With a vague stirring of unease inside him, Jack stumbled through the house wearing only his boxers. “Mom?” he called. “Mom, are you here?”
No answer. Well, she was a cop, after all, Jack told himself. She probably had to leave to take care of some sort of trouble.
He jerked the front door open and said, “Yeah, what—”
The words choked in his throat as he saw Jimmy Clifton standing there, with his bike lying on its side in the front yard. Jack had known Jimmy for what seemed like his whole life, and he liked the dispatcher.
Now Jimmy looked scared, really scared, and suddenly Jack was scared, too.
“What is it, Jimmy? Did something happen to my mom?”
“The chief’s not… here?” Jimmy asked.
“No, I don’t think so. I just got up, and I called to her, but she didn’t answer.”
Jimmy put his hands to his head. “I gotta find … the chief. Somethin’ bad is … happening.”
Jack wasn’t the least bit sleepy anymore. “What is it, Jimmy? What did you see?”
“Men with guns … goin’ into the police station.”
Jack’s first thought was that the Federal Protective Service had come back to town for some reason. “Like the ones who were here before?”
Jimmy shook his head. “No, they weren’t … soldiers. They looked more like bad guys. And then … and then …”
“And then what? You can tell me, Jimmy.”
“There was a bunch of … shooting.”
Alarm surged through Jack. “From the police station?”
“Nuh-uh. From downtown somewhere. And then I saw … a whirlybird … blow up.”
“A whirlybird? You mean a helicopter?”
“Yeah.”
“It blew up while it was in the air?” Jack had a hard time believing that, but Jimmy looked and sounded absolutely sincere.
“Yeah. I think somebody musta … shot it down.”
Now that was just crazy, Jack thought. All this crap couldn’t really be happening. Not in Home. Not on a Sunday morning.
Tears rolled down Jimmy’s cheeks. “I’m really scared, Jack,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. I’m s’posed to be … at work, but I’m scared to … go in the police station. I want the chief … to tell me what to do.”
“She’s not here, but I’ll tell you what.” Jack made up his mind. “Let me put some clothes on, and you and me’ll go down to the station together. How about that?”
“O-Okay. I guess. I hope Eloise is all right.”
So did Jack, but he was more worried about his mom. If some sort of gun battle had broken out downtown, the chances were that she would be right in the middle of it.
He pulled on blue jeans and a T-shirt, shoved his feet in some running shoes. “We’ll take my car,” he told Jimmy.
They were just about to pull out of the driveway when Rowdy’s pickup screeched to a halt in front of the house. Rowdy beckoned to them from behind the wheel.
“Come on!” he called through the open window. “There’s all kinds o’ shit going down! It’s war, dudes, war!”
Rowdy’s pickup was bigger and had more power than Jack’s car. They’d be better off going with him, Jack decided. “Come on, Jimmy,” he said. They piled into the cab, with Jack in the middle and Jimmy next to the passenger window.
“War with who?” Jack asked.
“I dunno,” Rowdy replied. “But there’s been a bunch of shooting, and somebody told me there was a helicopter got shot down by a missile, out by the high school!”
Jack glanced at Jimmy. The story about the helicopter, outlandish as it was, was gaining credence.
“Maybe we should have guns,” he said tentatively.
Rowdy jammed on the brakes. “That’s a good idea. Are there any left at your house?”
“My mom’s got a couple extra pistols she didn’t turn in. And there’s a deer rifle my dad didn’t take with him when he split.”
Rowdy turned the pickup back toward the Bonner house. “Let’s get ’em, then. We may need some firepower.”
“Now that I think about it, I’m not sure this is a good idea. I mean, how can we fight ’em? We’re just two kids and, well, Jimmy.”
Rowdy glanced over at him and grinned. “If we’re bein’ invaded, somebody’s got to fight the sons o’bitches, dude. And it looks like we’re elected.”
