Into the Maze at-14

by Dick Stivers

  A newspaper covered the hands of the man in the front passenger seat. In the back seat, another man held a briefcase, his thumbs on the latches. Then the Dodge passed.

  “Two of them are not Mexicans,” Vato said.

  “And why would executives be going to work at night?” Lyons leaned forward to Coral. “That blue Dodge. Stay near it.”

  Coral glanced to the rearview mirror. “Behind us. There is another car like that. A white one.”

  ‘Tell me when they come up.”

  Lyons turned to Jacom, who rode in the front passenger seat. He held an Uzi wrapped in a jacket.

  As Vato’s spotter in the mountain fighting, Jacom had fought the forces of Los Guerreros Blancos and the Mexican army. He had used binoculars to correct Vato’s five-hundred-meter rifle fire across the desert wastelands. In the battle at the Hills of the Dead, he had shot down a helicopter troopship with accurate 7.62 NATO slugs into the engine. Now the teenager faced danger in the chaotic traffic of a metropolitan expressway.

  Lyons trusted the Yaquis with his life. More than compatriots in arms, Vato and Kino and Ixto and Jacom had become his friends.

  A week earlier, Lyons did not know that the teenagers or their mountain people existed. If the cynical ex-LAPD detective had encountered the Yaquis — a tribal militia protecting the opium fields of the Sierra Madre — Lyons would have killed them. But the past week had given Lyons a quick education in the poverty and oppression of Mexico. He knew they grew opium for the heroin factories of Culiacan. He did not excuse their crimes, but now he understood their desperation. Now he would work to turn the people away from the drug trade.

  “Ready?” Lyons asked.

  Jacom nodded.

  As Lyons reached into a suitcase for his Atchisson, he heard tires scream on asphalt.

  Metal smashed metal.

  Autoweapons fired.

  8

  Gadgets flicked down the fire-selector of his silenced Beretta 93-R and fired a 3-shot burst into the gunman’s face when he saw the Uzi come out from under the newspapers.

  The gunman fell sideways across the front seat of the dark blue Dodge. The Dodge swerved into a bus. The drivers of other cars hit their brakes. Bumpers smashed.

  The Dodge straightened, and the engine roared as the driver closed the car lengths to the Mitsubishi van. A weapon flashed. Slugs shattered the side windows behind Gadgets and exited through the roof. Gadgets put the tritium night sights of the Beretta on line with the gunman firing from the back seat of the Dodge.

  But the driver anticipated the return fire. Tires screaming, the International driver swerved. The Beretta’s low-velocity 9mm slugs only cracked the windshield, ricocheting into the night as the Dodge wove behind the minivan, crossing three lanes in an instant.

  A truck crashed into the curb fence to avoid the Dodge as another gunman fired an Uzi from the car’s left rear window. Davis popped off rounds from a Colt Government Model as high-velocity 9mm slugs hammered the van. The suitcases and trunks behind Gadgets jumped with impact as bullets passed through the thin sheet metal of the Japanese-built compact van. One slug scored a window. Granules of glass showered the interior.

  Ixto aimed an autopistol but the Dodge had already swerved away, slipping through the trucks and cars like a shark moving through fish.

  “That man can drive!” Gadgets yelled. He watched the Dodge maneuvering for another attack. A dump truck painted with day-glo designs blocked the International’s driver from accelerating. Blancanales calmly moved through the traffic, swerving to keep other vehicles between their van and the pursuing gunmen. Gadgets took the reprieve to upgrade his firepower.

  Reaching into his backpack, he tore open a plastic case and grabbed two Italian MU-50G controlled-effect grenades. The tiny grenades, designed for the close-quarter combat of antiterrorist actions, had a forty-six-gram charge of TNT to propel 1,400 steel balls. The reduced charge of explosive limited the one hundred percent kill diameter to ten meters.

  “Grenades?” Davis asked. “Man, there are innocent people everywhere!”

  “It’s cool. These are Italian designer grenades. So chic, so cool for a freeway firefight.” Gadgets waited for the next attack.

  Looking in the rearview mirror, Blancanales shouted, “Here comes another one!”

  The second Dodge, the white one, gained on them. Differing from the first Dodge only in color, the second pursuit car also contained four gunmen with submachine guns.

