by Dick Stivers
A grenade bounced over the asphalt. Lyons kicked it away, heard it roll under the nearest car and continue beyond. Still crouching, he stepped up into the open door of the rental car.
The grenade flashed, thousands of tiny steel razors zipping under the parked vehicles, tires blowing, a man screaming. Another grenade bounced on sheet metal. This one fell next to the car in which Lyons hid.
Scrambling across the back seat, he saw a gunman standing in the back of a pickup. The gunman watched the space where Lyons had been. When the grenade banged, Lyons fired the Atchisson once, flipping the fascist backward.
A fireball rushed up into the night from the car’s ruptured gas tank. Lyons ran from the flames. Forms moved in the orange light. Firing single shots, he dropped one after another. Then he rushed into the open, away from the jam of International vehicles.
A hundred meters away, muzzles flashed. High-velocity slugs zipped past Lyons. He dived, slamming into the sidewalk. Rolling, he hit a wall with his shoulder. Concrete steps blocked the rifle fire, slugs skipping off the steps and whining away. He looked up, saw a door. But the door had no handle. No escape that way. He looked back, saw fascists against the flames. Crisscrossing autofire went over him. He did not reveal his position by shooting. Pulling out the hand-radio in his coat pocket, he keyed the transmit.
“This is the Ironman. I’m on the street. Down behind some steps. I think I’m in a cross fire between the goon squad and the army.”
In the alley, Gadgets answered first. “The lieutenant’s taking it slow. Moving his men up. Looks to me like it’s almost over.”
“Get to him. Tell him to radio his sergeant that I’m one of the good guys.”
“Will do.” Gadgets left the cover of the bullet-riddled car. Staying low, he zigzagged across the alley. He crouched behind two soldiers. They reared back when they saw his sports coat and casual shirt, the uniform of the fascists. Gadgets put up his hands, the palms forward and open.
“Paz, amigos. Yo estoy a sus lado. Dande estd el teniente?”
A soldier pointed to a freight door. “Alli.”
Gadgets dashed to the lieutenant’s position. “No dispare! Don’t shoot,” he called out. “Good guy coming. Lieutenant Soto?”
“Here. What is it?”
“My partner’s up there, out on the street. He’s caught between the goons and your other platoon. Could you radio your sergeant and tell him not to shoot him?”
“He’s up there? He has joined the ones you say are the enemy?”
“Joined them to kill them. He rushed them, didn’t you see? You think the Nazis threw those grenades at one another?” Gadgets pointed to the flaming cars and trucks. “Look at that. Death and destruction.”
The lieutenant spoke into his walkie-talkie.
Against the steps, Lyons stayed low. He had put down his Atchisson. With his modified-for-silence Colt, he watched for fascist gunmen in the flames. More than silencing the pistol, the suppressor would also eliminate the muzzle-flash.
A silhouette went from one shadow to another. Squinting into the blazing gasoline, Lyons lined up the Colt’s night-sight dots on the form. He saw the silhouette shift. Aiming at the curve suggesting the top of a head, Lyons squeezed off a shot.
The head moved, the gunman rising to fire at the advancing soldiers. The .45-caliber hollowpoint skipped off the hood of a car. Lyons saw a piece of the silhouette spin away.
A piercing, bubbling scream came from the wounded fascist. He rose to his feet and staggered. Lit by flames, the man clutched at his open throat and face, his hands searching for a jaw finding only a tongue and a vast wound. Then rifle fire threw him back.
Lyons saw another man crawling along the asphalt, dragging one leg. A .45 hollowpoint smashed through his other leg, flipping him onto his back. The fascist clawed at the street, trying to somehow escape the agony of his wounds.
Rifles continued to fire from the alley and from the other end of the street. But Lyons saw no more fascists with weapons. He keyed his hand-radio again.
“I think it’s all over on this end.”
Gadgets answered. “The lieutenant’s going slow. Leapfrogging from door to door. Very cautious fellow. Not like some people we know.”
