Carl Lyons leaned across the front seat of the van and adjusted the passenger-side rearview mirror. The nightlife didn't fool him. Many of those macho young men trained in the Florida Everglades, grunting through swampwater as their instructors fired machine-gun bursts to keep their heads down. Those older fellows, who looked like grandfathers, were cold killers. Betrayed at the Bay of Pigs, some of them financed their dreams of recapturing Cuba through the smuggling and sale of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. If any of them was to learn the identity of Rosario Blancanales, or see into the interior of the closed van carrying Carl Lyons and Herman "Gadgets" Schwarz, there would be death. The FBI had lost several agents in the streets and alleys of Little Havana. The agents simply disappeared.

We're searching for explosives, not drugs, Lyons thought. But we'd never get the chance to explain.

Blancanales stood a few car lengths behind the van, talking with a fat man in a polyester leisure suit named Hector. Lyons watched them in the rearview mirror.

"What're they talking about?" Lyons called back to Gadgets.

"Hector's got the information," Gadgets answered from behind the curtain that screened him from view. In the back of the van, Gadgets monitored the body-transmitter that Blancanales wore. Every word he spoke and almost all of Hector's words were transmitted to the van. A tape machine recorded the dialogue. Gadgets also maintained communication with the FBI Emergency Task Force assisting Able Team.

"How's the Politician making out?"

"Okay, I think. Wish my Spanish was better, those guys are talking real fast. And it's Cuban Spanish, so I don't know what I'm hearing — this is it! Hector says he's going to make a call. He has to make a phone call."