Warlord of Azatlan at-6

by Dick Stivers

  "We have far to go. It is already the afternoon."

  "Where we going?" Lyons asked.

  "To Unomundo," Merida answered.

  "You know where he is?"

  "We will search."

  Lyons looked to the others. "Pol, Wizard. The man may operate up in the hills, but he's got to have people in the city here. Transport, communication, spies in the government, whatever. Perhaps Colonel Morales and Captain Merida might have leads on Unomundo units here. I say we don't go into the mountains cold."

  "Is it possible we could gain information from the criminals here?" Blancanales asked the officers. "Before going into the mountains?"

  The colonel smiled. "Claro. Of course. In truth, there is one man who we intended to arrest today. A bus driver. He carries messages. We will go to the bus station."

  "What about others?" Lyons pressed.

  "If not that one, we will take some other. There are many."

  Able Team stowed their gear in one of the trucks and got in, Lyons in the front, Gadgets and Blancanales lounging in the middle seat. Captain Merida started the Silverado. They drove into the afternoon glare.

  Gadgets glanced back and saw the colonel go to an office. Then they cut between the hangars and continued to an access lane. Gadgets looked over to Blancanales. His partner tapped the tiny plastic phone that was plugged into his ear, and he smiled. In the front seat, Lyons tried to make conversation with Captain Merida.

  "This Unomundo character caught our security forces by surprise. How does he operate down here?"

  "He is unknown," Merida answered. He followed the narrow lane to a perimeter road. They passed parked cars and pickups. In the several colors of airline companies, technicians moved in equipment yards, or drove service trucks. Administrators in white shirts and ties talked with workers.

  "Our officer told us Unomundo has links to the other Central American countries," Lyons continued. "What do you know about the foreigners?"

  "Yes, many foreigners."

  They came to a guard booth. A man in a suit waved them through the gate. Lyons turned in the front seat and looked back. He saw the man leave the guard booth. A potbellied policeman stepped from a doorway. He wore a uniform of baggy blue pants and a frayed light blue shirt, and carried an M-l carbine. The man in the suit ignored the policeman, went instead to a new Dodge sedan.

  Lyons saw Gadgets make the same observation. Gadgets met Lyons's eyes, touched his ear, looked over to Blancanales. Lyons did not understand.

  "Later," Gadgets explained.

  Following a street to a major boulevard, Captain Merida turned east. Immaculate parkways bright with tropical flowers separated the east-west lanes. New American and European cars competed with trucks and rattling buses for the two lanes flowing east, the cars swerving in and out of traffic with seemingly divine protection. Fumes grayed the air. At every other corner, diesel smoke clouded behind buses pulling away from bus stops.

  They came to a traffic circle, from which they traveled north.

  Shops, auto dealers, office buildings linked both sides of the avenue. People crowded the sidewalks. Knots of shoppers and workers waited for buses on the corners. Pedestrians dashed through stop-and-go traffic to the grassy islands that divided the north-south lanes.

  The North Americans of Able Team saw Guatemalans of all social classes and ethnic origins: Mayan, European, and mixed heritage Ladinos. They saw garage workers in grease-caked coveralls. Office workers in slacks and shirts. Businessmen in Mercedes sedans. Vendors pushing handcarts painted with garish ice cream cones.

  Two young businessmen talked at a curb as they attempted to wave down a taxi. Both wore the gray-suit, dark-tie uniform of junior executives. Both held the required briefcases. One had fair hair and European features, the other black hair and a profile seen on the walls of Mayan temples.

  Indians walked in the modern crowds. At a traffic light, Lyons studied a Mayan woman. Shoulder to shoulder between a teenage girl in a disco-red jump suit and a technician with the logo of a multinational corporation on his uniform, the Indian woman waited for a bus. She wore sandals on her calloused, dusty feet, a simple wrap-shirt of broadloomed fabric, a huipile — heknew the word from the books — of hand-woven yellow and blues and purples, designs brocaded into the fabric, then highlighted with embroidered details. The cloth and designs and colors were a tapestry of ancient culture: history, tradition, and artistry displayed simultaneously in the marvelous fabric. Even with his ignorance of weaving and needlework, Lyons knew the woman wore months of work.

