by Ted Bell
Up ahead, he saw the phantom’s brake lights flash and he hit his own, mashing down on the pedal. There were no side streets so the trucker couldn’t be fixing to make a turn. He was going to stop right here in the middle of a ghost town.
Stop? For what? There was nothing here.
But the trucker was pulling up out front of a big old two-story brick building up ahead on the left. An old factory maybe, covering an entire square block. And with black holes upstairs where all the windows used to be and a wide arched entrance of some kind on the far end, like you might see at a fire station.
He swerved the Vic off the road and nipped in behind an abandoned Texaco gas station that was half burned down, almost hitting the one remaining pump with a busted gumball light on top. The Vic rolled silently over to the empty repair bay and came to a stop right under an old Hires Root Beer sign that had made it through the fire.
Homer shut the Vic down and quickly pocketed the keys, thinking: You can trust your car to the man who wears the star.
Homer wore a star, and, over his head, a faded red Texaco star was swinging in the breeze, making a creaky noise. It was shot through with rusty bullet holes. Time to go. He checked his sidearm. He checked his mini-flashlight, too, just to make sure the batteries hadn’t wore out.
He eased his car door open (even new, it tended to squeak) and climbed out of the Vic. Then he ran quickly toward the street, keeping the crumbling station building between him and the trucker’s cab. He stopped short, and peered around the edge of the building.
The Yankee Slugger was parked just outside the building. Blacked-out windows gleaming in the moonlight.
Damn. He’d been right. The Slugger had turned all its exterior lights off and pulled up outside the arched entrance to the building. Homer figured the guy (or the spook anyway) couldn’t see him now and he started moving along the deserted road beside the burned-out gas station.
Suddenly, there was a loud hiss of air brakes and then a big diesel engine growled and he saw that the wide factory door was going up. There still was not a single light shining in that building. But clearly someone was home to open the big old wooden door. Homer couldn’t hardly believe it, this was after all, a ghost town, but now the red, white, and blue cab was backing inside, was through the door, and now the door was coming down again. In the wink of an eye, the ghost rider was gone. Disappeared off the face of the earth.
Homer ran across the street, right up to the heavy door that had just slammed shut. He reached out and touched it, and it wasn’t wood at all. Solid steel. Somebody had painted it to look like old wood. Not only that, made it look like it was fading and the paint was peeling off, too. Now, why go to all that trouble? So no one passing through the ghost town would pay it any mind. That was why.
He ran quickly around the far side of the building, sidearm still holstered, but he had the Mossburg. There was a rusted out fire escape going up to the second floor. Windows up there, open. Maybe the stairs were still strong enough to hold him. No lights showing anywhere in the building. He scanned the building a second and then he saw it.
What looked like a tiny red eye up there in one of the darkened windows.
Somebody was standing up there, having a smoke. You couldn’t see anything but the cigarette’s burning coal floating in the blackness.
Another damn ghost?
A ghost didn’t worry too much about cancer sticks, Homer reckoned.
39
KEY WEST NAVAL STATION
A t three o’clock that rainy afternoon, Hawke, Congreve, and Pippa Guinness stood talking quietly. They stood just inside an alcove off the crowded hallway of the old Marine Hospital. The sleepy naval base was now a beehive of activity. At least a hundred other people jammed the hall. All were moving toward a pair of double doors leading to the cavernous base gymnasium. The crowd was restive, and a certain nervous excitement could be felt in the hall. Overnight, Conch’s Latin security conference had seen a dramatic increase in size. There was a palpable sense of urgency about the meeting. And, as Ambrose was explaining, there was a very simple reason for it:
Mexico had invaded the United States.
Rumors were swirling on Capitol Hill about a possible armed incursion by uniformed Mexican Army forces. A credible witness had reported uniformed troops moving north across his ranch at the Texas border in broad daylight. When confronted by the rancher and two of his hands, the men jumped back in their Humvees and hurried south, retreating across the border.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Border Patrol chopper, on routine patrol, had surprised a convoy of drug mules attempting to cross the border. Someone, reportedly driving a Mexican Army Humvee, had opened fire on American agents. It was common, now, to hear of Border Patrol agents being gunned down by Mexican Federales with AK-47s.
