Cut off the head...

But first they must find the snake.

Lyons heard his hand-radio click. Gadget's voice came through the earphone. "Ask Coral what the name of this freeway is."

He leaned forward and whispered. "What freeway are we on?"

"Tlalpan. It is a name from the Aztecs."

"Say it again."

Coral pronounced the unfamiliar word for the North American. "Tlal-pan. Say Te-lal in one sound. Tlal. Tlal-pan."

Lyons stuttered the Nahuatl word into his hand-radio. "Te-lal-pan. Tlalpan."

"Oh, shit!" Gadgets cursed.

"What?"

"Ixnay da jive. Da goonies know!"

It took a moment for Lyons to comprehend the nonsense Gadgets talked. And why. He questioned Gadgets to confirm the message. "Are you positive?"

No answer came. Then a voice shouted from the next traffic lane. Lyons saw Gadgets waving from the other Mitsubishi. He slid back his window.

"Lock and load!" Gadgets shouted. "They know we're on Tlalpan. I just heard it. I don't know how, but they must be monitoring us or tracking us or they got us under surveillance. Use your radio only as a last resort and talk jive, understand?"

Lyons shouted back. "We'll run patterns through traffic. If they're behind us, we'll spot them."

"Got it!"

Driven by Blancanales, the other minivan accelerated ahead. Lyons leaned forward to Coral. "Let him get a few hundred yards ahead. Then we'll speed past him. We're trying to spot any cars following us."

Coral nodded. He waited for the space in the next lane, then whipped the van to the right. He continued over one more lane and swerved in front of a truck.

Traffic sped past. Cars rode the bumpers of trucks. Buses accelerated and braked and swerved through rows of trucks. Motorcycles wove everywhere. In the chaos of headlights, Lyons could not identify any surveillance units. He motioned for Coral to accelerate.

Lyons scanned the vehicles in the other lanes, watching for any car or truck changing lanes or racing to follow them. But he saw only the motorized chaos of thousands of Volkswagens, Fiats, Mexican-manufactured Fords competing for position.

Then he saw a Dodge sedan easing from one lane to another, accelerating smoothly to merge with the flow.

"Miguel, slow down." Lyons turned to Vato. "Take a look at the men in the Dodge. On our left."

In contrast to the dented and dirty compact cars jamming the Viaducto, the powerful Dodge had perfect fenders and a gleaming dark blue finish. As the Dodge passed, Lyons glanced at the shoulders and backs of the passengers. He noted the passengers wore business suits.

A newspaper covered the hands of the man in the front passenger seat. In the back seat, another man held a briefcase, his thumbs on the latches. Then the Dodge passed.

"Two of them are not Mexicans," Vato said.

"And why would executives be going to work at night?" Lyons leaned forward to Coral. "That blue Dodge. Stay near it."

Coral glanced to the rearview mirror. "Behind us. There is another car like that. A white one."

'Tell me when they come up."

Lyons turned to Jacom, who rode in the front passenger seat. He held an Uzi wrapped in a jacket.

As Vato's spotter in the mountain fighting, Jacom had fought the forces of Los Guerreros Blancos and the Mexican army. He had used binoculars to correct Vato's five-hundred-meter rifle fire across the desert wastelands. In the battle at the Hills of the Dead, he had shot down a helicopter troopship with accurate 7.62 NATO slugs into the engine. Now the teenager faced danger in the chaotic traffic of a metropolitan expressway.

Lyons trusted the Yaquis with his life. More than compatriots in arms, Vato and Kino and Ixto and Jacom had become his friends.

A week earlier, Lyons did not know that the teenagers or their mountain people existed. If the cynical ex-LAPD detective had encountered the Yaquis — a tribal militia protecting the opium fields of the Sierra Madre — Lyons would have killed them. But the past week had given Lyons a quick education in the poverty and oppression of Mexico. He knew they grew opium for the heroin factories of Culiacan. He did not excuse their crimes, but now he understood their desperation. Now he would work to turn the people away from the drug trade.

"Ready?" Lyons asked.

Jacom nodded.

As Lyons reached into a suitcase for his Atchisson, he heard tires scream on asphalt.

Metal smashed metal.

Autoweapons fired.

Gadgets flicked down the fire-selector of his silenced Beretta 93-R and fired a 3-shot burst into the gunman's face when he saw the Uzi come out from under the newspapers.

The gunman fell sideways across the front seat of the dark blue Dodge. The Dodge swerved into a bus. The drivers of other cars hit their brakes. Bumpers smashed.

The Dodge straightened, and the engine roared as the driver closed the car lengths to the Mitsubishi van. A weapon flashed. Slugs shattered the side windows behind Gadgets and exited through the roof. Gadgets put the tritium night sights of the Beretta on line with the gunman firing from the back seat of the Dodge.

But the driver anticipated the return fire. Tires screaming, the International driver swerved. The Beretta's low-velocity 9mm slugs only cracked the windshield, ricocheting into the night as the Dodge wove behind the minivan, crossing three lanes in an instant.

A truck crashed into the curb fence to avoid the Dodge as another gunman fired an Uzi from the car's left rear window. Davis popped off rounds from a Colt Government Model as high-velocity 9mm slugs hammered the van. The suitcases and trunks behind Gadgets jumped with impact as bullets passed through the thin sheet metal of the Japanese-built compact van. One slug scored a window. Granules of glass showered the interior.

Ixto aimed an autopistol but the Dodge had already swerved away, slipping through the trucks and cars like a shark moving through fish.

"That man can drive!" Gadgets yelled. He watched the Dodge maneuvering for another attack. A dump truck painted with day-glo designs blocked the International's driver from accelerating. Blancanales calmly moved through the traffic, swerving to keep other vehicles between their van and the pursuing gunmen. Gadgets took the reprieve to upgrade his firepower.

Reaching into his backpack, he tore open a plastic case and grabbed two Italian MU-50G controlled-effect grenades. The tiny grenades, designed for the close-quarter combat of antiterrorist actions, had a forty-six-gram charge of TNT to propel 1,400 steel balls. The reduced charge of explosive limited the one hundred percent kill diameter to ten meters.

"Grenades?" Davis asked. "Man, there are innocent people everywhere!"

"It's cool. These are Italian designer grenades. So chic, so cool for a freeway firefight." Gadgets waited for the next attack.

Looking in the rearview mirror, Blancanales shouted, "Here comes another one!"

The second Dodge, the white one, gained on them. Differing from the first Dodge only in color, the second pursuit car also contained four gunmen with submachine guns.

Then they heard the boom of a shotgun. Gadgets grinned to the others. "Ironman to the rescue!"

Lyons leaned from the window of the van that Coral drove and fired into the oversize double rear tires of a freight truck. Tires exploding and flapping on the rim, the heavy truck lurched, the remaining tires smoking as the driver fought for control. The truck slowed, blocking lanes, acting as a traffic barricade.

Coral floored the accelerator. The other cars on the Viaducto pulled to the side to escape the danger of the wild shoot-out.

As Coral gained on the two sedans, Vato shoved aside luggage and crawled into the back of the van. He tried to lift the lid of a shipping trunk. The lid raised only a few inches before being stopped by the roof of the van. By touch, he searched through the interior, finally dragging out an FN FAL para-rifle and a bandolier of box mags. Vato shoved the trunk aside to block the side window. He arranged the suitcases to block the other side windows. Twisting into the narrow space between the shipping trunk and the stacked suitcases, he shoved the FN FAL's barrel through the tempered glass of the back lift-door. He swung out the rifle's metal stock and waited.