Home Invasion (23 page)

Alex jerked back as slugs flew around her, but she had the presence of mind to grab Garaldo’s collar and haul him with her behind a corner of the nearest building. Eloise pressed herself to the wall behind them.

Ford and Parker had been a few steps ahead, so they had lunged on across the alley and taken cover on that side. “We’ll cover you!” Ford called. “Make a run for it!”

Alex was ready to do so, but Garaldo suddenly twisted and rammed his head into her face. She cried out in pain as the blow drove her head back against the wall. Garaldo took off running back the way they had come.

“Stop him!” Alex choked out. Garaldo knew the resistance was gathering at the high school, and if he reached his men with that information, it would result in a bloodbath.

Eloise brought the rifle she held to her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The weapon was set to automatic fire, so a burst of shots ripped out from it. She probably wasn’t expecting the recoil, because all the bullets went high except one.

That one clipped the upper part of Garaldo’s right arm and knocked him spinning off his feet.

Alex had recovered from the blow by now. She dashed after Garaldo while Ford and Parker continued trading shots with the invaders at the other end of the alley. The general was cursing and trying to struggle to his feet when Alex reached him and put the muzzle of her rifle against the back of his head.

“Don’t make me regret the decision to keep you alive,” she said coldly.

Panting a little from the pain of his wounded arm, Garaldo said, “You cannot blame a man … for fighting for his destiny, Chief.”

“Your only destiny is prison.”

“We shall see.”

“Get up,” she ordered curtly.

“I am wounded.”

“And you’re lucky you’re not dead. If Eloise was used to handling an automatic rifle like that, you would be. Get up.”

Awkwardly, Garaldo got to his feet. Blood dripped from his arm. Alex took hold of his collar again and swung him around. She prodded him back to the alley mouth.

“Did I do all right, Alex?” Eloise asked.

Alex gave the dispatcher a quick smile. “You saved the day, that’s for sure.”

“Enough talk,” Parker said. “Those guys look like they’re getting ready to charge us. When we open up again, you go.”

“Hear that, Garaldo? You come with us, or I kill you right now.”

He nodded. “Yes. I understand.”

With Ford aiming high and Parker aiming low, the two agents thrust their rifles around the corner of the building and opened fire. Alex sent Garaldo across first, then Eloise, then dashed out into the open herself. She felt as much as heard a bullet passing within inches of her head, but then she was behind the sheltering corner of the other building.

“Lead the way,” Ford told her, and the five of them set off at a run again.

The pair of trucks set out from Casa del Diablo a little before eleven o’clock that morning, winding through the mountains on the narrow blacktop road until they reached the larger road that led through the foothills to the flatland. Each truck had a squad of armed men riding in the back with the cargo, but there were no jeeps leading the way, no armored SUVs following, no visible security at all. Secrecy was the greatest security of all, and there was nothing special about these trucks to attract anyone’s attention. That was the way it had been planned all along.

The guards didn’t know what they were guarding. A lot of the scientists who had worked on the various parts of the project didn’t know exactly what they were working on. Less than a dozen people at the facility knew the whole story, and even fewer people in Washington were aware of the truth. That was the only way this could work.

Construction of Casa del Diablo had started under the administration of the previous president, but at that point the possibilities for it had been only theories. Contingency plans at most. In the end, the President had decided not to go forward with any of it. Despite all her lust for power and her self-righteous zeal, she had finally drawn the line at murdering Americans whose only crime was disagreeing with her politics.

The man in the Oval Office now had no such compunction, and as soon as he had been briefed on the Casa del Diablo project, he had given the go-ahead for it. In fact, he had instructed the project leaders to work as quickly as possible. His instincts had told him that he might need the fruits of their labors sooner rather than later. So far, the American people had been amazing tolerant about letting him do whatever he wanted, but he knew that couldn’t last.

Now, in these old, nondescript trucks, the means to crush any opposition was almost within his grasp. The cargo would be driven all the way to Washington and delivered to a military installation there. Not regular military, though. The Federal Protective Service would take charge of it until it was needed.

That day had arrived much sooner than even the President had expected, but the drivers behind the wheels of the trucks didn’t know that. Neither did the guards. And so the trucks rolled on, under the arching vault of the blue Texas sky.

Alex knew about the unlocked window in the gym. She had heard Jack, Rowdy, and Steve talking about it, although they had no idea that she knew. She led Ford, Parker, Garaldo, and Eloise right to it.

Parker went in first to reconnoiter, and when he gave the all-clear, Alex told Garaldo, “Up you go.”

