Invasion Usa: Border War

by Johnstone, William W.

  “Go! Go!” Long yelled as he came to his feet and surged toward the door. Tom and the others were right with him.

  They opened fire again as they reached the doors. Bullets whined around them. Looking across the big room, Tom saw that another battle was going on at the front doors of the chapel. Guerrero and the Night Wolves were between a rock and a hard place, and they were about to be smashed.

  The place was total chaos, filled with flying lead and angry shouts and the screams of dying men. Tom emptied his pistol, reversed it, and used it as a club, the same way he had used his lost rifle. After he had smashed the butt of the automatic between the eyes of one of Guerrero’s men, he picked up the rifle the dying man dropped and used it. His feet slipped a little on the concrete floor, and he knew that was because he was splashing through pools of blood. Where the hell was Guerrero?

  A tall, thin man came at him, shooting with a pistol he held awkwardly. The man didn’t look like he knew how to handle the gun, but he was still a threat. The bullet that whined past Tom’s ear proved that. Tom fired twice with the commandeered rifle, blasting a couple of slugs through the man’s narrow chest. He went down hard, blood bubbling from his mouth as he thrashed for a second on the floor and then lay still.

  Tom didn’t know it, but he had just killed an English peer—and possibly the most perverted man in the Western Hemisphere.

  He swung around, still looking for Guerrero, frustrated that he couldn’t find the colonel whose colossal arrogance and evil had brought misery to so many people. The next instant, he was on his knees without quite knowing how he had gotten there, and the hot wet pain in his hip told him that he was hit. He pressed a hand to the wound and felt blood flowing over his fingers. He had no idea where the bullet had come from or who had pulled the trigger, but that didn’t matter. His legs still worked and he still had a gun in his hand, so he forced himself to his feet and staggered on, still seeking the big, handsome man in the fancy uniform.

  A flash of movement caught Tom’s eye. He saw a figure diving into an alcove and recognized Guerrero. Stumbling a little, he ran after the colonel. Both of them left the main fight behind.

  Guerrero must have heard Tom following him, or at least sensed the pursuit of an enemy, because he stopped suddenly, whirled around, and blazed a couple of shots from the pistol in his hand. Tom threw himself to the side, rolling and wincing in pain. The bullets screamed past him. From the floor, he fired the rifle and saw Guerrero’s arm jerk. The colonel’s pistol flew out of his hand. Guerrero didn’t try to recover it. He just turned and ran again.

  Tom pulled the trigger, perfectly willing to shoot the son of a bitch in the back if that was what it took to end his evil. But the rifle clicked futilely, out of ammunition. Tom scrambled to his feet and went after Guerrero.

  The colonel’s right arm hung uselessly at his side, and he staggered as he tried to run. Tom caught up to him in a few steps and left his feet in a diving tackle. His arms went around Guerrero’s legs, and both men fell heavily. This was a deep alcove, and shadows lay thick in it. As the two men broke apart and rolled over to come to their feet, what little light that penetrated back here shone dully on the blade of the knife in Guerrero’s left hand. He lunged at Tom, slashing with the blade.

  Tom jerked back, but not in time to keep the knife from scraping across his stomach. The kevlar vest kept the blade from cutting him. Guerrero snarled and flung the knife at his face. Tom ducked. The knife glanced off his shoulder. He dove forward, tackling Guerrero again and knocking him back against a pedestal where a large ceramic statue of the Holy Virgin and Child sat. Left over from the days when this had been a real mission, the statue toppled and fell to the floor, smashing to pieces. Neither man noticed as they wrestled desperately. Both of them were hampered by their wounds, but each man knew he was fighting for his life.

  Guerrero hooked a foot behind Tom’s knee and jerked. Tom went over backward. Guerrero landed on top of him. His left hand, his only good hand, locked on Tom’s throat, and the fingers squeezed like bands of iron. He slammed Tom’s head against the floor a couple of times, stunning him. Tom went limp for a moment, unable to fight back as Guerrero’s hand squeezed tighter and tighter, strangling the life out of him.

