Yesterday.

Generalissimo El Presidente Juan Hernandez awoke to pain in the darkness.  A vise was squeezing the left side of his face, in a grip like death.  Pain shot through his eye, and he brought his powerful left hand up to tear away the offending instrument.  But there was only the feel of dried leather.

Three days ago.

"Prepare for insertion."  Umbra's voice was calm and collected -- a sword feels best when wielded.  His private pain was temporarily drowned out by the thrum of the air crashing by the S70A, and the nearness of the insertion.

"Yaz" and "Cool," two voices answered from further back in the Black Hawk helicopter. Only two of the Nighthawks had agreed to join him, Salvage and Krios.  It had surprised him a little.  While Umbra himself had been somewhat of an outcast among the Nighthawks, Samantha (as Delta) had been quite well liked.  Nonetheless, Moonbeam and Echo, the other two survivors of the team, were not responding to Valerie's best efforts to contact them.  And the best efforts of the Valkyrie I satellite were quite impressive.

It had been the efforts of Valerie that pinpointed the location of Samantha's captivity.  Of dozens of facilities where Hernandez might have kept a valued pawn, this one had been identified, using the Generalissimo's own computers as sources.  This was but one of Valerie's many talents.

Salvage had supplied access to the Sikorsky helicopter.  His ability to fix anything, or even cobble together nearly anything from spare parts, had earned him favors completely around the world.  This trip was just a small payback, from a Colonel in Honduras.

Krios stared grimly at the passing jungle.  They were going to drop about twenty miles out from the General's villa, cover the swampy terrain in twenty minutes, and then break Samantha out from her cell in the villa.  He hated the heat, but even so it would be about average in difficulty, given their combined abilities.  They had momentarily considered using mercenary non-Exotics, either as auxiliaries or as diversions, but immediately discounted it.  Typical agents would be a net expense and a net liability.

Michael considered Krios an enigma.  He was the last one Michael would have considered to volunteer for this.  His detached way of watching people die, even team members, made it hard to believe that he felt anything about anyone.  Nonetheless, his first words, upon hearing that Delta was captured and alive, were a quiet "When do we leave?"

"Cuando llegamos?"  Michael asked the pilot.

"Noventa segundos, Senor Umbra."

"We arrive in ninety seconds." Michael repeated, although they all spoke enough Spanish to have understood.  Umbra was nominally the leader, and he must act the part. They slid open the door, letting the rushing of air into the cabin to buffet their hair and clothes.  A normal team would have been preparing with parachutes or drop-wires.

They were Exotics.

The moment came, and in the cabin it was as if Michael were never there.  Darkness dripped off the walls of the helicopter, off the trees, the bushes, finally the ground.  Darkness witnessed a streak of cold in the air, hitting the ground at a shallow angle and shooting off like a luge in a race to the northwest.  Darkness witnessed a human gliding from the helicopter wearing an armored harness, gliding silently after the ice streaking off in the humid night air.

And darkness followed.

Presidente Juan Hernandez rested his seven-foot frame in a specially constructed throne on his patio, enjoying the warm night at his villa.  Things were going just according to plan.

The American girl had told him exactly what he needed to know.  He had waited until she had contacted her friends among the American CIA, or whatever agency it was that she had worked for, before he had collected her.  And they would be coming.

Pity he had been unable to get more out of her.  Perhaps Tornado would oblige later. Across the patio, apparently asleep under his sombrero, was the leader of Los Soldados.  They had accepted the Generalissimo's invitation to come enjoy the official hospitality of Santo Domingo.  America was threatening to put the tiny nation on its list of countries that harbored terrorists, but America would soon have little leverage for such annoyingly arrogant display.

Los Soldados were aware of the possibility of an American invasion, although they did not know it had already been precipitated by the Generalissimo baiting a trap.  What they did not know, he would not need to pay for.  Indeed, they would assume that the assault was to attack them during their widely publicized visit.

El Presidente chuckled to himself.

Across the patio, Tornado quietly noticed and considered the laugh.  Something was definitely "out of proper clothing," as his mother would have said.  At the moment, he joked with himself, almost everyone was.  While Jaguar slept naked in his room upstairs, and Tanque was drinking with the women provided by the Presidente, Escorpiona and Oscuro were indulging themselves in their usual way.  He hoped that the hot-headed ones would make love rather than destroying another room -- it became tiresome apologizing to hosts.

He heard a slight noise on the grounds, and gently with his mind lifted back his sombrero to reveal his steely eyes.  Something was definitely not correct.