These startling episodes had naturally generated an immense public outcry in the hinterlands and capitals of every southern border state. As a result, a new sense of national urgency now surrounded the secretary’s security conference in Key West.
The voracious radio and TV pundits, and the vast blogger armies, all sensed a huge story. And all were happy to have fresh meat for the insatiable twenty-four-hour media machine. “Let’s go live to the border!” this or that anchorman would say, and then you’d see ruggedly handsome and epauletted correspondents riding right alongside the Border Patrol. The media was flocking to the border, in choppers and Humvees; or, more dashing yet, galloping through arroyos on horseback to the site of the latest attack.
The on-scene reporters noted again the woeful lack of security on America’s borders. Some, naturally, blamed the president for not securing them. Why hadn’t he just ordered a wall erected? How hard could that be? Some blamed government officials in Mexico City. Others blamed the apparent willingness of scattered Mexican field commanders to ignore our borders and accused these officers of being complicit in drug smuggling. A few thoughtful journalists actually understood that a border war with Mexico had been threatening to erupt for more than a century.
And now it seemed imminent.
In a few Washington circles, at Langley and the Bureau, it was an open secret that the vast drug gangs wielded enormous power within some Mexican military units and most certainly the Mexican police. Long simmering resentments, leftover from the War of Independence in 1846, were rising to a boil. And the American people, at least it seemed to Hawke, might be waking up at last to the real dangers along the southern flank.
In Alex’s view, everybody with an earbug and a microphone seemed to be having just a bit too much fun playing Cowboys and Indians along the Rio Grande. So far, no one had documented any of these “military” incursions on videotape. But that didn’t stop FOX NEWS, CNN, and the rest from trying to scoop each other. It was just a question of who would be first to get the story on film.
When the broad auditorium doors at last swung open, Hawke glimpsed a large oval table and rows of chairs inside a cavernous room. This vast, and pungent, location was apparently the only space large enough to accommodate the growing number of attendees. History, it seemed, was going to be played out on the sailor’s newly gleaming basketball court.
The room was filling up. Conch, trailing members of her staff, DSS, and Secret Service agents, had moved inside ten minutes earlier. She had not paused to speak to the aggressive media types pressing in around her. Nor had she even glanced at Hawke as she passed. This was hardly surprising, given recent events upstairs in her office.
Hawke, on a purely personal level, was feeling lifeless and numb, more than ready for the bloody session to get under way. From his own point of view, this pilgrimage, begun at C’s insistence, had already gotten off to a rocky start. He had meant to mend fences. Instead, he’d managed to put up a fresh wall.
He was grateful to have gotten out of Conch’s darkened office alive. Miss Guinness, who did not know the fiery Consuelo de los Reyes, was an innocent moth with no idea just how close she’d come to the flame. Her ill-timed arrival had das
hed any hopes he’d had of reconciliation. He had whisked Pippa away as quickly as possible, all the while trying to placate Conch with his eyes. He had failed miserably.
Alex Hawke and Consuelo de los Reyes had endured, to say the very least, a long and complicated relationship. It had always been, he thought, a love affair of sorts, constantly recurring, but lasting for an indefinite time, like some perennial light switch. It’s on. It’s off. It’s on again.
A year ago, the affair had plunged into darkness. After learning of Hawke’s relationship with the beautiful Chinese actress, Jet Moon, Conch had seemingly thrown the switch permanently. His phone calls went unanswered. So did his carefully composed letters. He had finally given up, imagining that he would not see her again. The idea was painful, but he had adjusted to pain before.
