Somehow, Jurado did not find it surprising that Ballesteros was here.
The other he didn’t know. Whip-lean and rangy, he had sunken cheeks, sharp indio cheekbones, and burning eyes. A single glance at those hard, feverish eyes was enough. Jurado looked away hastily.
Clemente and Ballesteros might be thugs, but this man was a predator, of a class far beyond them. This man was to be feared.
“Get him on his feet.” Clemente had a slight speech impediment; his voice was thick and faintly slurred.
The men to either side of him seized him and hauled him up until he was standing unsteadily in front of Clemente. He towered over the little man, but right then, the difference in size really didn’t matter.
His guards were dressed in simple trousers and dark green shirts. In fact, everyone was wearing some variation on the same green shirt. It appeared to be these terrorists’ uniform.
“Come to the balcony, Señor Jurado.” Clemente’s tone was vaguely polite, but he couldn’t quite manage to completely conceal the vicious, underlying malice to the words. Jurado’s knees shook and he wanted to vomit. If he’d had anything in his stomach or his bladder, he probably would have voided them some time ago.
The Green Shirts dragged him toward the balcony. The doors were already open. He staggered out as they shoved him through, and he stumbled against the railing and looked down.
The sun was coming up over the Grand Plaza. Ordinarily, there was some little traffic around the Plaza in the morning, mostly the early risers, those business owners who opened their doors for breakfast. The fountain at the center was usually in the shadow of the forested mountain above until nearly ten in the morning.
Now it was bathed in white light from the headlights of a dozen trucks. And a dozen familiar people knelt in front of that fountain, pinned by those glaring headlights. Some of them wept. Some cowered. Some stared into the light defiantly.
The dark shadows of twenty men stretched out from those headlights toward the kneeling figures. Each man carried a rifle.
More gunmen, backed up by pickup trucks mounting machineguns in their beds or atop their cabs, herded hundreds of the people of San Tabal toward the square. Clearly, Clemente wanted a lot of people to see this.
With a sudden, sickening shock, Jurado realized what was about to happen. But he couldn’t even summon up his voice to protest. He could barely hold himself up against the railing.
Clemente stood next to him. “I want you to see this.” Malevolence dripped from every syllable. Jurado didn’t know why. He’d never met Clemente before this moment. Then Clemente lifted a bullhorn to his lips.
“For too long, these rich farmers and puppets of the American imperialists have oppressed the people of San Tabal! Now, the hour of justice has come! San Tabal is an independent city state as of this moment! And all those who have sucked the blood of the poor who scrape out their living from the cleared jungle, giving their best to these parasites, who live in expensive mansions while they live in tumbledown shacks in the slums, will pay the price!” He turned to the wolfish man who stood on Jurado’s right hand and nodded.
“Firing squad! Do your duty! For the revolution and for Ramon Clemente!” The man’s voice was as raw and harsh as his eyes.
The twenty men lifted their rifles. With a ragged crash of gunfire that echoed off the mountains, they emptied their magazines into the twelve men and women kneeling by the fountain. Crimson spattered on the stone, while bullets chipped away at the two-hundred-year-old sculpture.
When the gunfire fell silent, a dozen twisted bodies lay leaking their lifeblood out onto the stones of the square. The old fountain was pocked with bullet holes, and one of the spigots had been shot off, dribbling water down into the pool below. Those residents who had been dragged out to witness the atrocity could only stare in shock and fear.
Clemente turned to the wolfish looking man again. “Take him away and finish it.”
The man with the burning eyes stared at Jurado without a word, and jerked a hand at his guards. Rough hands grabbed him by the arms and dragged him away from the railing. He went without resistance, still staring down at the bodies below. Some had been friends. Some had been enemies. Some had been competitors before he’d become the mayor.
Wordless and shaking, Jurado let himself be led away.
***
When the sun finally topped the peak to the east, spilling its rays down onto the bloodied plaza, it illuminated the body of Miguel Jurado, formerly mayor of San Tabal, as it swung gently beneath a lamppost at the edge of the Grand Plaza. Above, a red, black, and yellow flag drifted in the morning breeze, declaring a new order in the city of San Tabal.
Chapter 2
The Rocking K Diner was quiet, but it was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. Most people in that neck of the woods had to work. John Brannigan had plenty of chores to do around his cabin up the mountain, but his situation was a little different.
And the message he’d gotten from Mark Van Zandt had been more than a little intriguing.
Brannigan threaded his way between the tables toward the back, trading a friendly wave with Ginger, Mama Taft’s granddaughter and permanent waitress, who would probably inherit the diner whenever Mama passed away. Granted, Mama Taft was hard as nails, and probably wouldn’t die until Death himself
