Texas Showdown (5 page)

Carl Lyons caught Christie's arm, took her stubbornly held guitar case. "Are you hurt, lady?"

"I'm okay! Who are you?"

"He's a friend. We've got to get you out of here. Where's your car?" Blancanales' voice pulsed with urgency.

"We came in Craig's."

"Then we'll take mine. He'll follow us."

Blancanales had the doors to his rented sedan open in an instant. Lyons and Gadgets helped the singer into the car, then sprinted for their car.

A long scream tore apart the night. Blancanales looked back to the bodies. He saw Pardee, knife in one hand, something gory in the other, standing over the wailing, writhing punk who had threatened Christie. The scream choked off as Pardee jammed the handful of gore into the punk's mouth. Then he lifted the punk's head by the hair and grinned his death's-head smile into the face of the dying gang boy.

The knife flashed twice. Blood arced from the hood's yawning throat.

Blancanales threw the rented car into gear, burned rubber. A last look into the rearview mirror showed Pardee pause in the center of the parking lot to survey the scene, then scoop up his Colt from the asphalt and run to his car.

Taking directions from Christie, Blancanales wove through the avenues of Kingston. Lyons and Gadgets followed in their rented car. Pardee was waiting for them at the hotel. He greeted Lyons with a grin and a handshake.

"Good shooting, pal. Two inches to the left of the sternum at one hundred feet. And by street light. Ex-cell-ent!"

"Thanks. Practice makes perfect."

"Marchardo! You see the expression on that punk's face when he pulls the trigger and nothing? Punk didn't know the difference between cocked and half-cocked." Pardee continued on to Christie. "Are you all right, love?"

"I'm okay. What about you? You're the one they kicked."

"We don't have time to talk. My friend here..." he nodded to Lyons "...had to kill one of those punks. You know how the law is. I'm sending you back to the States. Or anywhere you want to go right now. We can't stay in Jamaica."

"I'll go with you. I don't want to go back alone."

"Okay, Los Angeles. You always wanted to go to L.A., so now you're going. Upstairs and pack! I'll join you in California next weekend."

Christie ran into the hotel. Pardee watched her, a look of love on his face. He turned to the three men.

"Okay, gentlemen. You got work." Pardee offered his hand to Gadgets. Then he noticed the blood that had clotted on his jacket sleeves. He grinned at Blancanales: "Another good suit hits the shitcan."

Dawnlight revealed the desert blurring beneath them, rocks and low brush flashing past at three hundred miles per hour. The pilot maintained an altitude of one hundred feet. To the east, rip-saw peaks stood black against a horizon the color of sheet flame. Six hours out of Jamaica, this was their first sight of Texas. They had seen the distant glows of towns' lights during the night. But now, in the first minutes of daylight, there was nothing. They skimmed over total isolation. Only the black line of a highway miles off marked the desert.

"So — you worked for the airlines after your discharge..." Pardee continued his questioning. For the hours of the flight, the plush leather and hardwood interior of the Beechcraft jetprop had served as an interrogation room. Before take-off, Pardee had collected their weapons and searched them. In the air, he asked them for their backgrounds, in detail. And then he questioned each detail.

"For a while, yeah," Gadgets answered. "But they let me go. Either the Feds bothered them, or they decided not to risk me fragging a pilot. They never told me straight."

"If you fragged your captain in Nam, how come they hired you in the first place?"

The nature of his role damn near made Hermann Gadgets Schwarz spit.

"I didn't tell them. I had a medical discharge. I had my Purple Heart. I mean, it was 'Hire the Vet' time. Until the investigators came along. Then they found out."

"What was the name of your captain? The one you wasted."

"Sisson. Captain Sissy, I called him. Always having us running around topside, to string antennas and put up new radar dishes — but he wouldn't even go for his own food. One time we took a hit on top that took away our gear, and he orders three men up to fix it. To fix it right then. Rockets, mortars, 130mm shells coming down, and he sends them up. 'Wouldn't ask you to do anything I wouldn't do.' Bang, we get hit again. He sends me up to check on them. Nothing but rags and meat. Couldn't even tell who was who. I go down and give him the bad news, he hears it, then he sends me topside to the officers' mess. He has me fetch coffee. The sky's falling, we're dying all over, and I'm trying not to spill his coffee." Schwarz was alive to the possibilities of the story. In fact he knew many like it. "That's when I decided to do him. My contribution to the war effort."

