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!"

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."