“I cannot. Not with my hands fastened behind my back and a wounded arm.”

“He’s got a point,” Ford said. “I’ll cut you loose, Garaldo, but if you try anything else, you’ll be a dead hostage instead of a live one.”

Alex started to bristle. Garaldo was
her
prisoner, and she ought to be the one to decide what to do.

But Ford was right and she knew it. Garaldo had to be cut loose. Ford did so with a clasp knife he took from one of the pockets in his jeans.

While they covered him, the general climbed through the window. Eloise followed, then Alex, and finally Ford. Once they were all inside, they listened intently but didn’t hear any sounds of movement from elsewhere in the school.

“If some of your people are here, where would they be?” Parker asked Alex in a half-whisper.

She thought about it for a moment before saying, “I don’t know, unless they’re in the library. It has some big windows and gives a good view of the front parking lot. If they’re in there, they could see anybody coming.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Ford drawled. “Can you take us there?”

“Sure. Come on.”

As they made their way through the halls, Alex felt someone watching her, and when she glanced back, Ford looked away quickly. She looked forward again and smiled faintly. Earlier, he had let slip some comment about her being hot. He was kind of a big, good-looking guy himself. Not classically handsome, by any means, but he had a rugged appeal to him.

And this was
so
not the time to be thinking about such things, she reminded herself. Not with the lives of everybody in town still in danger, not to mention the terrible threat that nerve gas would be if it fell into Garaldo’s hands.

They reached the hall that led past the library doors. Alex whispered, “I’ll go first.”

“Maybe I should—” Ford began.

“This is
my
town, Agent Ford,” Alex cut him off. “If some of my people are in there, they need to see me first.”

Ford made a go-ahead gesture. “That’s a good point, Chief. Just be careful.”

“A little late for that, don’t you think?” she asked with a curt laugh.

She cat-footed toward the doors with the rifle clutched tightly in her hands. Each door had a window set into it. When she got close enough, she leaned over to peer through the glass. Plenty of light came through the big front windows, but the library had some dark corners, too, because of all the shelves.

Alex didn’t see anybody moving around. She pushed one of the doors open a few inches and listened intently without hearing anything. It appeared that no one was here after all. A pang of disappointment went through her. She pushed the door back even more and stepped into the big room.

A hand came out of nowhere, grabbed the rifle barrel, and thrust it toward the ceiling. Alex didn’t fire because she didn’t know who had grabbed the gun. Then strong arms went around her from behind and lifted her off the floor. She let go of the rifle with her right hand and drove that elbow back into the stomach of her captor. The man grunted in pain and let go.

Alex jerked the rifle loose and spun around, ready to slam the stock into the face of whoever had grabbed her. She stopped short when she realized it wasn’t a man at all, but rather a teenage boy.

“Rowdy! “ she exclaimed.

“Oh, shit!” he said. “I mean, I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to grab your boobs, honest I didn’t.”

Other figures surrounded her. “Alex,” she heard J. P. Delgado say, and then an even more familiar voice said, “Mom!”

Alex handed the rifle to Rowdy and then turned to embrace her son.

It was a tight, desperate hug on the part of both of them. “Jack,” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he told her. “What about you?”

Alex managed to nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.” As much as she enjoyed being reunited with him and knowing that he was all right, there were other considerations. She turned her head and called, “Come on in.”

Eloise entered the library first. She hugged Jack and Delgado while Ford and Parker prodded Garaldo into the room at gunpoint. Eloise stepped back from Delgado and gripped his arms.

“Clint?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said gently. “I haven’t seen him.”

Alex knew what Delgado being here really meant, though. Garaldo had boasted that all of her officers were dead, but he’d miscounted. One had survived … and now it was obvious Delgado was that one.

Which meant Clint hadn’t made it, along with Jerry, Betsy, Lester, and Antonio. Grief was a powerful force inside Alex at that moment, along with a justified outrage.

More people were emerging from the shadows between the sets of shelves. Alex saw Clayton Cochrum, the blond reporter, and the cameraman. So they hadn’t been on the helicopter, after all, when it was blown out of the sky. When everyone had come out, she did a quick headcount.

“Twenty-eight,” she announced. “That’s not a very big bunch to take on an army.”

“It’s more than we started with,” Delgado said. “People have been showing up by ones and twos over the past half-hour. If we wait, maybe more will get here.”

“I’m not sure we can afford to wait.” Alex looked at Garaldo. “When’s that shipment of nerve gas supposed to come through here?”

