Warlord of Azatlan at-6

by Dick Stivers

  "Yes, sir. The mountains are beautiful."

  The driver swept through a smooth right-hand turn. Lyons felt the taxi slow. To the left, he saw a park lit with soft amber streetlamps. Lovers strolled the walkways, children ran through the night-shadows. Families crowded around vendors selling roast corn-on-the-cob, steaks, tacos, candies.

  The taxi's curbside door opened and a man took the seat next to him even as Lyons jerked his Python from under his windbreaker and pointed it at the horribly burned, one-eyed young beggar.

  His scars twisting with a smile, the beggar held up his left hand, palm open, empty. Like the taxi driver, he also spoke perfect English.

  "Tell me, sir. What business do you have with Colonel Morales?"

  6

  With the muzzle of Carl Lyon's Python against his heart, the disfigured beggar introduced himself.

  "I am Dr. Orozco. We..." his one eye looked to the cab driver "...are enemies of Unomundo. Is it true that you three men have come to Guatemala to fight Unomundo?"

  "You tried to shoot me at the bus station. Why?" Lyons demanded, knowing the mini-mike in his jacket pocket transmitted his words to his partners. He looked out the back window and saw the Volkswagen tailgating the taxi. Gadgets had the side window down, and his hands were out of sight below the dashboard.

  "That was a misunderstanding. I intended to kill Merida. He was one of those who did this to me." The man touched his hideously scarred face with the fingerless lump of his right hand.

  Glancing outside to the crowded plaza, the scarred doctor took a soft cap from his pocket. He put it on his head and pulled it down to shadow the right side of his face.

  "Please put the pistol away. If you shoot me here… There is the National Palace — the President's offices, guarded by the elite of our country's commandos. On the other side, the headquarters of the National Police. There are sharpshooters and secret police guarding the president's offices and the police buildings every moment of the day and night. If I die, you will live only a minute longer."

  Lyons realized that they had kept to the plaza since Dr. Orozco entered the taxi. The driver made only left turns, stopping for signals, slowing for crowded crosswalks and jaywalking soldiers, but never leaving the rectangle of four wide boulevards.

  "Very smooth," Lyons admitted. But he did not holster the revolver. He covered it with his wind-breaker.

  The doctor continued. "Though I always instruct my friends to be patient, to live with their anger and hatred, to discipline their emotions, I failed to follow my own preaching. I..." He thought of the correct word in United States English. "I snapped. It was fortunate that you stopped me."

  Lyons smiled slightly. "Not too fortunate for your head. Or your balls."

  "Pain is relative. The cuts and bruises you inflicted will heal in only a few days. In my rage, I did not even see you. If you had been one of Unomundo's mercenaries, I would again be Merida's prisoner. My previous experience with Merida was very bad. I could only expect worse on the second experience. Please, you avoided my question. Did you come to Guatemala to fight Unomundo?"

  The hand-radio that was clipped to Lyons's belt buzzed. He keyed it with his left hand. He asked his partners, "What do you think?"

  Blancanales's voice answered. "Ask Dr. Orozco to join us in this car. We'll talk."

  The scar-faced man nodded. "Certainly. Luis, we can leave the park now."

  The driver turned right, the Volkswagen on his bumper, and proceeded down an avenue until he turned right onto a dark side street. Blancanales parked behind them.

  The two passengers left the taxi. Lyons, his Python held ready under his windbreaker, saw headlights swing around the corner and stop. He looked in the other direction and saw a motorbike swerve into the shadows. Its headlight went black, but the rider did not dismount.

  "You people are organized," Lyons muttered as he opened the Volskwagen's sliding door. He got in. Dr. Orozco followed him.

  Gadgets winced at the doctor's scars, found he had to look away. The doctor ignored the North American's shock and extended his left hand for handshakes.

  "It is a pleasure to meet you, gentlemen. And now that I can speak with all of you, let us discuss fighting Unomundo together."

  "How do you know what we're here for?" Lyons asked.

  "After you abandoned Captain Merida, we questioned him."

  "You've followed us all day?" Gadgets asked, amazed.

  "We thought your escape from the terminal very dramatic. Very much like American television."

