by Dick Stivers
Lyons keyed his hand-radio. He clicked only the transmit. One click to identify himself, three clicks as a coded “no.” He repeated the one click, then three clicks, hoping Gadgets and Blancanales would understand.
Three clicks followed by three more clicks answered. Three clicks meant Gadgets. Then Gadgets repeated the code. Lyons waited. Gadgets would need time to walk away from the others so he could speak.
A flurry of clicks came. Voices and sounds came from the hand-radio. Lyons heard fists striking flesh. Then a voice came on.
“Okay, what is it?”
But the voice had a Spanish accent. Again the voice spoke, trying to get Lyons to answer.
“Okay, tell me what…”
The International had taken his partners.
15
In the underground garage, General Mendez positioned his men in a line behind concrete pillars and parked cars. Each gunman carried an FN FAL rifle. When the Ochoas descended the ramp from the avenida, they would drive directly into the ambush. The thin sheet metal of the Ochoa truck would not even slow the 7.62 NATO slugs fired by the FN FAL rifles.
An officer ran to the general. “Commander, urgent messages!”
“What?”
“Colonel Larde has the two other Americans. The Mexicans escaped, but he brings the gringos.”
“Good. What is the other?”
“A problem, commander. The captain of the squads escorting the Ochoas waits to speak with you.”
The general went to the four-door Dodge containing his secure-frequency radio. He took the microphone. “This is your commander.”
“The Ochoas have Colonel Gunther.”
“Where is he? Send him to me immediately. Is he wounded?”
“He is in the truck of the Ochoas. The truck that carries the American prisoner.”
“What! Why did you allow that?”
“It happened too quickly, General. They stopped. Men transferred the colonel from a car to the truck. Then the truck started again.”
“Are you sure it was Colonel Gunther?”
“We saw him in the lights of cars. I know the colonel. I am sure it was him.”
“This changes everything. Radio the other cars! When the Ochoas’ truck enters the garage, all your cars will follow. Do you understand? No one fires until we free Colonel Gunther. No one fires until he is clear.”
“I understand,” the unit leader answered. “I will brief all the others.”
General Mendez switched off the transmitter and rushed to the waiting gunmen. He had to cancel the ambush.
*
As the panel truck sped through the evening traffic, escorted by the unmarked police cars, Lyons and the Ochoa gunmen prepared for the surprise attack on the International. Lyons pushed aside the unconscious Gunther to clear a space on the panel truck’s floor. Then he field-checked his weapons, beginning with the silenced Colt Government Model. He worked the action and tested the seating of the suppressor. He loaded a 10-round extended magazine. An Ochoa gunman gave him a handful of .45-caliber hardball cartridges to reload his spare magazines. Those mags went into Lyons’s left-hand coat pocket.
Then he checked his backup Python.
The Ochoas also provided 12-gauge double-ought cartridges to top off his Atchisson mag.
The Ochoas carried an assortment of weapons. Coral, the oldest and most heavily armed, had two revolvers, one in a shoulder holster, another in an ankle rig. He had a pistol-grip double-barreled shotgun sawed off to six inches that went into a coat pocket. And he carried an old Thompson .45 with two 30-round magazines taped end to end.
Knowing what they would face when they attacked the International, the other three gunmen carried high-cyclic-rate assault weapons. One man had a standard Uzi and a Mini-Uzi. Another man had a .45-caliber Ingram. The third man carried an Uzi and a pistol-grip Remington 1100. And all the Ochoa men wore bulletproof vests.
On the wide Paseo de la Reforma, only seconds away from the meeting with the commander of the International, Coral turned to Lyons. “We must make you our prisoner again. That shotgun, that Uzi…” he pointed to the two weapons in Lyons’s hands “…have them near, but…”
“Yeah, yeah. I understand.” Lyons found the ropes that had bound his wrists. He put his hands behind his back and one of the Ochoa men wrapped the rope around his wrists. Lyons held both ends of the unknotted rope in his fists. Another length of rope went around his ankles. The gunman tied the rope with a slipknot, then tucked the slipknot into Lyons’s sock.
“Be ready,” Coral told his men.
