Remember The Alamo (13 page)

"Dave," Constance said in a fear-choked voice, "you're going to take this to the police, aren't you? You don't want any
part of this. You can't get mixed up in it."

When he hesitated, she went on urgently. "Tell me you're
not going to get involved in this, Dave. I know you're upset
about what happened to Silvio, but-"

"And Rita," he said. "We don't know what they've done
with her."

"I know, but right now I'm just concerned with you. I don't
want you doing anything crazy that will just get you hurt"

Dave sighed and shook his head. "I won't do anything
crazy, even if I wanted to. And of course I'll take this to the
police." He closed down the file, then reached for the jump
drive to unplug it from the computer. "But there's somebody
else I want to have a look at it first"

Phil read through the message again as the pages came out
of the printer in his office. He had saved the original document
onto his computer, opened that version back up after closing
it, and changed the settings to make the printout easier to read.

Regardless of how big the letters were or how many spaces
were between the lines, though, what the words said remained
the same.

The Mexicans were going to take the Alamo-and keep it.

"This is all speculation on your cousin's part," Phil said to
Dave Rodriguez, playing devil's advocate for a moment. "He
thought there was some sort of conspiracy between the Mexican government, the army, the Reconquistadores, and that
drug cartel he worked for ... but he didn't have any real
proof."

"Somebody followed him up here and killed him," Dave
said, his face and voice bleak. "That's proof enough for me ""

Phil inclined his head in acknowledgment of that point.
"That's convincing, all right, but it wouldn't stand up in a court
of law."

"It's somebody else's job to come up with the proof that
would stand up in court," Dave said. "The cops or the FBI or Homeland Security." He poked a finger at the printout in Phil's
hand. "Silvio heard those guys talking about how they were
going to take control of the Alamo and not give it back. To do
that, they'll need guns, and they'll have to be willing to use
them. The Reconquistadores are going to plant men in the
crowd at the ceremony handing the Alamo back over to
Mexico. They'll be armed, and when the time comes they'll
start shooting. They'll mow down anybody who gets in their
way, make it inside the Alamo, and then try to hold it."

Phil rattled the pages in his hand. "It doesn't say that anywhere in here. Now you're speculating, Dave"

"Tell me I'm not right," Dave challenged.

Phil shrugged. "I didn't say anything about whether you're
right or wrong. As a matter of fact, I think you've pretty much
nailed it. A few of the details might be different, but I think
that's what the bastards are planning."

"Then what do we do?"

"We go to the cops," Phil said, "but not before we take some
precautions." He pushed a button on the intercom on his desk
and said into it, "Carolyn, find Ronnie and send him in here,
okay?"

"Right away, Phil," came the answer over the intercom
speaker.

A few minutes later, a tall, gawky young man with a shock
of red hair knocked on the door and then came into the office.
He didn't even glance at Dave, just asked, "You wanted to
see me, Mr. Cody?"

"Yeah, I've got a job for you, Ronnie." Phil held up the
jump drive. "There's a single file on here I want encrypted.
Stash a couple of copies on our system, somewhere that
nobody will ever find them or be able to do anything with
them if they do, and e-mail several more copies to some secure
servers where they can be retrieved later if need be. Then cover your tracks so that nobody will know you're done any of that,
and don't tell anybody about it."

Ronnie grunted. "You didn't have to say that last part. You
can trust me"

"I know I can, or I wouldn't have given you a job in the first
place. And I sure as hell wouldn't give you this job"

Phil tossed the jump drive across the desk. Ronnie caught
it and nodded. "Give me half an hour." He left the room.

Dave looked at Phil and asked, "He can do all that in half
an hour?"

"Yeah, since I didn't tell him to hurry or anything. He's the
best computer guy I've got. I know it's a stereotype, because
he looks like a nerd and all, but sometimes cliches don't lie.
Best of all, he's used to handling sensitive information."

"So you really do trust him?"

"Of course" Phil smiled. "He knows that if he ever tries to
cross me up, the information I have about how he hacked into
Department of Defense computers will go to the Feds. I got
that info the old-fashioned way: legwork and bribes. He can't
hack it, either, because it's written down in longhand and
stashed in a safe-deposit box. Turning it over to the authorities
is just one of the instructions my lawyer has to follow if anything suspicious ever happens to me"

Dave shook his head. "Sounds a little paranoid to me"

"And thinking that a bunch of Mexican terrorists are going
to slaughter a crowd of people and take over the Alamo isn't
paranoid?"

"Not if that's what they're really going to do," Dave said.

Phil couldn't argue with that.

Ronnie was back in twenty-five minutes with the jump
drive. He handed it to Phil, still without looking at Dave, and
said, "All taken care of, Boss"

"Thanks, Ronnie."

The redhead nodded and left the office. Dave said, "What's
wrong with him? Doesn't he like Hispanics?"

"What do you mean?"

"He wouldn't even look at me. Acted like I wasn't here"

"Oh. That was just so he couldn't be forced to testify that he
saw you here. He doesn't want to know anything about any
of my clients. It's called deniability."

"Doesn't sound like a very good way to live."

"Yeah, well, in this day and age when anybody can sue anybody for anything and trial lawyers have one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, what do you expect? Everybody
has to be litigation-conscious. But I agree with you ... sometimes it's a hell of a way to live."

They left Phil's office together, and Phil suggested they go
in his car to visit the police and turn over the jump drive. "I'll
bring you back here so you can pick up your bike later," he
said.

