Texas Showdown (10 page)

"What about murder?"

"What murder?" Pardee responded, grinning.

The Mercedes pulled up behind the truck at the gate to the base. In the glare of the headlights, they saw a soldier standing on the tailgate of the truck. Pardee slipped his Colt automatic from its holster, told Furst: "Hit the high beams. That man wasn't there when the truck left the house."

Pardee leaned out the passenger window and called out to the man: "Who are you? You! ON THE TRUCK!"

The man turned to face them. Pardee eased down the hammer of his automatic, called out again.

"What're you doing out here, Morgan? Can't stay away from the action, can you?"

"I got bored!" Morgan called back.

Pardee reholstered his pistol, rolled up the window. "That's Carl Morgan, a good soldier. You met him..."

He saw Furst staring at Morgan. The handsome man's face was white. On the steering wheel, his hands were knots of tendons and white knuckles. Pardee whipped out the Colt again, jumped from the Mercedes. He pointed the .45 at Carl Lyons' face.

"Drop the rifle! And get off the truck, Morgan. Or whatever your name is, Mr. Federal Agent."

Squinting into the headlights, Lyons saw the Colt .45 ACP pointed at his chest. The M-16 he held had a round in the chamber. Could he flick up the safety and raise the rifle before Pardee put a .45 slug through his chest? No.

But neither would he surrender to be tortured to death. Furst had identified Lyons, his luck had run out, time to die.

"Drop the rifle, Morgan!" Pardee shouted again, the pistol steady on Lyons' chest. "Sentries! Disarm this man on the truck."

Lyons pushed up the safety. He flexed his knees, tensing his muscles to throw himself backward as the sentries reached for his rifle. He would try to spray Pardee and Furst before the sentries killed him.

A sentry started toward him, his hand reaching out to take the rifle...

"At ease, Pardee!" Furst shouted, leaving the Mercedes. "At ease! Why the hell you pointing that pistol at that man?"

"I thought..." Pardee looked from Lyons to Furst. The pistol pointed at Lyons did not waver. "When you saw him, you looked like you recognized him!"

"At ease! Lower that pistol, Pardee," Furst ordered. "You can't shoot a man simply on suspicion. Get back in the car." Easing down the hammer, Pardee jammed the Auto-Colt into its holster. Not taking his eyes from Lyons, Pardee got inside the Mercedes and slammed the door.

"Thanks, commander," shouted Lyons. "I thought I was going to get shot."

"Don't go joyriding around during a security alert! Captain Pardee has every reason to be jumpy."

* * *

In the Mercedes, Pardee watched the truck lurch over the speed bumps, Lyons clinging to the back. Pardee turned to Furst.

"Your face went white when you saw him. Why?"

"When I saw that man Morgan? I wasn't worried about Morgan. I've got my mind on something else entirely. And I can't shake it."

"What?" Pardee demanded.

The Mercedes went over the speed bumps, Furst snapping a salute to the sentries. Inside the camp, he followed the truck and saw Morgan jump from its bumper and start up the barrack steps.

"What was it, commander? What did you suddenly think of like that?"

"Did Monroe's doctor talk to you? That Dr. Nathan character asked me if Mrs. Monroe had been seen outside the house tonight. Or near the garage."

"Her? Why would he... Oh, yeah. I joked about someone playing with gasoline."

"It could have been her. It could have been her."

"Mrs. Monroe? Why would she pull a trick like..."

"Because that woman is sick. She's twisted in the head. Tonight she was so doped she couldn't stand straight. It could have been an accident, she could have done it for a thrill..."

"That doesn't explain the dead man. And when the men reported to me, they didn't mention anything about the woman being anywhere near there."

Furst stopped the car in front of the barracks where Pardee and the other officers had private rooms. Furst, as Force Commander, rated a prefab cottage with an office as well.

"Did they say how the man died? A knife? Wire or what?"

"Before I got out there, the garage exploded. They didn't..."

"Tomorrow, we question the man that lived. We might not have a spy. It might be that crazy Availa Monroe."

* * *

Still wearing his uniform and boots, Lyons sprawled on his bunk, his Colt Python near his hand. The M-16 lay on the floor, cocked and locked. He stared into the dark, every minute an eternity, waiting for Pardee to return with a group of soldiers.

He had gambled and lost. Pardee spotted him on the truck. And in the bright-as-day glare of the headlights, Furst surely recognized him as the LAPD detective who had sent the failed bank robber to prison.

But then why was he still free? Why hadn't they taken him on the spot? Did they know he would have gone down shooting rather than face torture and certain death later?

