Into the Maze

17

Shock-flash grenades boomed. As the Mexican soldiers sprayed autofire down the stairwells, Lyons dropped off the edge of the roof.

Thirty floors above the Paseo de la Reforma, he hung on the end of a rope. The overhang of the roof placed him six feet from the windows. He watched the offices in front of him. Three windows down, men moved inside an executive suite. But the explosions and shooting in the stairwells kept the attention of the fascists away from the skyline of Mexico City.

Lyons looked down. The lights of police cars and ambulances surrounded the tower. Emergency barriers blocked the avenida. He saw the specks of police officers and soldiers, but no one immediately below him.

He waited until his side-to-side swinging stopped. Then he moved back and forth to swing toward the plate-glass windows. He built up his swing. His shoes touched the steel frame. He pushed off.

With his silenced Colt, he fired four slugs through the plate glass as he swung outward, one shot to each corner. The glass shattered in sheets. Most of the glass fell into the office, but some fell to the empty sidewalk.

As he swung in, he reached out an arm to put it through the empty window frame and grab a handhold on the inside.

Slowly he eased through the window. Nothing moved in the dark office. He untied the harness of rope around him. Then he went to the door and locked it. By the light from the gray sky, he searched the office. He found only desks and filing cabinets.

He paused to reload his Colt, slapping in another extended 10-round-capacity magazine.

Returning to the window, he knocked out the last pieces of plate glass in the frame. He gave the rope two jerks, then two more. After a few seconds, the rope went slack. He pulled the lower end of the rope into the office and tied it to a heavy desk.

He jerked the rope three times. Above him on the roof, his partners pulled in the slack. The rope now stretched taut from the top of the window to the desk. Lyons grabbed the rope, twisting it and jumping on it to try the knots.

A moment later, Gadgets slid through the window. Lyons cut the rope harness from his partner and freed him from the safety rope. If the taut line had failed as Gadgets slid down, the safety would have stopped his fall. They threw the safety rope back through the window. On the roof, Blancanales and the Mexican commandos pulled it up.

"Anything?" Gadgets whispered.

"Nothing yet. Heard voices. But I know they didn't hear me."

"Positive?"

"No one's shooting at us."

Blancanales slid down next. They cut away his harness, then sent the safety rope up again. They unslung their weapons and listened to the firing coming from the stairwells. The booms of shock-flash grenades punctuated the firefight of the sham attack. Able Team each carried four of the antiterrorist stun grenades. As they waited, they jammed valved hearing protectors in their ears.

A Mexican commando came down. Able Team left him to supervise the entry of the other soldiers. Lyons went first with his silenced Colt. Gadgets stood behind him with a shock-flash ready.

Easing the office door open, Lyons saw men in uniforms and street clothes rushing through the corridor. Some of the gunmen wore the gray uniform of the International, others the OD fatigues of the Mexican army. He saw traffic cops in their dark pants and sky-blue shirts. But most of the gunmen wore the uniform he had seen in actions in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Guatemala City: expensive European casual suits, tailored and pressed.

But the airborne assault had ruined the styling of the International soldiers. Blood from superficial wounds stained their Italian fashions. They had torn their slacks and sports coats, wrinkled their silk shirts, scuffed their shoes.

Lyons turned to Gadgets and whispered, "Fragmentation."

Gadgets returned the shock-flash grenade to his combat harness. Lyons unhooked two Italian MU-50G controlled-effect grenades from his gear. He pointed to the right and held up the two small grenades. He pointed to the left and held up two fingers. Gadgets nodded and took two MU-50G grenades from his bandolier. They nodded to each other and pulled the safety pins.

"One... two..." Lyons counted, "three!"

They threw the grenades in opposite directions and slammed the door shut. Gadgets laughed. "Designer grenades for designer dudes!''

The chain-blast came an instant later. Lyons charged out first, Atchisson leveled, Gadgets one step behind him. Blancanales and a Mexican commando cut to the right.

Only emergency lamps provided light. The storm of high-velocity steel beads had broken all the fluorescent tubes. Lyons and Gadgets rushed over the dead and wounded. Pointing his CAR with one hand, Gadgets fired 5.56mm execution shots into any gunman who still lived. Lyons did not waste his 12-gauge shells.

At the door to the executive suite, Lyons fired a single blast through the lock and the door flew open. Submachine guns fired, slugs splintering the door, punching through the thin office walls. Gadgets dropped flat on the carpet and tossed in a shock-flash.

The white blast silenced the weapons. Dashing into the twilight of the office, they saw men and women sprawled around computer terminals. Shattered video displays smoked with phosphor powder. Flashlight in his left hand, the Atchisson's pistol-grip in his right, Lyons checked the stunned fascists while Gadgets watched the door.

He counted five men and three women. But no General Mendez. No Colonel Gunther.