There were soldaditos on the grounds, little soldiers, the guards of the Presidente.  But this noise had been more quiet than their tromping steps.  Without moving, his eyes scanned the grounds, and his mind followed.  There, to the left, was Jaguar, mock-hunting the guards.  He was only a few feet from the back of one when he leaped vertically into a tree, something a true jaguar could not have done.  The guard did not even notice the movement.  Jaguar had counted
his kill.

Tornado sighed.  He would get no sleep this night.

Salvage watched the villa through night vision binoculars of his own devising, watching the forms moving across the grounds.  One was bounding, creeping, occasionally pouncing like an overgrown kitten.  It was definitely an Exotic, and probably, he considered, Jaguar.  When the ruckus began, that would have to be the first target, because Jaguar's location changed too quickly and too often to allow for any assumptions about his status.   That would be Salvage's job.

The two on the little patio belonged to Krios.  President Hernandez had no known powers, although he was a huge man, and Krios would probably be able to handle both him and the sleeping Tornado in a single ice storm.  Los Soldados would then be minus two , and the odds would be even.

Salvage's second job was Tanque, who would respond quickly but, according to the view from the window, would be somewhat the worse for alcohol.  The special concoction for him only required a hit, and Tanque was not very fast even sober.  With any luck, there would be only Scorpion and Oblivion left to face the two of them while Umbra extracted Delta.

Well, only them and twenty or so guards with machine guns.  Salvage grinned.  He would have to move quickly into the house as his ammunition was exhausted -- other than those machine guns, there was nothing out here to use for construction material.  Such was life in someone else's jungle.  Salvage waited for the signal.

Krios looked at the trio on the patio, hoping for the serving girl to leave before the signal came.  The patio was at the edge of his range, the heat was oppressive, and Tornado was known to be powerful.  He couldn't afford to try to protect the girl from his blast.  It was to be full power, and everything he could add to that.

One chance.

If he didn't take down Tornado on the first try, they could lose the whole shooting match.  So he would go down.

That was the plan.  But no plan ever survived contact with the enemy.  Krios waited for the signal.

Hundreds of miles away, an artificial intelligence on a satellite listened to a relay.  In a moment she would insert a virus into a dozen computers, disrupting the power in several hundred square miles of a little country called Santo Domingo, and rendering a particular villa completely electronics-free.  Valerie waited for the signal.

Umbra lurked in the darkness, waiting for the moment.  There was a moment, every twelve minutes or so, when three of the guards passed close enough together for his powers to act upon them simultaneously.  And the moment was...

"Now."

Tornado heard the word in his mind, clear as the three bells of his father's chapel.  instinctively he raised a shield and began to turn as it hit him.

El Presidente heard it also, and began to straighten as the sounds began.  Several guards screamed, a shot rang out, and he was hit by an iceberg and blown through the door into his study, overwhelmed with pain and a sudden empty weakness.  He passed out.

Krios nodded in satisfaction at the blockage on the patio, and turned his attention to the nearest guard.  The luckless man dropped with a javelin of ice through his gut.  Krios turned his attention to the next target, and idly wondered how the other two were doing in the suddenly dark villa.

"Scum and Wind down." he reported.

Salvage was unhappy with his shot.  The cat had turned wrong at the last moment, and it had been a glancing blow.  However, once Jaguar's form had completed its acrobatic fall to the ground, it lay where it had fallen.

"Cat down not out." he reported.

Tanque was not in the window, so as Salvage moved closer, he turned his attention to the remaining guards.  They were shouting in Spanish, something about being attacked by Oscuro, The Dark One.  They got that right, in metaphor if not in fact.  But their shouts were confused, and Salvage couldn't understand why some were suddenly running into the villa.

There was an explosion from the patio, and Tornado flew a dozen meters into the air, scattering clouds of shaved ice.  He looked mad.  Like a god looks mad.

"Oh, boy." came the voice in Krios's ear.

"He's got his Wind up." answered Krios coolly.  "But hold your fire until I say."

"What?"

"Shh."

To add to the gunfire in the yard, there were crashes and shots from the main house.  The Nighthawks didn't have time to investigate.  There was enough to do outside.

Umbra felt the bullets passed through him, tearing chunks out of the three guards as they fell, already dead.  He felt them as a vague pain, more like indigestion rather than real damage.  There were two more guards between himself and the stairs that led to the cell.

They didn't stand a chance.

Tornado attempted to clear his head as he observed the carnage, Jaguar's bleeding form, the guards shooting at Oscuro as he flowed down the stairs, and the absence of the Presidente.  Tornado came to the obvious conclusion.  This visit was a double-cross.

