by Tom Kratman
"Hush child. You know I will."
It had not been without difficulty that Montoya had persuaded the sister to leave the mission with the infants. Ultimately, though, his reasoning had prevailed. "Get out of here, Sister. Somebody will have to look out for the little ones."
And so the sister had formed her charges into a column of twos and let young parents like Elpidia bid choking goodbyes.
As the little ones, lamblike, followed the nun to the gate, Elpidia raced to the wall for a last glimpse.
* * *
A broadly grinning Akers met Sister Sofia as she began to lead the column of children out the gate. "Sister," he greeted.
Believing that Akers was one with "the enemy," some hundreds of whom were gathered by the operation headquarters to watch the peaceful surrender, the sister halted briefly, looked him over once, then semi-snubbed him.
"I'm Sergeant Akers, Sister. How many children do you have? And how old?"
"I have twenty-six children following me, Sergeant. They range from little Pedro, here; less than a year, up to age twelve."
"Thank you, Sister. Now if you will follow me, please."
"Very well," answered Sofia. Turning her head over her shoulder she called, "Follow me, children."
"Sister?" asked one of the elder ones, Josefina by name. "What's going to happen to us? Once it is over, I mean."
Again the sister stopped, looking mournfully behind her. "I do not know, child." She could never have imagined the years of solitary confinement that lay before her if the FBI was to have its way.
* * *
"That nun looks about ready to turn around and go back," announced the spotter of a two man sniper team from the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team.
"What do I do if she does turn around?"
"Drill her," said the spotter to the sniper. "Can't let her take the kids back inside."
"Got it," whispered the sniper, settling his cross hairs on the sister's head, a foot or so above little Pedro's. Pedro was in no danger, however; the sniper was a master.
* * *
Crying, "Pedro," softly, Elpidia didn't notice that her rifle was still slung over her shoulder as she climbed the ladder inside the wall for a last glimpse of her son. Parting was more than a mother's heart, even a young mother's . . . perhaps especially a young mother's, could bear.
* * *
"Armed target, bearing eleven o'clock," announced the spotter. "Take it."
"On it," said the sniper, making the minute correction to the new target. A slim, long-haired target ascended into his cross hairs. The sniper's trigger finger had already been given the unvoiced command, "fire" when the more conscious part of his mind realized his target was just a young girl.
The sniper flinched in surprise, but not by much. His finger still closed, the rifle still fired, and the recoil still rocked him back.
In the sniper's view, his target—struck by her left shoulder rather than her heart, so much had his flinch accomplished—spun away and fell from view.
* * *
As if in slow motion, or in one of those dreams where one seems to move as if through a thickened liquid, Elpidia felt the bullet, heard as much as felt it pass through the complex of bones in her left shoulder, then was forced away from the ladder by the power of the blow. The ground rushed up at her, but also in slow motion. She struck the ground in a cloud of dust raised by the impact of her limp body.
Only a short moment passed before the immediate shock wore off and Elpidia was overwhelmed by the pain of shattered bone and burning bullet track. She screamed.
Miguel had already been running for Elpidia, to stop her, when he heard the bullet crack overhead. In his view the girl spun, oh so slowly, away from the ladder and collapsed to the ground below.
When he heard her high-pitched, shattering scream Miguel's mind turned half to mush.
* * *
Sofia heard the shot, then heard Sergeant Akers' mutter, "Shit," then shout "Down!" before diving himself for a nearby ditch to show the children the way. For a moment only was Sofia frozen. Then she turned and shouted, "Back to the mission, children. Run!"
Sofia did not see Akers draw his pistol. If she had, she would have seen it pointed not at her, but in the general direction of the FBI.
Gathering her skirts around her with one hand, Sofia tried to follow the fleeing boys and girls to the gate. She had nearly made it when the sniper, recovered from his surprise, put a bullet through her panic-filled brain. Little Pedro was flung forward as the sister fell.
"Hit," announced the sniper, softly.
Josefina was already at the gate when she heard the shot. By the time she turned, a fiercely wailing Pedro lay upon the mission walkway. Without hesitation, Josefina ran to pick up the child. With him safely in her arms she sprinted for the greater safety of the gate.
Though the sniper tracked her progress in his scope, he did not fire. There was no point to firing; the other children had already reentered the mission.
As Josefina reached the gate, a hard hand grabbed her clothing and pulled her inside. Then an outraged Father Montoya took a mostly covered kneeling firing position and scanned for targets. Most especially did the father look for whoever had shot Sister Sofia.
* * *
"Are you all right, Elpi? Oh, God, please be all right."
Miguel didn't have the training to know that the girl's wound was nonfatal; so far and no farther had the FBI man flinched. But she wasn't talking, she didn't seem conscious, and there was blood all over her side.
