"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?"
"Nothing," the sergeant answered. "The beggar boy might have lied."
"We will know soon. I am entering the building now."
Clicking off the transmit key, Lieutenant Soto slipped across the alley.
Bullets slammed sheet metal, then an explosion of tiny cubes of tempered glass filled the interior of the rental compact. A bullet had smashed out the back window and continued on to spider-shatter the windshield. Lyons turned in the back seat. Smashing out the shards of fracture-patterned glass with the short barrel of his assault shotgun, he pointed the Atchisson at the pursuing car.
He aimed above the left headlight of the swerving, speeding car and fired, but an instant too late. The number-two and double-ought steel shot tore away the driver's side mirror and shattered the window. The driver whipped the steering wheel in the opposite direction, the tires screaming across the wide boulevard. Sideswiping a delivery van, the sedan accelerated to parallel Able Team's compact. Two gunmen pointed Uzis out the right side windows to strafe Able Team.
Jacom accelerated from behind the sedan. He pointed a Mini-Uzi out his window and fired one-handed, the machine pistol spraying a 30-round magazine in a fraction of a second, slugs breaking windows, hammering sheet metal. As the gunmen swiveled to return the fire, Jacom hit the brakes and turned to the left, putting his car behind the sedan.
The distraction gave Lyons time to plan his shots.
He lined up the white tritium dots of his Atchisson on the front passenger-side window of the sedan and fired. Steel shot tore metal and flesh. The impact threw the gunman in the passenger seat against the driver. Lyons fired through the window again and again, until the assault shotgun's bolt locked back.
Wheel rims shrieked against concrete. The doomed car jumped the curb and plowed into the marble base of a monument. Glass and chrome flew everywhere.
Whipping his small car past the wreck, Jacom accelerated and closed the gap between the two compacts. He flashed his high beams, then Vato powered Able Team's car through a skidding left-hand turn, then a right. He leaned on the horn to speed through a neighborhood, Jacom only a car's length behind him.
Lyons kept his Atchisson below the level of the windows.
"They were most definitely monitoring," Gadgets told his partners. "This morning, too, I'll bet."
"No more calls home." Lyons changed Atchisson mags. He propped the selective-fire assault against the door and unholstered his silenced Colt. He cleared the chamber, then jammed in another standard-issue 7-round magazine.
"And that means they know what we know," Blancanales added. "They'll know exactly what we got from Gunther and what we didn't. If there's an address on the tape, they'll be gone tomorrow."
Lyons looked at his watch. "Tomorrow's four hours away."
"It'll take me that long to go through these tapes!" Gadgets protested. "I can't decode it in a flash, you know."
"Then get with it now," Lyons said.
Gadgets snapped a salute. "Yes, sir. Immediately. Switching into target-acquisition mode."
As Vato drove back to the warehouse, Gadgets put on miniature headphones and skipped through the tapes. "Wow, man, this Gunther dude gets around. Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala. Everywhere the Nazis hang out."
"Where's he now?" Lyons demanded. "Forget the travelogue."
"Jawohl, Herr Ironman! Working on it."