“Nerve gas?” Rowdy repeated in a surprised yelp. “What the heck’s goin’ on here, Chief?”

Alex glanced at the two renegade CIA agents. “Is it all right to tell them?”

“The more people who know about it, the better as far as I’m concerned,” Parker said.

Ford nodded in agreement. “Getting the story out to the public is the only chance we have of surviving this with our careers even reasonably intact. At that, I doubt we’ll ever be trusted out in the field again.”

“All right.” Quickly, Alex told everyone in the library about Casa del Diablo and the shipment of deadly nerve gas that was leaving there today.

“That’s crazy,” the reporter said angrily. “That’s nothing but a pack of right-wing lies. The President would never do such a thing. He’s an honorable man.”

“You’ve blinded yourself to the truth,” Alex snapped. “He’s used all the power at his command to try to keep the truth from getting out.”

“I don’t believe it, either,” Cochrum said. “I voted for the guy. I donated money to his campaign. He … he’d never … well, hell.”

The blonde turned on him like a she-badger. “Don’t tell me you believe those awful lies! The President would never do anything bad. He’s a liberal!”

Cochrum grimaced. “Sorry, babe. I’ve seen what happens to some guys when they get power in their hands. I don’t want to believe it, but I can’t rule it out.”

“Oh!” The blonde fumed. “You’re all just a bunch of… of
conservatives
”

“Liberal or conservative doesn’t have much to do with it at this level, lady,” Ford said. “We’re talking good and evil here. This guy"—he jerked a thumb at Garaldo—"this guy’s evil. So’s the guy who decided it was okay to use nerve gas on his own people if they disagreed with him. Doesn’t matter what party you’re from, doesn’t matter what your motivation is. It’s still mass murder you’re talking about, and we’ve got to stop it.”

That was the longest speech Alex had heard from Ford so far. It was inspiring, but it didn’t answer the most important question.

“How are we going to stop it?” she asked.

Delgado motioned the cameraman forward. “We’ve been talking about that,” he said, “and we’ve come up with an idea….”

The helicopters seemed to come out of nowhere, swooping down from the sky to land on the highway both in front of and behind the trucks carrying the shipment from Casa del Diablo. The spot chosen for the intercept was a good one. A deep gully ran along the right side of the highway for several hundred yards, so the trucks couldn’t swerve and take out across country in that direction in an attempt to escape. The left was open, but even as the eyes of the drivers swung in that direction, another gunship landed, blocking that path, too.

The drivers had no choice except to bring their vehicles to a halt. They had been warned about avoiding accidents during the trip to D.C. Crashing into a helicopter would certainly qualify.

“Code Red, Code Red!” the driver of the first truck said into the intercom connecting him with the guards in the back of the vehicle. They were outgunned, no doubt about it, but they would fight to defend the cargo. Satellite surveillance was supposed to be following them on their journey, and this interception would prompt a rescue team to be scrambled and sent out. Maybe they could hold out long enough for help to get here.

Surprisingly, only one man jumped down from the chopper that had landed in front of the trucks. He strode toward them, a stiff-backed, middle-aged man with a wind-burned face, graying sandy hair that was cut close to his head, and a small mustache. He wore close-fitting black combat gear, and the only weapon he appeared to be carrying was a holstered pistol strapped to his hip. He looked familiar to the driver.

As the man approached, he motioned for the driver to lower his window. The driver did so, wondering if he was going to be killed.

“At ease, son,” the man barked. “I’m General Wendell Stone, director of the Federal Protective Force. Change of plans.”

The driver recognized General Stone from news reports about the man’s ouster from the army and his subsequent appointment as head of the newly-formed FPS. That made the driver relax a little, but not much. Nobody had told him about a change of plans. Fortunately, there was a protocol for handling things like this.

The driver put his right hand on the gun beside him. “Sir? Are you sure about that?”

Stone smiled thinly. “Authorization Zulu Niner Bird Dog. That good enough for you, son?”

The driver blew out his breath in a sigh of relief. That authorization code came from the top. The very top. He nodded and said, “Yes, sir, what can we do for you?”

“My men and I are here to take charge of that cargo you’re carrying.”

“I thought it was supposed to be low-profile all the way to Washington.”

“Like I said, change of plans. You’ll cooperate, of course?”

The driver wondered for a second if there was a veiled threat in that question. Deciding that there wasn’t, he nodded and said, “Sure. We were supposed to turn the stuff over to you, anyway. We’re just doing it a few days sooner, that’s all.”

