Close Quarters. Don Pendleton

beneath his Marlins baseball cap. The man’s dress perfectly blended with the styles worn by the Able Team warriors, but his escorts stood out like highway cones in their government suits.

      They stopped at the table, and the taller one in serge blue removed his sunglasses. He looked around, then said, “You Irons?”

      “Yeah,” Lyons confirmed. He gestured to Blancanales and Schwarz respectively. “This is Rose and Black.”

      “Here’s your man,” they said.

      Without a word the pair whirled and made distance back the way they had come.

      The man stood there with a somewhat beleaguered expression. Lyons felt a bit of empathy for the guy. The two FBI agents assigned to bring him here were obviously intent on more important things, and Lyons couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. The wrist brace on his right arm and deep scratches on his legs made it obvious he’d been in a recent tussle. Lyons had no doubt this was Christopher Harland.

      “Have a seat,” he said, waving Harland into the one vacant chair at their table.

      The young man stuck his hands in his pockets and studied their faces in turn—almost as if sizing them up—before he sat.

      “You hungry?” Blancanales asked.

      Harland inclined his head at the disappearing agents and said, “They got me something when we landed. I’m good.” After a pause he added, “Thanks.”

      “How about something to drink? You must be thirsty.”

      He nodded and Blancanales signaled the waitress. The young man ordered a beer—a Tecate—and watched the waitress with obvious appreciation as she jiggled away with his order.

      Lyons smiled at his two companions. Okay, so maybe he could learn to like the kid, after all.

      “How was your flight?” Schwarz asked to break the silence.

      “It was okay.”

      “Those guys, they treat you okay?” Lyons asked.

      “I suppose.”

      “You go by Chris?” Blancanales asked.

      “I prefer Christopher.”

      “Fair enough.”

      Schwarz went back to shoveling food into his mouth while Blancanales took another pull at his malt-based soda.

      Lyons looked around. He saw only a couple of people nearby, nobody within earshot. Midafternoon and the lunch crowd was gone. It was too early for happy hour. “We’ve been briefed on what happened to you.”

      “Okay,” Harland said.

      “Anything you want to add?”

      “It’s pretty much like I told them.” Harland clammed up as the waitress dropped a napkin on the table, followed by his beer.

      Lyons handed her enough cash to cover the entire tab plus a tip that was generous enough to imply they wouldn’t need her again.

      Once she’d left, Harland continued. “I barely managed to escape with my life. Those bastards are holding my friends hostage, including a woman I care about.”

      “What do they want with your team?” Blancanales asked.

      Lyons eyed Harland. “And especially why would they keep the others and release just you?”

      Harland pulled off his sunglasses to expose a fresh black eye. Something in his expression seemed hardened, more mature and empowered than the average twenty-eight-year-old college grad. His expression bore witness to untold brutalities and hardships, and Lyons felt a measure of regret.

      “I didn’t make any deals, if that’s what you think,” Harland said.

      Lyons leaned close. “Hey, asshole, take it easy. We’re on your side.”

      Blancanales quickly intervened in a way that had earned him the “Politician” nickname. “Listen, Christopher, we’re not trying to give you a hard time. You can relax with us. Our job’s to keep you alive, but in order to do that we need to know everything. You shoot straight with us and we’ll do the same, no bull. Just tell us everything you can remember about these men.”

      Able Team had, of course, already been thoroughly briefed by Stony Man Farm. As soon as word came from channels—specifically a SIGINT analyst from the American embassy in the Paraguayan capital of Asunción—mission controller Barbara Price had called the Stony Man teams into action. The situation, as Harland had laid it out, was that seventeen members from a U.S. Peace Corps contingent along with three missionaries had been brutally assaulted and taken hostage by parties unknown. After they razed the camp and brutalized several of the women, they took them all except Harland. He’d been fortunate or maybe unfortunate enough to get the crap beaten out of him and sent to Asunción with a message: don’t attempt to interfere or the hostages would be slaughtered.

      “What were you doing there exactly?” Schwarz asked.

      “I was there on a Peace Corps mission,” Harland said.

      Lyons said, “We understand that, but what kind of mission? Humanitarian aid, education, what?”

      “Take your pick. After I left Rutgers I got selected to go down there and help try to bring modern facilities to their indigenous tribal populations. In some respects, these people have chosen a self-imposed exile. Mostly it’s a social and cultural isolationism but there’s a political play to it, too.”

      “What kind of play?” Blancanales asked.

      Harland took a long swallow from his bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “More than sixty percent of the population of Paraguay is urbanized. The rest are content to retire to farming life, particularly since they have the sixth largest soy production in the world. A very small percentage have made their homes deeper in the jungle, traveling to the farms like sharecroppers and then back again at the end of the workday. It’s almost a migratory existence. It’s those people we were sent there to help.”

      “So these military men,” Lyons said. “What can you tell us about them specifically?”

      “Nothing. I was told that if I so much as breathed a word about what I saw they’d kill my friends. I took a risk just leaving the country. I’m sure they’ll figure I’ve talked.” Harland’s voice cracked when he added, “They’re probably all dead by now and I killed them.”

      “You can’t think like that, man,” Schwarz said.

      “That’s right, Christopher,” Blancanales added in a gentle tone, squeezing Harland’s shoulder. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you. And if we can help it, we’re not going to let anything happen to your friends, either.”

      “Get real, dude,” Harland said as he wiped his bloodshot, swollen eyes. “You don’t have any control over what’s going on down there.”

      “We have more control than you might think,” Lyons said.

      Indeed, even as Harland’s tough facade melted, the Able Team warriors knew something perhaps less than a dozen people in the world knew. Five of the toughest and bravest men alive were touching down in Paraguay at that moment. Few knew their names or places of origin, but the exploits of Phoenix Force were no less mythical than the fiery bird from which they drew their namesake.

      “You haven’t seen what these men are capable of,” Harland said.

      Blancanales smiled. “They haven’t seen what we’re capable of.”

      “Why don’t you go ahead and drink up,” Lyons said. “Sitting here with our derrieres hanging out for just anybody to take a shot at is starting to make me nervous.”

      “Remember,” Schwarz quipped. “We were going to try to look at this as a vacation?”

      Lyons’s cold blue eyes glinted wickedly