The Alamo

by Roland Smith

“The survivors did tell what happened,” Angela said. “And hundreds of the Texians were enraged and rushed to fight under General Sam Houston. They crushed General Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto a few weeks later and won their freedom from Mexico. Barret, Bowie, and Crockett went down in history as martyrs to the cause of freedom.”

  Later, as we headed back to our hotel, Uly and Felix gave us our space and Angela and I were quiet as we strolled along. The Alamo is a place that stays with you for a while after you visit it.

  Uly and Felix dropped us off at our rooms and we tried to kill time. The longer we waited for Boone to show up, the more restless Angela became. She started pacing. Like she was trying to break the world record for stalking back and forth in a hotel room. I was sitting on the bed shuffling my cards. I couldn’t think of anything to jolly Angela up. I was about to ask her if she wanted to see a card trick, just to see the response, when we were interrupted by a knock at the door.

  Angela opened the door. Croc scurried in ahead of Boone and hopped up on the bed right beside me.

  “I just got back from my … errands,” Boone said.

  I slid a little farther back on the bed to get away from Croc, who smelled like he’d been working overtime in the Disgusting Odors factory.

  “Is my mom okay?” Angela asked.

  “Your mom is fine. She met with Number Three, a woman who goes by the name of Ruby Spencer and owns a big ranch south of here. Malak has been sent on to Chicago to a safe house. Eben and Ziv are on a flight to Chicago and they’ll pick up surveillance. Apparently the cell has plans there but we don’t know what yet.”

  “Who is going to watch her? She always has Ziv and Dirk and …” I could tell she was trying hard to keep the worry out of her voice but she was only partly successful.

  Boone held up his hand. “X-Ray is tracking her jet. Right now Agent Callaghan is in the backseat of an F-14 Tomcat and almost to Chicago. He’s going to pick up her trail and watch her until Eben and Ziv arrive. After that he’s going to run countersurveillance on them and the safe house. Pat is good. Almost as good as your mom. It’s covered.”

  Angela relaxed a little.

  “With an assist from Croc, who played rabid dog at the ranch, I got inside Ruby’s house and placed one of X-Ray’s tracking gizmos in her cigarette case. If we need to, we can find her—as long as she takes her smokes with her. I just checked in with J.R., so everyone is up to speed.”

  “Boone, we’ve got all kinds of questions …” Angela started to say.

  “I know you do. And I’ve told you what I can. When this is all over, I promise you I’ll tell you everything. But it’s a big story and we really don’t have time to deal with it right now,” he said.

  Something was different in Boone. Or maybe it wasn’t and all along it was just something I’d been too busy to notice. It was a little over a week earlier that Boone had “found” us in the middle of Nevada. One morning I had just stepped out of the coach. There I found Boone camped out with a sleeping bag, a little stove, a big heavy pack, and his stack of James Bond paperbacks. But since then, I didn’t remember seeing him sleep. I’m sure he must have, but I just don’t recall it. And right at that moment, he looked tired. No one else would probably notice with his thick beard and weathered skin. But I wanted to be a magician and to do that you had to be super observant. Tyrone Boone looked like someone who could use a nap.

  “But Boone, you’ve got to see it from our—” Angela was interrupted by the beep of Boone’s phone.

  He held up a finger. “Hold on, it’s X-Ray,” he said, then spoke into the phone. “All right. What? Where are Uly and Felix? Did you get any hits? Okay. Download those photos to everyone’s phones. I’ll be there in a minute. Get those cameras back up, X.” He snapped his phone shut.

  “Four new guys just showed up at the warehouse and got into the SUV. We’ve got photos of each of them. When this new crew pulled out in the Tahoe all the traffic cameras in the surrounding area went down. We need a special satellite because of the cloud cover, and J.R. will order one to be repositioned to help us. But it takes time to move them into place. X-Ray is trying to get the cameras back up now. You two stay here. I’m leaving Croc with you.”

  He started toward the door.

  “Wait,” Angela said, “we can help.”