Blancanales spoke next. “The other International unit’s withdrawing. The cars are gone. Stay low until the soldiers find you. And cooperate, understand?”
“I always cooperate.” Lyons clicked off, then muttered, “With people who know what they’re doing.”
Holstering his Colt, Lyons stayed in the shelter of the steps, listening to the soldiers shouting to one another. The platoon stayed a block away, firing single shots at movement in the flaming cars. But no fascists returned the fire.
The door above the steps opened. A flashlight blinded him. As his hand closed around the pistol-grip of his Atchisson, four hands grabbed Lyons’s arms and coat and dragged him through the door. He felt his Atchisson torn away. He kicked and struggled, but other hands restrained him. Then knees on his chest and arms and legs immobilized him.
An electric light went on.
He looked up into the face of Miguel Coral.
14
Soldiers waved flashlights over the faces of dead men. Other soldiers collected weapons while medics tended to the wounded. Blancanales and Gadgets, accompanied by Lieutenant Soto, searched through the wreckage and corpses for Lyons. The hulks of the cars still burned, acrid black soot floating in the air, the fires casting an orange light over the street.
They found fascist gunmen killed by shotgun blasts, but Carl Lyons had disappeared.
Blancanales looked from the gutted cars to the long street. Thirty-odd meters away, concrete steps went from the sidewalk to a door. In the other direction from the fires, he saw no steps, only shallow doorways and the steel framing of stairs to the roof of a warehouse.
At both ends of the street, held back by soldiers and police, crowds of people stared at the scene. The lights of a television crew panned from soldier to soldier as the cameraman recorded video images for the news.
“That’s got to be where.” Gadgets pointed to the concrete stairs under the door.
“He didn’t say ‘doorway’?” Blancanales asked.
“Nah, man. ‘Steps.’”
“What about that fire escape over there?”
“No cover. He wouldn’t lie low there.”
A soldier jogged up. “Teniente Soto. Los otros han salido. No estdn…”
Motioning the soldier to be silent, the lieutenant took him aside to hear his report. Gadgets and Blancanales walked to the concrete steps.
“He said the others had gone?” Gadgets asked Blancanales.
“That’s it. But what others?”
“One mystery at a time…” Gadgets went up to the door and tried to push it open. Locked. Shining a penlight on the steps, he saw long scratches where bullets had scarred the concrete. He waved the penlight over the area.
Brass sparkled on the street’s asphalt. Gadgets jumped off the steps and picked up a casing.
“Forty-five caliber. The man was here. But now he’s gone.”
“So he escaped?” the lieutenant asked as the North Americans rejoined him.
Blancanales shook his head. “He wouldn’t have left us without telling us what he intended to do.”
“Are you positive?” the lieutenant demanded.
“When the shooting started,” Gadgets snapped at the lieutenant, “did you run away?”
“No!”
“Then neither did our partner.”
“But the others ran away,” the lieutenant said. “The ones inside the warehouse.”
“The others?”
“The North American and the Mexicans. And the ones who you left here escaped before we came. Also the two indtgenaswho drove your cars — now they are gone.”
Gadgets and Blancanales glanced at each other. Vato and Ixto had slipped away in the chaos of the firefight. And somehow Davis and Kino had spotted the surv
eillance and escaped before the army encircled the warehouse. The others did not have radios. They could not inform Able Team of their actions.
But Lyons did carry a radio.
*
General Mendez, commander of the International de Mexico and the Grupo Internacionale del Ejercito Mexicano, reviewed the tapes of the intercepted communications. Alone in the penthouse office thirty floors above the Paseo de la Reforma, the general did not risk having anyone overhear the tapes. He listened to phrases in four languages inside his headphones.
The technical difficulties of the interception, and poor maintenance of the telephone line monitoring the transcontinental call, degraded the quality of the recording. Tape hiss and static distorted the voices, obscuring words and inflections. But he understood the German and Russian ravings of Colonel Gunther. And he also understood the English of the American technician speaking to his officer at the base in Virginia called Stony Man Farm.
