Loco held out his hand and took the papers from Strunk. “Good. I will study Mr. Ben Raines. I have learned, the more one knows of one’s enemies, the easier to defeat them.”

  “Comandante,” Valdez said, “do you want to begin the attack on Mexico?”

  Loco nodded. “Yes. It is time to unleash our troops against our neighbors to the north. Send some air strikes to disable their radar and begin to move our men forward on all fronts. Meanwhile, I will read about Ben Raines to learn how he thinks and to see how he can be beaten.”

  The Apache helicopter gunship hugged the desert terrain of southern Mexico, flying at less than a thousand feet across the Guatemalan border near San Felipe where a Mexican radar installation swept the skies.

  Captain Raul Rosales kept both hands on the controls, the yoke and the collectives, his feet applying just the right amount of pressure on the rotor pedals to keep the ship stable at low altitudes.

  Captain Roque Vela sat in the gunner’s position in front of the pilot.

  “I have the radar signal on my HUT,” Vela said, reporting what he could see on his Heads Up Targeting, a projection of a target signal that appeared to be displayed on the windshield of the gunship.

  “Wait a moment longer,” Rosales replied. “Comandante Perro Loco insists that this radar site must be taken out before the campaign to move northward across Mexico begins. San Felipe is the only radar installation the Mexicans have in this sector of the Yucatan.”

  “If they have missiles, we can’t wait much longer,” Vela said into his headset. “If we are to be sure of our safety, I should fire a missile soon.”

  “We have no missiles to waste, Roque. Wait until you are certain of your target.”

  “They may be tracking us on radar at his very moment,” Vela replied. “It could be dangerous to wait much longer. They may be able to shoot us down from here. I say we should fire one missile and let it track the radar beam.”

  “This gunship is more important than the missiles we carry,” Rosales said, dropping lower, to eight hundred feet, when his altimeter sounded an alarm. “This is a dangerous mission, Roque. We cannot fail . . . We must not fail. The radar installation at San Felipe has to be taken out.”

  “I understand, Captain.”

  “What do you see on your HUT?”

  “Only the radar beams.”

  “We have to get closer. We must be sure.”

  The rhythmic chum of the rotor blades filled a moment of silence.

  “What do you see now?” Rosales asked again.

  “Only the signal, and it is weak.”

  “Do nothing,” Rosales said. “We are below their targeting... even if the stupid Mexicans are awake so early in the morning to see that we are coming.”

  The altimeter read 750 feet as they flew across the southern fork of the Rio Candelaria, a dry riverbed this time of year. Below, there was nothing but rolling desert hills and flats. The Mexican military outpost at San Felipe was only a few miles away.

  “I see something,” Vela said.

  “What is it?”

  “I do not know. A spot on the display. It is moving toward us.”

  “A SAM,” Rosales whispered into the microphone. “Find the target and fire a rocket. I’ll drop down to five hundred feet and we’ll see what happens. It won’t be able to track us at low altitude.”

  Rosales slowed the rotor and tail turbine, losing altitude as beads of sweat began to form on his brow. This was the tricky part . . . shooting down an enemy missile while avoiding a rocket fired from the ground. The older American-made Apaches were all but invisible to many radar screens. Only a few Soviet radar posts had the capability of seeing an incoming Apache above a thousand feet.

  “I do not know how they spotted us,” Vela said, fixing his targeting display.

  “It will not matter how they did it,” Rosales said. “Fire a rocket. Take the installation out or we will both be killed by their SAMs.”

  Captain Vela did as he was instructed. He pulled the trigger on one air-to-ground missile mounted on the belly of the Apache.

  A trail of rocket vapor darted away from the craft. The Sparrow rocket traveled at speeds too fast for the naked eye to see.

  Desert sands swirled upward from the prop-wash of the rotor blades.

  “What do you see?” Rosales demanded, holding the ship at four hundred feet.

  “Only the spot on the screen. It is headed straight for us.”

