Texas Showdown at-3

by Don Pendleton

  "What is your problem, Mr. Morgan?" Furst asked, standing over him, pointing a Colt automatic at Lyons' face.

  "Kill that son of a bitch!" Blancanales roared. He held his ribs as he struggled to breathe.

  "I thought you two were friends," said Furst.

  Blancanales place-kicked Lyons' ribs. A soldier behind Furst rushed forward and shoved Blancanales away. Lyons groaned, choking, his arms knotted over his stomach, his knees touching his forehead. Blancanales laughed. "How's it feel? Feel good? Here comes the night!"

  Lunging forward, shoving the soldier aside, Blancanales aimed a second kick for Lyons' head. Lyons rolled, taking the kick in his shoulder. The impact threw him over. Furst pointed the pistol at Blancanales' head.

  "At ease, Marchardo. Take a break or I'll kill you. Soldiers!" Furst motioned to the curious soldiers crowding into the barrack. "Restrain that man. Put this other one on a bunk. Someone go for the medic."

  Several men pushed Blancanales back. Some of them slapped Marchardo on the back, congratulating him on a good fight. They laughed, shoving Blancanales back when he tried to get at Lyons again. Finally Blancanales sat on a bunk, and laughed with his guards.

  Two soldiers bent down to Lyons. He shrugged their hands away and rolled onto one knee. Then he stood painfully, holding his ribs, staggered to a bunk and collapsed.

  Furst surveyed the damage. The M-16, incredibly, was a twisted piece of junk. Bunks lay overturned. A line of small-caliber holes stitched the enameled sheet metal of the ceiling. Two large-caliber holes deformed a wall. Trash and bottles from the previous day's and night's victory celebration littered the floor.

  "What started this?" Furst asked.

  Gadgets pressed through the crowd. He bled from his mouth and a bruise discolored the side of his face. "Morgan drank too much last night. He woke up drunk and hung-over, started carrying on about his wife. And then it was the politicians betraying us in Nam."

  "How'd you and Marchardo get involved?"

  "Marchardo told him to shut up. Morgan pulled his Magnum out, tried to pistol-whip Marchardo, I grabbed the pistol — it all went from there. Morgan acted crazy."

  The camp medic arrived. "Who's hurt?"

  Furst pointed at Morgan. "Give that man a twelve-hour sedative. Maybe the other one as well."

  "Hey, if you're passing out pills," Gadgets joked, "me too."

  "You're taking a ride to town, remember?" Furst told him in a low voice, turning away from the crowd. "I need that equipment. Tonight."

  * * *

  In a Kingston bar, Bob Paxton and Lieutenant Navarro waited for a Mexican. Another man had told them the Mexican might have information for them. They could do with some information. In two days and nights of crisscrossing Jamaica, passing out money and their hotel phone numbers, they had learned only that the three Americans they followed had left Jamaica in a private plane to Texas.

  A hundred dollars had bought the memory of a bartender. Paxton had shown the bartender a photo of the Latin American federal agent, and the bartender remembered the Latin American meeting with a muscled scar-faced American.

  Twenty dollars had prompted a doorman to remember a scar-faced man with a thick neck and strong shoulders stopping at a hotel entrance to take the three federal agents away in a rented car.

  Three hundred dollars paid for three car rental agency employees to search their records and their memories. They recalled the man with the scars on his face. The records indicated that the agency had sent a driver out to an airfield to bring back a car.

  At the airport, a gas-pump attendant remembered one word. A hundred-dollar bill bought that one word, "Texas." He also remembered the plane's tanks taking eighty-five gallons of fuel more than factory specifications.

  A police detective came to Paxton's hotel room.

  For a thousand dollars, he furnished a folder of photos of the scarred man, and his name: Pardee. Craig Pardee had visited Jamaica several times, the most recent time for two weeks. He traveled with a young blond singer. But his business was hiring mercenaries.

  This information conflicted with Paxton's reasoning: if the three men were federal agents, why did they leave with Pardee as mercenaries? The United States government did not employ mercenaries to enforce its drug policies. But then, perhaps the contact with Pardee was part of their cover. Or perhaps the Drug Enforcement Agency wanted to distance itself from the extermination of the drug gangs by using mercenaries. Or perhaps Paxton had been wrong in all his guesses.