  “No. Not until I know it’s safe. I promised your mother nothing would happen to you. You both stay in this room. Don’t leave and don’t try anything fancy with your phones. You know you can’t take the batteries out, right?” He was serious.

  “Boone,” Angela tried whining. “Can we at least go to the restaurant to eat? We’ve done a lot today and we’re hungry.”

  “No restaurant. Order something from room service if you want. I mean it, Angela. No tricks. You too, Q.”

  “I’m good,” I said.

  Boone opened the door and for a second I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Because I was pretty sure that before the door closed all the way, Boone had disappeared.

  I was still staring at it and heard Croc whine a little. I looked at him and found him staring back at me with his blue eye. The brown eye was shut.

  Getting off the bed, I hustled to the door and opened it, peering up and down the hallway. Boone was gone.

  “Poof!” I said.

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9

  3:45 p.m. to 10:15 p.m.

  Waiting

  At the Firebrand Ranch, Miss Ruby sat at the desk in her study, smoking a cigarette and biding her time. As she rubbed out the butt in the ashtray, the smartphone sitting on her massive desk chirped. She had been waiting for the call, unsure what her instructions would be. As the phone chirped, several thoughts flashed through her head.

  She had been Number Three in the cell for some time. It was a cause she had devoted her life to. In the last two days she could not escape the feeling that something was … different. Number One had been giving commands, making plans, and essentially co-opting control of the group to the point that Ruby felt as if she and the entire cell were in danger of exposure.

  When the Leopard arrived earlier in the day, almost her first words were to challenge the kidnapping of Bethany Culpepper from the White House. In Miss Ruby’s mind, the Leopard lived up to her reputation. During her debrief she appeared smart, capable, and cunning. She brazenly called the decision to take the children as well as the president’s daughter stupid, and in truth Miss Ruby could not disagree. It had been a huge risk and had in fact blown up in their faces. As the Leopard had remarked, they had lost numerous valuable assets.

  Normally, they would fall back now. It was how they always operated. Whether the objective was met or the mission failed, the ghost cell said nothing, took no credit, and showed no public face at all. There were plenty of terrorist groups just waiting to claim the notoriety for themselves, and when they did, it provided the ghost cell with cover to operate unnoticed.

  But now, someone was noticing them. To Miss Ruby it felt like they were foolishly exposing themselves and taking too many unnecessary chances. After the SEAL team rescued the president’s daughter, Miss Ruby argued for retreat and a chance to regroup. Now that Number Four was dead, Anmar, the Leopard, was officially a voting member of the Five but it appeared those above her in the cell’s hierarchy were not quite sold on the Leopard’s loyalty and had ordered her to Chicago almost immediately. Miss Ruby did not believe in luck. But with the unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Bethany Culpepper, and the failure of the two car bombs to destroy any meaningful targets, it made her feel like something was up. It was the only thing she could think of to describe the feeling. Her instinct was to wait. Recover. Let a new plan take shape. But those above her wanted to press forward.

  Miss Ruby thought this was madness. She argued her case with Number Two. But Number Two almost always voted as Number One wished, like a loyal lapdog. In her view, Number Two was mostly useless but, as second in line, had the ear of Number One. And besides, the cell was structured as it was
structured. She could air her views, but in the end she followed orders.

  And truthfully, while she thought Number Two to be a competent planner and tactician, there was something about Number One that made her … uneasy. If someone asked her to identify why or what it was that made her feel this way, she was certain she would be unable to put it into words. They had only been together in person a few times, but each meeting had left her looking over her shoulder for days afterward, as if she might find Number One suddenly there.

  On the last ring, before the call went to voice mail, she answered.

  “Howdy!” she said sweetly.

  “Hey! I guess it hasn’t shown up yet, but did you ever find out about the package?” She recognized the voice. Number One.

  “I did, sugar. It’s in San Antonio but the company tells me it’s not out for delivery yet.”