Dave agreed, and as they were heading for downtown San
Antonio in Phil's car, he said, "You know, the thing I have the
hardest time believing is that Silvio was working for those
drug smugglers. I've known him all my life. I thought he was
an honest hombre."

Phil shrugged as he skillfully maneuvered the car through
traffic on the freeway. "From the sound of it, he probably
didn't even know he was working for them at first. By the time
he figured it out and they started giving him other jobs, it
was too late for him to do anything about it. He was in too
deep. If he'd tried to get out, it would have put his wife in
danger, not to mention himself."

"And now he's dead and Rita probably is, too," Dave said,
his voice sounding like the words tasted bitter in his mouth.

"Sometimes fate bears down on us like a freight train. It's
hard to get out of the way." Phil paused, then asked, "What
was the name of that detective?"

"Obrador." Dave took the card that Obrador had given him
from his pocket. "He works out of the police department
downtown. Maybe we should have called him and told him we
were coming."

"Nah, it's better this way. Let it be a surprise. That way he
won't have a chance to get ready for us. We'll get a more
honest reaction from him."

"You don't trust him, either?" Dave sounded surprised.

"If he worked for a Mexican police force, I'd say the odds
were nine out of ten that he was crooked. Since he works for
the San Antonio PD, he's probably honest. But it never hurts
to think the worst of people."

Case in point, his wife Nancy. If he hadn't been quite so
trusting, he might have been able to tell sooner that she was
cheating on him, and he could have tried to get her to put an
end to it before it was too late to save their marriage.

But it was probably too late already as soon as she decided
that she'd rather be with somebody else instead of him, he told
himself. Once that step was taken, once the special bond was
lost, it was all over. The marriage was FUBAR. Even if they
had stayed together, they wouldn't have truly been husband
and wife anymore.

Phil shoved those bitter thoughts out of his head. As bad as
that time had been, he had come through it. Who was it said
that shit about how whatever doesn't kill you makes you
stronger? Hemingway? Nietzsche? Phil couldn't remember,
but whoever it was, the guy had been on to something.

"What do we do if Obrador doesn't believe us?" Dave
asked.

"He's not the only cop in San Antonio. For that matter, there
are the Feds, too"

"I'm not that fond of the idea of dealing with the federal
government."

"Believe me, I'm not, either," Phil said. "I like to keep as
low a profile with them as I-"

Before he could say anything else, the sound of metal crashing and grinding against metal filled the air as the car gave a
violent lurch to the right. Phil had seen the big Caddy pull up
beside his car and then swerve toward it, but the attack had
been so fast and so unexpected that he couldn't do anything to
prevent it.

The wheel tried to jerk out of his hands, but he hung on
tight and fought to keep the car under control. They were on
Interstate 10, near downtown. The rush hour peak was over,
but there was still a lot of traffic on the highway. Phil looked
for somewhere to go as the Cadillac pulled away a little, then
came at him again. The nearest exit was still a couple of hundred yards away, so that didn't do him any good, and he was
in the outside lane next to a retaining wall with only a narrow
shoulder along it, so he had no place to go there, either.

He slammed on the brakes, instead. The Caddy hit his car
again, but it had shot ahead a little so that Phil's left front
fender was struck by the Cadillac's right rear fender. The
impact was still enough to send Phil's car across the shoulder
and into the retaining wall. Dave yelled as the car scraped
along the wall, throwing off a shower of sparks.

Phil stood on the brakes. The Caddy shot on past and
braked as well, skidding to a halt. Phil's car had stopped so
abruptly that he had been thrown forward against the steering
wheel. It hadn't been enough to pop the air bags, though, so
Phil had a clear view through the windshield as somebody in
the rear seat of the Cadillac rolled down a side window, leaned
out, and pointed something at them.

Dave saw it, too, and said, "Holy crap. That's an RPG
launcher."

After scraping along the retaining wall for several yards,
Phil's car had veered away from the concrete barrier, leaving
a gap of about three feet between the vehicle and the wall.
That was enough room for Dave to fling the door open and
crawl out.

Only the door wouldn't open. The collision with the wall
had jammed it shut.

Dave's eyes widened with horror. The bastard in the back
seat of that Caddy was drawing a bead on Phil's car, and at any
second, the rocket-propelled grenade in the launcher would
streak across the intervening distance to slam into the car and
turn it into a deadly inferno. Dave knew he stood no chance of
surviving that explosion, and there was no place for him to
escape it.

Then Phil threw his door open and rolled out of the car.
Dave thought for a second that his old friend and brother in
arms was deserting him, but he should have known better. A
gun had appeared in Phil's hand, plucked from a shoulder holster under his coat. In his line of work, it stood to reason that
he would have a concealed-carry permit.

Phil knelt behind the open car door and fired through the gap between it and the body of the car. He slammed four shots
into the Cadillac's back window, and as he triggered the
rounds, he shouted to Dave, "Go over the seat and out the back
door on this side!"

Dave scrambled to do as Phil suggested, knowing it was his
only chance-and a slim one at that.

The Caddy's back window didn't shatter under the impact
of Phil's shots. It had to be equipped with bulletproof glass, no
surprise when you considered that the guys inside had been
able to put their hands on a piece of armament like an RPG
launcher. As Dave twisted his body over the front seat of the
car, Phil shifted his aim and went for the narrow portion he
could see of the man holding the grenade launcher.

Too late. With a whoosh! the rocket zoomed out of the
cylindrical launcher.

It took only a tiny fraction of a second to hit the front grille
of Phil's car. If the man's aim had been a little better, if the
grenade had gone through the windshield and exploded inside
the car, Dave would have had no chance.