Mexico.”
“Wartime.”
“Again. That’s what my source said. Wartime. The Venezuelan military war games America all the time.”
“Sink our tankers. Venezuela, Mexico, all of them lining up against us. The south against the north. That’s what you believe?”
“My chief concern now is that Chavez is supporting the jihadistas. He’ll use them as a test for weakness before challenging America in the Gulf of Mexico. If the jungle armies succeed—next question.”
A silence fell over the gymnasium. It was the first time anyone had said out loud what many had perhaps been hearing and thinking privately. That war in the southern hemisphere was a distinct possibility. That the Islamist terrorists could be very willing pawns to an anti-U.S. movement throughout Latin America. Then a fiery old reporter, a former Yank champ at Wimbledon named Clark Graebner, puffed himself up and spoke.
“Commander Hawke, I don’t know you from Adam. I’ll take the secretary’s word you know a little bit about all this. But what you may not know is that the U.S. Navy is stretched pretty thin right now. As is our Army. As are our Marines. Hell, we hardly have enough National Guardsmen left to stop a dogfight and most of them are headed to the Mexican border. Now you waltz in here, stirring up a whole new pot of trouble with this crazy notion of terror cells in the jungle and Brazilian war games. As if we didn’t have enough on our goddamn plate with goddamn Iraq. Now, my question is, what do you have to say about that, Commander Hawke?”
Hawke looked at the red-faced man, his own face devoid of any emotion, and gave his answer.
“Well, sir, I’d say America has fetched up somewhere between Iraq and a hard place.”
42
GUNBARREL, TEXAS
H omer reached up with the idea he would test the fire escape ladder. He wrapped his near-frozen fingers around the cold metal of the bottom rung, but hesitated before he yanked down on it. The damn extension ladder, which was supposed to slide easily down to the ground, was crusty with rust and grime. It might squeak like hell when he pulled on it.
He had to do something. He was tired of waiting here with his back pressed up against the brick wall. The smoker in the window up above him had flipped his butt out into the dark ten minutes ago.
Homer exhaled and saw his breath hang a second and crystallize in the air.
So, was the guy still up at the window, or not?
Hadn’t lit another one, the smoker, so, maybe he was just taking the night air. Hell, it was cold as a witch’s left tit out here. Maybe a little colder. He was freezing his butt off, missing the powerful heater in the Vic. Glad he’d thought to wear his rawhide gloves.
He’d crept around the building twice now, looking for another way inside the big building. There was a tall doorway at the rear, but it was sealed up tight with a heavy slab of aluminum. Padlocked. The door was heavily dented and pried open like a piecrust around the edges. He saw something useful lying almost hidden under a lot of trash. A tire iron. Somebody had tried to get in here a bunch of times over the years and failed.
He didn’t see any sense in trying to pry the door open now. It would be way too noisy for his purposes, but he picked up the tire iron anyway, just in case he got desperate enough later on.
Hell with it. He’d try the ladder. He pulled down slowly on the bottom rung, trying to be quiet about it.
Screeeek.
Damn!
He let it go like a hot poker. The grinding noise had been brief and not all that loud. Still, he waited, his heart thudding pretty good inside his chest, expecting to hear somebody shout from the window over his head. Or shine a light on him and shoot him. His gloved hand moved down to grip the butt of his sidearm. His heart slowed down to near normal after a couple of minutes of nothing happening.
Maybe nobody inside had heard the screeching ladder.
Hell, maybe there was nobody inside to hear anything.
He looked up at the rotted-out fire escape again. Those iron stairs would wake the dead if he yanked that extension ladder down. Hadn’t been used in a few decades probably, maybe more. He looked around the empty side lot, overgrown with weeds. He was looking for a barrel or something he could stand on, maybe reach up and grab the permanent staircase without using the extension ladder. He’d need something pretty high. A couple of big wooden crates would do it.
But he didn’t see anything like that.
There was a bunch of crap laying around in the overgrown field out back. A kind of junkyard back there, surrounded by a barbed wire fence that had seen better days thirty years ago. A couple of old Mack truck cabs and trailers from the fifties were parked right where somebody’d left them sixty years ago.
Maybe he could find something useful back there in the yard. Hell, it sure beat standing here freezing to death. He inched along the wall toward the rear of the building. In the pale moonlight, everything looked silver. Especially the rusted trailer rigs on the other side of the barbed wire fence surrounding the junkyard.
At the rear of the nearest rig, a couple of fifty-gallon steel drums were lying on their sides. Two of those babies stacked up would just be about perfect. Plus, if he ripped some of the old wire fence out, he could roll those drums back around to the fire escape without making any noise at all.
He kept low and made for the fence. He got there quick and knelt in the bushes, looking back at the looming brick building. No sound, no lights in any upstairs windows. No nothing. He grabbed a fistful of wire stands and yanked. The stuff came away nice and easy in his hand and two or three of the rotted posts just broke off at ground level. He stood up and moved at low crouch into the abandoned junkyard.
It was about twenty feet over to the oil drums by the trailer and he got there without any alarms going off.
He snapped on his mini-light and stuck it in the one upright drum. There was about a foot of black gooey stuff at the bottom, maybe just old oil, maybe worse ’cause it stunk. The two other drums were empty although the bottom of one of them was completely rusted out. But, hell, they’d do in a pinch. He’d stack ’em, and then haul himself up on the fire escape.
What the hell was that?
HE’D HEARD something. He whipped his head around, automatically looking back at the factory. No, it had been closer. Not a human sound. A kind of a snickering noise. Rats, he thought. Rats inside this trailer? That must be it.
He found himself staring up at the doors of the funky old trailer. You could still make out (barely) the faded words Tequila Mockingbird over a bottle of cheap Mexican hootch. The rear doors were locked. Not only locked, but there was a heavy chain wrapped through the handles and locked with a large, rusty padlock. Do you padlock an empty truck and leave it in a field for twenty years? No.
So, what the hell was in there was so all-fired important?
He stuck the tire iron through the twin door handles and pulled back hard as he could without making a huge racket. Didn’t budge an inch. He looked at the padlock again, yanked on it. Rusty, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Now, he was curious. He stuck the sharp end of the tire iron up under the corner of the steel door and tried to pry it upward. The rusted metal peeled up about six inches. He shoved the tire iron in deeper and pulled upwards really hard. It gave another inch or so. He dropped the iron and snapped on his mini-light again.
He bent down to peer inside the trailer.
Couldn’t see diddly-squat in there. But there was one thing. He could see blue starlight coming down from above. So, part of the top of the trailer was missing. Rusted out. And there was one of those narrow ladders going up to the roof that looked like it just might hold his weight. He clicked off his light and stuck it back in his Sam Browne belt.
Hell, climb up, see what was in the old truck and then go find what was going on in the building where the
