Tyranny (27 page)

I
t was sort of like they were in a fort surrounded by hostile Comanches in one of those old Western movies G.W. loved so much, thought Kyle as he stood on the ranch house porch watching the stars begin to fade while the ebony sky overhead slowly turned gray. Dawn wasn't far off now.

Slade Grayson hadn't pinned down the hour on the deadline he'd given them. He'd just said that they had until morning to surrender.

Knowing Grayson, he'd tell the Chinese to attack at the crack of dawn. More dramatic that way, and the man loved his drama, even though there were no TV news cameras around to record it this time.

Kyle was sure that after the fact . . . after he and G.W. and all their allies had been wiped out in a bloody slaughter . . . camera crews would come in and broadcast a carefully staged scenario to the rest of the world. They would make it look like the ranch's defenders were the bad guys, the aggressors, the radical, violent right-wing extremists who had caused the whole thing.

And too many people would just nod solemnly and think that, yes, those awful, evil conservatives are just like that, then go on eagerly lining up at the trough of their masters, never giving a thought to the fact that one of these days, the same sort of hammer inevitably would fall on them, too.

G.W. came out onto the porch behind him, carrying a cup of coffee.

“Thinkin' deep thoughts?”

“Thinking sad thoughts. What we do here isn't going to change anything, you know that, don't you, G.W.?”

G.W. sipped his coffee and said, “Do you recall me sayin' anything about wantin' to change the world?”

“Well, no . . .”

“I'm doin' this because I won't be put off land that rightfully belongs to me. I'm not doin' it to make a statement or to open anybody's eyes. I'm doin' it because I'm a stubborn old bastard who won't be pushed around by the government or anybody else. As for the rest of you . . . well, I reckon you got your own reasons. I'm not sure any of those reasons are good enough to be dyin' over, but I reckon that's up to you.” G.W. paused. “I still wish you'd light out for the mountains, all of you. Scatter and go back to your lives.”

“My life is here now,” Kyle said quietly. “I don't really care about making a statement, either. You're my granddad and I love you. That's enough of a statement for me.”

G.W. put his free hand on Kyle's shoulder and squeezed.

“Son, you've made this old man proud.”

“It's about time, I suppose.”

G.W. shook his head and said, “See, that's where you're wrong. I've
always
been proud of you, even when it looked like you'd lost your way, because I knew the sort of stuff you had inside you. I knew you'd come around and figure things out.”

“If that's true, you had a lot more faith in me than I ever had.”

“More than likely. That's what family's for, isn't it?”

A grin spread across Kyle's face. He reached down to the Winchester that was leaning against the porch railing and picked it up.

“Let's go kick some Chinese ass,” he said.

“Go get you some coffee first,” G.W. said. “We want to be good and awake for this.”

 

 

The Chinese positions had been ablaze with light all night. Generators chugged constantly. The so-called UN forces were trying to intimidate the ranch's defenders and make Kyle, G.W., and the others realize just how hopeless their cause was.

That was wasted effort. The men on the other side of the fence knew exactly how hopeless things looked for them. Each man had searched his own heart, realized that he was going to die, probably not long after the sun came up, and accepted that fact as necessary.

Nearly two hundred years earlier, a small group of rough men had stood together inside an old mission in San Antonio and come to that same conclusion. A lot of things had changed in Texas since then.

But not the hearts and spirits of true Texans. That same love of liberty burned just as brightly inside G.W. and Kyle Brannock, Thad Bowman, Dave Sparks, and all the others. That had never changed and, God willing, never would.

Texan to the bone. Texan to the blood.

Bring it, you sons of bitches, thought Kyle as he stood behind one of the pickups parked near the fence and watched the Chinese troops moving around on the other side of the highway.

The sun wasn't up yet, but there was enough light for the defenders to see the enemy getting ready to launch their attack. There was nothing secretive about it. With such a huge advantage in numbers and firepower, there was no reason for the Chinese to sneak around and try to hide what they were doing.

The orange glow on the eastern horizon brightened even more. In a matter of minutes, that fiery orb would appear, a sliver at first, then rising steadily higher as its light spread across the West Texas landscape.

Before that happened, Slade Grayson walked out alone into the middle of the deserted highway.

“Brannock!” he shouted. “G. W. Brannock!”

“I hear you!” G.W. called from where he stood beside Kyle.

“Last chance, old man! You've defied the federal government long enough. Your time's up! Open that gate, and you and all the others come out with your hands up. You won't be hurt. You won't ever see the outside of a federal prison again, I can promise you that, but we won't cut you down like you deserve.”

