Into the Maze

10

In a storeroom of the abandoned garage, Vato prepared a drug. Gunther lay lashed to the springs of an iron bed, ropes securing his arms and legs and torso. He and the men of Able Team watched as Vato took the ingredients from a leather pouch, black with age and handling.

Vato put the knot of a cactus button on a board and chopped it with a knife.

"You think peyote will make me talk?" Gunther asked.

"This is not peyote."

"I am not unfamiliar with Mexico. I know what that is. I know I will not talk. You will only make me sick."

"It is like peyote, but it is not." Vato smiled to the prisoner. "You will soon know the difference."

An old porcelain cup and a rusty auto valve served as a mortar and pestle. After cutting the cactus button to hundreds of fine bits, he dropped it into the cup and crumbled in another substance. He ground the mixture to a powder. He added pinches of other powders. Then he took a folded square of paper from the pouch. The paper contained dried beetles the size of dimes.

"What do you call those?" Lyons asked.

Vato smiled and shook his head. He would not reveal the secrets. He dropped two of the beetles into the cup. Their shells crackled under the pestle as Vato ground them into the mixture.

Gadgets turned to their prisoner. "Last chance, colonel. Talk now and you won't have to eat that crazy shit."

"It will do nothing!" Gunther declared. He glanced around the circle of onlookers.

His eyes met Coral's for a long moment.

Then Gunther laid his head back on the squeaking bed. He closed his eyes against the searing light of the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

A couple of tar-colored lumps went into the cup next. Vato pressed down hard, grinding and blending. He worked patiently, stopping from time to time to stir the mixture with his knife blade, then grinding again. When the mixture became a homogenous green-black dust, he tasted it and nodded.

"Hold his head," he told the others. "Open his mouth and pinch his nose shut. Kino, you pour the water."

Lyons and Blancanales immobilized Gunther's head while Gadgets tried to pull his jaw open. Gunther locked his jaw shut.

"Relax," Gadgets told him. "Some people pay money to take drugs."

Gunther struggled against Gadgets's hands. Glancing to his partners, Gadgets asked, "Was it because I didn't say please? Come on, open up. We gave you the chance to talk. Please, open up...You're not cooperating..."

Gadgets slammed his fist into the side of Gunther's head, using the full force of his arm to drive the knob of his center knuckle precisely into muscles and nerves over the sphenoid bone of Gunther's temple. A second blow struck the ropes of muscle over the condyloid process of the jaw.

Stunned, his jaw numb, Gunther could not resist as Gadgets pulled his mouth open.

Vato dropped in the powder. Gunther strained to twist his head. Kino carefully poured a stream of water down Gunther's throat. Gunther had to swallow or drown.

"Now we wait."

The effects came slowly. After thirty minutes, Gunther began to blink his eyes and shake his head from side to side. He breathed deeply. Lyons leaned over Gunther and saw that his eyes no longer focused.

Gunther's breathing came in rasps. Then his eyes closed. Vato grasped his wrist and counted his pulse rate. Vato nodded.

"Question him now."

"Who are you?" Blancanales asked in English.

Violence seized Gunther. Arching his back, all the tendons of his neck standing out like cables, he strained to break the rope that bound him to the iron bed. His body trembled, sweat streamed from his face. He gulped air in panting gasps.

Vato studied the reactions, then took a plastic kit from his drug bag. The kit contained a vial and a disposable syringe still in the plastic envelope. Vato assembled the syringe and put the needle into the vial.

"This will calm him."

"What is it?" Blancanales asked.

"Morphine."

"Don't put him to sleep!"

"He will not sleep for days." Vato injected a few milliliters of the narcotic.

The spasms stopped but Gunther continued struggling. Blancanales leaned over him and asked him in Spanish, "Quitnes?"

Gunther raved through the night.

Lyons and two of the Yaqui teenagers, Kino and Jacom, stood guard on the rooftop. They alternated shifts, sleeping and watching the dark street. Cars and trucks sped by, bouncing over the broken pavement. People walked past without a glance at the abandoned garage. The street noises, the jets roaring overhead, the radios and televisions covered the screams and shouts of Gunther's delirium in the storeroom.

