Now Laura was the one in danger.
Tom pulled his F-150 into the garage and got out. By the time he reached the door that led from the garage into the kitchen, it was open and Bonnie was there, her face streaked with tears.
“I have to go, Tom,” she said by way of greeting. “I have to go down there.”
Tom drew her into his arms. “I know,” he said quietly as he held her and felt the little shudders running through her. “We’ll both go.”
She lifted her head to look at him, and she didn’t have to raise her eyes much since she was almost as tall as he was. “But the store—”
“Louly can look after the store. It’s not like we’re swamped all the time these days, anyway. The store will be fine.”
Bonnie managed to smile. “Thank you, Tom. When can we leave?”
“As soon as you’re ready. I’ll call the airport in Tucson and find out if there are any direct flights from there to Laredo later today.”
“There are,” Bonnie said. “I already checked on it. There’s a Southwest Airlines flight that leaves at four o’clock this afternoon.”
Tom thought about it and nodded. “We can make it. I’ll start packing.”
“I already started on that, too.”
Tom grinned. His wife knew him awfully well.
But then, she ought to, considering how long they had been married. They’d been together a long time and raised two kids who were now grown and on their own. They even had a couple of grandkids, although you’d never know by looking at her that Bonnie Brannon was old enough to have grandchildren. Tall and slender, she had been quite a tomboy as a youngster, and still had a little of that coltish quality about her. Her thick brown hair had only a few streaks of gray in it, and she wore it longer than most women her age, which also made her look younger. Tom thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, which was only natural considering that he’d been married to her for decades.
He followed her into the bedroom to help her finish up the packing. As he opened a drawer to take out some underwear and socks, he saw the deadly little automatic nestled among them and wished that he could put it in the suitcase and take it with him, too.
But of course in this day and age, there was no way he could get on an airplane carrying a gun or even toting one in his luggage. He would never make it through security. He would just have to go to Laredo unarmed. He told himself that would be all right.
After all, he was just going down there to offer moral support. It wasn’t like he was going to need a gun while he was there.
After making arrangements with one of the neighbors to feed their dogs, Tom and Bonnie put their bags in the pickup and headed for Tucson, some seventy-five miles to the northeast. It was only a little after one o’clock, so they had plenty of time to make the flight. Tom swung back into Little Tucson to pick up some hamburgers for them to eat on the way. Bonnie insisted that she wasn’t hungry and was too worried about Kelly and Laura to eat, but the smell of the burgers changed her mind.
From there they drove straight to Tucson International Airport, on the south side of the city. It had been a while since Tom had flown anywhere, but the process hadn’t gotten any more efficient or less annoying. Endless lines, endless security checkpoints with metal detectors and X-ray machines, and the whole hurry-up-and-wait mentality were still prevalent. In this dangerous day and age, such inconveniences were just something people had to put up with.
Finally they were on the airplane, winging eastward toward Texas. They lost an hour on the way, crossing from the Mountain Time Zone to the Central. It was early evening, nearly seven o’clock Laredo time, when they landed, but at this time of year the sun was still fairly high in the sky.
Between the driving, the hassle at the airport, and then the time in the air, they had lost touch with what was going on. While Bonnie took out her cell phone to call Kelly, Tom watched one of the television sets playing in the terminal, hoping to catch some news. Maybe there would be a report that the kidnapped girls had been rescued.
That proved not to be the case. The story was still big news, of course, but there didn’t seem to be many fresh developments since the reports Tom had seen earlier in the day. The girls were still missing, and the local police, the Texas Rangers, and the FBI were coordinating efforts to locate them. The death of the nun who had been driving the bus, one Sister Katherine, had been confirmed, as had eleven more fatalities from the vehicles that had been blown up on the highway at the time of the attack. So the death toll was up to an even dozen now, with exactly forty girls, all of them either juniors or seniors at Saint Anne’s, missing. All the kids who had been on the other buses involved in the field trip had been accounted for.
So from the looks of things, Tom mused, this one bus had been targeted by the kidnappers. It was the last one in the group, and according to information gathered from the other drivers, it had fallen behind considerably before disappearing. Of course, it hadn’t disappeared at all, but at first that was what the others had thought. They had suspected a breakdown or something like that, so when they reached the state park that was their destination, one of the nuns had gone back after unloading the kids who had been on her bus.
By that time, the attack was over and smoke was rising from the wreckage of the various vehicles littered over the landscape. Within a half hour, emergency vehicles from all over the city and county had converged on the scene, all of them much too late to do any good.
Tom had gleaned all that background from the news reports by the time Bonnie joined him again. “I talked to Kelly,” she said grimly. “They haven’t heard anything, no ransom demand, nothing. And I had to talk to some woman FBI agent, too. She had the nerve to tell me that we should turn around and go back home!”
Even under the circumstances, Tom managed to smile a little. He said, “I don’t imagine that suggestion went over too well.”
“It sure as hell didn’t. Come on.” Bonnie marched toward one of the car-rental desks. Tom followed her.
