Houston Attack (14 page)

“Ah, that is good news. You will need food. I will have the
esposa
light the fire. We will heat some chicken and rice for you. And I have five bottles of Dos Equis beer hidden in the spring. I will get them—”

“Don't go to any trouble, Sancho. All we want to do is sleep.”

“But you must stay up long enough for me to tell you about the drilling. Juan Probisco has secured four sections of good pipe—from what source, I do not know. Though it might be best not to mention it to any local police. We have already driven two of them by hand. The women in the village are upset because they no longer have a place to dump their cooking grease, but Juan Probisco says—”

“Sancho, you can tell me all about it in the morning. Please, don't wake anybody in your house. We don't want to cause you any trouble. And don't forget—we need a place to hide the truck. And, Sancho, we're also going to need some buses. Or big trucks. All you can get your hands on. Can you do that?”

“It will be done!”

Hawker smiled. “And, Sancho, don't be surprised if I look a little different to you.”

“Your red hair? The
putas
have cut off your hair?”

“Better than that, Sancho. Better than that. Don't shoot if a one-armed man doesn't get out of my truck.…”

sixteen

It had been a long ride on horseback, but there was no other choice. Williams's men would have heard cars. They would have been ready.

There were drawbacks to working with a team, but there were also advantages. And when it came to working with the Texas Rangers, the advantages far outweighed the drawbacks.

Quirt Evans had talked Hawker into it on the way to Sancho Rigera's. And then he had talked some more while they wolfed down hot chicken and yellow rice, served by the shy-eyed and lovely Juanita Rigera.

Evans based his argument on one often repeated truth: The Texas Rangers is no ordinary law-enforcement agency.

Hawker already knew that. He had read enough about the Rangers and, in fact, had done a term paper on the organization while working on his B.A. in Law Enforcement. He knew the history almost as well as Evans.

The Rangers was a band of rugged mounted riflemen organized in the early 1800s to protect American settlers from Indians and Mexican bandits. Unlike the U.S. Cavalry, the Rangers used the methods of their enemies to fight. One noted Texas politician summarized their abilities this way: “The Texas Ranger can ride like a Mexican, trail like an Indian, shoot like a Tennesseean, and fight like the very devil.”

They were, in fact, America's first guerrilla fighters.

During the Mexican War of the 1840s, the federal government established forts along the Texas frontier and garrisoned them with regular troops. But Sam Houston, speaking in the U.S. Senate, asked that they be sent home. They didn't need an army to defeat Mexico, said Houston. After all, they had one thousand Texas Rangers—and they were enough.

Hawker knew most of the Rangers' celebrated history, and he had heard that the modern-day Rangers were not much different from the Rangers of old. They still wore no uniforms. They still furnished their own transportation and weaponry. And they were still rugged individualists known for preferring quick thinking to force—but who could use deadly force, if need be, like few others in the world of law enforcement.

So when Quirt Evans said he could have ten fully equipped Rangers, complete with court warrants, at the Rigera ranch within six hours, Hawker consented.

As Evans reasoned, “If what you say about Skate Williams and his food franchise chain is true, Hawk, then we damn well can't take the chance of his getting away. We've got to get him.”

“It's true, Quirt. I'm sure of it. You saw the leaves I brought back from the greenhouses at Ranch Number Three. Hell, it took me longer to recognize them than it did you. Jonathan Flischmann found out—and they murdered him. It's the only thing that makes sense. Williams could have beaten a slavery rap. You know that.”

Evans's mouth was grim. “I know, Hawk, I know. I spent a year and a half infiltrating the operation and gaining that bastard's confidence, only to realize that his Hispanic slaves would never testify against him. They live in too much fear. To a court of law they would just look like more wetbacks content with any damn work they could find.”

Hawker was impressed. “A year and a half? You must really have it in for that guy.”

Evans gave him a strange look. “You don't know the half of it, Hawk. Skate Williams is a psychopath. Cares about no one but himself. If it took ten years I'd still get the bastard.”