After midnight, the neighborhood fell quiet as the thousands of families in the tenements finally slept. But the sounds of the city never stopped, the traffic noise of the avenues and expressways still going on, planes and trucks and unmuffled motorcycles hurtling unseen through the gray, polluted night.

Despite the tropical latitude, Lyons shivered. He clutched his sports jacket tight around himself. At the elevation of Mexico City, more than two thousand meters above sea level, the air became cool after sunset. Now, in the predawn hours, the few people still on the streets wore jackets and sweaters.

He stared up at the flashing Tecate sign, a neon explosion of red and yellow letters framed in a blue afterimage against the gray night. Able Team had gone from searing desert to the tropical coast to the cool mountains in only a few days. His body had not time to acclimatize to the sudden changes. He said aloud, "I do get around. No doubt about it."

"Que es?" Jacom asked.

"Nada." Lyons knew the word because Gadgets used it often. He tried to explain that he had only talked to himself. "Hablo... hablo nada." He didn't know enough Spanish to explain. He pointed down and left the rooftop.

Going down the steel stairs, Lyons heard an incomprehensible monologue of some guttural language. He saw Blancanales and Coral sitting by the bed, listening and taking notes. The fascist colonel thrashed against the rope restraints, his body soaked in sweat, his blind eyes snapping from side to side but never focusing.

Gadgets had electronic gear spread out on a table. He changed the cassette in the tape unit recording Gunther, then returned to the circuits of the NSA radios captured from the International. Lyons looked over his partner's shoulder. Gadgets pointed to the maze of circuits and components.

"I think they did a directional scan on this radio. That's how they got us on the freeway. Like a DF, except..."

"You deactivated it?"

"That's not it," Gadgets explained. "I think the encrypting generates a distinctive electronic signature. Apparently they picked up the signal. That's why one of their officers asked who was on the freeway. When no one answered, they sent some cars to check it out."

"So we can't monitor the Nazis now?"

"I wouldn't risk it. I guess we've lost that trick. Too bad. It was slick."

"But we got him talking," Lyons commented, looking at Gunther.

"It's a fact." Gadgets nodded. "That dope opened up the doors of his head. Problem is, we don't know what came out."

"What?"

Blancanales answered. He pointed to his pages of notes. "We can understand his Spanish and English. But he lapses in and out of German."

"You get a location? Names? Places?"

"No address." Blancanales shook his head. "Names and places and scenes. All flashbacks. But we can't ask him questions. He doesn't even know we're here..."

"Whatever Vatoman made," Gadgets added, "that stuff is rough."

"You mean we dragged this Nazi across a thousand miles of Mexico and we can't get the information?"

"Be cool!" Gadgets tapped a stack of cassettes. "I think we got something interesting here. It's a mystery, but it's a very, very interesting mystery."

Lyons snorted with bitter frustration. "We didn't come here to play Agatha Christie. We're here to find and destroy."

"Patience," Blancanales said. "We'll relay all these tapes to Stony Man. They can do the translation. We'll continue the search until..."

"We can't," Lyons told his partners. "The International has people in the DEA and the NSA. If we report to Stony Man, the International will monitor it all."

"Don't sweat it, hardguy." Gadgets looked at Coral. "Miguel knows this city. We came up with a cool scam. No embassy contact, no trip to the DEA office, no satellite interlock. Simple, direct."

"What?"

"We just call home."

As the pilot guided the piper cub through the still morning air, Lieutenant Soto scanned the forested hills. The optics of his binoculars compressed the distances and perspective, reducing the misted landscape to patterns of green and gray and black. He focused on the rectangles of fields and pastures — any clearing larger than fifteen meters, the diameter of a UH-1 troopship's rotor blades.

But he saw no helicopter.

The lieutenant had received the report of the unauthorized helicopter the afternoon before. After calling the army units in the region to check the information, he had flown to Mexico City with two platoons of his soldiers. Now his soldiers waited in trucks while he circled in the spotter plane.