  Then they heard the boom of a shotgun. Gadgets grinned to the others. “Ironman to the rescue!”

  Lyons leaned from the window of the van that Coral drove and fired into the oversize double rear tires of a freight truck. Tires exploding and flapping on the rim, the heavy truck lurched, the remaining tires smoking as the driver fought for control. The truck slowed, blocking lanes, acting as a traffic barricade.

  Coral floored the accelerator. The other cars on the Viaducto pulled to the side to escape the danger of the wild shoot-out.

  As Coral gained on the two sedans, Vato shoved aside luggage and crawled into the back of the van. He tried to lift the lid of a shipping trunk. The lid raised only a few inches before being stopped by the roof of the van. By touch, he searched through the interior, finally dragging out an FN FAL para-rifle and a bandolier of box mags. Vato shoved the trunk aside to block the side window. He arranged the suitcases to block the other side windows. Twisting into the narrow space between the shipping trunk and the stacked suitcases, he shoved the FN FAL’s barrel through the tempered glass of the back lift-door. He swung out the rifle’s metal stock and waited.

  Ahead, the two Dodges maneuvered for position, accelerating to make a cross-fire kill on the van that Blancanales drove.

  A hand reached out from the van. A tiny ball hit the asphalt, bounced high over the roof of the white Dodge and flashed.

  Hundreds of tiny steel balls hit the hood and the windshield and the roof of the Dodge.

  But without effect. The steel shrapnel pocked the paint and shattered the windshield but it did not touch the gunmen inside. The driver braked and swerved away.

  Gadgets looked back and saw the gunman in the front seat methodically smashing out the laminated safety glass with the steel butt of his Uzi. Another burst of 9mm slugs hit the van as the other Dodge continued the pursuit. Gadgets pulled the pin on a second MU-50G grenade and tossed it, hoping for a hit on the engine or tires.

  The tiny grenade bounced over the Dodge, then bounced again on the pavement. The grenade popped twenty meters behind the Dodge, spraying steel through empty air. The Dodge accelerated.

  “Italian shit!”

  The Atchisson boomed. Gadgets and Davis saw flame streaking from the short barrel of the assault shotgun. Glass exploded from the white Dodge as Lyons swept the back windshield and side windows with semiauto blasts of number-two and double-ought steel shot. Blood splashed the shattered windshield.

  Lyons continued firing as Coral accelerated past the white Dodge. Glass and gore sprayed from the far windows, the driver dying, the Dodge skidding sideways. The heavy car smashed into the center divider and overturned, throwing a man from a window. The rolling car smeared him into the asphalt.

  “One down!” Gadgets waved as Coral sped past in the other tourist van. He saw Lyons reloading his Atchisson. Looking back, Gadgets aimed his silenced, underpowered Beretta at the pocked windshield of the remaining pursuit car. He semiautoed round after round at the swerving blue sedan.

  A rifle fired from the back of the other Mitsubishi. The 7.62mm NATO slugs tore through the surviving Dodge, punching through steel and flesh. The Dodge slowed as the wounded driver struggled for control. The heavy-caliber battle rifle fired three more times. The big sedan drifted across the lanes, carrying dead and wounded men to a slow, screeching stop against the curb.

  In the second van, Coral turned to Lyons. “We must make our vehicles look okay. Soon police will look for us. Tell the others.”

  Vato had already put away the
FN FAL para-rifle. As the minivan sped over the now-deserted freeway, he used his boot to clean the remnants of the shattered glass from the lift-door’s window. Lyons leaned out his window and shouted to Blancanales and Gadgets.

  “Clean it up! We still got a way to go.”

  “Doing it already!” Gadgets shouted back. “But what about the bullet holes?”

  “Noway, no time!”

  The Mitsubishi tourist vans entered the traffic of an interchange and left the Viaducto Tlalpan behind. Lyons watched the passengers in the vehicles around him on the expressway. Many of the other people rode with their windows open to the pollution of the warm night. And in the shifting lights and smoke of traffic, no one seemed to notice the 9mm holes in the sheet metal of the minivan.

  But the bullet holes would not escape the notice of a policeman.

  Coral turned on the dash radio and spun through the stations. He stopped at a news station and listened to the announcer’s monologue. “Nothing said yet.”