  She saw him staring. Her proud, austere face returned his gaze. She saw only another North American in an automobile, his face like all the others, his sports coat and shirt like the clothes all the others wore, the automobile only one of millions from a factory. She found him uninteresting, and looked away.

  Lyons saw her disdain and disinterest, and he laughed at himself. Captain Merida glanced over to him and misinterpreted his laughter. The light changed and he accelerated through the intersection as he commented: "Soon, all those filthy Indians will begone."

  Lyons said nothing.

  Continuing north on the modern Avenida la Reforma, Captain Merida followed the flow of traffic without speeding or swerving to exploit open lanes. Able Team watched the city pass, turning in their seats to sightsee like tourists.

  Gadgets spotted a familiar Dodge sedan. He had seen it before, parked at the airport's guard booth. The man who had waved them through the security gate was driving the sedan. With a glance, Gadgets indicated the car to Blancanales. Blancanales nodded, touched his earphone.

  The Reforma passed under a railroad bridge, then they saw a modern civic center of plazas and public buildings. Sidewalk vendors displayed fruits and nuts. Families herded coveys of children. Roller skaters weaved through the crowds. Soldiers with rifles guarded the offices of the Banco de Guatemala. A street preacher held up a Bible and delivered a sermon to a group of onlookers.

  Above them, on a hill overlooking the plazas and government offices, they saw a fantasy of free-form concrete: the Teatro Nacional.

  A boulevard intersected the Reforma at a diagonal. Captain Merida eased left through the honking, screeching traffic. He then turned left again. Now they drove south. Lyons saw the west side of the Teatro Nacional. He looked into the shadows to double-check, finally asked the captain, "Where are we going?"

  "Terminal de autobuses… the bus station."

  "But we've gone in a circle."

  "The traffic is bad. I go around to save time. Do not worry, we will be there very soon."

  They drove through an older section of the city. Diesel-blackened buildings housed workshops, small stores, second— and third-floor apartments. Trucks jammed narrow side streets. Buses that were crowded solid with passengers, goods and produce lashed to the roof racks, low-geared up slight inclines. Captain Merida turned left again to follow a sidestreet for three blocks.

  Parked buses lined the streets. Vendors sold vegetables and fruit and manufactured trinkets on blankets spread in the gutters. Five-foot-tall laborers staggered under hundred-pound bags of grain, only their back and a headstrap carrying the loads. Soldiers in combat gear double-parked a jeep and began to unload cases of empty pop bottles at the warehouse of a soft-drink wholesaler. Captain Merida waited patiently for the soldiers to finish and drive away, then continued on.

  Buses and trucks blocked a street. A policeman directed Merida to turn. Going right, he saw a gap in the parked cars, and he swerved over to park.

  A street vendor's cart occupied the space. The toothless old man put up a hand to halt the truck; he motioned Merida away. Merida took out his wallet and opened it to show a badge and an identification card. But the old man had already turned his back on them.

  "Perro anciano!" Captain Merida called out. But in the noise and chaos of the trucks and buses and crowded sidewalks, the old man could not, or would not, hear him.

  Throwing the truck into neutral and jerking th
e parking brake, Captain Merida stepped out. They saw him wave his identification in the old man's face. When the old man talked back, Merida slapped him down, then kicked him. People crowded around as the young man in the expensive suit dragged the old man off the asphalt and threw him against the hand cart. A young laborer stepped forward to defend the old peddler. The captain's identification stopped him. The laborer helped the old man push his cart away.

  Meanwhile, Blancanales had leaned forward to Lyons. Motioning Gadgets to listen also, Blancanales whispered: "At the hangar, I put a microtransmitter in Colonel Morales's front coat pocket. He's spent the last half hour on the phone arranging for us to be kidnapped and murdered. It'll happen here."

  Captain Merida returned to park the truck. He smiled to the North Americans. "Come, my friends. We will go learn of Unomundo."

  4

  A thousand odors struck them. The perfumes of flowers and citrus. The stink of caged chickens and tethered pigs. The rot of vegetables and fruits mashed under thousands of sandals. Diesel soot from the buses. All mixed and fermented under a sun that blazed on a land only fifteen degrees north of the Equator.