“You know, Grayson, I reckon I was a little wrong about you,” G.W. said.

Even from this distance, Kyle could see the puzzled frown on Grayson's face. The government man asked, “How do you figure that?”

“I had you pegged as a bully, and most bullies are cowards at heart. But you're not yellow, Grayson. You're standin' right out there in the open, and you've got to know that I could put a bullet through your head before you could get back to cover if I wanted to.”

Grayson laughed and said, “You wouldn't do that. I'm a pretty good judge of character. I could tell right away that you think of yourself as an honorable man. You're not a murderer.”

“How about you?” G.W. asked. “Have you deluded yourself into thinkin' that
you're
an honorable man?”

That brought another laugh from Grayson. He said, “I'm a man who gets things done. That's all. And I'm getting you off that ranch.”

“Not alive, you're not.”

“So be it, then,” Grayson said with a shrug. He turned and walked at an easy, deliberate pace back toward the Chinese lines. As he went, he raised his right hand above his head and revolved it in a slow, “wind 'em up” motion.

The engines of the Chinese armored fighting vehicles rumbled to life.

Kyle took a deep breath. His heart slugged heavily in his chest. He was scared, no doubt about that. He didn't want to die, and that seemed inevitable.

Yet at the same time a great calmness spread through him. He knew he was exactly where he was meant to be, doing exactly what he was meant to be doing. There really was such a thing as destiny, after all, and this was his.

Still, there was a part of him that wished he could see Miranda one more time, take her into his arms and kiss her and tell her just how much she had come to mean to him over the past couple of weeks. Could people really fall in love that fast?

Damn right they could, he thought.

He turned to look at G.W., grinned, and said, “Here they come.”

“Yep.” G.W. raised his rifle to his shoulder. “They may take this ranch, but they're not gonna steal it. They're gonna pay for it . . . in blood.”

Red-gold sunlight burst over the land.

A thunderous, earthshaking roar of gunfire shattered the early morning quiet.

A
volley of rifle fire crashed out from the Chinese forces in the front ranks. That deadly storm of lead raked the vehicles that the ranch's defenders had arranged in a skirmish line. Kyle and the other men got off a few shots in return, but for the most part the barrage forced them to duck for cover.

As they did that, the Chinese vehicles surged forward through gaps in the line of troops and roared across the highway toward the fence. They would batter through the wire with no trouble at all.

Kyle crouched at the front of the pickup where he had taken cover and fired past its grille at one of the armored vehicles. He aimed at the tires, knowing the rifle slugs would bounce off the armor plating. The windshield was probably bulletproof, too.

Unfortunately, his shots didn't seem to have any effect on the tires. They were probably solid rubber, unable to go flat.

Machine guns mounted on the vehicles opened up, tongues of flame flickering from their muzzles. These weapons were firing armor-piercing rounds, and they ripped through the pickups, SUVs, and jeeps the defenders were using for shelter. Several men were thrown off their feet as those rounds shredded them into bloody husks.

Just before the first of the armored vehicles struck the fence, a high-pitched whine sounded. Something streaked through the air, and the Chinese vehicle exploded in a huge ball of fire. More streaks flashed in, and eye-searing blasts engulfed another pair of attackers. Explosions threw dirt and gravel high in the air and knocked over two more of the vehicles. That left just one of them untouched, and it slewed to a halt as its driver didn't know what to do.

Three helicopter gunships swooped over the highway. Their missile racks were empty now, but they were still armed with automatic weapons that scythed lead through the Chinese ground troops. With an ear-pounding
whup-whup-whup
, a pair of Hueys appeared and lowered toward the highway. Before they ever touched down, armored and helmeted men were leaping through open doors and charging into the fight with automatic weapons blazing.

Behind the bullet-battered pickup, Kyle and G.W. watched in stunned astonishment as the reinforcements took the fight to the enemy. Kyle's mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he was able to say, “Who . . . who . . .”

“Look there,” G.W. said, pointing.

Kyle looked where his grandfather indicated and saw the flag painted on the side of the nearest Huey.

It was the familiar red, white, and blue Lone Star flag.

The flag of the state of Texas.

“The governor must have sent those fellas,” G.W. said over the cacophony of battle.

“I'll bet Miranda had something to do with this,” Kyle said.

“I wouldn't doubt it a bit.”

The gunships had done an effective job of softening up the Chinese position, but the Texan troops were still outnumbered. G.W. finished thumbing fresh rounds through his Winchester's loading gate, then stood up and waved the rifle over his head.

“Let's go give those boys a hand!” he shouted to his allies.