  “How much farther?” Lyons asked.

  “Very near.”

  Gunther shifted on the floor. Lyons pressed his shoes down on the fascist colonel’s back. As they sped through the evening traffic, Lyons counted the charges they faced if the Mexican authorities arrested them.

  Kidnapping. Murder. Assault. Mayhem. Conspiracy. Illegal weapons. Theft of army weapons and equipment. Illegal entry into the country. Currency violations. Speeding. Public nuisance.

  If they went to trial, they faced a lifetime in prison. But they would never get to trial. The Fascist International controlled units of the Mexican army and the Federates. If the fascists had also infiltrated the metropolitan police, the North Americans would not live long in jail.

  But Able Team and the Yaquis had lived through the pursuit and firefight on the Viaducto. Maybe their luck would hold.

  Coral left the Viaducto, Blancanales following a moment later in the other minivan. They inched through a jammed intersection, horns and voices loud around them, then Coral turned onto a side street.

  Narrow as an alley, with rusting cars and trucks parked on either sidewalks, the street led through a neighborhood of decaying tenements. The smog had long ago stained the concrete and stone of the buildings the same gray black of the starless, moonless night.

  Corner streetlights created patterns of brilliance in the gray streets, light reflecting from gutter water and windows and car chrome. But elsewhere on the streets, only lights from windows and doors broke the darkness.

  Neon words identified some doorways as businesses. In others, fluorescent tubes cast gray light on racks of broken mailboxes. Shadowy corridors led into darkness.

  The windows of some apartments opened directly to the sidewalks. Inside, people occupied rooms bright with plastic furniture. One apartment had posters of Julio Iglesias and the blond singers of Abba. Another showed posters of the Rolling Stones and a defiant Che Guevara.

  Above the tenements, an electric billboard advertised Cerveza Tecate with thousands of colored lights, patterns of different colors forming the shape of a beer bottle and spelling out the name.

  Finally Coral stopped at a steel rollaway door. Sooty paint above the entry read Automechanica. Coral got out of the car and opened a padlock on the door.

  Lyons’s hand almost keyed his hand-radio. He stopped himself. Instead, he spoke to Vato and Jacom.

  “Check the area and look for surveillance. Look for anything unusual. I would do it but…”

  Vato understood. “You are too unusual here.”

  The two young men stepped into the gray night. Vato carried the flight bag concealing the sawed-off Remington 870.

  Looking back, Lyons saw Blancanales signal him. Blancanales pointed to the roof lines. Lyons nodded and held up one hand. He cocked back his thumb like a pistol hammer. Then he put his hand back on the pistol-grip of his Atchisson.

  Coral returned to the van and drove it inside the garage. Lyons saw two Japanese compact cars parked inside the cavernous garage.

  “What are those cars doing there?” he asked.

  “We rented four cars,” Coral explained. “Rosario wanted backup cars. In case.”

  “Good. We need them.” Lyons stepped into the darkness of the garage, the Atchisson cocked and locked, his thumb on the fire selector.

  The darkness smelled of old oil and rot. As Blancanales drove in the other van, Lyons snap-scanned the interior of the garage in the moment of headlights. He saw only walls, bricked-up windows, doorways. He waited until Blancanales switched off the engine. Then he trotted blind through the darkness, stopping short of the doorway.

  Behind him, the doors of the minivan opened, the dome light casting a weak glow. Lyons continued slowly to the doorway. Pressing his back to the cold concrete, he listened, the Atchisson gripped at port-arms.

  He heard movement. A can clanked. Lyons flicked his Atchisson’s fire-selector off safety.

  The Yaquis came through the entry. Coral pulled down the rolling steel door.

  Lyons stood in the semidarkness, still listening for movement. His partners and the Yaquis waved flashlights over the interior, lighting the corners, searching the back of the garage. Shoes clanged on steel as someone ran upstairs, the noise echoing in the empty building.

  “Ratones!” A voice called out.

  Lyons heard feet stomping. Squeaking things scurried across the floor, claws scratching.

  Lights flashed on, bare bulbs lighting the garage with searing glare. Lyons snapped a glance through a doorway of a small room behind him.

  He saw only the mottled gray and brown of rats running for safety.

