"I will do as you suggest, Colonel Gunther. The technicians will change the formula again."
Smiling, Gunther shook his head. "That is not necessary. I believe this compound better serves our purpose. Military napalm must incapacitate soldiers inside of vehicles, and under protective cover. But these peons?"
With a sweep of his arm, the foreign colonel directed Gonzalez's gaze to the blackened ejidoin the desert. The blond, blue-eyed East German continued in his excellent Spanish.
"This was no military operation. Our purpose here was to make an example of peons who will not work. The present formula serves the purpose of our organization."
2
Sweat dripped onto the steel and plastic of the M-79 grenade launcher Carl Lyons held. Sweat ran from his hair and down his face. He shifted in the seat and felt sweat flow down his back.
Under his short-sleeved shirt, Lyons wore Kevlar body armor. The rectangle of a steel trauma plate shielding his heart and central chest showed through his shirt. Hours before, when the summer sun had risen to its zenith and begun to beat down on the roof of the Drug Enforcement Agency surveillance van, the first streams of sweat had flowed from under the Kevlar. Now, sweat soaked the waist and pockets of his slacks.
Gadgets Schwarz set down his Uzi submachine gun. He pulled off his sunglasses and wiped sweat off the lenses for the tenth time in an hour. He also wore body armor. As he pushed the sunglasses back on, a drop of sweat hit the right lens. He wiped his sunglasses for the eleventh time in that hour.
"Can't the government afford an air conditioner?" Schwarz asked heatedly. "Summertime in Kevlar is cruel and unusual."
The young DEA agent who had volunteered to drive the van answered Gadgets in a bored monotone. "We've got one. It's in the director's car."