Houston Attack (2 page)

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Cristoba. Cristoba de Abella.”

“Do you know where they're taking you, Cristoba?” Hawker asked after telling her his own name.

Her chin trembled slightly. She shook her head. “All I know is that I was waiting on a bus to take me back to the University of Mexico in Mexico City when those … those
bastards
shoved me in a car, and then they stuck me with something … a needle, I guess … and then I woke up here.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I have no idea.”

“What was it like—the stuff they stuck you with?”

The girl averted her eyes from his for the first time. “It knocked me out. That's all I know.”

“No, it didn't,” Hawker pressed. “The stuff they gave you felt good. You liked it.”

Her face crinkled and she burst suddenly into tears. “You act like I
wanted
them to do it.
Yes
, it made me feel good, dammit! But I don't know what it was! I just want to go home.…”

The girl sagged away, swinging slightly on the handcuffs that held her. The other Mexicans and Indios in the trailer began to speak fast Spanish at Hawker, and their looks were threatening. Who was this nasty Anglo to upset this poor, pretty girl who already had enough trouble?

Hawker still worked furiously at his cuffs, trying key after key. If none of the hundred and twenty-seven keys worked, he would have to use the tiny hacksaw blade he had brought.

As he worked at the cuffs he spoke to the girl. “I'm not accusing you of anything, Cristoba,” he said softly. “And there's no reason for you to feel guilty. They gave you heroin. In a way, I guess, you should feel flattered. They don't waste it on everyone. Only the very strong and the very valuable. They want to have a hook in you so the person who buys you can be sure you'll stick around.”

The girl's quick intake of air was like a whispered scream.
“Sell
me?” Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, my God, you don't really mean that?”

Finally Hawker found the right key. The lone handcuff snapped open, and he rubbed his wrist to get the blood flowing again. “I'm afraid I do,” he said. “And I want you to tell the others what is planned for them. They're going to drive this truck back into the United States. The border guards have already been paid. By early tomorrow we'll be somewhere within a hundred miles of Houston. Just after sunrise a very small and elite group of Texas land barons are going to have an auction.”

Hawker looked deep into her eyes. “Most of the men and women in this truck will be sold as field hands and house servants. Like me, they paid the bartender inside that rat-hole bar to find them a way to gain entry into the U.S. illegally. But a girl as young and beautiful as you will bring top price, and it won't be because those bastards think you're a good cook. That's why they gave you the heroin. And that's why they're going to keep giving it to you until you're hooked so completely that you'd never give a thought to running away from your only source of the stuff.”

For a second Hawker thought the girl was going to break into tears again. But then her face became a stoic mask, and her brown eyes burned. She jerked at her cuffs. “Get me out of these,” she hissed. “Let me loose. Free us all, and the moment they open that door—”

“I can't,” Hawker cut in. “Those two Mexican guards are almost sure to check us one more time before they pull out.”

“But you've freed yourself!”

“Keep your voice down, Cristoba,” Hawker whispered calmly. “I'll fix my cuff so it looks like it's still locked, and they'll think I'm still passed out, so they won't even bother to check me. But I can't take that chance with the others. Don't you see? We have to make this trip tonight. I have to find out where they're taking you people and who's involved. Sure, I could probably fight our way out of here right now. But that's not going to help the people they've already kidnapped—and the people they'll kidnap in the future. When they've taken us to the very source of this slavery ring, Cristoba, I'll free you.” Hawker leaned across the truck and patted her warm shoulder gently. “You'll be safe with me. I promise you that. But I have to do it my own way.”

The girl leaned her weight briefly against his hand. Her head was bowed shyly, and she looked up at him. “There is something in your eyes that I trust.”

“And you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Then tell the others, Cristoba. Tell them what I have planned, and tell them to obey my every gesture. If they do, we've got a chance to get out of this thing safely—”

Hawker was interrupted by the sound of the truck starting: a sputtering diesel roar. And then the bolt on the trailer door slammed open, and the two Mexicans shoved the boxes away.