When they had rented a car and piled their bags into the trunk, they left the airport, heading for the nice residential neighborhood on the edge of Laredo where Kelly Simms lived. Tom knew that Kelly was fairly well-to-do, but by no stretch of the imagination could she be considered rich.
When they reached the street where Kelly lived, Tom had to slam on the brakes. Plastic barricades had been set up in the street, leaving an opening barely big enough for a single vehicle, and that opening was blocked by a Laredo police car. A fairly large crowd had gathered. A satellite uplink truck with a local TV station’s logo painted on it was parked at the side of the road.
“Vultures,” Bonnie muttered when she saw the TV truck. “I’m surprised there aren’t more of them here.”
“There are forty missing girls,” Tom pointed out. “There probably aren’t enough local news crews to stake out the homes of all of them.” He paused. “Wait until tomorrow, when all the ones from San Antonio and elsewhere get here.”
Many of the people standing on the sidewalks, the lawns, and in the street were probably Kelly’s neighbors, people who were concerned about her—in addition to having some of the same morbid curiosity that infected nearly everyone human. They stayed back, already knowing by now that they couldn’t get any closer. Tom drove past them, well aware of their curious stares, and eased the rented car up to the barricades.
One of the cops, a young Latino, came over as Tom rolled down the car window. “Sorry, sir, you’ll have to turn around and go back,” he said as he lifted a hand. “No admittance to this street right now.”
“My name is Tom Brannon,” Tom said. He handed the cop his and Bonnie’s Arizona driver’s licenses. “This is my wife, Bonnie. Kelly Simms is her sister.”
The cop frowned as he studied the licenses. “They didn’t tell us anything about family coming. Hold on a minute while I check with my lieutenant.”
He unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt and turned away to s
peak into it for a moment. The walkie-talkie crackled a reply, and the cop nodded despite the fact that whoever was on the other end couldn’t see him. He said something else and then returned the walkie-talkie to his belt.
Motioning to another cop who stood beside the police car that blocked the opening in the barricades, he called, “Sid! Let these folks through!” Then he turned to Tom, handed him the driver’s licenses, and went on. “Okay, the lieutenant said to let you come up to the house.”
“Thanks.” Tom drove carefully through the opening and past the police car.
“I don’t really understand all this hoopla,” Bonnie said. “Kelly didn’t do anything wrong. Why is the place crawling with police?”
“I guess the cops think the kidnappers might try to contact her, and they want to be on hand if that happens, to try to get any leads.”
“Like the kidnappers are just going to waltz up here and deliver their ransom demand in person? That’s insane!”
Tom smiled wryly. “Standard operating procedure doesn’t always make sense.”
Several police cars and several unmarked cars were parked in front of Kelly’s house, a red-brick colonial that might have seemed out of place in this semiarid, almost frontier landscape if not for the fact that most of the other houses along the street were the same sort. Tom parked the rental car by the curb, and as he and Bonnie got out, a couple of uniformed officers came across the lawn toward them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Brannon?” one of the cops said. “Come on inside.”
Even though it was early evening, the afternoon heat lingered in the air. Accompanied by the cops, Tom and Bonnie stepped into the foyer of the house and cool air washed over them. The central air-conditioning unit was cranked up high. Tom immediately had the sense that there were a lot of people in the house, but it was strangely quiet, almost hushed, as if they were in a church.
Straight ahead down a short hallway, past a pristine, seldom-used living room, was the large, dark-paneled den where under normal circumstances Kelly and Laura spent most of their time. A fireplace took up most of one wall; a big-screen TV dominated another. Several people sat on a large chocolate brown sofa, Bonnie’s sister Kelly among them.
As Tom and Bonnie came into the room, Kelly stood up and ran toward them, throwing herself in Bonnie’s arms. Kelly was seven or eight years younger than Bonnie, with blond hair that fell around her shoulders and a delicate prettiness that had just about vanished because of the emotional strain she was under. Her eyes were red with recently shed tears. She wore a fashionable skirt and blouse, conservative yet elegant, and Tom wondered if she had been in court when she got the word about the kidnapping.
As the sisters hugged, Kelly babbling out frightened, barely coherent words and Bonnie trying to reassure and comfort her, one of the other women in the room came toward Tom. She said, “Mr. Brannon?”
Tom nodded. “That’s right.”
“I’m Special Agent Sharon Morgan of the FBI. No offense, Mr. Brannon, but you and your wife shouldn’t be here. I told your wife as much when she called.”
Tom frowned. This woman rubbed him the wrong way. “My wife just wants to help her sister get through this, Agent Morgan. We won’t interfere with your investigation in any way.”
“Really, Mr. Brannon?” Morgan’s voice lowered, and she went on. “Or do you intend to come in here and screw everything up and get a bunch of people killed, the way you did in Little Tucson?”
Eight
The room was huge, with heavy, overstuffed furniture and thick carpets. Whoever lived here would not want for creature comforts. It was a sybaritic oasis in the middle of the ancient mission.