Yelling at the top of their lungs, the surviving defenders charged out from behind the vehicles and ran to the gate. They didn't bother unlocking the chain holding it closed. They just swarmed over, leaped to the ground, and raced across the highway to join the battle.

The Chinese discipline had evaporated in the face of the sudden, unexpected attack. Now it was a wild melee that spread across the mesquite-dotted landscape, scores of individual battles or clashes between small groups. The chatter of gunfire, the bursts of explosions, the screams of dying men, all blended together in a nightmarish melody of war.

Kyle was in the middle of it, blasting away at the Chinese troops. Those bright blue helmets made it easy to find targets. He aimed not for the helmets themselves but for the visors of hard, clear plastic covering the faces of the men who wore them. If struck at an angle, those visors would cause a bullet to glance off, but a direct hit would sometimes shatter them and plow into the face behind them.

Kyle felt a moment's sympathy for the men who were dying here, but no more than that. It was entirely possible their communist masters had forced them to come over here, but they and their countrymen had embraced that destructive, insidious, blood-drenched philosophy in the first place.

Kyle was going to kill as many of them as he could.

In the chaos, he lost track of his grandfather. G.W. was somewhere in the ruckus, Kyle knew, but he didn't have time to look for him. Instead, he reloaded until he ran out of ammunition, and then he used the rifle as a club, wading in and downing one of the Chinese soldiers with a butt stroke that knocked the man's helmet off. Kyle kicked him in the head and rendered him unconscious, then moved on in search of another enemy to fight.

He had barely started looking when someone came out of the confusion and tackled him from the side. Kyle and his attacker both sprawled on the ground and rolled over a couple of times. Kyle found himself on the bottom, with Slade Grayson looming over him. Grayson's face was twisted in lines of hate as he locked his hands around Kyle's throat.

Kyle knew he had only seconds to act before Grayson's powerful thumbs crushed his windpipe. He bucked up off the ground and swung his right hand in a brutal chop against the side of Grayson's neck. That loosened the government man's grip, but didn't knock it loose.

Kyle splayed his left hand over Grayson's face and tried to dig his fingers into the man's eyes. Grayson jerked his head back. Kyle shot a short punch into his solar plexus that made Grayson gasp for breath.

Kyle was a lot shorter on air than Grayson was, though. His head spun crazily, and a red haze was beginning to drip down over his vision. He arched his back again and swung both open hands against Grayson's ears.

That finally did it. Grayson's fingers spasmed and came open. Kyle bucked like a bronco for the third time, and Grayson toppled off to the side. Kyle rolled the other way to put some distance between them as he dragged in desperate lungfuls of air—mixed, of course, with a considerable amount of dust since a huge cloud of it hung over the battlefield.

Elsewhere, not far away, guns continued to chatter and roar. Explosions threw even more dirt and grit into the air.

None of that mattered to Kyle and Grayson. To the two of them, the whole world had narrowed down to the few square yards where they staggered to their feet and resumed their battle.

Elemental, primitive fury gripped both men now as they stood toe-to-toe and slugged at each other. No fancy martial arts moves, no jumping and whirling and spinning, just brute strength and determination as they tried to batter each other into submission.

Grayson was taller and heavier, but Kyle was a little quicker. He landed three punches for every two of Grayson's. And slowly but surely, he began to force Grayson back. The government man gave ground grudgingly, but the tide had turned against him and both of them knew it.

Kyle sank a left to the wrist in Grayson's belly. As Grayson started to double over, Kyle's right first was there to meet his jaw. The blow landed solidly, with a sound like an ax cleaving a block of wood. Grayson's head slewed to the side, and his knees buckled.

He went down on those knees and stayed there as Kyle backed off a step. Slowly, Grayson shook his head as he tried to gather his wits. Kyle expected him to collapse the rest of the way.

Somehow, Grayson stayed upright. He wobbled and swayed to his feet. Fists ready, Kyle moved in to finish him off.

But before Kyle could reach him, Grayson reached under his suit jacket and brought out a small, flat automatic pistol. Through broken teeth and swollen, bloody lips, he rasped, “I wanted to . . . finish you off . . . with my bare hands . . . but you'll be just as dead . . . if I kill you this way.”

From behind Kyle, G.W. said, “Go to hell,” and a rifle blasted. Kyle felt the hot wind-rip of the bullet as it whipped past his ear. The slug struck Grayson in the center of the forehead and jolted his head back as his skull exploded outward in a grisly spray of blood and bone fragments and diseased brain matter.

This time when Grayson thudded to the ground with the pistol still unfired in his hand, there would be no getting up.

