Tom had given everyone in town strict orders. They were not going to fire the first shot. If there was to be a battle here today, M-15 would have to start it.
Tom and Chet knelt behind the short wall. The tar on the roof was hot and sticky. They watched as one of the men opened the rear door of the limo and a man in an expensive white suit climbed out. The suit was dazzling in the noonday sun. He wore dark glasses and had a machete in his hand. Most of the members of M-15 came from Guatemala and El Salvador, Tom recalled. It made sense that their leader would, too, and a machete was a common tool in those jungles down there.
The man lifted the machete and shouted, “Little Tucson! Hear me! My name is Ernesto Luis Montoya! They call me the Eater of Babies! You have defied me, and now I bring you death!” Montoya turned to his two lieutenants. “Destroy the town and everyone in it!”
They opened fire, the assault rifles in their hands spewing lead and flame at the storefronts along Main Street. At the same time, the other cars in the convoy surged forward, and the men inside them began shooting as well. Rifles, shotguns, and pistols blared from the vehicles. Meanwhile, Montoya calmly climbed back into the limousine and shut the door after himself. Tom supposed the vehicle was heavily armored and virtually bulletproof, so he didn’t waste time shooting at it.
Instead he stood up as the two men on the street below stopped firing to change clips in their rifles. He shouted, “Hey!” and drew both pistols from behind his belt. Their heads jerked up to look at him.
He fired both guns at the nearest of the two men. The slugs smashed into the man’s chest and drove him back against the limo, bending him over the hood of the big car. He flopped forward lifelessly. Tom shifted his aim and snapped shots at the second man, but that one had reacted with incredible swiftness, diving behind the cover of the limousine even as Tom fired.
Tom dropped to his knees as beside him Chet Eggleston poked the barrel of the Winchester over the wall and started firing at the cars that were now inching along Main Street, moving slowly so that the gunners inside would have plenty of time to shoot at the buildings they passed. Chet drew a bead on the windshield of one of the leading cars and pumped three slugs through it as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever. The windshield shattered and the car came to a jolting halt as its horn blared. The driver had been hit and slumped forward onto the wheel.
That brought part of the convoy to a halt and allowed the townspeople positioned in other buildings along the street to start fighting back more effectively. Gunsmoke drifted from broken windows and open doors as the defenders poured lead into the cars. Unwilling to stay pinned down, the members of M-15 leaped from the vehicles and began spreading out, spraying bullets ahead of them. Now it would become a classic building-to-building, even hand-to-hand fight.
Tom backed away from the front of the store and grabbed Chet’s collar, dragging the lawyer with him. “Come on!” Tom said. “Let’s get down off of here while we still can!”
His feet seemed to barely touch the ladder as he climbed down to the alley. Chet was right behind him.
Out in front of the store, several gang members leaped onto the sidewalk and charged through the door. Bonnie, Lauren, and Louly were waiting, all three women with shotguns poked over the top of the counter. The explosions as all three scatterguns fired at once were deafening. The buckshot slammed into the men and pitched them backward through the blown-out windows. Crimson droplets of blood rained down on the sidewalk.
Tom and Chet trotted down the alley to the corner of the building and peered around it cautiously. A couple of M-15 members pounded toward them, trying to get behind the store. Tom nodded at Chet and then stepped out, bringing up his pistols. Chet moved out behind him, the Winchester ready. The gang members saw them, skidded to a halt, and tried to bring their weapons up. One of them actually got a shot off before Tom’s slugs bored into his chest and dropped him. Tom heard the wind-rip of the bullet past his ear as it missed him. The other gang member doubled over in response to the whip-crack of the rifle in Chet’s hands as the Winchester’s bullet ripped into his belly. Tom and Chet advanced up the alley toward Main Street, stepping over the bodies along the way.
All the cars were stopped now as smoke and steam poured from under the hoods of the ones in the lead. Cannily, the defenders had concentrated their fire on those vehicles, forcing the gang to abandon their cars or stay pinned down in them.
