Home Invasion (19 page)

She was right. She recognized the tall, slender, expensively-dressed figure standing next to the helicopter with his longish dark hair blowing in the propwash. As she entered the school parking lot with a squeal of tires, the man turned his head to peer at the patrol car through a pair of sunglasses even darker than the ones Alex wore.

What the hell was that slimy weasel Clayton Cochrum doing landing in Home in a helicopter?

A moment later, Alex told herself she should have known the answer to that question. All became clear as an attractive blond woman climbed down from the chopper and joined Cochrum, followed by a cameraman.

Cochrum was here for a photo op, and he had brought his own tame news crew with him.

That bastard, Alex thought. He’s heard about Pete McNamara dying, and he wants to get some publicity out of it.

Cochrum motioned for the reporter and the cameraman to follow him and strode toward the police car as Alex got out. He wore his usual arrogant smirk as he raised his voice to be heard over the still-turning blades of the helicopter and called, “Chief Bonner! Good morning!”

“There’s nothing good about it,” Alex snapped.

“I suppose you must have heard about Pete McNamara’s death?”

Alex jerked her head in a curt nod. “I have.”

The blond reporter, who managed to look perky and attractive even this early on a Sunday morning, said into her microphone, “And how do you feel about Mr. McNamara passing away, Chief Bonner?” She thrust the mike toward Alex.

Reining in her temper, Alex said, “How do you think I feel? I’m mourning a friend. Pete McNamara was a good man.”

“According to the courts, he was an unstable, gun-wielding vigilante.”

Alex took a step toward the reporter. She couldn’t stop herself.

Smoothly, Cochrum got between them. “This isn’t really a legal matter anymore,” he said. “The courts have ruled, and the case will be disposed of properly in due time. Right now, I don’t think we should intrude on the good people of Home.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Alex asked tightly.

“When I heard about Mr. McNamara’s passing, I knew I had to fly right over here from San Antonio and convey my client’s sympathy to Mr. McNamara’s friends and neighbors. Mr. Navarre bears no personal ill will toward anyone involved in the tragedy that crippled him and killed his good friend.”

Alex wanted to ram those words back down Cochrum’s throat, but she knew if she did, the video would be viral worldwide in less than an hour.

Cochrum went on, “If there’s anything I can do to help, perhaps with the funeral arrangements …”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Alex said. “Put on a big show for the cameras.”

Cochrum shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chief. If you doubt my sincerity, then that’s your problem, not mine.”

“Why don’t you get back in that chopper and go back to San Antonio?” Alex suggested. “We don’t want you here.”

Cochrum shrugged and shook his head. “This is still a free country, Chief.”

“Did the school district give you permission for that thing to land here?” Alex nodded toward the helicopter.

“Well, no, there wasn’t time to obtain permission, and this is really the best place in town to land—”

“Then you’re trespassing,” Alex cut in. “Either get out, or I’ll arrest you.”

Cochrum’s face hardened as he stared at her through the dark sunglasses. “You can’t do that.”

“Try me,” Alex said.

She didn’t know how the standoff would end. In a way, Cochrum would probably relish being arrested. That would get him even more publicity.

The rumble of a truck engine intruded on her thoughts and made her turn her head to look along the highway. A couple of unmarked trucks rolled past, evidently on their way through town. Truck traffic through Home wasn’t an uncommon sight, but the early morning hour and the fact that these vehicles were unmarked struck Alex as odd. She heard their brakes engage and watched curiously as the two trucks slowed to a stop in the middle of the crossroads.

“What in the world?” she muttered as she started toward her car. Her instincts as a law enforcement officer had kicked in, and for the moment she had forgotten about Clayton Cochrum, the reporter, and the cameraman.

“What is it?” Cochrum called from behind her. “Is there some sort of trouble, Chief?”

She ignored him and got in the car. She had left the engine running, so all she had to do was put it in gear and head for the center of town.

She wasn’t the only one who had noticed the trucks’ arrival, she saw as she approached. Jerry Houston was already on hand, pulling up next to the lead truck in his patrol car. He got out and approached the cab, lifting a hand in greeting to the driver. The cab door opened.

At first Alex’s brain couldn’t comprehend what her eyes were seeing. Jerry flew backwards like he was a puppet attached to strings jerked by a puppeteer. He landed across the hood of his car, lying there for a second while bright crimson blood spouted from the bullet holes stitched across his chest. Then he slid off the car into a crumpled heap on the pavement next to the right front wheel.

Alex’s instincts took over. Her gut knew she had just seen one of her officers gunned down, even if her brain couldn’t quite grasp it yet. She stomped the brakes and spun the wheel, sending the police car into a skidding, screeching halt that left it sitting crossways in the street.