The line of escort cars slowed. Weaving through traffic, an unmarked police car sped ahead. Coral looked out to see the car pass. For an instant, he saw into its interior. Then the car swerved in front of the first unmarked police car and raced down the ramp into the underground garage.
“That was the others!” Coral told Lyons. “Your Americans. I saw them in the back.”
“If we can free them, that’ll be seven of us. Wish we could have brought the Yaquis. But in a way, I’m glad we couldn’t.”
“They will be here soon. Many others will come.”
“Good.” Lyons looked over to the unconscious Gunther. “As soon as we’re moving, we have to get him someplace safe. We’ve brought him too far to lose him now to stray bullets.”
*
On the floor, his hands tied behind him, his feet tied, Gunther eased one eye open to a slit. He did not move or otherwise betray himself. His eye glanced to the men around him. Then his eyelid closed. He waited.
*
The caravan descended into the underground garage.
“What do you see?” Lyons asked, flat on the floor.
“There are many men around. They take the North Americans out of the car. A Mexican colonel goes to an old man in a suit. The colonel salutes the old man. Maybe the old one is General Mendez.”
“What about my partners?”
“The soldiers and pistolerospunch them. But they stop. Now we arrive. Be ready.”
Lyons heard voices outside. The truck’s doors opened, then the cargo doors opened. Coral dragged out Lyons and dropped him on the concrete.
As the gunmen of the International kicked him, Lyons saw Gadgets and Blancanales only a step away.
“Where’s the general?” Coral called out. “I want my gold!”
Gunther bellowed, “Shoot them! It’s a trick!”
A gray-haired man in a gray business suit stood several steps away. “Give them their reward!” he commanded with a sneer across his patrician features.
Hands went under sports jackets as the gunmen of the International reached for their holstered pistols.
“Pol! Wizard! Down!” Lyons yelled. “Get down! Down!” Without taking the second to untie his feet, Lyons shouldered and twisted his way through the legs of the fascists. A fascist kicked him in the face twice, but Lyons turned away and crawled on. He grabbed the ankles of his partners and dragged them down.
As the Americans went flat, the four Ochoas scythed down the gunmen of the International.
Coral aimed the six-inch-long sawed-off shotgun at General Mendez. Two fascists stepped in the way of the blast. The brains of the first man sprayed over the man behind him. As the headless body dropped, a second blast from the shotgun sheared away the face of the other man and punched holes in a third soldier’s neck. Only two of the double-ought lead balls hit the general.
One of the general’s arms jerked back as a .33-caliber ball broke the bone. The second ball hit just above his belt, a spot of red appearing on his white silk shirt.
The general staggered back, whining with pain as the scene exploded in front of him. Coral pocketed his shotgun pistol and shouldered his Thompson.
On both sides of Coral, his men emptied their submachine guns, firing without aiming, simply holding their weapons at stomach height and firing from one side of the crowd to the other. High-velocity 9mm hardball bullets punched through fascists to kill again. The .45 slugs in Co
ral’s Thompson and his friend’s Ingram ripped through men, throwing their bodies back.
Blood and casings fell on Able Team. The autofire from the Ochoas seemed to be one continuous explosion, the noise and the blast continuing for seconds as the four Ochoa pistoleroskilled or maimed every standing man.
As corpses dropped around him, Lyons pulled the knife from his pocket and cut the ropes tying the hands of his partners. Then he freed his feet with one quick cut.
“The Man of Iron does it again!” Gadgets yelled, grabbing an Uzi from the tangle of dead men on the floor around them.
“Is that Miguel Coral?” Blancanales asked.
“Whose side is he on now?” Gadgets demanded.
“Our side. The escape was a trick on the Nazis,” Lyons said as he unholstered the Python. He covered his partners, giving them time to find weapons.
The parked cars shielded Able Team. In the killzone, only the panicked and the dead and the screaming wounded remained. The other fascist squads, beyond the cars, did not have a direct line of fire at Able Team lying flat on the concrete.
