Into the Maze at-14

by Dick Stivers

  Tropical trees blocked the sun. Spots of light glowed on ferns and flowering plants. Vato moved effortlessly through the foliage. He stopped. Lyons saw Vato watching something. Then he too saw it.

  A hummingbird, resplendent in shimmering emerald-green feathers, hovered only an arm’s reach from Vato. When the bird moved, flashing from shadow to sunlight, the young man followed. Vato and Lyons wove through the trees and ferns, around a clump of bayonetlike maguey cactus, and stopped at a sheer wall of rock overhung by trees.

  Hummingbirds chattered. Lyons looked around and saw more of the tiny birds, hovering and darting around a flowering tree, their wings blurs, their bodies like jewels floating in the shadows and light.

  Vato reached into the tree to pick a round yellow fruit. He passed one to Lyons.

  “Zapote.”

  They sat among the ferns and grasses, eating zapotes. Inside a thin skin, a zapotehas flesh that tastes like mango, but with the consistency and texture of pudding. Vato smashed a zapoteon the rock beside him. He and Lyons sat still. Hummingbirds flocked to the zapotepulp and took the juices through their needle beaks, emerald wings blurring against the gray stone, the brilliant red of their breast feathers vivid against the soft yellow of the zapote.

  Vato broke the peace of the moment. “You fear death?”

  “I would if I thought about it. But I won’t get the chance to think when it comes.”

  “You’re not Christian? You don’t believe in heaven?”

  Lyons shook his head.

  “Don’t fear death. Look.” Vato pointed to the brilliant blur of a hummingbird. “A warrior reborn. That is what the Nahuatls believe. The reward for a life of courage is rebirth as beauty.”

  Lyons thought of his lover and fellow warrior, Flor Trujillo, reduced to scorched bones and ashes in the desert outside San Diego.

  He reached out to one of the birds with a hand that had caressed Flor, and the bird hovered around his hand. The needle beak touched him. A tongue flicked the zapotenectar from his fingers.

  Flor had been Catholic. She had worn a crucifix and attended mass and gone to confession. Unconsciously, even though he rejected her beliefs, Lyons had thought of Flor’s life and death within the tenets of her religion. He hoped that her God had granted her forgiveness and an eternity of peace. But she had made love without being married and had fought and killed — all sins to her church. Vato’s Nahuatl mythology comforted Lyons. Instead of thinking of Flor condemned to an eternity of suffering and torment in the Catholic hell, now he would always imagine her reborn as one of these living jewels. Lyons laughed at his sentimentality.

  “You laugh at what I tell you?”

  “Thanks for telling me it,” Lyons said, smiling, “but they’re only birds.”

  *

  Davis and the Yaquis carried cut branches to camouflage the helicopter. Sitting in the door, Gadgets and Coral and Blancanales listened to the NSA radio. On the other side of the troopship, separated from the radio by the transmission housing, Gunther still sat in the doorgunner’s seat, tied, blindfolded, wads of cloth taped over his ears.

  Lyons and Vato had returned from their patrol. Lyons went to Gadgets’s side and asked in a whisper, “What do you have on the radio?”

  “Voice of the Reich,” Gadgets answered, his voice low.

  “What’s the plan?”

  “I’m going into the city,” Blancanales told Lyons. “Miguel will go with me. Davis’s Spanish is good; he’ll stay here with Gadgets to monitor. When we come back, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, we’ll have cars. And clothes for Vato and the others. Then we’ll do the DF number on the colonel.”

  “Vato’s just told me he wants to try a chemical interrogation first,” Lyons reported.

  Blancanales looked to the Yaqui leader. “Chemical?” he asked him. “You mean drugs?”

  Vato nodded. “Ancient drugs. There will be no marks on his body, but he will reveal everything.”

  “How long will it take? And what are the aftereffects?”

  “A day. And maybe he will be confused and dizzy for another day. Like taking pills.”

  “It could help us,” Lyons said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “We get what info we can, then let him escape. If he’s disoriented, he’s more likely to make a mistake and go straight to the International.”