Were they watching the barrack now, waiting to grab him at an off-guard moment?

Lyons relived the scene outside the gate over and over again. A hundred yards from the gate, he had jumped on the troop truck. He was sure neither the driver nor the sentries had seen him. And the Mercedes had been on the far side of a hill. Furst and Pardee could not have seen him dash from the roadside to the bumper.

Thirty seconds after the truck stopped at the camp gate, the headlights of the Mercedes had appeared behind him. Pardee's first reaction was suspicion. Leaning out the car window, pistol in hand, he'd demanded that Lyons identify himself. But when Pardee saw it was "Morgan," Pardee joked with him, then slid back into the Mercedes and started to roll up the window.

A moment later, Pardee had jumped from the car, aiming his Colt at Lyons' chest, calling him a federal agent.

What had Furst said? One moment, Pardee joked with Lyons. The next, Pardee threatened to kill him.

The questions became a puzzle without a solution. For another hour, he replayed the scene in his mind over and over again, considering Pardee's actions and Furst's words, then straining to remember every detail of his experiences with Furst years before, in Los. Angeles. He knew Furst's biography: military schools as a child and teenager; honors from an exclusive Eastern university; officer training in the army, followed by commendations and decorations in Vietnam. But then Furst had fallen apart: a bad marriage to a debutante, a boring corporate career; squandering family money to invest in a movie starring himself; then the fast lane life with the beautiful people of Beverly Hills, including the mandatory Porsche and cocaine habit, all financed with credit and family money; finally organizing a team of drug-ruined veterans to operate internationally, but ending with a bungled bank robbery in Culver City.

Lyons laughed out loud. How could he make sense of the man's actions? Nothing Furst did made sense. Born to a good family, Furst threw it away to be a jet-set phony. Leaving prison as an ex-con with only his good looks and Vietnam record to recommend him, he became the commander of a crazy billionaire's private army.

A jeep! Voices! Lyons rolled from the bunk, grabbing the M-16. Holding the gun tight against his leg, he crept toward the rear of the barrack.

He heard the jeep accelerate away, then Blancanales' voice call out: "Thanks for the ride." Lyons reversed direction and rushed — silently — for the front entry. He stopped Blancanales and Gadgets on the front steps, without himself stepping past the doorway.

"Don't come in," he hissed.

"What?"

"Check the street for surveillance. Look around, I have to know if..."

"We already looked," Blancanales whispered. "We thought we might have people waiting for us."

"What for?"

Gadgets laughed quietly. "You don't know what we've been doing."

Lyons sighed at that. "Wait till I brief you on my adventures."

"We know all about it," Blancanales told him.

"Not the half of it you don't."

They dodged between the barracks to get to the back of a warehouse. The three of them squatted in a shadow while they exchanged stories. Lyons told them of the conference he had overheard, then the confrontation at the camp's gate. Blancanales and Gadgets told of bugging the mansion. Gadgets told them of the new assignment Furst gave him.

"Busy night," Lyons commented.

"Things are starting to pop," Gadgets added.

"Your trip to El Paso," Blancanales said, "will give us a chance to call in reinforcements."

"No chance," Lyons told him. "Mack — sorry, John Phoenix — is in the Middle East."

"Those guys in Phoenix Force
might
be available," Gadgets added. "But I don't think we need them. It's the three of us against only a hundred and fifty mercenaries... We got them outnumbered!"

"I was thinking of Grimaldi," Blancanales told them. "All these helicopters around..."

"Yeah!" Gadgets slapped his hands together. "But we gotta come up with a plan that uses him. Maybe..."

"How can we come up with a plan," Blancanales said, "when we don't even know what's happening here? We need more information first."

"Don't you two understand what I told you?" Lyons demanded of his friends, incredulous at their scheming. "Furst spotted me. No doubt about it. He's running some kind of scam on me. Maybe he's letting me stay free so he can watch you two. See if you're Feds."

"Makes sense," Blancanales agreed.

"Then why is he sending me to El Paso?" Gadgets insisted.

"That was before he spotted me. Maybe he'll cancel your trip. Maybe send someone else with a shopping list."

"Yeah, could be," Gadgets agreed. "So what do you want to do?"

Lyons grinned. "In the morning — which is two and a half hours from now — I'm waking up with a bad hangover. Too much booze. And the both of you and me are going to have a bad falling out..."

