"I think it's all over on this end."
Gadgets answered. "The lieutenant's going slow. Leapfrogging from door to door. Very cautious fellow. Not like some people we know."
Blancanales spoke next. "The other International unit's withdrawing. The cars are gone. Stay low until the soldiers find you. And cooperate, understand?"
"I always cooperate." Lyons clicked off, then muttered, "With people who know what they're doing."
Holstering his Colt, Lyons stayed in the shelter of the steps, listening to the soldiers shouting to one another. The platoon stayed a block away, firing single shots at movement in the flaming cars. But no fascists returned the fire.
The door above the steps opened. A flashlight blinded him. As his hand closed around the pistol-grip of his Atchisson, four hands grabbed Lyons's arms and coat and dragged him through the door. He felt his Atchisson torn away. He kicked and struggled, but other hands restrained him. Then knees on his chest and arms and legs immobilized him.
An electric light went on.
He looked up into the face of Miguel Coral.
14
Soldiers waved flashlights over the faces of dead men. Other soldiers collected weapons while medics tended to the wounded. Blancanales and Gadgets, accompanied by Lieutenant Soto, searched through the wreckage and corpses for Lyons. The hulks of the cars still burned, acrid black soot floating in the air, the fires casting an orange light over the street.
They found fascist gunmen killed by shotgun blasts, but Carl Lyons had disappeared.
Blancanales looked from the gutted cars to the long street. Thirty-odd meters away, concrete steps went from the sidewalk to a door. In the other direction from the fires, he saw no steps, only shallow doorways and the steel framing of stairs to the roof of a warehouse.
At both ends of the street, held back by soldiers and police, crowds of people stared at the scene. The lights of a television crew panned from soldier to soldier as the cameraman recorded video images for the news.
"That's got to be where." Gadgets pointed to the concrete stairs under the door.
"He didn't say 'doorway'?" Blancanales asked.
"Nah, man. 'Steps.'"
"What about that fire escape over there?"
"No cover. He wouldn't lie low there."
A soldier jogged up. "Teniente Soto. Los otros han salido. No estdn..."
Motioning the soldier to be silent, the lieutenant took him aside to hear his report. Gadgets and Blancanales walked to the concrete steps.
"He said the others had gone?" Gadgets asked Blancanales.
"That's it. But what others?"
"One mystery at a time..." Gadgets went up to the door and tried to push it open. Locked. Shining a penlight on the steps, he saw long scratches where bullets had scarred the concrete. He waved the pen-light over the area.
Brass sparkled on the street's asphalt. Gadgets jumped off the steps and picked up a casing.
"Forty-five caliber. The man was here. But now he's gone."
"So he escaped?" the lieutenant asked as the North Americans rejoined him.
Blancanales shook his head. "He wouldn't have left us without telling us what he intended to do."
"Are you positive?" the lieutenant demanded.
"When the shooting started," Gadgets snapped at the lieutenant, "did you run away?"
"No!"
"Then neither did our partner."
"But the others ran away," the lieutenant said. "The ones inside the warehouse."
"The others?"
"The North American and the Mexicans. And the ones who you left here escaped before we came. Also the two indtgenaswho drove your cars now they are gone."
Gadgets and Blancanales glanced at each other. Vato and Ixto had slipped away in the chaos of the firefight. And somehow Davis and Kino had spotted the surveillance and escaped before the army encircled the warehouse. The others did not have radios. They could not inform Able Team of their actions.
But Lyons did carry a radio.
General Mendez, commander of the International de Mexico and the Grupo Internacionale del Ejercito Mexicano, reviewed the tapes of the intercepted communications. Alone in the penthouse office thirty floors above the Paseo de la Reforma, the general did not risk having anyone overhear the tapes. He listened to phrases in four languages inside his headphones.
The technical difficulties of the interception, and poor maintenance of the telephone line monitoring the transcontinental call, degraded the quality of the recording. Tape hiss and static distorted the voices, obscuring words and inflections. But he understood the German and Russian ravings of Colonel Gunther. And he also understood the English of the American technician speaking to his officer at the base in Virginia called Stony Man Farm.
The night before, the general had mobilized all available forces to search the capital of Mexico for the Americans. He had authorized his unit leaders to hire drug-syndicate gunmen as reinforcements. Other International units, serving in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa, had received commands to return to Mexico City.
He had told his unit leaders that he would not accept failure. If they did not find and destroy the Americans, the leaders faced execution themselves. As an added incentive, he promised rewards to the units. One hundred thousand dollars for the freeing of Colonel Gunther; one hundred thousand dollars for the confirmed killing of an American; and two hundred fifty thousand dollars in gold to any officer of the International who succeeded not only in freeing Colonel Gunther, but also in capturing an American for interrogation.
Now, as the general listened to the tapes of the intercepted phone calls, units of the International battled with the Americans in the streets.
But after hearing the tapes, he dreaded the imminent victory. No longer did he view the Americans as a problem to the security of the International. The taped communications had altered his concerns. The communications threatened the general with death and the KGB with failure.
United in their conservatism and Castillian heritage, several countries in the Americas El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina had contributed funds and soldiers to the cause of the International. The men fought in the belief they opposed the advance of Soviet communism.
But the Americans now knew that Colonel Gunther and General Mendez served the Soviet Union.
If captured by a unit of the International, the Americans would reveal the allegiance of the International's commander and the supposedly Paraguayan Colonel Gunther.
Perhaps General Mendez could explain away the story of KGB sponsorship of the International. Who would believe the truth? European and North American peaceniks denounced the armed forces of the conservative Pan-American nations as armies of fascist assassins. Voice of Moscow broadcasts labeled the governments of all Western Hemisphere nations except Cuba and Nicaragua as fascist regimes. The soldiers of the International would not believe they fought for the Soviet Union.
But what if the Americans played the tapes of Gunther's interrogation? What if International soldiers listened to the tapes and understood? What if the fantastic revelation started the soldiers questioning?
General Mendez armed his forces with weapons purchased on the international arms market Israeli Uzis, American M-16 rifles, Belgian FN rifles. But some situations required more sophisticated weapons: explosives, or electronics, or antiarmor-antiaircraft rockets. Secrecy dictated a secure supply of high-quality weapons. The Soviet Union provided these weapons through intermediaries. The general then told his subordinates that he had purchased the Soviet ordnance from the Israelis, who had captured the materiel in Lebanon.
If an officer suspected the fascist-Soviet link, the officer might investigate. The simple procedure of matching the serial numbers of their weapons to the lists of serial numbers compiled by Israel after the Lebanese invasion would reveal a discrepancy. Perhaps the general could explain that away also...