  “Who are you?” Guerrero panted as he did his best to choke Tom to death. He didn’t release his grip to let his opponent answer the question. He just asked it again. “Who are you?”

  Tom fought his way back as consciousness tried to slip away from him. His right hand reached out, touched something sharp, and grasped it. Calling on all the strength he had left, he brought his arm up and around and brought the broken piece of statue across Guerrero’s throat in a slashing blow that left a blood-spurting gash in the colonel’s neck. Guerrero’s eyes bugged out in shock and pain as crimson flooded across his chest. His grip loosened, and Tom was able to throw him aside.

  Guerrero rolled onto his back and clawed at his ravaged throat with his good hand, but he couldn’t stop the fountain of blood. His feet drummed against the floor. Tom pushed himself up and half crawled, half lurched over to the dying man, knowing that Guerrero was going fast. He looked down at Guerrero and grated out, “Who am I? Just an American who won’t be pushed around, you murdering, kidnapping bastard!”

  With a hideous, blood-choked gurgle, Guerrero died.

  But not before the knowledge of what Tom had said showed briefly in his eyes.

  Colonel Alfonso Guerrero had made the worst, last mistake of his life when he decided that he could invade the United States and get away with it.

  Tom tried to get up but couldn’t. His strength was gone. Most of the pool of blood on the floor had come from Guerrero, but a lot of it had belonged to him. He slumped to the concrete and stopped trying to fight the tide of blackness that tried to wash over him. This time he let it carry him away, and after that he knew nothing.

  Laredo International Airport was closed tonight, shut down by order of the Federal Government. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t busy. Dozens of emergency vehicles screamed onto the tarmac, red and blue lights flashing. They lined one of the runways. Jet engines roared overhead, as well as the throbbing pulse of helicopter rotors.

  Special Agent Sharon Morgan climbed hurriedly out of one of the vehicles. Sheriff Phil Garza, Chief of Police Saul Jimenes, and John Holland from the State Department followed her. The men wore expressions of anticipation. Morgan just looked mad enough to chew nails, but at the same time, she seemed eager, too.

  “Those bastards will never see the outside of a federal prison again,” she said, as much to herself as to anybody else. But Garza, Jimenes, and Holland overheard the remark and exchanged worried glances.

  The three helicopters descended from the sky, kicking up some dust from the runway as they landed. Morgan squared her shoulders, ready to stride forward and arrest everybody in the big choppers. Air Force jets had picked them up as they crossed back into American airspace and escorted them here, but it hadn’t been a difficult chore. This seemed to be where the pilots of the helicopters wanted to go.

  Something made Morgan glance over her shoulder. She stiffened as she saw a large number of headlights racing toward the runway from the direction of the airport’s entrance. “Garza!” she practically screamed. “Your men were supposed to keep everybody out!”

  Garza looked at the approaching lights and tried not to smile. “I’m stretched pretty thin these days as far as manpower goes, Agent Morgan,” he said. “I must not have had enough deputies posted to stop whoever that is.”

  “Whoever that is!” Morgan repeated, her voice rising. “I’ll tell you who it is! It’s the damn media, that’s who it is!”

  “More than likely,” Garza agreed under his breath.

  “I don’t care,” Morgan insisted. “I’m still taking everyone in those helicopters into federal custody. By myself if I have to!”

  She drew her gun and stalked toward the choppers. The doors slid back. The runway lights were on, and alon
g with the headlights from the dozens of vehicles, they illuminated the scene brilliantly. Everyone got a good look at the young, blond girl who stepped into the open door of the first helicopter, shielded her eyes for a second with her hand, and then jumped to the ground. She walked forward calmly. Behind her, more of the former prisoners began to climb out of the helicopters.

  Morgan leveled her pistol at the blond girl and shrieked, “You’re under arrest! Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your head!”

  The blond girl just ignored her.