A fascist running for cover turned, Uzi in hand. Lyons snap-fired, the X-head hollowpoint hitting the Uzi’s handle, the gunman’s right hand exploding as the 158-grain high-velocity slug shattered on the steel of the weapon. The tangled ruins of the gunman’s hand flopped at the end of his arm as he staggered backward into a car. Nine-millimeter slugs from behind Lyons punched into the wounded man’s chest.
A fascist ran from behind the shelter of a concrete pillar with an FN FAL para-rifle. Lyons steadied his Python in both hands. Before the para-rifle reached the fascist’s shoulder, a .357 slug smashed through his forehead.
Shotgun blasts went off above them. Wadding and hot powder rained on them. Lyons grabbed an Uzi from the hands of a corpse. Flat on the concrete, he emptied the Uzi in a wild, one-handed spray in the direction of the fascist gunmen. Then he dropped the empty weapon and crawled through blood to the panel truck.
Heavy-caliber slugs punched through the truck, glass flying. Lyons looked inside.
No Gunther.
Lyons grabbed his Atchisson and the Uzi he had captured in the alley firefight. He saw Coral and the others firing from the cover of a bullet-pocked Dodge a few steps away.
Blancanales and Gadgets crawled through the slaughter. They both had Uzis over their shoulders. Magazines weighed down their pockets. Each held an autopistol in one hand.
“Move it, Ironman!” Gadgets shouted as they ran to join Coral.
Blood puddled on the oily concrete. Staying low, Lyons looked for Gunther in the tangle of corpses. He saw a headless corpse and a man with his hands knotted in his spilled intestines, and a wounded man vomiting blood. One fascist crawled away, dragging a shattered leg. A shotgun blast struck him low in the back, his clothing suddenly torn and bloody as his broken-backed corpse flopped.
But no Gunther.
Lyons crabbed under the panel truck, then scrambled for the wall of parked cars, calling out, “Amigos! Mis amigos Ochoas! No dispare!”
An Ochoa man reloading a Remington 1100 gave him a salute and a grin. To the side, a revolver popped and a light went out. Gadgets sat against the shelter of a police car, plinking at the overhead lights with a captured .38 revolver. One by one, he shot out the light bulbs.
“Where’s Gunther?” Lyons yelled out. “Dande estd Gunther?”
“No se,” answered the Ochoa with the Remington.
“It happened too fast,” Coral shouted. “But he is here. We will find him. He will not escape you.”
Gadgets popped out another light. “That ain’t the question. Our problem at the moment is for us to escape them.”
“Wrong attitude, Wizard.” Lyons flicked the safety off his Atchisson. Heavy with weapons and ammunition — the assault shotgun in his hands, an Uzi over his shoulder, pistols in his holsters and pockets, magazines in other pockets — he moved to the side.
Blancanales followed him. The Ochoa with the Remington joined the North Americans as they slipped from parked car to parked car. Gadgets fired above them, still popping light bulbs.
Gunmen of the International spotted Lyons’s flanking team. Heavy-caliber slugs punched the cars. Other fascists sprayed 9mm autofire at the concrete, trying to create skipping ricochets under the cars to wound the flankers.
Flat on his belly as NATO-caliber slugs came through the car door above him, Lyons saw feet running. He fired under the car, the double-ought buckshot bouncing off the concrete. A foot disappeared. The gunman staggered forward, trying to run on the bones of his ankle but falling. Lyons fired again, at a distance of ten feet, the load of buckshot tearing a two-inch-wide hole through the fascist’s torso.
The dead man had an FN FAL para-rifle. He wore a bandolier of magazines. Keeping his head down, Lyons stripped the man of his weapons and ammunition. He also found a 9mm autopistol. He passed the FN FAL to Blancanales.
Continuing in a semicircle, they came to a traffic lane. Lyons looked out from behind a parked car. Fascists fired an explosion of 9mm slugs at him. Bullets popped the tire near his ear.
“Pol! I’m going across. You and Senor Remington put out some fire. On three. One! Two! Three!”
Weapons fired in one long blast. Lyons dived across the traffic lane to the shelter of a concrete pillar. As he scrambled behind the pillar, bullets chipped the other side, ricochets whining to hit concrete and cars.