Built in 1762, the mission had served the farmers in the area as well as travelers on their way to Villa de San Augustín de Laredo, some twenty miles to the north on the Rio Grande. In time, the mission was abandoned as more churches were built in Laredo and then later, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the Rio Grande as the boundary between the United States and Mexico, in Nuevo Laredo, the new town that sprang up on the south side of the river. The mission itself, as well as the outbuildings and the surrounding compound, had fallen into disrepair. No tourists wanted to come and see it. It was too far across the border, off the beaten track. So it sat unused, a place of God that evidently even El Señor Dios had turned His back upon.
Then Los Lobos de la Noche had found it, and made it their home.
Money, of course, could accomplish almost anything. The mission was repaired, and modern furnishings were moved into the long barrackslike building that had once housed the peons who worked the mission’s garden plots. The red-tile roof was repaired, and then satellite dishes sprouted on it. Heavy compressors hummed as central air-conditioning units pumped cool air into the big mission building itself. The stables were converted into a motor pool. In a matter of months, the old mission was transformed. Now, instead of being home to humble priests who wished only to spread the word of God, it was occupied by the deadliest, most dangerous fighting force in all of northern Mexico, the Night Wolves, and their leader, Colonel Alfonso Guerrero.
So why, wondered Guerrero, if he had all this power, was he being defied by one seemingly helpless young girl who weighed barely one hundred pounds?
“How dare you say such things to me?” he thundered at her as they stood in Guerrero’s luxurious private quarters. His face was dark with the rage he struggled to control. “I am your father! You should respect me!”
Angelina’s chin jutted out defiantly and her hands were clenched into fists at her side. “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have dragged me off that bus and murdered poor Sister Katherine!” she said. “You wouldn’t have kidnapped me and all my friends!”
“You were not kidnapped,” Guerrero grated between clenched teeth. “I have told you ... I liberated you from your mother’s captivity.”
She crossed her arms over her heaving chest and turned away from him. Her stubborn stance weakened a little, though, as she said quietly, “I want to go home.”
“Impossible,” Guerrero snapped. “If I returned you to your mother now, she would take you far away, where I would never see you again. I know that she already planned to do so, later this year.”
“That’s her right,” Angelina murmured. “The court gave her custody of me.”
“An American court,” Guerrero said with a sneer. “Its rulings mean nothing to me.”
“Oh?” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Is that why you stayed away for five years and didn’t even try to see me?”
“I saw you.” Guerrero’s voice suddenly softened. “When your soccer team played for the championship of its league when you were thirteen, I was there. You never saw me, but I was there.”
She half turned. “You were?”
Guerrero nodded. “I would have congratulated you after your team won, but your mother would have seen me and caused trouble. Just as she always does and tries to keep us apart.”
Angelina stiffened again, her momentary unbending gone, and Guerrero knew he had overplayed his hand. She wouldn’t tolerate anything bad being said about her mother—that bitch. He could have had her assassinated any time he wanted to. With a nod of his head he could have ordered a bomb planted in her car, or something as simple as a high-powered rifle bullet through her head. It was no more than Rebecca Salinas deserved for abandoning him, abandoning his name, and stealing his daughter, his only child, away from him.
Somehow, though, he didn’t think Angelina would be swayed by the argument that she should be grateful to him because he hadn’t had the bitch killed.
“What are you going to do with me?” Angelina muttered after a moment.
“Keep you here with me and love you, of course.”
“I’m about to start my last year of high school. I’m almost eighteen, an adult.”
“I will have the finest tutors brought in. You can continue your education.” He ignored her statement about almost being an adult. I
t was beneath consideration.
“Will you send me to college next year?”
“Of course. To the university in Mexico City.”
“With guards to watch me twenty-four hours a day, so that I can’t run away?”
“Yes,” Guerrero said. “Mexico City is not as dangerous a place as Nuevo Laredo, but you will still need bodyguards. Even though few men would dare to harm the child of Colonel Alfonso Guerrero. You will be safe, I promise you.”
“What about all my friends?” Angelina demanded. “Will they be safe, too?”
Guerrero’s features hardened. “Do not concern yourself with them. You would have been leaving them before the year was over, anyway. Have you not told them that?”
“I ... I didn’t say anything to anybody about moving. I kept hoping Mom would change her mind and not take that job in Chicago.”
Guerrero shook his head. “Your mother is a very stubborn woman. Once she makes up her mind about something, there is no swaying her. She would have taken you away from your home and friends in the middle of your last year of school, and never given your feelings a second thought if they interfered with her desires.”
Angelina covered her face with her hands and began to sob.
Although he hated to see his daughter cry, Guerrero felt a surge of carefully concealed satisfaction. He was getting through to her, making her realize just how cruel and unfeeling her mother really was. He would never cause his beautiful chiquita such pain. Soon she would see that.
Carefully, Guerrero crossed the room toward her, not moving too fast or too aggressively. He wanted to take her into his arms and hug her, comfort her as he had when she was a little girl and she had fallen and skinned her knee. He knew that would be unwise, though. Better to move slowly. He touched her shoulder lightly, patted it for a second, and then withdrew his hand.
“It will be all right,” he said. “You will see, Angelina. This is a new beginning for us.”
She lowered her hands from her tear-streaked face and asked again, “What about all the other girls?”
Invasion Usa: Border War Page 5