Warlord of Azatlan at-6

by Dick Stivers

  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..."

  "Ironman! Pol! Move it!" Gadgets shouted through their earphones. "We've got to get out of here! I mean, now!"

  Lyons looked back the way they had come. "Straight out..."

  Each man grabbed one of Merida's arms and jerked him to his feet. He screamed as his weight went onto his shattered foot, then Lyons and Blancanales dragged him from the parked buses.

  Drivers stared, people backed away as the three men lurched through the chaos, Lyons and Blancanales sometimes dragging Merida, sometimes carrying him. Lyons shouldered through a wall of baskets. He kicked aside panicked chickens.

  Blancanales shouted out: "Policia! Emergencia!"

  Thrashing through the hanging plastic of a booth's sunshade, Lyons stumbled over piles of avocados, mangoes and bananas. He went down in a tangle with Merida. The wounded man screamed. The fruit smashed under them. Blancanales jerked them to their feet.

  Indian women ran, the bright colors of their huipilesflashing with instants of sunlight. Lyons pushed a child aside, stepped over another display of fruit on a tarp, dragged Merida through the bananas and mangoes. Blancanales called ahead in Spanish, warning the people.

  "Alto!" A policeman shouted into their faces, his M-l carbine levelled at them. Blancanales kicked him as Lyons chopped down on the barrel of the rifle.

  The policeman fired. Lyons felt the muzzle flash, felt the bullet shock Merida as it hit the already wounded man. Lyons released Merida for an instant as he pulled the carbine from the policeman's hands and straight-armed the man aside. Blancanales carried Merida. Ten steps farther, Lyons threw the rifle onto a corrugated-steel shanty roof.

  Leaving the shacks and stalls behind, they ran through brilliant sunlight. People stared as the three filthy, bloody men staggered up a hard dirt incline to the street.

  A horn sounded. "Ironman! Politician!"

  Weaving through buses and trucks, the Silverado's horn blaring, Gadgets drove over the curb. He braked just short of crashing into a vendor's sidewalk stall. The vendor grabbed a small child and hastily followed his wife and three other children down the dirt slope, away from the crazed North Americans.

  Blancanales jerked open the side door. Lyons shoved Merida onto the second seat, then jumped in on top of him. Blancanales followed, crawling over Lyons and Merida as Gadgets threw the wagon into reverse. They bounced off the curb backward, continued swerving backward through traffic. Then Gadgets stood on the brakes, shifted gear, and accelerated.

  Swerving from lane to lane, leaning on the horn, shouting out the window, Gadgets careered through the crowded streets. Blancanales crawled into the front seat. He found himself sitting on a bloody machete. He looked over to his partner, saw blood on Gadgets's hands.

  "I won't ask what happened."

  Gadgets detoured over a sidewalk, crashed through a pasteboard sign, then bounced off the curb. He whipped around a corner, and floored the accelerator.

  "Goon squad hits the shit! Film at eleven!"

  Tires screeching, Gadgets braked at a stop sign. The afternoon traffic of a major boulevard passed. Waiting for a gap in the cars and trucks and buses, Gadgets eased through a leisurely right turn, and merged with traffic.

  In the back seat, Lyons checked Captain Merida's wounds. The Magnum hollowpoint had shattered his foot. Strands of flesh and tendons hung out of the exit-torn shoe. The .30-caliber slug from the policeman's carbine had gouged his ribs, but not entered his chest cavity. Blood had ruined forever the Guatemalan's Italian fashions.

  Lyons looked at himself. Blood and filth and mashed fruit covered his clothes. Slime coated his Python. He heard Gadgets laughing. He looked up to see his partner watching him in the rearview mirror.

  "Dig it, Ironman," Gadgets said, shaking his head. "I know all about dirty wars — but man, you stink!"

  5

  Traveling at one hundred kilometers per hour on a freeway to the village of Amitatlan, Able Team interrogated Captain Merida. Lyons and Blancanales shoved their wounded prisoner down into the foot-well between the front and second seats, and held him down with their feet.