Hawker settled back beneath his hat, as if still unconscious. He expected them to check a few of the cuffs and take a head count.

But that's not what happened.

He heard an unfamiliar voice yelling in Spanish, and just as it came to him that one of the “slaves” handcuffed with him in the truck was really a plant, he heard Cristoba de Abella scream, “James, look out! They know!”

Hawker jerked his left hand free from its chain while sliding his right hand beneath the serape. He rolled hard across the trailer deck as two ear-shattering explosions ricocheted slugs off the metal floor behind him.

He heard a familiar scream, and his peripheral vision registered that the beautiful Indian girl's arm now oozed blood as she writhed beneath her chains.

Hawker brought his customized Colt Commander .45 to bear on the face of the smaller of the two Mexican guards and squeezed the trigger.

The revolver the Mexican had been holding slammed against the ceiling as his thick face splattered gore. The scream that had materialized on his lips was never uttered as the impact of the heavy .45 slug jolted his head back, broke his neck, and knocked his corpse to the floor.

In the same instant the bigger of the two Mexicans charged Hawker and kicked the Colt savagely from his hand.

Hawker tackled him around the ankles and wrestled him to the deck. The Mexican brought his revolver up to fire, but Hawker twisted it away with his left hand while putting all his weight behind a right fist that crushed the man's throat closed.

The Mexican's eyes bulged, and his feet kicked wildly on the deck as his throat hissed, fighting for air.

“James, look out!” screamed Cristoba de Abella.

The warning was unnecessary. The man who had obviously been planted inside the trailer to keep an eye on the kidnap victims was a huge man with massive shoulders. Earlier Hawker had noticed him only in passing: a man who looked like a prime slave candidate for the fields.

Now he was kneeling to pick up the revolver that had been knocked from the smaller Mexican's hands.

Hawker jumped to his feet and charged him. In the same instant he felt the truck jolt as some unseen driver—probably aware that they now had trouble—shoved it into gear and began to pull away.

Hawker hit the big man with a waist-high tackle, knocking him into the wall nearest the double doors. There was the heavy, reassuring clatter of the revolver hitting the deck. Hawker drew back his right fist to swing, but before he got the punch off, the big man nailed him with a crushing blow to the chest that ignited popping blue lights in Hawker's head.

Hawker heard a second punch whistle past his ear and bang off the aluminum siding of the trailer.

A thin hiss of pain escaped the man's lips, and Hawker realized that he had probably broken his hamlike hand. Hawker slammed his elbow into the man's ribs, then hit him with a cracking overhand right that would have knocked out any ordinary man.

But not this man.

Hawker hit him with a rapid series of punches to the body, then slid under a powerful left hook. It was hard to keep his balance now, because the truck was gaining speed, pulling away.

Hawker locked his arms around the man's heavy waist and tried to trip him to the deck. The man launched an elbow at Hawker's head, and as the vigilante ducked away, the sudden shift in momentum sent them both crashing against the double doors of the trailer.

There was a tremendous impact, and Hawker was aware of the doors opening and then of being airborne, flying through the night.

With a searing jolt he hit the asphalt highway, and then he was rolling through gravel. James Hawker got shakily but quickly to his feet, ready to continue the fight with the Mexican.

But the huge shape in the middle of the road did not stir. The Mexican was knocked out cold by the fall or dead.

Hawker hoped that he was dead.

Experimentally Hawker moved both his arms and then his legs. Nothing seemed to be broken.

They had been carried about three hundred yards from the bar, and Hawker was aware of men running toward him. There was the muted flash and cough of gunfire and the nearby whiz of lead slugs scraping the highway.

They were shooting at him.

North on the desert highway, the semi-tractor-trailer's lights were bright, taunting eyes as the truck sped its slaves toward Texas.

Hawker's words to the girl haunted him: “You'll be safe with me. I promise you that.”

