Home Invasion (24 page)

Alex wasn’t sure what worried her the most: the dangerous mission she was on, the possibility that the deadliest nerve gas on the planet might fall into the hands of a madman … or the fact that in a few minutes her son, her only child, would be in the middle of a fight to the death. There was no way she could have talked Jack and Rowdy out of taking part in the battle with Garaldo’s men. At least they had gone with J. P. Delgado, and Alex knew he would do his best to look out for them.

In the meantime, she had a job to do, and she couldn’t afford to waste any time. She had already had to hide a couple of times to avoid the cartel patrols, and that had delayed her. But now she was at the rear door of the warehouse where Phil Pearson stored the hay he sold at his feed store. He kept a truckload at the store, but the rest of his stock was here.

“Sorry, Phil,” Alex muttered under her breath as she used the barrel of her rifle to wrench the lock off the door. The hasp came free with a screech of nails.

She stepped into the shadowy, cavernous warehouse. The piled-up bales of hay loomed on both sides of a narrow aisle like twin mountains. A forklift was parked in the aisle. The air was thick with the smell of hay and floating dust motes. That dust would help the fire burn with a fierceness that was akin to an explosion.

Alex had a cigarette lighter in the pocket of her jeans. She didn’t smoke, but like a lot of law enforcement personnel, she carried a lighter with her because it often came in handy. That was certainly the case now. She trotted to the far end of the aisle and flicked the flame into life. Dashing back and forth between the two piles of hay, she set the stuff on fire in several different places as she hurried toward the back door. Behind her, the flames began to crackle as the blaze caught hold.

Alex was running by the time she reached the door and burst outside, and it was a good thing because the hay went up with a gigantic
whoosh!
behind her. A wind sprang up in her face as oxygen rushed into the warehouse to fuel the conflagration, but that wasn’t enough to keep the heat from battering her back. Alex kept moving until she was a good hundred yards from the building.

She stopped and turned to look at the thick cloud of gray smoke billowing up from the fire. It would be visible all over town … hell, from all over the area, she thought. And some of Garaldo’s men would have to come check it out. They were probably pretty jumpy by now with their commanding officer missing.

Grim-faced, Alex set her rifle on single fire, pointed it toward the sky, and pulled the trigger three times, then waited and fired twice more.

No turning back now, she thought. The signal had been given.

Let the battle for Home begin.

“I can’t stand it no more,” Rye Callahan said. He started to climb out of the gully.

Earl caught hold of his arm and stopped him. “Wait a minute,” the little scientist said. “Ford and Parker told us to wait here.”

“Yeah, well, we been waitin’ for a couple of hours now, and there’s been all sorts of shootin’ in town. I reckon something could’ve happened to those boys, and it’s up to us now to put a stop to whatever hell-raisin’ is going on here.”

“I don’t know,” Earl said dubiously. “They told us to wait—”

“Yeah, you said that,” Callahan cut in. “You can squat out here if you want to, son, but I’m gonna get right in the middle of that ruckus.” The rancher nodded toward the town and then abruptly exclaimed, “What the hell?”

Earl looked and saw a column of smoke rising from something on the edge of town. Shots began to ring out again, more of them than ever now. He sensed that whatever was happening in Home, it was starting to reach its climax.

Callahan scrambled out of the gully and took off toward town, carrying the rifle at a slant across his chest. Earl hesitated for a moment as he pondered his choices. Plunge right into the middle of that violent chaos, he thought, or stay here by himself and maybe risk being alone when the bad guys came looking for him, as they inevitably would?

“Damn it,” he muttered. That was no choice at all. How come life didn’t offer a “none of the above” option?

But it didn’t, so he climbed out of the gully and trotted after Callahan, his short legs moving fast as he tried to catch up to the rancher.