Stone grinned. “You’re right, that’s all.” He turned and motioned to the choppers. Men clad in similar black outfits disembarked and started to gather around the trucks.

The drivers and the guards climbed out to watch as nine of the ten cases containing the mysterious cargo were unloaded from the trucks and placed aboard two of the helicopters, four cases in one and five in the other. The tenth and final case was carried to the command chopper.

General Stone nodded in satisfaction when it had been loaded aboard. “Thank you for your cooperation, son,” he said to the lead driver.

“Just following—”

That was as far as the driver got, because at that point Stone drew his gun and shot him in the head, killing him instantly. The driver was dead when he hit the pavement, so he didn’t hear the yells and the gunfire as the rest of his companions were wiped out.

Less than ten minutes later, the bodies had been tossed in the now-empty trucks. Some of Stone’s men got into the cabs to drive the vehicles out into the empty West Texas landscape and dispose of them in a ravine that had been located on satellite photos. A few expertly placed charges would collapse the wall of the ravine on the trucks, burying them and their grisly contents forever.

And no one would ever know what had happened on this lonely stretch of West Texas highway.

From several blocks away, Bud focused the lenses of the binoculars on the trucks parked in front of the police station. He grunted as if he had seen what he was looking for and said in low tones, “Check out the one on the left. See that little dish antenna on top?”

He passed the binoculars to Ford, who studied the trucks for a moment and said, “Yeah, I see it. You think that’s where the EMP is coming from?”

“I don’t know if it’s a regular series of EMPs or a continuous jamming signal of some sort, but yeah, that’s why nobody’s phones or computers will work. I’d bet on it, anyway.”

“You are.”

“Are what?”

“Betting on it,” Fargo said as he lowered the glasses. “Betting a lot of lives, in fact.”

Bud swallowed hard. “All right.”

“What’s the best way to disable a gizmo like that, anyway?”

“Well … the sure-fire method would be to blow up the truck.”

“Short of that?”

“It’s bound to have an on-off switch,” Bud said. “Worst comes to worst, I could kill the power to it.”

“And everybody’s phones would start working again?”

“Probably not all of them. Some of them are probably damaged and would need to be repaired. But as many cell phones as there are bound to be around here, some of them should work, yeah.”

The two men were crouched inside a big Dumpster at the side of the grocery store. A few minutes earlier, the two men had taken cover in the Dumpster to avoid being seen by one of the Rey del Sol patrols, and they had stayed there since it had proven to be a viable, if somewhat smelly, observation post for their needs.

Since they had found out what they needed to know, they climbed out and trotted around the back of the grocery store, carrying their rifles. The rest of the group had split up, since nearly thirty people couldn’t move around a town the size of Home without being spotted. General Garaldo had been tied up securely and left at the high school with Cochrum and the blond reporter, who had refused to join the fight. Jimmy and Eloise had stayed there as well to keep an eye on them.

Parker and Alex were waiting in a beauty shop called the Hairateria, which sat a block off Main, facing a side street. Alex and Delgado had deployed everybody else in specific places around town, contingent on the small groups being able to reach those locations without running into any of the patrols. Since they had no way of communicating with each other, they had established a signal that would mean everyone should converge on the police station and be ready to fight. That signal was three evenly spaced shots, followed five seconds later by two more. The invaders would be able to hear those shots, too, and might figure out that they were intended as a signal, but there was nothing that could be done about that.

Parker had broken the lock on the beauty shop’s back door, but the damage wasn’t noticeable. Ford and Bud slipped inside the darkened interior. Parker and Alex lowered the rifles they had trained on the door when it swung open.

“Bud’s pinpointed the truck we’re after,” Ford said. “It’s parked in front of the police station, just like we thought it would be. But if we can fight our way to it, Bud says he can disable whatever’s jamming communications.”

Bud nodded. “Yeah, shouldn’t be too big a problem. Other than staying alive, that is.”

“Yeah, that’s all,” Parker said dryly. He turned to Alex. “We’re going to need a distraction, like the one we came up with when we sprang you from Garaldo and his men.”

“Why are you looking at me?” she asked. “That sounds more like a job for you two spooks.”

Ford shook his head. “No, we’ll be leading the attack on the trucks. You know this town better than the rest of us. Surely there’s something here that’ll get their attention. I don’t think we’ll be lucky enough to find another tanker truck to blow up.”