  “Oh, shoot! I was hoping it would be there by now. It’s a special gift and I really wanted you to have it before the night is over.”

  “Well, no worries. We were planning a trip into the city anyway. I told them to hold it for me and I’ll swing by and pick it up,” she said.

  “I hate to trouble you,” the voice said.

  “Oh, it’s no trouble, sugar. I’m grateful to have it. Really, it is far too generous. You shouldn’t have,” she said sweetly.

  “But I did. I’m glad you’re going to get it. Let me know what you think when you pick it up,” the voice said as the call disconnected. There was a tone in the last sentence that told Miss Ruby it was an order and not a request. Let me know when you pick it up, she thought. It was clear to her she did not have a choice. She was going to San Antonio.

  Miss Ruby put down the phone. The conversation had gone the way all forms of electronic communication went between cell members. To anyone listening, they could be talking about a delivery of flowers, a birthday gift, or a box of steaks on dry ice. No one outside their circle would have any indication of the meaning behind the words.

  On her desk sat a small console for an intercom that ran throughout the sprawling house. She pushed a button. “Robert, Sean, Marco, get in here.”

  A few minutes later the three men filed in. Robert and Sean were identical twins, six-two and built like bodybuilders, their black polo shirts barely fitting over their chests and bulging biceps. They had wide faces crisscrossed with scar tissue from fights and other violent incidents. The only way Miss Ruby could tell them apart was that Sean’s poorly healed broken nose listed slightly to the left.

  Marco was shorter and leaner, about five-ten, and his features were sharp, giving him an almost rat-like appearance along with his dark and angry eyes. Each of the men had been with her for a few years and she trusted them to follow her orders without question.

  “We’ve got a pickup to make. Get everything ready, like we planned.”

  The men left the library and went off to gather what they would need for their next task.

  Miss Ruby shuddered. What they had planned shouldn’t be dangerous at all. But she couldn’t help feeling that they were about to make a horrible mistake.

  She leaned back in her chair and lit another cigarette. There was time for one more smoke before they left. In truth, she ought to give up the nasty habit.

  It would probably kill her one of these days.

  Chasing Ghosts

  When Boone reached the intellimobile in the hotel garage, X-Ray and Vanessa were nearly ready to roll. Boone had lived a long time but it never ceased to amaze him how quickly X-Ray could move his seemingly endless stacks of equipment from any hotel or motel room, or wherever they were set up, into the van in a matter of minutes. His fingers flew over a couple of switches and keyboards and in seconds he had the monitors up and running and could call up a visual of just about anything. It was a marvel to Boone.

  The old roadie slid into one of the seats in between Vanessa and X-Ray, who handed him a Bluetooth headset. He slipped it into his ear. “Give me an audio check,” X-Ray said.

  “Felix, Uly, where are you?” Boone asked. X-Ray gave him a thumbs-up, signaling the headset was working perfectly.

  Felix’s voice came back. “The SUV is in the wind. We’re three blocks out from the warehouse and circling in a large radius. We’ve been looking for a roost where someone could sit and run countersurveillance, but so far there’s nobody hiding, as near as we can tell. Do you want us to go search the warehouse? It’s at the end of a dead-end street and difficult to approach without being seen, but we could give it a try.”

  Boone swiveled his seat to look at a monitor showing a map of the area surrounding the warehouse. It was in a fairly quiet part of town, but a few blocks from a couple of surface streets that led to freeways. The SUV could be anywhere by now.

  “What about the tracker?” Boone asked X-Ray.

  “No good. The battery is dead. I can get Felix and Uly inside the warehouse, if you want. See if they left anything behind,” X-Ray said, looking up at a monitor showing the now empty interior.

  “No. We can’t waste the time,” Boone said. “Felix, Uly, head back toward the concert. It’s the biggest event going on right now. It’s the logical target. But don’t assume that all four guys will stay with the vehicle. Get eyes on every white SUV in the vicinity that you can. Start rolling now.”

