Dick Stivers: Warlord of Azatlan

"Xela!"

"Chi-Chi!"

"Antigua!"

"Sacatepequez!"

"Nebaj!"

Arriving and departing buses eased through the chaos of the narrow lanes, assistants walking a step ahead of the front bumpers to part the chaos of crowding people and other maneuvering buses. Assistants guided drivers into narrow spaces with slaps on the fender: two slaps to continue, three quick slaps to stop.

A few steps behind Merida and Lyons, Blancanales lifted his coat as if to glance into an interior pocket, and whispered into his concealed hand-radio.

"Political to Ironman and the Wizard. I'm getting traffic sounds from the colonel. Must be on his way with his hit team. Wizard, we're in the terminal. Zero this far. No shadows, no badguys. Zero."

"Nothing here," Gadgets answered. "But I'm cocked and unlocked."

His partners' voices whispered in his earphone as Lyons followed Merida. The officer glanced back to the North Americans from time to time as he led them through the crowds. He read the hand-lettered destination signs-of buses.

A teenaged assistant called out to Lyons in awkward English: "Okay, man. Where you want to go? We go. Cheap. Anywhere you..."

The teenager saw Merida. His voice stopped in mid-sentence. Looking from the Guatemalan officer to the North American, the teenager stepped back between two buses and disappeared.

Lyons saw other bus drivers and assistants spot Merida. Most of the men and teenagers carefully ignored the officer. Others went quiet as the Guatemalan in the expensive suit passed. Lyons, with his years as a uniformed police officer, then as a plain-clothes detective, knew the reactions: the people recognized Merida as a police officer, and they hated him.

But why would they hate Merida? Unlike the pimps and dealers and male prostitutes who had despised Lyons because he represented law and decency, these bus drivers and their teenage assistants worked for a living, they sweated long hours behind the steering wheels of their buses or under the hoods repairing the engines. In the United States, bus and truck drivers joined police officers at the same all-night hamburger stands and doughnuts shops, sharing stories and jokes, often exchanging information. Why would it be different here?

A driver saw Lyons, smiled and motioned him over. Another man hissed to the driver, nodding toward Merida. The driver's face went hard, his eyes narrowing as he linked Lyons and Blancanales to Captain Merida. Lyons took a step toward the driver, only to have the driver turn his back.

None of the working-class Guatemalans could mistake Lyons and Blancanales as countrymen; Lyons's blond hair and blue eyes identified him as a North American, and Blancanales, though darker, with Hispanic features and easy Spanish, did not look Guatemalan. Even though the drivers recognized the two separate North Americans as foreigners, which meant Lyons and Blancanales could not be Guatemalan police or security officers, the drivers still gave them the same cold hatred as Merida. Why? Did they mistake the North Americans for someone else?

Lyons paused, secretively keyed his hand-radio. "Pol, I do not like this. Something's happening here and I don't know what."

"Think I know?" Blancanales whispered.

Drivers and assistants and passengers scattered. An Indian woman waiting in a bus saw something moving below her window — her eyes widened and she dropped down out of sight. The sidewalk cleared, people shoving their friends, hurrying them away.

Lyons's pulse roared in his ears. He snapped a glance back at Blancanales, saw the ex-Green Beret already dropping to a crouch, his right hand going under his coat for his pistol. Lyons heard Gadgets's voice shout through his earphone: "They're here! The colonel and four goons in flashy suits..."

Through the radio, he heard brakes screech. Then the frequency went to electron noise.

Lyons pulled his four-inch Colt Python from his shoulder holster and crouched with his back to the red and turquoise front of a bus. His eyes searched the area — the now deserted walkway and vendor stalls in front of him, the bus windshields and windows behind him. He eased his head past the right headlight and looked down the eighteen-inch gap between the bus and the next. Nothing moved.

Meanwhile Blancanales called Gadgets again and again. No answer. Finally: "Carl! Where's Merida?"

"Our liaison? Probably out there with a goon squad."

Looking across the walkway, Lyons saw two Indian children watching him. Their eyes flicked back and forth, from him to a point on the left side of the bus, six feet from where Lyons crouched.

Lyons shifted the Python to his left hand. He extended his left arm. He leaned down to look under the bumper. He saw two scuffed and torn shoes behind the front wheel. Infinitely slowly, the shoes crept through the black fluid and the filth and litter in the gutter. The shoes neared the front of the bus.

The front sight and barrel of a revolver appeared around the edge of the bus at waist height. Lyons tensed, then made his move even as the shoes splashed through the gutter, the man jumping out from around the fender to shoot, only to sprawl as the North American grabbed the pistol's barrel and jerked the gunman off balance. As the man fell, Lyons whipped back his Python and backhanded the gunman with the pistol's heavy barrel.

Shots. A bullet slammed into a fender. Lyons straightened, turned, heard the quiet rip-rip-rip of Blancanales's silenced Beretta 93-R, the three-shot burst hammering steel and breaking glass.

"DON'T SHOOT!" Lyons screamed. "THERE'S PEOPLE AND LITTLE KIDS EVERYWHERE!"

But the other pistol fired again. Lyons felt a fist slam into his head. He struggled with the gunman who had risen up from the sidewalk, the man's right fist clubbing Lyons in the head and face and shoulder again and again.

Lyons saw who he fought. The man looked like a beggar, his clothes ragged and patched, but he was not old. Webbed scar tissue twisted the right side of his face and hooded his sunken, blind right eye. The beggar's left hand gripped a blue-steel revolver. His right hand would never grip anything again, only knotted burn scars and stubs of fingers remaining.

Forcing the beggar's pistol to the concrete, Lyons blocked another blow from the stumpy hand and put his Python against the beggar's throat. But he did not fire. He wanted a prisoner. Lyons ended the fight by slamming his knee up into the beggar's crotch. He heard the man gasp and choke with the pain. A slug tore past Lyons's head.

Broken glass showered him, gutter slime splashed his face as he rolled off the low curb and went flat under the bus. The beggar was already gone.

Lyons crabbed under the bus, his hands sliding in the mashed vegetables and excrement and motor oil, the underside of the engine and transmission tearing at his sports coat. He paused for an instant, looking in the direction of the shots.

Two buses away, he saw expensive shoes. He recognized the fabric of the slacks. Lyons went flat on his belly in the dirt. He raised his filth-covered Python, sighted on Merida's right food, and fired.

Merida fell screaming. He rolled and thrashed in the gutter, the black slime ruining his Italian attire. Lyons crawled under the buses, found Merida's Colt Government Model .45, and eased down the hammer as the man moaned and clutched his shattered foot. Lyons put the Colt in his pocket, flipped Merida onto his face, and put the Python against the back of his head. Lyons keyed his hand-radio.

"I've got our liaison man. Where'd that beggar go?"

Gadgets's voice answered. "Move it, boys. The whole city must've heard that shoot-out."

Someone ran to Lyons. He whipped the pistol around and saw Blancanales, the silenced Beretta 93-R autopistol in his hands.

"The beggar's gone," Blancanales told him. "No one else..."