by Reed Hill
Bergstrom International Airport – South Terminal
Austin, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 3:05 p.m.
Kevin Margolis’ wireless buzzed, so he wiped sweat from brow and pulled it out of his pocket as he paced near the cordoned area of the south terminal. It was Burke. Great. I get to explain how I haven’t managed to do a damn thing here that he wanted done. He contemplated letting it go to voicemail, and then shook off the thought and pressed the green button on the display, “Margolis here.”
“Kevin,” Burke’s voice was cordial but direct, “how are things going there?”
“Not as well as I’d like, sir.” Margolis rubbed his neck and walked further from the entrance, away from wandering ears. “The locals don’t seem particularly interested in our help.” The past couple of hours had been a complete bust in terms of establishing any sense of authority. The old detective from DPS had ignored everything he said that wasn’t a direct question, and after a while Margolis has just given up. Lieutenant Jackson wasn’t much better. Occasionally, Jackson had asked his opinion about a piece of evidence or an aspect of the crime scene, but Margolis had run out of creative ways of indicating “I’m not sure” and Jackson had begun to disregard his presence.
“Listen, Kevin,” Margolis winced, preparing himself for the lashing that was sure to follow, “if you’ve made your presence known there, just let the local PD work the scene.” Kevin was a bit shocked – Burke was genial, if a little quick with his tone, “About now, you should be able to announce that you will meet up with them later, when the dirty work is done, to start working on theories. Just tell them you have other Task Force directives to focus on and the media to deal with. You can move on from there.”
“Oh,” Kevin stopped and scratched his chin, “well, okay. I can do that.”
“I have something else related to the Task Force I need to you work on.”
“Absolutely. Is it related to the subpoenas?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Burke paused and Margolis saw Jackson and Lefevre exit the terminal building. “You won’t need to liaison with U.S. Attorney Padilla there.”
“Why is that? It’s an important angle for our overall case.”
“Padilla is dead.”
“What?” Margolis’ head swam momentarily. “How did it happen?”
“We’ll add that to our list of items for your CIRG, Kevin, but as of now, it appears that he was gunned down at Alamo Park by members of Texas Rangers who are part of the Governor’s security detail. We lost three Bureau agents as well, and a fourth will probably never walk again.”
“That sounds unusual,” Margolis took a step toward Jackson and Lefevre, and the old cowboy nodded to him as the pair of detectives spoke. Margolis allowed himself a nod in return.
“Indeed,” Burke sighed. “It’s highly suspicious that we have two high-ranking federal officials – one a member of the President’s cabinet and another the chief legal authority in the region – murdered in performing the duty of serving the Governor and his staff with orders to appear for questioning. Don’t you find that curious, Kevin?”
“It’s pretty damning, yes,” Margolis put his foot up on a concrete planter, seeing the pair of detectives eyeing him. “Very damning, I would say.”
“To that end,” Burke’s voice quickened and Margolis heard some voices in the background on the other end of the line, “I want you to track down the Governor and high ranking members of his staff. We need to show some strength down there and get the information flowing. We need answers, and a good deal of them are going to need to come from the players themselves. We need to be interviewing these people, so get them in custody.”
“Yes, Mr. Burke.”
“Do whatever you need to, Kevin. We need the Governor and his staff to start answering some questions about what’s going on inside his administration and how it is we have two dead federal officials as well as FBI agents.”
“I’m on it.” Margolis scowled as Lefevre and Jackson started to walk toward him.
“I’ve got to go right now, Kevin. Keep your wits about you. The Bureau and your country are counting on you.” There was a click and the line went dead, so Margolis put the phone back in his back pocket as the detectives wandered over to him.
Jackson looked at him and appeared to shoo a mosquito from his shoulder. “Margolis, we thought we’d let you know we found some evidence you will want to see.” Jackson turned and peered at the small Ziploc baggie that the gangly old detective held up.
“We found this in some mortar on the southeast side of the building’s exterior.” Lefevre eyed the small copper-colored piece of metal; it was not much more than a shapeless lump with only the barest indication of a cylinder at one end. “It appears to be some kind of copper alloy, consistent with some government spec rounds. They are used by military, law enforcement SWAT units and other government agencies primarily.”
“Interesting…” Kevin wasn’t sure what to say, and it wasn’t the first time that had happened when talking to Detective Lefevre. “What’s your conclusion, Mr. Lefevre?”
Lefevre held the bag lower and offered it to the short black detective, “No conclusions as of yet.”
Jackson held up the round to the sunlight, peering closely at it inside its clear bag, “It’s inconsistent with the few fragments of another bullet we have been able to find at the scene.”
Margolis said nothing, merely allowing a raised eyebrow as he stroked his chin looking at Lefevre. “Now, that is quite curious.” Margolis hated to admit that he didn’t grasp the entirety of the ramifications. “What do you make of it?”
Jackson glanced quickly at Lefevre before returning his gaze to Margolis, “Well, the fragments we recovered were straight copper with some tiny pieces of a lead core. There’s no alloy in those fragments.”
Margolis stood silent, looking at the bullet that Jackson held in his hand.