"How'd you do it?" Pardee pressed.

The invention burned on. "Told a recon I knew that I wanted Chicom 82mm mortar. Then I put an electric Claymore's blasting cap on the fuse, and hid it just a little bit inside one of the sandbags topside. He went topside, I popped him, then I pulled the wires clear. I jammed them in my pocket as I went to help him. I tied off what was left of his legs and arm but he bled to death before he got to triage. His replacement had a more realistic attitude."

"I was in Operation Pegasus," Pardee commented. "Never saw a more fucked-up place than Khe Sanh. When did you say you met Mr. Marchardo?"

Blancanales interrupted. "Pardee, can't you lighten up? Luther and I go back years and years."

Luther. Luther Schwarz.

"Gentlemen," Pardee told them, looking at each of them. He smiled his death's-head grin. "You answer all the questions I ask you. Or you take a walk. Do we understand each other?"

"No problem here," Lyons told him.

"Thank you, Mr. Morgan."

Carl Morgan.

Outside, the jagged spines of mountains towered on both sides. Air turbulence shook the Beechcraft.

"When did you meet Mr. Marchardo?"

Gadgets looked to Blancanales. "When was it? A couple of years ago. The time the coast guard played tracer-tag with that yacht full of hippie dopers..."

"Oh, man..." Blancanales laughed.

"Were you there, Mr. Morgan?"

"No."

"How long have
you
worked with your friends?"

"This year."

"Tell me all about it."

"Sometimes we're on boats. Sometimes we fly. Sometimes I get a G-3. Sometimes it's a Mattie Mattel. Always I got my Python. What else you interested in?"

"Who you really are."

Lyons didn't answer for a second. Gadgets looked out the window, watched the morning sun light the rocks. If Lyons couldn't handle this questioning...

"I'm past that." Lyons spoke like an old man.

"What?" Pardee looked piercingly at Lyons. "Just give me a straight answer."

"I'm Carl Morgan. I've got a phony passport and a Colt Python with a magnaported six-inch barrel. Issue me a rifle, I'll carry it. What else can I tell you?"

"You and me just might get along, Morgan," Pardee said. "Last night, I asked your pal for references. He said he couldn't talk about it. But you two will. I want the names of people you worked for. You're on the payroll, but until I check you out, you don't get weapons, briefings, nothing. Understand?"

"No problem here," Lyons told him.

"I understand," Gadgets agreed.

The intercom interrupted them. "One minute until landing. One minute."

The three men of Able Team looked out as the base flashed beneath them. They saw rows of steel prefab buildings, asphalt streets, gravel assembly areas, and a two-lane highway. The highway cut through the rocky hills around the camp, continued past the camp to a mansion set on the peak of a distant hill. Two fences surrounded the base. A blockhouse guarded the only gate.

"There is something you should know," Pardee cut off their sight-seeing. "Texas has a whole different attitude about private property. Somebody goes someplace, and they ain't supposed to be there, that's trespassing. And like the sign on the fence down there says, 'Trespassers Will Be Shot.' " The Beechcraft's wheels touched the landing strip.

* * *

Below his office window in La Paz, waves of flowers rolled across the red clay tiles of the restaurant roof. Parrots squawked on the patio. The flowers attracted hummingbirds.

Bob Paxton turned from his desk to watch the emerald-green birds flit through the flowers. Once, when ravens had raided the nests of the tiny birds, eating the eggs and chicks, Paxton had taken his silenced Ruger .22 and dropped the ravens, one by one.

Now he held the Ruger under his desk. The footsteps on the creaky stairs continued to his door. Before the visitor knocked, Paxton crossed the office, his feet silent on the tiles except for the slight squeak of the ankle on his plastic leg.

Knock. "Senor Paxton, this is Lieutenant Navarro."

Paxton slipped the Ruger in his belt at the small of his back. He opened the door for the young lieutenant. The two men presented a contrast in military traditions: Paxton, the ex-gunnery sergeant with his beer belly and cocaine habit; Navarro, slim and formal in his tailored polyester. Yet Navarro respected the boozy retired non-com. Unlike Navarro, Paxton had distinguished himself in combat. Navarro knew he would never have the opportunity.