  Gadgets drove, watching the buses and trucks and cars in the lanes beside the Silverado for police.

  Lyons stripped off his filth-ruined sports coat. He put on a black nylon windbreaker to conceal his shoulder-holstered Python. Blancanales asked the questions.

  "Where did you intend to take us? Blancanales asked him.

  "Why do you do this, gringos? Are you Communists?" Merida gasped.

  "Where did you intend to take us?" Blancanales repeated.

  "My superiors said you search for Unomundo. They told me to help you. But now you torture me."

  "Who are your superiors?"

  "Colonel Morales."

  "Who else works for Unomundo?"

  "We are patriots. We will save our nation from communism."

  "Answer the questions," Lyons hissed.

  Blancanales continued patiently, his voice quiet and calm. "Where did you intend to take us?"

  "To the buses. To find the man who worked..."

  Lyons slapped the sole of Merida's shattered foot. The young officer screamed into the floormats. He thrashed and struggled to break the plastic handcuffs binding his wrists and ankles.

  Blancanales glanced to the cars in the other lanes. With the windows of the Silverado rolled up and the traffic noise drowning out what sound escaped, the other drivers heard nothing. Blancanales continued his quiet interrogation.

  "We know you and the colonel intended to kidnap us, then kill us. Tell us where you would have taken us."

  Merida sobbed with the pain. "Hijos de pittas… comunistas… gringos comunistas… "

  "Don't call us Communists," Lyons told him. He emphasized his next words with taps to the prisoner's shattered foot. "Answer..." Tap. "...the..." Tap. "...question." Tap.

  Merida arched back with agony at each word. Slamming his forehead into the floormat again and again, he tried to beat himself unconscious. Blancanales put his foot on the back of Merida's neck to immobilize him.

  "Answer the questions, cooperate with us, and you live. If you do not, you will suffer terribly, then die. Your officers and friends, your family will never know of your courage and sacrifice. They will never find your body. We will tell them we paid you money, flew you to Miami to start a new life. They will remember you as a traitor. Perhaps your family will suffer. If you cooperate, we will arrange that you can say you escaped from us. You will have your pride, you can tell the others of your courage, you can live to see your children have children. Answer the questions and you live."

  His breath still coming in ragged sobs, Merida considered the offer. Finally he told them: "It is too late for you. You cannot stop Unomundo now. We will take Guatemala. We will liberate our country from the Communists and the Indians and the Jews and the scum of mixed races. Whether I live or die, the future is ours, for we are strong and pure."

  His monologue silenced Able Team. Lyons and Blancanales only stared at their prisoner. Gadgets spoke first.

  "You know what that sounds like?Sieg Heil."

/>   "You low-life Nazi scum hole," Lyons cursed. "Pol, give me your Beretta. I'm going to make this world a better place to live."

  "No. I gave my word. If he cooperates, he lives."

  "I didn't give my word. What's it going to be, you petty pompous Nazi? Dachaus for the Indians? A Holocaust? What makes you so strong and pure and perfect? Because you look European? Because you speak Spanish? Because you have money and wear a suit? I'm the strong one now, and I'm purifying the earth of you..."

  Lyons put his Python against the back of Merida's head and thumbed back the hammer. Captain Merida heard the hammer lock back. He twisted and sobbed, looked up at Blancanales.

  "I will tell you! Colonel Morales is my commander. He speaks with Unomundo. He will take you to Unomundo. I have the address of our meeting place."

  "You will take us there?"

  "Yes, yes. Now."

  Blancanales smiled to Lyons, who wrote down the address that their gasping prisoner offered.

  * * *

  As they returned to the Metropolitan Center Of Guatemala City, Lyons wadded his ruined sports coat and put it over Merida's ears to prevent their prisoner from hearing their words. He used a roll of two-inch-wide adhesive tape to secure the wadded coat over Merida's ears. More tape covered his eyes. Another wrap of tape covered his mouth.

  Then Able Team had a whispered conference.

  "The goons see this truck show up at the colonel's," Lyons told his partners, "and they'll waste us on sight."

