The lieutenant stared at the beauty of El Salvador. At moments such as this, after nights without sleep, his fatigue and fear and adrenaline heightening his emotions, he loved his El Salvador with an intensity beyond simple military esprit or mere patriotism. For a moment, he surrendered his identity to the embrace of the earth of El Salvador, the warm rain drumming on his back becoming the blood drumming in his ears, his flesh merging with the warm mud, his eyes and what his eyes saw becoming inseparable. All became one: his dark skin, his Olmec-Nahua-Spanish face, his European name, his Indian heritage and his twentieth-century hopes — the earth of Cuscutlan-El Salvador received him as the faithful son it had created, Indian and Spanish, sometime poet and dreamer and full-time commando…

A hiss from his nearest soldier startled him. Lieutenant Lizco realized he must have slept with his eyes open. Now the storm clouds glowed silver with the sun. He looked down to the road.

Trucks approached.

What the lieutenant saw confirmed the information he had gathered in the preceding months.

The first truck was a four-wheel-drive Toyota Land Cruiser with a whip antenna. It served as the point vehicle. The militiamen inside watched for guerrilla roadblocks and ambushes, the radio always on, the microphone at hand to instantly transmit warning to the other trucks following a kilometer behind. They also had the duty of finding any land mines placed by guerrillas in the road. The second and third trucks, both armored Silverados, identical in year and color and trim, stayed in the tracks of the Toyota's oversized tires. Colonel Quesada rode in the second or third truck, unseen behind the gray-tinted windows. No guerrilla could aim an antitank rocket at one of the Silverados with confidence of hitting the fascist colonel.