by Ted Bell
“Good idea, Tommy, let me have her, will you? Hullo, you old buzzard, how the hell have you been? Huh?”
Damifiknow. Hellificare! Sniper replied.
“My sentiments exactly,” Hawke said, stroking her beak with great affection. “I don’t know how I’ve been and I don’t much care, either. Pretty sad lot, are we not?”
What a babe! What a bod! Sniper said, apropos of nothing. Probably just repeating what she’d heard one of the crew remark upon seeing Pippa Guinness coming aboard.
Hawke laughed. Sniper’s language grew increasingly salty with the passing years, a result of her hanging out with the loose crowd that inhabited this great barge of his. But the old girl was trained in the ancient pirate’s ways and often had warned her master of hidden or unseen dangers.
Sniper fluttered her wings and settled easily onto Hawke’s shoulder. He’d had the beautiful bird for many years and it was a comfort to feel her resting there again. She’d gotten him out of more than one scrape, sitting on that shoulder.
Quick said, “She hasn’t had breakfast, Skipper. I brought along her Cheezbits.”
Hawke held up a handful and Sniper eagerly snapped them up.
“All shipshape below, Tommy?” Hawke asked. He’d been on the bridge for a word or two with his captain, but he’d not yet had time to inspect the engine room or the communications and fire control centers.
He’d placed Quick in charge of overseeing some aspects of the yacht’s refit and weapons systems upgrade. The yacht Blackhawke was in truth more warship than wealthy man’s play toy. She had a gleaming black hull and featured an integrated combat system centered on the Aegis weapon system and the SPY-1 multifunction phased array radar. The whole kit had cost him a bloody fortune, but he took the long view in such matters. Blackhawke was both his fortress and his base of operations when on assignment abroad. He could, thankfully, well afford to have a first-rater beneath his feet when he went to sea.
“I can’t say everything went like clockwork, these things never do, but she’s certainly seaworthy, combat ready, and ready to sail, sir.”
“I had a look at the sea trial reports from the Chief Engineer. Hard to read between the lines but, superficially at least, she seems more fit than I left her.”
Quick smiled. “For a two-hundred-forty foot vessel, she runs like a bat out of hell, I’ll tell you that much, Skipper.”
“I want to be under way by midnight.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“What the hell is that noise, Tom?”
“Sounds like somebody arriving down on the dock, sir.”
“An automobile is making that horrendous sound?” Hawke said, moving to the port rail and looking down at the dock. There was a black convertible just pulling up at the foot of the gangplank, an American muscle car with its rear end jacked up at a very severe angle. A loud blat of exhaust wafted up as the monster’s throttle was depressed.
The convertible top suddenly lifted up off the windscreen and began folding back. It revealed Stokely Jones sitting behind the wheel of the wild machine, waving up at him, a big smile stretched across his face.
Hawke smiled back and handed Quick the bird.
Stoke was back. Ambrose was aboard.
His team was together again. They were headed into the thick of it once more.
Alex Hawke was finally feeling alive again.
30
PRAIRIE, TEXAS
L ook outside, Sheriff! What the heck’s going on out there?” Homer said, slamming down his Pepsi and half getting to his feet to look over the top of the booth.
Franklin looked up from his cream of barley soup and sandwich. He twisted his head around so that he, too, could look out the front windows. He saw a man in dungaree coveralls running past the drugstore windows. He was moving at a pretty good clip for a lazy Saturday afternoon. A second later, he saw an old yellow dog bounding after the man, both of them moving lickety-split up the sidewalk.
“Missed his bus,” Franklin drawled and returned to his soup.
“Prairie ain’t got any buses,” Homer said.
“Well, there’s that.”
The sheriff took a bite of his grilled cheese and smiled. Nobody made better grilled cheese sandwiches than Virgil Buff at the Rexall drugstore. Nobody even came close.