"How can I help you, Lieutenant?"

The young Latin handed him a folder. Paxton glanced through the eight-by-ten black-and-white blow-ups.

"I need to know the names and nationalities."

"I don't know about these three, I'll have to check my files," said Paxton. "But this man..." He limped to his desk, spread out the photos. "I can tell you who he is, right now."

Paxton put his finger on the glossy black-and-white photo of Hal Brognola.

A closed van waited only steps from the jetprop. Scanning the scene as they left the plane, they saw the concrete landing strip, strips of landing lights, the steel prefab hangars at the far end. Double chain link fences topped with razor wire encircled the area.

"Move it!" Pardee shouted. "No tourism! In the truck."

Sitting on the floor of the van, Blancanales felt the air compress as Pardee slammed the van doors shut on them. "Reminds me of prison."

Gadgets touched his ear, pointed to the walls of the van. Blancanales and Lyons nodded. "Way I see it," Gadgets said clearly, "they run a tight operation. And I'm glad. Most of the gangs down South don't get busted from the outside, it's always a Fed or an informer on the inside. So a tight operation is all right with me."

The van took them first to an infirmary. Again, in the few steps between the van and the door of the prefab infirmary, they saw almost nothing of the base: chain link fencing topped by razor wire, and a blacktop road.

"Strip down," an orderly told them. He gave them each a deep plastic tray. "All your clothes and personal things in the trays. And I mean everything. Rings, dogtags, all of it."

"When do we get it back?" Lyons asked. "And where's our luggage?"

"Hey, man," the bone-thin blond orderly drawled in his southern accent. "Until you clear Security, that's the least of your worries."

Naked, they waited until a doctor took them one by one into an examination room. A middle-aged man with the gray skin and ravaged body of an alcoholic, the doctor did not introduce himself nor question them on their medical histories. Speaking only in monosyllables, he took full-body photographs of them, complete X rays, then blood samples.

Next, the orderly gave them each day-glow orange fatigues and tennis shoes, and hurried them back to the van.

"Dig these jazzy uniforms," Gadgets sighed.

"Camouflage," Lyons said. "For an invasion of Las Vegas."

Another short ride and the van dropped them at their barrack. The building sat at the edge of the base. It looked like a prison unit. Two electric gates and a glass-walled guard booth completed the impression created by the chain link fence and razor wire.

A man standing six-foot-eight stomped from the barrack door. "Stop rubbernecking, new meat. In here!"

They filed through. The interior was one large room. Two rows of ten steel bunk beds ran the length of the barrack. Though there were scuffs in the linoleum and chips in the paint of the steel beds, the place had the smell of a new house trailer, just months old. The sheet steel walls had the original enamel. Not one of the windows was cracked.

"I am Sergeant Cooke," the three-hundred-pound soldier told them. "Until Captain Pardee is positive on your identities, you stay here. When you clear Security, you will join the other men. Until then, you sweat. Here are the supplies you need for the next few days."

He pointed to a table. There were three identical piles of sheets, pillowcases, blankets, soaps, razors.

"I suggest you make your bunks now. Tonight you might not have it left in you." Sergeant Cooke threw back his immense shoulders, glared at each of them for an instant, and added: "I'm taking you out for a long walk."

* * *

Ten miles into the rocky foothills, Sergeant Cooke collapsed. He floundered in the dust, trying to stand, but got no further than his hands and knees. He fell onto his back, gasping, his face gray and streaming with sweat.

Blancanales sat at the side of the trail, watching Sergeant Cooke struggle. Gadgets looked down at the huge man. Lyons squinted into the afternoon glare. He shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon.

"You think they're training over there?" Lyons pointed to the east. "Every once in a while, I hear booms. Thought I saw a helicopter."

"Take a break, Morgan," Blancanales told him.

"We got a problem here with the D.I. Looks like heatstroke to me."

"Textbook case," Gadgets agreed.

"What's with you guys?" Sergeant Cooke croaked. "Pardee hire you straight out of the Special Forces?"

Gadgets flashed a grin to Blancanales and Lyons. "Sort of."

The second day, Sergeant Cooke rode a 1200cc dirt bike while Able Team double-timed.

