Remember The Alamo (29 page)

"It means the government is lying to us," Cecilia said. "This
wasn't a riot. It was a terrorist attack, and those protesters
didn't cause it, they tried to stop it."

"It means we got a hell of a scoop! We got to get this on
the air!"

"Hold on," Zachary said. "This tape has got to be worth
some money. Say ... five hundred dollars?"

"Done," Cecilia said without hesitation. She knew that her
news director and the station manager probably would have
paid ten times that much for this tape, or even more. "Upload
it to the station right now, Eddie."

He started pushing buttons and tapping the keyboard on the console. "You got it, Sissy," he said, and she didn't even bother
to reprimand him for using the nickname.

Once this footage hit the air, with her introducing it, everybody would know the name of Cecilia Montez.

She pulled out her cell phone and called the news director
to let him know the footage would be coming in over the satellite uplink. He was excited, too, and told her to get ready to go
live as soon as they had it cued up. Eddie switched the monitor input to the station's feed as Cecilia said, "Will it be all
right if I ask you a few questions on the air, Mr. Zachary?"

"Me?" His voice went up to a higher pitch. "You want to interview me? Cecilia Montez is going to interview me?"

She put a patient smile on her face. "If that's all right."

"Sure! You bet! Boy!"

Cecilia put her earpiece in so she could hear the director
back at the station, then climbed down out of the truck, taking
Zachary with her. Eddie came after them, hefting his camera
to his shoulder.

The voice in Cecilia's ear told her, "We've got the footage,
and we'll be coming to you live in approximately two minutes,
Cecilia."

"I'm ready," she said into the microphone she had brought
from the truck. Eddie got in position for the live shot, aiming
the camera at her and Zachary.

"Coming to you in thirty," the director said.

Then Cecilia heard a sharp intake of breath from the man,
as if something surprising had just happened back at the
studio.

"Hold on"

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Hold-"

The earpiece went dead.

"Eddie, I've lost the station," she began in alarm, stopping
when she felt the cell phone in her pocket vibrate. She pulled it out, saw that the station manager was calling, and flipped
the phone open. "Mike, what "

"Cecilia, get the hell out of there," the man cut in, his voice
urgent and maybe a little scared. "Take that tape with you, and
the man who shot it. And hurry!"

He broke the connection.

Utterly confused, Cecilia looked at Eddie and said, "Something's wrong. Mike said for us to get out of here and to take the
tape with us"

"What the hell?"

"What's going on?" Zachary asked in a scared voice. "I
thought I was going to be on TV!"

Cecilia turned toward the truck, but it was too late. With a
screech of tires, a black SUV came around a nearby corner,
followed by a military jeep with several soldiers in it. The vehicles came to a stop and a couple of men in dark suits got out
of the SUV. They started quickly toward the news truck, followed by four gun-toting soldiers.

A part of Cecilia told her she should run, but she stayed
where she was. She couldn't believe anyone would actually interfere with her. She was a member of the press, after all. She
had rights-

"Ms. Montez," one of the men said as the group strode up,
"you'll have to come with us "

"You can't do this," Cecilia protested. "Who are you?"

"This is a matter of national security. All of you are in our
custody now, and this truck and everything in it are officially
seized by the government"

"You can't!"

"We just did," the man said, and with the soldiers to back
him up, Cecilia knew she and Eddie and Zachary had no
choice but to cooperate.

But it's wrong! a voice within her cried out. This couldn't
be happening. The American government didn't treat its own citizens like this. Not in these enlightened times, when
liberals were running things again.

But in a matter of minutes, Cecilia, Eddie, and Zachary
were bundled into the backseat of the SUV, and the door
closed with a solid thump of finality. One of the dark-suited
men closed up the TV truck, retracted the satellite antenna like
he knew what he was doing, and drove it away after the SUV
and the jeep.

And at the station where Cecilia worked, the only thing being
broadcast was a screen bearing the old-fashioned message TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES-PLEASE STAND BY.

With the rattle of a keyboard, an instant message was sent
mere minutes later:

u wont believe wht ijst hacked off some tvsat u got 2c it

And like that, the genie was out of the bottle.

The Alamo had three doors and only a handful of windows,
so it didn't take very many men to keep a watch on them.
Dave spoke to those who had been busy with that duty during
the earlier discussion with the rest of the defenders, and to a
man they agreed with the decision reached by the group.
They would try to stick it out for the weekend, until the
ridiculous "treaty" had run its course and the Alamo was returned to American control. Then and only then would they
lay down their arms and surrender, to take whatever punishment society wanted to levy on them for saving a cherished
shrine of liberty.

Dave knew better than to expect that they would get off
scot-free, assuming they lived through this standoff. They had
embarrassed the government, and for that they would have to
pay a price. If they somehow avoided being convicted of any
criminal charges, Dave fully expected that each and every one
of them would face a tax audit by the IRS every year, at least
until a new president was elected. Anything else that the government could do to make their lives a living hell was likely to
take place, too.

The windows in the Alamo were all small and covered inside and out with iron bars and wrought-iron scrollwork.
Nobody would get through them without going to a lot of
trouble. That meant the doors were the main worry.

The double doors at the front of the chapel were the most
vulnerable. There were double doors at the rear of the building, too, but they were never used and had been locked and
barred for years. A single side door opened onto a walkway
that led over to the gift shop and museum.