  “What?” Vato asked. “Why will…”

  “The plan is to release him. We’ll put direction finders on him, then when he runs, we’ll follow him.”

  “Electronic devices? What if he finds them? What if there is interference from the electricity and the radios and the buildings in the city?”

  “That’s a risk. But I think it will work.”

  “He’ll expect a trick and take precautions.”

  “Best we can do, under the circumstances.”

  “No!” Vato protested. “You will not!”

  Blancanales intervened. “So we’ll try your drug interrogation first. There will be no torture? No physical damage?”

  “When I joined my people,” Vato told them, “the achaigave it to me. To learn about me. There is no harm.”

  Voices came from the NSA radio. Gadgets turned to Lyons and said, “Get Gunther out of here! He could hear this.”

  Coral motioned Lyons to stay put. “I will take him away,” he said.

  *

  Leaving the others, Coral went around the helicopter. He untied the ropes securing Gunther to the doorgunner’s seat. Then he untied one of the ropes binding the prisoner’s ankles. Gunther required help to step down to the rocks. A second rope around Gunther’s ankles served to hobble him.

  Able Team took no chances with the six-foot-five, two-hundred-twenty-pound Gunther. When they had seen the karate-caused calluses on the striking edges of the fascist colonel’s hands, they had known they could never allow Gunther to free an arm or leg.

  Leading the blindfolded prisoner to the far side of the clearing, Coral tied him to a tree. Then he removed the wads of cloth covering Gunther’s ears.

  “We are near Mexico City.”

  “Where?”

  “In the mountains. Southwest of the city. There is a problem. It is something I cannot stop.”

  “What?”

  “They will interrogate you with drugs. They are talking about it now.”

  “The blond one suggested this?”

  “No, one of the Yaquis.”

  “What does the blond one say?”

  “He says he will release you and then follow you to your organization.”

  “He does want the gold! He did exactly what I suggested. This is very good for the International…”

  “Forget the International!” Coral interrupted Gunther. “This endangers everything. When you talk, I go to prison. And there will be no escape for my family. My wife and children are with the Drug Enforcement Agency in the United States.”

  “We have friends in the American agency. They can arrange for the release of your family.”

  “But what of my freedom? My life? If you say anything under the drugs, I’m dead. Or in prison. We must escape now.”

  “Do you have a rifle?”

  “No.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “The North Americans are in the helicopter. The Yaquis stand guard.”

  “Then it is not possible now. We will wait.”

  ” But we must escape now!”

  “Do not panic, my friend. There is nothing to fear. Drugs will not break me. We will wait until a better time.”

  “Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”

  Still blindfolded, Gunther turned to Coral’s voice. “What is the problem? Listen to me. They trust you. When they question me with the drug, they will crowd around me. You will prepare to strike. Be near a weapon. If, under the influence of the drug, I speak, then you kill them. Except for the American who works for us.”

  7

  Lines of taillights disappeared into the gray night of Mexico City. In two rented Mitsubishi mini
vans, Able Team and the others waited for the traffic to move. The headlights of cars and trucks leaving the city streaked past them. But their lanes remained jammed.

  Around them, horns sounded in one unending chord of noise. Passengers leaned from bus windows to look ahead. Truck drivers gestured and cursed. Only motorcycles continued moving, the macho young men — without helmets — accelerating, braking, weaving between the cars and trucks and buses, then accelerating again.

  On both sides of the Viaducto, an eight-lane expressway, four lanes in each direction, the nightlife of the Mexican capital buzzed. Without a glance to the traffic only steps away, men clustered under the neon lights of a bar. Boys kicked a soccer ball along the sidewalk. Indian women in satin blouses and cotton skirts sold candy and cigarettes and comic books from curbside stands. Teenagers strolled arm-in-arm through the crowds.

  The pastel colors of the shopfronts, vivid pinks and blues and yellows, glowed like the neon of the shops’ signs. But other than the painted colors of the shops and cars and the clothing of the people, the North Americans saw only the grays and black of concrete and asphalt. No trees or flowers or lawns lined the streets.