  Captain Rosales knew he had to take evasive action. He let the gunship drop lower . . . three hundred feet, and then two hundred feet.

  Directly below them, from a grove of mesquite trees, he heard the stutter of machine-gun fire.

  “Who the hell is shooting at us?” Captain Vela shouted, as the floor of the chopper rattled with the impact of bullets. “Dios! My left foot . . .”

  A tuft of lint swirled away from the rear of Captain Vela’s seat, followed by a stream of blood.

  A change occurred in the sounds made by the helicopter, a clanging noise from the rear of the craft. Suddenly the ship began to swing in a circle.

  “They shot out the rear turbine!” Rosales cried, trying to steady the chopper with the collectives.

  Vela did not answer him ... his head was lolled back against the seat, his hands free of the firing controls, resting in his lap.

  “Son of a bitch!” Rosales roared when the Apache did not respond to the yoke or rotor pedals.

  The heavy gunship plummeted downward at an odd angle, its nose pointed toward the ground while the tail made big looping circles.

  “Shit!” Rosales spat, fighting the pull on his yoke, making every adjustment he had been trained to make when a helicopter lost its tail rotor.

  The earth rushed toward him and Raul Rosales knew he was about to die.

  “Dios,” he screamed, then he began saying Hail Marys as fast as he could mouth the words, a prayer he knew from his childhood.

  A shuddering crash sent him forward in the cockpit and his head slammed into the rear of Captain Vela’s seat. He smelled fuel ... and fire.

  The main rotor chewed into the desert sands until it broke apart; then the main turbine stopped.

  Rosales slumped forward upon impact and wondered about the silence around him.

  His eyes batted shut.

  Perry Osborn examined the wreckage, an M-16 dangling below his shoulder on a leather strap.

  Justin Law approached what was left of the aircraft with his automatic rifle aimed in front of him. “You need to radio Ben. There are no markings on this Apache, so we don’t know who it belongs to.”

  “I’m fairly sure it’s part of the Nicaraguan’s fleet,” Perry replied.

  “Then there may be something to all this bullshit about Mad Dog forming an army . . . Comandante Mad Dog.”

  “General Raines says our intelligence is good. The bastard calling himself Perro Loco is planning to move north. He’ll take Mexico. Unless we stop him.”

  “Where do they come up with helicopter gunships like this?” Justin wanted to know.

  “Captured after the drug wars in Colombia,” Perry said, a keen eye on the chopper before they moved away from the mesquite thicket. “The old United States government sent dozens of these things down to help with the cocaine problem. Then all hell broke loose and nobody was left to keep track of where the Apache and Comanche gunships were.”

  “Then we’re basically fighting our own technology,” Justin remarked.

  “It’s technology from the past,” Perry said. “But it still can be effective. Ben was right to send us down here after he heard what was going on.”

  “We need to let him know he was right about Perro Loco starting to move on Mexico.”

  Perry shook his head. “We can’t. He’s on a secret mission someplace to rescue one of his team.”

  “The woman . . . what was her name?”

  “I heard it was Jersey, but no one’s saying for certain. I do know she’s very close to General Raines, whoever she is. Since General Raines is out of pocket, we’ll inform Intel about the raid; they’ll get the message to him.”

  “Let’s make sure the sons of bitches aboard this thing are dead,” Justin said.

  “Nobody could have lived through this crash,” Perry said in a low voice. “But like you say, we need to make damn sure there are no survivors.”

  “I’ll come in from the other side,” Justin whispered as they left the grove.

  “Shoot anything that moves,” Perry instructed. “We’ll take any identification papers we find off the pilot and the gunner. Damn lucky that this thing didn’t explode when it hit the ground as hard as it did.”

  Raul woke up by degrees. At first he saw nothing but fog before his eyes. He heard voices . . . faint, far away, and his nostrils caught the strong scent of aircraft fuel when he came closer to consciousness.

  “What happened?” he asked aloud, expecting an answer from Captain Vela.