Lyons crabbed another few feet to a parked truck. He saw polished shoes and pressed slacks. A gunman pointed his Uzi down at Lyons and Lyons rolled and fired the Atchisson one-handed, the blast catching the fascist in the crotch, flipping the man face first onto the concrete. His arteries pumping jets of blood out of a vast wound, the fascist tried to raise himself on his arms.
Lyons did not waste another 12-gauge round. Standing, he brought the butt of the Atchisson down on the back of the man’s neck, snapping his vertebrae.
Another gunman ran around the back of the truck. Point-blank, Lyons put a 12-gauge blast through the man’s face.
“Pol!”
“Can’t! Cannot do it.”
Letting his assault shotgun hang from his shoulder by its sling, Lyons snatched up the Uzis of the dead men. An Uzi in his left hand, he leaned from cover and sprayed out the magazine. Return fire smashed into the truck. Lyons felt blood flowing down his arm. Blood dripped from his sleeve.
The blood of other men covered his sports coat. He could not see his own wound. He could not stop to find it. Dropping the blood-slick Uzi, he shifted his position. NATO slugs tore through the truck as riflemen tried to kill him.
Blancanales answered with the FN FAL para-rifle.
Over the sights of the Uzi, Lyons saw a fascist stagger back. Then the Remington 1100 blasted a gunman’s face and hands away. Lyons spotted a leg and put a burst of 9mm slugs through it. As the wounded man clawed at the concrete, another burst killed him.
Fascists retreated to the ramp, trying to gain the safety of the street. The Ochoas cut them down with shotguns and bursts of .45-caliber slugs. Gadgets broke cover and pursued the fascists, firing quick bursts from an Uzi into any fascist still holding a weapon.
A wounded man with a pistol got a 3-shot burst to the face. A running fascist got four 9mm slugs through the back. A soldier in camouflage-patterned fatigues tried to tear a grenade from his web belt but died.
Lyons changed magazines and charged, killing everyone in front of him. Wounded men, fascists crawling to escape — blasts of 12-gauge ended their allegiance to the Pan-American Reich.
A shot zipped past Lyons’s face. He whirled, unleashing a full-auto burst from his Atchisson. A fascist with a pistol disintegrated as three blasts of double-ought and number-two buckshot ripped away an arm, opened his chest and tore off his head.
“Where’s General Mendez? Where’s Gunther?” Lyons shouted to the others as he searched for another Atchisson magazine in his pockets.
“I think the general made it out,” Gadgets ca
lled back. As the firing died, he took that moment to change Uzi mags. “I haven’t seen Gunther.”
A full-auto burst from an M-16 chipped concrete, the high-velocity 5.56mm slugs whining and ricocheting through the garage.
Caught in the open with empty weapons, Lyons and Gadgets looked up the ramp. Lieutenant Soto and a wall of black-clad Mexican army commandos stood at the top.
Each of their rifles pointed at the North Americans.
16
Spinning to face the line of soldiers, Lyons slammed a magazine into his assault shotgun and thumbed down the fire-selector to full auto.
Gadgets screamed, “Don’t. They’re good guys!”
Lyons stopped an instant before his index finger touched the trigger. “What?”
“Yeah, man. The lieutenant’s okay. He tried to stop the colonel from taking us here. And he got banged upside the head for thanks.”
Setting the safety of his Atchisson, Lyons strode up the ramp to the Mexican soldiers. The lieutenant directed his soldiers to form a cordon around the entrance. He motioned Lyons back.
“You cannot be seen,” Lieutenant Soto told him. The young officer accompanied him down the ramp. Lyons saw that a huge scab of drying blood matted the lieutenant’s black hair. “There will be much trouble soon. I may lose my commission. Or I may be a hero. But first we must do what must be done.”
“Now do you know what’s going on?” Lyons asked.
“Yes, now I know.”
Blancanales greeted the lieutenant with a quick medical exam. “How’s your head? Do you feel dizzy? Nauseated? Do you have a medic with you?”
“We cannot take the time,” the lieutenant replied. “The criminals fled to another building. When we attempted to detain the fascists, they fired on my men. We know where they are, but an assault from the street is not possible. What do you know of these fascists?”
Blancanales saw blood dripping from Lyons’s coat sleeve. “You got hit.”