  Pollution had killed all but human life. Exhaust from the stalled traffic swept the adjoining streets like fog. A block from the Viaducto, the pollution paled the lights. A few kilometers away, where the skyscrapers of the city towered above the avenues of the business district, the smog grayed the thousands of office lights to abstract smears.

  And above the city, the smoke from the thousands of factories and millions of vehicles made a gray dome of pollutants that blocked any sight of the stars or moon.

  In the vans, Able Team waited for the traffic to move. Blancanales and Coral had rented the minivans from a tourist agency earlier in the day. Then they drove through the vast city, stopping at shops to buy clothes for the Yaquis, black plastic tarps to cover the helicopter and luggage to conceal the arsenal of captured weapons. Now, in the backs of the vans, overnight bags held pistols and Uzis, suitcases concealed folding-stock rifles and an M-79 grenade launcher, and shipping trunks contained M-60 machine guns. Other trunks carried the NSA secure-frequency radios captured from the Mexican army. The suitcases and trunks filled the backs of the vans to the roof.

  As Coral idled the engine of the van, waiting for the traffic jam to break up, Lyons sat in the back seat with his feet on Colonel Gunther. Tied and blindfolded, wrapped in a tarp, the prisoner lay on the floor. Vato sat beside Lyons. The Yaqui leader kept his right hand in an airline flight bag. The bag concealed the sawed-off Remington 870 shotgun taken from a dead gunman in Culiacan.

  Lyons concealed his Atchisson, fitted with the fourteen-inch “urban-environment barrel,” under a clutter of tourist maps on the seat.

  If Gunther attempted to escape, Lyons or Vato would execute him. They could not allow him to rejoin the International.

  The forces of the Fascist International searched for them. Throughout the afternoon and evening, Gadgets had monitored transmissions between International units. Snatches of conversation — from a private airport, from trucks on the highway — indicated that the commander of the International had withdrawn squads from Culiacan and Rancho Cortez and repositioned the soldiers along the Mexico-United States border. Other units maintained surveillance of Mexico City’s airport, watching for North Americans matching the descriptions of the three men of Able Team.

  But Able Team hoped to find and hit the International first.

  The traffic moved. As Coral shifted gears and accelerated, Lyons spoke into his hand-radio. The earphone he wore eliminated any chance of Gunther’s overhearing the conversation.

  “Wizard, what have you got?”

  “Same noise from the boys.”

  “Like what?”

  “A goon said he’s leaving. I don’t know who, I don’t know where, but he’s going by air.”

  “Any addresses?”

  Gadgets cut his jive. “Ironman, these Nazis are professionals. Even with the encoding radios, they maintain very tight-mouthed discipline. They’re using code names and numbers for their positions. And there’s another encrypting radio out there putting out screech transmissions. Not only are they professionals, not only do they have all the modern electronics, but also they seem to be one step ahead of us. I get the scary feeling they could be decoding usright now.”

  “Not possible.” Lyons knew that without one of the three secure-frequency radios Able Team carried, no one could monitor their communications.

  “Positive?”

  “I hope it’s not possible.”

  “Yeah, let’s hope. Problem is the same people who made the radios for us good guys made the radios for those bad guys.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Hey, man, maybe you don’t know it. But I know it.”

  They passed a stadium. Thousands of Mexicans crowded from the ultramodern structure of curved concrete and steel. Traffic slowed again as the cars of the sports fans sped onto the Viaducto. A city policeman directed traffic around an accident.

  The wheels of the Mitsubishi crunched over smashed soda-pop cans. To the side of the wide expressway, the driver of a truck argued with a bleeding man who leaned against a smashed Volkswagen. The truck driver pointed to his spilled load of soda-pop cases, then shouted into the face of the injured man.

  “The joys of the big city,” Lyons commented to Vato.

  Vato nodded. He leaned forward and spoke in Spanish to Coral. Then Vato turned to Lyons. “We will be there soon.”

  Coral had called associates from the Ochoa Gang and negotiated for the use of an auto-repair garage in the slums of Colonia Netzahualcoyotl. He had told them he needed a place to park two vans of contraband “from the north,” videotape recorders and videocassettes of American and European pornography. The auto garage would allow the group to arrive and depart without being seen on the street.