Shots snapped and barked all up and down Main Street as the fighting spread. Tom knew that he and the others were heavily outnumbered, possibly by as much as ten to one. Although they were dealing out some damage, in the long run they would have no chance of surviving. M-15 could afford to take heavy losses. Eventually, Tom and his friends would be hunted down and killed, one by one.
Not yet, though. He stepped onto the sidewalk, holding his arms out to the side and firing both guns at the same time, in opposite directions. Two more members of M-15 went spinning off their feet. Luck was guiding his shots; he probably couldn’t have made another pair of shots like that in a hundred years of trying.
A gun blasted from the rear of the limousine. Tom felt a giant hand swat him in the side and spin him half around. Before he could get his balance, the second of Montoya’s two lieutenants charged out from behind the limo and came at Tom, the assault rifle in his hands blazing. Bullets thudded into the wall next to him.
Chet Eggleston surged forward, shouting and firing the Winchester. The man turned the assault rifle to meet this new threat and Chet went over backward, blood flying in the air. But the distraction he had provided gave Tom enough time to set himself, and he emptied both pistols into the man with the assault rifle, driving him back against the limo’s rear fender. The man dropped the rifle and hung there for a moment, a shocked look on his face as if he couldn’t comprehend the damage the bullets had done to him, and then he crumpled, falling forward so that he landed with his face pressed to the street.
Montoya opened the rear door of the limo as Tom slowly lowered his empty guns. Brandishing the machete in his hand, Montoya shouted, “Brannon! I know you! I’ll cut you in little pieces!” He started toward the sidewalk.
Tom grinned despite the pain of the wound in his side, dropped the empties, and reached behind him to pluck the other two guns from his belt. As he brought them into sight, Montoya’s eyes widened and he reversed course abruptly, diving back into the armored limousine that served as his fortress and command post.
Tom didn’t waste bullets on the car, knowing the .45 slugs wouldn’t penetrate the armor. It would take something like a grenade or a rocket to pierce the vehicle’s heavy plating. Instead he turned to Chet and saw that the lawyer had pulled himself into a sitting position with his back propped against the front wall of the building. His shirt was bloody, but he was conscious and had the Winchester in his hands again. “Bring ’em on!” he said with a pained but fierce grin.
Tom was glad to see that Chet was still alive. He said, “You’re about to get your wish. Here they come.”
About a dozen of Little Tucson’s defenders were making their way toward the auto parts store, fighting a running battle as they came. Tom saw Walt Deavers and Pete Benitez and Ray Torres and Wayne Rushing. Francisco Montero limped along, firing the pistol in his hand back at the onrushing hordes of gang members. Ed Crabtree and Ben Hanratty were using rifles. Were those few and the handful of others all that was left? If that was the case, then they had lost ten or twelve men. Fewer than twenty people remained to defend Little Tucson against M-15.
Tom and Chet opened fire on the gang as Bonnie, Louly, and Lauren burst out of the store and added their efforts to the covering fire. The fleeing defenders leaped onto the sidewalk. Tom yelled, “Give me a hand!” to Pete, and the newspaperman paused to help him lift Chet to his feet. Supporting the wounded lawyer, they started toward the door, firing with their other hands as they went.
Moments later, everyone was inside, hunkered around the windows. The shooting died aw
ay outside. The defenders holed up inside the store were about to make their last stand, and everyone knew it.
Montoya opened the limo door but didn’t come out from behind it where anybody could get a shot at him. “Brannon!” he shouted. “Brannon, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Tom called back, wishing Montoya would step out just a little more.
“Was it worth it, Brannon?”
The haunting question hung in the air.
“Was it worth all the dying? Will it be worth the destruction of this entire town? I’m going to burn it to the ground, you know. None of you are going to get out of here alive. Is your precious gringo freedom worth it?”
Callie Spinelli crawled out from behind the counter, tears streaking her face. Her eyes widened when she saw Chet half sitting, half lying on the floor near the windows. She started toward him. When he saw her coming, he motioned her back and growled, “Callie, no!”