Hawker nodded and said nothing. There was something in the big Ranger's tone that said he didn't care to talk about it anymore.

So Hawker drifted off to a fitful sleep while Quirt Evans went to work on the phone. Before calling his fellow Rangers, he contacted the state patrol and notified them of the shipment that might have left Williams's ranch despite Hawker's attack. Then he went to work waking up state officials. They were prim and officious until Evans told them what it was about—and then they were outraged with disbelief.

Finally he placed a call to the governor. The governor was asleep, of course. Evans insisted that he be awakened.

Ten minutes later the governor returned his call. At first the governor refused to believe him. And then the disbelief became shock. And the shock became disappointment.

The Governor admitted that he loved Rio Bravo Burgers. He said now he understood why he felt “antsy” if he didn't have them at least a couple of times a week.…

James Hawker awoke late in the morning. Outside Sancho Rigera's adobe ranch house, he pumped water over his head.

The sun was pale yellow, flat against the old western sky.

Juanita Rigera and her mother were washing clothes in a wooden tub. He noticed the graceful lines of the girl. Her blue-black hair was tied in a ponytail, and she wore a white cotton dress that emphasized the tautness of her body. She was lovely indeed, and seeing her made him think of Cristoba.

Tonight
, he thought.
You'll be free tonight
.

Hawker found Sancho in a sand-and-cactus swale just beyond the village. He and a dozen other men squatted on their haunches, Mexican-fashion, before a makeshift oil drilling rig.

The men wore no shirts, and they glistened with sweat.

They had planted four old telephone poles as the rig's foundation. High atop the poles was a platform and a block and tackle. Hooked to the block and tackle was a chunk of metal that must have weighed two hundred pounds. Centered beneath it was a section of long pipe fitted with a high-tensile-strength driving head so that the pipe would not split.

Hawker wondered where Juan Probisco had stolen it.

Before they would allow Hawker to organize them into a truck caravan for the night's assault, they insisted on giving their “honored vice-president” of Chicago Fossil Fuels Ltd. a tour of the operation.

Hawker humored them. They joked about his growing a new arm. They suggested that the black eye and swollen face were not the result of a fistfight but of a passionate love affair instead. Hawker laughed, enjoying their company. He complimented their efforts at great length. And why not?

After all, in a few hours they would be risking their lives to free people they had never met.

Shortly afterward, the ten Texas Rangers arrived. Probably because he had seen too many late-night westerns, Hawker expected them to come by horse, dusty after a hard ride.

Instead they arrived in immaculately kept trucks, their horses in trailers behind.

The Rangers varied in shape and size, but they all seemed to have that ruddy, rugged look of humor and confidence that he had first liked in the face of Quirt Evans.

It was Evans who called them together for a briefing. It was Evans who showed them maps of the Williams's ranch, told them how they would present the search warrant to the guards, and what the next steps would be if the guards refused to let them pass.

Hawker was only briefly introduced, and then only as a private citizen who would be going along because of his familiarity with the area.

But Hawker could see that the other Rangers knew who he was. Could see it in their eyes. And he understood why Evans had gone out of his way to purposely ignore him. It was for his own protection. So that later, when the Senate committee of investigation was formed, he would be just a faceless, nameless man none of them remembered.

Or pretended not to remember.

They left at dusk, the horses saddled and fed in the trailers behind the trucks that they would drive to the Star County line.

Just before they pulled out, Hawker placed a long-distance call to Andrea Marie Flischmann.

He wanted to tell her he had found her brother's murderer.

There was no answer.

seventeen

So it had been a long ride. Especially for Hawker, who was no horseman.

Twice on the narrow dirt road to Williams's estate fast trucks had passed them but paid them no mind.

The horses were disguises in and of themselves.

To people in the trucks the twelve men on horseback probably just looked like wranglers from Ranch #4.

Fortunately they couldn't see what the riders were carrying in their saddlebags and beneath the rolled tarps.