Lefevre shifted his weight on his leather boots and tipped back the cowboy hat, “Two different bullets means, in all likelihood, two different shooters.”
Margolis was puzzled. Two different shooters?
“Two different shooters could mean redundancy, which implies a conspiracy,” Lefevre breathed a sigh and wiped a bit of sweat from the side of his face with a handkerchief he took from his jeans, “or, it could be separate incidents, which means we may have a killer and a witness.”
“A killer and witness?” Margolis chided himself for the statement as soon as it had escaped his lips.
“Given the placement of this bullet at the scene and the fragments we recovered from the one that killed the AG, it looks like the trajectories were different, but both most likely came from the same general direction.” Lefevre pointed, “From the south there, probably in those fields and stands of trees and brush.”
Margolis turned and looked behind him where more than a score of uniformed officers walked the brushy little valley and hillside south of the airport, scanning the area. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of two shooters.
“Yeah,” Jackson put the Ziploc bag in his pocket, “we thought you’d want to know about that.”
“Finding it was a break I would say.” Lefevre put his hands in his jeans pockets.
“That’s good work, Detective,” Margolis glanced at this watch. “I really need to get downtown to make a few calls and prepare for some media stuff, so why don’t you guys keep things moving here.”
“They should be done with the crime scene in three or four hours.” Jackson looked at Margolis, narrowing his eyes. “I would suggest we work the location until then.”
“I think you guys have got the heavy lifting covered.” Margolis waved to a couple of the Austin FBI agents. “We need to re-group and hit another Task Force element, and get a statement ready for Washington and the press as well.”
“We’ll handle the press here for you, if you like.” Lefevre pushed a rock with his boot before glancing up at Margolis. “It’s no problem.”
“Suit yourself, Mr. Margolis.” Lefevre stroked his silver mustache as the FBI Deputy walked off with the agents in tow.
Margolis shot up a wave without turning around as he strode across the parking lot toward the waiting sedans. “Thanks for your help, gentlemen. I’ll be in touch.”
Part III
On the Anvil
Chapter 13
Texas Guard Armory
San Angelo, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 3:32 p.m.
Sergeant Mathews looked over the magazines for the M-16 rifles and decided to re-pack one of them and check the spring. It felt a little loose when he seated it in his rifle, after the fire fight back near Junction. He was damn lucky he hadn’t had a failure to feed or a jam. The other five he had received seemed to be in good working order. Scores of soldiers continued to arrive every few minutes at the Texas state armory on the outskirts of Junction, and Mathews thought that they were starting to resemble an actual Regiment. He was still reliving the shootout at the chicken joint in his mind.
Mathews had the men cool their heels and catch a bit of rack time while he reported to Regimental command. The Regimental executive officer sent him to 3rd Battalion, which was less than half assembled at noon. They had been quickly assigned to Delta Company, under Captain Al Murphy, which was painfully short on men with any real experience. Murphy had welcomed Mathews with a hearty handshake and asked him a bunch of questions about El Paso, so Mathews had just started at the beginning.
“Hey, Sarge,” Mathews looked up to see Corporal Williams standing in front of him, his arms on his hips as he breathed heavily. “You got to come over and see this. It’s more guys from Fort Bliss – more men from the 31st and 11th made it out.”
“Is that so?” Mathews put down the magazines and got to his feet. “When did they get in?”
“Just now,” Williams pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “They came a few minutes ago in a couple of deuces and a Humvee.”
They walked out the barracks and across the large multi-purpose area and out of the main building, heading across the short stretch of pavement to the smaller mess hall and general storage facility. Mathews must have had let his disappointment leak, because Williams tapped him on the arm, “What’s up Sarge? I thought you be more stoked that some other grunts made it out of Bliss.”
He didn’t know where to go with that. “Oh, I am.” Was he supposed to lie and put on a happy face when he knew that most of the Fort Bliss soldiers were dead? Williams was right, though. It was a cause to be celebrated. Even if it was another twenty or thirty, he needed to be in a better mood, if just to keep the morale of his guys up. He recalled a primary rule of morale from his trainers back at Fort Carson from NCO leadership school – the shit goes up the chain of command not down. Always try to send the good news, encouragement and praise down to the dogfaces and the complaints, grumbles and criticism up to the glorious college pukes to deal with. “No, I’m just working on getting a bug out of my ass.” He flashed a quick grin, “I just wish I could have gotten us more gear from the Sonora Armory.”
“Yeah, I hear that.” Williams dodged a private hustling some papers back to the main armory building.
It didn’t take long to get to the mess area, where a group was already gathered around the Fort Bliss survivors, peppering them with questions. It was hard to tell with all the Texas Guard troopers hanging around, but there appeared to be maybe forty men in the group. Mathews waded his way through the gaggle of onlookers and well-wishing guardsmen to the front of the crowd. As he scanned the faces of the Army troops that milled about taking handshakes and questions about how they made it out, he felt someone grab his arm.
Mathews spun and saw the familiar face of Nate Silva, a Sergeant in the 11th Air Defense Brigade, 1st Battalion of the 43rd. Mathews did a stint with the 1st/43rd when he made his second run through Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Silva was one-striper in that unit back then.
