"If they are, it doesn't look like they got rich," Gadgets said.
Blancanales indicated the pueblo with a sweep of his arm, taking in the mud-plastered adobe houses, the pole and tree-branch ramadas, the people with ragged clothes and bundles of possessions.
"Do you begin to understand why they would grow opium?" he asked Lyons. "Someone comes out here and promises them a few dollars. It's the difference between food or no food, shoes or no shoes..."
"But what they got was a gang war..." Lyons replied as he looked up. Vultures circled the village.
"Opium and death," Lyons said. "Heroin and gang wars. Billions of dope dollars and international fascism. Hell, it's time to move. We've got questions to put to those prisoners."
Bent under the unwelcome weight of their packs and weapons, they climbed up the steep trail to the ridge. Only two of the Huey troopships remained. Soldiers worked inside the helicopters. On the north end of the ridge, where Lyons and Vato had hidden and plotted the infiltration, soldiers dug ditches.
Vato, standing in the center of the ridgetop plateau, directed the soldiers. The old achaistood beside him. As Able Team approached the helicopters, the North Americans recognized Yaquis in the green camouflage fatigues. The Yaquis wore the fatigues, berets and boots of the Mexican army. They all wore army web gear. With the M-16 and FN-FAL rifles they had captured from the Mexicans, they looked like soldiers.
"What's going on?" Gadgets wondered out loud.
They saw that nothing remained of the killing the night before. No blood or flesh marked the spots where Mexican soldiers had died. Yaquis swept the earth clean with branches.
In one of the troopships, Miguel Coral worked with Yaquis to secure a chain of three claymore mines to the engine housing of a troopship. Taped together in a band, linked by a line of det-cord, the claymores faced them.
"I wouldn't stand in front of amateurs playing with claymores," Gadgets advised from a distance.
Lyons and Blancanales stepped back ten paces.
"What are they doing?" Blancanales asked.
"Vato!" Lyons called out.
The achaiand the young leader walked to them. Of all the Yaquis, only they wore dust-colored clothing. Vato had his Springfield rifle slung over his back.
"What's happening over there?" Gadgets pointed to the troopship where Coral had set up the claymore mines.
"The army is coming. With their officers. When they come, we kill them."
"How do you know?" Lyons demanded.
"This will be known as the Hill of Death," the achaiadded. With a salute to the foreigners, the old man walked away. "The boy will instruct you en su trabajo aqui."
"In the other helicopter, the one that Davis took away, there is a special radio..."
"Where's he now?" Lyons continued.
"My men hide the helicopter. He will wait with it."
"What kind of special radio?" Gadgets asked. He shrugged off his pack and set it on the earth.
Blancanales stopped the interruptions. "Gentlemen! The man's trying to brief us."
Vato continued. "I told the Mexican lieutenant to report that he had trapped the Yaquis and North Americans, but he needed more soldiers and weapons. The Mexican colonel immediately took command. I know the vanity of my enemy. He flies here now to lead the final assault. And we will kill them.
"There..." Vato pointed to the first helicopter "...we have the bombs in place. Claymore mines. In front of the bombs are barrels of gasoline from the helicopters. Senor Coral told me the arrangement would be very terrible..."
"Oh, yeah..." Gadgets agreed. "If the blast and shrapnel don't get them, the flash will toast them righteously."
"And now Senor Coral prepares the second bomb. When the helicopters land, my soldiers will go down the trail, then explode the bombs."
"But what a waste of helicopters," Gadgets interrupted again. "Those Hueys cost a million each."
"There is only one pilot," Vato countered. "The men there..." he pointed to the soldiers digging ditches on the hill overlooking the plateau "...they have the machine guns from the helicopters. They will fire down. And there on that mountain..."
Across the canyon, three hundred fifty meters away, Yaquis wearing their dust-colored uniforms dug more ditches. "From there, we will shoot with rifles and machine guns. When they come, they die."
Blancanales nodded. "A classic 'X' ambush."
"We will need one of you here," Vato continued. He looked to Blancanales. "You, you speak Castilian. You will be here with your radio. And you..." he looked to Lyons "...you will be with me on the other mountain."
"How will you trigger the claymores?" Gadgets asked. "Maybe I can work out something slick. And that other helicopter's got radios. I can monitor the frequencies."
Vato pointed to the helicopter. "I know nothing of that. Talk to Senor Coral. When he is done, he will take you to where the other helicopter is hidden."
"What happened to our prisoners?" Lyons demanded.
"The officers?" Vato asked. "Nothing."
"And the other soldiers?" Blancanales asked.
Not taking his eyes from Lyons, Vato ignored the question, as if Blancanales had not spoken. "Come. I go now to the other hill to wait. I will take you to the officers. You can question them. But we must hurry. We talk too much and the Mexicans come."
"We want in on this?" Lyons asked his partners.
Gadgets nodded. "The man's got it down. No doubt about it."
"If the Mexicans come down here," Blancanales added. The ex-Green Beret surveyed the landscape, the ridge, the canyon, the near-vertical mountainsides, the expanse of desert and hills and gullies continuing into the distance.
Only the plateau where they stood offered the advantages of high, defensible ground and open area for the landing and takeoffs of helicopters. To the north, where the Yaqui machine gunners concealed their firing positions, rocks and sheer drop-offs made landing impossible. To the east, where Vato would place his riflemen and backup machine gun, a hilltop offered only a few square meters of level area. With the uniformed soldiers and the decoy troopships, the plateau looked like a secured landing zone. Blancanales finally nodded his approval.
"And I think they will," he said.
"This means we can't raid the army base," Lyons told his partners. "If they lose the colonel, they'll be on full alert."
"Ironman, get smart. We've got a helicopter. Are they going to expect us to come out of the sky in one of their own troopships? You're just making noise because this ain't your idea."
"I want to get the number-one Nazi, the Mexican traitor who's working for the goons."
Gadgets laughed. "Well, hey, maybe he's coming to you!"
"All right..." Lyons looked across to the other hilltop. "I'll be over there."
And he jogged after Vato.
"Notice Vato didn't answer your question about the soldiers?" Gadgets asked Blancanales.
"Had to ask. I know the answer."
"Yeah. Me, too. Zipppp. Zipppp."
On the trail, Lyons saw the last of the families leaving the pueblo. The houses stood empty. Nothing moved on the dirt road but swirls of dust.
Vato waited for him in the streambed. Lyons splashed through the shallows, his overweight backpack lurching from side to side.
"Where are they?" he asked.
In response, Vato led him up the embankment to a shack made of interwoven branches and plastered with mud. A Yaqui fighter guarding the door nodded to Vato and Lyons.
"We did nothing to them. But I think they will speak."
Lyons looked at the sleeves of the guard's dust-colored shirt. Clotted blood crusted the cloth as high as his elbows. Blood had splattered his shirt and pants. Then Lyons pushed aside the woven-stick door.
Plastic loops still secured the prisoners' wrists and ankles. Tape covered their mouths. But the tape over their eyes had been replaced with blood-clotted strips of green camouflage cloth. The shack stank of the blood.