"Hold them! We haven't got it all yet. Can you?"
"They're already in there."
"The two that ran in here? They are past tense."
"How much longer?"
A full-powered Detroit engine roared as another Chevrolet slipped around the corner. The driver skidded the car to a stop in front of the telephone office. Three more gunmen ran for the entry, Uzis in their hands. The people on the sidewalks scattered.
Bursts of autofire shattered the evening. A plate-glass window fell onto the sidewalk.
Going to one knee, Lyons gripped his Colt Government Model in both hands. He lined up the sights on the driver of the first Chevrolet, checked the sidewalk for bystanders, then squeezed off a silenced shot.
Blood splashed the inside of the windshield. The driver slumped over the steering wheel, the engine screaming with frenzied rpm as the dead man's foot pressed down the accelerator. Then the driver fell sideways onto the transmission lever.
Tires smoking, the Chevy raced backward, shearing off two doors of a parked taxi. The out-of-control sedan continued backward into the wide boulevard, scraped off a car's taillights and smashed into the side of a bus. Hundreds of cars skidded to a stop.
Sprinting from the doorway, Lyons ran for the other car. He saw the driver turning in the front seat, his hand coming up with an automatic. Lyons sidestepped to the left and the driver fired, the back windshield of the Chevrolet suddenly fracture-white, the 9mm slug passing high over Lyons's head.
A silent 3-shot burst of .45-caliber slugs from Lyons punched holes in the crystals of broken glass, the impacts of the hollowpoints like hammers slamming the dashboard. He continued around the Chevrolet and fired again, point-blank through the driver's window. Three more hollowpoints tore into the wounded man. Lyons reached inside and took the keys from the ignition.
An Uzi fired a last burst. Lyons ran toward the telephone office and looked inside. Dead men sprawled everywhere. A woman ran from the front doors, screaming, tottering on her high heels. Gadgets and Blancanales followed her out. Blancanales held his Beretta 93-R autopistol in a two-hand grip. Gadgets had his bag of gear in one hand, an Uzi in the other. Another Uzi hung on his shoulder.
A shotgun boomed. A block away, Lyons saw a muzzle flash twice, the cracks coming an instant later. Headlights wavered. A second pair of headlights accelerated from behind the first, and the shotgun fired again. Lyons heard a crash.
"Where are the cars?" Gadgets shouted.
"We'll take that one." Lyons ran toward the windshield-shattered Chevrolet and jerked open the door. He pulled the dead man out.
Another weapon fired somewhere on the next block. Lyons dropped to a crouch. But no bullets came. Listening for a moment, he heard no more shots, only blaring horns.
Vato's rental arrived, sliding sideways as it stopped. Vato held out Lyons's Atchisson with one hand, the forestock braced on the window trim. "There are many of them!'' he shouted.
"Where's Jacom?"
"Back there, coming. Get in!"
"Take them." Lyons pointed to his partners. "I'll wait for Jacom."
Lyons pulled his Atchisson out of Vato's car window. Vato passed him another 7-round box-mag of 12-gauge shells as Blancanales and Gadgets got out of the Chevrolet and into the small car. Gadgets leaned across the back seat and pushed the door open.
"Get in! What're you waiting for?"
"Jacom! Where is he?" Lyons crouchwalked into the open, the muzzle of the Atchisson straight up as he scanned the street for the Yaqui teenager. "I'm not leaving him here..."
"He's coming!" Vato told him. "Look back there."
The headlights of a compact flashed to high beam twice. Jacom waved from the window. Only then did Lyons get in the car with his partners.
"Move it!" Lyons pointed the Atchisson out the window, watching for any other gunmen of the International.
Vato stood on the accelerator, swerving past a bus, whipping the compact through a skidding right turn. Lyons looked back, saw Jacom following them.
"We made it... What did Stony Man tell you?"
Gadgets shook his head with disbelief. "This is all too weird. Gunther isn't a Nazi, he's..."
Veering across three lanes of traffic, a pickup closed on them. A gunman stood up in the back and raised an Uzi.
A blast from the Atchisson flipped him backward from the truck. Lyons turned in the seat and sighted on the driver.
The truck swerved, headlights glaring through the back window of their rental car, then accelerated, the driver reaching out the window to point a revolver.
Firing point-blank, Gadgets killed the driver with a captured Uzi, the long burst throwing the driver sideways into another man, his hand pulling the wheel hard to the right. Gadgets fired until the bolt slammed down on the empty chamber. The truck went over the curb and into a sidewalk vending booth. Newspapers and magazines exploded into the air.
Gadgets dropped the empty Uzi to the pavement, the weapon clattering end-over-end on the asphalt.
"Gunther's what?" Lyons asked.
"He made all that noise we thought was German?"
"Yeah, yeah. What was it?"
"German. And Russian. He's an East German. KGB."
Headlights wove through the traffic. Muzzles flashed with autofire.
12
Pointing to a doorway, Lieutenant Soto posted two of his soldiers to watch the street. Then the lieutenant led his platoon into the darkness. They wore black fatigues and neoprene-soled boots. Wax stick blacking darkened their faces. Tape on the stocks of their M-16 rifles eliminated noise.
As silent as a shadow, the line of twenty soldiers moved through the darkness of the alley.
The lieutenant walked slowly, gently pushing aside trash with his boots before he eased down his weight. He flicked his eyes from side to side. He scanned the doorways, the warehouse loading docks, the mounds of paper and plastics.
Rats ran through the filth and trash piled behind the warehouses. Cans rattled. A block away, a diesel truck roared through its gears. From time to time, workers in one of the factories hammered sheet metal, the banging echoing through the alley. The lieutenant picked up the pace. None of the foreigners in the warehouse would hear the small sounds of the soldiers' soft-soled boots on the asphalt.
The shoeshine boy had described the men. The Mexicans who had impersonated soldiers matched the descriptions of the soldiers accompanying the mysterious helicopter. The lieutenant had not matched the boy's descriptions of the North Americans to those of any known criminals. But tonight he would interrogate the foreigners.
If they surrendered.
If they did not, the lieutenant would send morgue photos to North America and Europe.
There would be no escape this time. A platoon of soldiers, headed by his sergeant, watched the street entrance to the warehouse. The lieutenant and the second platoon now moved to secure the back exits. A few blocks away, an army colonel and a metropolitan police commander coordinated the action of the Mexican army antidrug unit with the patrols of the city police in the area.
Among the shadows and gray forms, Lieutenant Soto saw the ramp. That ramp led into the warehouse rented by the foreigners. A line of yellow light under the warehouse door indicated activity inside.
The lieutenant tapped the chests of the two soldiers behind him, then pointed to a doorway. The soldiers silently took positions in the shadows. A few steps farther, the lieutenant sent two more soldiers to creep into the space between two buildings. Other soldiers walked up a flight of concrete steps to a loading platform. They went prone.
After dispersing his men in groups of two and four to positions opposite the warehouse, the lieutenant finally keyed his walkie-talkie. He wore the small radio on the shoulder strap of his web gear, the case secured by a strip of Velcro. He whispered into the microphone.
"We are ready. You see anything?"