The two lawmen had knocked off around one and left the courthouse. Out of sheer habit, they’d ambled directly across the street to the drugstore luncheonette for a bite. It was a warm December day and the overhead fans inside were spinning lazily. The smell of fried onions in the air made Franklin hungry coming in the door. There was a stack of newspapers set on the table by the screen door and he took one.
From his station behind the long Formica counter, owner Roy Sewell waved them over to the last available booth, halfway down on the right. By the averted looks he and Homer received entering and sitting down, Franklin wasn’t sure he had too many friends left around this town. But, you know, he’d always said, the law wasn’t some kind of popularity contest.
People liked it when the law was on their side and didn’t like it when it wasn’t. No mystery there.
Roy came over and took their order, nodding when both men said, “The usual.” They sat for a few moments in silence and then Homer piped up, “How’s your paper goin’? You only got a few days left before you go to Key West.”
“Almost done.”
“You happy with it?”
“I guess so, Homer. I said my piece anyway.”
“I hear on the news that pretty woman Secretary of State is even going to be there. What’s her name? Consuelo something or other. Cuban, I believe. I’ve seen her on the TV here a lot lately. Say, you nervous about getting up in front of all those fancy Washington folks?”
“I’m nervous about being gone away so long, to tell you the honest truth.”
“We’ll be all right. Don’t worry. We got Wyatt.”
“Yep. We got Wyatt.”
In truth, the town had been pretty quiet since the afternoon about a week ago here that the little Mexican boy, Manuelito, had gone to his reward out at the Brotherwood place. There had been a sizable outpouring of grief in the town’s small but growing Latino community. Even a few demonstrators and more questions raised about the inhumanity of the U.S. immigration laws, and so forth and so on. Some locals, Hispanics and others, blamed the sheriff for the child’s death since the boy had been in Dixon’s care when he passed on. Nothing you could do about that. People think what they’re going to think.
Since the boy apparently had no family left in Mexico, Franklin had arranged for Manuelito to be buried in the small plot behind St. Mary’s. It was the only Catholic church in town, and the priest there was an old friend of Franklin’s. The sheriff had spoken at the graveside and tried to express his true feelings about the loss of a child in these kinds of circumstances. He wasn’t sure he had, but he hoped he’d given some comfort to the folks who mourned. Two families had stepped forward and volunteered to take in Manuelito’s surviving brothers.
“Sit down and eat your lunch, Homer,” Franklin said. His deputy had popped up again, upsetting his water glass and spilling it directly onto Franklin’s plate. Ruined what was left of a perfectly good sandwich.
“Sheriff, something funny’s going on out there. Look at all the people going by. They’re all running. Like they were scared or something.”
Franklin wiped his mouth with the paper napkin and stood up, sliding out of the booth.
“Come on, Homer,” he said as soon as he saw the faces of the townspeople rushing past the drugstore windows. Homer was right. Something about their expressions said they weren’t running to something but rather away from something.
“What’s going on, Sheriff?” Homer said, adjusting his short brim and sliding out of the booth, “A twister or something?”
“That’s what we’re about to go find out. Go ahead. I’ll settle us up with Roy.”
Homer was first out the door and he was almost
bowled over by Frank Teague, a big gangly kid who was the all-state center on the high school basketball squad. He had his baby sister in his arms. Right behind Frank were his mother and grandmother. Farther down Main Street was another group of citizens fleeing some unseen danger.
“Miz Teague,” Homer was saying as Dixon stepped out into the street, “where are you running to? What the heck’s going on?”
She paused a second, all out of breath, and said, “It’s some kind of trouble, Sheriff! A whole bunch of outlaw motorcycles. They’ve got guns!”
“How many?”
“Maybe twenty or thirty, far as I could tell. Bad. Looks like the Hell’s Angels or somebody like that. I heard they already shot up some cars. Blew out a store window.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“I don’t know, Sheriff. Everybody kinda panicked.”
“Where are they now?”
“Still down the road a piece, I guess,” the widow Teague said, looking fearfully over her shoulder. “I saw them stopped along the two-lane outside of town. You know, just before you get to Gray’s Mobil station. They’re probably headed into town! Somebody better do something, Sheriff!”
