Remember The Alamo (37 page)

Grim lines were etched into Dave's face as he said, "So all
we can do is wait, and meanwhile Phil gets sicker and sicker."

Stark and Mahone both shrugged.

From behind them, a voice said, "I can't believe you're
even talking about giving up"

The men turned to see Evelyn Harlow standing there. She
showed the same strain as the rest of them but still managed
to be attractive.

"We're just worried about Phil-" Dave began.

"Of course you are. I am, too. I've grown to be ... very
fond of him." Tears glistened in her eyes as she spoke, but she
wiped them away before they could run down her cheeks.
"But I know what this effort to save the Alamo means to him.
He's sleeping now, but he'd be really upset if he knew you
were thinking about surrendering because of him."

Stark shook his head. "There won't be any surrender. The
Mexicans won't allow it now. We've shown them up too bad
so far. They've got to wipe us out to appease their honor."

"I know. I overheard that part, too. All I'm asking is that
you don't ever tell Phil that you even thought about it
because of him."

The men nodded their agreement. The same grim thought
was in all of their heads.

They might not live long enough to have to worry about
keeping that promise.

Somewhat surprisingly, there were no more attacks against
the Alamo that Sunday. The men inside the old mission figured that was because Salgado had shown a definite preference for attacking in the early morning hours, just before
dawn. That was another thing he shared in common with
Santa Anna.

The phone lines were busy between Washington and
Mexico City, as the president tried to convince the Mexican
government to withdraw Salgado and let the men inside the
Alamo leave peacefully. In return the United States would
allow Mexico to occupy the Alamo and maintain control of
it until the whole legal mess concerning the treaty had been
properly adjudicated. Presidente Guzman was adamant that
this would never take place.

"They are criminals, they are on our land, and they will
be dealt with by us," he insisted. "And the ruling by our
Supreme Court has already been handed down, so there is
nothing more to adjudicate."

With the Mexicans refusing to budge, that left the American president with only one decision to make: either leave
them alone to do whatever they wanted in San Antonio, or
stop them and expel them from the United States.

By Sunday night, she had not made that decision.

A part of her wished the Mexicans would go ahead and
kill those stubborn Texans, so the choice would be taken
out of her hands.

Constance Rodriguez couldn't remember when she had
slept last. Sometime before this horrible business started.
And if she had eaten anything over the weekend, she
couldn't remember it. Mostly she just sat in front of the television, staring at the news reports, wondering if she
would ever see her husband alive again.

Early on, other than being terrified for Dave's safety, she
had felt conflicted. She was a Mexican citizen, after all. She
had friends and relatives who lived south of the border. She
loved her adopted homeland, but she also loved her native
country. She knew that despite the widespread corruption,
there were plenty of good, honest, hardworking Mexican citizens who despised the crooks who ran things. None of them
were to blame for what was happening now. And to be
honest, she could even feel some sympathy for those who
felt that the Alamo, along with a lot of other territory, had
been unfairly taken from Mexico over the years. Every new
treaty had carved away at Mexico's influence and power.
Mexico had always gotten the short end of the stick, and that
wasn't right.

But the Reconquistadores lost her sympathy and support
when they turned to violence. She had seen the video taken
in Alamo Plaza three days earlier. She knew, as the rest of the
country was coming to realize, that it was no fake. Dave and
his friends had saved lives on that horrible day. They were
the true heroes in this affair, and anyone who called them terrorists was either sadly misguided or deliberately lying to
promote a political agenda ... like that bitch in the White
House had done at first until she realized that her attitude
might cost her some potential votes in the next election.

Yes, the country was coming around. That was obvious from
watching the news reports. Even some of the die-hard liberals
were uncomfortable with the idea of allowing foreign troops to
operate on American soil and kill American citizens. The coldblooded murder of the GI who had been driving that truck
during the attack that morning had been the last straw for many
Americans.

There ought to be something she could do, Constance thought as she sat there numbly on the sofa and watched TV
That Mexican general was strutting around in his command
post, looking haughty as he was interviewed by some reporter. Constance hated him.

Maybe, she thought, maybe it was time General Salgado
learned how some of his fellow Mexicans felt about him.

Her cell phone was beside her on the sofa. She picked it
up, and without pausing to think too much about what she
was doing, she began to make some calls.

By nightfall on Sunday, Phil was mostly incoherent. He lay
on the love seat in the office muttering, and sometimes
Evelyn could make out enough of what he was saying to
know that he thought he was back in Kuwait and Iraq. He
wasn't responding to the antibiotics that Doc had given him,
and the fever was persistent despite medication, too. He was
burning up inside and strangling on the infection in his lungs.

At midnight, Dave, Stark, and Mahone gathered near the
diorama depicting the original battle of the Alamo. Bullets
had shattered the glass enclosing the display, and splinters of
broken glass glittered in the candlelight as they lay among
the tiny figures of Texans and Mexicans from long, long ago.

"This was when the Alamo was supposed to go back under
American control," Dave said. "This should have all been
over now."

Mahone said, "It's a shame things didn't work out that
way. I try to tell myself that protecting the Alamo is worth
it ... but at the same time, I have to wonder. It's just an old
building, after all."

