"Dispacio! Alto!" Gadgets called out to his driver as the Dodge crashed into the pickup. Lyons's taxi fishtailed and spun, tires smoking, rear end downing a light pole. Then Gadgets saw Lyons weaving through the smashed cars, Konzak in his hands.

Gadgets's driver stopped short. The young Mexican soldier turned to him and said in perfect English, "I'll turn the truck around and be ready for the getaway!"

Throwing open the back doors, running through the acrid tire smoke, Gadgets heard pistols popping, then the Konzak boomed. He turned to see Lyons at the Mitsubishi van.

As Gadgets approached the Dodge, he saw dead men in the front seat. Suddenly the back door flew open, and Powell and Akbar dragged out Illovich.

"Slick hijack, Wizard!" Powell raved. "You guys got your act together."

"Get my partner's radio and pistol," Gadgets told him. "Then drag the comrade back to the truck..."

Powell threw Illovich down on the asphalt. Akbar put a foot on the back of the Soviet's neck while Powell searched the old man.

Blancanales and Desmarais stumbled from the wrecked Mitsubishi. Gadgets guided the stunned and bleeding young woman away from the wreckage. As he brushed broken glass off her clothes, Gadgets spoke like a gentleman.

"Are you okay, Mademoiselle Desmarais?" Dazed, she nodded. Gadgets pointed to the waiting panel truck. "In there, in the truck, you'll be safe. Sit down and be calm, you're safe now."

The young woman staggered away to the truck.

Then Gadgets quickly briefed his partner. "That bitch works for the Soviets. Get her into the truck and watch her. Don't let her talk to Illovich. Tell Powell and Akbar."

"You positive? She talks leftist, but..."

"She ain't leftist, she's red. We'll put the questions to her when we can."

Coming up to them, Powell tossed a Beretta 93-R and the Able Team hand radio to Blancanales. Then, jerking the Soviet cultural secretary up by his arms, Powell and Akbar dragged Illovich to the panel truck and shoved him inside.

A pistol popped, then the Konzak boomed and glass fell around Gadgets and Blancanales. Crouching down, they saw a blood-spurting Soviet flop backward through a shattered window of the Mitsubishi.

Blancanales jammed the hand radio in his pocket, then checked his pistol. "My other equipment here?"

"It's all in that truck." Gadgets pointed to the panel truck and Blancanales jogged away. "And watch that phony Frenchy."

Tires screeched, engines roared. Past the smashed Dodge and Mitsubishi, Lyons and Gadgets saw two cars full of Soviet gunmen racing toward them. The three Mexicans fired submachine guns at the approaching cars. Lyons rushed to Gadgets.

"Wizard, shut up and kill somebody," Lyons said as he pulled grenades from his bandolier, yanked the pins and threw the grenades one after another.

The first grenade exploded in a deafening boom, the next two poured out smoke. Gadgets realized the method in Carl Lyons's mayhem. The first grenade, an antiterrorist stun-shock grenade, had been designed to neutralize airline hijackers without killing passengers. It produced a blinding white flash and deafening blast but no shrapnel. The Soviets would think they faced heavy weapons. And if any local people watched the firefight in their street, the explosion served notice to take cover.

Skidding, the Soviets stopped short. The wall of smoke rising from the other grenades obscured their aim. Gadgets selected two fragmentation grenades and threw hard. His throws did not make the hundred-meter distance. The round canisters bounced off the asphalt and popped short of the Soviets.

But a 40mm high-explosive grenade from Blancanales's M-203 scored. A headless Soviet gunman fell. Another Soviet, blood jetting from a hundred pinpoint wounds, staggered backward through the confusion and drifting smoke. A police car, racing to the scene, hit the Soviet, flipping him broken-backed through the air.

Switching to a left-handed grip, Gadgets braced his CAR against the side of the wrecked Mitsubishi and aimed semiauto slugs into the corrupt Mexicans rushing to help their Soviet paymasters. Gadgets fired five rounds, dropped three gunmen, Soviet and Mexican.

Shouldering his M-16/M-203 over-and-under assault rifle and grenade launcher, Blancanales sighted down. He fired a high-explosive round under the nearest police car.

A ball of flame rushed into the sky. Lyons threw another smoke grenade. Gadgets hit two more gunmen, then flipped on his short assault rifle's safety. He added a red-smoke grenade to flames and white smoke, then watched for targets.

Firing broke out behind them. Though the rescue and quick firefight had taken only four minutes, the Soviets had already organized a response.

Lyons had anticipated the reaction. On the intersecting boulevard, Captain Soto's antiterrorist unit ambushed the cars of Soviets and corrupt Mexican police.

"Quit it, Wizard!" Lyons shouted out. "Pol! Mr. Marine! Time to go..."

Through the smoke and flames, Gadgets saw two more cars of Soviets and police rushing into the fire-fight. Gunmen dashed from doorway to doorway. Gadgets fired single shots from his CAR, forcing the gunmen to halt.

"Ironman! The time has come to evacuate!"

While his two buddies covered him with their submachine guns, one of the Mexican soldiers backed the pickup from the wreckage. Lyons saw the pickup coming and shouted out to Gadgets, "Wizard! Get in that truck — that one! We'll be the firepower."

"The man's got the plan!" Gadgets sprinted to the pickup and jumped in with the Mexicans. They gave him a thumbs-up congratulations on the ambush.

Gadgets saw the taxi and the panel truck starting away. Blancanales stood on the panel truck's bumper. Holding on to one of the back doors, he fired bursts of auto fire from his M-16/M-203 at the Soviets and Mexican police rushing past the flaming cars.

Lyons tossed a grenade under the wrecked Dodge and ran for the pickup. As the tires squealed, the Mexicans grabbed his hands and pulled him in.

Behind them, the grenade blasted open the gas tank of the Dodge. But the spilling gasoline did not flash.

Soviets and Mexicans rushed the wrecked cars. Taking cover behind the cars, they fired at retreating Americans. An impact punched the Kevlar protecting Gadgets's chest. The Mexican next to him grunted and fell. Glass shattered. Bullets slammed the fenders.

Blancanales aimed another 40mm grenade at the gunmen. The high-explosive shell popped against the Dodge, and an explosive wave of flame enveloped the Dodge, the Mitsubishi and several gunmen.

Lyons scrambled across the pickup cargo bed to Gadgets. "You hit?"

"Where?"

"You got the bullet, you tell me."

"I'm okay, check him." Gadgets pointed to the bleeding Mexican.

A 9mm slug had passed through the upper-right section of the young man's chest and out through his back. He screamed and gasped as Lyons turned him to glance at the exit wound. Lyons saw no blood in the Mexican's mouth. He pushed him to the side of the cargo bed, out of the way of the others. "You'll live."

The pickup hurtled into another firefight. Lyons had anticipated the Soviets and Mexican-police units coming to the aid of Illovich. He had asked Captain Soto to organize an ambush. The Mexican antiterrorist officer had directed his men to take positions on the boulevard behind the scene of the rescue and wait.

When the Soviet and Mexican-police gunmen rushed to the rescue of Illovich, they ran into the trap. Firing from the cover of doorways or protected by trucks and cars and taxi cabs, the antiterrorist unit slammed the Soviets with fire from NATO-caliber FN FAL rifles, the heavy 7.62mm slugs punching through sheet steel and flesh.

All of the Soviet cars took hits, drivers and gunmen dying. But the Mexicans hesitated to fire on the squad cars. Two police cars broke through the ambush. One continued straight on down the boulevard, accelerating away at one hundred twenty kilometers an hour to safety. The other squad car stopped and returned the fire.