* * *

The next morning, Commander Furst made a call. He had the only direct telephone link from the base to the outside. Because there were no lines to this mountain base, a microwave system bridged the fifty mile gap to the nearest overland telephone lines. After he dialed the Los Angeles number, Furst gave his name to a 24-hour answering service, then spoke directly to his informant, the owner-president of a computer service company. The businessman said:

"My man Furst. Long time no talk. Is this a business or pleasure call?"

"Information."

"Business in other words. What is it you need to know?"

"Remember Detective Carl Lyons?"

The man laughed. "Bet
you
haven't forgotten."

"Find out if he's still in L.A., with the LAPD or what. If he isn't, find out where he is."

"Pay back time. Pay first, a thousand dollars."

Shots popped somewhere in the camp. Then came a burst of auto-weapon fire. Furst jumped from his seat, still holding the receiver. The telephone fell from his desk.

"...what's the noise? Someone shooting?" asked the distant voice.

"I'll wire you the money today. Call you later."

Slamming down the phone, Furst grabbed his rifle from the corner and rushed out. A soldier sprinted across the asphalt to fly up the steps in one stride.

"Who's shooting?" Furst demanded.

"Morgan! He's gone berserk!"

Wrestling the M-16 from Lyons' hands, Blancanales swung the plastic-and-steel rifle like a baseball bat. Lyons stepped back, letting the rifle stock slice past him, then jumped forward with a kick-and-punch combination. The kick went into Blancanales' ribs as he back-swung the rifle, which smashed Lyons in the arm and shoulder, and knocked him sideways onto a bunk.

Doubled over with pain from the kick, Blancanales could not press his attack. Lyons bounced back and drove another kick at Blancanales. He blocked it with the rifle, the kick bending the stock where it met the receiver. Gasping from the pain in his ankle, Lyons stumbled. He caught Blancanales' uniform, slamming at his friend's face with one fist and clutching him for support with the other hand.

Blancanales spun, throwing Lyons off him. Lyons sprawled on the floor, scrambled to get to his feet as Blancanales swung the bent rifle overhead and brought it down at Lyons' head. Lyons blocked the rifle with a double-arm X block. The plastic stock flew free, leaving Blancanales with the barrel and receiver assembly only. He swung the shortened rifle over his head again, and brought it savagely down.

Lyons rolled to the side so that the rifle hammered down onto the floor. It bent once more. Lurching forward, his gut hurting from the kick, Blancanales slammed the rifle down a third time. Lyons rolled safe again, but then caught the battered weapon before Blancanales could upswing. Still on the floor, Lyons hooked a foot behind Blancanales' knees and dropped him. The bent and broken rifle now in his hands, Lyons started to rise.

"What is your problem, Mr. Morgan?" Furst asked, standing over him, pointing a Colt automatic at Lyons' face.

"Kill that son of a bitch!" Blancanales roared. He held his ribs as he struggled to breathe.

"I thought you two were friends," said Furst.

Blancanales place-kicked Lyons' ribs. A soldier behind Furst rushed forward and shoved Blancanales away. Lyons groaned, choking, his arms knotted over his stomach, his knees touching his forehead. Blancanales laughed. "How's it feel? Feel good? Here comes the night!"

Lunging forward, shoving the soldier aside, Blancanales aimed a second kick for Lyons' head. Lyons rolled, taking the kick in his shoulder. The impact threw him over. Furst pointed the pistol at Blancanales' head.

"At ease, Marchardo. Take a break or I'll kill you. Soldiers!" Furst motioned to the curious soldiers crowding into the barrack. "Restrain that man. Put this other one on a bunk. Someone go for the medic."

Several men pushed Blancanales back. Some of them slapped Marchardo on the back, congratulating him on a good fight. They laughed, shoving Blancanales back when he tried to get at Lyons again. Finally Blancanales sat on a bunk, and laughed with his guards.

Two soldiers bent down to Lyons. He shrugged their hands away and rolled onto one knee. Then he stood painfully, holding his ribs, staggered to a bunk and collapsed.

Furst surveyed the damage. The M-16, incredibly, was a twisted piece of junk. Bunks lay overturned. A line of small-caliber holes stitched the enameled sheet metal of the ceiling. Two large-caliber holes deformed a wall. Trash and bottles from the previous day's and night's victory celebration littered the floor.

"What started this?" Furst asked.

Gadgets pressed through the crowd. He bled from his mouth and a bruise discolored the side of his face. "Morgan drank too much last night. He woke up drunk and hung-over, started carrying on about his wife. And then it was the politicians betraying us in Nam."

"How'd you and Marchardo get involved?"

"Marchardo told him to shut up. Morgan pulled his Magnum out, tried to pistol-whip Marchardo, I grabbed the pistol — it all went from there. Morgan acted crazy."