Any of these doors could be knocked down with a battering
ram or a grenade, but Dave felt confident that the San Antonio police, or even the American military, would never go that
far. They wouldn't want to wreak so much destruction on the
Alamo.

The Mexican army was a different story. This old mission
was the scene of a bitter victory for their ancestors. There was
no telling what they might do once they got here.

All he and the others could do was wait, Dave told himself.
And a prayer or two might not hurt anything, either...

By nightfall, the military had brought in huge floodlights
that ringed the Alamo and the plaza and lit them up as bright
as day. The chief of police had called several more times,
asking the defenders to surrender, but each time either Stark
or Mahone had politely declined to do so. Reporters had
called, too, a lot of them, and finally Dave had decided that
the phone ought to just be left off the hook.

It didn't really matter. As darkness settled down over the
city, phone service to the Alamo was cut off, as was the electricity. The inside of the chapel was plunged into thick,
gloomy shadows.

But not for long, because the defenders had anticipated that
tactic. The supplies that had been hidden in one of the storage rooms earlier in the week included several battery-powered lanterns and a handful of oil lamps, as well as a box of
candles. As soon as the lamps and the candles were lit, the electric lights were turned off to preserve their batteries. A soft
yellow glow filled the chapel, and Dave thought that it must
have looked something like this back in 1836, when another
band of Texans had holed up in here to await the arrival of the
Mexican army.

Along with night, a quiet somberness had settled down.
Nobody talked much, and the few conversations going on were
pitched at a low level. The defenders were all thinking their own
thoughts and keeping them to themselves. Thoughts of home
and family, more than likely, and maybe questions like What
have I gotten myself into? and What the hell am I doing here?

And Am I going to die? Will I ever see my loved ones again?

Dave couldn't blame them for feeling that way. An image of
Constance filled his own mind, and he caught himself wishing he could hold her again, feel the warmth of her touch,
smell the fragrance of her hair. Just be with her. He couldn't
be sure he would ever experience those things again.

The thing of it was, that was true for everybody, every day
of their lives. They got up in the morning assuming that they
would live to see the sun go down and then rise again the next
day, but they couldn't know that. Nobody liked to think about
it, but every day of their continued existence was a gamble.
The stakes were life and death, and in the end, everybody lost
the final bet. Nobody walked away from the table a winner.

That was why, every now and then, you had to stop and
think and make sure the life you were living was worth it, because it was the only one you were going to get.

Had to be the Alamo causing those thoughts to go through
his head, Dave decided, the sense of history and destiny that
filled this place.

One of the men came over to him carrying an open cell
phone. Dave recognized him as Billy Romo, one of the
youngest of the volunteers, a vet of the Iraq conflict. Billy held the phone out toward Dave and said, "Hey, man, take a look
at this."

Dave took the phone and squinted at the little screen. His
eyes weren't quite what they had once been. "What am I looking at?" he asked. All he could make out were a lot of people
running.

"That's video of what happened in the plaza this afternoon"

Dave held the phone closer to his face, and sure enough, he
could make out the Alamo in the background. He glanced up
at Billy and asked, "You shot this with your phone?"

"No, man. I downloaded it from the Internet. The wireless
signal in here is spotty, but I was able to stay connected long
enough to get the whole clip."

For a second, Dave couldn't quite comprehend all the implications of what Billy was telling him, but then he felt his
heart begin to slug harder in his chest.

"This is posted on the Internet?"

"Yeah. Cool, isn't it?"

Dave thrust the phone at him. "Play it again."

"Sure" Billy took the phone, thumbed a few of the buttons,
and then turned it around so Dave could watch the video
again. This time, knowing what he was looking at, he was able
to pick out a lot more of the details. He saw the Reconquistadores firing into the crowd, gunning down cops and civilians
alike, and he saw his fellow defenders fighting back, blunting the force of the terrorist attack and finally sending the surviving gunmen fleeing for their lives.

Phil and Evelyn had emerged from the office. The rest had
done Phil some good; he looked stronger now. Dave caught his
eye and motioned him over, along with Stark and Mahone.
When they were all gathered around, he asked Billy to play the
video for them, too. He thought to ask, "How's the battery in
that thing holding up?"

"Just fine," Billy assured him. "Anyway, I brought an extra
one. Got it in my pocket"

Phil, Stark, and Mahone were just as excited to see the
video as Dave had been. "You got this off the Internet?"
Mahone asked.

"Yeah," Billy said.

"If it's posted in one place, it's probably posted in a dozen
others," Dave said.

"Or a hundred," Phil put in.

Stark said, "That means people can see for themselves that
the government is lying about what happened. They'll see that
it wasn't a riot, it was a terrorist attack, and it would have
been a lot worse if we hadn't been there ready to stop it."

"The truth," Mahone said. "It's a powerful weapon, especially when people can see it with their own eyes"

Dave asked Billy, "Can you connect to the Internet again?"

"Sure. I can try, anyway. Like I said, the wifi's a little
spotty."

He had to walk around the Alamo to find a spot where the
phone could connect. The massively thick adobe walls cut the
signal strength way down. But after a while Billy was able to
establish a connection, and Dave told him, "See what the news
Web sites are saying about that video. Maybe some of them
even have it posted"

After a few minutes of searching online, Billy said, "None
of the big sites have it. They all say there's a rumor floating
around about some sort of fake Alamo video, but they all
claim it's some sort of hoax"