She threw the door open and rolled out as the hammering sound of automatic weapons fire blasted apart the early morning tranquility. Slugs pounded into the other side of the car. It was all that saved her from being killed like Jerry.

Her gun was in her hand. She didn’t even remember pulling it from its holster. As the yammering guns fell silent for a moment, she risked a look over the hood and saw dozens of armed men pouring out of the trucks.

Home was being invaded … again.

These men weren’t from the federal government, though. They were civilians, or at least they were dressed like civilians. They moved with military precision, though, as they began spreading out along the streets.

Alex couldn’t reach the radio in the car, but she had a portable clipped to her belt. She grabbed it and keyed the mike.

“Eloise! Jimmy! Whoever’s there! Officer down, officer down! I need help now in the center of town! Now!”

But was she just calling her people in to their deaths? she wondered. The strangers had way more firepower than her little department could muster.

When she released the microphone button, all she heard from the speaker was static. She tried calling the station again but got no response.

Alex dropped the radio and grabbed her cell phone. She flipped it open.

No signal.

That was crazy. All of Home had good cell phone reception.

The explanation hit her brain like a bombshell. The invaders had somehow knocked out all communications in the vicinity. They had to have some sort of machine emitting a powerful electromagnetic pulse that blocked digital signals. All the computers in town had probably gone haywire, too.

This bunch was ready for trouble, no doubt about that.

Alex heard shouting in Spanish. Somebody was giving orders. She risked another look. A man in fatigues and campaign cap had gotten out of one of the trucks. He was the only one in uniform and was obviously in command.

Alex heard a rush of footsteps nearby. She wheeled around and saw that a squad of the invaders had flanked her. She went to the pavement and fired three rounds. The shots missed, but the men ducked back.

She was going to die here. She was sure of it. She would never see Jack again, never get a chance to tell him goodbye. Never get a chance to tell him how much she loved him. She prayed to God that he knew that anyway. Her hand tightened on the gun butt and she swallowed hard as she waited for the killers to charge her again.

“Hold your fire!” a man called in English. “Hold your fire,
por favor.
”

A couple of tense seconds went by. Then the man said, “Señorita, can you hear me? I know you are either Chief Bonner or Officer Carlyle. Please throw out your weapon and surrender.”

Alex hesitated. The idea of surrendering didn’t sit well with her, especially after everything that had happened in the past week.

On the other hand, taking on a small army alone was just another way of committing suicide.

Before making up her mind, she wanted to know something.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked. She had a feeling she was talking to the man in fatigues.

That hunch was confirmed when he replied from the other side of the car, “General Jose Luis Garaldo. This town is now under my command.”

“What gives you that idea?”

A chuckle came from him. “The fact that my men have all the guns,
señorita.
”

And who was to blame for that, Alex asked herself bitterly?

One man … and his current address was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“What is it you want, General?” Alex asked, still stalling for time. She wasn’t sure why she was doing that when she faced odds like these.

“Do not concern yourself with that,” Garaldo snapped. “But I give you my word, those who cooperate will not be harmed.”

“That’s a damned lie,” Alex snapped. “I saw your men shoot down my officer.”

“Ah, you are the chief of police,” Garaldo said. Alex chided herself for giving away even that much information. “You and your officers are the only ones in this town who are still armed,” Garaldo went on. “You must understand that we will take no chances with you. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with our mission.”

“And what’s that?”

“Enough,” Garaldo replied in a harsh, impatienttone. “Throw out your weapon and surrender, Chief Bonner, or you will be ki—”

The leader of the invaders didn’t get to finish his threat. Tires squealed around a corner, and suddenly the street was filled with gun thunder once again.

Alex ducked lower as bullets whipped through the air, whined off the pavement, and thudded into buildings and parked cars. She saw one of her own department’s police cars barreling toward her. J. P. Delgado had his left hand out the window, firing his service revolver, while his right hand suddenly spun the wheel. The patrol car slid to a stop only a few feet from Alex.

“Come on!” Delgado yelled through the open passenger side window.

Alex didn’t have to be invited twice. She didn’t take the time to open the door, either.

She just surged to her feet and dived headfirst through the open window.

She wound up with her face in Delgado’s lap, but under the circumstances neither of them had the time nor inclination to think about how awkward that was. Bullets continued to slam into the car as Delgado hauled the wheel around and tromped on the gas. The rear window starred under the impact of the slugs, then suddenly shattered, spraying glass through the interior of the car.

Alex pulled her legs in and levered herself up into a sitting position. Keeping her head low, she twisted in the seat and fired back through the broken window. A fierce surge of satisfaction went through her as she saw one of the men shooting at them double over and collapse.

