by Dick Stivers
“You mean, the White Warriors — Guerreros Blancos?” Lyons asked. He pulled out the gunman’s belt and bound his hands behind his back.
“I do not mean a soldier. But they are with Los Guerreros, yes.”
“And the Federates?” Lyons asked.
“They are all together. Culiacan is their city.”
“Miguel, what about the fuel? We’ve got to get out of here.”
“It is already arranged. That’s why we went to Juan. He took care of our planes, before the war.”
“Then let’s get that fuel and get gone.”
“A car follows!” Juan shouted.
Looking through the back windows, Lyons saw a new four-wheel-drive pickup closing on them. A man in a sports coat leaned from the passenger window. A submachine gun flashed.
Bullets hammered the van. Tempered glass sprayed the interior. The van swerved, throwing Lyons against the side. Another slug punched through the sheet metal.
Snatching up the sawed-off shotgun — a Remington 870 with a pistol-grip, the barrel cut back to fourteen inches — Lyons crawled to the shattered windows of the van’s back doors. He looked out and saw the 4x4 truck drawing up parallel with the van.
The gunman in the 4x4 sprayed slugs at Juan. Lyons pressed down the Remington’s safety and fired.
As the abbreviated shotgun rocked in his hands, Lyons pumped the slide and fired again.
He pumped the weapon and pulled the trigger a third time, but the hammer only clicked.
Impact slammed the van sideways. The swerving and sliding threw Lyons hard against the wall of the van again. Lyons looked forward and saw that the passenger door had flown open as the two vehicles banged into each other. He saw the unconscious gunman fall out. Scrambling for the door handle, Lyons saved the Mini-Uzi, then drew the door closed as the 4x4 truck hit their van again.
Juan stood on the brakes. The 4x4 continued on. Lyons looked at it through the shattered windshield and saw a gunman in the back clutching at the roll bar. No one drove the 4x4 now. The shotgun blasts had broken the windows, and they could see that the interior was sprayed with blood. As Lyons snapped out the steel folding stock of the Mini-Uzi, the truck smashed into a parked car. The impact launched the gunman over the cab and into the boulevard’s traffic.
Juan swerved. The wheels of his van bumped over the gunman. The middle-aged gangster gave a ranch-eroyell. “Ayeeee-ha!”
“Everyone okay?” Lyons called out.
Laughing, Juan glanced back. He laughed and talked as he raced through traffic. “I like you, rubio. For a month now, we have hidden in the house and said we were neutral, we were out of it, we wanted no trouble. Now we must move to another city, but in five minutes we killed six! Where is the other one?”
“He fell out.”
“Seven we killed! They will respect this old man!”
*
Two hours later, with the sun setting behind them, they bumped over the dirt road in a flatbed truck. Lyons rode with his feet on two cases of cold Dos Equis beer. Both Lyons and Coral held cardboard boxes full of roast chickens, tortillas, corn on the cob, plates of refried beans, chilis and chocolate cookies.
As Juan drove, he and Coral exchanged stories, sometimes in English, usually in Spanish. Lyons unwrapped the plastic around a kilo of hot tortillas and stuffed one in his mouth. He took another one, scooped up some refried beans. He ate tortillas and beans and watched the shacks pass.
As they arrived at the junkyard jacalwhere Alejandro lived with his family, they saw lanterns and people dancing in the warm evening to the blaring disco music of a transistor radio. A pink-and-blue Mickey Mouse piflatahung on a wire, ready to be destroyed by the children. Alejandro sat at the head of a table, pouring tequila for a group of friends. They listened as he told a story. He pointed with his index fingers — like a two-gun pistolero— to dramatize moments.
Coral looked at Lyons. They laughed.
They directed Juan to the arroyo where the others had camouflaged the helicopter. Juan took the flatbed truck, with its four fifty-five-gallon barrels of jet fuel on the back, to the edge of the hiding place. From there a hose would siphon the fuel into the troopship’s tanks.