"Soldados, Marchan." He put the thoughts into all their heads.  "Jaguar, awake!"

Tornado heard the team's responses, even as the machine gun fire from the guards began bouncing off his mental shield.  Grabbing the two closest guards, he squeezed their brains into a pulp.  There was no time for subtlety.

Jaguar groaned and responded to the prompting of his leader.  He was bleeding badly, but the best defense was a dead opponent.  He dived off the ground behind a tree while a guard turned to take aim at him.  A momentary dodge, then a slash and the guard's guts fertilized the grass.  Jaguar felt better already.

Three guards ran for the jungle.  One made it.

Tornado turned in the air to survey the grounds, then the villa, even as he surveyed the minds of his team.  Tanque had taken out some guards inside, and collected a few bruises to show for it.  Oscuro and Escorpiona had returned to their clothing and were about to... he paused, confused.  How could The Dark One be with Escorpiona?

"Target wind on two." came the voice of Krios in Salvage's headset.

"On one."  repeated Salvage.

"Now."

Simultaneously, a spear of ice and a lance of red light hit Tornado from two different directions, transfixing him like a shining crucifix.  He crumpled and fell ten meters to the lawn.

Into the arms of darkness.

Krios had watched the darkness flow from the main house onto the lawn, noting with interest Oblivion's similarities and differences to Umbra's style.  It was not surprising that the guards could not recognize the difference.

Both shadow-warriors were uncanny.

And the wailing coming from this darkness was even more so.  Not for the first time, Krios wished that Echo and Moonbeam had not been indisposed.

"What's happening?" Salvage queried.

"The guards thought Umbra was Oblivion.  Thought Los Soldados switched sides."

Salvage whistled quietly.  "Better than we could have hoped."

"Shhh."

Oblivion cradled his leader, shielding the entire team from sight.  Tornado was alive, if barely.  The sadness and darkness flared up to a dark scream in his throat.

"Escape, or avenge?" asked Jaguar, holding up a claw wet with his own blood.

"Avenge!" screamed Scorpion.

"Escape."  Oblivion's gaze was on his leader.

"Avenge!" screamed Scorpion, beating her fists against her lover's back and shoulder.

Tanque looked from one to the other, still feeling the alcohol and the bruises across his chest from the guards' machine guns.  "Escape, then avenge."

Oblivion brought his dark gaze to bear on Tanque.  He was not normally the wise one.

"Escape, then avenge,"  he repeated.  Then he began to bear them off.

"Perhaps a little of one, some of the other."  growled Jaguar as he leaped down through the darkness into a tree.

Krios watched the darkness recede, then moved in toward the patio to check on the Generalissimo.  Inside the study, he found the huge body just beginning to move.

"You shouldn't kidnap Americans, General.  It makes us mad."

El Presidente heard the voice of the American agent as he struggled back to consciousness.  God, the cold.  The pain.  How dare they...

Oh, yes, he had invited them.  And about now, they would be finding a present from their host.

Shadow flowed through the door and oozed off the walls in the small chamber which held the prisoner.  There was a bed, but it was unoccupied.  On the wall, hanging within shackles which contorted her body painfully, was a bloody form.

The shadows coalesced, with no one to view the transformation.  Michael quickly checked the unconscious form.  Alive.  Samantha.

Delta, Michael corrected himself.  For the next hour, until they were safely away, she was Delta.  And he was Umbra.

He examined the several shackles and chains briefly before breaking them.  There were electronic devices attached, unpowered due to Valerie's intervention.  Umbra shattered them and gathered Delta.  "Extraction in ninety seconds.  Medivac. "

A chill went through Salvage.  He hadn't brought enough mass for a full Medical unit.  He would have to move down to the Villa's kitchen.  "Acknowledged.  Party in the Kitchen.  Seventy seconds."

"I'm with El Presidente now."  came the quiet voice of Krios.

"Give him my compliments."  Salvage replied quietly as he moved over the wall into the villa proper.  He moved carefully, watching for living guards and booby traps as he began reconfiguring his equipment.

Overhead, Jaguar watched the armored man moving into range.  He didn't understand much English, but the last exchange had been obvious.  Party, kitchen, Presidente, compliments.  The American Mercenaries were celebrating their sneak attack.  Well, that was a game for two.

Jaguar dropped on the man's back, drilling him a foot into the ground and
sending a shower of sparks off of the equipment.  The man fell and then rose, from a
blow that would have dropped two of the little guards.