“Got one of the bastards!” she said as her gun clicked on empty.

“Yep, but there’s still a bunch more of them,” Delgado said. He cranked the wheel again and sent the car careening around a corner into one of the side streets. For the time being, bullets quit smacking into it.

Alex had a spare magazine clipped to her belt. She shoved it into the automatic and asked, “How’d you happen to show up just in the nick of time? Did my radio call get out before they shut all the comms down?”

Delgado shook his head. “No, I didn’t hear a call. But I did hear the shots. I had a bad feeling about things and held off on the lights and siren until I got close enough to see what was going on.” He laughed humorlessly. “Which I still don’t know. Who are those men, Alex? Is the town really under attack?”

“That’s what it looks like. The guy I was talking to calls himself a general. Jose Luis Garaldo, he said his name was.”

“I know the name,” Delgado said. “He’s a general in the Mexican army, but he’s even more open than his fellow officers about the fact that he really works for the Rey del Sol cartel.”

“Navarre’s bunch.”

“Navarre was the lowest of the low. Garaldo is almost at the top, not much below Enrique Reynosa, the boss of the whole thing.”

Now that he reminded her of it, Alex recalled reading reports for the Border Patrol and the Drug Enforcement Agency about the Rey del Sol cartel, including mentions of its leader. Garaldo’s name was vaguely familiar, too.

“The town’s being taken over by a drug cartel?”

“Sounds like it,” Delgado said. “Were all the men you saw Hispanic?”

“Well … yeah. And they were yelling orders in Spanish.”

“God, I hate being related to those people,” Delgado said fervently. “People hear my name and see my brown skin, and they think I’m like those … those … people is too good a word for them. They’re animals.”

“Nobody who knows you feels that way, J. P.,” Alex said.

They had reached the edge of town. No one seemed to be pursuing them … yet. Alex knew it was just a matter of time before Garaldo sent his men after them, though.

“Now what?” Delgado asked as he slowed the car.

“We need to get to the police department. That’s where all our other weapons are. Maybe the rest of the officers will head for there, too, and we can fort up inside the building. Word of what’s going on here is bound to get out, and maybe we’ll get some help from outside.”

“That’s going to be our only chance,” Delgado agreed. “The problem is that Garaldo will be smart enough to know that he needs to take out the police station as soon as he can.”

The shift change was at eight o’clock, so Eloise Barrigan was getting ready for Jimmy to show up, and then Clint would swing by the station and pick her up so they could go home. Their schedule made it hard for them to attend church on Sunday morning, but they always showed up for the Sunday evening service.

It had been a peaceful night and was turning into a mighty quiet morning. Too quiet, Eloise suddenly thought, like in those old Western movies when the hero starts to worry that the Indians are sneaking up on him. She picked up the microphone on her desk and said, “Clint, you hearin’ me?”

There was no answer.

“Hey, Jerry? J. P.? Anybody out there?”

Alex had tried to talk Eloise into being more formal on the air, but it was hard when she had known all these people for years and considered them to be her friends.

Still getting no response, she picked up the phone and hit the speed-dial button that would connect her to her husband’s cell phone. It took her a second to realize that the phone wasn’t dialing. In fact, there was no dial tone on it at all. The landline was dead.

Well, that was odd, Eloise thought. She opened the drawer where she kept her purse and reached inside to take out her own cell phone.

No service. Stubbornly, Eloise tried to call Clint anyway, but what the display told her was true. The cell phone was as dead as the landline.

“Well, if that doesn’t beat all,” she said as the front door of the station opened. Eloise looked up, figuring it was Clint coming in. Maybe he’d have some explanation for why the radio and all the phones were out.

Instead, the cell phone slipped out of Eloise’s fingers and fell to the floor as she stared in shock at the men with guns who were coming into the station.

Jimmy Clifton didn’t have a driver’s license, but he had the best bike in the whole town and could get anywhere he wanted to in Home without any trouble. This morning he had gotten up and made breakfast for himself because his mom and dad were still asleep. While he was eating his cereal, he thought he heard some odd sounds from somewhere else in town, like somebody hammering nails real fast, but he wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it didn’t have anything to do with him.

Now he was on his way to work, and as always, that thought never failed to make him experience a surge of pride. He knew perfectly well that he was different from most folks and couldn’t do a lot of the things they could do, but he could do some things
they
couldn’t, too. He had won awards for his excellence as a dispatcher. He might get mixed up about some things, but he never got a call wrong.

He recognized trouble when he saw it, too. When he came around the corner on his bike and started pedaling toward the station two blocks away, he spotted armed men entering the building.

That was wrong, really wrong. The men weren’t soldiers, like the ones who had come into town a few days ago and taken everybody’s guns. These men looked more like criminals. And those sounds he had heard earlier … could they have been gunfire?