The night before, the general had mobilized all available forces to search the capital of Mexico for the Americans. He had authorized his unit leaders to hire drug-syndicate gunmen as reinforcements. Other International units, serving in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa, had received commands to return to Mexico City.
He had told his unit leaders that he would not accept failure. If they did not find and destroy the Americans, the leaders faced execution themselves. As an added incentive, he promised rewards to the units. One hundred thousand dollars for the freeing of Colonel Gunther; one hundred thousand dollars for the confirmed killing of an American; and two hundred fifty thousand dollars in gold to any officer of the International who succeeded not only in freeing Colonel Gunther, but also in capturing an American for interrogation.
Now, as the general listened to the tapes of the intercepted phone calls, units of the International battled with the Americans in the streets.
But after hearing the tapes, he dreaded the imminent victory. No longer did he view the Americans as a problem to the security of the International. The taped communications had altered his concerns. The communications threatened the general with death and the KGB with failure.
United in their conservatism and Castillian heritage, several countries in the Americas — El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina — had contributed funds and soldiers to the cause of the International. The men fought in the belief they opposed the advance of Soviet communism.
But the Americans now knew that Colonel Gunther and General Mendez served the Soviet Union.
If captured by a unit of the International, the Americans would reveal the allegiance of the International’s commander and the supposedly Paraguayan Colonel Gunther.
Perhaps General Mendez could explain away the story of KGB sponsorship of the International. Who would believe the truth? European and North American peaceniks denounced the armed forces of the conservative Pan-American nations as armies of fascist assassins. Voice of Moscow broadcasts labeled the governments of all Western Hemisphere nations — except Cuba and Nicaragua — as fascist regimes. The soldiers of the International would not believe they fought for the Soviet Union.
But what if the Americans played the tapes of Gunther’s interrogation? What if International soldiers listened to the tapes and understood? What if the fantastic revelation started the soldiers questioning?
General Mendez armed his forces with weapons purchased on the international arms market — Israeli Uzis, American M-16 rifles, Belgian FN rifles. But some situations required more sophisticated weapons: explosives, or electronics, or antiarmor-antiaircraft rockets. Secrecy dictated a secure supply of high-quality weapons. The Soviet Union provided these weapons through intermediaries. The general then told his subordinates that he had purchased the Soviet ordnance from the Israelis, who had captured the materiel in Lebanon.
If an officer suspected the fascist-Soviet link, the officer might investigate. The simple procedure of matching the serial numbers of their weapons to the lists of serial numbers compiled by Israel after the Lebanese invasion would reveal a discrepancy. Perhaps the general could explain that away also…
And perhaps not.
The general knew he must act immediately to end the risk. He keyed a code into the intercom. A minute later, the technician who had supervised the interception entered the penthouse office. Like General Mendez and Colonel Gunther, the technician worked for the KGB.
“Who else heard this?” General Mendez tapped the roll of reel-to-reel magnetic tape.
“No one, General. I dismissed all the other technicians from the project. When I heard the interrogation, I… realized the significance immediately.”
“Good. Return to the communications suite. Wait for my instructions. We may need to communicate with our friends.”
General Mendez meant their friends at the Soviet Embassy.
“Yes, my commander.” Saluting, the technician left the office.
The telephone buzzed. A static-scratched voice came through the receiver as one of the field units reported via the highest-priority channel, a secure-frequency radio-telephone channel that linked the unit leaders directly to their commander.
“The Ochoas captured one of the gringos,” a unit officer reported.
“What of Colonel Gunther?”
“Nothing yet.”
“And the others?”
“They are with the army.”
“Does an officer loyal to the International command that army detail?”
“Yes. But he says he must wait to take the Americans. The time is not right for his move.”
“Tell them to bring the captured American to the underground garage at this address.” The general told the technician the name and number of an office building only a hundred meters away from the Trans-Americas tower.