  Riding through the city, Lyons watched the unending urban sprawl float past. He began to doubt the wisdom of searching the Mexican capital for the headquarters of the International.

  On maps, Mexico City looked like yet another of the world’s largest cosmopolitan cities.

  Back in the isolation of the Sierra Madre of Sonora, Lyons had thought they could search the city. After all, his partners spoke Spanish. They had Mexican allies. They had taken a fascist colonel prisoner. And Lyons himself had lived most of his life in the second largest Mexican city: Los Angeles, California.

  As a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, Lyons had operated in Mexican communities. He had searched for felons in the barrios of Los Angeles and he’d found the criminals. He expected to do the same in Mexico City.

  But the street map of the city, mere lines and colors printed on paper, did not communicate the unimaginable scale of the capital of Mexico. Tourist guidebooks gave the population as fourteen million. Unofficially, the Mexican government estimated that at least eighteen million people lived in the metropolitan center and the satellite cities. In fact, the Mexican government did not know how many millions lived in the vast city.

  But going there had avoided an assault on the stronghold of the International’s forces in northwest Mexico. Los Guerreros Blancos and the corrupt International Group of the Mexican Army maintained an army with modern weapons and communications at Rancho Cortez.

  An attack on a military base with a force of teenagers and out-of-work gangsters would have risked pointless death.

  In contrast, a surprise attack on the Mexico City offices of the American Reich seemed cunning yet obvious.

  Cut off the head…

  But first they must find the snake.

  Lyons heard his hand-radio click. Gadget’s voice came through the earphone. “Ask Coral what the name of this freeway is.”

  He leaned forward and whispered. “What freeway are we on?”

  “Tlalpan. It is a name from the Aztecs.”

  “Say it again.”

  Coral pronounced the
unfamiliar word for the North American. “Tlalpan. Say Te-lal in one sound. Tlal. Tlalpan.”

  Lyons stuttered the Nahuatl word into his hand-radio. “Te-lal-pan. Tlalpan.”

  “Oh, shit!” Gadgets cursed.

  “What?”

  “Ixnay da jive. Da goonies know!”

  It took a moment for Lyons to comprehend the nonsense Gadgets talked. And why. He questioned Gadgets to confirm the message. “Are you positive?”

  No answer came. Then a voice shouted from the next traffic lane. Lyons saw Gadgets waving from the other Mitsubishi. He slid back his window.

  “Lock and load!” Gadgets shouted. “They know we’re on Tlalpan. I just heard it. I don’t know how, but they must be monitoring us or tracking us or they got us under surveillance. Use your radio only as a last resort and talk jive, understand?”

  Lyons shouted back. “We’ll run patterns through traffic. If they’re behind us, we’ll spot them.”

  “Got it!”

  Driven by Blancanales, the other minivan accelerated ahead. Lyons leaned forward to Coral. “Let him get a few hundred yards ahead. Then we’ll speed past him. We’re trying to spot any cars following us.”

  Coral nodded. He waited for the space in the next lane, then whipped the van to the right. He continued over one more lane and swerved in front of a truck.

  Traffic sped past. Cars rode the bumpers of trucks. Buses accelerated and braked and swerved through rows of trucks. Motorcycles wove everywhere. In the chaos of headlights, Lyons could not identify any surveillance units. He motioned for Coral to accelerate.

  Lyons scanned the vehicles in the other lanes, watching for any car or truck changing lanes or racing to follow them. But he saw only the motorized chaos of thousands of Volkswagens, Fiats, Mexican-manufactured Fords competing for position.

  Then he saw a Dodge sedan easing from one lane to another, accelerating smoothly to merge with the flow.

  “Miguel, slow down.” Lyons turned to Vato. “Take a look at the men in the Dodge. On our left.”

  In contrast to the dented and dirty compact cars jamming the Viaducto, the powerful Dodge had perfect fenders and a gleaming dark blue finish. As the Dodge passed, Lyons glanced at the shoulders and backs of the passengers. He noted the passengers wore business suits.