Don Pendleton - Texas Showdown

"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. And 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'll shoot 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?"

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!"