  Vela did not reply. Raul could see his helmet lying against the back of the gunner’s seat.

  “Roque?”

  Raul became increasingly aware that his flight jacket and pants were doused with helicopter fuel. It was rare to survive a crash in a chopper, and even more unlikely that the ship had not exploded upon impact.

  “Roque?” The voices were louder now, and Raul was sure he heard them distinctly . . . but Roque was not moving. Who was talking to him?

  The enemy, he thought. A squad of Mexican machine-gunners had shot them down and now they were coming for him. There was no other explanation for the voices.

  Numbed by the impact of the crash, he reached for his Luger 9mm pistol belted to his side.

  “Be careful,” a voice said in English.

  Raul drew his pistol.

  “One of them’s still moving. I can see his head bobbing up and down.”

  And now Rosales knew he was surrounded by the enemy. But why were they speaking English?

  He lifted his weapon and aimed through a splintered side window of the Apache.

  “Look out!” a voice cried. “One of them’s alive and he’s got a gun!”

  Rosales blinked. He tried to find a target in the blur of brush and trees outside the helicopter.

  “Don’t waste a shot,” another, deeper voice said. “A match will do a better job.”

  Rosales heard a match being struck. Then he saw a billowing cloud of flames.

  “Ayiii!” he shrieked as his flight suit erupted in a ball of fire.

  The crackle of spreading flames was the last sound Captain Raul Rosales heard. He was consumed by an inferno, and when he opened his mouth to scream, he inhaled a mouthful of fire that made his lungs feel like burning cinders.

  Nineteen

  Harley Reno walked down the belly of the C-130 checking each member of the drop team’s oxygen masks and rigging for the HALO drop.

  “Remember,” he shouted to be heard over the roar of the four big engines of the aircraft, “watch your altitude gauge on your wrists. If the automatic pressure release doesn’t work, you’ve got about five seconds to do it manually; otherwise it’s adios, amigo and we’ll be picking you up in a sponge.”

  Anna glanced at Ben, standing next to her. “That’s a cheerful thought,” she said.

  Ben nodded, his mind already on the planned meeting with their contact in Belize, El Gato Selva. Gato had radioed them coordinates for the drop, and promised to meet them and hopefully lead them to the area where Coop and Jersey had disappeared. Ben hoped they weren’t dropping into a trap, for he knew little about Gato other than he hated Perro Loco and wanted him dead.

  Reno stepped to the open cargo door of the big airplane and stood next to Scott Hammer Hammerick, who would be the first to jump. All eyes in the plane were on the twin lights at the front of the cabin, waiting for red to change to green signaling a go.

  When the green light began flashing, Reno tapped Hammer on the shoulder and he dove out of the door. Anna was next, then Corrie and Ben. Reno went last, dipping his head in a dive that was to last almost five miles.

  As he arrowed down through air that was seventy degrees below zero at that altitude, Ben wondered briefly if he was crazy to be doing such a stunt at his age. Who says they can’t teach an old dog new tricks, he thought as he gripped his chute-release button in his right hand and stared fixedly at the altitude meter on his left wrist. He didn’t dare look at the green jungle rushing up at him at almost two hundred miles an hour. Reno had said more than one sky diver had been killed when so mesmerized by the sight of the onrushing ground that he failed to open his chute in time.

  Just as Ben started to punch his release button, thinking his altitude sensor had failed, his chute deployed, almost jerking his head off.

  He hit the ground going twenty miles an hour, and tucked and rolled as he’d been taught years before in paratrooper school. As he came to his feet, he whipped his SPAS 12-gauge assault shotgun around his body and cradled it in his arms, crouching and looking around for enemies.

  The coordinates Gato had given them were for a large, open field, to minimize the danger of injury from attempting to land in the rain-forest canopy. Ben squatted and glanced around him. He was standing in a field of poppies. Evidently, growing the plant that heroin was made from was one of the ways Gato financed his insurrection attempts against Perro Loco.