Lyons shouted to his partners and the Yaquis. “Party time!”
“What’s the occasion?” Gadgets questioned from the darkness of the arroyo.
“For a start,” Lyons muttered, “we lived through another day.”
4
Bandages covered the right side of the agent’s face. A plaster cast immobilized his right shoulder and arm. Outside the window of the private room, birds fluttered in the courtyard of the clinic. The only survivor of the two surveillance units, Agent Nava, now sedated against terrible pain, described the killer of the other federal officers.
“A North American. Blond, but dark from the sun. Tall, I think. Strong. A very good shot. He killed the others with only a pistol.”
Sitting beside the agent’s hospital bed, Captain Gomez noted the details on a pad. He underlined the words “North American.”
“Did he speak Spanish or English?”
“English only. When I rode in the van, I pretended to be unconscious. I listened to what they said. They talked in English about the White Warriors and…”
“The American did?”
“Yes, he knew of us. They talked of the Warriors and the federals and the army. The ones in the front, I don’t know who said what, but they talked of the organization. Then they talked about ‘the fuel.’”
“Gasoline?”
“No, they used the word ‘fuel.’ One of them, the Mexican, said, ‘That’s why we went to Juan. He took care of our planes.’ That is what they said.”
“Then they were Ochoas?”
“They never said ‘Ochoa.’ But I think the Mexican was an Ochoa. He said ‘our planes.’ That is what Juan Perez did for the Ochoa Gang, right?”
Captain Gomez nodded. “The Mexican and Perez were Ochoas, but not the American. Interesting. They said they needed the fuel for their plane?”
“No. They never said what. Not a plane, not a truck, not a boat. They only said, ‘fuel.’ What happened to that Perez? Have you killed him yet?”
“No, he and his family escaped. We are searching — we alerted our units in the north — but nothing yet. Maybe Perez went with the others. We will learn soon. We have alerted all our men in the other cities.”
“Kill him. We should have killed him weeks ago. When his son killed our man.”
“We thought we could use him. But now he dies. And those others.”
Folding his note pad closed, Captain Gomez left the ward. His driver took him directly to his next appointment. The driver parked the car and went into a downtown office. After a wait of a few minutes, an officer of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency got in the car.
The driver wove through the city traffic while the officials in the back seat discussed the events of the previous day. The Texas-born DEA agent laughed when he heard the description of the American gangster who had killed the Federates.
“Well, where’d that fellow come from?” he said with a chuckle. “He’s supposed to be dead. We had him shot down.”
“Who?” Captain Gomez asked, confused by the Texan’s response.
“That’s Carl Lyons. He’s called The Ironman because he’s into weapons. He and his partners volunteered to work with the agency, and the agency sent him south to work with us. Damn, we couldn’t have that. So we had their plane shot down. We were told it crashed and burned, no survivors. Damn, this complicates everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re going to know who set them up! We sent them out there to fly over what we told them was a Mexican army operation. And the Mexicans shot them down. That puts us and the army on their shit list. And then yesterday this Lyons fellow shoots it out with Federates. That means they go it alone from now on. They won’t trust anyone. Makes it more difficult to kill them.”
“Who are
these men?”
“Hotshots. Specialists. Antiterrorist terrorists. Always interfering in our operations. Thought we’d get rid of them this time.”
“But they are still alive.”
“Yeah, and while they’re alive, there won’t be no end to the trouble. So we got to fix that.” The Texan looked directly at Captain Gomez. “We’ll work close on it with you, okay? For our mutual benefit.”
Returning to the federal offices, Captain Gomez typed up a summary of the information. One copy went by courier to Rancho Cortez. And one copy went by coded transmission to Mexico City, to the offices of the International.
*
Below the helicopter, the land became lush, tropical. Groves of bananas and avocados spread across mountains. Red dirt roads cut through jungles. As they neared Tepic, the sky darkened with the rain clouds of a southern storm.