"Call for some soldiers," Lyons told his partner as they went to the office door. "We can't stop to tie these Nazis up."

"Gringo putos!"

A woman shot Lyons in the back.

Lyons spun and the woman fired her revolver again, a .38-caliber slug roaring past his ear. One blast from the Atchisson tore apart her heart and lungs, throwing her body over. Dying, she tried to scream, her eyes fluttering, her hands opening and closing reflexively as liters of her blood drained from the vast through-and-through wound.

Gadgets picked the deformed hollowpoint out of Lyons's Kevlar and gave it to him. "Teach you to turn your back on a woman."

Plaster flew from the walls. Gadgets staggered, and Lyons felt a slash across his gut and right forearm. An autoweapon in the corridor fired burst after burst at the doorway. As Lyons went down backward, his arm screaming with pain, he brought up the Atchisson.

An International gunman, ammunition bandoliers belted across his sports coat, ran through the door. He fired an M-16 wildly, spraying the office at waist height. Squinting against the muzzle-flash above him, Lyons snap-fired a single blast.

Steel shot smashed the plastic-and-aluminum autorifle to scrap, tearing away the gunman's hand, ripping through his chest. He fell back into another fascist attacker. Lyons aimed the Atchisson and fired again, slamming the dead men back some more. The corpses fell in the corridor.

Autofire searched for Lyons, hammering the door, shattering plastic computer components on the desk tops. Gadgets groaned, then rolled across the floor to the doorway. He found a fragmentation grenade in his web gear. Pulling the pin, he let the safety lever flip off. He counted away the delay.

A fascist dashed across the doorway, an autorifle in his hands flashing. Roaring over Gadgets's head, the slugs swept the office. Gadgets tossed the grenade into the corridor and scrambled back as slugs whined off the doorframe. Burst after burst killed the carpet where he had sprawled only a second before.

The grenade stopped the firing. Blinded, a hundred wounds spurting blood, the gunman staggered to the office door. He held the wall and screamed with shock and despair. Lyons pointed his Atchisson at the dying fascist but did not fire. He crawled to help Gadgets as the screaming man died on his feet and fell.

"I'm hit..."

"Where?" His Atchisson pointed at the door, Lyons searched for blood on Gadgets with his left hand.

"There!" Gadgets gasped as Lyons touched the Kevlar over the left side of his chest.

Blood oozed through a tear in the battle armor. Though the steel trauma plate set in his armor protected him from a straight-on shot to his chest, a 5.56mm bullet had hit Gadgets from the side. Kevlar could not stop full-velocity rifle bullets. Lyons fumbled with the Velcro closure strips.

"Hey, let me take care of me." Gadgets pulled open his battle armor. "And you take care of you. Now your other arm's bleeding."

Checking himself, Lyons saw where a bullet had slashed across his battle armor, cutting a path across the black nylon exterior. The bullet had continued into his right arm. He pushed the sleeve up, saw two bloody holes where the bullet had entered and exited just below the inside of his elbow. Pain came when he made a fist, but his hand still functioned. The shallow wound had not severed any tendons.

"No doubt about it," Gadgets said, trying to twist his face into a grin. He pointed to a small hole in his ribs. "I'm shot."

Black uniformed commandos ran into the suite. For an instant, Lyons and Gadgets looked into the bores of the Mexicans' M-16 rifles, then a commando went to one knee beside the North Americans.

The Mexican tore open a field-dressing packet and pressed a bandage to the wound. Gadgets pushed the dressing aside. He probed at the wound with his fingers.

Blancanales joined them. "You hit? Where?"

"I'll live. I'm okay, I think. Nothing broken. Not gargling blood. Ughh — there it is. Found it. The wall and the Kevlar almost stopped it."

"Stay here," Lyons told him. "Pol, let's go."

As Gadgets surrendered to the first aid, Blancanales stripped off his partner's ammunition and grenades. Gadgets tried to sit up.

Lyons pushed him back. "Take a break. I'll call you if we need you."

"Get the number-one man!"

"That's the plan..."

Lyons and Blancanales rushed into the corridor.

Two Mexican commandos followed the North Americans. Firing continued at the stairwells. Bypassing the offices, the group went to the next corridor. Lyons dropped flat and looked around the corner.

In one instant of sight, as boots ran toward him, Lyons saw the elevator lobby. A group of International soldiers in uniforms and casual styles defended the stairs, spraying autofire up at the attacking Mexican commandos, then closing the door as the Mexicans returned the fire. Across the lobby, other gunmen shoved personnel — men, women, wounded — into the elevators.

Then a boot kicked Lyons as a soldier tripped over him. Blancanales brought down the butt of his M-16/M-203 on the back of the fascist soldier's head. The first blow of the plastic stock did not calm the struggling soldier. Blancanales slammed him twice again before he went slack.