Fargo Ford yawned and ground a knuckle against the corner of his right eye. He had dozed a little while Parker was driving, earlier in the night, but not enough to do much good.
They were all running on empty, with the exception of Earl Trussell. The little scientist had snored for hours while the others took turns driving across Texas. Earl was awake now and fiddling with the radio buttons while Ford drove and Parker dozed in the other corner of the cab. Rye Callahan was in the back of the pickup with the guns, his Stetson tipped down over his eyes. Mostly static came from the radio speakers, with an occasional burst of music or incomprehensible speech. Earl muttered, “Boy, you get out here in West Texas and the reception sucks.”
“That’s because of all these wide-open spaces,” Ford said.
“Well, I’m a city boy. I need music. And concrete. And there’s too much sky. I need buildings.”
“I thought you worked at that Casa del Diablo place. It’s in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and that’s one thing I didn’t like about it. That and the fact that they’re making bio-weapons to use on American citizens.”
“Yeah, that’s a bummer, all right,” Ford drawled.
They were on a state highway now, having traveled on a crazy network of farm roads and county roads, some of them unpaved, for most of the night. That had taken them away from Callahan’s ranch, though, and as far as Ford could tell, they weren’t being followed. Once again, they had slipped away from the men who wanted them dead.
It was early Sunday morning, and the sun was up behind them, painting the flat, mesquite-dotted, unprepossessing landscape with splashes of orange and gold that made it look prettier than it really was. Mountains bulked on the horizon in the distance. Ford knew those were the mountains where Casa del Diablo was located.
He drove past a sign that read HOME 10. “Almost there,” he said.
“And what are we gonna do when we get there? “ Earl asked. “We need a plan, don’t we?”
“We have a look around first to see if we can figure out if anything’s going on. If you make a plan before you have the proper intel, you’re liable to get locked into a mind-set that won’t work.”
“In other words, we improvise.”
“Exactly.”
“With our lives and the lives of God knows how many other people on the line.”
“It won’t be the first time,” Ford said.
“And it’s worked all the other times,” Parker said without opening his eyes. “If you don’t count the times we got shot and nearly killed.”
“Oh, now I feel much better,” Earl said.
“Even when we got hurt, we stopped the bad guys,” Ford pointed out.
The radio was nothing but static now. Earl turned it off, then squinted through the windshield.
“What’s that up ahead?” he asked.
Ford had already moved his foot from the gas to the brake, although he didn’t actually press down on the pedal yet. On the other side of the cab, Parker sat up and opened his eyes.
“Trouble?”
“Don’t know yet,” Ford said. “Appears to be a roadblock of some sort.”
“Wasn’t the FPS supposed to set up checkpoints to keep guns out of Home?”
Ford nodded. “Yeah. Maybe that’s all it is.”
Earl pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “John Wayne back there is sitting on a whole pile of guns.”
“He doesn’t look like John Wayne,” Ford said. “He looks like Lee Van Cleef. Can’t you get that right?”
“Whatever, dude. Hadn’t we better turn around? We don’t want them to find al
l that hardware, do we?”
Parker said, “Hang on a minute. There’s a police car and a couple of local officers up there, too. Maybe they’re not looking for guns. Let’s check it out, Fargo.”
“All right. Tell Mr. Callahan to make sure the tarp’s down good over those weapons. Maybe we can claim that it’s pipe for a windmill or something.”
“There you go, improvising again,” Earl said.
Ford slowed the pickup. There was a black RV parked off the side of the road that probably belonged to the FPS, but a Home police car was on the shoulder with its lights flashing. Two officers walked toward the pickup as Ford brought it to a stop.
“Trouble up ahead, fellas?” Ford asked through the open window. “A bad wreck, maybe?”
“No, it’s worse than that, sir,” one of the officers said. Both of them were Hispanic, but that wasn’t unusual out here in West Texas. “Some sort of epidemic. We’re trying to keep it contained until the CDC gets here.”