And now, thanks to his Chief of the Service, here he was in tropical Key West, in the midst of a brand-new romantic drama. Thanks to the lovely Miss G’s sudden appearance on stage, the long-running tragicomedy starring de los Reyes and Hawke looked to have an even unhappier ending than he’d previously thought possible.
The hallway echoed with a heady hubbub of conversation. Jostling attendees began passing through the final security checkpoint and then filing inside the auditorium. Hawke waved a greeting to his old war buddy Brick Kelly, CIA director. Brick appeared to be enjoying having a serious set-to with a couple of Air Force four-stars. A few feet away stood Peter Pell, the president’s new Defense advisor.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” the young State Department aides kept repeating, gathering people together and gently herding everyone toward the door.
“I suppose we should go inside,” Hawke said to Ambrose. He was dreading, as always, another interminable meeting, trapped inside someone else’s agenda.
“While we’re young?” Congreve said, chuckling at Hawke’s obvious discomfort.
Ambrose took Pippa’s elbow and the two made their way into the gym. Hawke followed a minute later and quickly found his seat at the table. Ambrose sat on his right and Pippa was seated at one of the chairs provided for support staff just behind Hawke. Conch sat directly across the table from him. She wouldn’t return his smile.
Suddenly, Pippa was leaning her blonde head right between Hawke and Congreve, whispering in Alex’s ear. There was a warm scent of Chanel rising from the depths of her cleavage and it was all Hawke could do to stare straight ahead.
“Yes?” Hawke said quietly.
“So sorry to bother you again. Please don’t forget we agreed to soft-pedal the Bogotá station’s role in all this. C does insist we’re not quite ready to let the Americans have that juicy bit.”
“Ah. Didn’t know that. Thanks.”
Congreve suddenly looked over at the two of them and Pippa jumped.
“Will you two please pipe down? Madame Secretary is about to speak and she’s staring directly at you both.”
“Oh, God,” Hawke said under his breath, “you’re right, she is.”
40
C onversation died down as the secretary stood. She cast her eyes about the room, gathering everyone in. Consuelo de los Reyes was a tall, elegant, and very beautiful woman. She could command a room full of star-spangled generals with a single sidelong glance, and her fiery eyes could burn or freeze at will. When she spoke, her words had weight. They seemed to hang for moments in the air before others took their place. As was her habit, she swept a wing of dark auburn hair away from her forehead before she spoke.
“First, on behalf of the president, I’d like to welcome the members of the media who’ve joined us today,” she began. The auditorium erupted into sustained laughter. Everyone present knew the secretary had pitched an all-out battle to have the electronic and print press banned from her conference. The White House, sensing a huge media opportunity, had handed Secretary de los Reyes a very public defeat.
She handled that one well, Hawke thought, sitting forward at the table. She was steaming, but you’d never know it.
“America is at war with Mexico,” she said quietly, and the room went dead still.
“I will come to that unfortunate reality shortly. But, I would like to welcome you to the magic island where I was born forty years ago today. My father and mother are Cuban. I am proud to be Hispanic-American. And grateful for this chance to share my hometown with you.
“As the president says, ‘The best pages of history are written in courage.’ We here stand at history’s front line. While Congress spends its days overreacting to yesterday’s attacks, the men and women in this room know that we must concentrate on the most likely current threats.
“Although few acknowledge it as such, there is a new front in the War on Terror. I believe the gravest danger our country faces sits right on our doorstep. Mexico is openly waging a new kind of war on America. Not just the recent border incursions and drug smuggling. Not the tunnels or the deliberate shooting of our Border Patrol agents trying to enforce the law. No. Something far more insidious.”
She paused a beat, and said, “I believe the Mexican government is using an invading illegal population as the latest weapon of mass destruction.
“I personally believe the Mexican government has encouraged and promoted illegal attacks on our country for decades. In my office, I have copies of comic book brochures, printed by the government, explaining how to violate our sovereignty. Now, the millions of illegal immigrants who cross our borders threaten entire social and economic structures. It grows worse with every passing day. We are under siege.