With the rotors beating the air, the helicopter flew toward Home. General Weldon Stone opened the steel case that sat at his feet and looked at the hardened plastic canister nestled within it. The canister had a simple nozzle on it that could be attached to a hose. Stone had such a hose. All he had to do was attach it to the canister, run the other end out of the helicopter, fly over Home, and turn the handle on the canister’s valve. The gas would do the rest. It was possible that some of the people in town might survive, but the general and his men could dispose of them a short time later, after the gas had become inert.

It should have bothered him, the idea of killing fellow Americans. He had been a career military man, after all. He had devoted his life to serving his country. But over the years he had come to realize that those on the political left were right … sometimes the few had to suffer for the good of the many. Sometimes the many had to suffer for the good of even more. He had seen how the poor and those of color had flocked to the military because civilian life held nothing for them but injustice. He had seen how the rich and powerful—most of them Jews—always got richer and more powerful, and the unfairness of it ate at him. The politicians never seemed to do anything about it, even the ones who had once shown promise, like the previous president.

Then a special politician, a different politician, had come along, and General Stone had recognized at last a kindred spirit, although the man had no service experience and generally held the military in disdain, like most of his ilk. But he had a dream of transforming the country, of spreading the wealth and making the United States a kinder, gentler nation.

And when General Stone looked in the President’s eyes, he knew the son of a bitch was willing to kill anybody he had to in order to make that dream of tolerance and equity come true. The President, to Stone’s way of thinking, was the perfect blend of ideals and utter ruthlessness.

Kill for good. Murder for equality. Wipe out a whole town if you had to in order to be sure nobody found out the truth.

It was all collateral damage, and General Stone was enough of a pragmatist to know that such things were inevitable if true change was to come about.

“General!”

Stone looked up from the canister and all the dreams it held. “What is it, Lieutenant?” he asked his aide.

“There’s a big cloud of smoke up ahead. It looks like it’s coming from the direction of the town.”

Stone stood up, bracing himself against the side of the helicopter, and looked past the pilot and co-pilot. He saw the column of smoke rising in the distance.

“What do you think it is, sir?” the lieutenant asked.

“I don’t know, son,” Stone replied, “and in a few minutes, whatever it is won’t matter.”

Jack, Rowdy, and J. P. Delgado crouched behind a parked car on Main Street, trading shots with a squad of Rey del Sol killers. Jack was more scared than he had ever been in his life, but a certain calmness had descended on him when the invaders opened fire on him and his companions and forced them to take cover. He knew he might die at any second, but he also knew that he was fighting for a good cause, for the very survival of his hometown. For his mom and his friends and for everybody who lived here, even the assholes. They didn’t deserve to have a bunch of drug-running, power-hungry thugs come waltzing in and take over, slaughtering people right and left. It wasn’t right.

And if Jack had to die to put a stop to it, well, he supposed he could be at peace with that.

But he was still scared, and he tried to channel that fright into making every shot count.

Up and down Main Street, similar skirmishes were going on as the resistance forces converged on the police station. A few minutes earlier, what looked like most of the invading force had gathered and started toward the smoke coming from the burning warehouse. Out in the open like that, they had made good targets for the citizens of Home who opened fire on them from alleys and rooftops. The resistance was still heavily outnumbered, though, and the invaders seemed to be intent on wiping them out. The wave of Rey del Sol killers was slowly sweeping up the street, killing the defenders as they came to them. Jack had seen half a dozen townspeople die already, riddled with bullets.

The same fate awaited him, probably within minutes. The invaders were closing in.

Rowdy let out an excited whoop. “Got another one!” he said.

“Keep your head down, kid,” Delgado warned. The cop fired another round. They all had the rifles on single fire now, since their ammunition was starting to run low.

One of the invaders tried to dash from one parked car to another. Jack was waiting for him and drilled him through the body. The man tumbled to the ground and flopped around like a fish out of water as he died.

That ought to bother me, Jack thought, but it doesn’t. They came in here ready to murder anybody who stood up to them. They were getting a lot hotter welcome than they had expected. Maybe later, the human lives he had taken would haunt him.

But he wasn’t going to have to worry about that, he told himself, because there was no way he was going to live through this.

