Liberty's Hammer

by Reed Hill

  "Anyway, Colonel Brooks up at Hood says they have no orders to release any assets for us –Chase hasn't made the call." Stein said. "It's due diligence. We need to raise this with the Governor, and make sure he's completely aware of the full spectrum of his duties and rights."

  "Oh, I'm sure he is aware of them," Dinger said. "He's just a stubborn son-of-a-bitch."

  "He probably thinks the Texas Guard can handle it," Stein said.

  "Where are we on the mustering status of those Regiments?" Dinger asked.

  "The unfortunate part was that only about one-quarter of the Regiment personnel were on high alert status, which meant availability at all hours," General Stein said. "The rest had twenty-four assembly contracts."

  Dinger broke in, "Which means we won't be up to snuff with a full complement of forces available until probably eight a.m. tomorrow. Dammit all to hell… "

  "Hold on, Hum," Stein said. "1st Regiment is nearly thirty percent mustered, and the 2nd Regiment is close to twenty-five percent."

  "Good," Dinger drummed the desk with his thick fingers.

  "However, the 8th in Houston is lagging behind, at not quite twenty percent strength," Stein said.

  "How many complete companies do we have available at this point for San Antonio?"

  "1st Battalion has two of its five companies ready by noon, and 2nd and 3rd should have one up and running by noon too. In all that's about five hundred riflemen and accompanying vehicles."

  "Four or five hundred per engagement zone, "Dinger said softly. He didn't like the prospects of launching an operation with five hundred troops spread across four different engagement zones. The air assets were all Army National Guard and Air Force National Guard and would require federal permission. The best intelligence they had indicated they were looking at facing as many as three thousand enemy combatants in El Paso and in McAllen and nearly that many in Laredo and in Del Rio. In addition, the enemy apparently has acquired armored personnel carriers and has some limited air assets in the form of helicopters.

  "It's less than that in San Marcos with the 2nd Regiment," Stein said. "Only about four companies and just shy of four hundred men. Houston is even worse, with about three hundred men ready," Stein said.

  "And we don't have any of our own air assets, since they're technically Air National Guard property."

  Stein clucked his tongue, "We need more men."

  "Well, we're doing what can be done, Bill."

  "That's the honest truth," Stein said. "Anything more is Chase's call, and I'm not sure either side has enough trust to make the call."

  "That and Chase is one pigheaded son of a bitch," Dinger laughed.

  "Well, let's give him a call," General Stein said. "His ears are probably burning."

  *****

  Rocksprings, Texas - July 5th, 2017 - 9:55 a.m.

  Brodie and the guys had gotten to Langston and his trailer only to discover that his painted mare had taken a few pellets of buckshot and was bleeding a little from the flank. While it was pretty superficial, Langston insisted on driving into town to see Doc Jiminez, so the crew loaded up and escorted Langston into Rocksprings to the vet's office. Langston had been practically bursting with gratitude, and was even offering Brodie and the guys money for rescuing him. Of course, they refused, and told him to keep it for the vet bills.

  It was an uneventful ride to the north edge of Rocksprings where Dr. Jiminez ran a general practice clinic. Brodie's hand was a still a bit shaky on the steering wheel as the crew dropped Langston off at the ranch clinic. Langston wobbled bow-legged to the window of the big truck and mustered as good a smile as the seventy-year old could, with his crooked, stained teeth. "If you're ever up my way, you look me up," he pushed his straw hat back a bit and extended a gnarled hand to Brodie. "I mean it. If y'all ever need anything, you let me know."

  "Our pleasure to help you, Mr. Langston," Brodie said, as they shook hands. "You take care of that mare now."

  With a wave to Langston, they were off to town. Finnegan had wanted to check on his mother while they were there, so Brodie let Finnegan lead the way into Rocksprings, falling in behind the big man's Ford 4x4. It was a good idea anyway, since Brodie thought they should stop at the sheriff's office and report the incident.

  The shots echoed in his mind, as did the peeling noise of the tires and the wild racing of the engine. It had been a long time since anyone had leveled a weapon at him, and he thought such things were gone from his life long ago, buried far away in the mountains of Afghanistan. Brodie rubbed his forehead and grabbed the CB mic, in part just to cover the unsteadiness of his hand on the wheel, "Finnegan, if you want hit your mother's place, Mac and I can drive over to the Police Department and let the Chief know what had happened out on Route 41."