Certain the girl was dead, with a wordless cry of utter anguish Miguel began climbing the same ladder from which she had been hurled. With each step upward he muttered, "Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers."
* * *
"New target. Prior location. Eleven o'clock."
Again the sniper made a minute adjustment. Again, he commanded his finger to tighten. Again the rifle rocked against his shoulder.
"Hit," he announced.
Frustrated beyond words, Montoya saw only a spurt of dust to mark the sniper's position. Not a chance. They're behind cover from here. With a sigh of regret he withdrew the rifle from his shoulder, then leaned against the rough-hewn gate to close it. Once it was in place he lowered the bar.
Already some of his people were rushing to the still warm and breathing Elpidia . . . and rapidly cooling Miguel.
Chapter Six
From the transcript at trial: Commonwealth of
Virginia v. Alvin Scheer
DIRECT EXAMINATION, CONTINUED
BY MR. STENNINGS:
Q. Alvin, I know it's hard to remember. It's been a long time and a lot has happened. But try to recall and tell the Court how you felt about the mission.
A. I remember being mad. Really mad. See, it weren't a fair fight, not at all. Them poor folks in the mission, young kids most of them, they didn't stand a chance.
They made you proud though. Made you think a little on olden days . . . an' Texas . . . and a whole bunch of other things that people mostly done forgot.
My old pappy come on over to watch my TV during the assault. He kept whistling something . . . sounded sort of familiar. I asked him what it was.
He told me, "It's 'Deguello,' boy. The 'throat cut' song. And ain't they a bunch of cutthroats, too?"
MS. CAPUTO: Objection. Hearsay.
MR. STENNINGS: Not offered for the truth of the matter asserted, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Overruled.
* * *
Austin, Texas
Schmidt fumed and raged. "Murderers! Butchers! Goddamit, Juani, this has gone far enough!"
Nagy just shook his head while staring at the television. "My man Akers," he announced, "told me your brother's folks did not open fire at all, let alone first, Governor. No matter what GNN may be saying."
"Then what happened?" demanded the governor.
"Akers didn't know; not the whole story. But he was definite that the first shot came from the feds. The second�
�the one that killed the nun—came from the feds. That the third came from the feds and that there was not a fourth."
"Then what's all that shooting sound they put on the TV?"
Schmidt answered, "They dubbed it in, Juani. Afterwards."
He turned to Nagy, "How'd your man get away?"
"He said there was a ditch by the gate. That he jumped into that and waited for nightfall. Said he wasn't too worried about being shot by the mission folks, but that he wouldn't be too surprised if the feds took a shot at him. Oh, he was in a fine rage . . . and Sergeant Akers is never angry."
"In a ditch, was he?" Jack mused.
* * *
Qui Nhon Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1966
The helicopters had radioed for friends, then proceeded to do whatever they could themselves to help Montoya and Schmidt with their own door guns. It helped, but it wasn't quite enough.
Montoya recited "Ave Maria" as he poked his head and rifle over the wall of the ditch in which he and Jack sheltered. Blam, blam, blam, went the rifle and two of the pair's assailants fell into bleeding, choking, shrieking ruin not fifteen meters from the ditch. A burst of fire drove Jorge's head down again.
Overhead one helicopter made a low pass from Montoya's right. Its left side gunner fired a long burst into the tree line before the pilot pulled his nose up and around to line up for another pass. Jorge saw tracers outline the helicopter even in the bright morning light.
It all seemed futile to the barely conscious, bleeding Schmidt. With a radio between them and the helicopters, the choppers could have cooperated with Montoya, and vice versa. As it was, the shot-up radio being long abandoned, they were each guessing at what the other would do or had seen.
"Jorge!" Schmidt cried as three Viet Cong leapt into the ditch, not far from where he lay.
Montoya turned, attempted to fire only to have his magazine run dry after the first, missed, round. With an inarticulate shout he drew a knife and charged the VC.
Whatever the guerillas had been expecting to greet them in the ditch, it apparently was not a hundred and fifty pounds of shrieking Mexican fury. They turned and clambered back out again, shouting for help. All except the last got away. That one's escape was halted by Montoya's knife, buried eight inches in his back. He slid face against the earth to the foul dirt below.
* * *
Jack reached a sudden decision—sudden, although its nature and implications had been torturing him for days. "Juani, let me roll my division. I've got over three hundred tanks and a like number of other armored vehicles. And they're manned by Texans, Juani. They won't let your brother go down."
Spanish eyes flared. "You want to start a civil war, Jack? We lost the last one, remember?"
Schmidt smiled. His multi great-grandfather, the captain, and the governor's, the sergeant, had fought side by side in that lost cause, members of Hood's Texas Brigade. His eyes turned and looked over the governor's bookshelves. He walked over to one and selected from it an old, red leather-bound volume. He checked the index and then opened to a page.