Rowdy suddenly frowned and asked, “Hey, am I goin’ nuts, or do I hear a helicopter?”

As the fighting spread down Main Street, Ford, Parker, and Bud crouched behind the Dumpster they had used as an observation post earlier. Some of the invaders were still clustered around the two trucks parked in front of the police station, but most of them had hurried off down the street to check on that smoke and stayed to fight the resistance forces.

“We’re not gonna get a better chance than this,” Ford said. “I say we go.”

Parker nodded. “So do I. Ready, Bud?”

“Yeah, let’s do this,” the cameraman said, his voice shaking a little despite his unhesitating answer.

The three men burst out from cover and headed toward the trucks at a dead run. They wanted to cover as much ground as possible before the invaders saw them coming.

That lasted only a couple of seconds, but it was enough for them to close the gap to about fifty yards. Then several of the enemy whirled around and started to raise their guns.

Ford and Parker were in front. They opened fire, cutting down the invaders before the men could pull their triggers. The shots drew more attention, though.

“Split up!” Parker yelled. “Bud, go with Fargo!”

The two agents veered apart. Their rifles were still chattering death. From the corner of his eye, Ford saw Parker suddenly stumble. Parker didn’t go down, though. He stayed on his feet and kept firing, mowing down several more of the invaders before he finally lost his balance and tumbled to the ground.

Ford bit back an oath. He couldn’t worry about his friend now. He and Bud had almost reached their destination. One of the invaders appeared at the rear door of the truck where the jamming equipment was located. Ford’s rifle blasted at the same time as flame spewed from the muzzle of the invader’s weapon. Bullets chewed at Ford’s left leg like the teeth of a rabid animal. It collapsed under him.

The guy in the truck was doubled over, though, blood spurting between his fingers as he pressed his hands to his midsection. He toppled out of the vehicle and thudded to the street.

“Go!” Ford shouted to Bud from the ground. “Get in there and destroy that equipment!”

Bud was pale and terrified looking, but he jumped over the corpse and started climbing into the truck. Ford rolled over on his belly and lifted his rifle, hoping to be able to cover Parker, who lay unmoving on the asphalt now. Ford loosed several shots at a group of thugs who started toward the fallen agent.

Footsteps slapped on the pavement behind him. Ford glanced around, convinced he was about to be shot to pieces.

Instead, he saw Earl Trussell and Rye Callahan firing their rifles as they flanked him. Earl dropped to a knee beside him and shouted over the racket of gunfire, “Are you all right, you big gorilla?”

“Better now,” Ford yelled back. There was no time for explanations, so he added, “We gotta keep those bastards outta this truck!”

“They’ll have to come through us,” Callahan grated. He sprayed lead up the street at the invaders.

Earl suddenly looked up. “What th—Is that a
helicopter
I hear?”

Ford heard the distinctive eggbeater sound and knew Earl was right. A chopper was coming toward Home.

Had help somehow gotten here already?

“Damn it, no!”

The woman’s angry shout made Jimmy and Eloise turned swiftly from the library window. They were shocked to see the blond reporter struggling with Clayton Cochrum. The lawyer had a pair of scissors he must have gotten from the librarian’s desk.

Worse that that, one of General Garaldo’s arms was free, and he was struggling to get the other ropes off himself.

“You son of a bitch!” Wilma yelled at Cochrum. “I didn’t think you’d really do it!”

She was grappling with him and had hold of his arms, but he suddenly pulled loose from her and struck her with a vicious backhanded blow that sent her sprawling back over one of the library tables.

That brought her within reach of Garaldo, who abandoned his efforts to free himself and lunged toward her instead, reaching out as much as he could while still tied in the chair. He grabbed her arm and jerked her into his lap. Wilma was too stunned by the blow Cochrum had landed to fight back until it was too late. Garaldo looped his arm around her neck and held her in front of him like a human shield.