Salvage struggled up to face his assailant.  "Cat's back," he reported quietly.  Too quietly, since his headset was no longer functioning.

Salvage had faced worse.  Then he felt the frayed leads, the destroyed components along his back, the missing carrier wave from his headset.  He had been in the middle of reconfiguration when he was attacked, and half of his equipment was non-functional for one reason or another.  Including his gun.

Survive, report, destroy, escape, whispered his Nighthawk training.  He completed the stimulation module as he dodged the cat-man.

Jaguar struck like lightning, aiming to rip the sniper rifle from the man's grasp.  It flew over the wall into the darkness of the jungle.  One less fang in the enemy.

Salvage dodged again as he glanced after the lost gun. He had needed that power pack for restoring his force field.  He would have to use the reserve from his flight pack.  So much for escape.  But what else could he use?  He needed the goggles to see in the dark.

Jaguar struck again, a glancing blow that shattered some components in the now-defunct flight pack.  Salvage grinned savagely as a slight glow surrounded him.  Not full strength, but some protection nonetheless.  Now for an attack.  Of a sort.

Jaguar's blows missed, then landed, then missed again.  He would need to win quickly if this were to end with happiness.  So he would kill this man... now!  He leaped straight for the American's throat, and straight into a high-powered strobe of light which left him blinded.  But he could tell by the smell and the sound that his own blow had landed.  There was the gurgling of a torn throat.

Salvage thrashed, then lay still.

Jaguar limped into the bushes, his eyes slowly clearing and adjusting to the night.  He moved to the patio, where he could hear the rich tones of the Generalissimo and the low flat voice of an American mercenary.

Umbra arrived in the kitchen, carrying Delta.  She appeared to be stable, but he would only be happy when she was in a medical unit of Salvage's devising.  In the darkness of the large kitchen, he found the smashed body of a guard.  Probably the work of Tanque.  This was working out quite well.

Umbra continued to believe that for another full minute, as Salvage became more and more overdue...

Presidente Juan Hernandez stood in his study, the cold eyes of this American agent transfixing him. Would he never be warm again?  "You know that killing me would be a major mistake.  A diplomatic disaster for your country."

"Oh, darn."  said the American.  He appeared to be waiting for something.

El Presidente felt his strength returning.  He must play for time.  What would slow this man?  "There is money to be earned."

"Do tell."  Krios looked at the man coolly.  Delta was recovered.  His tiredness from that initial attack was passing.  There was no sense taking any longer at this.  He began to gather his powers.

Jaguar prepared himself as the president and the American mercenary discussed money.  If there had been any doubt, it was now dead.  Just as El Presidente would be, in a moment or two.

Presidente Juan Hernandez smiled as the Jaguar streaked into the room and slashed the American from behind.  The American fell quickly under the surprise attack.

"Finalmente!" spat the president.

Jaguar stood over the fallen mercenary and looked at the president with fire in his eyes.  "Si," he replied.  "Finalmente."

Then he leaped.

Under a bush on the grounds, the stimulation module continued its work.  Salvage's throat still felt white hot, but his breathing was even and the bleeding had stopped.  Exhausted, he assessed his equipment as he lay quietly.

There was very little to work with.  The force field had drained the power pack from the flight unit, and the flash had cost him most of the life of his headset.  He reconnected the radio, to hear only dead air.  No telling how long it had been.  He clicked his receiver twice.  There was no reply.

The lights were back on in the main villa, although they were off here in the grounds.  Voices were speaking lowly around the villa, and it sounded like people were moving bodies a few hundred feet away.  He had only a few minutes, probably less.  He reconfigured the headset into night vision goggles again.  They were grainy, but they would suffice.

There was no help for it.  Wounded or not, he must let the stimulation module go.  He would cannibalize only the power unit, to power his rush over the wall to the jungle.  There was another villa a kilometer away -- if he could reach the power lines connecting that to what passed in this country for an electrical grid, he would live.

Not counting power, his equipment was about one-third of its usual strength.  Call it nine seconds of force field, strengthened legs, and visual enhancement.  If he could get over the wall and find his gun in that time, he would live.  If he could get over the wall, he at least had a chance.

The voices moved away slightly.  There would never be a better time.

Salvage rolled to his feet, moved toward the wall, then leaped.  His feet crashed against the top of the wall and he landed on his face on the other side, sliding several yards down the steep grade.  He groaned, losing precious seconds as he gained his bearings and scanned for the gun.  There was shouting from the other side of the wall.

