Lyons heard feet stomping. Squeaking things scurried across the floor, claws scratching.

Lights flashed on, bare bulbs lighting the garage with searing glare. Lyons snapped a glance through a doorway of a small room behind him.

He saw only the mottled gray and brown of rats running for safety.

Taking a breath, Lyons stepped into the room, the Atchisson ready. The room had been the garage office. The window had been bricked shut except for an air slot at the top. Looking up through the slot, he saw the flashing colors of the electric Tecate billboard. Padlocks and chains secured a door to the street. Black dust lined the shelves and stained the walls. On the floor, he saw that shoes had recently crossed the soot-covered linoleum. But he found only rats.

"Ironman!" Gadgets called out. "Where are you and that righteous thundergun going?"

Flicking on the safety of the assault shotgun, Lyons returned to his partners. "This would have been the absolutely perfect ambush. Wait till we close the doors, then bang-bang." Lyons pointed to the backup compact cars. "Have you checked those for booby traps or DF units?"

"Did it first thing."

"Anything on the Nazi radios?"

"I have totally discontinued my monitoring of the electromagnetic spectrum until I check out that NSA radio," Gadgets declared. "Something gave us away. In fact, those gooners zoomed right in on us. I'm going to take that black box radio apart."

"Couldn't have been our radios?"

"Dig it — we had hand-radios in both vans. And we didn't say where we were, nothing like 'Cruising north on Tlalpan Avenue.'"

"Surveillance?" Lyons asked. "Maybe they spotted us coming into the city?"

"In all those thousands of cars?" Gadgets asked, incredulous. "Anyway, don't we have almost identical vans? With Anglos in both vans? You notice they didn't lock on to you... Man, that means something."

"Yeah. It means they know we're in the city."

"And," Blancanales added, "that we have lost the element of surprise. We may be hunting them, but now they're hunting us, too."

In a van, Coral listened to the dash radio. An announcer raved nonstop. Coral turned to the North Americans.

"It is on the news. On all the stations. They tell of North Americans killing Mexicans and Europeans. This one..." he motioned to the voice blaring from the radio "...a politician says it is CIA. He will demand the withdrawal of United States forces. He is screaming 'Foreign invaders, foreign invaders. 'Invasidn de extranjeros!'"

History chronicles many invasions of Mexico. The armies of the United States, the French empire, the Catholic empire, all played their role in creating the passionate nationalism of the Mexican people.

Yet the armies of the North American and European nations appear late in the history of the region that would become the republic of Mexico.

In the ancient Valley of Mexico, the black, alluvial soil of the shores of Lake Texcoco provided the foundation of life for the emerging civilization of the Mexicans. The people farmed crops of corn and beans and squash, and the gentle climate and seasons allowed for two crops a year. They lived in union with the seasons of their crops, fearing drought and disease, hoping for ample harvests and many children.

Religion rose from the mystical bonds between these people and their world. Before the Romans built their public monuments on the Mediterranean, pyramids and temples overlooked the mists swirling about Lake Texcoco.

But an accident of geology had formed the valley — with its temperate climate, its fertile land and year-round streams — in the center of regions ravaged by tropical extremes. To the north, barren deserts offered only cactus and small animals to sustain the tribes of nomads living in wastelands. To the south, despite the torrential rains and lush tropical growth, the red clay soil would not support agriculture.

When strangers came to the valley, they saw the paradise of Mexico and wanted it. The mountains circling the valley did not protect the people from the invasions. The ancient people of Mexico knew only unending war.

Cycles of invasion created endless defeat and chaos. A barbarian tribe called the Toltecs entered the Valley of Mexico and attacked the city-states lining the shores of Lake Texcoco. The Toltecs crushed some cities and became allies with others. The religions and traditions merged, the decadent and barbarian cultures fusing. This new culture spoke Nahuatl, the language still spoken in Central Mexico a thousand years later.

The god of war became a vital part of the Nahuatl culture. When Nahuatl-speaking cities built temples, their two supreme gods received the highest and most splendorous pyramids. The first, Quetzalcoatl, the god of the Teotihuacanis, represented enlightenment and beauty. The other, Tezcatlipoca, became the god of war and magic. The gentle priests of Quetzalcoatl — the Plumed Serpent — asked the people only for offerings of jewels and feathers and sacred butterflies. The warrior-priests of Tezcatlipoca — The Smoking Mirror, the Lord of Night — demanded the hearts of captives taken in battle.

Legends tell of Quetzalcoatl inventing the calendar and astronomy and mathematics. Other legends describe the beauty of the god's own city, Tula, where the feather-pennants of his palace floated like shimmering flames. Though archaeology disproves the enrapturing myths of Quetzalcoatl, the reign of the god-king represented the ultimate achievement of Mexican culture.

But Quetzalcoatl fell.

The violent devotees of death, demanding war, demanding human blood and hearts to gorge Tezcatlipoca, overwhelmed Quetzalcoatl.

In time, myth transformed the god-king from a gold-skinned Nahuatl to a being with white skin and a beard, clothed in shimmering metal, who marked his path with crosses. The Toltecs believed Quetzalcoatl would someday return from his exile to retake his throne.

This myth doomed Mexico to conquest by European invaders.

In the centuries following the expulsion of Quetzalcoatl, the Toltecs, who had invaded Mexico, suffered the invasion of the Chichimecs. These tribes of merciless barbarians worshipped a god who spoke only to priests and warriors, Huitzilopochtli. Led by their god, they wandered the valley, attacking the weak cities, making alliances with the strong. Later, one tribe of the Chichimecs established their city on a marshy island in the center of Lake Texcoco. They were the Aztecs.

The Aztecs dedicated their city of Tenochtitlan to war. As their first act, they erected a temple to their god Huitzilopochtli and gave him a sacrifice of the "sacred eagle cactus fruit," human hearts.

Huitzilopochtli demanded unending blood. The Aztec lords believed that if they failed to appease their god's hunger for victims, the sun would fail to rise. They sacrificed their own young men and the warriors of other nations. The Aztecs fought their wars not to expand their empire, but to take captives for the altar of their god. Ceremonies demanded hearts. At the dedication of a new pyramid to Huitzilopochtli, the Aztecs sacrificed eighty thousand captured warriors in four days.

Sacrifice decimated the young men of the defeated nations. Taxes impoverished the citizens. But invincible armies of Aztec warriors threatened any rebellious nation of their empire with annihilation.

Then couriers brought word of the return of Quetzalcoatl. The couriers told of floating mountains coming from the east, bringing a man with white skin and a beard, clothed in metal. The white man brought an army of superhuman white warriors who walked on four legs, preceded by priests with crosses.

And so the Spanish marched into Mexico. Every enemy of the Aztecs believed that alliance with the Spanish offered release from centuries of domination by the Aztec warrior-priests. With the gunpowder weapons and the horses of the European invaders, they hoped to smash the armies of the Aztec empire and win freedom for their people.