  Hearing a stampede of feet behind them, Garza, Jimenes, and Holland stepped aside to let a large group of men and women run past them. Seeing them coming, the girls who had gotten out of the helicopters screamed for joy and ran forward. The reunion was a glorious one, mothers and a few fathers embracing their formerly lost daughters, safe at last back on American soil. And all around them were reporters and cameramen, video cameras whirring as they recorded the reunion in scenes that would be shown hundreds of times all over the world.

  Morgan just stood there, shaking with rage, ignored by everyone.

  Except for John Holland, who closed the cell phone he had been talking into and walked over to the FBI agent. “You’re not going to be arresting anyone, Agent Morgan,” he said, raising his voice a little so that she could hear him over the clamor. “I’ve just been on the phone with the president herself. Whether any of us like it or not, the country won’t stand for it if we jail American citizens for rescuing their own children from certain death. It’s over.”

  “But ... but they broke federal laws!” Morgan said in stunned anguish, as if she couldn’t believe what she had just heard.

  “And there will be a full investigation... .” Holland’s mouth quirked. “Followed by a decision not to press charges. That will probably include Captain Rodgers, by the way.” He shook his head slowly. “Let’s face it, Morgan. There are some things not even we can do anything about, and one of them is the will of the American people.”

  “But ... but ...”

  Holland just shook his head again and turned away.

  A few yards away, Garza and Jimenes stood together and no longer bothered trying not to smile as they watched the celebration on the runway. “Who do you think alerted the media?” Jimenes asked.

  An electric motor buzzed behind them, and they turned to see Brady Keller rolling toward them in his wheelchair. “That would be me,” Keller said, “as soon as our boys radioed that they were on their way home. Your men didn’t put up much of a fuss when we came in the gate, Sheriff.”

  Garza shrugged. “Wasn’t really any reason to, was there?”

  The left side of Keller’s mouth lifted in a grin that the two lawmen returned.

  And out on the runway, Laura Simms suddenly found herself in her Aunt Bonnie’s embrace. Both of them started crying. “It ... it was Tom,” Laura choked out. “He saved us. He saved us, Bonnie. But I ... I don’t know what happened to him after that.”

  “We’ll pray for him,” Bonnie managed to say as tears rolled down her face.

  “Wh-where’s my mother?”

  “She’s waiting for you. I’ll take you to her. We’ll go right now.”

  “That lady over that said I was under arrest.”

  “That’s no lady,” Bonnie said, “and I don’t think what she says means much anymore. Come on.”

  They turned and walked toward the cars, and behind them, the celebration continued.

  Epilogue

  Tom Brannon fought his way up out of the darkness. The feel of crisp, starched sheets underneath him told him that he was in a hospital bed, and the tightness around his lower torso confirmed it. He was bandaged up like a mummy.

  He opened his eyes, the lids fluttering weakly, and his blurred vision took a few seconds to focus on the face smiling down at him.

  But then he recognized his wife, and as he looked past her and saw the anxious faces of Laura and Kelly Simms, as well, he heard Bonnie say, “It’s all right, Tom. You’re going to be fine. Everything’s all right now.”

  He believed her and managed to smile a little, too. Then, with a sigh, he went back to sleep.

  Ten members of the rescue force had been killed during the fighting at the old mission, and a couple of dozen more were wounded, some seriously enough that they would be hospitalized for quite a while. But out of the forty captives, thirty-eight of them were returned safely to the United States. The only ones who didn’t come back were Rosa Delgado and Billie Sue Cahill. When Tom heard about that, he felt a pang of sorrow and sympathy for Rosa’s father Joe and for her mother. He hadn’t known the Cahill girl’s parents, but he grieved along with them, too.

  Many of the girls had been through a terrible time of it, of course, and no doubt some of them would need years of psychological help. Some of them might never fully recover from their ordeal. But they were alive and they had a chance. That was more than they would have had if Tom and the others hadn’t come to free them.

  Angelina Salinas and her mother moved to Chicago, far away from La Frontera.