Jimmy brought the bike to a skidding halt and frowned as he thought about what he had seen. His heart pounded with fear for his friend Eloise.

He didn’t hear any shots from inside the station, though, so maybe she was all right.

Somebody else was going to have to figure this out and tell him what to do. Clint would know, or J.P., or the chief.

That was it. He would go to the chief’s house and tell her what he had just seen.

And then the chief would fix everything. Jimmy was sure of it.

Clint Barrigan was driving past the high school when he saw the helicopter on the parking lot. It distracted him from what he had already seen, several blocks on down the highway in the center of town: some trucks stopped in the middle of the road, and a police car parked sideways across both lanes of Main Street. That had to be trouble. Clint was already worried because he hadn’t been able to raise Eloise on the radio.

Now he hit the brakes as a man in a suit ran out from behind the helicopter, waving his arms as if he were trying to get Clint to stop. Clint did so, and as he did, he recognized that sleazy lawyer Cochrum. What was that weasel doing here in Home? Clint wondered. And did it have something to do with what was going on in the center of town? Lots of people were milling around down there, he noted. Maybe the Feds had come back to raise more hell.

Clint lowered the passenger-side window. Cochrum rested his hands on the sill and stuck his head into the car.

“Thank God you’re here, officer!” the lawyer said. “There was a lot of shooting down the street a few minutes ago, after Chief Bonner went down there.”

Alex!
Clint hadn’t heard an officer-needs-assistance call, but then, he wouldn’t have with the radio out.

“Back away from the car, sir!”

Cochrum ignored the order. “Are we in any danger? Should we evacuate?” He waved a hand toward the helicopter.

“I don’t care. Get the hell out of town if you want. Just get your head out of my car!”

Clint wasn’t going to wait any longer. He stomped the gas just as Cochrum leaped back away from the patrol car. The side of the window barely cleared the lawyer’s head.

Clint had a shotgun clipped under the seat. He reached down and pulled it free as he drove one-handed toward the crossroads at the center of town. He was almost there before somebody opened fire on him. One of the shots blew a front tire on the police car, and suddenly Clint found the world revolving crazily in front of his eyes as the car skidded and then rolled. It went over twice and was upside-down when it slammed into the empty car sitting in the middle of the street.

Badly shaken up but not really hurt, Clint fumbled for the release on his seat belt as he hung there. It came loose and dropped him in an ungainly sprawl on the ceiling of the car. He heard flames crackling somewhere and knew he had to get out before one or both of the gas tanks blew up. Still clutching the shotgun, he crawled through broken glass onto the pavement. He staggered to his feet and started running, instinct making him want to get as far as he could from the burning cars.

Then men with guns loomed up in front of him. Clint raised the shotgun and yelled, “Drop those guns! Get on the ground!”

They laughed at him.

And then they shot him.

But as the high-powered slugs ripped into him, dozens of them shredding his organs, he managed to pull the trigger and send a load of buckshot into one of his killers. The blast blew the man backwards.

That was the last thing Clint saw with his eyes.

But in his mind and in his heart, for an instant he saw his wife, whom he had loved ever since they were both seniors in high school, and then he was gone.

Whoever they were, they were killing cops, Clayton Cochrum thought as he ran toward the helicopter. That reporter, Wilma What’s-her-name, and her cameraman, Bud, both looked terrified by all the shooting they had heard. Obviously not veterans of war zone journalism, Cochrum thought.

He revolved his hand over his head in a signal to the pilot. They were getting the hell out of Dodge, and the sooner the better.

Problem was, the son-of-a-bitch pilot didn’t wait. He must have been scared, too. The rotors began to turn faster, and suddenly the chopper was in the air, and the three former passengers were still on the ground. Propwash pounded down around them. Wilma was screaming something, but Cochrum couldn’t hear her over the roar of the helicopter.

The chopper lifted higher and higher, and its nose swung toward the east. Suddenly, from the corner of his eye Cochrum saw something streak through the air, trailing smoke. It headed straight toward the helicopter….

Which exploded in a huge ball of fire as the surface-to-air missile struck it.

Cochrum stared openmouthed and uncomprehending at the destruction as bits of flaming wreckage began to rain down. He could have been on there, he thought. Mere moments earlier he had been cursing the pilot for leaving him behind.

The realization that he had narrowly escaped death sunk in on him, and so did the need to do something. He grabbed the arms of his two companions and shoved them toward the school.

“Run!” he urged them. “We gotta get out of here!”

“What is it?” the blonde cried. “What’s going on? Who are those people?”

“I don’t know,” Cochrum said, “but I got a bad feeling that they’re gonna be coming after us next.”