"Looks like you're training your own gang down there."

Blancanales answered the joke. "They're all honor students. A's and a's."

"And what do they get for it?" Lyons asked rhetorically. He sat on the concrete stoop of a tenement. In his white karate pants and clinging sweat-soaked shirt, with close-cut blond hair and golden tan, he stood out like neon against the old, soot-gray tenement. "I'll tell what they get, they get their heads kicked by the punks. So we're training them to… er, present a credible threat of counterforce. There it is. Why are you here?"

"Want to use your Spanish?"

"Where?"

"El Salvador."

Lyons and Blancanales exchanged glances. The Puerto Rican ex-Green Beret sat beside Lyons on the stoop and said, "Here's a quick Spanish lesson for you. The word for asshole in Spanish is ano. Like, el ano del mundo. Asshole of the world. It's spelled S-a-l-v-a-d-o-r."

"Quit the lip," Konzaki told Blancanales. "A straight answer."

Lyons shook his head. No.

"Hey, Ironman," Gadgets jived. "You dig it down south. Forests, mountains, papayas, tropical showers. Just like a vacation in Hawaii, except in Spanish."

"Just like a vacation in Dachau," Lyons answered. "Except in Spanish."

"Gentlemen," Konzaki pronounced, switching from his Marine voice to the voice of a capital spokesman. "You are disparaging a democratically elected government attempting to reform a feudal nation while fighting a civil war."

"You believe that?" Lyons asked.

"No," Konzaki said, "but it sounds good."

"Then plug in your headphones when you talk that shit," Lyons countered bitterly. "I don't want to hear it."

"Then hear this, you limp-wristed bleeding-heart pinko liberal..." Konzaki swore.

"The Ironman? A pinko?" Gadgets asked incredulously.

"You want Quesada?" fumed Konzaki. "Remember Colonel Roberto Quesada, recently of Miami Beach, Florida? Wanted for the murder of David Holt and Alfred Lopez?"