“Yes, ma’am. It’ll be all right. Everybody needs to get off the streets. Right now. You go tell everybody you see. Go on, now.”
“Para Salvados,” Homer whispered to Dixon. “PS 13, right, the same guys we saw down at the bullring?”
“Could be,” the sheriff said. He was already thinking that’s who it was. In the last forty-eight hours, he’d had a few death threats on the phone and one in the mail postmarked Laredo. Daisy’d gotten some very disturbing email. He’d heard rumors from various Latino members of the department that down in Nuevo Laredo, some people were blaming him for the death of the little Mexican boy. Tiger Tejada was no doubt stirring the pot.
The woman set off at a run up Main to catch up with her fleeing family. Franklin stepped aside to let other people go by. You could hear the beginning of a faint and distant thunder to the south. Pretty soon here, they’d be entering town at the bottom of Main Street. That would be about eight blocks to Franklin’s left. A sound like approaching thunder grew perceptibly louder.
“Homer.”
“Yessir.”
“Is Wyatt asleep? Get Wyatt on the radio and tell him to get some officers out here on the street. Anybody he can find in the office and on the radio. OK? Tell him to look out the window. We got a potential panic if he doesn’t already know that by now. I want everybody off the street, now. Tell him I want everybody wearing Kevlar, too.”
“Yessir. How ’bout you?”
“I’m going to try and find out what we’re looking at here.”
“You want this?” Homer asked, pulling out his Smith & Wesson. Franklin looked at it a second. He didn’t carry often, for two reasons. He was trying to set a good community example. And he’d once killed a whole lot of people at close range and was trying to live out the balance of his life without repeating that experience.
Times change.
He took the gun.
“We ain’t got a whole lot of time here, Homer. Now, go on, git over there and help Wyatt.”
FOLKS WERE STREAMING out of Roy’s Rexall now, and Dixon had to squeeze through an onrush of frantic people just to get through the door. He found Virgil, the short-order cook, locking up the cash register and the owner, Roy, breaking the breech of a shotgun he kept behind the counter to make sure it was loaded. Franklin knew he kept it loaded with double-ought buckshot. Wasn’t ideal, but better than nothing.
“Roy, you got a quick way to get up on your roof?” The drugstore was on the ground floor of an old four-story brick building with unobstructed views south down Main Street.
Roy vaulted over the counter. “Out the back, Sheriff. Fire escape steps leading up there. You want to go up there?”
“No. I’d like you up there with your shotgun, Roy. Just in case. Will you do that?”
“You got it, Sheriff. Heck is going on?”
“Outlaw motorcycle gang.”
“We’ll go scope it out.”
“Don’t show yourself unless you see a signal from me. And for Pete’s sake hold your fire.”
Roy nodded and then he and the short-order man headed to the back and the dark hallway that led to the rear of the old Victorian red brick building. Dixon hurried back out the front door and onto the narrow sidewalk.
The crowd had thinned out completely, only one or two still on the street. To the south, as far as he could tell, Main Street looked empty all the way to the edge of town. Looked like most folks had disappeared indoors or gotten in their vehicles and hightailed it out of town. In only a few minutes, the townspeople had evacuated.
The approaching rumble was louder now. Much louder. They were getting close. And there were a lot of them, too, kicking up dust and sending a chalky cloud up into the blue skies over the little town.
Dixon walked out into the center of the empty street. He looked up at the top of the building and saw Roy and Virgil up there on the roof, looking down over the parapet. Across the street, the courthouse had faces in every window. No officers had appeared yet which was probably just as well. Let these boys have their big parade and then just keep on going.
Franklin started walking south down the center of the street. The roar of the engines was getting very close. He’d walked half a block when he saw the first of them coming six blocks away. It was a whole lot more than twenty or thirty of them. From the look and sound, it was more like a hundred of them. Big bikes, too.