A nod; it was the right page. Schmidt's eyes scanned briefly before he began to read aloud. " 'There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged . . . The war is inevitable—and let it come. I repeat it, sir, let it come.'
"Patrick Henry said that, Governor." Schmidt closed the book slowly, reluctantly.
"Jack, I just don't know."
"Juani," Schmidt persisted, "we won the civil war we had before the one we lost. Maybe you should remember that. Come to think of it, Americans won the civil war before the Texas revolution, too . . . if you'll remember that."
He didn't need to open the book again to say, " 'The battle is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.' "
* * *
Dei Gloria Mission, Waco, Texas
The children had kept vigil over the dead; all but Elpidia. She, bandaged, alone and doped to deaden horrifying pain both physical and mental, lay in the mission's tiny infirmary.
Slowly, reluctantly, Father Montoya closed the Bible on the last Mass he ever expected to say on mission grounds. It was a combination Mass and funeral service for Miguel, who lay, eyes closed in eternal slumber, on a table in the chapel. Miguel's body and ruined cranium lay under a black shroud.
Next to Miguel, Sister Sofia slept as soundly.
Father gestured to the corpses. "Why did these two good people die?" he asked rhetorically.
Looking at his charges, Montoya said, "Children, I want to tell you a story. It is of a place that once was and could be again. There was a time when we, here in the United States, did not murder unborn babies. There was a time when people took care of other people—well—and didn't ask the government to spend nearly half the wealth of the country every year in order to take care of people . . . badly.
"There was a time when we were not afraid of the truth here in this country, a time when words meant something real, when they were not just things to be twisted to suit a particular set of politics.
"There was a time when our people were brave and free and strong . . . and honest too, most of them. There was even a time when the faith of our fathers was not considered to be an 'enemy of the state' . . ."
* * *
The breeze rifling the priest's hair was warm, unseasonably so for the lateness of the season on the flat Texas prairie. The old, starched jungle fatigue jacket Montoya had removed for mass was again covering his torso, though it was itself covered by an armored vest courtesy of Schmidt.
The priest disdained wearing a helmet.
An even half dozen of the boys sat with Montoya under cover of a low shed. He didn't know if the thermal imagers Jack had told him of would see through the sheet metal roof. Even if they could, he reasoned, they were unlikely to be able to tell the difference between the priest and the boys and the eight or so animals that usually slept here.
Best I could think to do.
Not for the first time the priest wondered, and worried, about the morrow. Am I doing the right thing? Have I put the kids in the safest place? Can we hold them? Will Jack come riding over the hill to the rescue? Do I want a war?
On the last point the priest was really rather sure; he did not want a war. Yet, so it seemed to him, sometimes a fight was the best way to avoid a war. And, looking down the road a few years, he saw a war coming.
* * *
"Think the old man in there knows we're coming, sir?" asked his driver of Sawyers.
"Doesn't much matter, does it Ricky? We could walk in armed with rocks and still beat the crap out of them."
"Yes, sir," the driver grinned.
"Not much longer now," Sawyers muttered to no one in particular.
Although not directed to him, the driver answered anyway, "We're ready when you are, sir."
We're not, you know. We might have been. If it were not more important to propagandize you kids into the party line than to train you to fight, we might have been.
Sawyers sighed for lost—stolen—opportunities.
* * *
"You wanted me, padre?" the boy Julio asked.
"I . . ." the priest hesitated, "I just wanted a few words with you Julio. About Miguel."
"He was my friend, Father; my best friend. They murdered him. In a few hours they will attack and I will have the chance to shoot the people who shot him."
"Julio . . . you will likely never get the man who shot Miguel and Elpidia. That one . . . he was an expert, very special. Not to be risked on something like us. The people who are coming in tomorrow morning are not too different from you. Boys, most of them. Maybe a little older. Just boys like you though, doing a job they believe in."
Julio raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Are you telling me I shouldn't shoot them then, father?"
"No, son. You'll have to fight; same as me. But when you fight . . . Julio . . . hijo mio . . . remember, good men sometimes fight for bad causes. Try not to hate."
* * *
; The assault came from the east. With the newly risen sun shining brightly into the eyes of the defenders, Sawyers confirmed his orders and gave the command, "Roll."
The two loaned tanks led the way, driven and manned by hastily familiarized agents of the BATF. Behind the tanks came Sawyers' own two companies, riding safe in their Light Armored Vehicles.
To the south, a crane converted to a tower was raised to provide the Hostage Rescue Team's snipers a clear field of fire down into the Dei Gloria mission compound. Only very close to the south wall—and north and east of some of the buildings—was the team's line of sight blocked.