  Blancanales agreed. "We'll rent another car."

  "What about this Nazi here?" Gadgets asked. "Can't drive him around the city. Anybody sees him and we're in jail. Unless maybe we rent an ambulance."

  Lyons nodded. "He's a problem. I don't even trust him to take us to the colonel. Could pull some trick. If I had my way..." Lyons made a thumbs-down.

  "I gave my word he'd live," Blancanales told them. "We'll leave him in the truck."

  On an avenue of delicatessens and tourist shops, they spotted a car-rental agency. Gadgets stopped the Silverado in a driveway around the corner. Blancanales stepped out. He went to rent a car while Lyons and Gadgets waited.

  Rush-hour traffic jammed the boulevard. Neither Gadgets nor Lyons spoke, not wanting to risk saying something that Merida might hear and later report.

  Traffic passed in surges on the one-way boulevard. When a traffic light a block behind them changed, the two-cycle popping of motorbikes rose to a deafening whine, the teenagers jerking through the gears to gain the lead, shooting past in a crescendo of noise, followed a second later by a curb-to-curb wall of bumpers as trucks and cars and bumpers raced to the next red light. Motorbikes swerved in and out through the pack as more teenagers attempted to gain the forefront.

  Auto exhaust brought an early dusk. The lights and neon of shops came on one at a time. Flashing signs advertised North American jeans, European watches, Japanese stereos and cameras. Only a few Mayan names on signs and the low-rise architecture distinguished the boulevard from downtown Los Angeles or a Hispanic ghetto in New York.

  A Volkswagen van pulled up beside the Silverado. Blancanales honked the horn and waved. Gadgets followed the van into traffic. Ten minutes later, they parked in a quiet suburb of modest apartments and tree-shaded streets.

  To give them time before Merida freed himself or beat on the inside of the abandoned Silverado to get a passerby's help, Blancanales sedated him with a shot of morphine from his med-kit. Then they transferred their packs and case-concealed weapons to the Volkswagen.

  Only after they had put distance behind them did they finally speak, "So what's our transmitter telling us about the colonel?" Gadgets asked Blancanales, who drove.

  "I get sounds once in a while, voices..."

  "Yeah, range fade. We're moving in and out of range."

  "They're looking for us. They've got all their men out."

  "What about police?" Lyons asked.

  Blancanales shook his head. "These characters are not official."

  "What about a false crime report, just to get us off the streets?"

  "False?" Blancanales asked his ex-LAPD partner, incredulous. "Four dead men, a kidnapping, auto theft, illegal weapons, forged papers? We're a three-man crime wave, my friend. No, from the bits and pieces I've heard, there are no police, no security services, no army involved."

  "Great liaison connections the Feds made for us," Lyons laughed. "Delivered us straight to a gang of Guatemalan Nazis. Next time I make my own reservations."

  "Who says they're Guatemalan?" Gadgets asked. "Morales and Merida met us at the airport. There was no one else in the hangar, they had their own man at the guard post, they took us in a slow circle until their death squad was ready to take us. They could be anyone from anywhere."

  "They've got some kind of official connection," Lyons responded. "When Merida kicked that old man around, he was flashing a badge to keep the crowd back. I saw an official card."

  Gadgets laughed. "Hey, Politician. How many sets of official cards do wehave?"

  Blancanales shook his head in disagreement. "Those bus drivers at the terminal, they recognized Merida as a hardman cop. And they thought we were cops, too."

  "No," Lyons said, "it was something else, don't know what. Everyone thought I was a tourist until they saw me with Merida. Wizard, you said four goons came at you. What did they look like? What happened?"

  "Four big dudes. Dark hair, tailored suits. They came to get me, but I got them. A Beretta 93-R makes a great urban equalizer. Three of them didn't know what hit them. The fourth one had on a Kevlar vest. He got in a swing with a machete. But he should've worn his Kevlar hat, too. Then I put a burst into the colonel's car as he beat it. Pol, you hear him complain of any upper-body discomfort? Maybe like a nine-millimeter headache?"

