Ahead, the two Dodges maneuvered for position, accelerating to make a cross-fire kill on the van that Blancanales drove.

A hand reached out from the van. A tiny ball hit the asphalt, bounced high over the roof of the white Dodge and flashed.

Hundreds of tiny steel balls hit the hood and the windshield and the roof of the Dodge.

But without effect. The steel shrapnel pocked the paint and shattered the windshield but it did not touch the gunmen inside. The driver braked and swerved away.

Gadgets looked back and saw the gunman in the front seat methodically smashing out the laminated safety glass with the steel butt of his Uzi. Another burst of 9mm slugs hit the van as the other Dodge continued the pursuit. Gadgets pulled the pin on a second MU-50G grenade and tossed it, hoping for a hit on the engine or tires.

The tiny grenade bounced over the Dodge, then bounced again on the pavement. The grenade popped twenty meters behind the Dodge, spraying steel through empty air. The Dodge accelerated.

"Italian shit!"

The Atchisson boomed. Gadgets and Davis saw flame streaking from the short barrel of the assault shotgun. Glass exploded from the white Dodge as Lyons swept the back windshield and side windows with semiauto blasts of number-two and double-ought steel shot. Blood splashed the shattered windshield.

Lyons continued firing as Coral accelerated past the white Dodge. Glass and gore sprayed from the far windows, the driver dying, the Dodge skidding sideways. The heavy car smashed into the center divider and overturned, throwing a man from a window. The rolling car smeared him into the asphalt.

"One down!" Gadgets waved as Coral sped past in the other tourist van. He saw Lyons reloading his Atchisson. Looking back, Gadgets aimed his silenced, underpowered Beretta at the pocked windshield of the remaining pursuit car. He semiautoed round after round at the swerving blue sedan.

A rifle fired from the back of the other Mitsubishi. The 7.62mm NATO slugs tore through the surviving Dodge, punching through steel and flesh. The Dodge slowed as the wounded driver struggled for control. The heavy-caliber battle rifle fired three more times. The big sedan drifted across the lanes, carrying dead and wounded men to a slow, screeching stop against the curb.

In the second van, Coral turned to Lyons. "We must make our vehicles look okay. Soon police will look for us. Tell the others."

Vato had already put away the FN FAL para-rifle. As the minivan sped over the now-deserted freeway, he used his boot to clean the remnants of the shattered glass from the lift-door's window. Lyons leaned out his window and shouted to Blancanales and Gadgets.

"Clean it up! We still got a way to go."

"Doing it already!" Gadgets shouted back. "But what about the bullet holes?"

"Noway, no time!"

The Mitsubishi tourist vans entered the traffic of an interchange and left the Viaducto Tlalpan behind. Lyons watched the passengers in the vehicles around him on the expressway. Many of the other people rode with their windows open to the pollution of the warm night. And in the shifting lights and smoke of traffic, no one seemed to notice the 9mm holes in the sheet metal of the minivan.

But the bullet holes would not escape the notice of a policeman.

Coral turned on the dash radio and spun through the stations. He stopped at a news station and listened to the announcer's monologue. "Nothing said yet."

"How much farther?" Lyons asked.

"Very near."

Gunther shifted on the floor. Lyons pressed his shoes down on the fascist colonel's back. As they sped through the evening traffic, Lyons counted the charges they faced if the Mexican authorities arrested them.

Kidnapping. Murder. Assault. Mayhem. Conspiracy. Illegal weapons. Theft of army weapons and equipment. Illegal entry into the country. Currency violations. Speeding. Public nuisance.

If they went to trial, they faced a lifetime in prison. But they would never get to trial. The Fascist International controlled units of the Mexican army and the Federates. If the fascists had also infiltrated the metropolitan police, the North Americans would not live long in jail.

But Able Team and the Yaquis had lived through the pursuit and firefight on the Viaducto. Maybe their luck would hold.

Coral left the Viaducto, Blancanales following a moment later in the other minivan. They inched through a jammed intersection, horns and voices loud around them, then Coral turned onto a side street.

Narrow as an alley, with rusting cars and trucks parked on either sidewalks, the street led through a neighborhood of decaying tenements. The smog had long ago stained the concrete and stone of the buildings the same gray black of the starless, moonless night.

Corner streetlights created patterns of brilliance in the gray streets, light reflecting from gutter water and windows and car chrome. But elsewhere on the streets, only lights from windows and doors broke the darkness.

Neon words identified some doorways as businesses. In others, fluorescent tubes cast gray light on racks of broken mailboxes. Shadowy corridors led into darkness.

The windows of some apartments opened directly to the sidewalks. Inside, people occupied rooms bright with plastic furniture. One apartment had posters of Julio Iglesias and the blond singers of Abba. Another showed posters of the Rolling Stones and a defiant Che Guevara.

Above the tenements, an electric billboard advertised Cerveza Tecate with thousands of colored lights, patterns of different colors forming the shape of a beer bottle and spelling out the name.

Finally Coral stopped at a steel rollaway door. Sooty paint above the entry read Automechanica. Coral got out of the car and opened a padlock on the door.

Lyons's hand almost keyed his hand-radio. He stopped himself. Instead, he spoke to Vato and Jacom.

"Check the area and look for surveillance. Look for anything unusual. I would do it but..."

Vato understood. "You are too unusual here."

The two young men stepped into the gray night. Vato carried the flight bag concealing the sawed-off Remington 870.

Looking back, Lyons saw Blancanales signal him. Blancanales pointed to the roof lines. Lyons nodded and held up one hand. He cocked back his thumb like a pistol hammer. Then he put his hand back on the pistol-grip of his Atchisson.

Coral returned to the van and drove it inside the garage. Lyons saw two Japanese compact cars parked inside the cavernous garage.

"What are those cars doing there?" he asked.

"We rented four cars," Coral explained. "Rosario wanted backup cars. In case."

"Good. We need them." Lyons stepped into the darkness of the garage, the Atchisson cocked and locked, his thumb on the fire selector.

The darkness smelled of old oil and rot. As Blancanales drove in the other van, Lyons snap-scanned the interior of the garage in the moment of headlights. He saw only walls, bricked-up windows, doorways. He waited until Blancanales switched off the engine. Then he trotted blind through the darkness, stopping short of the doorway.

Behind him, the doors of the minivan opened, the dome light casting a weak glow. Lyons continued slowly to the doorway. Pressing his back to the cold concrete, he listened, the Atchisson gripped at port-arms.

He heard movement. A can clanked. Lyons flicked his Atchisson's fire-selector off safety.

The Yaquis came through the entry. Coral pulled down the rolling steel door.

Lyons stood in the semidarkness, still listening for movement. His partners and the Yaquis waved flashlights over the interior, lighting the corners, searching the back of the garage. Shoes clanged on steel as someone ran upstairs, the noise echoing in the empty building.

"Ratones!" A voice called out.