A hundred meters away, muzzles flashed. High-velocity slugs zipped past Lyons. He dived, slamming into the sidewalk. Rolling, he hit a wall with his shoulder. Concrete steps blocked the rifle fire, slugs skipping off the steps and whining away. He looked up, saw a door. But the door had no handle. No escape that way. He looked back, saw fascists against the flames. Crisscrossing autofire went over him. He did not reveal his position by shooting. Pulling out the hand-radio in his coat pocket, he keyed the transmit.

"This is the Ironman. I'm on the street. Down behind some steps. I think I'm in a cross fire between the goon squad and the army."

In the alley, Gadgets answered first. "The lieutenant's taking it slow. Moving his men up. Looks to me like it's almost over."

"Get to him. Tell him to radio his sergeant that I'm one of the good guys."

"Will do." Gadgets left the cover of the bullet-riddled car. Staying low, he zigzagged across the alley. He crouched behind two soldiers. They reared back when they saw his sports coat and casual shirt, the uniform of the fascists. Gadgets put up his hands, the palms forward and open.

"Paz, amigos. Yo estoy a sus lado. Dande estd el teniente?"

A soldier pointed to a freight door. "Alli."

Gadgets dashed to the lieutenant's position. "No dispare! Don't shoot," he called out. "Good guy coming. Lieutenant Soto?"

"Here. What is it?"

"My partner's up there, out on the street. He's caught between the goons and your other platoon. Could you radio your sergeant and tell him not to shoot him?"

"He's up there? He has joined the ones you say are the enemy?"

"Joined them to kill them. He rushed them, didn't you see? You think the Nazis threw those grenades at one another?" Gadgets pointed to the flaming cars and trucks. "Look at that. Death and destruction."

The lieutenant spoke into his walkie-talkie.

Against the steps, Lyons stayed low. He had put down his Atchisson. With his modified-for-silence Colt, he watched for fascist gunmen in the flames. More than silencing the pistol, the suppressor would also eliminate the muzzle-flash.

A silhouette went from one shadow to another. Squinting into the blazing gasoline, Lyons lined up the Colt's night-sight dots on the form. He saw the silhouette shift. Aiming at the curve suggesting the top of a head, Lyons squeezed off a shot.

The head moved, the gunman rising to fire at the advancing soldiers. The .45-caliber hollowpoint skipped off the hood of a car. Lyons saw a piece of the silhouette spin away.

A piercing, bubbling scream came from the wounded fascist. He rose to his feet and staggered. Lit by flames, the man clutched at his open throat and face, his hands searching for a jaw finding only a tongue and a vast wound. Then rifle fire threw him back.

Lyons saw another man crawling along the asphalt, dragging one leg. A .45 hollowpoint smashed through his other leg, flipping him onto his back. The fascist clawed at the street, trying to somehow escape the agony of his wounds.

Rifles continued to fire from the alley and from the other end of the street. But Lyons saw no more fascists with weapons. He keyed his hand-radio again.

"I think it's all over on this end."

Gadgets answered. "The lieutenant's going slow. Leapfrogging from door to door. Very cautious fellow. Not like some people we know."

Blancanales spoke next. "The other International unit's withdrawing. The cars are gone. Stay low until the soldiers find you. And cooperate, understand?"

"I always cooperate." Lyons clicked off, then muttered, "With people who know what they're doing."

Holstering his Colt, Lyons stayed in the shelter of the steps, listening to the soldiers shouting to one another. The platoon stayed a block away, firing single shots at movement in the flaming cars. But no fascists returned the fire.

The door above the steps opened. A flashlight blinded him. As his hand closed around the pistol-grip of his Atchisson, four hands grabbed Lyons's arms and coat and dragged him through the door. He felt his Atchisson torn away. He kicked and struggled, but other hands restrained him. Then knees on his chest and arms and legs immobilized him.

An electric light went on.

He looked up into the face of Miguel Coral.

14

Soldiers waved flashlights over the faces of dead men. Other soldiers collected weapons while medics tended to the wounded. Blancanales and Gadgets, accompanied by Lieutenant Soto, searched through the wreckage and corpses for Lyons. The hulks of the cars still burned, acrid black soot floating in the air, the fires casting an orange light over the street.

They found fascist gunmen killed by shotgun blasts, but Carl Lyons had disappeared.

Blancanales looked from the gutted cars to the long street. Thirty-odd meters away, concrete steps went from the sidewalk to a door. In the other direction from the fires, he saw no steps, only shallow doorways and the steel framing of stairs to the roof of a warehouse.

At both ends of the street, held back by soldiers and police, crowds of people stared at the scene. The lights of a television crew panned from soldier to soldier as the cameraman recorded video images for the news.

"That's got to be where." Gadgets pointed to the concrete stairs under the door.

"He didn't say 'doorway'?" Blancanales asked.

"Nah, man. 'Steps.'"

"What about that fire escape over there?"

"No cover. He wouldn't lie low there."

A soldier jogged up. "Teniente Soto. Los otros han salido. No estdn..."

Motioning the soldier to be silent, the lieutenant took him aside to hear his report. Gadgets and Blancanales walked to the concrete steps.

"He said the others had gone?" Gadgets asked Blancanales.

"That's it. But what others?"

"One mystery at a time..." Gadgets went up to the door and tried to push it open. Locked. Shining a penlight on the steps, he saw long scratches where bullets had scarred the concrete. He waved the pen-light over the area.

Brass sparkled on the street's asphalt. Gadgets jumped off the steps and picked up a casing.

"Forty-five caliber. The man was here. But now he's gone."

"So he escaped?" the lieutenant asked as the North Americans rejoined him.

Blancanales shook his head. "He wouldn't have left us without telling us what he intended to do."

"Are you positive?" the lieutenant demanded.

"When the shooting started," Gadgets snapped at the lieutenant, "did you run away?"

"No!"

"Then neither did our partner."

"But the others ran away," the lieutenant said. "The ones inside the warehouse."

"The others?"

"The North American and the Mexicans. And the ones who you left here escaped before we came. Also the two indtgenaswho drove your cars — now they are gone."

Gadgets and Blancanales glanced at each other. Vato and Ixto had slipped away in the chaos of the firefight. And somehow Davis and Kino had spotted the surveillance and escaped before the army encircled the warehouse. The others did not have radios. They could not inform Able Team of their actions.

But Lyons did carry a radio.

General Mendez, commander of the International de Mexico and the Grupo Internacionale del Ejercito Mexicano, reviewed the tapes of the intercepted communications. Alone in the penthouse office thirty floors above the Paseo de la Reforma, the general did not risk having anyone overhear the tapes. He listened to phrases in four languages inside his headphones.

The technical difficulties of the interception, and poor maintenance of the telephone line monitoring the transcontinental call, degraded the quality of the recording. Tape hiss and static distorted the voices, obscuring words and inflections. But he understood the German and Russian ravings of Colonel Gunther. And he also understood the English of the American technician speaking to his officer at the base in Virginia called Stony Man Farm.