  Taking a breath, Lyons stepped into the room, the Atchisson ready. The room had been the garage office. The window had been bricked shut except for an air slot at the top. Looking up through the slot, he saw the flashing colors of the electric Tecate billboard. Padlocks and chains secured a door to the street. Black dust lined the shelves and stained the walls. On the floor, he saw that shoes had recently crossed the soot-covered linoleum. But he found only rats.

  “Ironman!” Gadgets called out. “Where are you and that righteous thundergun going?”

  Flicking on the safety of the assault shotgun, Lyons returned to his partners. “This would have been the absolutely perfect ambush. Wait till we close the doors, then bang-bang.” Lyons pointed to the backup compact cars. “Have you checked those for booby traps or DF units?”

  “Did it first thing.”

  “Anything on the Nazi radios?”

  “I have totally discontinued my monitoring of the electromagnetic spectrum until I check out that NSA radio,” Gadgets declared. “Something gave us away. In fact, those gooners zoomed right in on us. I’m going to take that black box radio apart.”

  “Couldn’t have been our radios?”

  “Dig it — we had hand-radios in both vans. And we didn’t say where we were, nothing like ‘Cruising north on Tlalpan Avenue.’”

  “Surveillance?” Lyons asked. “Maybe they spotted us coming into the city?”

  “In all those thousands of cars?” Gadgets asked, incredulous. “Anyway, don’t we have almost identical vans? With Anglos in both vans? You notice they didn’t lock on to you… Man, that means something.”

  “Yeah. It means they know we’re in the city.”

  “And,” Blancanales added, “that we have lost the element of surprise. We may be hunting them, but now they’re hunting us, too.”

  In a van, Coral listened to the dash radio. An announcer raved nonstop. Coral turned to the North Americans.

  “It is on the news. On all the stations. They tell of North Americans killing Mexicans and Europeans. This one…” he motioned to the voice blaring from the radio “…a politician says it is CIA. He will demand the withdrawal of United States forces. He is screaming ‘Foreign invaders, foreign invaders. ‘Invasidn de extranjeros!’”

  9

  History chronicles many invasions of Mexico. The armies of the United States, the F
rench empire, the Catholic empire, all played their role in creating the passionate nationalism of the Mexican people.

  Yet the armies of the North American and European nations appear late in the history of the region that would become the republic of Mexico.

  In the ancient Valley of Mexico, the black, alluvial soil of the shores of Lake Texcoco provided the foundation of life for the emerging civilization of the Mexicans. The people farmed crops of corn and beans and squash, and the gentle climate and seasons allowed for two crops a year. They lived in union with the seasons of their crops, fearing drought and disease, hoping for ample harvests and many children.

  Religion rose from the mystical bonds between these people and their world. Before the Romans built their public monuments on the Mediterranean, pyramids and temples overlooked the mists swirling about Lake Texcoco.

  But an accident of geology had formed the valley — with its temperate climate, its fertile land and year-round streams — in the center of regions ravaged by tropical extremes. To the north, barren deserts offered only cactus and small animals to sustain the tribes of nomads living in wastelands. To the south, despite the torrential rains and lush tropical growth, the red clay soil would not support agriculture.

  When strangers came to the valley, they saw the paradise of Mexico and wanted it. The mountains circling the valley did not protect the people from the invasions. The ancient people of Mexico knew only unending war.

  Cycles of invasion created endless defeat and chaos. A barbarian tribe called the Toltecs entered the Valley of Mexico and attacked the city-states lining the shores of Lake Texcoco. The Toltecs crushed some cities and became allies with others. The religions and traditions merged, the decadent and barbarian cultures fusing. This new culture spoke Nahuatl, the language still spoken in Central Mexico a thousand years later.

  The god of war became a vital part of the Nahuatl culture. When Nahuatl-speaking cities built temples, their two supreme gods received the highest and most splendorous pyramids. The first, Quetzalcoatl, the god of the Teotihuacanis, represented enlightenment and beauty. The other, Tezcatlipoca, became the god of war and magic. The gentle priests of Quetzalcoatl — the Plumed Serpent — asked the people only for offerings of jewels and feathers and sacred butterflies. The warrior-priests of Tezcatlipoca — The Smoking Mirror, the Lord of Night — demanded the hearts of captives taken in battle.