"I received the information from a hotel clerk who overheard," Lieutenant Lizco added. "He knows they are PLF."

Lieutenant Lizco referred to the Popular Liberation Forces, a Stalinist group that admitted links with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Unlike the rebel forces who hoped for eventual reconciliation of the nation after victory, the Popular Liberation Forces fought a war of annihilation. They took no prisoners in their assaults on isolated army positions, putting bullets through the heads of captured soldiers or hacking fifteen-year-old draftees to death with machetes. They dispatched assassins to silence Salvadorans — conservatives, liberals, union leaders, socialists, Marxist Utopians — who spoke of peaceful reform or a revolution ending without the creation of a "People's Soviet State." And they preached the doctrine of revenge: all Salvadorans who failed to join the People's Army faced execution after the Triumph.

Outside the mud-walled, bullet-pocked farmhouse where the Black Berets made their barracks and offices, the diesel generator sputtered and stopped. Both soldiers reflexively looked out the sandbagged window to the scorched cornfields. A midday attack? Guerrillas always sabotaged generators first, to cut off the lights and radios. But the officers saw no guerrillas advancing across the fields. No autofire cracked the quiet of the overcast afternoon. As their eyes searched the perimeter, the generator resumed its monotonous drone.

Finally turning to Lieutenant Lizco, the commander's exhausted, expressionless eyes examined the twenty-two-year-old junior officer. The commander glanced to the doorway to the other room. The lieutenant stepped to the door and looked out. The clerk had left the room that served as a unit office. Only then did the commander ask, "Quesada is a friend of yours?"

"No!" Lieutenant Lizco sneered.

"Perhaps his guards will protect him," the commander suggested. He turned away. Adding another cube of sugar to his coffee, he stared out at the black clouds bringing an early end to the afternoon. Lizco did not allow the silence to deny his point.