  "Who do you represent?" Blancanales asked.

  "I represent our group. We have talked together and agreed to help you."

  "What are your politics?" Lyons demanded.

  Dr. Orozco smiled. "You Yankees are so naive. First, if we were Communists, would I tell you? And if we were, would you now be alive? Do not judge us all by the bumbling of a one-handed, half-blind doctor stupid with the thought of revenge. We have grenades, we have machine guns. We could have killed you a hundred times today."

  "You have any foreign connections?" Lyons asked.

  "You mean, Russia? Libya? Nicaragua? No. We have families and friends in the United States and Mexico and Europe. Sometimes they send us money. But we do not need it. We work."

  Blancanales asked next. "Are you in opposition to the present government?"

  "The new president is a gift from God. When he came to office, our group disbanded, only to learn that Unomundo and the other fascists who had escaped justice still threatened our country. Now, with the elections only weeks away, the threat is at its greatest. Unomundo has spies in the government and the army. We do not know what he plans, but it will come soon. To fight Unomundo, you need our help. And though it shames me to ask, we need the help of the United States."

  "How long have you known of Unomundo?" Blancanales asked.

  "Since this…" He touched the scarred right half of his face with what remained of his right hand. "Only a few months out of school. For my church, I volunteered to work in a clinic for Indians. I gave a wounded man first aid and called for an ambulance.

  Merida came with a squad of killers. They wanted the names of the others fighting Unomundo. But I knew no names. They beat me, they put my hand in a fire. I knew no names. They put my face to the fire. I knew no names. They threw me in a ditch, shot me, buried me. But I lived. That was when I learned of Unomundo."

  The North Americans said nothing. In the silence of the car, they heard the traffic sounds of the boulevards, and a woman singing. Gadgets shook his head, sighed quietly: "Nazis..."

  "Will you help us in our fight?" Dr. Orozco asked.

  The men of Able Team looked to one another. They nodded.

  "Good," beamed the disfigured young man. "We help each other. After you took Merida, the Nazis evacuated those offices. But we followed them to another place. Luis, that man..." Dr. Orozco pointed to the cab driver waiting in the taxi "...he will guide you. When I learned of an American commando team attacking Unomundo, I mobilized all our people. We will stop the fascists. We must. God be with you."

  Dr. Orozco stepped out of the van and raised his hand to signal the car parked at the far end of the block. The tires burned rubber as the driver roared to the van. In five seconds, the disfigured young doctor was gone.

  Gadgets broke the silence. "One brave hombre. That happens to him and he still plays the game."

  "No," Lyons corrected. "He wasn't in any game. They just did it."

  "Talk about gifts from God," Blancanales added. "Dr. Orozco and his people are a gift to us. I feel it about this guy. From the evidence on his face, I kinda trust his story."

  "Unomundo's got to go." Gadgets eased down the hammer of his Beretta 93-R. He set the safety. He returned the autopistol to his shoulder holster. "Got… To…Go."

  "First, we got to find him," Lyons said as he reached into his war bag heavy with steel. He took out the re-engineered Colt Government Model. He checked the chamber and checked the Allen screw secu
ring the suppressor. Redesigned and hand-machined by Andrzej Konzaki to incorporate the innovations of the Beretta autopistols, the interior mechanisms of the Colt no longer resembled what Browning had invented and patented. Like the Berettas, a fold-down lever and oversized trigger guard provided a positive two-hand grip. But it fired silent full-powered .45-caliber slugs, in semi-auto and three-shot bursts. Lyons jammed in an extended ten-shot magazine, with the chamber left empty. Returning the weapon to the flight bag, Lyons gave his partners a salute: He would go with Luis and they would follow him.

  "Find and kill," he said.

  A few steps took him to the waiting taxi. Inside, the sallow-faced young driver turned to him. Lyons extended his hand. "We're working together, Luis. We'll break those Nazis."

  The driver smiled and shook the North American's hand.

  Speeding to find Colonel Morales, the taxi traveled the brightly lit boulevard again. Lyons saw Luis glance to a crowd of laughing young men and women emerging from a restaurant. Then came a bride in flowing white and a young groom in a tuxedo. The crowd of friends showered the newlyweds with rice until they gained the shelter of the limousine.