  Like many small, dusty towns in the hill country, Rocksprings, population 1,290, could only support a staff of two in the Constable's Office, a town constable and his deputy. There were stories that in the oil boom years, they had a woman there to answer phones for the Constable, full-time. There wasn't much to police in Rocksprings on a daily basis, aside from getting an occasional drunk home safely or the rare domestic dispute. The town relied heavily on the Edwards County Sheriff's office for anything that really mattered when it came to law enforcement, and hardly anything criminal of note in Rocksprings ever happened.

  "Sounds good," Finnegan's voice broke in over the CB, "I'll head over to her house and then meet you at the sheriff's office."

  "Roger that," Brodie said, watching Finnegan peel off on Edwards Street heading west across town, while he followed the curve of Highway 377 as it slowed to thirty mph as they came into Rocksprings proper.

  Brodie saw the sign for Dexter's Drive-thru and passed the high school. Rocksprings might not have had any art classes, but they had a damned good football team from the sign that listed the seven Texas class A championships since 1964. Rocksprings was your typical poor, scrubby, West-Texas town with mostly dirt lawns and low stands of cedar trees here and there. The library was a fine, two-story sandstone building, but aside from it and the high school, most of the buildings were old aluminum or brick-sided ranch homes and business buildings, with a healthy mix of single-wide and double-wide trailers. What the town lacked in material excesses it made up for in Texas pride, with many homes and business displaying the Texas Star along with Old Glory on flag poles and signs.

  Brodie turned on Main Street and headed down the couple of blocks to the Sheriff's office. He could tell before he got to the driveway that things weren't normal – there were a dozen trucks and SUVs in the driveway and on the lawn of the Office, which was more like a large red-brick ranch house with five concrete vertical parking barriers across the front and a large bronze star attached to the brick front. The Sheriff's king cab dually was parked on the side of the office, and there were several people going in and out of the building as Brodie and Mac pulled the vehicles onto the lawn and got out.

  Before they could get very far, Brodie saw Sheriff Johnson come bounding out of the front door and across the porch, talking on his wireless, "I hear ya. Yeah…we're headed there now, me and the Jessups, and Buddy Driscoll, but I don't know if we'll be able to do much." Sheriff Albert Johnson was in his late-fifties, five-foot ten and stout, with a large girth and handle-bar mustache. He wore a Sheriff's uniform shirt with jeans and belt buckle about the size of small Frisbee. In addition to his revolver sidearm, he clutched a black Remington 870 twelve-gauge service shotgun in his meaty hands as he heeled his way to his truck. He stopped to speak with three men holding long guns who were standing by the Sheriff's truck, "Okay, Fred says there's a big problem out at the Gas-n-More west of town on 377." The Sheriff stopped and glared at Brodie holding up a hand as the gang strode up towards him, "I don't have time to take any more complaints right now, folks – I'm dealing with an emergency, so if you please excuse us."

  Brodie stepped forward, "We're not here to cause trouble, Sheriff. I'm Nick Brodie, a friend of John Finnegan's
. We came into town to check on John's mother after a bit of a run-in east of town."

  "That's fine. Oh, John Finnegan. Lord yes, I've known John since he was a kid." The Sheriff stopped for a moment and looked over at Brodie and then eyed the crew. "Y'all had a run-in with some bad folks you say? Well get in line. It's goddamn epidemic of crap this morning." He stood back on his heels of boots for a moment and adjusted the leather service belt under his large belly, "I got five people in my office there filling out incident reports right now. I'm telling anyone who calls to just stay inside and keep the doors locked, 'cause Fred and I can't handle all this. Me and these boys was about to head over and see if we can do something about it, but we're pretty well outmanned."

  "Maybe we can help," Brodie said, hearing the CB go off in his truck. "Hey Mark, would you grab that; it's probably Finnegan."

  As Simmons went to the truck and grabbed the CB mic from the open window, the Sheriff walked over to Brodie, "You say your name is Brodie?"

  "Yes sir, Nick Brodie – I have a place over by Hunt and do a little cattle and oil, and natural gas."