The camp medic arrived. "Who's hurt?"

Furst pointed at Morgan. "Give that man a twelve-hour sedative. Maybe the other one as well."

"Hey, if you're passing out pills," Gadgets joked, "me too."

"You're taking a ride to town, remember?" Furst told him in a low voice, turning away from the crowd. "I need that equipment. Tonight."

* * *

In a Kingston bar, Bob Paxton and Lieutenant Navarro waited for a Mexican. Another man had told them the Mexican might have information for them. They could do with some information. In two days and nights of crisscrossing Jamaica, passing out money and their hotel phone numbers, they had learned only that the three Americans they followed had left Jamaica in a private plane to Texas.

A hundred dollars had bought the memory of a bartender. Paxton had shown the bartender a photo of the Latin American federal agent, and the bartender remembered the Latin American meeting with a muscled scar-faced American.

Twenty dollars had prompted a doorman to remember a scar-faced man with a thick neck and strong shoulders stopping at a hotel entrance to take the three federal agents away in a rented car.

Three hundred dollars paid for three car rental agency employees to search their records and their memories. They recalled the man with the scars on his face. The records indicated that the agency had sent a driver out to an airfield to bring back a car.

At the airport, a gas-pump attendant remembered one word. A hundred-dollar bill bought that one word, "Texas." He also remembered the plane's tanks taking eighty-five gallons of fuel more than factory specifications.

A police detective came to Paxton's hotel room.

For a thousand dollars, he furnished a folder of photos of the scarred man, and his name: Pardee. Craig Pardee had visited Jamaica several times, the most recent time for two weeks. He traveled with a young blond singer. But his business was hiring mercenaries.

This information conflicted with Paxton's reasoning: if the three men were federal agents, why did they leave with Pardee as mercenaries? The United States government did not employ mercenaries to enforce its drug policies. But then, perhaps the contact with Pardee was part of their cover. Or perhaps the Drug Enforcement Agency wanted to distance itself from the extermination of the drug gangs by using mercenaries. Or perhaps Paxton had been wrong in all his guesses.

The detective had also told Paxton of a group of Mexican drug lords fleeing Mexico. Panicked, paranoid, and wealthy, they hid in a villa outside Kingston. They were guarded by gunmen twenty-four hours a day. One of the gunmen told of an airborne strike by Americans on a remote smuggling base and airfield. There had been no attempts to arrest the gang's personnel, only a slaughter. It was this Mexican that Paxton wanted to interview. For another thousand dollars, the detective told Paxton he would pass on an invitation.

Now Paxton and Lieutenant Navarro waited in the quiet bar, watching tourists wander in from the boulevard. A sunburned brunette dropped coins in a jukebox, selected a reggae record sung in incomprehensible Jamaican patois.

"Is that English?" Navarro asked Paxton in Spanish.

Paxton shook his head, glanced to the door. Two Latins stood there, scanning the interior. One man, with gray hair and a gray mustache, wore a blazing white tropical suit. The other, square shouldered and weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds, kept his right hand under his poorly cut sports coat. Paxton raised a hand to get their attention.

The Mexicans came to their table. The gray-haired man extended his hand to Paxton and Navarro. The heavy man stayed back, his right hand holding his left lapel.

"
Buenos dias
, gentlemen," the gray-haired man said. "Would you think me terribly impolite if I did not give you my name?"

"No problem, sir," Paxton answered, shaking his hand.

"First, who are you? Are you police?"

Paxton smiled, shook his head, no.

"But you ask many questions. Why?"

"Do you know of the annihilation of the American Mafia families?" Paxton asked the Mexican. The gray-haired man was clearly startled at the question. He nodded. Paxton continued. "I have sources who have kept me informed of the war against the families, the gangs, and syndicates. None of my sources could identify the vigilantes actually killing the gangs, but they did identify the federal official who was apparently in some way in charge. I had his photo in my files. Last week, we spotted this man in our country..."

"What country is that?"

Paxton smiled. He nodded to Lieutenant Navarro. "His country. The country where I live. In South America. We spotted this federal official with three agents. The official stopped at the United States Embassy, then left the country in a United States Air Force jet. But the three agents stayed.

"The agents assumed the roles of soldiers guarding two high-level drug traffickers. They left our country that night. We followed them north to Colombia, then the Caribbean, then to Kingston.

"But here, we lost them. However, we have learned two details. One is that they left with a man who the Jamaicans say is a mercenary recruiter. The other is that the agents flew to Texas with the recruiter.