Eloise had started to lift her rifle, but she stopped when she saw she couldn’t get a clear shot at the general. “Drop your guns!” Garaldo shouted. “Drop your guns and free me, or I snap her neck!”

“The hell I will!” Eloise yelled back at him. “Let that girl go!”

Garaldo smirked. “You will not shoot her, any more than you shot me when you had your chance.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Eloise warned. “All she and her kind ever do is tell lies about the American people.”

“All right, go ahead,” Garaldo taunted. “Those weapons will shoot right through her into me. Kill us both.”

Cochrum began circling, getting to the side where Eloise couldn’t cover both him and Garaldo.

“Watch him, Jimmy,” Eloise said.

“I don’t want to … shoot anybody,” Jimmy said.

“Neither do I, honey, but we may have to.”

“Look, just let the general go,” Cochrum urged. “Nobody else has to die here.”

“You weasel,” Eloise practically spat. “What’d you do, sell out to him?”

Garaldo laughed. “The counselor has been working for Rey del Sol all along. Who do you think paid him to represent Emilio Navarre?”

“Hey, those fees were paid by an anonymous donor interested injustice,” Cochrum protested.

Another harsh laugh came from Garaldo. “That was cartel money, and you know it. Now, take the gun away from that halfwit and let’s get out of here.”

“You shouldn’t call people names,” Jimmy scolded.

Cochrum held out a hand. “Gimme the gun, kid. You know you don’t want to hurt anybody. I’ll bet your parents always taught you to stay away from guns.”

“Well … they said I might hurt myself or somebody else.”

‘Jimmy!” Eloise said. “Don’t listen to him.”

“Take it easy, Jimmy,” Cochrum said. “Nobody’s gonna get hurt—”

He was close enough to lunge forward, grab the barrel of Jimmy’s rifle, and shove it toward the ceiling. Eloise spun toward them, but she couldn’t fire because Jimmy was between her and Cochrum.

The lawyer didn’t have to worry about that. He tore the rifle out of Jimmy’s hands, flipped it around, and pulled the trigger.

The bullets punched into Jimmy’s thick-bodied figure and spun him out of the way. Eloise screamed and fired, but she was too late. Slugs pounded her off her feet. She dropped the rifle as she went down.

One of her bullets had found its mark, though. Cochrum staggered a little as he lowered the rifle he had taken away from Jimmy. Blood stained his white shirt under the expensive suit coat.

“Cochrum!” Garaldo said. “Cut me loose!”

Cochrum dropped the rifle and picked up the scissors again. He stumbled over to the general. Wilma watched him with wide, terrified eyes.

“Five million bucks, right, General?” Cochrum asked as he used the scissors to saw through the last of the bonds holding Garaldo in the chair.

“Of course. That was our arrangement.” Garaldo got to his feet, holding the blonde with his left arm now as he held out his right hand. “Give me the scissors.”

Cochrum handed them over and asked, “What do you need them for?”

“This,” Garaldo said, and plunged the sharp tips into Cochrum’s neck. With a savage twist and jerk, he ripped the lawyer’s throat out. Wilma screamed as blood flew everywhere, spurting from severed arteries.

Gagging, Cochrum clapped his hands to his ravaged throat, but of course he couldn’t do any good. He fell to his knees, then pitched forward onto his face. A crimson puddle began to spread around his head.

Wilma managed to gasp, “Wh-what are you going to do with me?”

Garaldo grinned at her. “Why, you’re coming with me,
señorita.
Imagine what a scoop you’re going to have! You’re about to witness the balance of power in the world shifting….”

Bud stuck his head out the back of the truck. “I got it!” he yelled to Ford. “The jamming signal’s down! And there’s a radio in here, so I started it broadcasting a mayday loop!”

“Good work, kid,” Ford said. His leg had hurt like blazes at first, but he couldn’t even feel it now. And he was getting cold, which wasn’t a good sign. He figured he was bleeding out.