* * *

High above the rocks and red dust of the Texas desert, Tate Monroe surveyed the maneuvers of his mercenary army from the helicopter of its commander, Colonel Furst. Monroe leaned against the nylon safety webbing to peer down at the other helicopters circling beneath them. In the brilliant sunlight, his hair looked like strands of ceramic, the skin of his tropics-scarred face like translucent plastic molded over a skull. He wore antique sunglasses, round black lenses on a wire frame. The round lenses looked like black eye sockets.

"There's the objective," Colonel Furst shouted over the rotor noise. Furst was square-shouldered, with muscles straining his tailored fatigues. Years of combat and prison had not marred his movie-star good looks.

Furst pointed to a series of concrete buildings alongside an asphalt road. The buildings had only walls and roofs. Along the road, several old cars and trucks were parked.

"Here comes the lead ship now," Furst shouted. "Inside that helicopter, there's a hundred steel tubes, all loaded with 106mm recoilless rifle rounds and triggered electrically. It's very effective. Watch."

Dropping down, a Huey paralleled the road at a hundred miles an hour. An instant before it came to the buildings and the parked vehicles, the Huey climbed suddenly, then banked. Fire flashed from its side.

A chain of explosions ripped the road and clustered buildings. Blazing seconds later, gutted hulks burned on the road. Dust and billowing smoke obscured the buildings. Wheeling in the sky, the Huey swept down again. A second chain of explosions hit the buildings and vehicles from the opposite direction. Shattered concrete and twisted metal was all that remained.

"That was twenty rounds," Furst announced, "leaving eighty rounds in reserve. Now here's the clean-up squad. The other troops take blocking positions."

Three Hueys swept in low, the door gunners spraying the target with machine-gun fire. One touched down near the wrecked trucks. The second and third split, the second landing on the road three hundred yards to the north, the third three hundred yards to the south. The squad from the first helicopter sprinted into the smoke and fire. The other two squads fanned out along the road.

"The clean-up squad makes sure that everything is dead," Colonel Furst concluded.

"Excellent," Monroe nodded, leaning back against the seat. He rested his head against the bulkhead and mouthed the word again. "Excellent. Excellent."

* * *

Electronic funk filled the interior of the limousine. Half-smiling, her face a mask of Quaalude pleasure, Mrs. Monroe swayed slightly to the rhythm. Her features revealed her heritage, her defined, almost aquiline nose and high cheekbones showing her Indian blood, her full lips and round eyes the Spanish. Designer clothes and gold jewelry revealed her wealth.

Dr. Nathan, Tate Monroe's personal physician, glanced into the searing blue of the midday sky. A thin, pale young man from New York City, he sucked hard on the last inch of a cigarette, opened the limo door for an instant to flick the butt outside. Then he lit another with the limo's gold lighter.

"Mrs. Monroe, this is absurd. Your husband contracted me as his doctor. I have no responsibilities other than his health. I cannot — by contract — ever be more than one minute away. I am on call twenty-four hours a day. Which is all very reasonable, considering the condition of his heart.

"But what does he do? He goes up in a helicopter. What does he say to me? 'Wait here, I'll be back in an hour.' Do you have any idea what kind of stress that will put on his heart? I don't mean just the excitement of flying around in the sky with his security personnel, I mean the altitude!

"The higher someone goes, Mrs. Monroe, the more demand on that muscle, and your husband has one sick muscle in his chest. I cannot believe what he..."

"Only another month, doctor," Mrs. Monroe interrupted. She turned to him, her eyes heavy-lidded with drugs. "Perhaps sooner. Can you not have patience with... your patient..." She laughed at her pun, throwing her head back against the seat, and the laugh died. She closed her eyes, rubbed her cheek against the leather of the seat. "Only another month," she murmured.

"Mrs. Monroe," Dr. Nathan began.

"Please call me Availa. I tell you so often..."

"Mrs. Monroe. Your husband may not survive the year if he continues disregarding my instructions. I don't want to have..."

Availa Monroe came upright, her eyes suddenly hard, her lips curling in disdain. "You don't want! What does it matter what you want? If my husband..." she spat the word "...has another month of life, he will have his revenge. And that is all he wants. What you want, what I want, it is nothing. Want..."

Her anger gone, she lay back against the seat again, her eyes closing. She spoke without opening her eyes. "Tell me, doctor. What is my age?"

