"It is a gamble worth taking, Field Marshal," Loco said, leaning across the table to make his point. "After all, for a chance to control all of the American continent, what difference would it make if we lose a few thousand men? Fighting men and equipment are expendable and easily replaceable. Central and South America are full of men who are willing to risk their lives for the promise of money."

Bottger grinned and raised his cup of coffee. "For which we both should be eternally grateful."

215.

Captain Dimitri Zubov was deeply concerned. Worried was a better word for the way he felt. In all his years as a hired mercenary since leaving the former Soviet Union, he'd never encountered anything quite likethis. His men were spread out across muggy, jungle-thick hills in a Mexican state known as Oxaca.

They'd been dropped off at the port town of Salina Cruz by freighter and told to move northward and kill everyone and destroy any villages they came upon. They'd been promised that the Mexican Army was weak and poorly represented in this state and that they'd face little opposition except from poorly armed Indians and half-breeds.

However, a seek-and-destroy mission in this terrain was about as tough as it could get. Captain Zubov lead a force of ex-Blackshirts, the special a.s.sa.s.sination troops trained in guerrilla warfare by the elite USA Subversive Corps. Black-shirts, as they were called, were only sent into a war zone for highly specialized a.s.signments. Most of these men had left the U.S. when Claire Osterman had been forced from power last year, and had joined up with mercenary forces. Zubov commanded one of these units, made up of mercenaries from around the world.

General Herman Bundt had directed him to search for a Mexican Army unit made up of special troops reported to be in these hills. And yet no sign of them had turned up anywhere . . . not so much as a single footprint.

A bombing run 216.

by the helicopters a.s.signed to his unit had used their ant.i.tank missiles to wipe out most of the citizenry of this region, leaving only a few farm animals and wild creatures roaming the mountainous jungle region.

He spoke to his sergeant, Sergi Rikov, another highly skilled Soviet guerrilla fighter, whispering to him in the fog of an early spring morning in southern Mexico.

"Nothing. We were given bad information by General Bundt about these Mexican troops. They are not here. Otherwise, we would have found something. . . ."

"Why would anyone fight to hold this useless territory?" Sergeant Rikov asked. "What strategic value could it possibly have?"

"Who knows? I'm beginning to wonder about the competence of leadership under this man whom we never see. No one seems to know what they are doing."

Zubov glanced up at cloudy skies. A silence blanketed the valley below them. "No airplanes. No rockets. Not a shot has been fired."

"It may be too quiet," Rikov warned. "Remember what Leonid said about silence when we went through our training in Mongolia. Silence can be a deadly thing ... a warning. I have never been in a place as quiet as this. It is far too quiet to suit me."

"Nor have I seen a place so quiet," Zubov agreed, sweeping the pine-studded valley with field gla.s.ses.

"If these Mexican troops intend to challenge us over this place, they would surely send up aircraft in order to have our position," said Rikov. "Even the quietest surveillance airplane flying at high alt.i.tude makes some noise." He glanced at his superior lying next to him. "Or perhaps the presence of our attack helicopters scared them off.""They may not be able to get a fix on us," Zubov said. "We don't know how well equipped this General Guerra and his armies are. We have ten rocket launchers, and only thirty men for them to find. If these Mexican soldiers are here, we 217.

217.

will certainly have them overpowered by weaponry . . . and skilled guerrilla fighters."

"At the very least, we have good men," Rikov said with a glance behind him. "Our Soviet and Yugoslav a.s.sault teams are the best in the world. I have absolutely no doubt about it. All we have to do is find the enemy."

Zubov let out a sigh. "What good will it do us, or this cause championed by General Bundt and Field Marshal Bottger, if they have sent us to the wrong place? There are times, like now, when I question the value of their intelligence reports on enemy activities."

"General Bundt sounded so sure. A unit of the Mexicans' crack a.s.sault troops was coming south by way of this old road, to launch an attack on Salina Cruz to try and take back the port so we couldn't use it for reinforcements. No one had any doubts, according to the general."

"I have my doubts now," Zubov said. "This is nothing but jungle and empty villages, a few wandering cows and some pigs beyond that hilltop.

There are no enemy soldiers here. We have wasted our time in difficult terrain based on inaccurate information. No one, not even a civilian, is here now."

"We were ordered to wait."

Zubov scowled. "Yes. To wait for the enemy. But as you can see, there is no enemy, unless we intend to wage war against pigs and cows." ; "According to General Bundt, we will be paid no matter what we find."

