Texas Showdown (6 page)

Dust whirled in the wind. Twisting into a red column, the swirl obscured the sun, throwing the firing range in shadow. The paper targets at fifty feet, one hundred feet, and three hundred feet flapped as the dust devil swept past. Then the wind shifted, and the whirling column lost its vortex, became a cloud of churning, billowing grit.

Pardee pulled a bandanna up over his mouth and nose. Like his uniform, the bandanna was khaki splotched with gray and rust — the colors of desert camouflage. Now Blancanales, Gadgets, and Lyons wore the uniforms of the mercenary army also.

"I saw what you could do the other night," Pardee told Lyons. "But that was your pistol. And maybe you're lucky with your own weapon. Give me the same show with this M-16."

Taking the loaded rifle, Lyons pulled out the magazine, snapped back the action to check the chamber, then hinged open the receiver. He glanced at the interior, then closed the rifle. He sat down at a shooting bench, resting the rifle on a table.

"Hey, no bench-resting it," Pardee told him. "Stand up and rapid fire."

"I'll zero it first."

"It's good, I zeroed it myself."

"No one prepares my weapon but me," Lyons told him. "It's a habit that's kept me alive."

"Go ahead, Morgan. Be difficult."

Sighting on the fifty-foot target, Lyons punched a 5.56mm hole through the printer's seal in the lower left hand corner. He stood, snapping the stock to his shoulder, fired three rounds, shifted his aim, fired three more rounds, then aimed at the 300-foot target, fired three times again.

Focusing his binoculars, Pardee counted the hits. "Three tens on the fifty, two...three in the black of the hundred-foot target. And on the hundred yard... two in the black."

Blancanales laughed, gave Lyons a shove. "Slipping up, hotshot."

"Morgan" shrugged. "It's windy." He pulled out the magazine, jerked back the action to clear the chamber. He caught the flying cartridge, and handed the rifle to Blancanales.

"Wait a second, Marchardo." Pardee pointed to Lyons' personal weapon, the Colt Python that he wore in a shoulder holster. "Now your wheel-gun, two bullets each target."

In one fluid motion, Lyons swept the Python from his holster as he dropped into a wide-legged stance. He fired six times in six seconds.

"The ten's gone on the fifty, you got three in the black of the hundred, and two blacks on the hundred-yard target." Pardee lowered the binoculars. "You are a shooter."

Lyons ejected the Magnum's brass into his hand. He pocketed the casings. "I work at it."

"Wish we had time." Pardee glanced downrange at the targets. "I'd put you to work as an instructor. Some of our quote soldiers unquote need a full mag to put a scare on a target. Now you, Marchardo. Semi-auto rapid fire."

Blancanales fired twice at the fifty-foot target, and raised the rifle to sight on the hundred-foot target. Pardee stopped him: "Back to the fifty-foot target, blindman. Fire until you hit it."

"I got two tens. Morgan ripped up the bull's-eye with his cannon. My rounds went through the holes."

"Quit the talk. Put some holes on that paper."

"Two tens so far." Blancanales snapped the rifle to his shoulder, called his shots. "Number nine to the right, eight to the right, seven."

Downrange, 5.56 holes stitched across the paper target, punching out the numbers 9 and 8 and 7 in the score rings.

"All right, Marchardo." Pardee grinned. "Big shot. Now give me a good pattern on the hundred-yard target."

Brass arced through the air as Blancanales fired, the shots one roar of sound. The bolt locked back after the last cartridge. Blancanales pulled out the magazine and blew smoke from the receiver like a space-age gunfighter.

"You pass. Now Luther." Pardee tossed a magazine to Gadgets.

"I have to shoot those torn-up targets? How will you know what I score?"

"Then put up some new ones. There's the targets, there's the staple gun, go to it."

"Forget the walking," Gadgets muttered. "Numero cinco, to the left." He fired three times. "Same thing on the hundred." He fired again, then sighted on the hundred-yard target, punched holes in the black. "Good enough?"

"All of you are very good." Pardee took up the M-16. He cleared the chamber.

"What's with using M-16s, Pardee?" Blancanales asked. "And these desert uniforms. From what I see in newspapers and magazines, we'll look like Rapid Deployment troopers. Someone could get the idea we're official."