  "No points, Schwarz," Blancanales smiled. "You missed."

  "Bullshit! Had him dead in my sights, double-hand grip. Glass must've deflected the slugs."

  "You tried a through-the-windshield shot with nine millimeter?" Lyons asked. "Why'd you bother? Windshields will deflect even 5.56 military rounds."

  "It was the back windshield. Tempered glass. The nines broke it. I knew the first one would go wild, but I thought number two and three might score. Konzaki's custom steel cores and all that jazz."

  "Nine millimeter was designed to kill Europeans," Lyons told them. "For dangerous people, you got to use .45 caliber."

  They laughed at Lyons's cynicism. Blancanales finally reminded them of the task at hand. "Gentlemen, if I can have your attention. We're looking for an address."

  Using a tourist map from the car-rental agency, Able Team drove through the streets and boulevards of the central city. Blancanales had no difficulty with the traffic, but few of the corners had streets signs. One-way streets forced him to drive past certain streets and then circle back. At last they found the correct avenue, and cruised slowly down the block, reading the numbers.

  They found the number on a cafe's window. Looking in at the patrons and waitresses, Lyons shook his head.

  "That Nazi tricked us."

  "What do these big numbers on the map mean?" Gadgets asked Blancanales.

  "What numbers?"

  "These." Gadgets pointed out several faint numbers with penlight.

  They saw large numbers in faint blue ink superimposed over the streets and rivers of Guatemala City. The number 1 marked the old center of the city. The number 9 marked the area of the international airport. The number 19 marked a suburb ten miles away.

  Blancanales drove to the corner and looked at the street sign. The sign read, 6 AVENIDA Z. 1.

  "Zones! The city's divided into zones."

  "That Nazi Merida didn't give us the zone number!" Lyons cursed. "I told you. He fooled us."

  "If you remember," Blancanales reminded Lyons, "he had your Python up against his skull. Tricking us was not his number one concern. He just forgot to give us the zone."

  "How many zones? Nineteen?" Lyons groaned with frustra
tion. "We're going to spend the night driving in circles."

  A taxi passed the parked Volkswagen. Blancanales turned to his partners. "Carl, you're going to be a lost tourist. Give the address to a cab driver. We'll have a microphone on you. We'll follow the cab. The driver will know what zones have this kind of address. You just keep saying, 'No, that's not the place.' We'll go back later and check out the most likely places."

  "All right, makes sense. And just in case they find us first..." Lyons grabbed the fiberboard case concealing his Atchisson as he stepped into the cool evening air.

  Gadgets called out: "Remember, be discreet."

  * * *

  Lyons stood at the curb in his black windbreaker and filth-spotted slacks, holding the guitar case. Farther down from the intersection, the nightlife of the Guatemalan capital already sparkled. Neon flashed, music blared from cars, teenagers walked arm in arm. As he walked, Lyons came across what looked like a shop-front casino; inside, young men crowded around a video game. They cheered their friend when he won, the machine paying off like a slot machine, tokens spilling onto the floor. As Lyons stared around him, Guatemalans stared at him, smiled when he met their eyes. He looked at himself in a shop window and laughed. I look just like an ex-cop on a rock-n-roll tour of Guatemala.

  A taxi slowed, the driver motioning to Lyons. Lyons stepped from the curb and got in the back. A young driver with a prematurely lined face greeted him in perfect English. "Good evening, sir. Where would you like to go?"

  Lyons gave him the address, then commented: "Your English is better than mine. You go to school up north?"

  "Yes, sir, several years." The young driver spoke in a quiet, forlorn tone. "Have you been in Guatemala long, sir?"

  "Only today." Lyons watched the crowded sidewalks and bright shops flash past as the driver eased through traffic.

  "Will you be staying long, sir?"

  "No, just here on business. Get it done, go home. But I think I'll come back on my own time one of these days. On the flight down, I looked at a lot of pictures of the Indians. Their weaving. Their villages. The mountains. All I've seen so far is the city. But maybe my business will take me into the mountains."