"I'm beginning to wonder," Zubov added, turning the focus k.n.o.b on his field gla.s.ses. "I hear rumors that Bottger and Perro Loco are going broke . . . that they have very little money left after the disastrous defeat last year at the hands of Ben Raines's Rebels. Most of their attempts to take Africa and Mexico failed miserably, which only makes me wonder more about their leadership. And now I hear they are broke."

"I have heard the same thing," Rikov said. "If this is indeed 218.

true, we will be forced to take our money from them at gunpoint."

"I was told the Central Americans have not been paid in silver or gold.

They were given paper currency that is worthless. None of the stores in any of the towns in the USA will take this paper money."

"Until Field Marshal Bottger breaks a promise to us, we have no choice but to follow his orders. If anything he has told us is not true, including the amount and type of money we will be paid, then I will kill him personally."Rikov suddenly looked away. "I heard a noise, Captain."

Zubov jerked around. "What kind of noise?" he whispered when all seemed quiet at the front, to the north of their present position.

"A cry . . . like the crying of a small child, but very soft and far away."

"Who the h.e.l.l would be crying in this wilderness? There are no children here. We haven't seen anyone since we crossed that ridge miles behind us."

"It may be nothing," Rikov said, although he continued to keep an eye on a hilltop roughly half a mile away. "I could have imagined it, I suppose."

Zubov went back to his field gla.s.ses, sweeping the jungle again.

"Nothing," he hissed, clenching his teeth. "But I have the distinct feeling that something is wrong."

"Look!" Rikov exclaimed, pointing to a gra.s.sy slope to the north. "It is Yarimere! What is he doing out in the open like that?"

Zubov turned his binoculars on the slope. Yarimere Hecht, an old friend from Russia, was staggering down the hill, stumbling and almost falling.

And now Zubov heard the crying sounds too, for they were distinct in the silence surrounding them.

"What the h.e.l.l is wrong with him?" Rikov wanted to know, focusing his field gla.s.ses on a man in a black shirt and black 219.

219.

beret stumbling toward them, dark stains on his clothes and an agonized expression on his face.

Zubov sighed, reaching for his AK-47 automatic rifle. "He is badly wounded, comrade. Someone has shot him several times in the chest and belly."

Rikov tensed, reaching down for his own automatic rifle. "Then they are here," he whispered.

The sudden staccato of automatic-weapons fire thundered from the jungle hills south of them. Yarimere Hecht went down in a heap as if he'd been struck over the head by a heavy hammer, blood squirting from a number of wounds across his back and sides, his head coming apart in a spray of blood and bone and tufts of his long black hair.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Zubov hissed, looking for the source of the bullets.

"How the h.e.l.l did they get behind us?"

"It is not possible," Sergeant Rikov said as more and more gunfire erupted from trees to the south and west of their position.

The endless blasts of large-bore guns echoed across the Ox-acan jungle.

Men in black vests and berets tumbled out of pine thickets, shooting at unseen targets to their rear before they were gunned down.

"They have us cornered," Zubov exclaimed. "We have no choice but to headnorth, and that is all very thick jungle country."

"To h.e.l.l with this," Rikov shouted as the gunshots came closer, lead slugs whistling through the air above their heads now.

He came to a crouch and took off at a run, keeping low to make as small a target as possible.

Captain Zubov had cupped his hands around his mouth to warn his sergeant against such a retreat, when he felt the earth shudder beneath him.

Sergeant Rikov stepped on a land mine less than thirty yards downslope.

He was blown skyward, arms windmilling, his AK-47 flying into the air only fractions of a second before his legs 220.

were severed from his body. Pulpy bits of bone and flesh swirled away from his torso, and as he met his appointment with death, he let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Zubov did not watch his sergeant land in pieces around a deep crater where the land mine had been planted. All he could think of now was making it out of this place with his skin intact.

Men were screaming across vine-choked ridges behind him, and he had proof the land south of his position had been mined ... his trusted sergeant's body decorated the dark green gra.s.s running into the valley below him.

"How the h.e.l.l did they slip up behind us without any of my men knowing about it?" he wondered aloud, inching backward until he was protected from flying bullets by a ledge of rock jutting from the hill.

It was not possible, and yet the shrill cries of wounded and dying men made it all too clear his squad was in deep trouble in the pines.

