"Grenades?" Davis asked. "Man, there are innocent people everywhere!"
"It's cool. These are Italian designer grenades. So chic, so cool for a freeway firefight." Gadgets waited for the next attack.
Looking in the rearview mirror, Blancanales shouted, "Here comes another one!"
The second Dodge, the white one, gained on them. Differing from the first Dodge only in color, the second pursuit car also contained four gunmen with submachine guns.
Then they heard the boom of a shotgun. Gadgets grinned to the others. "Ironman to the rescue!"
Lyons leaned from the window of the van that Coral drove and fired into the oversize double rear tires of a freight truck. Tires exploding and flapping on the rim, the heavy truck lurched, the remaining tires smoking as the driver fought for control. The truck slowed, blocking lanes, acting as a traffic barricade.
Coral floored the accelerator. The other cars on the Viaducto pulled to the side to escape the danger of the wild shoot-out.
As Coral gained on the two sedans, Vato shoved aside luggage and crawled into the back of the van. He tried to lift the lid of a shipping trunk. The lid raised only a few inches before being stopped by the roof of the van. By touch, he searched through the interior, finally dragging out an FN FAL para-rifle and a bandolier of box mags. Vato shoved the trunk aside to block the side window. He arranged the suitcases to block the other side windows. Twisting into the narrow space between the shipping trunk and the stacked suitcases, he shoved the FN FAL's barrel through the tempered glass of the back lift-door. He swung out the rifle's metal stock and waited.
Ahead, the two Dodges maneuvered for position, accelerating to make a cross-fire kill on the van that Blancanales drove.
A hand reached out from the van. A tiny ball hit the asphalt, bounced high over the roof of the white Dodge and flashed.
Hundreds of tiny steel balls hit the hood and the windshield and the roof of the Dodge.
But without effect. The steel shrapnel pocked the paint and shattered the windshield but it did not touch the gunmen inside. The driver braked and swerved away.
Gadgets looked back and saw the gunman in the front seat methodically smashing out the laminated safety glass with the steel butt of his Uzi. Another burst of 9mm slugs hit the van as the other Dodge continued the pursuit. Gadgets pulled the pin on a second MU-50G grenade and tossed it, hoping for a hit on the engine or tires.
The tiny grenade bounced over the Dodge, then bounced again on the pavement. The grenade popped twenty meters behind the Dodge, spraying steel through empty air. The Dodge accelerated.
"Italian shit!"
The Atchisson boomed. Gadgets and Davis saw flame streaking from the short barrel of the assault shotgun. Glass exploded from the white Dodge as Lyons swept the back windshield and side windows with semiauto blasts of number-two and double-ought steel shot. Blood splashed the shattered windshield.
Lyons continued firing as Coral accelerated past the white Dodge. Glass and gore sprayed from the far windows, the driver dying, the Dodge skidding sideways. The heavy car smashed into the center divider and overturned, throwing a man from a window. The rolling car smeared him into the asphalt.
"One down!" Gadgets waved as Coral sped past in the other tourist van. He saw Lyons reloading his Atchisson. Looking back, Gadgets aimed his silenced, underpowered Beretta at the pocked windshield of the remaining pursuit car. He semiautoed round after round at the swerving blue sedan.
A rifle fired from the back of the other Mitsubishi. The 7.62mm NATO slugs tore through the surviving Dodge, punching through steel and flesh. The Dodge slowed as the wounded driver struggled for control. The heavy-caliber battle rifle fired three more times. The big sedan drifted across the lanes, carrying dead and wounded men to a slow, screeching stop against the curb.
In the second van, Coral turned to Lyons. "We must make our vehicles look okay. Soon police will look for us. Tell the others."
Vato had already put away the FN FAL para-rifle. As the minivan sped over the now-deserted freeway, he used his boot to clean the remnants of the shattered glass from the lift-door's window. Lyons leaned out his window and shouted to Blancanales and Gadgets.
"Clean it up! We still got a way to go."
"Doing it already!" Gadgets shouted back. "But what about the bullet holes?"
"Noway, no time!"
The Mitsubishi tourist vans entered the traffic of an interchange and left the Viaducto Tlalpan behind. Lyons watched the passengers in the vehicles around him on the expressway. Many of the other people rode with their windows open to the pollution of the warm night. And in the shifting lights and smoke of traffic, no one seemed to notice the 9mm holes in the sheet metal of the minivan.
But the bullet holes would not escape the notice of a policeman.
Coral turned on the dash radio and spun through the stations. He stopped at a news station and listened to the announcer's monologue. "Nothing said yet."
"How much farther?" Lyons asked.
"Very near."
Gunther shifted on the floor. Lyons pressed his shoes down on the fascist colonel's back. As they sped through the evening traffic, Lyons counted the charges they faced if the Mexican authorities arrested them.
Kidnapping. Murder. Assault. Mayhem. Conspiracy. Illegal weapons. Theft of army weapons and equipment. Illegal entry into the country. Currency violations. Speeding. Public nuisance.
If they went to trial, they faced a lifetime in prison. But they would never get to trial. The Fascist International controlled units of the Mexican army and the Federates. If the fascists had also infiltrated the metropolitan police, the North Americans would not live long in jail.
But Able Team and the Yaquis had lived through the pursuit and firefight on the Viaducto. Maybe their luck would hold.
Coral left the Viaducto, Blancanales following a moment later in the other minivan. They inched through a jammed intersection, horns and voices loud around them, then Coral turned onto a side street.
Narrow as an alley, with rusting cars and trucks parked on either sidewalks, the street led through a neighborhood of decaying tenements. The smog had long ago stained the concrete and stone of the buildings the same gray black of the starless, moonless night.
Corner streetlights created patterns of brilliance in the gray streets, light reflecting from gutter water and windows and car chrome. But elsewhere on the streets, only lights from windows and doors broke the darkness.
Neon words identified some doorways as businesses. In others, fluorescent tubes cast gray light on racks of broken mailboxes. Shadowy corridors led into darkness.
The windows of some apartments opened directly to the sidewalks. Inside, people occupied rooms bright with plastic furniture. One apartment had posters of Julio Iglesias and the blond singers of Abba. Another showed posters of the Rolling Stones and a defiant Che Guevara.
Above the tenements, an electric billboard advertised Cerveza Tecate with thousands of colored lights, patterns of different colors forming the shape of a beer bottle and spelling out the name.
Finally Coral stopped at a steel rollaway door. Sooty paint above the entry read Automechanica. Coral got out of the car and opened a padlock on the door.
Lyons's hand almost keyed his hand-radio. He stopped himself. Instead, he spoke to Vato and Jacom.
"Check the area and look for surveillance. Look for anything unusual. I would do it but..."
Vato understood. "You are too unusual here."