  Boone’s eyes bore into the map of downtown San Antonio. With the crowd control and streets blocked off for the concert, everything was out of sync. In the older city center, streets ran at odd angles and crisscrossed everywhere. There were literally a half-dozen points where a car bomb could wreak havoc in a big way.

  Of course the ghost cell could be sending the SUV somewhere else. But Boone didn’t think so. He believed they knew someone was watching them. Or at least they suspected it. They would think the government was looking for the SUV even if they weren’t hearing any chatter about it on police scanners or through their own network. Boone and his crew had rescued Bethany Culpepper without anyone outside the cell and the SOS knowing. Keeping the hunt for a single SUV quiet would be easy compared to that. It could be they had decided to take it off the board and hide out for a while. But he doubted it and he didn’t have time to consider the cell’s master plan. There was a car bomb somewhere in San Antonio. The only safe assumption was that they would deploy it where it would do the most damage.

  That meant the concert or something near the Alamo was the target.

  “All right, everyone, listen up. Felix, when you get back here, grab the sniper rifle and get on the roof of the Emily Morgan Hotel. It’s going to give you the best view of the traffic approaching the concert. Uly, Vanessa, and I are going to patrol the area around the concert crowd, starting with the perimeter. We’ll work our way in toward the stage. I’ve got a feeling at least a couple of them will be in the crowd or somewhere very close by.”

  “Copy that,” Uly said.

  Boone opened the side door of the intellimobile.

  “Where are you going to be, Boone?” Vanessa asked.

  “I’ll be around,” he said.

  Room Service

  “Poof,” Angela repeated. She threw herself back on the other bed.

  “Yep,” I said.

  Croc had completely taken over the second bed and I had no desire to share that space with him. So I moved to the armchair in the corner.

  Angela sat up. “You know what? I’ve got to do something. I can’t sit here like this.”

  “But Boone said …”

  “I know. I’m not going anywhere. Physically, at least. But we can still dig into Boone’s background. I can’t stand not knowing. So if he won’t tell me, I’ll just start looking myself. Send another text to P.K. and ask him if he’s found anything yet. He’s got better resources than we do. Just tell him we need more WH info if he finds anything interesting. That will sail by X-Ray.”

  I knew better than to argue with Angela so I sent another text. Angela sat at the desk and flipped open her laptop. Before long she was lost in something she�
�d found on the Internet. I don’t know if it had to do with our homework, Boone, or if she was pulling up a schematic of the hotel to find a way out through the ventilation system.

  Croc sat up now and cocked his head. He made a series of strange sounds. Not exactly whines or growls, but he jumped down off the bed and was now staring at me and huffing and pawing at the chair.

  “What’s got into him all of a sudden?” Angela asked.

  “Beats me,” I said. Croc usually slept most of the time. Now he looked a little agitated.

  “Just out of curiosity, do you suppose he’s had all his shots?” I asked as he edged closer to me.

  “I would think. Boone seems very attached to him. I don’t expect he’d allow Croc to get sick if he could avoid it,” Angela said.

  “The way he’s looking at me is creeping me out a little.”

  Angela retrieved the room-service menu from the desk drawer and sat down on the corner of the bed opposite me. I was practicing more cuts and shuffles with a deck of cards. There was a small table in between the two beds where the room phone rested.

  “What do you want to eat?” Angela asked.

  “Burger, fries, milkshake,” I said.

  “Q!” She laughed. “You better hope my dad doesn’t check the room-service receipts. He does that, you know.”

  “I’m willing to risk it.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to eat a salad once in a while,” she said.

  “Lettuce and tomato on my burger, please.”

  “They have salads that look really good,” Angela insisted.

  “Go ahead. Order one.”

  “Oh, all right, burger for you it is,” she muttered. As she reached for the phone Croc was suddenly there; he gently knocked her hand away with his muzzle. She reached again and he did the same thing.

  “Stop it, Croc,” she said absentmindedly, still studying the menu. Again, as her hand went for the handset, Croc pushed it to the side.

  “What is up with him?” Angela asked.