Dick Stivers: Into the Maze

The sedan flipped, scraping across the asphalt on its roof.

Lyons ran to the wrecked, bullet-pocked sedan. One gunman still lived. Struggling to push the driver's corpse away, he didn't see Lyons. Lyons kicked the gunman in the side of the head. The man cursed and tried to turn to face his attacker, the M-16 rifle in his hand. Lyons kicked him again.

Stunned, the gunman did not resist as Lyons dragged him out. Slinging the M-16 over his shoulder, Able Team's Ironman dragged the semiconscious gunman back to the pickup.

Coral and a middle-aged man ran from the house. The man held a folding-stock M-l carbine. Lyons dumped the prisoner in the driveway, then ran to Alejandro.

" Usted bien ?" Lyons asked the young man.

Alejandro put up his hands. " Por favor, sefior Norteamericano. No veo nada. Por favor, tengo dos niflos, tengounafamilia ..."

Lyons holstered his Python. He went to one knee beside the panicked Mexican. He took out a hundred-dollar bill and pressed it into the teenager's hand. Struggling with the Spanish words, he told him, " Por usted. Gracias. Vaya. Vaya pronto . Get out of here."

" Si, senor Norteamericano . I go, okay! Shit, man, I go."

Alejandro jumped into his pickup. Grinding the gears, he accelerated away, driving over the body of the first gunman Lyons had killed.

Pausing to gather the weapons from the dead men, Lyons found a new Mini-Uzi gripped in the hands of the throat-shot gunman. He took the time to find the spare magazines in the dead man's pockets. A Mini-Uzi had all the features of a standard Uzi, with the addition of a superior folding stock and a 1200-rounds-per-minute rate of fire. He would not leave it for the local police to claim.

Heavy with weapons, Lyons crossed the street to Coral, who held the side door of a panel van open. Lyons threw the collection of weapons inside and climbed in.

The surviving gunman bled from a bullet wound and from two cuts the shape of the toe of Lyons's shoe. Lyons pulled the gunman's jacket down over his arms. Searching the semiconscious man quickly, he found a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver in an ankle holster.

Coral got into the front seat and shouted, " Juan! Immediatamente !"

His middle-aged friend threw a bandolier of magazines for the M-1 carbine into the panel van and started the engine. Slamming the van into gear, he whipped backward out of the driveway, then raced away.

Lyons found the gunman's wallet. He saw a badge and an identification card with the seal of the Republic of Mexico. The card bore the words: Director General de la Policia de Transito.

"What is going on?" Lyons asked as he passed the wallet forward to Coral. Coral glanced at the identification, then showed the badge and card to Juan.

"Sorry to involve you in our war," Juan told his visitors. "My son killed a Guerrero. So the Federates want to take revenge. You should have called, Miguel. I would have told you to visit another time."

"You mean, the White Warriors — Guerreros Blancos?" Lyons asked. He pulled out the gunman's belt and bound his hands behind his back.

"I do not mean a soldier. But they are with Los Guerreros, yes."

"And the Federates? " Lyons asked.

"They are all together. Culiacan is their city."

"Miguel, what about the fuel? We've got to get out of here."

"It is already arranged. That's why we went to Juan. He took care of our planes, before the war."

"Then let's get that fuel and get gone."

"A car follows!" Juan shouted.

Looking through the back windows, Lyons saw a new four-wheel-drive pickup closing on them. A man in a sports coat leaned from the passenger window. A submachine gun flashed.

Bullets hammered the van. Tempered glass sprayed the interior. The van swerved, throwing Lyons against the side. Another slug punched through the sheet metal.

Snatching up the sawed-off shotgun — a Remington 870 with a pistol-grip, the barrel cut back to fourteen inches — Lyons crawled to the shattered windows of the van's back doors. He looked out and saw the 4x4 truck drawing up parallel with the van.

The gunman in the 4x4 sprayed slugs at Juan. Lyons pressed down the Remington's safety and fired.

As the abbreviated shotgun rocked in his hands, Lyons pumped the slide and fired again.

He pumped the weapon and pulled the trigger a third time, but the hammer only clicked.

Impact slammed the van sideways. The swerving and sliding threw Lyons hard against the wall of the van again. Lyons looked forward and saw that the passenger door had flown open as the two vehicles banged into each other. He saw the unconscious gunman fall out. Scrambling for the door handle, Lyons saved the Mini-Uzi, then drew the door closed as the 4x4 truck hit their van again.

Juan stood on the brakes. The 4x4 continued on. Lyons looked at it through the shattered windshield and saw a gunman in the back clutching at the roll bar. No one drove the 4x4 now. The shotgun blasts had broken the windows, and they could see that the interior was sprayed with blood. As Lyons snapped out the steel folding stock of the Mini-Uzi, the truck smashed into a parked car. The impact launched the gunman over the cab and into the boulevard's traffic.

Juan swerved. The wheels of his van bumped over the gunman. The middle-aged gangster gave a ranch-eroyell. "Ayeeee-ha!"

"Everyone okay?" Lyons called out.

Laughing, Juan glanced back. He laughed and talked as he raced through traffic. "I like you, rubio . For a month now, we have hidden in the house and said we were neutral, we were out of it, we wanted no trouble. Now we must move to another city, but in five minutes we killed six! Where is the other one?"

"He fell out."

"Seven we killed! They will respect this old man!"

Two hours later, with the sun setting behind them, they bumped over the dirt road in a flatbed truck. Lyons rode with his feet on two cases of cold Dos Equis beer. Both Lyons and Coral held cardboard boxes full of roast chickens, tortillas, corn on the cob, plates of refried beans, chilis and chocolate cookies.

As Juan drove, he and Coral exchanged stories, sometimes in English, usually in Spanish. Lyons unwrapped the plastic around a kilo of hot tortillas and stuffed one in his mouth. He took another one, scooped up some refried beans. He ate tortillas and beans and watched the shacks pass.

As they arrived at the junkyard jacal where Alejandro lived with his family, they saw lanterns and people dancing in the warm evening to the blaring disco music of a transistor radio. A pink-and-blue Mickey Mouse piflata hung on a wire, ready to be destroyed by the children. Alejandro sat at the head of a table, pouring tequila for a group of friends. They listened as he told a story. He pointed with his index fingers — like a two-gun pistolero — to dramatize moments.

Coral looked at Lyons. They laughed.

They directed Juan to the arroyo where the others had camouflaged the helicopter. Juan took the flatbed truck, with its four fifty-five-gallon barrels of jet fuel on the back, to the edge of the hiding place. From there a hose would siphon the fuel into the troopship's tanks.

Lyons shouted to his partners and the Yaquis. "Party time!"

"What's the occasion?" Gadgets questioned from the darkness of the arroyo.

"For a start," Lyons muttered, "we lived through another day."

Bandages covered the right side of the agent's face. A plaster cast immobilized his right shoulder and arm. Outside the window of the private room, birds fluttered in the courtyard of the clinic. The only survivor of the two surveillance units, Agent Nava, now sedated against terrible pain, described the killer of the other federal officers.