Ford’s heart slugged harder in his chest at the mention of the word “epidemic.” Had the bastards already field-tested their nerve gas by wiping out an entire town?
These two cops didn’t seem upset enough to be the sole survivors from Home, though. They looked somewhat tense, but at the same time, they were just doing their jobs.
“We’re just passing through on our way to El Paso,” Ford said. “If we roll up all the windows and drive straight through town without stopping, don’t you think it would be all right?”
The cop who had spoken before shook his head. “No, sir, I’m afraid our orders are clear. Nobody gets in or out of Home until further notice.” He pointed east. “But if you go back that way for a few miles, you’ll come to a county road that’ll take you up to the Interstate. That’ll get you to El Paso faster, anyway.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Thanks.” Ford put the truck in reverse. “Sorry to hear about folks being sick.”
“We’ll deal with it, don’t worry.”
“Well, so long.” Ford backed the truck around and headed back east.
“You believe him?” Parker asked.
“Hell, no,” Ford replied without hesitation. “Too many coincidences have piled up. Casa del Diablo being so close by, the citizens of Home being disarmed, now the town’s closed off…. Something is happening back there, and my hunch is that it’s happening today.”
“Now what?” Earl asked. “We can’t get into town to look around, the way you wanted.”
“Oh, we’re going to town,” Ford said. “We just have to find another way in, that’s all.”
CHAPTER 40
Alex and Delgado abandoned the police car behind the old abandoned cotton gin on the edge of town. The car would just draw attention, and they didn’t want that.
They took the two riot guns with them, though.
That wasn’t going to be enough firepower, Alex thought grimly as they made their way on foot, sticking to the outskirts of the community. They had heard all the gunfire from downtown, and it killed Alex not to be there protecting the people she had sworn to serve. Until they knew exactly what was going on, though, it was better for them to stay free to take whatever action they could.
Then they saw the helicopter get blown out of the air on the other side of town. “That was a SAM that took out that chopper,” Delgado muttered. “Where do those drug cartels get their hands on weapons like that?” He made a curt gesture. “Never mind. Everything’s available on the black market, and with the tons of money they make, they could afford to buy a nuke.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Alex said, knowing that one day it might come to that.
“It still baffles me why they’re trying to take over the town.”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to stop them.”
Delgado flashed her a grin. “I share the sentiment, Chief, but not the confidence. We’re about as outnumbered and outgunned as anybody could be.”
“We need reinforcements,” Alex said, thinking about the people she most suspected of hiding guns from the FPS. “I think we’re going to have to split up, J. P.”
He didn’t like the idea, but she named half a dozen families in town and told him to go to their houses and see if they had any weapons.
“If this is war, then we have to start putting together a resistance,” Alex said. “Get all the guns you can, and people willing to use them, and head for the high school. If it hasn’t been taken over, we’ll use it as a staging area.”
Delgado nodded. “That makes sense, I guess. What are you going to do?”
“Scout out the station. I’d still like to get in there … if they haven’t taken it over already.”
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you to be careful.”
“I think we’re well past that point,” Alex said.
“Better take it slow and easy,” Jack cautioned as Rowdy turned the pickup onto Main Street.
“Slow just means you’re givin’ the bad guys more time to aim at you,” Rowdy said. Before Jack could warn him again, he tromped the gas pedal.
The pickup surged forward, heading toward the municipal complex and the police station. Too late, the three occupants saw the heavily-armed men posted along the street to keep everybody inside and traffic at a standstill.
“Look out!” Jack yelled. “They’ve got guns!”
“So do we!” Rowdy let out a whoop and stuck his left arm out the window so he could blaze away with the pistol in that hand.
He wasn’t a very good shot with either hand, and his bullets went wild, ricocheting off the pavement. That was plenty to make the invaders return the fire, though.