Dr. Nathan studied her face with concern. "Those pills are dangerous. They are habit-forming and have long-term toxic effects..."

"My age, doctor."

"Twenty-five and months."

She laughed. "Thank you for lying, doctor. But I know I am so very old. I have so much to forget. I must be old."

"Mrs. Monroe... Availa, please. I don't know your troubles, not all of them, but if you want help — counseling, medication, or just someone to talk to you — you're a very rich woman. You don't need to suffer in silence, you don't need to drug yourself so..."

Dr. Nathan reached out to her.

She jerked her hand away, hissing. "Don't touch me!"

They heard the throb of approaching helicopters. Dr. Nathan lit another cigarette from the butt of the one he smoked, and stepped into the hot desert wind.

* * *

In the red glow of sunset, Able Team jogged back to the base. Salt crusted in sweat patterns on their orange jumpsuits. Sergeant Cooke roared past them on his dirt bike, his wheels throwing dust and gravel into the air. Running blind through the dust, Gadgets tripped on a rock and fell.

Lyons helped him up. "That Cooke irritates me."

"Yeah." Gadgets wiped blood from his torn hands. "I think he's doing it deliberately."

"Lots of deliberate things can happen to him, too." Lyons ran alongside Gadgets. "But that has to wait."

"But how much longer?" Gadgets gasped. "This waiting is about to kill me. We must've done a hundred miles today."

Lyons laughed. "It's good for you."

"Ughhhhhhh," Gadgets groaned.

Ahead of them, where the trail met the asphalt road, they saw a jeep. The two previous evenings, after their forced marches through the desert and hills, it had been the closed van that had taken them into the base. Now they saw Blancanales swing into the jeep.

Lyons sprinted to the road. "All right! Did we finally get our clearance?"

"Sure did, pal," the driver told him. A crew-cut, muscled man with a black mustache, the driver extended a strong hand to Lyons. "I'm Perkins. Welcome to the Texas Irregulars."

* * *

Cold wind from the Andes banged signs, carried newspapers down the avenue. The wind penetrated the old weather-stripping of his Volkswagen's doors, chilled Bob Paxton's stump despite the heater. He massaged the ache where his right leg ended, not bothering to downshift until he came to El Negro's villa. Then he threw the shift into first, and chugged up to the iron gate.

Paxton kept his hands on the wheel as the guards approached. There was one man on each side, both with folding stock Galil assault rifles. Then a third man shone a flashlight in Paxton's face. He waved the light over the interior of the small car. He signaled the guard window. An electric motor opened the heavy gates.

Ex-Lieutenant Navarro approached as Paxton parked in front of the villa: "Senor Paxton, do you have everything?"

"Most everything." Carrying a folder of photos and papers, Paxton limped after the young man into the villa. Hardfaced men with Uzi's and sawed-off shotguns watched them from the shadows.

The warmth of the foyer washed over Paxton, relaxing him, easing the ache where his leg had been. They paused while a guard went over Paxton with a hand-held metal detector, then they continued to the library. Navarro opened the door for him.

"It is my pleasure to introduce Master Sergeant Robert Paxton, Retired." Navarro announced.

El Negro stood to greet the American. Unusually tall for a Bolivian, almost six feet, the man had coarse features and blue black hair, swept straight back from his forehead. He shook Paxton's hand. "My aide tells me you have important information for me."

"Information, yes. But I hope it is of no importance to you." Paxton spread photos across El Negro's walnut desk. "Lieutenant Navarro brought these photos to me. He believed them to be either a new American gang in Bolivia or new Drug Enforcement Agency officers. Three men I can't identify, yet. But this man is well known in the United States.

"He is Hal Brognola, formerly of the United States Department of Justice. Specializing in organized crime until last year. What he's doing now is unknown..."

"Organized crime?" El Negro asked.

"The big gangs in North America and Europe. The Mafia, the Syndicate. Anyone who has the smarts to get organized. But most of that is over now. In the last year of Mr. Brognola's service, the gangs took heavy, heavy casualties. Most of the gangs were wiped out."

"And the other three men?"

"Nothing on them. Zero."

"Lieutenant Navarro, you will work with Mr. Paxton. Whatever it costs, wherever you must go. I want to know why they are in my country. It is, Mr. Paxton, very important to me."