Dick Stivers - Into the Maze

The businessman put his umbrella under his other arm and pulled out a handkerchief. He blew his nose, stuffed the handkerchief back in his coat pocket. He continued past Lyons.

Lyons opened the car door. He put the newspaper-covered Atchisson on the seat, then gathered up newspapers and a brightly colored tourist map of the city. Crossing the sidewalk to the entry of a travel bureau, he made a pretense of studying the ads of Mexican and European resorts displayed in the window. But he watched the street reflected in the plate glass. He held the newspapers and map under his left arm to cover the shape of the Colt holstered beneath his jacket.

A woman passed, a plastic-net shopping bag on one arm and her teenage daughter clutching the other. The girl glanced at Lyons, their eyes meeting for an instant, the girl averting hers when she saw the strange North American smiling at her. Her mother looked at Lyons and scowled. Lyons laughed out loud.

Across the street, Vato continually scanned the neighborhood. Lyons watched the Yaqui leader. The young man's eyes always moved — glancing to the traffic on the boulevard, watching a truck pass, studying a teenager who roared past on a motorcycle. Vato saw everything. Yet he appeared at ease, unconcerned with the passing people and cars, like a bored young man waiting for a shop to open. Vato had natural abilities, the gift of grace despite stress.

Footsteps behind Lyons interrupted his thoughts.

"Mr. American!" a voice called out. "Where do you want to go?"

Lyons took his hand out of his coat as an elderly travel agent motioned him to enter the office. " Pase adelante, por favor . We have a beautiful country. You have come to the correct place to arrange your tour of our natural wonders."

"No thank you, sir. Love your country, but I'm here on business. And I've got to get to it." Lyons walked away toward the windows of the telephone office. He saw Gadgets and Blancanales inside one of the booths. Continuing to the corner, he glanced down both directions on the boulevard.

Smog paled the brightness of the high-altitude morning to a dull glare. Like a tourist seeing the sights, Lyons stood with his hands in his pockets, looking around at the different architectural styles. He watched the people hurrying past on the wide sidewalk, searching their faces for the one wrong expression, one wrong glance. When cars and trucks turned from the boulevard to the side street, he gave every driver a quick look.

Lyons did not underestimate the International. The fascists had an efficient organization, with cunning and ruthless commanders, financed and aided by every right-wing regime in the hemisphere. Any one of the people walking past, any one of the passing cars could mean sudden death.

"Hey, hardguy!" Gadgets called out as he and Blancanales pushed through the door of the telephone office. "You waiting for someone?"

Vato had the second car in motion. Lyons threw open the door and stepped in. An instant later Jacom followed, Gadgets slamming the car door closed as the Yaqui teenager whipped into traffic.

"How did they do that so fast?" Vato asked Lyons. "They had several cassettes. And we stayed only twenty minutes.''

"Screeching," Lyons replied. "High-speed transmission and recording. The Wizard plays the cassette at ten times normal speed. At the other end, they record at ten times normal speed. When they play it back at normal speed, the recording sounds normal."

"Oh." Vato nodded. "High technology."

"You got it. Otherwise, we wouldn't have made that call. No way we'd stay in one place for hours, playing tapes over the phone while the Nazis closed a circle around us."

Weaving through the traffic of the boulevards and expressways, circling and zigzagging through the streets to lose any surveillance units, the two cars took separate routes back to the garage. Vato, the ex-lowrider from Tucson, skidded to a stop in front of the rolling steel door first. Lyons slouched low in the seat as Vato sent the door up, then spun the tires as he raced the car inside.

Davis ran from the shadows, an M-16 rifle in his hands. Ixto jerked down the rolling door.

The DEA pilot shouted, "Coral's gone! He's gone to the Nazis. We got to get out of here before..."

"Calm down!" Lyons told him. "What're you talking about?"

"Coral's one of them. I heard a van start up and it was Coral. And he took Gunther with him. They'll be here..."

"When did he go?"

"Fifteen minutes ago, maybe twenty. He waited until we were both up on the roof, watching for you. Then he was gone."

A horn honked outside. The door clanked up again and the other rented car sped inside.

"Move it!" Lyons shouted to his partners. "Coral's one of them. Him and the colonel are gone."

Gadgets and Blancanales threw open their doors. Lyons heard Davis explaining the betrayal and escape. But the ex-LAPD detective did not listen to the details. He ran up the steel steps to gather his equipment. He had heard enough.

Fascist units, backed by corrupt forces of the Mexican army and police, would encircle the garage.

Once the circle of squads of gunmen and soldiers closed, no weapons, no high-tech electronics would break that circle.

The North Americans and the Yaquis would be trapped.

Outnumbered, outgunned. Outlaws in a foreign city.

A suite of rooms overlooking the Paseo de la Reforma served as the communications office for the International.

The International, through a Canadian transnational corporation, owned the ultramodern Trans Americas S.A. tower. The data center and administrative offices occupied the top floors of the high rise. Banks, brokers and other international corporations leased hundreds of offices on the lower floors. The operations of those companies also required computers and telecommunications. The offices of the International seemed to be only one more data-processing center for a financial institution.

Microwave antennae provided satellite links with other International forces in the cities of Mexico and the hemisphere. Rows of electronic consoles processed incoming data and messages, automatically decoding and printing fold-sheets for the attention of a commander's staff. Technicians monitored the operation of the machines and maintained the flow of printouts to the offices on the penthouse floor of the tower.

In a high-security cubicle, a lieutenant took notes on a voice message from Washington, D.C. The voice of the North American radioing from an NSA office a continent away came from the decoding circuits like a machine speaking, metallic and disembodied.

"We did not tape all the transmitted information. But what we recorded, we will relay to your commander. A translation will follow."

"Excellent!" The lieutenant underlined a notation. "We have units in motion."

The metallic voice laughed. "You get them. We're tired of those hotshots running around making trouble. Get them."

Lyons whipped through the turns, the bumper of his compact sedan only a few steps behind the Mitsubishi van that Blancanales drove. Vato led in the first compact. On the long blocks between turns, Ixto watched the traffic behind them.

" El camidn estd alu ," Ixto told him.

In the rearview mirror Lyons saw the gunmen following in a Ford pickup truck.

They came to a traffic circle. Lyons accelerated to close the gap behind the van. Cars and trucks sped around the monument at the center, weaving through the city buses. Someone ahead braked. Blancanales braked, Lyons smashed the bumpers together, then Blancanales veered to the right. Lyons hit the bumper again. The van sped away.

Swerving across the wide boulevard, Vato made a right turn, accelerated, then skidded through a left turn. Blancanales followed only seconds later. Ixto gripped the panic handle on the dashboard as Lyons skidded through a turn. The gunmen in the pickup tried to follow but sideswiped a bus. Another bus rear-ended the truck.