  Luis stared at the scene with longing and sorrow. For that moment, Lyons studied the young man's old face. Lyons had already heard Dr. Orozco's horror. What had Luis suffered?

  * * *

  Looking down through a dirty skylight, they saw Colonel Morales. The colonel supervised a crew of workers packing what appeared to be clay inside the door panels of three cars — a battered Fiat, a gleaming black Mercedes, and a blue-and-white National Police squad car. Elsewhere in the warehouse, workers packed the clay into commonplace street objects: trash cans, striped street barricades, the underside of fiberglass park benches.

  Blancanales leaned to Lyons and Luis. He pointed to a shipping crate, then motioned to all the objects the workers packed. "That's C-4. Plastic explosive."

  "They are making bombs?" Luis asked.

  Lyons nodded. He slipped back from the skylight to key his hand-radio. He whispered to Gadgets.

  "Guess what? It's a bomb factory. Car bombs, booby traps. Enough to make this city Beirut-for-a-day. What's going on out front?"

  "Nada, man. Zero. Guard number one's got a cigar in the car. Guard number two's asleep on his feet."

  "The doctor's people in position?"

  "First shot they hear, it's blacktop kill zone."

  "Standby. Over."

  Blancanales snapped his fingers to get Lyons's attention. He pointed down. "Two guards coming up," he hissed.

  Lyons went to the stairwell housing, moving as quickly as he dared over the sun-cracked tar of the warehouse roof.

  He felt the footsteps on the stairs before he heard them. Pressing his back against the housing, he thumbed back his silent Colt's hammer and waited.

  Voices. Sentries. The door swung open, light fanning across the dark rooftop. Lyons saw one man with a folded-stock Galil autorifle in his hands. The man called out.

  A second man looked around the corner, his eyes going wide as he looked straight into Lyons's face.

  Grabbing the guy by the hair, Lyons jerked the sentry's face into the muzzle of the silent Colt, and pulled the trigger twice.

  He tried to shove the dead man away, but stumbled over the corpse. Still he aimed one-handed at the other sentry, and fired.

  The slug clanged off the Galil's barrel and tore through the man's right bicep. The guy sucked down a breath as the pain came, but the scream never left his throat, a second .45-caliber hollowpoint punching into his chest. The third went high, tearing away the top of his head.

  Lyons changed magazines. On one knee he listened for an alarm. The roof door swung back and forth on its hinges, and voices came from below; a worker used a power drill. But he heard no shouting, no rush of feet on the stairs.

  He looked over to Blancanales. His partner gave him a thumbs-up, then he and Luis crept across to join Lyons. They stripped the Galils from the dead men. They found 9mm automatics in shoulder holsters. Lyons nudged Luis.

  "Put on that one's coat, and sling the rifle over your shoulder. Pol, you make like the other man. Down the stairs, left into the office. I want that phony colonel alive."

  Descending the stairs, Luis and Blancanales screened Lyons with their bodies. They watched the floor of the warehouse. The workers continued in their preparation for the death and dismemberment of thousands of innocent people. Colonel Morales helped a worker press a sheet of C-4 into a wide flat box. Then another worker poured thousands of steel nuts and bolts over the plastic explosive to fill the box. They closed the box, and taped it tight to create a one-foot-by-two-foot Claymore mine.

  The three invaders cut from the stairs to the door of the windowless office. Blancanales watched a worker pasting newspaper over the improvised Claymore. The bomb would be placed at a newsstand, to spray an intersection or an entire city block with crude but deadly shrapnel. Lyons, now in front of the "sentries," pushed open the door. He saw a young man leaning over a map of Guatemala City. The man spoke without looking up.

  "Coronet. Aqui esta la otra..."

  A silent .45 slug through the top of the head rocked him back. His arms flailed like a spastic marionette before he collapsed to the floor. Already dead, his last breath wheezed through blood in his throat.

  Pointing to the telephone, Lyons whispered to Luis: "Can you get that phone to ring? Call somebody, get them to call you back?"

