Into the Maze

7

Lines of taillights disappeared into the gray night of Mexico City. In two rented Mitsubishi minivans, Able Team and the others waited for the traffic to move. The headlights of cars and trucks leaving the city streaked past them. But their lanes remained jammed.

Around them, horns sounded in one unending chord of noise. Passengers leaned from bus windows to look ahead. Truck drivers gestured and cursed. Only motorcycles continued moving, the macho young men — without helmets — accelerating, braking, weaving between the cars and trucks and buses, then accelerating again.

On both sides of the Viaducto, an eight-lane expressway, four lanes in each direction, the nightlife of the Mexican capital buzzed. Without a glance to the traffic only steps away, men clustered under the neon lights of a bar. Boys kicked a soccer ball along the sidewalk. Indian women in satin blouses and cotton skirts sold candy and cigarettes and comic books from curbside stands. Teenagers strolled arm-in-arm through the crowds.

The pastel colors of the shopfronts, vivid pinks and blues and yellows, glowed like the neon of the shops' signs. But other than the painted colors of the shops and cars and the clothing of the people, the North Americans saw only the grays and black of concrete and asphalt. No trees or flowers or lawns lined the streets.

Pollution had killed all but human life. Exhaust from the stalled traffic swept the adjoining streets like fog. A block from the Viaducto, the pollution paled the lights. A few kilometers away, where the skyscrapers of the city towered above the avenues of the business district, the smog grayed the thousands of office lights to abstract smears.

And above the city, the smoke from the thousands of factories and millions of vehicles made a gray dome of pollutants that blocked any sight of the stars or moon.

In the vans, Able Team waited for the traffic to move. Blancanales and Coral had rented the mini-vans from a tourist agency earlier in the day. Then they drove through the vast city, stopping at shops to buy clothes for the Yaquis, black plastic tarps to cover the helicopter and luggage to conceal the arsenal of captured weapons. Now, in the backs of the vans, overnight bags held pistols and Uzis, suitcases concealed folding-stock rifles and an M-79 grenade launcher, and shipping trunks contained M-60 machine guns. Other trunks carried the NSA secure-frequency radios captured from the Mexican army. The suitcases and trunks filled the backs of the vans to the roof.

As Coral idled the engine of the van, waiting for the traffic jam to break up, Lyons sat in the back seat with his feet on Colonel Gunther. Tied and blindfolded, wrapped in a tarp, the prisoner lay on the floor. Vato sat beside Lyons. The Yaqui leader kept his right hand in an airline flight bag. The bag concealed the sawed-off Remington 870 shotgun taken from a dead gunman in Culiacan.

Lyons concealed his Atchisson, fitted with the fourteen-inch "urban-environment barrel," under a clutter of tourist maps on the seat.

If Gunther attempted to escape, Lyons or Vato would execute him. They could not allow him to rejoin the International.

The forces of the Fascist International searched for them. Throughout the afternoon and evening, Gadgets had monitored transmissions between International units. Snatches of conversation — from a private airport, from trucks on the highway — indicated that the commander of the International had withdrawn squads from Culiacan and Rancho Cortez and repositioned the soldiers along the Mexico-United States border. Other units maintained surveillance of Mexico City's airport, watching for North Americans matching the descriptions of the three men of Able Team.

But Able Team hoped to find and hit the International first.

The traffic moved. As Coral shifted gears and accelerated, Lyons spoke into his hand-radio. The earphone he wore eliminated any chance of Gunther's overhearing the conversation.

"Wizard, what have you got?"

"Same noise from the boys."

"Like what?"

"A goon said he's leaving. I don't know who, I don't know where, but he's going by air."

"Any addresses?"

Gadgets cut his jive. "Ironman, these Nazis are professionals. Even with the encoding radios, they maintain very tight-mouthed discipline. They're using code names and numbers for their positions. And there's another encrypting radio out there putting out screech transmissions. Not only are they professionals, not only do they have all the modern electronics, but also they seem to be one step ahead of us. I get the scary feeling they could be decoding usright now."

"Not possible." Lyons knew that without one of the three secure-frequency radios Able Team carried, no one could monitor their communications.

"Positive?"

"I hope it's not possible."

"Yeah, let's hope. Problem is the same people who made the radios for us good guys made the radios for those bad guys."

"We don't know that."

"Hey, man, maybe you don't know it. But I know it."

They passed a stadium. Thousands of Mexicans crowded from the ultramodern structure of curved concrete and steel. Traffic slowed again as the cars of the sports fans sped onto the Viaducto. A city policeman directed traffic around an accident.

The wheels of the Mitsubishi crunched over smashed soda-pop cans. To the side of the wide expressway, the driver of a truck argued with a bleeding man who leaned against a smashed Volkswagen. The truck driver pointed to his spilled load of soda-pop cases, then shouted into the face of the injured man.

"The joys of the big city," Lyons commented to Vato.

Vato nodded. He leaned forward and spoke in Spanish to Coral. Then Vato turned to Lyons. "We will be there soon."

Coral had called associates from the Ochoa Gang and negotiated for the use of an auto-repair garage in the slums of Colonia Netzahualcoyotl. He had told them he needed a place to park two vans of contraband "from the north," videotape recorders and videocassettes of American and European pornography. The auto garage would allow the group to arrive and depart without being seen on the street.

Riding through the city, Lyons watched the unending urban sprawl float past. He began to doubt the wisdom of searching the Mexican capital for the headquarters of the International.