Again the helicopter eluded him.

This time, however, he had a confirmed sighting. An ex-air force officer, working on his ranch in the mountains, had seen it. The helicopter passed so close to him that he'd seen Mexican soldiers and North Americans riding inside with rifles in their hands. The retired officer had even noted that the doors of the troopship had been removed. The officer, suspicious because of the North Americans with the Mexican soldiers, reported what he saw.

No one else had reported the helicopter. The night before, the lieutenant had alerted all the police in the area. He had expected any information immediately.

Then came the killings on the Viaducto...

The lieutenant did not believe the events to be only coincidental. Mexicans and North Americans, in a stolen Mexican army helicopter, with automatic rifles, had been sighted in the mountains outside the capital. That same night, Mexicans and North Americans had killed other Mexicans and foreigners on an expressway in the city.

Lieutenant Soto had pledged himself to break this mystery. He would not fail.

Lyons watched Blancanales and Gadgets enter the Oficina de Telefonos Larga Distancia. Sharing the first floor of the side-street office building with a bank, the oficina offered long-distance telephone and telegraph services to walk-in customers.

No equivalent commercial service existed in the United States, nor did it need to. In the States, every desk and table and kitchen wall features a telephone. It is not necessary to leave the house to place a long-distance call or to send a telegram. But in Mexico, a developing nation, the telephone companies cannot yet provide that universal telephone service. Nor can the companies ensure dependable service. The people of Mexico City tell a joke. "Want to talk to a stranger? Telephone a friend."

Coral explained that the Oficina assured correct connections for personal and business calls. Every office featured working, static-free telephones and long-distance lines, and — important to Able Team — private booths, each with a chair and a writing table.

"There will be no problems," Coral assured them. He had taken the address of a long-distance office from the telephone book and given them directions. Coral stayed to sleep. He had sat with Blancanales beside Gunther all night, taking notes and recording his monologue. Coral would catch up on his sleep while the North Americans posed as businessmen relaying the recordings of their important meetings to their headquarters.

Now Lyons and Vato sat in one of the rented tourist cars, watching the street. Lyons held his fourteen-inch Atchisson under a newspaper. Vato concealed the sawed-off Remington in a flight bag. Ahead, Jacom waited behind the wheel of the other compact, an Uzi near his right hand. They took no chances, despite Coral's assurances. If the NSA monitored the Stony Man telephone lines, the International would know of the call from Mexico City before Gadgets switched off his tape player.

Blancanales and Gadgets talked with a clerk at the counter. Through the plate-glass windows, Lyons watched his partners give the clerk a slip of paper. The clerk pointed. They went to a booth.

On the street, a Mexican in a gray business suit approached the parked tourist cars. The middle-aged man, dapper, gray haired, carried a briefcase and an umbrella. Lyons watched the man. Several manufacturers of submachine guns offered briefcase adaptations of their weapons. The dapper Mexican businessman would pass within an arm's distance of Lyons. Lyons turned to Vato.

"Can you go to the other side of the street? And watch there?" Lyons pointed to the shadowed doorways opposite the telephone office.

Vato nodded. Taking his flight bag, he left the compact car. He jogged through the early-morning brilliance and slipped into a doorway.

A step away from Lyons, the businessman stopped. Lyons watched the hand that gripped the briefcase handle as he slid his own hand under his coat. He wore his modified-for-silence Colt Government Model in a shoulder holster under his left arm. He touched the pistol's checked plastic grip.

The businessman put his umbrella under his other arm and pulled out a handkerchief. He blew his nose, stuffed the handkerchief back in his coat pocket. He continued past Lyons.

Lyons opened the car door. He put the newspaper-covered Atchisson on the seat, then gathered up newspapers and a brightly colored tourist map of the city. Crossing the sidewalk to the entry of a travel bureau, he made a pretense of studying the ads of Mexican and European resorts displayed in the window. But he watched the street reflected in the plate glass. He held the newspapers and map under his left arm to cover the shape of the Colt holstered beneath his jacket.

