"We have no clothes, only uniforms," Vato answered, pointing to the camouflage-patterned Mexican army fatigues he and the three other Yaqui fighters wore.

"I can't," Gadgets answered. "I have to stay with the radios. And if you're going, the Politician's got to stay here to translate. So that means the Ironman goes. You still got your civilian clothes?"

Lyons pulled his wadded slacks and shirt from his pack. He found his sport shirt. As he dressed, Vato and the Yaquis spread out into the desert around the helicopter. In their uniforms, with Mexican army boots and gear and weapons, they looked like young soldiers on maneuvers.

"How much money you got?" Lyons asked Gadgets.

Gadgets took a plastic box from his pack. The stenciled word Moneymarked the lid. He took out stacks of crisp greenbacks in bank wrappers. "Ten thousand... twenty thousand... thirty thousand total. How much will two hundred gallons of kerosene cost?"

Davis stared at the money. "You always carry that much cash around in your backpack?"

"Nothing like pictures of Benjamin Franklin to expedite solutions to difficult situations," Gadgets jived as he counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills. "Will a thousand dollars cover a fill-up?"

"Make it two thousand." Lyons buttoned up his sport shirt.

Gadgets laughed at Lyons's wrinkled, dirty clothes. "Look at that dude. He's so mean he even wipes out Perma-Press. Here's a thousand more. Buy yourself a new shirt."

"Yeah, yeah. You think you're funny. What if I take this money and buy an air ticket back to L.A.?"

"You won't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because the goons you want to kill ain't in L.A., that's why."

"You got it. Adios, amigos."

Lyons and Coral hiked out of the arroyo. In the distance, across the rolling desert, they saw a gray smear: the smoke and auto pollution of Culiacan. Lyons checked his watch.

"Four o'clock. Think we can walk into town before night?"

"We will be there very soon. We could be done before night, but it is probably better that we come back with the truck after dark. To avoid questions."

They followed the dirt road toward the highway.

As they walked, Coral tutored Lyons in basic Spanish. The Mexican gangster taught the North American justice warrior numbers and directions and distances. He taught him nouns and the present tense of common verbs.

After a half hour's walking, they came to a sprawling dump. Plastic bags and broken glass littered the sand. Along the road, several families lived in jacals— shacks made of discarded sheet metal and plywood. Teenage boys looked up from sorting scrap metal and saw the two strangers. Children watched from the doorways of the shacks.

Coral called out to the teenagers. A boy pointed. A young man wearing oil-stained coveralls walked out to the strangers. He talked with Coral for a minute. Coral turned to Lyons.

"We can hire him to take us into Culiacan," he said.

"Sure," Lyons said.

Coral negotiated the price and then the young man left.

"I told him our truck broke down in the mountains, and we're going in for some parts. He wanted to repair the truck, but I told him it was a new American truck with computerized ignition and that's what went wrong."

A battered Chevy pickup, assembled of mismatched body panels, rattled out. Lyons saw packing cases in the cargo bed. Each box contained different metals: aluminum, copper, brass, iron. A chicken fluttered about, finally flying off the truck.

Coral sat in the center, Lyons against the passenger door. The teenager leaned across the seat and introduced himself to his riders.

"Alejandro," he said.

"Carl." Lyons gave only his first name.

"Miguel."

Then Alejandro accelerated the truck down the dirt road. It shook, the springs squeaking. Bumping and lurching on the seat, Lyons tried to follow the conversation between the teenager and Coral. Failing to understand the Mexicans, he stared out at the passing desert. Soon they turned onto the highway.

Alejandro instructed Lyons in Spanish dialect during the ride. Lyons understood nothing. Finally, Coral interrupted the lesson to give Alejandro directions. Alejandro left the highway and drove through the suburbs of Culiacan.

Late-afternoon sunlight blazed from the turquoise, pink, aqua-blue colors of the stucco houses. American and European compact cars filled the driveways. Cinder-block walls topped with jagged broken glass divided the lots. Coral motioned Alejandro to stop.

Coral scanned the neighborhood. Lyons started to open the door. Coral caught his arm.

"Wait. Something is not right."

"What?"

"No children. There should be children." Coral spoke quickly with Alejandro. The teenager shook his head. Coral turned to Lyons again. "There is no festival, no parades today. There should be children in the street and the yards."

They waited. Coral spoke again with Alejandro. The teenager started up the truck. They drove through the neighborhood, scanning the parked cars. After a few minutes of driving through the streets, circling the blocks, they parked again. Coral went into a house.

"Que pas la problema?" Alejandro asked Lyons.

Lyons shrugged.

Tires squealed. An engine roared as a four-door sedan spun around the corner. Lyons saw the forms of men in the front and back seats. Then he saw the muzzle of a weapon come out of the side window.

Grabbing Alejandro, Lyons threw open the pickup's door.

Tires screamed as the sedan skidded to a stop. The fender and a headlight of the car crumpled as they slammed into the pickup. Flat on his belly beside the pickup, Lyons pulled his Colt Python from the hideaway holster at the small of his back.

A Mexican with slicked-back hair and gray polyester business suit ran in front of him, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

Lyons fired a 158-grain jacketed, X-headed hollowpoint into the Mexican's face. The slug smashed through flesh and skull, the expanding hollowpoint disintegrating, the fragments continuing through the gunman's brain to explode from the back of his head. The impact threw him down, already dead, his skull a bloody void.

Looking under the pickup, Lyons saw shoes and slacks running from the sedan. The mirror-polished shoes ran around the rear of the pickup. Lyons spun and fired as another gunman appeared, the hollow-point catching the Mexican just above his open collar and tearing through his throat to sever the spine. Momentum carried the dying man forward, the last spasms of his heart pumping blood from the entry and exit wounds. He fell, his Uzi still gripped in his hands, a broken neck allowing his head to twist impossibly, his open, blind eyes staring up at the sky.

Another weapon popped, slugs punching through sheet steel, glass shattering. Lyons heard ricochets hum overhead. A window in a house broke. Someone screamed. Lyons looked back to Alejandro, saw the teenager staring around, his eyes wide with panic. He couldn't think of the Spanish words to calm the teenager so he shouted, "Be cool, be cool — everything'll be okay."

The sedan's engine roared again, the wheels spinning. A door slammed. As tire smoke clouded into the air, Lyons scrambled to the bumper of the pickup.

He saw the sedan's driver leaning low over the steering wheel. The engine whined at maximum rpm, but the sedan did not move, the spinning tires only smoking on the asphalt.

A gunman leaned from the front passenger-side window and sprayed a burst from an M-16, the high-velocity 5.56mm slugs shrieking into the house, shattering glass, ricocheting wildly from concrete.

The tires gained traction. Lyons sprinted as the sedan started away. From an arm's distance, he double-actioned slugs through the driver's-side window, a hollowpoint ripping away the side of the man's skull, a second shot punching through his dead hand and shattering the steering wheel, a third bullet spider-shattering the windshield.