"You will learn."
Waiting until all the other passengers left their seats, the three North Americans finally joined the line of travelers leaving the jumbo jet. Service workers in yellow uniforms slipped through the line of passengers and moved among the rows of seats, picking up papers and plastic cups, emptying ashtrays. One worker made eye contact with Lyons.
"This way," he said.
Lyons turned to his partners. They also recognized the sharp Nahuatl features of Captain Soto. The North Americans followed a step behind Soto to the passenger bridge. But instead of continuing to the terminal gate, Soto opened a door. They stepped into the dawn chill and hurried down an aluminum stairway to the asphalt. The ground personnel very deliberately ignored the three North Americans.
"There!" Soto shouted over the roar of jet engines, pointing to the open doors of a catering van. "What does your luggage look like?"
Blancanales answered. "Three sheet-metal shipping trunks. All green with brass trim. Identical."
"What names?"
"Guerimo Soto. All the same."
Soto closed the van's doors. The driver gunned the engine and sped around the parked jetliners. The noise of the jet engines was cut off when the truck swerved into a hangar. The driver turned to them.
"We will wait here for the captain. You must not move or talk."
Sitting in the back of the van, Able Team listened to the activity around them. Workers shouted to one another, metal containers crashed along conveyor belts, horns beeped. Finally, tires squealed to a stop behind the van.
Grunting with the weight, Soto pushed the three green shipping trunks into the back of the van. He got in and pulled the doors closed. Then the truck sped out of the food service hangar.
"Now what, my friends?"
"We need to meet an American," Lyons glanced at his watch. "He's arriving approximately right now on another plane. He's with a Shia militiaman who's on our side and a Canadian woman reporter who isn't."
Soto instructed the driver. As the van circled to the passenger entrance of the international terminal, Able Team briefed Soto on the Iranian-Libyan plot against the President of the United States. Gadgets did not join in the discussion. He opened his trunk and assembled electronic gear.
"And they have come to Mexico? You are positive?"
Blancanales nodded. "We have the tickets and passports. We assume they plan to enter the United States from Mexico."
"Then we can mobilize all the security forces necessary to defeat the terrorists. When you called, I thought this was perhaps another... ah, political problem, as it was in the other action."
"Murder is murder," Lyons interrupted. "We only chase murderers. I don't care what their politics are. Fascists, commies, scumbag dopers, they get wasted."
"As you said when we fought the International. However, the politicians have other opinions, as I learned. But I will tell you of my education later here is the terminal. Who makes the contact?"
"I will," Blancanales offered. "I speak the language, I don't look like a tourist..."
"Here, in your pockets." Gadgets passed Blancanales a hand radio. "And here's a DF so we can follow you. A minimike. Anything else you can think of?"
"Extras for others."
"You got it."
"Do not take a pistol into the airport," Captain Soto warned.
Blancanales nodded. As he pushed open the van's door, he gave his partners a quick salute. "Stay close."
Then he hurried through the lines of taxis and cars. Weaving through the crowds of travelers, he scanned the terminal for Powell, Desmarais and Akbar. And he searched for surveillance, watching for eyes watching him.
But the thousands of faces in the crowds defeated his efforts. Anyone could be surveillance: the elderly Castillian man, the North American hippies in hurachesand huipiles, the dark-featured Mexicanatraveling with her children, the security guard armed with the .45 auto-Colt. Blancanales had only his anonymity as a mask.
The crowds surging through the entry prevented him from taking full strides. Unconsciously he continued searching as he flowed with the terminal's masses, his eyes always scanning, looking for the unusual or the unlikely. Yet he realized professional surveillance agents would avoid any distinguishing appearance. He eased along with the other people, his head turning from side to side.
He checked the flight arrival and departure notices. The plane carrying Powell, Desmarais and Akbar had arrived on schedule. He went to where incoming passengers exited customs and took a seat.
After five minutes, Akbar appeared. He wore sunglasses and three days' growth of beard. Blancanales rushed through the arriving passengers, rudely shouldering some, pushing past others. He bumped into Akbar and slipped the coin-sized units of a directional transmitter and a miniature microphone into his coat. Then Blancanales stood at the exit and watched as the other passengers cleared customs.
Powell and Desmarais emerged two minutes later. Powell saw Blancanales and continued past without a word, Desmarais at his side. Blancanales waited a few seconds, then followed them through the terminal.
Akbar went to the pay phones, Powell and Desmarais to the car-rental booths. Blancanales casually joined them at the rental counter. He waited until the clerk turned away, then dropped the miniature directional-finder transmitter and the minimicro-phone into the pocket of the Canadian woman's coat. The Canadian did not notice.
"We came in without a problem." Blancanales made a pretense of reading a brochure as he spoke. "They're outside, ready to go."
"Akbar will give us a signal when he knows what goes," Powell told him. "So you watch us. Stay away until we leave."
"Then I'll jump in." Blancanales folded and pocketed the brochure, then went to the foreign-currency exchange. After converting the American dollars and Lebanese pounds in his pockets to pesos, he turned to see Akbar walking to the exit. Akbar went outside to the curb and waited, ignoring the taxis and hotel limos.
Hurrying back to the van, Blancanales stepped inside and threw off his coat. He buckled on the shoulder holster for his silenced Beretta 93-R. "It's in motion. Watch Akbar, he's at..."
"I see him there." Lyons said, pointing. "What's going on with Powell?"
"As planned. He's renting a car. I'm on my way," the Politician said as he opened the vehicle's door.
Outside, Blancanales surveyed the traffic lanes of the terminal. He noted the pickup and drop-off points, the taxi waiting zones, the lines of rental cars. He walked quickly to a traffic island a hundred meters from the rental cars.
From where he stood, he had a view of Akbar waiting, of Powell and Desmarais sitting in the rental car, and of the parked catering van. Powell saw him standing on the traffic island and flashed his headlights.
Situation covered. But as he waited Blancanales never let his eyes stop, always searching the sidewalks and traffic lanes for sign of a pattern in movement, a pattern that meant ambush or kidnap or surveillance. He watched the crowds behind Akbar. He watched the arriving traffic, looking inside the cars and trucks, watching for any odd detail.
After fifteen minutes, a panel truck stopped in front of Akbar. The driver leaned out his window and spoke to the young Shia. Blancanales saw Powell reach for the ignition of the rental car. As Akbar got into the panel truck, Blancanales felt the hand radio inside his coat click. He answered with three clicks of the transmit key.
The panel truck accelerated past Blancanales. He memorized the make of the truck, the license number and the face of the driver.
Seconds later, Powell braked to a stop at the traffic island. Blancanales got in the rear seat. As they accelerated away, Blancanales looked back and saw the catering van weaving through traffic. He slouched down below the level of the front seat and keyed his hand radio.