A woman passed, a plastic-net shopping bag on one arm and her teenage daughter clutching the other. The girl glanced at Lyons, their eyes meeting for an instant, the girl averting hers when she saw the strange North American smiling at her. Her mother looked at Lyons and scowled. Lyons laughed out loud.

Across the street, Vato continually scanned the neighborhood. Lyons watched the Yaqui leader. The young man's eyes always moved — glancing to the traffic on the boulevard, watching a truck pass, studying a teenager who roared past on a motorcycle. Vato saw everything. Yet he appeared at ease, unconcerned with the passing people and cars, like a bored young man waiting for a shop to open. Vato had natural abilities, the gift of grace despite stress.

Footsteps behind Lyons interrupted his thoughts.

"Mr. American!" a voice called out. "Where do you want to go?"

Lyons took his hand out of his coat as an elderly travel agent motioned him to enter the office. "Pase adelante, por favor. We have a beautiful country. You have come to the correct place to arrange your tour of our natural wonders."

"No thank you, sir. Love your country, but I'm here on business. And I've got to get to it." Lyons walked away toward the windows of the telephone office. He saw Gadgets and Blancanales inside one of the booths. Continuing to the corner, he glanced down both directions on the boulevard.

Smog paled the brightness of the high-altitude morning to a dull glare. Like a tourist seeing the sights, Lyons stood with his hands in his pockets, looking around at the different architectural styles. He watched the people hurrying past on the wide sidewalk, searching their faces for the one wrong expression, one wrong glance. When cars and trucks turned from the boulevard to the side street, he gave every driver a quick look.

Lyons did not underestimate the International. The fascists had an efficient organization, with cunning and ruthless commanders, financed and aided by every right-wing regime in the hemisphere. Any one of the people walking past, any one of the passing cars could mean sudden death.

"Hey, hardguy!" Gadgets called out as he and Blancanales pushed through the door of the telephone office. "You waiting for someone?"

Vato had the second car in motion. Lyons threw open the door and stepped in. An instant later Jacom followed, Gadgets slamming the car door closed as the Yaqui teenager whipped into traffic.

"How did they do that so fast?" Vato asked Lyons. "They had several cassettes. And we stayed only twenty minutes.''

"Screeching," Lyons replied. "High-speed transmission and recording. The Wizard plays the cassette at ten times normal speed. At the other end, they record at ten times normal speed. When they play it back at normal speed, the recording sounds normal."

"Oh." Vato nodded. "High technology."

"You got it. Otherwise, we wouldn't have made that call. No way we'd stay in one place for hours, playing tapes over the phone while the Nazis closed a circle around us."

Weaving through the traffic of the boulevards and expressways, circling and zigzagging through the streets to lose any surveillance units, the two cars took separate routes back to the garage. Vato, the ex-lowrider from Tucson, skidded to a stop in front of the rolling steel door first. Lyons slouched low in the seat as Vato sent the door up, then spun the tires as he raced the car inside.

Davis ran from the shadows, an M-16 rifle in his hands. Ixto jerked down the rolling door.

The DEA pilot shouted, "Coral's gone! He's gone to the Nazis. We got to get out of here before..."

"Calm down!" Lyons told him. "What're you talking about?"

"Coral's one of them. I heard a van start up and it was Coral. And he took Gunther with him. They'll be here..."

"When did he go?"

"Fifteen minutes ago, maybe twenty. He waited until we were both up on the roof, watching for you. Then he was gone."

A horn honked outside. The door clanked up again and the other rented car sped inside.

"Move it!" Lyons shouted to his partners. "Coral's one of them. Him and the colonel are gone."

Gadgets and Blancanales threw open their doors. Lyons heard Davis explaining the betrayal and escape. But the ex-LAPD detective did not listen to the details. He ran up the steel steps to gather his equipment. He had heard enough.

Fascist units, backed by corrupt forces of the Mexican army and police, would encircle the garage.

Once the circle of squads of gunmen and soldiers closed, no weapons, no high-tech electronics would break that circle.

The North Americans and the Yaquis would be trapped.

Outnumbered, outgunned. Outlaws in a foreign city.