"That's not my worry," Pardee replied. "What I need is shooters. But what I got is full-auto noise-makers."

"Put them out here on the range," Lyons suggested. "Can't you afford the ammo?"

Pardee shook his head. "Can't afford the time. Chances are, in two weeks all of this will be history."

* * *

On the wide-screen television screen, a helicopter closed on a cluster of concrete buildings and parked cars and trucks. Fire streaked from the side of the helicopter, blast-flashes and clouds of flame obscured the targets.

Another video clip showed desert-camouflaged soldiers crowded into a helicopter. The image jumped and wavered with the bucking of the helicopter as the ground rushed up to meet the camera. The camera lurched, soldiers jumped from the side door, sprinted into flames and drifting black smoke.

The sound track carried rotor-throb, shouted commands, staccato auto-rifle bursts.

In a final clip, the cameraman leaned from the side door of his helicopter to pan over the blocking forces in positions around the road. As he passed the squad, his camera recorded the blasted buildings and wrecks, soldiers moving through the smoke and debris, then showed the second blocking force.

"Attack, deployment, and withdrawal in five minutes," Colonel Furst told the others as he switched off the video deck and switched on the lights. He turned to them, his boots shoulder-width apart, his fists on his hips. He scanned their faces — the smiling Tate Monroe in his wheelchair, Craig Pardee in his dusty fatigues at Monroe's side, and Jorge Lopez in his five-hundred-dollar silk suit.

They sat in Monroe's trophy room. Photos of Monroe in his youth, mementos from his distant and now lost operations, and portraits of his past wives covered the walls. There was a wooden propeller. There were rifles, submachine guns, a Browning .50 caliber machine gun with the stenciled words, Monroe International, along its water-cooled barrel.

The back wall had ports for the projection room. In the past, Tate Monroe had entertained old friends with black-and-white movies of his adventures in the thirties, forties, and fifties. But he had outlived his friends. For the past several weeks, he had watched videotapes of preparations for another adventure, one which he had financed, but which would be the glory of other, younger men.

"What is your reaction, Senor Lopez?" Furst demanded of the elegant Mexican.

Lopez glanced at a notepad before answering. "His rancho is beyond the range of your helicopters."

"We will secure a staging area in your country before we make our strike."

"And where will that be?" Lopez asked.

Furst did not answer.

Lopez nodded, glanced at his notes again. "He is not without protection there. What if the helicopter with the rockets is shot down? What if one of your troop helicopters is shot down? Will you be able to complete your mission?"

"Affirmative. We have backup units. But we do not believe his security personnel will have the time to react. We will come in at one hundred feet, the lead helicopter will rocket all opposition, all buildings, all vehicles. I believe our greatest difficulty will be in finding the body. If we were willing to risk a one-percent chance of failure, we would have modified all the helicopters to fire rockets. Then we would have blasted the entire ranch flat and hoped we got him. But instead, we will take the time to find the body. There may be skirmishing and casualties, but we will be one hundred percent sure he is dead."

"Very good, Colonel Furst," Monroe said, his voice a rattle of mucous. He turned to Senor Lopez. "I have reviewed all of the colonel's plans. He has anticipated every contingency. He has recruited the finest independent soldiers and technicians and officers available. Every man has had months of training. Every man knows that success means wealth — not just generous pay, but lifelong wealth. Some of them may die, but those who live will be paid immediately what common men earn in a lifetime." The old man cleared his throat. "Tell all of this to your leader. We have already joined our families, soon we will join our destinies. We wait only for your signal."

"Yes, destiny..." muttered Lopez, studying his notes. "How is the senora? Happy? Even when she was a child, in her father's mansion, on his estates, she did not have the wealth that she knows now."

Monroe smiled. "Availa is a joy to me every moment of my day. Her joy is my joy."

"Her brother misses her," Lopez informed him. "They were always together, you realize. But so it must be... They had a blessed childhood, but she could not be a child forever. She needed a husband to make her complete, to make her a woman."

"What will you tell your Rojo?" Furst demanded, cutting into the Mexican's personal speech.