  Fueled by official complaints from Mexico, the investigation that John Holland had mentioned to Agent Morgan took a full six months ... and in the end, no charges—state, federal, or local—were filed against those who had taken part in the rescue. That brought more protests from the Mexican government, which were largely ignored. A lot of high-level American politicians—including the one in the White House—secretly seethed at the idea that people could defy the Federal Government like that and get away with it, but what could they do?

  Well, there were a few things. When he got back to Arizona, Tom Brannon found a letter from the Internal Revenue Service, informing him that his tax returns for the past seven years were about to be audited. The same thing happened to Roy Rodgers, Charles Long, Wayne Van Sant, and a dozen or so others. Although they were all taxpaying, law-abiding citizens, they had to go through the hassle of the IRS audits.

  And when those proceedings were over, thanks to the counsel of a small army of tax attorneys provided by Hiram Stackhouse, the IRS was forced to conclude that, in fact, in each case they owed additional refunds to the people who had been audited.

  That news got into the papers and onto the TV newscasts, too, and the higher-ups who had been so mortally offended by the very idea of American citizens doing the right thing on their own decided it just might be time to cut their losses... .

  Tom was alone in the auto-parts store one afternoon when the bell over the door jingled. He looked up from the invoices spread out on the counter in front of him and saw a slender man using a cane come into the store. It took him a second to recognize Ricardo Benitez.

  Tom came out from behind the counter and hurried forward to greet Ricardo. The two men shook hands and then embraced, slapping each other on the back, and Tom asked with a grin, “How are you doing?”

  “Not bad,” Ricardo said. “The wound in my side healed up without any trouble. What about yours?”

  “I’m still a little stiff and sore every now and then, but usually just when it rains.” Tom chuckled. “Down here in Little Tucson, we don’t have to worry about that very often. Your leg still giving you problems?”

  “The doctors had to give me an artificial knee. My own was just shot up too bad to repair. But I get around pretty good on it. I can’t do any fieldwork anymore, of course, but I’m still with the DEA.”

  Tom’s smile disappeared and was replaced with a frown. “What happened with the Night Wolves?”

  “More than half of them were killed in the fighting that night, and the ones who survived scattered. I’m sure some of them have gone back to work for the cartel, but as a coherent fighting force ...” Ricardo shook his head. “They’re washed up. With Guerrero and Cortez both dead, there was nobody to pull them back together.”

  Tom rubbed a hand over his head. “The DEA sent you in to help bring the Night Wolves down, didn’t they?”

  “They did.”

/>   “I’d say you did a good job of it. I understand from talking to Laura that you’re the one who killed Cortez.”

  Ricardo smiled again. “How is Laura?”

  “Enjoying her senior year of school. She’ll be graduating in another couple of months.”

  “I’ll send her a card. And an apology. I should have done something to help those girls a long time before I did.”

  Tom shrugged. “If you had, likely you would have gotten yourself killed and wouldn’t have really helped them. As it was, the timing worked out just fine, even though we didn’t plan it that way.”

  “That was just good luck,” Ricardo pointed out.

  “Maybe.” Tom thought about that broken statue and how his hand had happened to fall on the razor-sharp shard he needed to end Guerrero’s life. “Or maybe sometimes things work out according to a higher plan that we don’t know anything about.”

  The two men were silent in thought for a moment, and then Ricardo said, “Well, I was just on my way to California, and I thought I’d stop over in Tucson and drive out here to see you. Brady Keller’s working for us again, as a consultant, and he and I have a meeting in San Diego with the local authorities. There are a lot of drugs coming across the border out there, and we’re trying to figure out a way to stop them.”

  “You think you’ll ever win that war?”

  “I don’t know,” Ricardo admitted, “but we can’t stop fighting and just let the bad guys win, can we?”

  “No,” Tom said. “We can’t.”

  As he stood on the sidewalk in front of the store a few minutes later and watched Ricardo drive away, he looked around and saw life going on about its business in Little Tucson. People he knew smiled and waved at him, and even though they were average, ordinary folks, he knew there was a core of steel in each and every one of them. Just as Ricardo had said, they wouldn’t quit and let the bad guys win. It might take a while, but they would rise to the challenge every time.