He couldn't detect the weapon.  It had come over the wall about there, and should have landed about here.  In between, it would have gone...

Into that tree.

Using the last of his heightened strength, Salvage leaped vertically to the first layer of the canopy.  He was two feet short of the gun, but he grabbed the wide branch and struggled to get his armored form onto it.  The branch creaked, but held.  From the way it felt, so did his arms.  He was struggling to move the armor with only the strength of his own tortured body.  This was not fun.

A volley of machine gun fire splattered through the foliage, knocking leaves off the tree.  Salvage ducked behind the branch, and felt his stomach drop as the gun fell away into the darkness.  There were about a drop and a half of power left in his visor, and nothing anywhere else.  This was going to hurt.

He reconnected the stimulator, and rolled off into the night, into the...

...Pain...

...Pain...  And dry batteries...

...Pain...  And throbbing head...

...Pain...  And an approaching searchlight...  They would be here in a moment.  Then there would soon be more...

...Pain...  And an angel appeared to his blurred sight, a woman backlit by light like angels in the Roma Downey series.  Was he dead?  Then why was there so much...

...Pain...  "Is it time to go?"

"Yes."  said Moonbeam, smiling.  "It's time to go."

Yesterday.

Generalissimo El Presidente Juan Hernandez awoke to pain in the darkness.  A vise was squeezing the left side of his face, in a grip like death.  Pain shot through his eye, and he brought his powerful left hand up to tear away the offending instrument.  But there was only the feel of dried leather.

"Presidente." came a female voice from the foot of his bedside.  He looked, groggy, to see a woman in white, a nurse of some sort.  "You are awake."

El Presidente felt his body, the weakness, the damage.  He was not himself.  He would have to have the woman killed for seeing him like this.

No matter.  She was unimportant.

"Did the others live?"  He asked, wondering of the Americans and Los Soldados.

"Many of la Guardia died.  A few survived their wounds. "  replied the nurse.  The stupid woman thought he cared about the guards.  He would definitely have her killed, along with any guards who did not have enough new scars to justify their lives.

"The Americans?  The Jaguar?" he prodded impatiently.  He remembered the feeling of that silly cat's throat in his hands.  Its claws on his face...

The nurse seemed agitated.  "The Jaguar and the American were dead in the study.  The guards put them into the freezer to await your orders."

He turned his one good eye onto the woman's face, and flexed his hands.  "The Freezer?"

"Yes , my general."

"And?"

"And the Jaguar is still there."

It felt good to kill her.

Today.

The face on the viewscreen was somber, with piercing eyes.  Presidente Juan Hernandez fought off his exhaustion and suppressed his nervousness.  This must go well.

"I will answer three questions." He repeated. "Make them good ones."

"If you do not answer truthfully, I will know. "  Tornado believed what he said.  He had many years of being The Changed One to his credit, and few could fool him long. "By your gods, I will know."

The Generalissimo hoped that that was literally true, but only literally.  Los Soldados would be as dangerous as enemies as they were powerful as friends.

"Of course."

"The Americans attacked your villa, and tried to kill us both?"

"Yes."  So far, so good.

"You did not order an attack on us?"

"You are correct."  Again, the right question for a truthful answer.

"And what of Jaguar?"  This was the dangerous question.  He suppressed the urge to touch the black leather patch over his eye.  He breathed out, a heavy sigh.  Thanks to  God for a vague question.

"I do not know where he is.  Like the Americans, he was not here when I regained consciousness."  Not here in this room, anyway.

Tornado watched the face of the Generalissimo, noting that he was telling the truth, but also that there was something wrong.  But The Changed One had agreed to only three questions, and now there were none left.  "Very well, General.  The Americans it will be.  For now."

"There is one thing it might please you to know."

The leader of Los Soldados raised an eyebrow, but stayed silent.  He watched the face of the master politician.  He would never trust such a one again.

"While the bodies were not recovered, I believe that El Jaguar killed at least one of the Americans before he was captured or killed himself."  The General prided himself on being able to tell just enough truth.

Tornado nodded briefly.  It would calm Escorpiona.  Some.  He broke the connection.  The Americans have much to answer for, and Los Soldados would soon see that the answering began.

El Presidente granted himself a smile, broadening by the moment until a great laugh echoed off the walls of his study.  He truly did not know where El Jaguar was -- neither the body nor the soul.  His people followed his orders precisely, and he would never know where the remains had been deposited.  Well, most of the remains.

He looked at the new trophy on the wall of his study.

The pelt was magnificent.
 

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