“Citizens living along the southern border face chaos. Many of you have read the reports from the U.S. Border Patrol. Border state law enforcement officials and agents fear the danger of total breakdown. Lawlessness is already rearing its ugly head on both sides. Borders, once sacrosanct, are under attack even as political concepts. To defend one’s borders, one risks being labeled as racist. I am not a racist. I am an American.
“As always, there are two sides to every story. This is especially true along a borderline. Many Americans want a walled fortress. It’s understandable. The Mexicans want jobs and to provide for their families. It’s understandable. But they have been encouraged by their government to think they have inalienable rights to cross illegally. And so anger and violence erupt daily on both sides of the line.
“Sheriff Franklin W.Dixon of Prairie, Texas, is with us today. I believe I see him. He’s the good guy over there in the white hat.”
The audience chuckled at the sight of the somewhat embarrassed lawman removing his white Stetson.
“In our first session tomorrow afternoon, Sheriff Dixon, as well as members of California, Arizona, and New Mexico regional law enforcement agencies and local sheriff’s departments, will provide firsthand accounts of this tragic story. They will ask for our help in solving this problem. As you know, the president has committed six thousand National Guard troops to the border. He asked me to assure you that other measures are being taken to solve this situation.
“But the broader crisis we face in Latin America is not limited to the Mexican borderline. No, this new threat goes far deeper than that. It reaches into the jungles of Brazil and Argentina and Ecuador. It stretches to Caracas, where yet another Communist dictator joins Fidel Castro in his grand dreams of humbling Uncle Sam. The Venezuelan dictator has the oil reserves, and thus the money, to make his dreams a reality.
“Castro and his kindred spirits are determined to wreak havoc in our hemisphere. Chávez has said so publicly, and we believe him. Our next speaker, Commander Alexander Hawke, will offer dramatic evidence of a Venezuelan scheme to disrupt oil shipments in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Indeed, as you will soon hear from our distinguished guest, Commander Hawke of the Royal Navy, there is a rising tide of anti-Americanism throughout Latin America, fueled only in part by an oil-rich Venezuela. I have read his report carefully. I wish I could tell you this new threat was posed by ragtag guerrilla armies with little training and unsophisticated weaponry.
“But that is far from the truth. Let me summarize briefly Commander Hawke’s findings in his own report to British Intelligence. ‘Since the early seventies, the Amazonian jungles have been havens for al-Qaeda. Radical Islam has made great inroads in Latin America. They have deep connections to groups like the Shining Path in Peru or FARC in Colombia, or the Montaneros in Argentina. They have incorporated organized crime families and street gangs within these countries, converting them from mere criminals to fervent revolutionaries.’
“Using literally hundreds of millions of dollars generated by the sale of Number Four Heroin, these Latin Islamist cells are now financing the creation of well-equipped and well-trained terrorist armies. Hard intel recently acquired by Commander Hawke’s Service suggests these powerful new al-Qaeda operations may have purchased dirty nuclear weapons from Iran and in other markets. They are almost certainly developing biochemical weaponry in sophisticated jungle laboratories. So, where do they intend to use these awful weapons?
“The new Latin American terror armies are transnational. They are beholden to no single country. But they do have one common enemy. America. They are bringing this war to the very doorstep of our American allies. And I believe they are preparing to move and soon.
“I will conclude my personal remarks by saying that America is challenged on many fronts. We face threats from every point of the compass. But, for the next two days here in Key West at least, we will concern ourselves with only one compass point. A veritable tsunami, boiling up from all points south.”
She paused and gazed out at her audience, her eyes finally coming to rest on Alex Hawke. After a moment, she actually smiled.
“Commander Hawke, welcome to Key West.”
41
L ights and cameras swung in Hawke’s direction as Alex rose to his feet and said, “Thank you, Madame Secretary. It’s an honor.”
The monitors arrayed around the room instantly displayed maps and satellite imagery of Brazil rain forest.