out her K-Bar and squatted over Garza’s body.

  “Hey, wait a minute, Jersey. I was just kidding . . .”

  She looked up at him. “I’m not.” She bent and with a quick slash of the K-Bar made a circular incision around the top of Garza’s skull, then grabbed his hair and yanked a full scalp lock off in one squishy jerk.

  “Damn! Coop said, almost gagging at the horrible sight.

  “Listen, Coop,” Jersey said, pausing to wipe her bloody hands on Garza’s shirt. “We’re stuck out here in the middle of a jungle, surrounded by hostiles, with no transportation and no way to ‘phone home.’ ”

  “We can take one of these ...” Coop started to say, pointing to the jeeps in the path, until he saw bullet holes in all the hoods and steam coming from each and every motor.

  “Good thought, Sherlock. Wanta try again?” Jersey asked.

  “So, what does that have to do with scalping our enemies?”

  “The only chance we have to survive is to put some fear in our opposition. The more barbaric and crazy we can seem, the fewer men who are going to be willing to come into the jungle after us.”

  “You really think taking a few scalps will scare off men like these?” he asked, pointing to the dead lying around them.

  “Not just scalping, but I have a few more ideas. Remember, I’m part Apache.”

  Coop took a deep breath as he pulled out his own K-Bar. “Okay, Pocahontas, show me the way.”

  Fifteen

  Mike Post, Ben’s Chief of Intelligence, entered the office to find Ben and his team waiting for him.

  “I hear there’s been some word from Belize,” Ben said.

  Mike nodded, frowning. “Yes. Unfortunately, it’s not good news.”

  “Let’s have it, Mike.”

  “El Gato Selva, the intermediate between Jersey and Cooper and the assassins, radioed to say the entire mission was a bust. The assassins were killed, but not before they talked. Evidently, they gave away Jersey and Coop’s position and a hit team was sent in to take them out.”

  Ben felt his chest tighten and his mouth go dry at the words. “Do we know what happened?”

  Mike pulled up a chair and set down. He reached into his coat, pulled out his pipe, and began filling it as he talked. “Our intel is not one-hundred-percent reliable. Jersey and Coop were staying in a small village in the jungle. The hit squad killed six or eight of the villagers and reported back to Perro Loco that they were after two Americans who’d paid the assassins. Later that day, radio contact with the hit squad was lost, so we don’t know what’s gone on since then.”

  Ben leaned back in his chair, a small smile on his face. “I can tell you what happened, Mike. Those soldiers made the mistake of messing with a buzz saw when it was busy cutting wood. Jersey and Coop took the hit team out.”

  “That’s possible, but we won’t know for several hours. This is all happening in a very remote part of the country and communications are difficult because of the mountains.”

  “Well,” Ben said, “I’m not going to wait. I’m going to take a scout team in after Jersey and Coop.”

  “But Ben,” Mike said, “you can’t leave. You’re right in the middle of negotiations between President Otis Warner and Cecil Jeffreys about the peace protocol.”

  “That’s gonna have to wait. Two members of my team are in trouble, and I intend to see that they make it back.”

  Mike fired up his pipe, sending clouds of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “Who’s going with you?”

  Ben nodded his head at Anna, Corrie, and Beth, sitting across the room. “My usual team along with a couple of my best scouts.” He got to his feet. “They’re waiting outside.”

  He crossed the room and opened the door. “Harley, Hammer, come on in.”

  Two men entered the room, each seeming as big as a house. Ben put his hand on the shoulder of a six-foot-four-inch man with blue eyes and red hair in a single braid hanging down to the middle of his back. “This is Harley Reno,” Ben said. “He’s gonna take us in and bring us out. He’s the best scout in the Army.”

  Reno nodded at the team as Ben stepped to the next man. Only marginally smaller than Reno, he stood six feet three inches and had coal-black hair and icy green eyes. “This is Scott ‘Hammer’ Hammerick. He’s our weapons expert, and also happens to be fluent in Spanish and knows Belize like the back of his hand.”

  Hammer stepped forward. “The country we’re gonna be fightin’ in is high mountain jungle. Lots of thick foliage, not too many open spaces. That means we’re gonna make some changes in the weapons you carry. Your M-16s won’t be much use up there, an’ they’re much too heavy to carry up and down mountain passes.”

  He reached down and unslung a small machine gun from the strap over his shoulder. “You women will be carrying these Mini-Uzis. Fully loaded, they weigh only four kilograms, have forty-round detachable box magazines, and can fire six hundred fifty rounds per minute on full automatic.”

  He nodded at Harley, who held out a shotgun with a pistol grip on it. “Ben, you and I and Harley will be carrying the SPAS Model 12. SPAS stands for Special Purpose Automatic Shotgun. It’s twelve-gauge, weighs 4.2 kilograms, has a seven-shot tubular magazine, and on full automatic can fire two hundred forty rounds per minute.”

  “Wait a minute,” Corrie said. “Don’t shotguns have a very limited range?”

  Hammer shrugged. “Depends. We have a variety of slugs available, from light bird shot to heavy metal slugs that’ll penetrate steel plate at a hundred yards.”

  Corrie nodded and sat back.

  “Now, as far as handguns, the old Colt .45’s are out of date. I prefer the Beretta Model 93R. It fires a 9mm Parabellum bullet, has a twenty-round magazine, and can fire single-shot or in three-shot automatic bursts. On automatic fire, a small lever drops down in front of the trigger guard for the left hand to grab and steady your aim.”

  Anna got to her feet. “This is all well and good, but while we’re standing here talking, Jersey and Coop are in trouble. When are we leaving?”

  Harley Reno smiled at Anna. Evidently, she was his kind of woman—no bullshit, ready for action.

  “As soon as you get suited up and pick up your weapons,” he said. “We’re going to make a HALO drop over the mountains in six hours.”

  “HALO drop?” Corrie asked.

  “High Altitude, Low Opening,” Harley said. “We’ll go out of the plane at ten thousand feet but we won’t open our chutes until we’re a few hundred feet off the ground so we won’t be picked up on radar.”

  “Isn’t that cutting it awfully close?” she asked.

  Harley smiled. “Yeah. A tenth of a second late an’ you’re hamburger.”

  Hammer added, “But don’t worry, the chutes are fitted with automatic pressure gauges that open ’em automatically... most of the time.”

  Ben got to his feet. “Okay, team, let’s go. We’re burnin’ daylight and we’ve got an appointment with some friends to keep.”

  Paco Valdez entered the main room of the hacienda to find Perro Loco and Jim Strunk discussing new security arrangements in light of the recent assassination attempt.

  Loco glanced up from a map of the grounds when Paco entered. “What news have you of the squad with the aircraft fuel?”

  Paco shook his head. “There has been no radio contact for some hours now, comandante.”

  Loco slammed his hand down on the desk, making even the imperturbable Jim Strunk jump. “I want to know what is happening, and I want to know it now!”

  “Sí, mi comandante,” Paco answered hastily. “I will have the helicopter fly over the area immediately. The good news is there has been no signs of smoke in that region, indicating the fuel was not exploded.”

  Loco turned to Strunk. “Jaime, go with Paco and make sure that the fuel is found and delivered back here safely. If it is lost, it will seriously delay my offensive against Mexico City.”

  An hour and a half later, Strunk and Paco Valdez climbed out of the helicopter they’d landed in the center of the village where Felipe Garza had been when he’d last made contact. They were followed by fifteen handpicked troops who’d ridden in the big Huey with them.