He’d learned how to handle a gun, too. By now he was one of the very best at the range where he practiced.
Of course he had never actually shot at anything except a target, but he was confident that if there was trouble, he could handle himself, whether with guns or hand to hand. He still looked kind of scrawny in his uniform, but underneath it was some impressive muscular development.
“Hey, Mitch,” Albert Carbona called. The mobster beckoned to him. “C’mere.”
Mitch had tried to keep a professional distance between himself and the inmates, but it was hard not to like Carbona. He had to remind himself that the guy was responsible for who-knew-how-many murders and probably a ton of other human misery.
But at the same time he was like somebody’s friendly, slightly goofy uncle, and Billy Gardner was like an older brother, overbearing at times but still a good sort.
As Mitch came up to the table where Carbona and Billy sat along with J.J. Lockhart, the mobster said, “We need a fourth for bridge. Why don’t you sit down and play a few hands?”
“You know I can’t do that, Mr. Carbona.”
“Eh, why not? The TV camera’s gone now. Nobody’s gonna know—or care.”
Mitch hesitated, then said, “Captain Frazier’s somewhere here in the facility. He might come in any time.”
“If he does, I’ll put in a good word for you. I’ll tell him Billy muscled you into it.”
Billy said, “I wouldn’t do that, boss.”
“I know, I know, but Frazier don’t have to know.”
Mitch looked around and spotted another inmate sitting alone. He told Carbona, “Wait a minute,” and went over to Simon Winslow. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and told the computer hacker, “Some of the guys are getting up a game of bridge. Do you play?”
Winslow looked surprised that somebody was talking to him. He kept to himself all the time, which was a risk for a guy like him who couldn’t take care of himself physically. But on the other hand, he didn’t make any enemies, either.
“They want me to play?” Winslow asked, sounding like he couldn’t believe it.
Mitch started to tell him that the others just needed a fourth player and didn’t really care who it was, but he decided against that and said in a hearty voice, “Sure. You know how to play, don’t you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Well, come on, then.”
Winslow stood up and Mitch escorted him over to the other table.
“Here’s your fourth,” Mitch told Carbona, Billy, and Lockhart.
Carbona gave the hacker a dubious frown and said, “You’re that computer guy. You got like a computer brain or something.”
“Like an android?” Billy asked.
“No, like he’s a machine.”
“That’s what I said, ain’t it?”
Winslow said, “I know a lot about computers, but I don’t have a computer brain. Just a regular old human brain.”
“Trust me, pal,” Carbona said. “Anybody smart enough to steal as much money as you did ain’t got a regular brain.”
Winslow smiled faintly. “I wasn’t smart enough to keep from getting caught, though, was I?”
Lockhart said, “The young fella’s got a point. Sit down, son. You can be my partner.”
“All right,” Winslow said with a nod.
Mitch drifted back over to his previous position next to the wall. He was pleased with how he’d handled that. He had been professional, but he hadn’t angered Carbona, who wielded some influence inside these walls.
It was just too bad Captain Frazier or Warden Baldwin hadn’t been here to see what he’d done.
But he was sure they’d have plenty of other opportunities to realize that he was somebody they ought to keep in mind when it came to advancement around here.
CHAPTER 18
In the county seat fifty miles away, the dispatcher in the sheriff’s department who answered the call from Fuego about some sort of massacre happening there took it seriously.
“The PD there has that kid who’s not right in the head working communications for them,” the dispatcher said with a laugh. “He’s probably imagining the whole thing.”
“I don’t know,” the other dispatcher who was on duty said with a dubious expression on her face. “Maybe we should send a car to check it out, Helen.”
The first dispatcher shook her head and replied, “You can send somebody if you want to, but I’m not gonna cause a panic and waste valuable resources just on the word of a retard.”
The other dispatcher had been trying to motion with her eyes for her co-worker to shut up, but the warning hadn’t done any good. Sheriff Jim Wallace, who had come up behind the first dispatcher without being heard, drawled, “I’m not much on all that sensitivity bullcrap, Deputy, but even I don’t like that word.”
Helen jerked around, swallowed hard, and said, “Sorry, Sheriff. I . . . I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“Yeah, I’d say you weren’t.” Wallace leaned on the counter in the communications center. He was a tall, leathery, middle-aged man, just the sort who looked like what he was, a West Texas sheriff. “What’s this about something going on in Fuego?”
“How’d you know where it was?”
“Because of what you said about their dispatcher. I happen to have met Officer Raymond Brady a few times. He works mighty hard at his job.”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure he does.”
“So what did he tell you?”
“That Fuego was being invaded by aliens.” Helen frowned. “No, wait a minute. He started to say that, but then he changed it. He said they weren’t aliens. They were Arabs.”
“Arabs?” Wallace repeated with a frown of his own.
“That’s right, Sheriff. Arabs with guns. He said they’re killing people all over town.”