  Watching for the men who would kill them, Lyons and Blancanales followed Captain Merida through the market stalls. The narrow passages were claustrophobic with crowding Indians and Ladinos, with overhanging awnings and piled goods.

  Lyons and Blancanales scanned the faces and hands of the people, watching for weapons or sudden movement. The confusion of colors and faces and objects threatened to overwhelm their danger-heightened perception.

  Voices called out to them in Spanish. Women talked to one another in guttural Indian languages. Children whistled and pointed at the North Americans, chattering to them in languages Lyons had never heard before. Animals squealed. Cassette players and radios blared a cacophony of music and songs.

  Gadgets had stayed in the Silverado, supposedly to watch their weapons and gear. Actually he had hot-wired the vehicle and now waited for a signal to move. Lyons wore his earphone, and kept his hand-radio channel open for instant communication. Blancanales still monitored the microtransmitter in Colonel Morales's pocket.

  The Terminal de Autobuses Extraurbanosoccupied a block-square section of the city. The crowded markets surrounded the terminal itself, an asphalt area where the buses shuttling from the villages to the capital exchanged passengers and loads. Leaving the market stalls behind, the three men came to the buses.

  The designers of the terminal complex had built it in accordance with Third World realities. There were no ticket offices, no waiting rooms, no service garages. The drivers collected the fares, passengers waited on the buses, mechanics worked on engines and brakes and transmissions while the waiting passengers supervised. Pay lavatories offered privacy to those with five centavos. The poor used the corners and the gutters.

  The air was gray with diesel exhaust. Hundreds of Ford and Chevrolet and Bluebird buses jammed the blacktop. Rows of buses, parked side by side, only inches separating one bus from the next, waited for passengers. Passengers carrying burdens of packages and sacks and children wandered along the rows searching for the buses that would take them to their villages. Drivers waited behind the wheels or tinkered with engines as assistants lashed goats and furniture and bundles to roof racks. Other assistants, shouting over the noise of radios and horns and blaring rock and roll, announced the names of cities and villages.

  "Xela!"

  "Chi-Chi!"

  "Antigua!"

  "Sacatepequez!"

  "Nebaj!"

  Arriving and departing buses eased through the chaos of the narrow lanes, assistants walking a step ahead of the front bumpers to part the chaos of crowding people and other maneuvering buses. Assistants guided drivers into narrow spaces with slaps on the fender: two slaps to continue, three quick slaps to stop.

  A few steps behind Merida and Lyons, Blancanales lifted his coat as if to glance into an interior pocket, and whispered into his concealed hand-radio.

  "Political to Ironman and the Wizard. I'm getting traffic sounds from the colonel. Must be on his way with his hit team. Wizard, we're in the terminal. Zero this far. No shadows, no badguys. Zero."

  "Nothing here," Gadgets answered. "But I'm cocked and unlocked."

  His partners' voices whispered in his earphone as Lyons followed Merida. The officer glanced back to the North Americans from time to time as he led them through the crowds. He read the hand-lettered destination signs-of buses.

  A teenaged assistant called out to Lyons in awkward English: "Okay, man. Where you want to go? We go. Cheap. Anywhere you..."

  The teenager saw Merida. His voice stopped in mid-sentence. Looking from the Guatemalan officer to the North American, the teenager stepped back between two buses and disappeared.

  Lyons saw other bus drivers and assistants spot Merida. Most of the men and teenagers carefully ignored the officer. Others went quiet as the Guatemalan in the expensive suit passed. Lyons, with his years as a uniformed police officer, then as a plain-clothes detective, knew the reactions: the people recognized Merida as a police officer, and they hated him.

  But why would they hate Merida? Unlike the pimps and dealers and male prostitutes who had despised Lyons because he represented law and decency, these bus drivers and their teenage assistants worked for a living, they sweated long hours behind the steering wheels of their buses or under the hoods repairing the engines. In the United States, bus and truck drivers joined police officers at the same all-night hamburger stands and doughnuts shops, sharing stories and jokes, often exchanging information. Why would it be different here?

