Deadly Payload. Don Pendleton

and their comrade continued parallel to the road the motorbikes and pickup took for a few minutes when Schwarz gave the hand signal for them to stop cold.

      Arquillo and Lyons crouched deeply. The leaves of the canopy were thick overhead, but to some forms of detection, they might as well have been standing on barren tundra.

      “Tree trunks, break up our pattern,” Schwarz whispered, crawling into the crooked fingers of a tree’s roots for cover. The others did the same, sweeping leaves and mud over themselves. The ambient temperature of the forest floor would allow the leaves and mud to mask their humanoid heat patterns, however, all the metallic gear they carried would provide enough to lock on with focused radar sweeps. Even the pound of metal in Arquillo’s polymer-framed Glock would register.

      Schwarz inwardly hoped that because of the low-cost Chinese electronics in the unmanned drones, that they wouldn’t have the technical capacity to operate a focused beam radar sweep. He doubted it, though. The drones were supposed to be untraceable, but the enemy would undoubtedly want prime-quality gear for the UAVs protecting their home base. He braced his SIG and aimed toward where the PDA’s sensors picked up the drones’ approach, ready to empty a magazine of 5.56 mm NATO rounds into the Predator.

      The thrum of engines sounded overhead as the UAVs took up an orbit. There were two of them, Schwarz’s monitor picked them out as they described a lazy circular arc overhead, setting Able Team and their ally perfectly in the middle. The electronics genius scowled.

      “Found us,” Schwarz said. He still stayed close to the tree trunk, but the mulch of the forest floor was no longer needed. “But these aren’t armed.”

      “The last time they hosed us down from the air, they got bupkis,” Lyons growled. “This time, they want confirmed kills. That means…”

      The buzzing snarl of dirt bikes rose to a crescendo in the distance, but then stopped. Blancanales gestured toward where he placed the enemy’s last position. His SIG, equipped with an M-203 grenade launcher, swept the forest.

      Lyons squirmed out of most of his gear and laid the SIG Masterkey beside it. The only metal he had left on his person was his combat knife and his Kissinger-tuned 1911 pocket revolver and spare ammunition. It was still a significant amount, but the Able Team leader had been briefed well by Schwarz about the radar capability of the Predator drones. His sheathed magazines, pocketed revolver and battle knife, under radar-absorbent ballistic nylon, would provide a negligible signal for the drone to pick up. He threaded a suppressor onto the barrel of the .45 auto and nodded for the others to do the same.

      The implication was clear.

      His teammates dumped their gear except for their handguns and knives.

      Arquillo was about to do the same, but Lyons shook his head.

      “You’re our anchor,” he told her in a low whisper. “I know you’re okay with fighting, but this isn’t going to be self-defense. This is going to be slaughter.”

      Arquillo frowned as she gripped her .45. “I can handle myself.”

      Lyons shook his head. “If things go tits up, I need someone with a real weapon, not a handgun, giving us cover fire.”

      The CIA agent’s eyes narrowed. “Because I’m a woman?”

      “Because you’re not a member of our team, and you haven’t done what we have,” Lyons said. He stalked off into the forest, his modified-for-silence .45 a dark, grim bit of high-tech in his fist.

      T SO K U KILLED THE ENGINE on his Kawasaki and slid off its seat. The heat was stifling, but it was a familiar cloak. While the rain forest here smelled different, strange plants and animals compared to the jungles of Thailand where he served as chief of security for heroin plantations, it was familiar territory. The rules were the same as back in Thailand, even if their aerial cover was far more sophisticated. Somewhere above the treetops, rotating around their target site, the Raptors, Predators updated and renamed by the Engineers of the New Tomorrow, kept high-tech eyes on their prey.

      He clutched his Heckler & Koch G-36 K, a fine, sturdy piece of hardware that was as well suited to the jungle as his old AK-47. While his shirt stuck to him with damp sweat and sticky humidity, his vest didn’t add an unwanted burden of extra heat while providing a layer of protection against even full-powered rifle slugs. ENT had gone to great lengths to give Tso all he needed to be successful in this new environment.

      Tso pulled his out GPS monitor. The Raptors had picked up his team on its radar, the steel in their weapons and gear giving them away to invisible high-frequency beams. There was some scattering of the signal, tiny blips away from their main targets, four people who had wandered into the jungle.

      No, they hadn’t wandered. They’d survived one of ENT’s distracting traps and a strafing run. The Mercedes SUV left burning at the cliff was mute testimony that the strangers weren’t wayward tourists. It was a quality, expensive piece of equipment, and charred gear in the back indicated that the four of them were well-armed and looking for trouble.

      Tso sneered as he silently answered that the fools had found trouble.

      Using hand signals, Tso had his men spread out. They were a mix of Filipino, Thai, Mexican and Colombian, all experienced in jungle operations, and ENT had trained them together to form a cohesive team to the point where they could communicate entire thoughts with gestures and glances. FARC had made the mistake of trying to enter their territory, and the ragtag terrorists, forty strong, had fallen to the well-honed ENT security force under Tso, despite two-to-one odds. Tso hadn’t lost a single member of his team.

      Tso had seven men with him, leaving the others to protect the base. If anything happened to this group, Aceveda would lock down the facility. The Thai commander didn’t think that this group could handle two-to-one odds, but they had managed to survive a Raptor attack involving machine guns and an antitank missile. Firepower wasn’t everything, and Tso was under no illusion that even his team’s level of training made them invincible.

      There was a soft cough off to his right and Tso hit the ground hard. A Filipino ENT sentry also fell, but not out of survival reflex. The ENT gunman’s face had been obliterated by a suppressed pair of bullets, smashing his cheekbone and ejecting his brains out the other side of his skull. One glassy eye stared at Tso, unblinking in its accusation.

      There was no room for silent communication now. Not with hostile marauders in their midst.

      “Ambush!” Tso bellowed, slithering into the foliage as slugs dug up mud near him. He triggered his G-36 K, slicing a wide arc in the forest before reaching the cover of a tree trunk. Other assault rifles chattered, and Tso could see their muzzle-flashes in the dimness of the canopy’s shadow. “Check fire! Check fire!”

      The ENT commander slung his rifle. The weapon would give his position away. The rifles they selected for this operation were chosen for their compactness, but that same short barrel also produced a flare that would point right at him. Even with the muzzle brake taming the explosive gases to a mere spark, it was still bright enough to give away his position. Tso pulled his pistol and looked for movement in the trees. His team was smart enough to set their assault rifles aside, going to handguns in the darkness. A pistol wasn’t a preferred weapon, but with stealthy ambushers, their long-arms would prove to be a hindrance, giving aid to the enemy.

      Thumbing back the hammer on his pistol, Tso took to the shadows, hunting the demons of the forest.

      C ARL L YONS DELIBERATELY MISSED the apparent leader of the enemy strike force, throwing away ammunition in the course of forcing Tso to reach cover. He rammed a fresh magazine into the butt of his .45 and snicked on the safety. He wanted the Asian alive, or at least in good enough condition to survive a couple of questions. From his position in the middle of a patch of shadowy, moss-encrusted roots, he was invisible, the 1911’s suppressor rendering his low-flash ammunition invisible to view from Tso. The direction of the bullet impacts in the ground might have drawn the commander’s attention, but his assault rifle spit wide of the mark.

      “Loudmouth’s mine,” Lyons whispered