Right.

Somehow he had to find her. Somehow he had to save her from the living hell that awaited her and the others.

As the men running toward him grew nearer Hawker threw back the serape and unstrapped the brutal-looking little Ingram submachine gun.

He couldn't allow himself to think about the girl now. Before he could save her, first he had to survive.…

two

As James Hawker waited on the tarmac, waited in the balmy Mexican night for his attackers to fall within range of the Ingram, he thought, It can't end here. I've worked too hard tracking these bastards down, worked too many lonely weeks to see them slip through my fingers. Plus, there's now the girl to consider … if she lives.…

It had been his most unusual assignment to date.

And one of his toughest.

He had spent a long winter in Chicago doing a dangerously good imitation of the sterotypical suburban male. He had allowed himself to be sucked into the cozy trap that cold weather so easily sets: It's ten below outside, so let's just skip the run and calisthenics today … and tomorrow … and next week. There's a hell of a blizzard blowing in, so why not curl up on the couch and watch a little television. With a beer, maybe … and a couple of sandwiches now that you're in the kitchen … and maybe a piece of pie, too, because you don't want to hurt the landlady's feelings.

It had gone on and on like that, through January and February, and then into the long, gray sopping month of March.

And he deserved it, didn't he?

He'd put his damn neck on the line too many times during the last assignment: that run-in with the Nazis of New York and their crazy plan to rebuild the Third Reich.

And he'd damn near lost one of his best friends to boot: Jacob Montgomery Hayes.

It had been Hayes's idea to put Hawker's unique cop skills to work in a nation that was quickly being destroyed by crooks and killers and con artists who no longer feared—or needed to fear—the American court system.

It had been Hayes's idea to seek out selected areas of the nation where innocent people were being bullied and then send in Hawker to help them fight back.

Hayes, one of the richest men in the world, would provide whatever financial backing was needed.

Hawker would provide the experience, the muscle, and the street sense.

And it had gone well. Almost too well. None of the missions had been easy, but they had all been successful … until they ran into the Nazis of New York.

It was the first mission in which Hayes had gotten personally involved. And it had almost cost him his life. Hawker and the inimitable butler, Hendricks, had spent long nights by Hayes's bedside, waiting while he hung by a thread between life and death.

But finally the tough old Texas billionaire started to come around. Started to respond to the nursing and the around-the-clock doctors' care. Started to draw on the innate subbornness that had driven him from the poverty of his south Texas youth to the top of the business ladder and far, far beyond.

Hayes began to heal, and then he began to get crotchety, souring in bed. And when they finally let him get up, his old good humor began to return, and then he began reading his esoteric books on Zen and began tying his beloved trout flies, and finally Jacob was his old, sweet, imposing self.

And that's when winter set in and Hawker used the weather as an excuse to go on his extended vacation.

After a month of too much rest and too much food, he made a couple of halfhearted efforts to get back into shape. Each effort started with a muscle-wearying flurry, then ground to a slow halt.

After about the fourth failed attempt, Hawker began to get scared.

He knew all about the sweet trap of middle age: eat when you feel like it; drink all you want; and someday, when the time is right, get back into shape because there's always time.…

Someday. But Hawker had too many old friends who lived for “someday.” They were overweight and out of shape, and because they took little pride in their own physical well-being, they took little pride in their lives. To wait for “someday” Hawker knew was to settle for that slow decline that led only to the coffin.

And James Hawker had no desire to die of old age.

So, on a bleak March morning, he put himself back on the old routine. No excuses. No whining. And damn the wind, snow, and rain.

He started slowly, feeling the fat bounce on his sides during the morning run, feeling the deteriorated muscles burning during the hour of calisthenics. Feeling the shame of the slowed reflexes during the brutal sparring sessions at the old Bridgeport gym.

But he stuck with it. And by April he was beginning to feel he was approaching that nicety of speed, litheness, and endurance that meant he was in top shape.