  Ben shook his head, a dark smile on his face. He wasn’t crazy about teaming up with a man who grew and presumably sold heroin, but he knew war made for strange bedfellows. Besides, Ben was a nihilist about such things as drug control. He figured if a person wanted to ruin his life for a temporary high, that was his business, as long as they didn’t try to finance their habit by robbing other people. Drug use was the mark of a stupid person, and Ben had no use for stupid people.

  Within ten minutes, the team had gathered in a loose-knit group, not standing too close together in case they came under attack.

  Reno stepped to Ben’s side. “We’d better get out of the open and under cover, Boss,” he said.

  Ben shook his head. “Harley, on this mission, you’re the boss. This is your neck of the woods and you and Hammer are the resident experts in scouting, so take the point.”

  Reno nodded and waved his hand over his head, leading the others toward the safety of the thick jungle ahead. Just prior to reaching it, a man in khaki BDUs (Battle Dress Uniform) stepped from the forest, his hands over his head to show he was not a hostile.

  “Welcome, General Raines,” El Gato said.

  Behind Gato they could see several men, all of whom looked thoroughly dangerous in their jungle cammies carrying Russian-made AK-47’s in their arms.

  Ben nodded and shook hands with Gato. “This is Harley Reno, my team leader. He’s familiar with this country and he will be leading my team until we’re extracted,” Ben said.

  Gato spoke a couple of sentences in rapid Spanish to Reno, and grinned when Reno answered him in an equally fluent manner.

  “Bueno,” Gato said, then waved his arm and added, “Vamos!”

  As Gato’s men led the way down barely discernible jungle trails, Reno asked him, “Do you have a probable location for our people?”

  Gato smiled. “Yes. A convoy carrying considerable amounts of airplane fuel was destroyed a couple of days ago, and all of the men in the convoy were not only killed, but mutilated.”

  Reno nodded. He knew it was the work of Jersey, using a well-known scouting technique to spread fear and terror among natives.

  “Not only that,” Gato continued, “but the fuel was . . . how you say . . . booby-trapped. The explosion came within inches of killing two of Perro Loco’s most important men, and did manage to wipe out the entire force sent to rescue the fuel.”

  Ben laughed. “I knew Coop and Jersey wouldn’t go quietly into the night. Leave it to them to kill a bunch of the enemy to let us know where they are.”

  Gato cut his eyes at Ben. “Then you also believe this attack was a deliberate attempt to advise us of their position in the jungle?”

  “Of course,” Ben answered. “If they wanted to stay under cover, all they had to do was avoid the patrols.” He shook his head. “No. The communications equipment they have is only useful up to a distance of about five miles, maybe less in this mountainous region. They knew we’d be coming after them and had to give us an approximate location to start our search.”

  Gato nodded approvingly. “Your people are very well trained to be able to anticipate your moves.”

  “We’ve been together a long time and been through a lot together. They knew I’d never leave a member of my team hanging.”

  Gato pointed. Up ahead Ben could see several vehicles covered with camouflage paint parked under a canopy of trees so they wouldn’t be visible from the air. They looked to be vintage World War II jeeps.

  “There is our transportation. We should be at the approximate location within two hours,” Gato said.

  “Good. The sooner the better,” Ben replied as he climbed into the back of a jeep.

  Coop slapped at his neck and softly cursed as he and Jersey walked through jungle as thick as any he’d ever seen in Africa. “Damn bugs think I’m a walkin’ buffet,” he said.

  Jersey, who was in the lead, glanced back over her shoulder. “Quit whining, Coop. It could be worse.”

  “Oh? And how is that?”

  She smiled wickedly. “There could be snakes,” she purred, referring to Coop’s well-known phobia of snakes. In Africa, during the campaign against the Neo-Nazis, he’d been attacked by a snake, and in his terror fallen into a river and gotten washed downstream and lost in the jungle. Jersey had vowed to never let him forget that episode.

  He stopped and pointed a finger at her. “You promised not to mention that again.”

  She kept walking, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t. You asked me not to, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”