Vato studied the reactions, then took a plastic kit from his drug bag. The kit contained a vial and a disposable syringe still in the plastic envelope. Vato assembled the syringe and put the needle into the vial.
"This will calm him."
"What is it?" Blancanales asked.
"Morphine."
"Don't put him to sleep!"
"He will not sleep for days." Vato injected a few milliliters of the narcotic.
The spasms stopped but Gunther continued struggling. Blancanales leaned over him and asked him in Spanish, "Quitnes?"
Gunther raved through the night.
Lyons and two of the Yaqui teenagers, Kino and Jacom, stood guard on the rooftop. They alternated shifts, sleeping and watching the dark street. Cars and trucks sped by, bouncing over the broken pavement. People walked past without a glance at the abandoned garage. The street noises, the jets roaring overhead, the radios and televisions covered the screams and shouts of Gunther's delirium in the storeroom.
After midnight, the neighborhood fell quiet as the thousands of families in the tenements finally slept. But the sounds of the city never stopped, the traffic noise of the avenues and expressways still going on, planes and trucks and unmuffled motorcycles hurtling unseen through the gray, polluted night.
Despite the tropical latitude, Lyons shivered. He clutched his sports jacket tight around himself. At the elevation of Mexico City, more than two thousand meters above sea level, the air became cool after sunset. Now, in the predawn hours, the few people still on the streets wore jackets and sweaters.
He stared up at the flashing Tecate sign, a neon explosion of red and yellow letters framed in a blue afterimage against the gray night. Able Team had gone from searing desert to the tropical coast to the cool mountains in only a few days. His body had not time to acclimatize to the sudden changes. He said aloud, "I do get around. No doubt about it."
"Que es?" Jacom asked.
"Nada." Lyons knew the word because Gadgets used it often. He tried to explain that he had only talked to himself. "Hablo... hablo nada." He didn't know enough Spanish to explain. He pointed down and left the rooftop.
Going down the steel stairs, Lyons heard an incomprehensible monologue of some guttural language. He saw Blancanales and Coral sitting by the bed, listening and taking notes. The fascist colonel thrashed against the rope restraints, his body soaked in sweat, his blind eyes snapping from side to side but never focusing.
Gadgets had electronic gear spread out on a table. He changed the cassette in the tape unit recording Gunther, then returned to the circuits of the NSA radios captured from the International. Lyons looked over his partner's shoulder. Gadgets pointed to the maze of circuits and components.
"I think they did a directional scan on this radio. That's how they got us on the freeway. Like a DF, except..."
"You deactivated it?"
"That's not it," Gadgets explained. "I think the encrypting generates a distinctive electronic signature. Apparently they picked up the signal. That's why one of their officers asked who was on the freeway. When no one answered, they sent some cars to check it out."
"So we can't monitor the Nazis now?"
"I wouldn't risk it. I guess we've lost that trick. Too bad. It was slick."
"But we got him talking," Lyons commented, looking at Gunther.
"It's a fact." Gadgets nodded. "That dope opened up the doors of his head. Problem is, we don't know what came out."
"What?"
Blancanales answered. He pointed to his pages of notes. "We can understand his Spanish and English. But he lapses in and out of German."
"You get a location? Names? Places?"
"No address." Blancanales shook his head. "Names and places and scenes. All flashbacks. But we can't ask him questions. He doesn't even know we're here..."
"Whatever Vatoman made," Gadgets added, "that stuff is rough."
"You mean we dragged this Nazi across a thousand miles of Mexico and we can't get the information?"
"Be cool!" Gadgets tapped a stack of cassettes. "I think we got something interesting here. It's a mystery, but it's a very, very interesting mystery."
Lyons snorted with bitter frustration. "We didn't come here to play Agatha Christie. We're here to find and destroy."
"Patience," Blancanales said. "We'll relay all these tapes to Stony Man. They can do the translation. We'll continue the search until..."
"We can't," Lyons told his partners. "The International has people in the DEA and the NSA. If we report to Stony Man, the International will monitor it all."
"Don't sweat it, hardguy." Gadgets looked at Coral. "Miguel knows this city. We came up with a cool scam. No embassy contact, no trip to the DEA office, no satellite interlock. Simple, direct."
"What?"
"We just call home."
As the pilot guided the piper cub through the still morning air, Lieutenant Soto scanned the forested hills. The optics of his binoculars compressed the distances and perspective, reducing the misted landscape to patterns of green and gray and black. He focused on the rectangles of fields and pastures — any clearing larger than fifteen meters, the diameter of a UH-1 troopship's rotor blades.
But he saw no helicopter.
The lieutenant had received the report of the unauthorized helicopter the afternoon before. After calling the army units in the region to check the information, he had flown to Mexico City with two platoons of his soldiers. Now his soldiers waited in trucks while he circled in the spotter plane.
Again the helicopter eluded him.
This time, however, he had a confirmed sighting. An ex-air force officer, working on his ranch in the mountains, had seen it. The helicopter passed so close to him that he'd seen Mexican soldiers and North Americans riding inside with rifles in their hands. The retired officer had even noted that the doors of the troopship had been removed. The officer, suspicious because of the North Americans with the Mexican soldiers, reported what he saw.
No one else had reported the helicopter. The night before, the lieutenant had alerted all the police in the area. He had expected any information immediately.
Then came the killings on the Viaducto...
The lieutenant did not believe the events to be only coincidental. Mexicans and North Americans, in a stolen Mexican army helicopter, with automatic rifles, had been sighted in the mountains outside the capital. That same night, Mexicans and North Americans had killed other Mexicans and foreigners on an expressway in the city.
Lieutenant Soto had pledged himself to break this mystery. He would not fail.
Lyons watched Blancanales and Gadgets enter the Oficina de Telefonos Larga Distancia. Sharing the first floor of the side-street office building with a bank, the oficina offered long-distance telephone and telegraph services to walk-in customers.
No equivalent commercial service existed in the United States, nor did it need to. In the States, every desk and table and kitchen wall features a telephone. It is not necessary to leave the house to place a long-distance call or to send a telegram. But in Mexico, a developing nation, the telephone companies cannot yet provide that universal telephone service. Nor can the companies ensure dependable service. The people of Mexico City tell a joke. "Want to talk to a stranger? Telephone a friend."
Coral explained that the Oficina assured correct connections for personal and business calls. Every office featured working, static-free telephones and long-distance lines, and — important to Able Team — private booths, each with a chair and a writing table.