"An old building that a hundred and eighty men fought
and bled and died for," Stark said. "But what they really died
for was time ... time for Sam Houston to get his army
together. Santa Anna's pride lost Texas for him. He could've gone around San Antonio and left a small force here to keep
the fellas in the Alamo bottled up while the rest of his army
went after Houston. Those Texicans wouldn't have stood a
chance if Santa Anna had caught up to him earlier. As it was,
they had no business winnin' at San Jacinto, if you look at
it from a military point of view."

"No business but fate," Dave said.

"Yeah" Stark smiled. "You can look at it like that, too"

"I think I'll try to get a little sleep. If Salgado runs true to
form, he'll attack again, first thing in the morning."

Dave found himself a quiet corner, sat down on the floor,
and propped his back against the adobe wall behind him. The
adobe was cool through his shirt, but it warmed up some as
he leaned against it. The earth-of which adobe was made,
after all-was like that. It drew warmth from the people who
walked upon it and gave it back to them. It sustained them.
Even though he couldn't feel it because of the floor, Dave
sensed the soil of Texas underneath him. Sacred soil, if there
could be such a thing, not only because it had been watered
by the blood of those long-ago defenders, but also because it
was Texas. A special place.

A special people.

One phone call begat many, as the word spread and
spread. And because of that, people began to arrive in the
vicinity of the Alamo early the next morning, well before
dawn. They came from all over San Antonio and its suburbs,
from Bandera and Kerrville in the hill country, from New
Braunfels and San Marcos and Austin up the Interstate 35
corridor, from Seguin and Beeville and Karnes City, from
Refugio and Goliad and Victoria, even some from Houston
and Corpus Christi and Dallas who drove for hours through
the night to get there.

Since the army had withdrawn from downtown, the task
of keeping civilians away from the Alamo had fallen to the
San Antonio police department. They blocked the roads leading in and set up checkpoints so that no one could get near
the Alamo who didn't have any official business being there.

But despite the orders from the chief, a lot of these cops
knew exactly what had happened in Alamo Plaza on the previous Friday. They knew that some of their own had died at
the hands of men who were probably connected with the
Mexican military, and they knew that even more cops would have died if not for the actions of the courageous men who
were now besieged inside the old mission.

So when people began to show up wanting to demonstrate
their support for those new Texas heroes ... well, downtown
San Antonio had a lot of streets, not to mention the San Antonio River and the historic Riverwalk that ran alongside it
and the underground passages that connected the Rivercenter
Mall to it, and it stood to reason that the cops couldn't watch
everywhere at once....

So as the sky grayed with the approach of dawn, they
came, first a handful, then a few dozen, then scores of
common people, some Anglos, some Hispanics, some blacks,
American citizens and legal immigrants alike.

All because of what Constance Rodriguez had started.

General Salgado looked over his shoulder and frowned at
what he saw. He had dispatched some of his men to block the
streets and keep that gringo rabble away. Where were the
American police? They were supposed to keep the streets
clear, so that Salgado and his men could operate unhindered.

But now there were at least a hundred demonstrators
nearby, and he heard their hated chant quite clearly: "Remember the Alamo! Remember the Alamo!"

Things were getting out of hand. He had toyed with his enemies for several days now, a deliberate choice because he
wanted to rub the noses of the Americans in their powerless
shame for as long as possible before he demonstrated
Mexico's newfound strength. The American media had cooperated in this, of course.

But in the past eighteen to twenty-four hours, Salgado had
begun to detect a shift in the atmosphere. Even the idiots
who were quick to blame their own country for everything
bad had started to question whether or not America was really at fault in this matter, and wonder if the country was
being taken advantage of. Americans were notorious among
their enemies for continuing to slumber long after they
should have woken up to their danger, but even a sleeping
giant could be roused sooner or later. Salgado didn't want
that.

It was time to end this farce, he decided. He would
commit all of his forces to one last, all-out assault.

And the Alamo would surely fall, just as it had fallen
before.

The sharp rapping on her bedroom door woke the president. She sat up, still groggy from exhaustion, and shook her
head in an effort to clear it. She had been up most of the
night, and there was a good reason for her feeling like she
had just gone to sleep less than an hour earlier-it was true.

She turned on the bedside lamp and glanced over at the
empty other half of the bed. She and her husband had slept
apart for decades now, ever since it had become obvious to
both of them that their union was nothing more than a marriage of convenience. Still, it might have been nice at times
of trouble like this to wake up and find the bastard beside her
again.

She shook that thought away and called, "Come in."

Her chief of staff, in a bathrobe, hurried into the room carrying a sheet of paper. "I knew you'd want to see this right
away," he said as he handed it to her. "It came in to Langley
about half an hour in a burst transmission with several layers
of encryption. Their operative hadn't been able to get the
intel out until now. They sent it over here as soon as it was
decrypted""

The words blurred for a second before the president's
eyes. She forced herself to concentrate on them and take in their meaning. Her eyes widened more and more as she read,
until she looked more shocked than her chief of staff had
ever seen her before.

She looked up at him and asked, "Is this true?"

"The head of the Agency assures me that their operative is
trustworthy."

"I can't afford to act on uncertain intelligence."

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but anything you do in this
situation will be a risk. My gut says this is good intel."

The president took a deep breath. "Then I have no choice
but to accept it ... because my gut says it's true, too. Get me
the commander at Fort Sam Houston ASAP." She threw back
the covers and stood up, calling after the chief of staff as he
hurried out of the room. "And call a press conference, too!"