  The detective had also told Paxton of a group of Mexican drug lords fleeing Mexico. Panicked, paranoid, and wealthy, they hid in a villa outside Kingston. They were guarded by gunmen twenty-four hours a day. One of the gunmen told of an airborne strike by Americans on a remote smuggling base and airfield. There had been no attempts to arrest the gang's personnel, only a slaughter. It was this Mexican that Paxton wanted to interview. For another thousand dollars, the detective told Paxton he would pass on an invitation.

  Now Paxton and Lieutenant Navarro waited in the quiet bar, watching tourists wander in from the boulevard. A sunburned brunette dropped coins in a jukebox, selected a reggae record sung in incomprehensible Jamaican patois.

  "Is that English?" Navarro asked Paxton in Spanish.

  Paxton shook his head, glanced to the door. Two Latins stood there, scanning the interior. One man, with gray hair and a gray mustache, wore a blazing white tropical suit. The other, square shouldered and weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds, kept his right hand under his poorly cut sports coat. Paxton raised a hand to get their attention.

  The Mexicans came to their table. The gray-haired man extended his hand to Paxton and Navarro. The heavy man stayed back, his right hand holding his left lapel.

  "Buenos dias, gentlemen," the gray-haired man said. "Would you think me terribly impolite if I did not give you my name?"

  "No problem, sir," Paxton answered, shaking his hand.

  "First, who are you? Are you police?"

  Paxton smiled, shook his head, no.

  "But you ask many questions. Why?"

  "Do you know of the annihilation of the American Mafia families?" Paxton asked the Mexican. The gray-haired man was clearly startled at the question. He nodded. Paxton continued. "I have sources who have kept me informed of the war against the families, the gangs, and syndicates. None of my sources could identify the vigilantes actually killing the gangs, but they did identify the federal official who was apparently in some way in charge. I had his photo in my files. Last week, we spotted this man in our country..."

  "What country is that?"

  Paxton smiled. He nodded to Lieutenant Navarro. "His country. The country where I live. In South America. We spotted this federal official with three agents. The official stopped at the United States Embassy, then left the country in a United States Air Force jet. But the three agents stayed.

  "The agents assumed the roles of soldiers guarding two high-level drug traffickers. They left our country that night. We followed them north to Colombia, then the Caribbean, then to Kingston.

  "But here, we lost them. However, we have learned two details. One is that they left with a man who the Jamaicans say is a mercenary recruiter. The other is that the agents flew to Texas with the recruiter.

  "Then we learned that your camp and airfield had been attacked. We thought it might be useful to us to talk to you. Perhaps we can exchange information."

  The Mexican leader stroked his mustache, studied Paxton for a few seconds. "We were attacked by soldiers two nights ago. They killed everyone who could not escape. We thought it was a raid by the Mexican army. But in my opinion it was too professional and efficient. And they spoke English."

  "Could any of the men who escaped identify the Americans?" Paxton asked.

  "No."

  "One more question. How far from the U.S. border was your base?"

  "Two hundred and fifty kilometers. That is the nearest point. It is approximately four hundred kilometers to El Paso. A
nd now, no more questions. Thank you for your information. It will be of no help to us, but we know what happened at least. Good day."

  The gray-haired Mexican shook their hands and promptly left the bar. His bodyguard followed him, watching Paxton and Navarro and the other patrons as he did so. Paxton laughed.

  "Mexican gangsters are such a joke. They all look like politicians. And sometimes they are."

  "Why did you not question them of the location of their base?" Navarro asked.

  "But I did. And they told me." Paxton dropped money on the table and stood up. "Now we go to Chihuahua."

  * * *

  Gadgets glanced out the front window of the electronics wholesaler's shop. His driver waited in the car, still watching the shop's door. Hurrying through the shelves and racks of parts and equipment, Gadgets rushed out of the employees' entrance at the back. Three doors down the alley, he turned in through overflowing garbage cans and stacked produce crates of a Chinese restaurant.