But somewhere, somebody would pick up that emergency signal, and the cavalry would come galloping in, just like in the old movies. Ford glanced up. Smoke from the burning warehouse clogged the sky above Home now, and he couldn’t see the approaching helicopter. He could hear it, though, and he figured everybody else in town could, too. The shooting had stopped. A feeling of tense expectancy hung in the air along with the smoke.

Ford grasped Earl’s arm. “You make sure the truth gets out, you hear?” he said. “Don’t let the … sons of bitches get away with this.”

Earl nodded. “Yeah, sure, but you can tell the story, too. You and Parker both. People are gonna be a lot more likely to believe a couple of upright government agents than a lowlife scientist like me.”

“Forget it,” Ford said. “This is … your job now … kid.”

Yeah, it was cold, cold and dark, and Ford felt consciousness slipping away.

The last thing he heard before the icy blackness claimed him was an explosion.

With the terrified blonde’s arm tightly gripped in one hand and a rifle in the other, General Jose Luis Garaldo strode down the street toward the police station. Some of his men noticed him and came running up to him. They didn’t salute, as they should have, but they were low-level thugs and there was only so much that could be done with such inferior raw material.

“Report!” Garaldo snapped at them.

“We are under attack, General,” one of the men said.

“I can see that, you fool! Where is all that smoke coming from?”

The men shook their heads. One of them explained, “When we went to see, someone opened fire on us. And now a helicopter comes!”

Garaldo jerked his head in a nod. He had heard the chopper approaching, too, as he dragged the reporter downtown from the high school. Now it was almost on top of them.

One of the men carried a grenade launcher. Garaldo shoved the blonde into the arms of another man and took the grenade launcher. He loaded a grenade into it and brought the weapon to his shoulder, angling it toward the sky.

If whoever was in that helicopter thought they were going to help the Americans, they were in for a big surprise. Garaldo’s forces had already shot down one chopper today.

With any luck, the general himself would make it two.

All he needed was for those clouds of smoke to clear….

“General, we can’t really see what’s going on down there!” the pilot called over his shoulder to Stone.

“Get lower,” Stone ordered. It didn’t really matter what sort of fight was taking place in Home. Soon all the combatants would be dead. But with the deadly power of the gas on his side, he could afford to indulge his curiosity, he supposed. The apparatus was already hooked up. All he had to do was twist the valve, and that wouldn’t take but a second.

The helicopter swooped down through the smoke, and the propwash from the rotors helped to disperse it. The chopper emerged abruptly from the smoke above one end of what had to be Main Street. It was littered with shot-up cars and sprawled bodies. This was war, Stone thought, but it was about to be over.

“General!” the pilot suddenly screamed. “Incoming!”

Stone’s eyes widened as he looked past the man and saw something streaking toward the chopper. The pilot reacted instinctively, trying to swerve the helicopter out of the way.

Stone’s hand flashed to the valve on the gas canister.

Before he could turn it, something slammed into the chopper’s tail section and exploded. The impact jolted Stone off his feet. As he slammed to the deck, the aircraft began to spin wildly. Somebody was cursing at the top of his lungs. Stone groped toward the canister but before he could reach it, the damaged chopper crash-landed on the pavement in the middle of Main Street.

The pilot had done a masterful job of retaining some control and getting the bird down in one piece. It would never fly again, though. Flames broke out and spread toward the fuel tank.

The lieutenant, bleeding from a gash on his forehead suffered in the crash, grabbed Stone’s arm and tried to haul him to his feet. “Sir, we’ve gotta get out of here! Now!”

Stone struggled to reach the canister. He got his hands on it and ripped the tubing free. The valve was still closed, and the canister was intact. The deadly contents were still in there.

With his aide’s help, Stone staggered to his feet. The dozen or so FPS officers who were also in the helicopter looked to him for orders. They were shaken up and had some cuts and scrapes but seemed to be largely all right.

“Get out there and fight!” Stone barked as he waved a hand at the hatch while he cradled the canister against his chest with the other hand.

“Fight who, sir?” one of the men asked.