When they got back in the pickup at Jack’s house, Jack had put Jimmy in the middle, even though the dispatcher was bigger. Jack wanted to be at the window so he could shoot if he needed to.
He needed to now. He put his left hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and pushed. “Get down, Jimmy! Get as low as you can!”
At the same time he stuck the other pistol out the window and started squeezing off shots. All that time he had spent on the firing range with Delgado paid off now. He saw one of the invaders spin off his feet, and another dropped his gun, clutched his shoulder, and staggered backwards as the pickup raced past.
“We’re runnin’ the gauntlet, boys!” Rowdy yelled. The pickup’s engine roared. Rowdy had the truck moving at eighty miles an hour down the deserted street.
The sheer audacity of it probably saved their lives. By the time some of the gunmen realized what was going on, the pickup had already zoomed past them, through the hail of lead criss-crossing the street. Jack heard some of the bullets thud into the truck, but the hits didn’t slow them down.
The police station came into view. Rowdy said, “Holy crap!” and Jack thought that was putting it mildly. A couple of big trucks were parked in front of the place, and there had to be at least fifty or sixty of the invaders waiting for them, including several manning something that looked like—
“Oh, my God!” Jack said. “That’s a machine gun! Left, Rowdy, left!”
Rowdy’s reaction time was the only thing that saved them. He spun the wheel and sent the pickup plunging into the narrow driveway between the saddle shop and the drugstore just as the machine gun opened up. Slugs chewed great gouges out of the pavement mere inches behind the pickup as it slewed out of the street. The driveway was only wide enough for one vehicle. Rowdy floored the gas pedal.
An SUV started to pull across the far end of the driveway. Rowdy never slowed down. The right front fender of the pickup slammed into the left front fender of the SUV. The impact threw all three young men in the pickup to the side, but Rowdy managed to hang on to the wheel and powered on past the SUV they had hit. The mirror on that side was gone, scraped away by the collision, along with a lot of paint.
“Son of a bitch!“ Rowdy said. “That was close!” Jack lifted his left hand and looked at it for a second, watching it shake. “Yeah.”
They w
ere on a side street now, but they weren’t out of trouble. Armed men were still running after them, firing automatic weapons. Rowdy cut to the right.
“I’ll come up to the back of the police station,” he said.
“There’s no point in it,” Jack told him. “You saw how many of them there were back there. They’ve already taken it over.”
Jimmy was still bent over so his head was below the level of the dashboard. He looked up past his shoulder at Jack and asked, “What about Eloise?”
“I don’t know, Jimmy. I hope she’s all right, but I just don’t know.”
“Those men are bad!”
“Yeah. Yeah, they sure are.”
Jack was trying to figure out who the invaders were. He had gotten a pretty good look at quite a few of them, and every one he’d seen was Hispanic. Was the U.S. at war with Mexico? Was this just the first step in an actual invasion of the entire country?
Jack didn’t believe he was a bigot, no matter what those eastern politicians and reporters said about Texans. Like most kids in this part of the state, he had grown up bilingual and was just about as fluent in Spanish as he was in English. He’d had Hispanic friends for as far back as he could remember. He just flat didn’t care what color somebody’s skin was, only how they acted.
But it was just a fact that the situation in Mexico was bad now. The drug cartels ran everything, and for everybody else, poverty was rampant. Jack knew enough history to know that circumstances like that were breeding grounds for resentment and jealousy, and corrupt leaders could play on that to get people to do whatever they wanted. That was the classic way a lot of America’s own politicians gained power in the first place and then hung on to it once they had it.
So, yeah, an actual invasion from Mexico was a possibility, Jack thought. Home, Texas, might be ground zero in a new war.
Or it might just be something as simple as some of those drug smugglers flexing their muscle. Everybody knew they were better armed than the Mexican army. They would have what it took to shoot down a helicopter and take over a town.
“Stay on the back roads and head for the high school,” Jack told Rowdy.
“The school? Why?”
Home Invasion Page 23