Wallace rubbed his jaw. What he had just heard sounded pretty unlikely, but with the way the world was today, who was to say what was impossible? Plenty of things had taken place in the past fifteen or twenty years that he never would have dreamed would happen . . . like hardworking Americans allowing a bunch of freeloaders and starry-eyed dreamers to elect Democratic presidents again and again and again, just so the dreamers could give away stuff and the freeloaders could rake it in.
“If there’s the slightest chance somebody’s gone on a shooting spree over there, we have to check it out,” Wallace said. “Better send two cars. Send an ambulance, too. I know the volunteer fire department over there has one, but they may need help if people are hurt.”
“What are you going to do, Sheriff ?” the other dispatcher asked as Wallace turned and headed for the door.
“I’m gonna go have a look for myself,” he told them over his shoulder without looking back, as he grabbed his Stetson from a rack and went out.
The call came in to the office of Texas Ranger Company E in El Paso a little before noon. Sounding scared, the young man on the other end of the line identified himself as Officer Raymond Brady from the Fuego Police Department.
“We need help!” Raymond bleated. “We need the Rangers! There are men with guns everywhere! They’re shooting anything that moves!”
The Ranger who’d answered the phone tried to break in and calm him down, but Raymond just kept repeating frantically, “Send help, send help!”
The Ranger might have thought this was a prank, but the highly efficient Caller ID and GPS locator built in to the Texas Department of Public Safety’s communications system pegged the call as coming from the police department in Fuego, some 150 miles away.
He still wasn’t sure he believed the bit about a mass shooting—until he heard a crash of some sort, followed by the distinctive chatter of automatic weapons and then a dull boom that could only be a shotgun.
And then the line went dead.
The Ranger was on his feet a second later, running into the office where Lt. Dave Flannery was on duty on what should have been a sleepy Sunday morning. Flannery was one of tw
o lieutenants assigned to Company E, serving under the command of Major Neal Burke.
He looked up in surprise from the computer where he’d been working when the other man burst into the room.
“We’ve got a mass shooting in Fuego, east of here,” the Ranger reported.
“I know where Fuego is,” Flannery said as he came to his feet. “You’re sure, Tommy?”
“I got a call that originated at the PD there. The caller identified himself as one of their officers and requested help. Then—” Tommy paused and took a deep breath. “Then I heard a bunch of shooting, Lieutenant. It sounded like a war.”
“Good Lord,” Flannery muttered as he came out from behind the desk, moving fast now. “Mobilize the SRT. I’ll take command of it myself.”
“What about Major Burke?”
“Let him know what’s going on—after we’ve got the wheels rolling on the SRT.”
“He won’t like not being the one to make the call,” Tommy warned.
“I don’t care,” Flannery snapped. “Just make the calls. Call the airport and tell them to start warming up the engines on the choppers, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
Flannery stood there alone for a moment after the other Ranger rushed out to follow his orders. He had been a Ranger for several years and a DPS officer before that and had worked on plenty of major cases. He had seen some bad things, too, things that sometimes still haunted him.
But he had never taken part in the sort of action this sounded like it might be. He had trained with the Special Response Team, of course. The SRT was part of the Rangers’ Special Operations Group and included not only Rangers but also officers from the Highway Patrol and the Criminal Investigation Division. The Rangers had a SWAT unit as well, but it was headquartered in Austin. There was a Special Response Team assigned to each of the six Ranger companies around the state.
They would be the first state law enforcement officers into any active shooter situation.
From what he had just heard, there were a lot of active shooters in Fuego.
The two DPS helicopters carrying the SRT could be there in less than two hours.
Flannery hoped they wouldn’t be too late.
Maria Delgado had just gotten back to the governor’s mansion from the late mass when her personal cell phone buzzed.
Not too many people had that private number. When she checked the screen, she saw the call was from Texas Attorney General Ellis Flynn.
“What is it, Ellis?” Delgado asked as she answered the call. She didn’t believe in wasting time on pleasantries. That came from growing up in a household where her mother, a single parent, had worked twelve to fourteen hours a day and instilled that same work ethic in her children.
Her brusque attitude annoyed some people, but nobody could deny that she threw herself wholeheartedly into the job of governing the Lone Star state.
“Maria, I’ve just heard from the DPS that we may have a mass shooting incident on our hands.”
“Oh, Lord,” Delgado breathed. It was more a prayer than anything else. “Where?”
“Some little town out in West Texas called Fuego.”
“I think I’ve seen it on maps. Don’t know that I’ve ever been there.”
“It’s not much more than a wide place in the road. The Ranger office in El Paso got a call from a police dispatcher there about people being killed.”
“How many shooters?”
Flynn hesitated, then said, “That’s just it. According to what we know at the moment, there are multiple shooters. Dozens, maybe more. Like a military operation.”
Delgado’s hand tightened on the phone. She looked out the window of the room where she was standing at a beautiful autumn day in Austin.
The world she had known all her life couldn’t be about to come crashing down . . . could it?
Quietly, she said into the phone, “Is this it, Ellis? Is Washington making the move?”