“Whoever’s out there, damn it! Everybody in this town is an enemy! Go, go, go!”

The men piled out of the chopper and started shooting as soon as their boots hit the pavement. In a matter of seconds, chaos once again reigned in Home as the three-way battle raged along Main Street.

Pain shot through Stone every time he took a breath. He had broken some ribs when he fell, he thought, and he had a hunch at least one of them had pierced a lung. He would soon be drowning in his own blood.

But that didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t live that long. He would die quickly and painlessly, with one twist of that valve. He would be the first to die, in fact, but the gas would spread and kill everyone else who breathed it. He could only hope that the winds would disperse it throughout the town and wipe out everyone, so the President’s hands would remain clean, and the media and the gullible voters would continue to worship at his feet and America would continue to be transformed into a country where the Jews didn’t run everything.

That was a dream worth dying for, wasn’t it, Stone asked himself as he climbed out of the wrecked chopper and stumbled into the middle of the street.

“This is Bud Conway reporting from Home, Texas,” Bud said into the portable radio he had patched into the big set inside the truck. “If anyone is hearing me, please record this. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to broadcast.”

He had taped dozens of reporters doing remotes during his career. It had never seemed that hard to him. Now he had a chance to try it for himself. Nobody had told him to. It had just occurred to him that somebody ought to try to document the momentous events that were going on here today.

“War has broken out here in this small Texas town, war between paramilitary killers from the Rey del Sol drug cartel and the embattled citizens of Home. There’s something else happening, too. A helicopter has just crash-landed in the street, and armed men are pouring from it and joining in the fight, cutting down whoever happens to get in front of their guns. That appears to be mostly the cartel gunmen. People are dying all around me. It’s like a scene out of a nightmare. Blood and smoke and bullets are everywhere. Please, if you’re listening, record this.”

A little blond-haired guy with a mustache suddenly loomed out of the smoke and grabbed Bud’s arm. “Are you a reporter?” he demanded.

“Yeah, I guess,” Bud answered. “Who’re you?”

“Earl Trussell. I’m a scientist from Casa del Diablo. Gimme that radio.”

Before Bud could stop him, Earl had ripped the radio out of his hands and brought it to his mouth.

“Listen to me, world! Put this out on the Internet as quick as you can, as often as you can. Upload it everywhere! The President has a secret bio-weapons lab in the mountains west of Home, Texas. I know it’s true, because I worked there. They’ve been making nerve gas to use on his political enemies. He’s going to wipe out all the opposition and make himself president for life! I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true! Somebody has to stop—”

A shot rang out. The radio slipped from Earl’s fingers as he crumpled, but Bud caught it before it hit the ground.

A tall, red-faced man in a black combat outfit strode toward Bud and Earl, smoke curling from the barrel of the pistol in his hand. In his other hand he carried some sort of blue plastic canister.

Bud slipped the radio in his pocket but left it on. He thrust his hands in the air and said, “Don’t shoot!”

With an angry snarl on his face, the man said, “I heard what he was saying. Who was he talking to?”

“To … to me,” Bud stammered. ‘Just to me. He was talking crazy, I don’t know what was wrong with him.”

“Do you know who I am, son?”

“N-no, sir.”

“General Weldon Stone,” the man snapped. “A true patriot! That’s why you have to die, and I have to die, and everybody in this town has to die, so that America can be transformed.”

Bud swallowed hard. “Then … then it’s true? What he was saying?”

“Of course, it’s true!” The shooting was dying away now. The battle seemed to be coming to an end. That made it easier to hear General Stone as his voice rang out clearly. “You don’t think a visionary like our President would let a little thing like the death of a few citizens stand in the way of bringing our country the change it needs, do you? Of course, he’ll do whatever’s necessary to put his policies forward. That’s why he ordered those scientists at Casa del Diablo to develop that nerve gas. It’s for the good of the country! That’s what all those damned Jew-loving right-wingers never seem to understand! It’s for the good of the country!”