  Grinning to the cooks and waiters as he dashed through the kitchen, Gadgets stepped into the dining room. He saw a pay phone near the cash register. He paced past the tables of businessmen and housewives eating lunch. He dropped a dime in the phone. Peering through the bamboo slats screening the restaurant from the mall's parking lot, he saw his driver still waiting in the car.

  He punched the phone's buttons. The operator came on the line.

  "What is your billing number?"

  "Don't have my charge card with me. Let me place this call collect, to a Miss Rose or anyone else who answers..."

  * * *

  Bent under the weight of the rocks in his backpack, Lyons marched up the trail. Sweat soaked his fatigues, and poured from his face to drip into the red dust. He turned and looked downhill. Payne — the soldier who had spotted for him on the night of the drug-base assault — trudged a hundred yards behind. Lyons rested for a moment, the afternoon wind cooling his face and fatigues. He scanned the vista below the mountains: the base and airfield, the lengthening shadows of the hills spreading across the desert, the vast horizontal planes of clouds made luminous by the sinking sun.

  "Hey, Morgan! You wait!" Payne called to him.

  "We're almost at the top," Lyons shouted.

  "Take a break, man! I'm hurting."

  Lyons found a shelf of rock where he could sit without taking off his pack or bending his legs. Awkward because of the handcuffs he wore, he loosened his packstraps. He watched tiny birds flit from rock to rock. One bird shot past, banking like a jet fighter, its belly a flash of impossible blue against the pink and red clouds of the western horizon.

  Miles away, he saw a truck tow a Huey from an airfield hangar. The field crew in their safety overalls were minuscule specks of phosphorescent orange.

  "Hey, Morgan! Who's on punishment march here?" Payne joked as he approached, breathing hard from the ascent of the steep trail.

  "I dunno. I'm having a good time."

  "Jesus. They give you some pills, then they send you out to prance around in the hills. Think I'llshoot up the barracks next." Payne sat on a rock and dug into his day pack.

  "Look down there." Lyons pointed with his cuffed hands. "Looks like they're taking the helicopters out tonight."

  "Oh, yeah. Cap'n Pardee's taking a platoon down to relieve the guys guarding that airfield down in Mexico."

  "Anything going on in Mexico?"

  "No one tells us anything — here!" Payne held up a beer. "Make a deal with you, Morgan. We cut off this punishment march right here, we forget making it to the top, and I'll issue half of this bottle to you."

  "Might as well," Lyons shrugged. "Half of something's better than nothing."

  * * *

  "So Lyons is working for the Feds now?"

  "That's the story," the distant voice confirmed.

  "Some big secret deal. You ever hear about that shoot-out on Catalina Island? Papers said some bikers freaked out?"

  "Haven't had the chance to read the newspapers."

  Furst told his informant. "It wasn't like the papers said. My friends in blue told me it was a major terrorist event. They took about a hundred body bags to the cooler downtown. The night the bikers got closed down, some old friend of Lyons had a victory party. And guess who was the guest of honor?"

  "Thanks a lot."

  "Anytime..."

  Furst hung up the telephone, picked up the camp's com-phone. He punched the code for the sentry station at the camp gate: "This is Commander Furst. When Morgan comes in, put leg irons on him. Bring him to my office."

  * * *

  An hour after sunset, chains rattled on the steps to Furst's office. "Commander? We have Morgan here."

  "Bring him in."

  Soldiers opened the door and shoved Lyons into the office. Caked with sweat-muddied dust, sunburned, chained hand and foot, he gave Furst an awkward double-handed salute. Furst sent the sentries out with a wave of his hand.

  Furst leaned back in his swivel chair, spoke softly. "Tell me, Mr. Lyons. Would it help you in your investigation and prosecution if I were to turn state's witness?"

  16

  Crouching in the darkness of his workshop, Gadgets twisted the steel band of his headphones. The earpieces now faced outward. He motioned to Blancanales to sit shoulder to shoulder with him.

  "Now dig this."