Blancanales saw railroad tracks. He matched the landmarks and the railroad line to a map, then spoke into the intercom.
“You see the airport?”
“I’ve got it on trie radio,” Davis answered.
“How’s the fuel?”
“Getting low. But the airport’s coming up.”
Turning to his partners, Blancanales saw Gadgets sleeping. Lyons and Coral studied the land under them. Coral pointed to a grove of trees. Clearings appeared here and there in the trees. A paved road cut past the groves.
Lyons shouted to Blancanales, “How far?”
“Close.”
“Look there.” Lyons pointed to the grove.
“Yeah, but Davis wants to get closer to the airport.”
Lyons nodded. The helicopter banked. To the east, they saw the hangars and runways of the airport. A few kilometers to the south, sunlight flashed from the windows and sheet-metal roofs of thousands of houses and shops. Then the storm clouds moved across Tepic. A smear of rain trailed from the clouds.
“How close are you going to the city?” Blancanales asked Davis.
“I’m circling for a spot now. See a good place?”
“In those trees.”
A tight bank took them back to the grove. Davis eased the troopship into a clearing. The rotor tips thrashed the nearest trees, chopping leaves and branches, then the skids touched the red earth and Davis switched off the power.
Silence.
Their ears rang in the sudden absence of turbine whine. Vato and the three Yaqui teenagers left the helicopter and took guard positions, playing the role of soldiers.
Gadgets woke and stared around him. “Where are we?”
“Tepic,” Coral answered.
“Where’s that?”
“Eight hundred kilometers from Mexico City.”
The afternoon light went gray, and rain swept the grove with a sound like a wave breaking. The downpour bowed the trees’ branches and hammered the aluminum of the troopship. In seconds, pools of water covered the ground. Rain angled into the troopship and puddled on the floor panels.
Reaching out to pull the door closed, Gadgets’s hand grasped nothing. They had unbolted the doors and left them in the desert outside Culiacan the night before. Gadgets searched through his backpack and pulled out a wallet-sized packet. Unfolding a plastic poncho, he asked Coral, “Ever been to Laos?”
Coral shook his head.
Gadgets looked out at the muddy earth, the sheets of rain, the shadows of the Yaqui sentries, the green forms of the trees fading into the gray sky.
“Helicopters and rain,” he said. “Takes me back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when I was a teenager in Laos.”
“Was that a war? How long have you been fighting?”
“Forever. The wars never stop.”
Voices and laughter came from the falling rain. Feet splashed through the mud. Three barefoot children ran to the helicopter and looked inside. When they saw Coral and Gadgets, the children dashed away, laughing, pointing imaginary weapons at one another as they ran through the rain.
*
In his office at Rancho Cortez, Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez read the report prepared by Captain Gomez in Culiacan. He studied every detail, noting how the information supported his own suspicions concerning the mysterious battles in the Sierra Madre.
The lieutenant colonel, in the absence of Colonel Gonzalez, now served as acting commandant of the base and the International Group. Though he had assigned patrols to search the mountains for their commanding officer or any surviving members of the unit, he did not expect the patrols to find any living soldiers or officers. And in two days of searching, they had not.
Nor had they found the missing helicopter.
The report from Culiacan contained several significant details.
Evidently a gringo had gone into Culiacan for fuel. He killed several federal agents in a street battle before disappearing into traffic.
An officer in the DEA identified the man as an “antiterrorist specialist” from the United States, one of three “specialists” flown in from San Diego to investigate Los Guerreros Blancos.
The DEA officer stated that the specialists had been shot down in the mountains east of Obregon.
Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez remembered the urgent command to set the trap for the specialists. Soldiers of the International Group had waited in trucks, their SAM-7 missiles ready and aimed, until the DEA jet flew over their position. They shot it down. But the passengers apparently had survived.
Then came the series of ambushes in the Sierra Madre, climaxing with the battles where the International Group lost six helicopters, an airplane and several squads of soldiers.