  "Oh hell, yes," Sheriff extended his hand, "I knew you're dad from back in the day, sorry to hear about him." Sheriff Johnson shifted his weight, "You boys know how to handle a weapon?"

  "You're looking at about half of the Fox Run Gun Club," Kirk Thompson said matter-of-factly. "Simmons over there," he pointed over to Mark at the truck, "is a reserve deputy for Sheriff Bosco."

  Mark Simmons called from the truck, "It's Finnegan – he's coming over."

  "Tell him to haul as. The Sheriff could use a little help, and now we've made him late." Brodie said.

  "I already did," Mark said.

  Brodie put his attention back on the Sheriff, "What's going on? What do you need us to do for ya?"

  Finnegan's Ford truck came spinning around the corner and down the lane, and Sheriff clapped Brodie on the shoulder, "Long and the short of it is there's a bunch of damn thugs running around north and west of town since about eight this mornin'. Scared a bunch of folks and ran a few off the road. Save-a-Lot Foods got robbed about a half-hour ago, and it looks like Fred has found them up at the little gas-station on west 377 stealing gas. There's like ten of them, he said, in three or four trucks."

  "Okay, let's head out," Brodie said getting the guys back to the vehicles. "We'll follow your lead. We're using CB channel eight to stay in contact."

  "Good, stay on that, hardly used at all out here. I'll switch over to the CB and tell Fred to give us an update on Channel eight. Should take less than five minutes to get there." Johnson said.

  Brodie gave Finnegan the heads up and jumped in his truck along with Thompson, Simmons and Calderon, and they followed Sheriff Johnson as he turned onto Main Street speeding west. As they pushed the speed limit through the center of town, Brodie heard a voice come on the CB, "This is Deputy Martinez. Sheriff, do you read me?"

  "Roger, Fred this is Johnson, over," The Sheriff said. "I got us a little back-up Fred, so give us the situation, over."

  "Roger…okay…I'm keeping an eye on these guys, here. They've filled up about ten gas cans and look like they're gonna do about six or eight more. I'm doubting that they're going to pay for it. I saw a small guy with a Mohawk waving his gun around in the store and came out telling the guys rápido, rápido idiotas – hurry up you idiots. They're gonna be done soon if we want to do anything about it."

  "We're on the way," the Sheriff said. "I've picked up John Finnegan and some of his friends, in addition to Driscoll and the Jessup boys. We'll be there in a second."

  They turned out of town off Main Street onto Del Rio Road which turns into Highway 377, and really started going fast, about ninety miles per hour.

  "One of them just fired his pistol in the air to run off a customer pulling in," the Deputy said.

  Brodie's eyes got large as the world of dust and cedars blurred by. They pushed ninety-five and then one hundred, trying to keep up with the Sheriff. Brodie could feel the wind pushing around the high truck and the thump of his heartbeat accelerating as they raced down the two-lane highway. Keep cool. You'll be all right. You can do this. They kept up the reckless pace for half a minute that seemed liked ten, but then the flash of red lights had him pushing the brakes as the Sheriff pulled into the large gravel parking lot of the Gas-n-More.

  It was probably a little bit of a stretch to call it Gas-n-More, because there wasn't going to be a hell of a lot 'more' inside a building that small. Brodie could see that the Deputy was accurate in his description. About a dozen ragged Chicanos and Mexicans were loading a variety of gas cans into the beds of three trucks and an older Dodge Durango. Upon seeing the arriving vehicles, they took up defensive postures by their trucks, many of them with their hands on pistols in their belts. A few sitting in the truck beds held shotguns. Brodie counted ten Mexicans in the area of pumps, and he rapidly scanned for the old green truck they had run into a less than an hour ago but didn't see it.

  Sheriff Johnson pulled in about fifty feet from them, behind where their trucks were pointed. When Johnson rolled to a stop, Martinez pulled his silver Tacoma forward from behind the Tastee-Freez across the road and stopped next to Johnson's dually. Finnegan and Mac Harris wheeled their pickups in beside Brodie, and got the five vehicles all in a row facing the thugs at the pumps. Mac Harris was in the unenviable position at the end of the row of trucks, and probably had a bit of trouble seeing the action because of the pumps between him and the Mexican gang.

  Sheriff Johnson came over the CB, "Everybody stay calm. Martinez and I are going to try to talk to them. You guys stay in your vehicles for the moment. If you see me draw, go ahead and get out, because that means it's gonna get ugly."

