Davis pointed to the south. In the afternoon glare, the men of Able Team saw only heat-shimmering desert.

"How far to Culiacan?" Lyons asked.

"I guess we're about five miles outside city limits," Davis replied. "You can catch a bus on the highway."

"I have friends in the city," Miguel Coral told the North Americans. "I will go. Who will go with me?"

"We have no clothes, only uniforms," Vato answered, pointing to the camouflage-patterned Mexican army fatigues he and the three other Yaqui fighters wore.

"I can't," Gadgets answered. "I have to stay with the radios. And if you're going, the Politician's got to stay here to translate. So that means the Ironman goes. You still got your civilian clothes?"

Lyons pulled his wadded slacks and shirt from his pack. He found his sport shirt. As he dressed, Vato and the Yaquis spread out into the desert around the helicopter. In their uniforms, with Mexican army boots and gear and weapons, they looked like young soldiers on maneuvers.

"How much money you got?" Lyons asked Gadgets.

Gadgets took a plastic box from his pack. The stenciled word Moneymarked the lid. He took out stacks of crisp greenbacks in bank wrappers. "Ten thousand... twenty thousand... thirty thousand total. How much will two hundred gallons of kerosene cost?"

Davis stared at the money. "You always carry that much cash around in your backpack?"

"Nothing like pictures of Benjamin Franklin to expedite solutions to difficult situations," Gadgets jived as he counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills. "Will a thousand dollars cover a fill-up?"

"Make it two thousand." Lyons buttoned up his sport shirt.

Gadgets laughed at Lyons's wrinkled, dirty clothes. "Look at that dude. He's so mean he even wipes out Perma-Press. Here's a thousand more. Buy yourself a new shirt."