His monologue silenced Able Team. Lyons and Blancanales only stared at their prisoner. Gadgets spoke first.

"You know what that sounds like?Sieg Heil."

"You low-life Nazi scum hole," Lyons cursed. "Pol, give me your Beretta. I'm going to make this world a better place to live."

"No. I gave my word. If he cooperates, he lives."

"I didn't give my word. What's it going to be, you petty pompous Nazi? Dachaus for the Indians? A Holocaust? What makes you so strong and pure and perfect? Because you look European? Because you speak Spanish? Because you have money and wear a suit? I'm the strong one now, and I'm purifying the earth of you..."

Lyons put his Python against the back of Merida's head and thumbed back the hammer. Captain Merida heard the hammer lock back. He twisted and sobbed, looked up at Blancanales.

"I will tell you! Colonel Morales is my commander. He speaks with Unomundo. He will take you to Unomundo. I have the address of our meeting place."

"You will take us there?"

"Yes, yes. Now."

Blancanales smiled to Lyons, who wrote down the address that their gasping prisoner offered.

As they returned to the Metropolitan Center Of Guatemala City, Lyons wadded his ruined sports coat and put it over Merida's ears to prevent their prisoner from hearing their words. He used a roll of two-inch-wide adhesive tape to secure the wadded coat over Merida's ears. More tape covered his eyes. Another wrap of tape covered his mouth.

Then Able Team had a whispered conference.

"The goons see this truck show up at the colonel's," Lyons told his partners, "and they'll waste us on sight."

Blancanales agreed. "We'll rent another car."

"What about this Nazi here?" Gadgets asked. "Can't drive him around the city. Anybody sees him and we're in jail. Unless maybe we rent an ambulance."

Lyons nodded. "He's a problem. I don't even trust him to take us to the colonel. Could pull some trick. If I had my way..." Lyons made a thumbs-down.

"I gave my word he'd live," Blancanales told them. "We'll leave him in the truck."

On an avenue of delicatessens and tourist shops, they spotted a car-rental agency. Gadgets stopped the Silverado in a driveway around the corner. Blancanales stepped out. He went to rent a car while Lyons and Gadgets waited.

Rush-hour traffic jammed the boulevard. Neither Gadgets nor Lyons spoke, not wanting to risk saying something that Merida might hear and later report.

Traffic passed in surges on the one-way boulevard. When a traffic light a block behind them changed, the two-cycle popping of motorbikes rose to a deafening whine, the teenagers jerking through the gears to gain the lead, shooting past in a crescendo of noise, followed a second later by a curb-to-curb wall of bumpers as trucks and cars and bumpers raced to the next red light. Motorbikes swerved in and out through the pack as more teenagers attempted to gain the forefront.

Auto exhaust brought an early dusk. The lights and neon of shops came on one at a time. Flashing signs advertised North American jeans, European watches, Japanese stereos and cameras. Only a few Mayan names on signs and the low-rise architecture distinguished the boulevard from downtown Los Angeles or a Hispanic ghetto in New York.

A Volkswagen van pulled up beside the Silverado. Blancanales honked the horn and waved. Gadgets followed the van into traffic. Ten minutes later, they parked in a quiet suburb of modest apartments and tree-shaded streets.

To give them time before Merida freed himself or beat on the inside of the abandoned Silverado to get a passerby's help, Blancanales sedated him with a shot of morphine from his med-kit. Then they transferred their packs and case-concealed weapons to the Volkswagen.

Only after they had put distance behind them did they finally speak, "So what's our transmitter telling us about the colonel?" Gadgets asked Blancanales, who drove.

"I get sounds once in a while, voices..."

"Yeah, range fade. We're moving in and out of range."

"They're looking for us. They've got all their men out."

"What about police?" Lyons asked.

Blancanales shook his head. "These characters are not official."

"What about a false crime report, just to get us off the streets?"

"False?" Blancanales asked his ex-LAPD partner, incredulous. "Four dead men, a kidnapping, auto theft, illegal weapons, forged papers? We're a three-man crime wave, my friend. No, from the bits and pieces I've heard, there are no police, no security services, no army involved."

"Great liaison connections the Feds made for us," Lyons laughed. "Delivered us straight to a gang of Guatemalan Nazis. Next time I make my own reservations."

"Who says they're Guatemalan?" Gadgets asked. "Morales and Merida met us at the airport. There was no one else in the hangar, they had their own man at the guard post, they took us in a slow circle until their death squad was ready to take us. They could be anyone from anywhere."

"They've got some kind of official connection," Lyons responded. "When Merida kicked that old man around, he was flashing a badge to keep the crowd back. I saw an official card."

Gadgets laughed. "Hey, Politician. How many sets of official cards do wehave?"

Blancanales shook his head in disagreement. "Those bus drivers at the terminal, they recognized Merida as a hardman cop. And they thought we were cops, too."

"No," Lyons said, "it was something else, don't know what. Everyone thought I was a tourist until they saw me with Merida. Wizard, you said four goons came at you. What did they look like? What happened?"

"Four big dudes. Dark hair, tailored suits. They came to get me, but I got them. A Beretta 93-R makes a great urban equalizer. Three of them didn't know what hit them. The fourth one had on a Kevlar vest. He got in a swing with a machete. But he should've worn his Kevlar hat, too. Then I put a burst into the colonel's car as he beat it. Pol, you hear him complain of any upper-body discomfort? Maybe like a nine-millimeter headache?"

"No points, Schwarz," Blancanales smiled. "You missed."

"Bullshit! Had him dead in my sights, double-hand grip. Glass must've deflected the slugs."

"You tried a through-the-windshield shot with nine millimeter?" Lyons asked. "Why'd you bother? Windshields will deflect even 5.56 military rounds."

"It was the back windshield. Tempered glass. The nines broke it. I knew the first one would go wild, but I thought number two and three might score. Konzaki's custom steel cores and all that jazz."

"Nine millimeter was designed to kill Europeans," Lyons told them. "For dangerous people, you got to use .45 caliber."

They laughed at Lyons's cynicism. Blancanales finally reminded them of the task at hand. "Gentlemen, if I can have your attention. We're looking for an address."

Using a tourist map from the car-rental agency, Able Team drove through the streets and boulevards of the central city. Blancanales had no difficulty with the traffic, but few of the corners had streets signs. One-way streets forced him to drive past certain streets and then circle back. At last they found the correct avenue, and cruised slowly down the block, reading the numbers.

They found the number on a cafe's window. Looking in at the patrons and waitresses, Lyons shook his head.

"That Nazi tricked us."

"What do these big numbers on the map mean?" Gadgets asked Blancanales.

"What numbers?"

"These." Gadgets pointed out several faint numbers with penlight.

They saw large numbers in faint blue ink superimposed over the streets and rivers of Guatemala City. The number 1 marked the old center of the city. The number 9 marked the area of the international airport. The number 19 marked a suburb ten miles away.