Alex frowned in thought. After a moment, she said, “There’s a warehouse full of hay on the edge of town. If somebody set fire to it, it would make quite a blaze. It might even blow up. Hay will do that sometimes, when it’s been sitting around for a while and it gets too hot.”

“Sounds like it’s worth a try,” Ford said with a nod. “If nothing else, all the smoke will get them looking away. How long will it take you?”

Alex shrugged. “Fifteen minutes, maybe, to get there and start the fire.”

“All right,” Parker said. “We’ll use that time to get as close to the trucks as we can. When you get the fire going, give the signal for the others to attack the police station. The three of us will wait for the fighting to start, then make a run for the trucks.” He looked at Bud. “Are you up for this?”

The cameraman swallowed hard, but nodded without hesitation. “Yeah. I don’t know how good a fighter I’ll be, but get me in that truck alive and I can handle the tech stuff.”

“We’re good to go, then,” Ford said. “In fifteen minutes.”

Alex looked at him. “Fifteen minutes,” she agreed.

And she knew it might be the longest fifteen minutes of her life.

Jimmy wished there was something he could do to help his friend Eloise. She was pacing back and forth, and he knew she was really worried about Clint. So was he. He hadn’t seen any of the officers except Delgado, and he wished he knew whether they were all right.

General Garaldo was sitting in a chair at one of the library’s study tables. Not only were his hands tied behind his back, but he was tied into the chair as well. His shoulders slumped in defeat.

Eloise suddenly stopped pacing and pointed her rifle at the general. “I ought to kill you right here and now,” she said.

Garaldo lifted his head. He still had enough defiance in him to sneer at her. “You won’t do it,” he said. “You’re too weak, just like the rest of your countrymen. You let your own government do anything it wants to now, and you do nothing but whine and complain! In my country, the government does what those with real power tell it to. Men like me.”

“You’re not telling … anybody what to do,” Jimmy said. “You’re tied up.”

“That’s right,” Eloise said. “And if I want to, there’s not a thing stoppin’ me from blowin’ you away, mister.”

“Nothing except your own weakness,” Garaldo mocked.

Eloise glared at him for a moment, then turned away with an exasperated sigh. Jimmy was glad she hadn’t shot the general. The chief hadn’t said anything about shooting anybody.

Eloise went over to look out the window. Jimmy moved to stand beside her. “It’ll be all right,” he told her. “You just gotta … have faith.”

“I’m trying, Jimmy,” she said as tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m trying, but it’s really hard.”

Behind them, Garaldo caught the blonde’s eye and motioned her over with his head. Wilma hesitated, but after a moment she walked up to him.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Garaldo nodded toward Jimmy and Eloise at the front windows. Keeping his voice low, he said, “The woman is insane, and the man is mentally deficient in other ways. They’re going to kill me,
señorita.”

“I don’t think they will. If they wanted to, they would have done it before now.”

“You know this ridiculous tale about nerve gas and your American President isn’t true, don’t you?”

“Of course, it’s not. The President would never do anything like that.” Wilma frowned. “But you’re a bad man, General. You’re probably here after drugs or something like that, aren’t you?”

Even tied up, Garaldo managed to give an eloquent shrug. “I see no point in denying the obvious. It is true that I work for the Rey del Sol cartel. Our enemies are bringing a shipment of cocaine through here today, and we plan to hijack it. But that’s all, señorita. This talk of nerve gas is loco!”

Wilma crossed her arms and nodded. “I knew it. I knew the President couldn’t do anything bad. He’s so nice. I’ve met him several times, you know.”

“If you could help me get free,” Garaldo said, “I could stop all this killing right now. And you … you could get an exclusive for your network out of it, my dear.”

Excitement leaped into Wilma’s eyes, but only for a second. Then she said, “How stupid do you think I am? Never mind, you must think I’m pretty stupid. I’m not going to trust a Mexican drug lord.”

Cochrum ambled up behind her and grinned. “I was waiting to see whether you’d fall for his pitch, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart,” she snapped. “That’s sexual harassment. You’re a lawyer. You ought to know that.”

He held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it. I was just saying that you did good not to believe this guy. He’s not on our side.”

“I never claimed to be,” Garaldo said. “But I can speak your language, and I don’t mean English. I mean … one million dollars if you turn me loose.”

“You want me to betray my country for a million dollars?” Cochrum demanded.

“I’m sorry. I meant five million.”

“You might as well shut up—” Wilma began.

Cochrum stopped her with a curt gesture. “Don’t pay any attention to her,” he told Garaldo. “Keep talking, General …”