The soldiers searching the mountains had found the wrecks of five helicopters and the plane. One helicopter remained missing.
Now the gringo specialists from the downed DEA jet had appeared in Culiacan looking for fuel.
No one matching the description of the specialist had been seen at the Culiacan airport. No flights had been spotted at the several dirt airstrips in the area.
Only a helicopter could land without a runway.
Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez began to write down his thoughts. Eventually he went to the communications room and transmitted his notes to Mexico City.
*
Able Team and the Yaquis spent the night in a house a hundred meters from the parked helicopter. For five hundred pesos, the family of the orchard’s caretaker had chased out the chickens and swept the dirt floor. Rain hammered the corrugated-steel roof all through the afternoon, then fell off to infrequent downpours.
Blancanales and Coral took a bus into Tepic and returned two hours later with boxes of groceries. They had arranged for aviation-quality kerosene to be delivered to the orchard.
“Any trouble?” Gadgets asked them.
Shaking his head, Blancanales passed out beers and dinners. The carnitasand tortillas came wrapped in banana leaves. Blocks of ice chilled several six-packs of beer.
In the opposite corner of the one-room house, Lyons interrogated Gunther. Since the capture of the Fascist International officer, Lyons had questioned Gunther at every opportunity, asking endless questions, considering the answers, then rephrasing his questions and asking again. Coral questioned Gunther in Spanish. Working together, Lyons and Coral attempted to trick Gunther into revealing details within the lies of his answers.
Now Lyons was done. He crossed the house to Coral and Blancanales. Coral asked him in a low voice, “What has he told you?”
“Nothing. It’s a game. He knows what I’m doing.”
“Now I talk with him.” Coral went over to Gunther.
The rain pounding on the metal roof covered their voices. As Coral questioned Gunther in Spanish, Lyons briefed Blancanales.
“He’s a professional. He probably knows interrogation techniques better than we do.”
“What have you said about where we’re going?” Blancanales asked. “What have you told him that we’ll be doing with him?”
“I told him it depends on how much he helps us.”
As Coral rep
hrased one of Lyons’s questions in Spanish, Gunther watched the North Americans. The rain hammering on the roof filled the house with noise. No one heard him when he asked Coral a quick question, “Did you telephone?”
Coral answered quickly. “No. The Puerto Rican was with me every moment. The truck comes tonight. I will try to call tonight.”
“He comes.” Then Gunther raised his voice. “I know nothing about the operations in Mexico.”
Lyons returned with a six-pack of Dos Equis and four dinners. He motioned Coral over to stand guard outside while he rearranged the ropes binding Gunther so that the prisoner could feed himself. The colonel waited until Coral left, then took the opportunity to propose a deal.
“American, I am your prisoner now. But the situation may be reversed in the future. The others cannot hear. Listen to my offer. The International pays better than any government. I get two thousand dollars a week, in gold. You could do very well for yourself.”
“I don’t fight for money,” Lyons said matter-of-factly.
“You risk your life for ideals? Truth, justice and the American Way? But that is government propaganda. You are a professional. You know wars are fought only for money. And your own leaders are with us. Do you think we could move from country to country without their support? Don’t be naive. That is for teenagers and charities.”
Though Lyons freed Gunther’s hands for eating, the prisoner’s wrists remained linked by a length of nylon rope. Another length of rope linked the wrist-to-wrist rope to his feet, so that Gunther could not use the short length as a garrote. He was able to eat, but not fight or stand or kick.
The two men sat facing each other, drinking beer and eating tamales and strips of fried beef and chicken rolled into tortillas. The scents of the barbecued meat and cilantro and corn tortillas replaced the musty odors of the adobe house.
Gunther drained a beer in two gulps. “Mexican beer…” He belched. “An advantage of working in Mexico.”
“That and the gold, right?”
“You could start at a thousand dollars a week. Are you interested, American?”
Lyons opened another beer for his prisoner. He glanced over his shoulder at his partners, then passed the beer to Gunther.