Kyle turned to see his grandfather limping toward him, old lever-action Winchester in hand. Crimson stains dotted G.W.'s work clothes here and there, but he didn't seem to be seriously injured. In fact, there was a big grin on the rancher's rugged face.

Behind G.W. came a tall, equally tough-looking man in some sort of fatigue uniform, flanked by several more soldiers. The patch on the tall man's uniform was a Lone Star flag.

Kyle realized that except for sporadic shots, the battlefield had fallen silent. He looked around and saw that the Chinese troops who were still alive had withdrawn a couple of hundred yards and formed up again, but they weren't attacking, just waiting to see what was going to happen. Kyle estimated that there were fifty or sixty of them left.

The tall man came up to Kyle and said, “I'm Colonel Thomas Atkinson. The governor sent me to give you folks a hand. It took some fancy work from our pilots to get through that no-fly zone, but I'm glad to see that we got here in time.”

Kyle was still having a little trouble catching his breath. He said, “Me, too . . . colonel. But isn't the governor . . . gonna get in a lot of trouble . . . over this?”

Atkinson grinned and said, “The mood we're all in, I don't think any of us particularly care right now.”

Kyle looked around at the bodies littering the field, the burning Chinese assault vehicles, the gunships hovering not far away, the men who had come to defend the ranch standing ready along the highway, and knew that if the UN forces wanted to resume the battle, they would have one hell of a fight on their hands.

“By the way,” Atkinson said, “a certain blond lawyer sends her regards.”

“Miranda?” Kyle asked, then realized a second later what a stupid question that was.

“That's right,” Atkinson responded with a grin. “She's a pretty determined lady. It was all we could do to make her stay in Austin with the governor.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said with a smile of his own. “I can see that.” He grew more serious. “What made the governor decide to send in troops? And . . . who are you guys?”

“Just some fellas ready to stand up for Texas, and for what's right. Maria's been putting together a force for emergencies such as this, when somebody has to stop the federal government from running roughshod over the people's rights.”

“But you're not fightin' just the federal government,” G.W. pointed out. He nodded toward the Chinese forces. “You're takin' on the UN. The whole dang world, in other words.”

“Texas versus the world,” Atkinson said. He took an unlit stub of a cigar from the pocket of his fatigues, stuck it in his mouth, and clamped his teeth down it. “Sounds like pretty fair odds to me!”

 

 

Angela Jessup hated to go into the Oval Office right now. The President had been getting reports from Texas all morning, and he was upset.

That was putting it mildly. He was on the verge of a stroke, or declaring martial law, whichever came first.

He wouldn't like hearing what Jessup had to tell him. Earlier, it had seemed impossible that the news could get any worse, but then other bulletins had started breaking. So far, only on the one cable news network the White House couldn't control, but those bastards at the other networks, in their never-ending quest for ratings, would soon start nipping at the story as well. Corporate greed would trump partisanship, at least for a little while.

Jessup took a deep breath and went in.

The President was pacing back and forth, hands behind his back, face mottled with fury. He swung toward her and snapped, “What is it? Have the UN forces wiped out those traitors yet?”

“Not exactly, sir,” Jessup replied. “The Secretary-General has ordered General Ling to hold his position.”

“Hold his position!” The President stared at her. “That's insane! The damn Chinaman still has enough troops to wipe out Brannock and his friends
and
the rebels that Mexican bitch sent in!”

“That's just it. The Secretary-General says that the actions by Governor Delgado this morning place this incident in the category of an internal problem for the United States and plans to tell the UN forces to withdraw.” Jessup grimaced as the President stared at her. “To put it bluntly, sir, things have gone too far and he's hanging you out to dry.” She paused, then added, “He wasn't too happy about the UN being dragged into a situation caused by a phony land grant and a deal with the Chinese government that stinks of graft and corruption, not to mention posing a grave threat to the health and well-being of American citizens.”

The President bared his teeth and said, “What. The. Hell. Are. You. Talking. About?”

“The land grant was a fake,” Jessup said softly. “You must have known that. And you and Senator Rutland are in bed with the Chinese to the tune of billions of dollars and millions of tons of toxic radioactive waste. I don't really
care
about any of that, Mr. President . . . but you could have told me about it so I wouldn't be operating in the dark.”

The President's breath panted between his teeth. He asked, “How did you hear about any of that?”

“The story is breaking on TV. Our friends at the networks will sweep it under the rug as much as possible, of course, but it's out on the Internet, too. Something like that . . . it never goes away. Some people will never look at you the same way again.”