  They sat there for a moment, and it was silent. When the Sheriff got out of his truck and stood by his open door, a small Mexican in a black t-shirt, black leather vest and dirty jeans, sporting a Mohawk and silver wraparound sunglasses, pressed forward past a couple of thugs. He had his hand on this semi-auto pistol wedged into the left side of his belt, and grabbed the sunglasses from his face and made a couple of wild head movements like he was trying to loosen a crick in his neck. The man had tattoos up and down his arms, and scowled widely as Martinez followed suit and exited his vehicle slowly. As the man bared his teeth at the Sheriff, Brodie could see a tiny tattoo near the corner of his left eye.

  Brodie cracked the window when Sheriff Johnson held up his left hand while coolly placing the right on his belt, putting his thumb in the loop next to the holstered .44 Magnum, "Okay, we don't need any more trouble. You fellas best be paying for that gas and just getting' on your way."

  "Eh, Cabrón? Tu me dices qué hacer aquí?" the mohawked thug said. Joe Calderon translated from the back seat, "What's that asshole? You telling me what to do?" Two ruffians emerged from near the pumps and flanked the leader with the mohawk, putting five of them across from the two lawmen. Two more marauders, a bare-chested hooligan and another one who was very fat, clutching a riot shotgun, stood up from the bed of the closest truck, bringing those immediately threatening the officers to seven. There were more, because Brodie could see the silhouettes of drivers in at least the trailing two trucks.

  Martinez put his hand up and said firmly, "Bajen las armas lentamente. Put the guns down slowly. No queremos lastimar a nadie. We don't want anyone hurt. Bajen las armas lentamente."

  Several of the thugs moved forward and fanned out a bit – this was going downhill fast. One of them taunted the lawmen by spraying gas from one of the pump nozzles toward the Sheriff, send a high-arcing fountain of the clear orange stuff into the air. The thug dropped the nozzle to the dust and joined his friends near the leader. Sheriff Johnson bent his knees a bit and took another step forward, causing Brodie to grab the door handle, and draw his 9mm from his holster. "Put the guns down and lie down on the ground," the Sheriff said in a strong voice. Martinez repeated in Spanish, "Bajen las armas y túmbense en el suelo."

  The mohawked man twist
ed his head sideways glowering at Martinez and then at Johnson, "Jódete, hombre. No acuesto por policias." "Screw you, man. I don't lie down for cops," Calderon translated. Brodie saw the thug's eye twitch, and a bead of sweat rolled down the rivulet of a scar that stretched from his eye to his chin. "Lárgate de aquí antes de que te mate." Get the hell out of here before I kill you Calderon repeated.

  Johnson understood enough of that, from the red that was creeping up from his collar. He steadied his stance in the dusty gravel, and slowly put his hand on his sidearm. Brodie popped the latch on his door and the metallic ring of it must have spooked somebody. One of the thugs drew, and as he began to level his revolver at the Sheriff, he was thrown back with a gunshot to the upper left torso. The shot went high. Brodie saw the muzzle flash and heard the bullet whiz by like an angry hornet.

  Time slowed down – way down.

  Wisps of smoke rose from Sheriff Johnson's .44 as he fired another shot from the hip. He was moving back toward the cover of his truck door and the shot went wide. Johnson was badly exposed for that moment, and Brodie could see two of the thugs drawing pistols, so he brought up his Glock 19 as he exited the truck and fired without taking careful aim. The mohawked ruffian dived to the truck and drew his pistol, firing wildly. "Kill them!"

  Martinez squared off with the Mexican hood across from him, pulled his revolver and fired a shot, as the thug was drawing on him. Both men were blown backwards a step and Martinez went into the dirt, shot in the chest, while the hood was clipped in the hip and staggered backwards.

  "Careful of the pumps!" exclaimed Brodie, as he gripped his 9mm and watched the criminals start to move and draw their weapons. The world was starting to tunnel down on Brodie, and he cursed inside as his vision blurred.

  The bearded Taliban lowered the muzzle, shouting in Pashto, and pointing the weapon at Brodie in the market square. Women in burkas and children began screaming and running in fear. The muzzle blast of a Kalashnikov at close range burst in his ears.