She kept coming, and when she reached him she clutched at him and moaned, “Chet, oh, Chet, you’re hurt!”
“I’m okay,” he tried to tell her. “I’ll be okay . . .”
But none of them would be okay unless something happened soon. All Montoya had to do was give the order, and they would be overrun and wiped out. On the street, Montoya laughed and said, “You stupid gringos. You’ve always been your own worst enemies! You make yourselves weak, like sheep for the shearing!”
“Oh, Chet . . .” Callie said as more tears rolled down her face.
Then she reached over, picked up the Winchester her wounded husband had put down, and surged up before anyone could stop her.
“Shut your goddamn pie hole, you son of a bitch!” she screamed as she staggered into the open door of the store and clumsily fired twice, both bullets smacking into the bulletproof glass of the open limo door. Lauren tackled her and drove her down out of the line of fire as Montoya’s men opened up again, sending a storm of lead against the front of the building.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Montoya shouted until the shooting stopped again. He laughed harshly and went on, “You hide behind women, Brannon! If it all means so much to you, step out and face me where I can see you!”
Bonnie clutched at Tom’s arm. “Tom, no!” she said. “You can’t! They’ll kill you!”
“Not just yet,” Tom said. “Montoya wants to gloat a little first.”
“Tom—!”
He stood up, both hands filled with his guns, and stepped into the doorway. “Here I am, Montoya.”
“No shooting!” Montoya bellowed to his men. “No shooting!” He came out from behind the limo door. With a cocky grin on his face, he said, “It is time you and I met face to face, Brannon. You thought to humiliate me, but in the end it is I who have destroyed you.”
“Not yet,” Tom said. “Little Tucson is still ours. You haven’t taken it away from us.”
“Oh, but I will, in a matter of—”
“Listen,” Tom said. He had heard what he’d been waiting for, a low rumble like the sound of distant drums.
Montoya heard it, too. He looked around in confusion. The sound seemed to be coming from two directions at once. He looked along the street to the east.
Out of the midday heat haze, behemoths loomed, lumbering forward like great beasts out of some dim prehistory. Montoya’s head snapped around so that he could look west along the street. The same awesome spectacle met his eyes. As the massive vehicles came closer, the blur of rising heat waves went away, and Montoya saw them for what they were—huge tractor-trailer trucks, eighteen-wheelers, at least fifty of them closing in from each direction, and on the side of each, painted in bright green letters, was the word SAVMART. The only difference in the two convoys was that the one approaching from the east was led by an old man in a bright red 1960 Ford pickup. Inside the cab of the pickup, Hiram Stackhouse laughed out loud, having the time of his life. He pressed the horn ring on the steering wheel, but instead of the normal blare, the horn played “The William Tell Overture”—better known as the theme from “The Lone Ranger”.
Like the two halves of the Red Sea after God had parted it, Hiram Stackhouse and his SavMart army came crashing down on Mara Salvatrucha.
The gang members panicked and tried to escape, but there was no place to run. Main Street was blocked in both directions, and some of the trucks had split off to circle around and block the side streets as well. They pushed together the cars that had carried the gang into town and crumpled them like tissue paper. Some of the gang members were caught between vehicles and screamed as tons of metal crushed them to jelly. As soon as the trucks came to a stop, the rear doors on several of them rolled up and members of Stackhouse’s security force leaped out, wearing body armor and carrying automatic weapons. Their guns spurted fire as they mowed down Montoya’s men. The members of M-15 tried to fight back, but for a change, they were outgunned. Hiram Stackhouse himself was in the middle of the fighting, unwilling to ask his people to do anything that he wouldn’t do. The old Colt revolver in his hand bucked and roared as he traded shots with the enemy.
In front of the hardware store, Tom went after Montoya.
He dropped his guns and lunged at Montoya, ducking under the swipe of the machete in the man’s hand. He could have gunned down the M-15 leader, but he wanted to do this with his bare hands. He owed it to his folks, who had died a horrible death at Montoya’s orders. He owed it to everyone who had died because of this man’s greed and arrogance. He got his left hand on Montoya’s wrist and his right hand on Montoya’s throat. Banging Montoya’s hand against the edge of the limo door, Tom forced him to drop the machete.
