Powell floored the accelerator. He sped past the first truck, then whipped the car to the right, hitting the contact man and a gunman, tearing away the truck's driver-side door, the three impacts coming in one crash, the men and the door flying into the street.
Standing on the brake, Powell slammed the car into reverse and shrieked rubber. A shot from the second gunman banged off the hood, Desmarais screamed, then the panel truck blocked the gunman's aim. Powell jammed the brakes again, skidding the rental car to a stop.
Converging on the scene from opposite directions, two sedans braked to a tire-smoking stop. Men in dark suits — Soviet gunmen — ran from the cars shouting in Spanish. "Policia! Policia! Alto!"
The surviving Iranian turned. As he raised his pistol to aim, the dark suits fired. The gunman staggered back, his pistol falling from his hand, his legs spurting blood. He fell against a wrought-iron fence.
Akbar came out the back of the panel truck. Powell shouted at him. "Overhere!"
In the back seat of the rented car, Blancanales shoved the suppressor against the seat. He felt the pistol jar as Illovich fired a round into the upholstery.
Desmarais turned and sprayed Illovich with tear gas. She held down the button of the purse-size canister with one hand as she opened the door with the other. "Americans, get out! We must run!" Akbar shouted.
As Powell and Desmarais abandoned the car, Blancanales and Illovich, both choking, coughing, with watering eyes, fought for the pistol. Finally, Blancanales twisted the autopistol out of the Soviet's hands.
A Soviet gunman leaned into the car and pointed a gun at Blancanales's face. Breathing hard, his eyes streaming tears, Illovich took the silent pistol from Blancanales.
"Thank you." Illovich gave a command in Russian, and the Soviet ran after Powell and Desmarais. "A waste of time. They will not get far," Illovich said as two Soviets dragged the leg-shot Iranian gunman to a car.
At the corner, another car screeched to a stop, and a Soviet enforcer pointed a submachine gun at the running couple. Powell and Desmarais sprinted across the street, trying to make the safety of the boulevard. The Soviet fired a burst in front of them, the slugs pocking a rough-stone wall. They stopped. The Soviet motioned them back to where Illovich waited.
At the rented car, another Soviet agent quickly and expertly searched both Powell and Desmarais. He took the tear-gas sprayer from the woman and handed it to Illovich. Then Powell was ordered to start the car and follow the other cars away.
His eyes still filled with tears, Illovich examined the tear-gas sprayer. "Do all American girls carry these?"
"I am not..." Anne Desmarais began.
Illovich silenced the woman's denial with a spray of tear gas.
"Is that an official residence?" Lyons asked as they watched the last car turn through the gates of the walled and guarded grounds of a city estate.
"I know it is not their embassy," Soto answered. "I will get the information later, but first we change this truck for cars."
"What else can you get?" Gadgets asked.
"We must decide at what level this operation will proceed," Soto answered. "We can keep all this within my unit, which will unfortunately limit what we can do. Or we can go to my superiors and explain the threat to your President. If we do that, we will have all the resources of the security forces. However, that may take time."
"That's not the only trade-off." Lyons took a last glance at the estate as the catering truck passed. "We go official, it takes time. It also takes it away from us. Your people won't let us operate. Then if the Iranians get across the border, we've got to go official up there, too. More time. More limitations. I say we only need a few cars. Once we get Powell and the Politician loose from those commies, we're ready to go. Wizard?"
"Get a mobile home. With a shower. A bullet-proof mobile home. With a color tv. And a video machine and some videos and some movies on tape. And..."
"Kill the wish list," Lyons said, laughing. "You ain't a senator yet!"
"You asked."
"There's a limit."
"Then come up with a panel truck. I want to park outside the people's palace back there and monitor the place."
Screams echoed from the basement. As if he had not heard, Illovich poured tequila into a tumbler. The screams continued. The two Americans glanced to one another. Illovich watched the Hispanic as he passed the tumbler of clear liquor to the American agent.
Illovich tried to guess the man's ethnic background. Mexican? Puerto Rican? Central American? The man could be one of the three Colonel Gunther had encountered the previous month when the combined force of American operatives and Mexican mercenaries smashed through the structure of Los Guerros Blancos. In a week of smash-and-run attacks, the gang of killers had first destroyed the dope gangsters and Mexican-army units ruling the opium fields of the Sierra Madres, then slashed through the maze of criminal-military-political alliances to attack the headquarters of the Fascist International operations in Mexico.
That attack had very nearly ended Illovich's most ambitious scheme: the penetration and control of the highest offices of the Fascist International by the Soviet Union.
Throughout the previous decade, Soviet KGB officers had succeeded in infiltrating thousands of agents into the security services and death squads of many Latin nations. These agents believed they served the American CIA, or the Salvadoran government, or patriotic Argentine exiles, or any one of many other reactionary groups. At the instructions of their neo-Nazi officers, and with the aid of the KGB, these thousands of agents annihilated the moderate political elements of Central and South America. Teachers, students, labor organizers, priests, progressive politicians, compassionate businessmen, idealists, evangelists — anyone not subscribing to the Stalinist diktat of the Soviet Union, died. Forewarned and sheltered by the KGB, only the cadre of Soviet agitators and manipulators avoided the death-squad assassins. When the oppressed people of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua inevitably rebelled against their feudal overlords, Soviet-trained-and-financed cadres emerged from the universities, slums, and army barracks to lead the revolutionaries.
But the death-squad agents remained in the lower ranks of the Fascist organizations. The Soviet Union needed agents who attended the conferences of the leaders. Through years of patient work, creating identities and arranging "victories" to demonstrate his agent's intelligence and loyalty, Illovich had finally succeeded in placing an East German operative in the highest military-political circles of the Fascist International. Colonel Jon Gunther, supposedly born in Paraguay, supposedly the ambitious son of a German family dedicated to the ideals of the Thousand Year Reich, had attained the coveted position of the International's military-liaison officer to Mexico. Gunther had served to integrate the actions of the Mexicans within the hemispheric strategy of the Fascist International. He had shuttled between the capitals of the Americas, coordinating and often initiating the responses of the Pan-American elite — the wealthy, the oligarchic Families, the transnational corporations — to the rising storm of nationalism and democracy throughout North and South America.
Then the three Americans and their mercenaries had almost defeated Illovich's ambitious plot. If Gunther had not escaped...
Yet from the near-disaster, Gunther had wrenched a significant gain: the recruiting of one of the Americans. Gunther had offered the blond leader of the operatives, the one called "Ironman," gold and a leadership role in the Fascist International if the American became an agent in the employ of Gunther. The "Ironman" had accepted and helped Gunther to escape. Though the Ochoa gang had immediately recaptured Gunther, the American had fulfilled his commitment. Or had it only been a trick?