"I will tell my leader that our American friends have assembled the men and machines required to strike the first blow of our revolution. I will tell him that this army, commanded by his own brother-in-law, the honorable Mr. Monroe, will join the phalanx of warriors and leaders marching against the international communist conspiracy. Together we will wield the swords of patriotism, liberty, and faith. We will..."

Furst's snickering interrupted Lopez. Pardee burst into guffaws. Offended, Lopez looked from one man to the other, and his face went taut with anger. Monroe stopped the laughter with a slap on the armrest of his invalid chair.

"Wheel me out," Monroe ordered Pardee. "Senor Lopez, dinner and my lovely wife wait for us. These soldiers wish to return to their troops. They have no time for talk. Or for cultured conversation."

"They have time for this much more talk," Lopez faced the soldiers and spoke with fierce anger. "Your films are very impressive, but they mean nothing. Your plans mean nothing. The battle alone will prove your worth. You talk brave now, you promise us his death. But until he is dead, you and your soldiers are the greatest threat facing our patriots. Your attack must be perfect. Perfect! If you fail, if you blunder, the Mexican government will believe that the United States government sponsored the attack, and there will be war. Not war between our patriots and the Marxists — but total, tragic war between our two nations!"

For a moment there was silence. Furst and Pardee did not dare mock the Mexican's statement. Then from an old, dried throat came the words that hissed through the withered, colorless lips of Tate Monroe: "So be it!"

* * *

Their fatigues snapped in the warm dusk wind. Craig Pardee was letting gravity pull the open jeep through the curves and straightaways of the hills below Monroe's mansion. He gulped from a bottle of fine French wine he had stolen from the mansion's wine rack, passed it to Colonel Furst. Furst finished the bottle in two gulps. He heaved it into the canyon below the road. Arcing over the gathering shadows, the bottle flashed with the sunset's red light, then smashed on the stark eroded rocks.

Furst grinned, showing his movie-star teeth. "All Monroe wants is dead Mexicans. All the political talk, all that patriotism stuff, he don't care..."

"I thought he wanted his oil fields back," Pardee said to his commander, "the ones he had way back when. The ones that got nationalized."

"He wants the fields because the Mexicans took them. When we first sketched out the plan, he had me look into getting a hydrogen bomb so that..."

"What?"

"An H-bomb. A super-nuke. He wanted to drop it on the oil fields. I figured I'd have to hijack three B-52s from the Strategic Air Command to do it right. So he decided to finance the revolution instead. I tell you, that old man has money. He had me running all over the world with suitcases full of hundred-dollar bills. Lear jets. Gold bullion." Furst grinned to Pardee. "You know how much the senorita?"

"I thought she was part of the political deal."

"At any price. And I think she has an erotic fascination with wheelchairs."

They laughed for a minute. Pardee pulled another bottle of wine from under the seat. They were parallel to the airfield now; miles away, the lights of the mercenary base sparkled in the twilight. Furst took the bottle, flicked out his German paratrooper knife, got the cork out.

"No time to waste," Furst joked. "Officers can't drink in front of the enlisted men. So, she is part of the politics, the senora is. And ten million dollars was part of the politics, too. Ever seen ten million in small bills?"

"Why didn't you just take off? Make for the horizon!"

Furst gave Pardee a knowing grin. "Then Monroe would
send you
after me. And if I offed you, he'd send ten more. And if I got them, he'd send a hundred. You don't mess with someone who can buy every freelance shooter in the world. Makes for bad experiences."

"Speaking of shooters, I got three new recruits who're good. One man's great."

"You still hiring men? We don't have time to train them."

"They don't need it. They're trainer material themselves. One guy speaks Mexican, one guy's a deadeye, pistols and rifles, and one's supposed to be an electronics freak. I'm going to work them into the raid tomorrow night."

"An electronics man?" Furst wondered out loud. "And a marksman? Let's talk to these fellows."

* * *

The base offered two first-run movies a night. Walking to the theater next to the PX, Lyons and Blancanales saw a jeep driven by Craig Pardee stop at the gate. The sentries saluted the two men in the open jeep, and the electric gates started open.

"I wonder who the hardcase with Pardee is," Blancanales said to Lyons. There was no answer. Blancanales glanced around for his friend. He was alone in the roadway.

"Hsst!" The signal came from the shadows between the prefab offices.