Hawker wore a black cotton watch sweater, jeans, and worn Nike running shoes. His face and hands still hurt from the fights he had had the night before. Evans had found him a gray, weathered cowboy hat with a rattlesnake band. The knapsack stuffed with ordnance was strapped to the back of the broad-chested Arabian he rode.

When the guardhouse and high adobe fence came into view, they pulled into tighter formation, two abreast. Three hundred yards from the guardhouse, the bright searchlight flashed on. Hawker shielded his eyes and looked at Evans.

“You still insist on trying to serve that damn warrant?”

Evans winked, but Hawker sensed fear behind the calm facade. “That's the law, Hawk. That's what I get paid for.”

“You don't get paid to die, Quirt. And that's just what's going to happen. Once they know you're a Ranger, you won't make it three steps from the guardhouse. Why in the hell go through the formalities?”

Evans smiled as he kicked his horse ahead. “I think you know. You were a cop once. And a damn good one, from what I've heard. You would have done the same thing, Hawk.”

As Hawker watched his friend trot toward his rendezvous with the guards—and probably death—he pulled open his knapsack. From it he took an electronic detonating device. It was about the size of a television remote control. But instead of buttons on its face there was a frequency dial and two toggle switches. Hawker set the frequency, then took a flare gun from the knapsack. He snapped it open and inserted a single 12-gauge-size signal cartridge.

The searchlight followed Evans as he pulled up to the guardhouse: a single man on horseback. Ol' Quirt. The trail boss who worked over at Ranch #4 and sometimes came to doctor Skate Williams's horses. There would be perfunctory smiles and thoughts of conversation.

But then they would notice that Quirt had changed. They would see there was something different about him.

It was the badge on his chest: the shield that identified him as a Texas Ranger.

And then they would have to kill him.

Hawker watched nervously as Evans slid down off his horse. Behind him, Hawker heard the rifle bolt click as the other Rangers readied their weapons to provide covering fire.

The two guards stepped out to meet Evans. Hawker was aware of movement behind the guardhouse: four or five more soldiers waiting in the darkness. He saw Quirt Evans reach into his shirt and pull out the warrant. Holding it in both hands, one of the guards turned into the light so he could read it.

And then everything happened very damn quickly indeed.

There was a blur of movement, and the guard holding the paper went for his holstered automatic. But Evans got to his Colt faster, and there were two sledgehammer
kerwhacks
, and the guard was blown backward into the adobe wall.

As the second guard went for his gun Hawker fired the flare. It exploded over Skate Williams's mansion with a fiery red light. It was beneath that weird crimson glow that Hawker saw Evans drop the other guard with a single shot, then turn to run to his horse. As he ran, the soldiers materialized from the shadows. They opened fire on Evans.

Quirt stumbled, spun, and fell. Somehow he managed to get up on his horse. Sitting at a sickening angle, he kicked his horse into a gallop away from the guardhouse.

Hawker didn't hesitate. He hit the first toggle switch, and the guardhouse was pulverized by a blinding yellow explosion. The impact threw the soldiers high into the air. Backlighted by the fiery glow, they looked like tumbling rag dolls.

Hawker's Arabian spooked as the other Rangers charged by him; the Rangers leaned low over their horses, reins in their teeth, automatic rifles in their hands. They galloped through the hole where the guardhouse had been, and when more soldiers materialized from the shadows, they opened fire.

Hawker changed the frequency on the detonator and touched the second toggle switch.

The explosion was more like an earthquake. It came in a ribcage-vibrating series: first the processing plant; then Williams's mansion, the back wall, and the fence outside the slave quarters went up. Then the tank of red gas apparently detonated another tank, and still another. Somewhere within the plant was a store of munitions, and these, too, went off, sputtering and whacking and flaring.

Hawker no longer needed moonlight by which to see. An orange, gaseous ball of fire roared high above the trees, illuminating the whole estate.

From within the compound Hawker could hear the high shrieks of agony mixing with the battle whoops of the Rangers as they cut through the panicking mercenaries.