and sliced through light fixtures and cut wood support posts into splinters. Jim Bob was unhurt and under his table, punching 911 on his phone. But the police wouldn't arrive in time.
'Stay down!'
Bode reached over and yanked Hank's weapon out of his holster. It was a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a fifteen-round clip. He grabbed Hank's spare clip then clicked the safety off and chambered a round and waited for a pause in the shooting, when the men had run through their clips and had to reload. The gunfire lasted less than fifteen seconds, but it seemed like an hour. Then it stopped.
They were reloading.
Bode knelt up and saw two men standing in the middle of the street holding assault weapons. They were no more than twenty feet outside the restaurant. They had ejected spent clips and were inserting new ones. He stood and aimed the pistol center mass and fired. He hit both men in the chest three times each, dropping them.
'Don't move, Becca!'
He climbed through the blown-out window and walked to the men; broken glass crunched under his boots. One moved; Bode shot him again. Twice. Bode approached a black SUV angled across Guadalupe Street; a dark figure moved in the driver's seat. He aimed and fired through the windshield. Five times. He ejected the spent clip and snapped in the spare just as a man fell out of the vehicle with an AK-47; Bode shot him six times before he could fire his weapon. He heard sirens in the distance. He checked that the SUV was empty then walked back through air thick with gunpowder. He looked through the open window at Becca.
'Are you hurt?'
She shook her head, but she wasn't looking at Bode. She was staring at Darcy, who lay motionless on the floor with her eyes open and a bullet hole in her forehead.
Angel Salinas was a charter member of Mayor Gutierrez's Mexican Mafia. He had driven the two hundred thirty-five miles from Austin to Laredo just to interview Jesse Rincon.
'Doctor,' Salinas said, 'you could beat the governor-'
His cell phone rang. He checked the number.
'It's my office.' He punched the button and answered. 'Angel… What?… When?… Shit!.. I'm leaving now.'
He disconnected but stared at his phone a moment. Then he looked up at Jesse.
'They killed the governor. His daughter, too.'
He ran off. Jesse turned in a circle searching for the governor's wife.
'They missed. We're both okay.'
Lindsay Bonner breathed a sigh of relief.
'Thank God.'
She had called Bode's cell phone. Her husband and her daughter had survived an assassination attempt. But Bode did not speak. There was more.
'What is it?'
He exhaled into the phone.
'They killed Hank and Darcy.'
She felt her legs start to give way.
'Oh, God. No.'
'I'm sending the jet to Laredo. You're coming home, Lindsay.'
' Sicarios,' DEA Agent Rey Gonzales said to the governor of Texas. 'Hit men.'
Austin police, Texas Rangers, state troopers, and FBI and DEA agents now swarmed Guadalupe Street outside the restaurant called Kerbey's. The street was blocked off from traffic, and police barricades and cruisers cordoned off the crime scene from the reporters and cameras. People shouted, emergency lights flashed, and blood stained the governor's clothes.
'Hit men?'
Rey nodded. 'Each cartel has a sicario unit. In-house assassins. Ex-military and law enforcement, hired out to the cartels.'
'And they're here in America?'
'FBI's got an entire task force devoted just to Mexican sicarios working in the U.S. They just killed a stockbroker up in New York named Ronald Richey.'
'He was into drugs?'
'Investment banking. Enrique de la Garza-we tagged him 'El Diablo'-he's the head of Los Muertos, he invested a billion with Richey, blamed him for losing half in subprime mortgages.'
'So he killed the guy?'
'Bullet through his brain.' Rey gestured at the dead Mexicans sprawled across Guadalupe Street. 'Standard payment for a U.S. assassination is fifty grand cash plus two kilos of cocaine, worth three hundred grand on the street. We found two hundred grand cash and ten kilos of coke in their vehicle. El Diablo, he put a premium on your head. He wants you dead, Governor.'
'Because we found his marijuana?'
'Because you killed his son.'
' His son? '
'One of those Mexicans you killed on the ranch, he was El Diablo's first-born son. Jesus de la Garza, nineteen years old.'
Rumors had been percolating on the border that El Diablo had sent a team of sicarios into Texas. Rey knew the target had to be the governor. So he had taken it upon himself to come to Austin and warn the governor. He had arrived in town that morning, too late to save the Ranger and the girl. The governor and his daughter were just lucky.
'Who does this guy think he is, the godfather?'
'Governor, El Diablo makes the godfather look like a middle-school bully. The broker, that was business. This is personal.'
The governor turned to the bodies of the Texas Ranger and the college girl and his daughter sobbing in Mr. Burnet's arms. Then he turned back to Rey.
'You goddamn right it's personal.'
The governor of Texas stood in front of a cluster of microphones set up in the parking lot. He faced a dozen television cameras but pointed at the crime scene.
'This is what happens when a sovereign nation can't control its own borders. When it won't control its own borders because of politics. People die.'
'Governor,' a reporter said, 'The FBI says these men were professional killers. They staked you out, knew your daily routine. They knew where to find you. Aren't you afraid El Diablo will make another attempt on your life?'
Bode Bonner stared into the cameras.
'I'm not afraid of the devil himself.'
'Oh, you should be, Governor. You should be very afraid.'
Enrique de la Garza once loved the game of beisbol more than life itself. He loved the smell of the grass and his leather glove and the feel of the wood bat in his hands. He had the glove and the arm but not the bat to play in the American majors. So his playing days had ended but not his love for the game. On the shelf in his office, he maintained a costly collection of baseballs autographed by the legends of the game. He often imagined autographing baseballs for fans before games in Boston; he went to many Red Sox games while at Harvard and often dreamed of playing shortstop at Fenway Park. He now picked up the Ted Williams ball and threw it as hard as he could at the image on the television of the Anglo he now hated more than any man before. He turned to Hector Garcia but pointed a finger at the shattered screen.
'I want that man dead. I want his head on my desk.'
He took a deep breath to get his blood pressure under control. He calmed and assessed the damage.
'Ask Julio to go online and order another television.'