“They want the reward, General. They say they will not deliver him until they see the money.”
“Then have the Ochoas bring him. Our units will escort the Ochoas. Then they will receive their reward. Order ten men to take positions around the garage. They must be concealed and waiting when the Ochoas come.”
“That is very close to these offices. Could that compromise our operations here?”
“I will supervise the… the payoff. I do not have time to travel across the city.”
The general hung up the phone. He could not risk an interrogation of the American. He could not risk anything the American might have already told the Ochoas. The American and all the Ochoas who captured him must be annihilated.
When they came to deliver the prisoner, all would receive the same reward.
Death.
*
“I will explain.”
Lyons lay on the concrete floor, his ankles tied, his hands bound behind him. Coral stood over him while other Ochoa gunmen searched Lyons for weapons. They found revolvers, the reengineered Colt Government Model, the Uzi, a knife and the Atchisson. The collection of weapons went into a burlap bag. The hand-radio went to Coral, who slipped it into his coat pocket.
“What is there to explain? How much Gunther promised to pay you?”
“I will explain how valuable you are to the International.”
Lyons spun on his hip and kicked Coral with both feet. The Mexican staggered back. The other Ochoa men grabbed Lyons, immobilizing him on the floor.
“You are a fighter,” Coral said, laughing. He limped back to Lyons. “The International hired many gunmen today. We joined them also. There is a reward for any of you Americans — one hundred thousand American dollars. Very good, yes? Now we take you to them.”
The gunmen of the Ochoa gang carried Lyons to a panel truck. They threw him inside. Lyons thrashed and struggled, straining against the ropes that dug into his wrists. But the men sat across his legs and back.
A Mexican army colonel in uniform leaned into the truck. Behind him, Lyons saw soldiers in camou fatigues. The colonel grabbed Lyons by his hair and jerked his head back. Lyons twisted his head, tried to throw off the weight of the men on his ba
ck, and the colonel laughed at him.
Steel clanked. The warehouse doors opened. The colonel and his soldiers stepped back as Coral slammed the truck’s cargo doors closed. Then they drove from the garage. The truck sped through crowds of curious people, its horn sounding.
“You believe I betrayed you, yes?” Coral asked Lyons.
“You Nazi scumbag,” spat Lyons. “All your talk about understanding Mexico, about poverty, about troubles.”
Coral laughed. “You do believe! Let us hope the colonel also believes I betrayed you, too. But it is not true.”
“Then what is?”
“I took Gunther to my friends. We wanted information from him. We want revenge against the Blancos and Gunther knows who they are. But he told us nothing. He can tell us nothing…”
“You killed him?”
“No, it is that drug. When he is awake, he makes noises and sees things. Sometimes he sleeps. Until the drug is over, he is like an idiot. You will see. He will join us in a few minutes.”
“And why do you do this?” Lyons demanded, arching his back to motion with his tied hands.
Coral smiled. “Because you, you we will take to the International. You and Gunther.” Coral motioned to the men sitting on Lyons. He felt hands grip his wrists, then a knife cut the ropes on his hands and feet. Another man passed him the burlap bag containing his weapons.
Glancing through the windshield, Lyons saw unmarked police cars leading the panel truck through traffic. Other cars followed.
“Now do you understand? How else could we go directly to the headquarters of the International?”
“What about my partners?”
Coral passed the hand-radio to Lyons. “Inform them.”
“What about the lieutenant and the sergeant? Are they with the International?”
“I do not know. You see, we told the fascists that we work for them. We told them to find you, to follow you. The truck that followed you this morning, from the old garage? One of our people. But you lost him in traffic. We searched everywhere in the city. One of our people told us of the soldiers and North Americans renting a warehouse. We had our men around the warehouse. We wanted to talk, so you did not think we betrayed you, but the army comes and then the Blancos come and the shooting starts. We watched the fight from the roof. The lieutenant and his men fought the fascists. They are honest. I don’t know about the sergeant.”