Zubov saw two of his men break from a stand of trees at a dead run, spraying automatic-weapons fire in their wake as they ran toward safety.

A mortar thudded somewhere on a hillock west of the valley, and then an earsplitting explosion blew his Blackshirt squad men away, leaving nothing but flying dirt and vines and clods of gra.s.s where they had been only moments before the blast.

To h.e.l.l with this, he thought, bending low to make a run to the east where no guns riddled the slopes. He dashed across the low side of the ridge with his AK-47 c.o.c.ked, ready to unleash its deadly load should any target present itself before he reached the apparent safety of a jungle grove nestled in a swale between two hills.

Too late, he caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure in the trees, and the glint of early morning sunlight off the barrel of a rifle.

221.

221.

Zubov threw himself flat in the gra.s.s, bringing his rifle to bear on the shape.The pounding of rapid fire filled his ears, and he felt a stinging sensation spread across the top of his head and his right shoulder.

The sky above him began to spin, and he lost his bearings for a moment.

"What the h.e.l.l ... is happening?" he stuttered, feeling a wet substance flow out of his mouth when he spoke.

He looked down at the gra.s.s below his chin. A crimson stain spread between his elbows, and pain raced through his skull unlike any pain he'd ever known.

/ am shot, he thought dully as he felt himself spinning in widening circles. Tiny pinpoints of light flashed before his eyes as the world around him darkened.

How did they get behind us? he wondered again, until a deep wracking cough filled his mouth with blood.

His eyes batted shut, and the pain was gone.

Captain Raul Perez stepped from cover and stood over the bodies of the mercenaries as his men came out of the jungle to join him. They all wore the red berets of the Mexican Special Forces units that Harley Reno and Hammer Hammerick had trained the year before when Perro Loco first attacked Mexico.

Sergeant Julio Yara stepped to Perez's side. "I see our training last year was not in vain, Captain," he said with a grin.

Perez looked around at his men, who'd suffered no loses in their ambush of the mercenaries. "Yes, the tactics the ameri-canos taught us worked extremely well."

Sergeant Yara turned to the other men. "Pick up all the weapons and ammunition you can and strip the bodies for the buzzards. We shall leave a message the mercenaries will not soon forget."

222.

Bruno Bottger was furious when Bergman told him of Bundt's report of the mercenary unit slaughtered in the mountainous region of Oxaca.

"Why are we wasting valuable troops and equipment trying to occupy land that is so remote?" he asked scornfully.

Bergman shrugged. "We did not feel the Mexican Army was such a threat, Field Marshal. Evidently, they have learned some lessons from fighting with the Americans last year."

"From now on, we will concentrate on taking Mexico City, not worthless mountains and jungles that have no strategic significance," he ordered.

He looked at General Bundt. "Herman, you will use the port cities we've already captured as staging points for reinforcements to build up a force that is to be used only in our final attack against Mexico City.

Once we have the seat of government in our hands, the Mexican Army will have no choice but to surrender."

"Yes, sir, Field Marshal," Bundt said, his face flaming withembarra.s.sment at his failure.

Bottger consulted a detailed topographic map of Mexico. "I want you to leapfrog our troops to take Acapulco and then Las Truchas next. From there we can ship in helicopters and gunships as well as men for the final a.s.sault on Mexico City."

"Yes, sir, it will be done," Bundt said.

"I do not want any more reports of failure, Herman, or you will soon be fighting as a private, do you understand me?"

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223.

"Yes, sir," he said, saluting smartly and hurrying from the room.

After the general left, Sergei looked at his boss. "Why the haste to take Mexico City, sir?"

Bottger sighed. "My bank accounts are depleted, Sergei. We need to get to the gold stored in the capital city as soon as possible, before our mercenaries find out we have nothing left with which to pay them."

Bergman nodded. "I understand."

"And, Sergei, have the scientists get the plague missiles and bombs ready. As soon as we've secured Mexico City, I want to launch BW attacks against Ben Raines and his troops. We cannot afford a repeat of Africa."

"Yes, sir."

Perro Loco's men were doing better. The roads toward Mexico City that ran through the middle of the country were well maintained and hadn't been mined extensively, so his heavy equipment and tanks were making short work of the Mexican Army's defenses. In fact, his men had progressed almost to the city of Puebla, less than a hundred miles south of Mexico City, well within the range of his helicopter gunships. He was almost ready to give the order for an all-out siege of the capital city.