The Canadian turned and looked. Smiling with a secret knowledge, she glanced at Blancanales and smirked.
The Dodge carrying Illovich, Powell and Akbar stayed behind Blancanales and Desmarais. The Dodge and the passenger van continued along the boulevard another block, then turned right.
"Must be close now. Here we go..."
"Are you nervous, American? Why do you talk so much? I thought secret agents were strong and silent. You chatter."
Blancanales looked back again. He saw a pickup truck leave the boulevard. Two young Mexican men in stained shirts sat in the cab, laughing with one another. The pickup truck gained on the Dodge.
Then another car and panel truck left the boulevard. The pickup truck accelerated to pass the slow-moving Dodge and passenger van. Blancanales saw the other vehicles gaining. Watching the pickup truck pass, he saw the young Mexican men eyeballing Desmarais.
The Soviet gunmen watched the speeding truck. A walkie-talkie squawked. Then, in the back of the pickup, a Mexican sat up with a silenced Heckler and KochMP-5.
Even as the 9mm slugs shattered glass, hammered sheet metal, tore through the bodies of the Soviets in the front seat, Blancanales grabbed the wrist of the gunman next to him. He forced the pistol against the front seat as the pistol jumped again and again.
Then the van crashed.
Crouching in the back of the panel truck, a round in the chamber of his CAR-15, Gadgets watched the pickup and the taxi cab gain on the Soviets. The pickup accelerated to parallel the Mitsubishi van. The taxi cab accelerated to pull alongside the Dodge.
Voices came from the Mexican walkie-talkie as units of Captain Soto's force raced to their positions on the other streets.
Gadgets slap-checked his gear a last time, touching the Velcro closures of his Kevlar-and-steel battle armor, the bandoliers of magazines and grenades, the fit of his sunglasses.
Ready to go. Gadgets snapped his bubble gum and watched as the Mexican in the back of the pickup killed the three Soviet gunmen in the front seat of the Mitsubishi passenger van. He saw Blancanales struggling with the Soviet next to him. The multiband receiver blared sounds of panic and shooting from the three frequencies of the minimikes.
Fifty meters ahead, Lyons leaned from the window of a taxi cab. He pointed the fourteen-inch barrel of the Konzak out the window of the taxi and put a 12-gauge blast through the back left tire of the Dodge carrying Illovich. The tire exploded and flapped on the rim. Lyons put a second blast through the front left tire.
Jumping the curb, the Mitsubishi crashed into a parked truck. The pickup truck glanced off a streetlight pole and skidded sideways to stop, its tires smoking and screaming.
But the driver of the Dodge accelerated, aiming the bouncing, tire-shot car at the pickup. The taxi stayed parallel, Lyons firing from the window, the Konzak flashing semiauto flame. The driver's window of the Dodge exploded, the spray of steel balls and glass cubes ripping away the head of the driver and killing the other gunman in the front seat. Lyons fired again, and blood and glass sprayed out the opposite window as the Dodge hurtled on toward the pickup.
"Dispacio! Alto!" Gadgets called out to his driver as the Dodge crashed into the pickup. Lyons's taxi fishtailed and spun, tires smoking, rear end downing a light pole. Then Gadgets saw Lyons weaving through the smashed cars, Konzak in his hands.
Gadgets's driver stopped short. The young Mexican soldier turned to him and said in perfect English, "I'll turn the truck around and be ready for the getaway!"
Throwing open the back doors, running through the acrid tire smoke, Gadgets heard pistols popping, then the Konzak boomed. He turned to see Lyons at the Mitsubishi van.
As Gadgets approached the Dodge, he saw dead men in the front seat. Suddenly the back door flew open, and Powell and Akbar dragged out Illovich.
"Slick hijack, Wizard!" Powell raved. "You guys got your act together."
"Get my partner's radio and pistol," Gadgets told him. "Then drag the comrade back to the truck..."
Powell threw Illovich down on the asphalt. Akbar put a foot on the back of the Soviet's neck while Powell searched the old man.
Blancanales and Desmarais stumbled from the wrecked Mitsubishi. Gadgets guided the stunned and bleeding young woman away from the wreckage. As he brushed broken glass off her clothes, Gadgets spoke like a gentleman.
"Are you okay, Mademoiselle Desmarais?" Dazed, she nodded. Gadgets pointed to the waiting panel truck. "In there, in the truck, you'll be safe. Sit down and be calm, you're safe now."
The young woman staggered away to the truck.
Then Gadgets quickly briefed his partner. "That bitch works for the Soviets. Get her into the truck and watch her. Don't let her talk to Illovich. Tell Powell and Akbar."
"You positive? She talks leftist, but..."
"She ain't leftist, she's red. We'll put the questions to her when we can."
Coming up to them, Powell tossed a Beretta 93-R and the Able Team hand radio to Blancanales. Then, jerking the Soviet cultural secretary up by his arms, Powell and Akbar dragged Illovich to the panel truck and shoved him inside.
A pistol popped, then the Konzak boomed and glass fell around Gadgets and Blancanales. Crouching down, they saw a blood-spurting Soviet flop backward through a shattered window of the Mitsubishi.
Blancanales jammed the hand radio in his pocket, then checked his pistol. "My other equipment here?"
"It's all in that truck." Gadgets pointed to the panel truck and Blancanales jogged away. "And watch that phony Frenchy."
Tires screeched, engines roared. Past the smashed Dodge and Mitsubishi, Lyons and Gadgets saw two cars full of Soviet gunmen racing toward them. The three Mexicans fired submachine guns at the approaching cars. Lyons rushed to Gadgets.
"Wizard, shut up and kill somebody," Lyons said as he pulled grenades from his bandolier, yanked the pins and threw the grenades one after another.
The first grenade exploded in a deafening boom, the next two poured out smoke. Gadgets realized the method in Carl Lyons's mayhem. The first grenade, an antiterrorist stun-shock grenade, had been designed to neutralize airline hijackers without killing passengers. It produced a blinding white flash and deafening blast but no shrapnel. The Soviets would think they faced heavy weapons. And if any local people watched the firefight in their street, the explosion served notice to take cover.
Skidding, the Soviets stopped short. The wall of smoke rising from the other grenades obscured their aim. Gadgets selected two fragmentation grenades and threw hard. His throws did not make the hundred-meter distance. The round canisters bounced off the asphalt and popped short of the Soviets.
But a 40mm high-explosive grenade from Blancanales's M-203 scored. A headless Soviet gunman fell. Another Soviet, blood jetting from a hundred pinpoint wounds, staggered backward through the confusion and drifting smoke. A police car, racing to the scene, hit the Soviet, flipping him broken-backed through the air.
Switching to a left-handed grip, Gadgets braced his CAR against the side of the wrecked Mitsubishi and aimed semiauto slugs into the corrupt Mexicans rushing to help their Soviet paymasters. Gadgets fired five rounds, dropped three gunmen, Soviet and Mexican.
Shouldering his M-16/M-203 over-and-under assault rifle and grenade launcher, Blancanales sighted down. He fired a high-explosive round under the nearest police car.
A ball of flame rushed into the sky. Lyons threw another smoke grenade. Gadgets hit two more gunmen, then flipped on his short assault rifle's safety. He added a red-smoke grenade to flames and white smoke, then watched for targets.
Firing broke out behind them. Though the rescue and quick firefight had taken only four minutes, the Soviets had already organized a response.