Over the past few years, she and several governors from other Republican-leaning states had had discussions about the direction the country was taking, and they were all convinced that sooner or later a Democratic president, emboldened by the slavish devotion of the media and a certain percentage of the population, would use the Department of Homeland Security in an attempt to seize complete federal control of their states, removing Republican governors and other elected officials by force if necessary.
That terrible day of reckoning was coming. Delgado knew it in her bones.
And there was a strong likelihood Texas would be first on the list for such an action. Even though the Democrats had been trying to take it over for many years, so far the state had resisted at the ballot box. Texas had even elected an Hispanic Republican woman governor and a black Republican attorney general, and those were particular slaps in the face to Washington and the growing Democratic dictatorship.
Such a threat to one-party rule couldn’t be tolerated indefinitely by the so-called progressives.
Flynn said, “No, it doesn’t sound like it. Supposedly the shooters are Arabs.”
“Arabs,” Delgado repeated. “Islamic terrorists?”
“That would be my guess. But it’s just a guess,” Flynn emphasized. “Right now there’s a whole lot more we don’t know than we do know.”
“All right.” The governor massaged her temples with her free hand. “Do you think I need to be on the scene?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t,” Flynn answered without hesitation. “Not as uncertain as the situation is. And if somebody does need to go out there later on, probably it should be me. Right now we just need to monitor things and wait to find out more.”
“How are the Rangers responding?”
“They have a Special Response Team in the air right now.”
“We’ll pray that’s going to be enough . . . and that they get there in time to do some good.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Keep me informed, Ellis. And thank you for the heads-up.” Delgado paused. “It’s been a long time since anything this bad has happened in Texas, hasn’t it?”
“That’s right. And I wish I could say it’ll be even longer before things go really bad. Unfortunately . . .”
“I know,” Delgado said softly. She broke the connection, lowered the phone, and looked out the window again.
The beginning of the end, she thought.
Unless we’re really lucky.
But Texas wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She lifted the phone again, punched in a number.
A number that she alone knew.
The phone on the other end rang twice before a man answered it, growling, “Yeah?”
“Get ready, Colonel,” Delgado said. “I’m going to need you.”
CHAPTER 19
Raymond’s father had said that Raymond wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. That he wasn’t playing with a full deck. That his elevator didn’t go all the way to the top.
Raymond’s father was an A-hole.
He had thought that many times, although every time he did, he felt embarrassed for even thinking such a bad word and guilty for feeling that way. A-hole or not, the guy was still his dad, and he wasn’t like that all the time. Just most of it.
But when he wasn’t, he could be pretty good. Sometimes he ruffled Raymond’s hair and said, “Hey, sport, how ya doin’?” just like a dad on one of the old black-and-white TV shows Raymond liked to watch on the satellite.
And one time they had gone all the way to El Paso to watch a baseball game in person. Raymond went to all the high school games he could, in all the different sports, but this was a real professional baseball game. Minor league, but still.
Sometimes when he wasn’t off working somewhere on an oil or gas rig, Raymond’s dad sat down and watched TV with him. He’d say things like, “Good Lord, are they still showing this? It was ancient when I was a kid.” Or, “Wait a minute, the boxes are gonna start coming faster and faster on that conveyer belt. It’s a hoot.”
Best of all was when his dad would come into his room at bedtime, make sure he was tucked in good, and lean over to kiss the top of his head and say, “Have a good night’s sleep, big guy.”
Raymond never felt better than at times like that, and he sure wished he could figure out how somebody could be such an A-hole most of the time and then do something so nice.
He never could understand it, though. He guessed that was just the way people were.
All he knew right now, as he knelt behind the counter in the police station and thumbed more shells into the shotgun, was that he was glad his father was up in Oklahoma on a job.
That way he wouldn’t get killed by the bad guys, the way Raymond figured he was about to, any minute now.
After Chuck had left, Raymond had called the other four officers in the department. Two of them didn’t answer, the calls going straight to voicemail.
He knew one of the men sang in the choir at the Baptist church, so that was probably why he’d turned his phone off. Raymond didn’t know where the other officer could be.
But he got hold of the other two men and told them to get to the station as fast as they could. As it turned out, both of them were already on their way in, having heard the shooting and realized that all hell was breaking loose.
Then he had called the sheriff’s department and finally the Rangers, and he’d been talking to them when somebody had driven a pickup through the parking lot and crashed it into the front of the station.
The wreck made Raymond drop the phone. He saw men with guns climbing out of the pickup, and he remembered what Chuck had said about using the shotgun if anybody tried to hurt him.
These men were shooting at him, so he figured that counted. He crouched, grabbed the gun, and pointed it at the invaders. He pulled the trigger but nothing happened.
Then he remembered how Chief Cobb had showed him how the shotgun worked. Even though the chief told him not to touch any of the guns, he showed them to Raymond sometimes and told him about them. The chief liked to teach him stuff, and Raymond enjoyed learning.
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