They were riding four abreast up Main, moving at a slow speed, maybe ten miles an hour. There were at least twenty or thirty rows of four behind the leaders. The chopper noise, now that there were buildings on both sides, was so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think.
He did hear a shout to his right and saw Wyatt and Homer emerge from the courthouse entrance with a couple of other officers. He could see a few more bunched up behind them. All three outside the door had riot guns and were wearing Kevlar sport-coats and Franklin had to make a split second decision about whether or not he wanted uniforms on the street. Their presence could serve to incite what was maybe going to be a peaceful demonstration or show of force or whatever these boys had in mind.
He turned to Homer and Wyatt and cupped his hands.
“Back inside!” he shouted. “Get everybody to stay out of sight and stay down unless you hear different. Let the riders pass on through!”
“What’s that?” Wyatt cried. His hearing wasn’t too good.
“Go back inside!” the sheriff shouted as loud as he could. Homer gave a signal that he understood and the men retreated back into the courthouse building. Twenty seconds later, all the faces had just about disappeared from the windows.
The rumbling machines, mostly stripped down Harleys flashing chrome, were half a block away and showed no signs of slowing or stopping at the sight of a lone man in the middle of the street, standing astride the center line. Franklin scrutinized the outlaws, but they were still too far away to make out the faces of the front four.
All wore polished motorcycle chains, skull earrings and nose rings, wraparound shades, bandannas, and greasy Levis. On their bare torsos, the leather gear of the Para Salvados. Each massive-armed and bearded rider wore the white death’s head symbol plainly visible on the front of his black helmet. They all maintained a very precise formation, with at least three feet separating the bikes, and they kept to a speed of around ten miles an hour.
When the choppers entered the courthouse block, he could finally make out a few of the riders. Most of them he’d seen that night at the Plaza del Toros. Then he made eye contact with the rider on the far right. It was Tres Ojos himself, Tiger Tejada. El jefe, the gang leader, riding low in the saddle, reached down with his left hand and pulled out a sawn-off shotgun from a fringed holster below the seat of his bike.
Tejada was maybe a hundred yards away. He aimed his stubby weapon directly at the sheriff
’s midsection. Out of the corner of his eye, Franklin saw Homer re-emerge from the courthouse doors. He was carrying a pump action riot control shotgun. Franklin couldn’t wave him away because any sudden movement at this point was a very bad idea. He looked quickly to the rooftop where Roy waited, found his eyes and shook his head “no.” He could only hope the man understood his desire not to provoke a fight. It was then that Tejada suddenly raised his own gun over his head, pointed into the air, and fired twice.
It was a signal for everyone on a motorcycle.
Guns came out. Rifles. Shotguns. Riders in the middle of the pack fired their weapons into the air. Between shots, they shouted “Viva Mexico! Reconquista! Viva Mexico!” It seemed like everybody was shooting. The sound of their shouting, even their gunfire, was almost lost in the deep heavy rumble of a hundred or more growling machines. Franklin held his gun in his right hand, hanging loosely by his side.
He left it there as he stared at Tiger Tejada, shaking his head from side to side as the first row of bikes bore down on him.
He never raised his weapon or took his eyes off Tiger. No, he just stood there in the street and prayed that Homer or Roy up on the roof with his shotgun didn’t do any damn fool thing to disrupt their protest ride or parade or whatever you want to call it. He wasn’t trying to be a hero, a man alone standing his ground or any of that kind of nonsense. He knew he was going to die. He was just pretty sure this wasn’t the way he was going to do it.
Anyway, the bikes were on him before he’d had a chance to move out of the way. Suddenly, Tiger’s right fist shot into the air and all the bikes braked to a stop in unison, kicking up a choking cloud of dust, but staying in formation.
Tiger had stopped a foot away.
“Ola,” he grinned.
“How you doing today?”
“Not bad, man. You know.”
“What can we do for you?”
“Nice town you got,” he said, looking around, the sun glinting off the silver bangle hanging from his ear.