“How you doing you old bastard?” Silva grinned broadly as he unstrapped his ACH helmet and propped it under his free arm. “I should have known a rough piece of leather like you would have made it out of the Blister as well.” The clean-shaven Hispanic was a small, wiry soldier, five-eight and maybe one hundred fifty soaking wet, with rocks under his sleeves. His wide-set eyes looked over his old colleague, and Mathews noticed several superficial cuts on Silva’s face and neck. He was clearly exhausted.
“I never thought I would miss the goddamn boil on my ass,” Mathews grabbed Silva and gave him a brief hug before stepping back with his fists on his hips. “But, I’d take a hot day out at Fort Bliss anytime compared to what’s gone down.”
“Roger that,” Silva shook his head and settled the helmet at his feet. “It was a freaking nightmare, but I expect that ain’t news to you.” He recalled that Silva was from San Diego and had a bit of a surfer lilt to his voice, which made Mathews found entertaining.
“Hell no,” Mathews helped Silva take his ruck down. “We had a helluva time getting out, but we did manage to get a bunch of women and children out with us.”
“Oh yeah? That’s freaking awesome.” A nearby private was passing out water and Mathews grabbed one of the one-liter bottles and passed it to Silva after cracking it open. Silva downed a good bit of in one long chug, “We spend several hours – probably 0230 to 0500 just moving from place to place on the base trying to find some kind of rally point.” He took another long drink from the water bottle, “We picked up a couple of guys here and another there until there was just too many of us to stay hidden very well. We managed to grab a Humvee and a deuce, and get the hell out of there.”
“It was really dicey for us too,” Mathews put his hands in his pockets. “I almost didn’t stop for anybody when I jumped in a truck I found. Then lady with a kid showed up in the street. After that a couple guys came out of the bushes in their civvies. In all, we wound up doing a little good in a God-awful situation.”
“That’s a helluva a thing, man. We were trapped out near the airfield when a whole lot of commandos in red fatigues started storming the area in all kinds of crazy vehicles.” Silva patted his blouse pockets as if he were checking for something, “These weren’t like the regular crazy-ass thugs with them. These guys were organized, tactical – they were pros, dude.”
“Yeah, I saw a few of them. They looked like they were decked out in decent gear.”
“With the red-tiger fatigues,” Silva took another sip from his bottle, “I thought the bastards were Chinese or North Korean or some shit like that, but nope. I got a good look. Latinos, every damn one of them.”
“Yeah,” Mathews shook his head and examined his dirty boots. “Don’t know what to make of it.”
“You have any idea what’s going on? Have you heard anything?”
“Just that they’ve hit at least four different places here in Texas, all along the border.” Mathews looked in Silva’s dark brown eyes as they got wider. “Scuttlebutt says they also hit in Arizona, New Mexico and California.”
“California,” Silva stuck his chin out a little as his teeth clenched down on his lower lip. “Dammit. God dammit.”
“Yeah, sorry to tell you, bro,” Mathews put a hand on his shoulder for a just a moment.
“No,” Silva shook his head and took another long sip from of water. “I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did.”
They didn’t speak for a moment as Silva just looked to the ground and adjusted his helmet and pack before coming back to look at Mathews again. Mathews looked away at a few other faces of the newcomers when he saw Silva’s watery eyes. “So, how many of you are there? How many made it out?”
“Forty-four.” Silva drew an empty magazine from his pocket and placed it in his ruck. “We had sixty at
one time during the night, but there’s just the forty-four of us now.”
“Damn,” Mathews muttered.
“I wouldn’t be here if a few of those guys hadn’t covered my ass. I didn’t get all their names, even.”
“You have any officers with you?”
“We had some butter bar with us for a little while,” Silva looked around at some of the others in his group taking down packs or just celebrating finding others from Fort Bliss. “But he caught a bullet one of the fights. Damn guy was two months out of Officer Candidate School. Said he had a wife and son who he couldn’t find anywhere.”
Mathews hoped that they were two of the four hundred that he helped get out of El Paso, “That sucks.”
“Yeah, it does. But hey, you said you bastards got some folks out huh? Maybe they were with them.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Mathews grabbed a water from another private who hurried by with a bunch more. “Maybe we helped get them out.”
Silva clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s just say they made it, all right. That’s what I’m gonna say.”
Mathews wanted to go along with Silva but he just couldn’t bring himself to believe it so quickly. There were probably four thousand families on the post. What were the odds? “Yeah, sounds good. I bet they made it out with us, yeah.”
Silva shuffled his feet a bit, “You know, I could use some downtime. Where are you guys racking with these baggers?”
“There’s a small barracks across the way there. I’ll show you.”
“That’d be awesome, man. And, I could really use some decent chow besides the bag nasty we’ve forced down the past twenty-four hours.”
Mathews grabbed Silva’s rucksack and threw it over his shoulder as he led the smaller man toward the main building. “I’ll show you where you can get a couple hours rack ops, and you can drop your gear and a get some chow. After that, I’ll introduce you to the Company commander.”
“Sounds good,” Silva permitted a small smile. “I’m not happy to have to look at that ugly mug of yours, but I’m glad you made it out Mathews.”