Three boats had left the cruiser offshore. Able Team, laden with equipment, needed the help of three Miskito soldiers. The two other boats each carried four men.

In seconds, the lookouts sent an all-clear code on their radios. The men at the boats dragged the inflated crafts into the palms and camouflaged them with palm fronds and brush, then returned to the shore with branches and whisked away the marks of the boats and every bootprint.

Able Team unpacked and distributed equipment. Two contrasand the sentries who would remain with the boats received Pocketscopes. The passive night sights used second-generation image-intensification electronics to amplify the ambient light of the stars and moon.

As the Miskitos checked the scopes, Blancanales switched on the NVS-700 Starlite scope fitted to his M-16/M-203 over-and-under assault rifle/grenade launcher. He scanned the darkness, the light-amplification electronics turning the rainy night to brilliant green-and-white day. Then he slipped a suppressor over the muzzle of the M-16 and jammed in a magazine of Interdynamics reduced-charge 5.56mm cartridges. Though Blancanales, Gadgets and Lyons all carried silenced pistols, the combination of the Starlite and Interdynamics suppressor kit gave them the capability of invisible, silent attack over a range of two hundred meters.

Gadgets checked the multifrequency coded impulse generator. Tonight, though he would not even carry a rifle, he had the greatest responsibility. The Sandinistas had garrisoned hundreds of soldiers in the region: the satellite photos revealed barracks near the workshops and docks of the harbor. If a sentry or guard dog saw Able Team slip into town, the latter risked pursuit by a battalion of Nicaraguan soldiers commanded by Cuban and Soviet officers. Gadgets could not stop a battalion with the electronics and radio-triggered claymores he carried, but he could slow one down. Other than his heavy gear, he carried only a knife and a silenced Beretta 93-R.