  A driver saw Lyons, smiled and motioned him over. Another man hissed to the driver, nodding toward Merida. The driver's face went hard, his eyes narrowing as he linked Lyons and Blancanales to Captain Merida. Lyons took a step toward the driver, only to have the driver turn his back.

  None of the working-class Guatemalans could mistake Lyons and Blancanales as countrymen; Lyons's blond hair and blue eyes identified him as a North American, and Blancanales, though darker, with Hispanic features and easy Spanish, did not look Guatemalan. Even though the drivers recognized the two separate North Americans as foreigners, which meant Lyons and Blancanales could not be Guatemalan police or security officers, the drivers still gave them the same cold hatred as Merida. Why? Did they mistake the North Americans for someone else?

  Lyons paused, secretively keyed his hand-radio. "Pol, I do not like this. Something's happening here and I don't know what."

  "Think Iknow?" Blancanales whispered.

  Drivers and assistants and passengers scattered. An Indian woman waiting in a bus saw something moving below her window — her eyes widened and she dropped down out of sight. The sidewalk cleared, people shoving their friends, hurrying them away.

  Lyons's pulse roared in his ears. He snapped a glance back at Blancanales, saw the ex-Green Beret already dropping to a crouch, his right hand going under his coat for his pistol. Lyons heard Gadgets's voice shout through his earphone: "They're here! The colonel and four goons in flashy suits..."

  Through the radio, he heard brakes screech. Then the frequency went to electron noise.

  Lyons pulled his four-inch Colt Python from his shoulder holster and crouched with his back to the red and turquoise front of a bus. His eyes searched the area — the now deserted walkway and vendor stalls in front of him, the bus windshields and windows behind him. He eased his head past the right headlight and looked down the eighteen-inch gap between the bus and the next. Nothing moved.

  Meanwhile Blancanales called Gadgets again and again. No answer. Finally: "Carl! Where's Merida?"

  "Our liaison? Probably out there with a goon squad."

  Looking across the walkway, Lyons saw two Indian children watching him. Their eyes flicked back and forth, from him to a point on the left side of the bus, six feet from where Lyons crouched.

  Lyons shifted the Python to his left hand. He extended his left arm. He leaned down to look
under the bumper. He saw two scuffed and torn shoes behind the front wheel. Infinitely slowly, the shoes crept through the black fluid and the filth and litter in the gutter. The shoes neared the front of the bus.

  The front sight and barrel of a revolver appeared around the edge of the bus at waist height. Lyons tensed, then made his move even as the shoes splashed through the gutter, the man jumping out from around the fender to shoot, only to sprawl as the North American grabbed the pistol's barrel and jerked the gunman off balance. As the man fell, Lyons whipped back his Python and backhanded the gunman with the pistol's heavy barrel.

  Shots. A bullet slammed into a fender. Lyons straightened, turned, heard the quiet rip-rip-ripof Blancanales's silenced Beretta 93-R, the three-shot burst hammering steel and breaking glass.

  "DON'T SHOOT!" Lyons screamed. "THERE'S PEOPLE AND LITTLE KIDS EVERYWHERE!"

  But the other pistol fired again. Lyons felt a fist slam into his head. He struggled with the gunman who had risen up from the sidewalk, the man's right fist clubbing Lyons in the head and face and shoulder again and again.

  Lyons saw who he fought. The man looked like a beggar, his clothes ragged and patched, but he was not old. Webbed scar tissue twisted the right side of his face and hooded his sunken, blind right eye. The beggar's left hand gripped a blue-steel revolver. His right hand would never grip anything again, only knotted burn scars and stubs of fingers remaining.

  Forcing the beggar's pistol to the concrete, Lyons blocked another blow from the stumpy hand and put his Python against the beggar's throat. But he did not fire. He wanted a prisoner. Lyons ended the fight by slamming his knee up into the beggar's crotch. He heard the man gasp and choke with the pain. A slug tore past Lyons's head.

  Broken glass showered him, gutter slime splashed his face as he rolled off the low curb and went flat under the bus. The beggar was already gone.

  Lyons crabbed under the bus, his hands sliding in the mashed vegetables and excrement and motor oil, the underside of the engine and transmission tearing at his sports coat. He paused for an instant, looking in the direction of the shots.