On maps, Mexico City looked like yet another of the world's largest cosmopolitan cities.

Back in the isolation of the Sierra Madre of Sonora, Lyons had thought they could search the city. After all, his partners spoke Spanish. They had Mexican allies. They had taken a fascist colonel prisoner. And Lyons himself had lived most of his life in the second largest Mexican city: Los Angeles, California.

As a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, Lyons had operated in Mexican communities. He had searched for felons in the barrios of Los Angeles and he'd found the criminals. He expected to do the same in Mexico City.

But the street map of the city, mere lines and colors printed on paper, did not communicate the unimaginable scale of the capital of Mexico. Tourist guidebooks gave the population as fourteen million. Unofficially, the Mexican government estimated that at least eighteen million people lived in the metropolitan center and the satellite cities. In fact, the Mexican government did not know how many millions lived in the vast city.

But going there had avoided an assault on the stronghold of the International's forces in northwest Mexico. Los Guerreros Blancos and the corrupt International Group of the Mexican Army maintained an army with modern weapons and communications at Rancho Cortez.

An attack on a military base with a force of teenagers and out-of-work gangsters would have risked pointless death.

In contrast, a surprise attack on the Mexico City offices of the American Reich seemed cunning yet obvious.

Cut off the head...

But first they must find the snake.

Lyons heard his hand-radio click. Gadget's voice came through the earphone. "Ask Coral what the name of this freeway is."

He leaned forward and whispered. "What freeway are we on?"

"Tlalpan. It is a name from the Aztecs."

"Say it again."

Coral pronounced the unfamiliar word for the North American. "Tlal-pan. Say Te-lal in one sound. Tlal. Tlal-pan."

Lyons stuttered the Nahuatl word into his hand-radio. "Te-lal-pan. Tlalpan."

"Oh, shit!" Gadgets cursed.

"What?"

"Ixnay da jive. Da goonies know!"

It took a moment for Lyons to comprehend the nonsense Gadgets talked. And why. He questioned Gadgets to confirm the message. "Are you positive?"

No answer came. Then a voice shouted from the next traffic lane. Lyons saw Gadgets waving from the other Mitsubishi. He slid back his window.

"Lock and load!" Gadgets shouted. "They know we're on Tlalpan. I just heard it. I don't know how, but they must be monitoring us or tracking us or they got us under surveillance. Use your radio only as a last resort and talk jive, understand?"

Lyons shouted back. "We'll run patterns through traffic. If they're behind us, we'll spot them."

"Got it!"

Driven by Blancanales, the other minivan accelerated ahead. Lyons leaned forward to Coral. "Let him get a few hundred yards ahead. Then we'll speed past him. We're trying to spot any cars following us."

Coral nodded. He waited for the space in the next lane, then whipped the van to the right. He continued over one more lane and swerved in front of a truck.

Traffic sped past. Cars rode the bumpers of trucks. Buses accelerated and braked and swerved through rows of trucks. Motorcycles wove everywhere. In the chaos of headlights, Lyons could not identify any surveillance units. He motioned for Coral to accelerate.

Lyons scanned the vehicles in the other lanes, watching for any car or truck changing lanes or racing to follow them. But he saw only the motorized chaos of thousands of Volkswagens, Fiats, Mexican-manufactured Fords competing for position.

Then he saw a Dodge sedan easing from one lane to another, accelerating smoothly to merge with the flow.

"Miguel, slow down." Lyons turned to Vato. "Take a look at the men in the Dodge. On our left."

In contrast to the dented and dirty compact cars jamming the Viaducto, the powerful Dodge had perfect fenders and a gleaming dark blue finish. As the Dodge passed, Lyons glanced at the shoulders and backs of the passengers. He noted the passengers wore business suits.

A newspaper covered the hands of the man in the front passenger seat. In the back seat, another man held a briefcase, his thumbs on the latches. Then the Dodge passed.

"Two of them are not Mexicans," Vato said.

"And why would executives be going to work at night?" Lyons leaned forward to Coral. "That blue Dodge. Stay near it."

Coral glanced to the rearview mirror. "Behind us. There is another car like that. A white one."

'Tell me when they come up."

Lyons turned to Jacom, who rode in the front passenger seat. He held an Uzi wrapped in a jacket.

As Vato's spotter in the mountain fighting, Jacom had fought the forces of Los Guerreros Blancos and the Mexican army. He had used binoculars to correct Vato's five-hundred-meter rifle fire across the desert wastelands. In the battle at the Hills of the Dead, he had shot down a helicopter troopship with accurate 7.62 NATO slugs into the engine. Now the teenager faced danger in the chaotic traffic of a metropolitan expressway.

Lyons trusted the Yaquis with his life. More than compatriots in arms, Vato and Kino and Ixto and Jacom had become his friends.

A week earlier, Lyons did not know that the teenagers or their mountain people existed. If the cynical ex-LAPD detective had encountered the Yaquis — a tribal militia protecting the opium fields of the Sierra Madre — Lyons would have killed them. But the past week had given Lyons a quick education in the poverty and oppression of Mexico. He knew they grew opium for the heroin factories of Culiacan. He did not excuse their crimes, but now he understood their desperation. Now he would work to turn the people away from the drug trade.

"Ready?" Lyons asked.

Jacom nodded.

As Lyons reached into a suitcase for his Atchisson, he heard tires scream on asphalt.

Metal smashed metal.

Autoweapons fired.