Montoya’s knee came up toward Tom’s groin. Tom twisted aside and took the blow on his thigh, but it was still enough to stagger him. Montoya got his right hand free and slammed a punch across Tom’s face. Tom was driven down to one knee, but he kept his grip on Montoya’s throat and pulled the man with him. Montoya bulled into him, driving him over backward. Both men sprawled on the hot street, rolling over. They broke apart from each other and came up trading punches. Tom’s side was numb now where the bullet had creased him earlier, and his shirt was wet with blood. He could feel himself losing strength. Montoya couldn’t win now, couldn’t even escape. Hiram Stackhouse had seen to that. But Montoya’s sunglasses had come off, and Tom could see the insane hatred in his eyes. All that mattered to Montoya now was killing this gringo who had dared to defy him. When Tom slipped and went down on one knee again, Montoya slammed a vicious kick into his wounded side. Tom cried out in pain as he rolled across the pavement. The world swam crazily in front of his eyes. He came to a stop and pushed himself up on hands and knees and looked back over his shoulder. Montoya had snatched up the machete from where it had fallen in the street and was coming at him, the long heavy blade lifted high, poised to come down in a killing stroke.
“Tom!” Bonnie cried.
He looked toward her, saw something spinning across the pavement toward him, something she had just thrown in his direction. His eyes locked on it, saw the black grip with the twin lightning bolts, saw the blade flickering in the sun as it turned around and around. His father’s knife, the one Herb Brannon had taken off the dead German officer in Berlin, the officer Herb had killed to save his own life and perhaps the lives of countless others, because there was no way of knowing how many lives one man’s existence touched in his time on this earth . . .
Montoya screamed incoherently as he loomed over Tom and the machete started to come down.
Tom reached out, felt the knife’s grip slap into his palm, twisted and came up and drove the blade right into Ernesto Luis Montoya’s belly. Montoya froze, the machete stopping in midstroke. Tom stood up, pushed the knife deeper with the last of his strength. He sagged back to the street as Montoya took an unsteady step backward, still clutching the machete. He looked down at his midsection in shock and horror as crimson began to spread on his white suit.
Then blood began to bloom like flowers all over the suit as
the defenders of Little Tucson who were now gathered on the sidewalk in front of the auto parts store opened fire. The shots all blended into one thunderous roar as Bonnie, Lauren, Louly, Walt, Pete, Wayne, Ed, Francisco, Chet, and all the others, even Callie, filled Montoya with so much lead that the thing that finally crashed to the pavement next to the limo didn’t even look human anymore.
El Babania Comida would eat no more babies.
Bonnie was at Tom’s side. She helped him up. Most of the others were wounded, too. They stood with their arms around each other, offering support and comfort. They waited there as the firing around town died away and Stackhouse’s security force began the mopping up operation. The old man himself came striding along the sidewalk, a proud grin on his face. He lifted a hand in greeting and said to Tom, “Yep, a can o’ whoopass, just like I told you. Works ever’ time.”
As he looked around at the battleground Little Tucson had become, Tom couldn’t argue with that. But he could have added one thing, if he’d had the energy.
A can of whoopass . . . in the hands of an American fighting for freedom. That would do it. Every time.
Epilogue
In the aftermath of what became known as the Battle of Little Tucson, well over a thousand lawsuits were filed. The ACLU lost every one in which it was involved.
The President immediately declared the town, indeed all of Sierrita County, to be a disaster area and promised that plenty of federal aid would be forthcoming. Many of the residents refused the offer, explaining to reporters that they wouldn’t feel right accepting aid now from the government that had turned its back on them earlier. When told about this, the President pursed her lips and glared for a second before managing to put a phony smile of concern back on her face.
The FBI launched an investigation of the whole affair. So did the Border Patrol. So did Congress. Reports were expected eventually . . . although probably not until after the next election, at the earliest.
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