"Then we learned that your camp and airfield had been attacked. We thought it might be useful to us to talk to you. Perhaps we can exchange information."

The Mexican leader stroked his mustache, studied Paxton for a few seconds. "We were attacked by soldiers two nights ago. They killed everyone who could not escape. We thought it was a raid by the Mexican army. But in my opinion it was too professional and efficient. And they spoke English."

"Could any of the men who escaped identify the Americans?" Paxton asked.

"No."

"One more question. How far from the U.S. border was your base?"

"Two hundred and fifty kilometers. That is the nearest point. It is approximately four hundred kilometers to El Paso. And now, no more questions. Thank you for your information. It will be of no help to us, but we know what happened at least. Good day."

The gray-haired Mexican shook their hands and promptly left the bar. His bodyguard followed him, watching Paxton and Navarro and the other patrons as he did so. Paxton laughed.

"Mexican gangsters are such a joke. They all look like politicians. And sometimes they are."

"Why did you not question them of the location of their base?" Navarro asked.

"But I did. And they told me." Paxton dropped money on the table and stood up. "Now we go to Chihuahua."

* * *

Gadgets glanced out the front window of the electronics wholesaler's shop. His driver waited in the car, still watching the shop's door. Hurrying through the shelves and racks of parts and equipment, Gadgets rushed out of the employees' entrance at the back. Three doors down the alley, he turned in through overflowing garbage cans and stacked produce crates of a Chinese restaurant.

Grinning to the cooks and waiters as he dashed through the kitchen, Gadgets stepped into the dining room. He saw a pay phone near the cash register. He paced past the tables of businessmen and housewives eating lunch. He dropped a dime in the phone. Peering through the bamboo slats screening the restaurant from the mall's parking lot, he saw his driver still waiting in the car.

He punched the phone's buttons. The operator came on the line.

"What is your billing number?"

"Don't have my charge card with me. Let me place this call collect, to a Miss Rose or anyone else who answers..."

* * *

Bent under the weight of the rocks in his backpack, Lyons marched up the trail. Sweat soaked his fatigues, and poured from his face to drip into the red dust. He turned and looked downhill. Payne — the soldier who had spotted for him on the night of the drug-base assault — trudged a hundred yards behind. Lyons rested for a moment, the afternoon wind cooling his face and fatigues. He scanned the vista below the mountains: the base and airfield, the lengthening shadows of the hills spreading across the desert, the vast horizontal planes of clouds made luminous by the sinking sun.

"Hey, Morgan! You wait!" Payne called to him.

"We're almost at the top," Lyons shouted.

"Take a break, man! I'm hurting."

Lyons found a shelf of rock where he could sit without taking off his pack or bending his legs. Awkward because of the handcuffs he wore, he loosened his packstraps. He watched tiny birds flit from rock to rock. One bird shot past, banking like a jet fighter, its belly a flash of impossible blue against the pink and red clouds of the western horizon.

Miles away, he saw a truck tow a Huey from an airfield hangar. The field crew in their safety overalls were minuscule specks of phosphorescent orange.

"Hey, Morgan! Who's on punishment march here?" Payne joked as he approached, breathing hard from the ascent of the steep trail.

"I dunno. I'm having a good time."

"Jesus. They give you some pills, then they send you out to prance around in the hills. Think
I'll
shoot up the barracks next." Payne sat on a rock and dug into his day pack.

"Look down there." Lyons pointed with his cuffed hands. "Looks like they're taking the helicopters out tonight."

"Oh, yeah. Cap'n Pardee's taking a platoon down to relieve the guys guarding that airfield down in Mexico."

"Anything going on in Mexico?"

"No one tells us anything — here!" Payne held up a beer. "Make a deal with you, Morgan. We cut off this punishment march right here, we forget making it to the top, and I'll issue half of this bottle to you."

"Might as well," Lyons shrugged. "Half of something's better than nothing."

* * *

"So Lyons is working for the Feds now?"

"That's the story," the distant voice confirmed.

"Some big secret deal. You ever hear about that shoot-out on Catalina Island? Papers said some bikers freaked out?"

"Haven't had the chance to read the newspapers."

Furst told his informant. "It wasn't like the papers said. My friends in blue told me it was a major terrorist event. They took about a hundred body bags to the cooler downtown. The night the bikers got closed down, some old friend of Lyons had a victory party. And guess who was the guest of honor?"

"Thanks a lot."

"Anytime..."

Furst hung up the telephone, picked up the camp's com-phone. He punched the code for the sentry station at the camp gate: "This is Commander Furst. When Morgan comes in, put leg irons on him. Bring him to my office."