Gadgets had stayed in the Silverado, supposedly to watch their weapons and gear. Actually he had hot-wired the vehicle and now waited for a signal to move. Lyons wore his earphone, and kept his hand-radio channel open for instant communication. Blancanales still monitored the microtransmitter in Colonel Morales's pocket.

The Terminal de Autobuses Extraurbanosoccupied a block-square section of the city. The crowded markets surrounded the terminal itself, an asphalt area where the buses shuttling from the villages to the capital exchanged passengers and loads. Leaving the market stalls behind, the three men came to the buses.

The designers of the terminal complex had built it in accordance with Third World realities. There were no ticket offices, no waiting rooms, no service garages. The drivers collected the fares, passengers waited on the buses, mechanics worked on engines and brakes and transmissions while the waiting passengers supervised. Pay lavatories offered privacy to those with five centavos. The poor used the corners and the gutters.

The air was gray with diesel exhaust. Hundreds of Ford and Chevrolet and Bluebird buses jammed the blacktop. Rows of buses, parked side by side, only inches separating one bus from the next, waited for passengers. Passengers carrying burdens of packages and sacks and children wandered along the rows searching for the buses that would take them to their villages. Drivers waited behind the wheels or tinkered with engines as assistants lashed goats and furniture and bundles to roof racks. Other assistants, shouting over the noise of radios and horns and blaring rock and roll, announced the names of cities and villages.

"Xela!"

"Chi-Chi!"

"Antigua!"