  Sharing the headphones, they listened to Furst and Pardee discuss Carl Lyons:

  "... forced marched him all day. He's strong. He wore out three soldiers, but thirty or so miles calmed him down. I transferred him to other quarters, told him to avoid Marchardo if he wanted to make his money. I don't think we have any more problems."

  "I want to take him south with me tonight. It'd give me time to put some questions to him."

  "Why? His story checked," said Furst's voice.

  "Checked too good. Everything was perfect..."

  "I don't want you interrogating him."

  "You're willing to risk him being an agent..."

  "I don't want to risk your killing him. He's too valuable. If I suspected him at all — repeat, at all — I would have had him eliminated."

  "But..."

  "It's time for the helicopters to go. Leave Morgan to me. I'll have him watched."

  "You interrogated Mrs. Monroe yet? Our Mexican spitfire?"

  "Keep your sarcasm, Pardee!"

  A tapping sounded on the door. Pushing the receiver and tape recorder and headphones into a box, Gadgets went to the door. Blancanales pressed himself to the wall behind it.

  "Gadgets..." Lyons whispered.

  "In fast!" Gadgets whipped the door open for an instant. Lyons slipped into the workshop, knocking down a box of components as he did so.

  "Hey, Morgan," Blancanales hissed in the dark. "You die!"

  Lyons laughed quietly. "You all right? That fight was bad."

  "But realistic..."

  "Shut up!" Gadgets told them. He pulled the receiver from the box. He pressed the twisted headphones to Blancanales' and Lyons' ears. "They're talking about someone named Morgan..."

  "You bugged Furst's office?"

  "Two minutes ago."

  "Pardee's gone to Mexico," Blancanales told Gadgets. He turned to Lyons. "You missed Furst defending your loyalty. He was great."

  "We've got it on the tape. I'll play it back for you."

  "He'd betterstand up for me. An hour ago, he started working for us."

  "What?"

  Lyons briefed them on the betrayal of Monroe's private army by its commander.

  * * *

  Paxton and Navarro flew from Jamaica to Mexico City, then continued to Chihuahua by executive jet. They arrived after midnight. That dawn, they left once more, in a rented Piper. Paxton directed the pilot to an isolated area of the mountains.

  "Senor, what are we looking for?" the pilot asked Paxton. A slow man with a knowing smile, he glanced to the map his American client spread out.

  "Stolen aircraft. There's an airstrip up in the mountains that's used b
y the oil-research teams. The thieves might be parking the planes there."

  "Oh, yes. Stolen airplanes. Yes, yes. Many stolen airplanes. The drug gangs use them. Perhaps you are also looking for the drug gangs?"

  "Why would I do that?" Paxton asked him. "I am paid to recover planes. Even if I found the gangs, what would be the profit? That is the business of your government."

  The pilot shook his head. "It is the business of my government notto find the gangs!"

  They laughed. Navarro leaned forward from the back seats. "How are you certain of that airfield?"

  "I've been there. And if there's nothing there anymore, we'll check out three other airstrips."

  They crossed the desert, then flew over the foothills into the mountains. Paxton reconfirmed the compass bearings. He glanced at his watch. The pilot gained altitude while Paxton and Navarro scanned the terrain with binoculars.

  "There!" Navarro pointed to a distant glint of morning light. Focusing their binoculars on the ridge, they saw a brush-dotted gravel airstrip.

  Minutes later, as they neared the airstrip, they saw no planes and no activity. The knots of brush covering the airstrip indicated months without a plane landing.

  "Circle it, low." Paxton said.

  Banking the plane, the pilot looked down at the strip overgrown with weeds. "Senores, that is not right. I have a friend, a friend of a friend, who has business here sometimes. A month ago, my friend landed a plane here. There were no..."

  "In those buildings!" Paxton pointed to the hangars. "Helicopters! U.S. Army Hueys!"

  A bullet punched through the cabin.

  * * *

  Shouting into his hand-radio, Pardee sprinted across the airstrip. His men responded instantly. Some pulled the brush and piled branches away from the hangar doors, others dragged the Hueys from the hangars. Two riflemen continued firing at the Piper even as it dived low, pulling up at the last instant. It skimmed the landscape to escape the riflefire.