"Who might it be...?" Escobedo asked as the car came around a sweeping turn.

There were five teams of two men each, gunners and loaders. They were armed with West German MG3 squad machine guns, which the Colombian Army had just adopted because it used the same 7.62mm round as their standard infantry weapon, the G3, also of German manufacture. These five had recently been "stolen" - actually purchased from a greedy supply sergeant - out of an army depot. Based on the earlier German MG-42 of World War II fame, the MG3 retained the older weapon's 1,200-round-per-minute cyclic rate of fire-twenty rounds per second. The gun positions were spaced thirty meters apart, with two guns tasked to engage the chase car, two on the lead car, but only one on the Mercedes. Cortez didn't trust the car's armor quite that much. He looked at the digital clock. They were exactly on time. Escobedo had a fine set of drivers. But then, Untiveros had had a fine set of servants, too.

On the muzzle of each gun was a cone-shaped extension called a flash-hider. Often misunderstood by the layman, its purpose was to shield the flash from the gunner - to prevent him from being blinded by his own shots. Hiding the flash from anyone else is a physical impossibility.

The gunners began firing at the same instant, and five separate yard-long cylinders of pure white flame appeared on the right side of the road. From each muzzle flash sprang a line of tracers, allowing the gunners to walk their fire right into their targets without the need to use the metal sights on their weapons.

None of the occupants of the cars heard the sound of the guns, but all did hear the sound of the impacts - at least those who lived long enough.

Escobedo's body went as rigid as a bar of steel when he saw the yellow line of tracers attach itself to the leading M-3. That car was not as heavily armored as his. The taillights wavered left, then right, and then the car left the road at an angle, rolling over like one of his son's toys. Before that had happened, both he and Cortez felt the impacts of twenty rounds on their own car. It sounded like hail on a tin roof. But it was 150-grain bullets, not hail, impacting steel and Kevlar, not tin. His driver, well trained and always nervously alert, fishtailed the long Mercedes for a moment to avoid the BMW ahead, at the same time flooring the accelerator. The six-liter Mercedes engine responded at once - it, too, was protected by armor-doubling both horsepower and torque in a second and hurling all of the passengers back in their seats. By this time Escobedo's head had turned to see the threat, and it seemed that the tracers were aimed straight at his face, stopped by some apparent miracle by the thick windows - which, he saw, were breaking under the impact.

Cortez hurled his own body against Escobedo's, knocking him down to the floor. Neither man had time to speak a word. The car had been doing seventy miles per hour when the first round was fired. It was already approaching ninety, escaping from the kill zone more rapidly than the gunners could adjust fire as the car body absorbed a total of over forty hits. In two minutes, Cortez looked up.

He was surprised to see that two rounds had hit the left-side windows from the inside. The gunners had been a little too good; had managed to drive repeated rounds through the armored windows. There was no sign of either the lead- or the chase-car. F lix took a very deep breath. He had just won the most daring gamble of his life.

"Take the next turn anywhere!" he shouted at the driver.

"No!" Escobedo said an instant later. "Straight to -"

"Fool!" Cortez turned el jefe over. "Do you wish to find another ambush ahead of us! How do you suppose they knew to kill us! Take the next turn! " he shouted at the driver again.

The driver, who had a good appreciation of ambush tactics, stood on the brakes and took the next turn. It was a right, leading to a small network of side roads serving local coffee farms.

"Find a quiet place to stop," Cortez ordered next.

"But - "

"They will expect us to run, not to think. They will expect us to do what all the antiterrorist manuals say to do. Only a fool is predictable," Cortez said as he brushed polycarbonate fragments from his hair. His pistol was out now, and he ostentatiously replaced it in his shoulder holster. "Jos , your driving was magnificent!"

"Both cars are gone," the driver reported.

"I'm not surprised," Cortez replied. Quite honestly. " Jes s Mar a - that was close."

Whatever Escobedo might have been, coward was not among them. He too saw the damage to the window that had been inches from his head. Two bullets had come through the car - they were half-buried in the glass. El jefe pried one loose and rattled it around in his hand. It was still warm.

"We must speak to the people who make the windows," Escobedo observed coolly. Cortez had saved his life, he realized.

The odd part was that he was right. But Cortez was more impressed with the fact that his reflexes - even forewarned, he had reacted with commendable speed - had saved his own life. It had been a long time since he'd had to pass the physical fitness test required by the DGI. It was moments like this that can make the most circumspect of men feel invincible.

"Who knew that we were going to see Fuentes?" he asked.

"I must - " Escobedo lifted the phone receiver and started to punch in a number. Cortez gently took it away from him and replaced it in the holder.

"Perhaps that would be a serious mistake, jefe ." he said quietly. "With all respect, se or, please let me handle this. This is a professional matter."

Escobedo had never been so impressed with Cortez than at that moment.

"You will be rewarded," he told his faithful vassal. Escobedo reproached himself for having occasionally mistreated him, and worse, for having occasionally disregarded Cortez's wise counsel. "What should we do?"

"Jos ," Cortez told the driver, "find a high spot from which we can see the Fuentes house."

Within a minute, the driver found a switchback overlooking the valley. He pulled the car off the road and all three got out. Jos inspected the damage to the car. Fortunately neither the tires nor the engine had been damaged. Though the car's body would have to be totally reworked, its ability to move and maneuver was unimpaired. Jos truly loved this car, and though he mourned for its defacement, he nearly burst with pride that it and his own skill had saved all their lives.

In the trunk were several rifles - German G3s like those the Army carried, but legally purchased - and a pair of binoculars. Cortez let the others have the rifles. He took the field glasses and trained them in on the well-lit home of Luis Fuentes, about six miles away.

"What are you looking for?" Escobedo asked.

" Jefe , if he had part in the ambush, he will know by now that it might have failed, and there will be activity. If he had no such knowledge, we will see no activity at all."

"What of those who fired on us?"

"You think they know that we escaped?" Cortez shook his head. "No, they will not be sure, and first they will try to prove that they succeeded, that our car struggled on for a short while - so they will first of all try to find us. Jos , how many turns did you take to get us here?"

"Six, se or, and there are many roads," the driver answered. He looked quite formidable with his rifle.

"Do you see the problem, jefe ? Unless they have a great number of men, there are too many roads to check. We are not dealing with a police or military force. If we were, we'd still be moving. Ambushes like this one - no, jefe , once they fail, they fail completely. Here." He handed the glasses over. It was time for a little machismo. He opened the car door and pulled out a few bottles of Perrier - Escobedo liked the stuff. He opened them by inserting the bottlecaps into bullet holes in the trunk lid and snapping down. Even Jos grunted with amusement at that, and Escobedo was one who admired such panache.