  Luis nodded. He dialed the operator. "Senorita. Hay una problema con este telefono. Esposible.…"

  Lyons and Blancanales watched the interior of the warehouse through cracks in the wood of the office wall. Beside them, the phone rang, once, twice, three times.

  Finally, Colonel Morales looked toward the ringing telephone. He called out: "Armando! Armando!"

  When the ringing continued, the colonel marched to the office.

  Once inside, Blancanales pinned his arms. Lyons slapped a hand over his mouth and asked. "You want to live, Nazi? Want to live?"

  Seeing Lyons's face, the colonel threw himself back, twisting and kicking. But Blancanales and Luis wrestled him to his knees. Lyons felt the colonel gasping against his palm as he put his knee into the middle-aged man's back to immobilize him. Making sure the guy had seen the silenced Colt, Lyons pressed the weapon to the back of the colonel's head.

  "I want to hear you say you want to live. Say it."

  "Traitor to your race!" the colonel grunted.

  Lyons hooked his elbow around the colonel's throat and jerked his head back. He kicked his prisoner's knees apart from behind, and hissed: "You're a brave one, Nazi. You think you're a man because you torture and murder. But are you brave enough to learn a new word? The word is eunuch..."

  He jammed the muzzle of the auto-Colt up between the colonel's legs.

  The colonel went white. A whine rattled in his throat. Watching, Luis laughed. Lyons looked to the young man. Luis enjoyed the fear and suffering of the officer.

  "Shoot him, American! It will be justice."

  Lyons ignored the laughter and the demand for revenge. He continued the interrogation of the man he held.

  "Now, do you cooperate? Tell me, Nazi!"

  "Yes, yes, I..."

  "Shout that the police are coming. The army. Tell your scum terrorist crew to run. Now! Shout it!"

  Shouting out in Spanish, the colonel told his workers to evacuate the warehouse.

  They called out to him, he told them to flee. He would follow soon in a moment.

  Blancanales keyed his hand-radio to alert Gadgets. "Nazis coming out. Hit them all."

  From his position on a rooftop across the street, Gadgets sighted his silenced Heckler & Koch MP-5SD3 submachine gun, the electronics of the Starlite scope illuminating the shadowy doorway of the warehouse. He snapped single shots into the chest of every green-glowing form that left through the door.

  In the office, Lyons jerked Colonel Morales to his feet. "Okay, Nazi. Now you take us to Unomundo."r />
  The colonel's eyes rolled in panic. "Pero no se"...

  I do not know. He is in the mountains. I see him only at meetings."

  "How do you communicate?"

  "Sometimes telephone, sometimes couriers."

  "Take us to the couriers."

  7

  Two soldiers guarded the iron gates of the estate.

  The teenagers in camouflage and combat gear looked at the taxi as it passed by the street. Seeing only a cab driver and a blond North American, the soldiers returned to throwing coins against the guard post's wall.

  Lyons looked back. Within the wide gates, a long, lighted driveway crossed an immaculate lawn. The glare of floodlights around the mansion created an all-night noon. Mercury-arc security lights bathed the landscaping and garages behind the big house.

  A spiked iron fence, eight feet high and topped with concertina wire, enclosed the estate. As the taxi cruised past, dogs ran along the fence. Dogs barked from adjoining estates. But Lyons saw no sentries at the other gates on the avenue. He keyed his hand-radio.

  "It's a high-security mansion. It's got dogs. Lights. Razor wire. Two soldiers out front. This Lieutenant Garcia lives real well on army pay."

  Questioning Colonel Morales, Able Team had learned the identities and duties of Lieutenant Garcia and his wife. Both served Unomundo as couriers. Garcia exploited his post in the Office of Army Intelligence to maintain contacts with other traitors in the army and government. Senora Garcia, a coordinator in the Department of Tourism, traveled throughout the nation to arrange Indian ceremonies and markets for tourists. She carried information to and from Unomundo's base in the mountains.

  "Think we can go straight in?" Blancanales asked Lyons by radio.

  "Three possibilities. A tunnel. Or parachutes. Or straight through the gate. I think I can take them quiet. There's no one else on the street to see it happen. You got any alcohol?"

  "Huh?"

  "Rubbing alcohol. In your medical kit."