The Mexican commandos dragged the unconscious man off Lyons. The soldier, wearing green fatigues bearing the emblem of the International Group of the army of Mexico, wore a vest of Uzi mags and a canvas bag of fragmentation grenades. Blancanales appropriated the weapon and the bag of grenades. He pointed to the sound of the fighting.

Lyons nodded. "Teamwork. You pull, I throw."

Pulling safety pins, Blancanales passed the grenades to Lyons, who let the levers flip before he pitched the grenades into the lobby. He threw three grenades before anyone noticed the olive-green spheres bouncing over the carpet.

One fascist shouted, then a blast slammed him against a wall. Blasts came fast and continuously as Lyons threw. He tossed all the eight grenades that the bag contained.

"Time to clean it up."

The North American and Mexican commandos rushed into the screams and swirling smoke. Wounded men and women raised pistols and shotguns. Others clawed the carpet to reach rifles. With an autoweapon in each hand, Blancanales killed everyone he saw, firing ambidextrous bursts from the M-16/M-203 and the Uzi.

Lyons kicked open the stairwell door. A bloody gunman pulled the pin from a grenade and swung back his arm. Lyons fired once, the point-blank blast tearing away the man's ribs and spinning him against the wall. Lyons closed the door. The steel fragments splintered the fire door with dozens of ragged holes.

A flash-shock boomed on the other side. The noise made Lyons stagger back. His body ached from the shock wave. Throwing the door open, he shouted, "No mas! We are here! Tenemos los fascistos! Alto!"

One soldier peered down. He saw Lyons and motioned to the others. A line of soldiers ran down the stairs. The lieutenant viewed the carnage in the elevator lobby. "Have you found the general?"

"No. But we only searched one office."

A fury of autofire broke out somewhere on the floor. The lieutenant shouted orders to his platoon. The young commandos went through the offices, searching methodically.

"There is still fighting below. My sergeant reports a unit of federal agents attempted to come to the rescue of the fascists."

"Then we'll search through the building until we find him. Him and Gunther..."

"No, American. You must leave. This will be trouble to explain. It is impossible for you to stay."

"We won't go until we find Gunther and the general..."

Blancanales interrupted. "You heard him, Ironman. It's his country. We'll go now."

"It's our war! We got to track down all these Nazis and stomp them out."

"I thank you for your help," the Lieutenant repeated. "But now I must ask you to go."

Vato and the three Yaqui teenagers rushed around a corner. Their Mexican army uniforms splotched with blood, they reloaded their shotguns and rifles on the move. When they saw Lyons and Lieutenant Soto, they blinked as if in shock. Ixto collapsed against a wall, blood pouring from fragment slashes on his left arm. Jacom and Kino sat beside him. They tore off a dead man's shirt and used the shirt to make a compress. Vato joined Lyons and the Mexican officer.

"Have we cut off the head?" Lyons asked the Yaqui.

Vato pointed at the offices. "This head. But there are more. I know there must be more. This Trans-Americas sociedad andnimais everywhere. The offices have maps of all the countries. The war on my people in Sonora is only one of many."

"The lieutenant tells us to go..."

"I thank you for your courage," Lieutenant Soto interrupted, "but this problem, this syndicate is Mexican. You have done what you can."

"Now it is a political problem." Vato nodded, agreeing with Lieutenant Soto.

"No!" Lyons countered. "It is criminal. These Nazis, the Communists, terrorists — they're only gangs of murderers. I refuse to call it political. It's not Mexican, it's not..."

"American," the lieutenant said, "it doesn't matter what you call it. It is what the politicoscall it. But you and I know the truth. There is no disagreement between us. Now go. Take all your friends and go. The helicopter waits."

With a salute, Lieutenant Soto left the Yaqui and North Americans.

Lyons shouted to him, "But I'll come back! You understand?"

"Next time you come," the lieutenant answered, "call me first. It will prevent misunderstandings! Adios!"

Lyons and Vato gathered their partners. Minutes later, they flew from Mexico City in the captured troopship.

They had won a victory in Mexico.

But they had far from defeated the Fascist International.

In an inner office of the Soviet Embassy, Jon Gunther briefed the First Secretary on the attack against the International. Like Gunther, the First Secretary served the KGB. "We lost most of those Mexicans, but it is not a total disaster. One of the Americans wants our gold. He will sell himself to us."

"Which one?"

"The blond one. I don't know his name. I will review our files."

"Then why this massacre? If he..."

"He followed my instructions. He attempted to release me. But the other one, the Mexican criminal, he took me to his gang. The American followed instructions. I told him not to betray himself. And he did not. So he killed a few Mexicans? Now we have a man in the most secret of the American special units. I will contact him. I will pay him the gold I promised and much more. And in time, he will earn his money. Tonight was not a defeat. It was another step to victory..."