Texas Showdown

6

A closed van waited only steps from the jetprop. Scanning the scene as they left the plane, they saw the concrete landing strip, strips of landing lights, the steel prefab hangars at the far end. Double chain link fences topped with razor wire encircled the area.

"Move it!" Pardee shouted. "No tourism! In the truck."

Sitting on the floor of the van, Blancanales felt the air compress as Pardee slammed the van doors shut on them. "Reminds me of prison."

Gadgets touched his ear, pointed to the walls of the van. Blancanales and Lyons nodded. "Way I see it," Gadgets said clearly, "they run a tight operation. And I'm glad. Most of the gangs down South don't get busted from the outside, it's always a Fed or an informer on the inside. So a tight operation is all right with me."

The van took them first to an infirmary. Again, in the few steps between the van and the door of the prefab infirmary, they saw almost nothing of the base: chain link fencing topped by razor wire, and a blacktop road.

"Strip down," an orderly told them. He gave them each a deep plastic tray. "All your clothes and personal things in the trays. And I mean everything. Rings, dogtags, all of it."

"When do we get it back?" Lyons asked. "And where's our luggage?"

"Hey, man," the bone-thin blond orderly drawled in his southern accent. "Until you clear Security, that's the least of your worries."

Naked, they waited until a doctor took them one by one into an examination room. A middle-aged man with the gray skin and ravaged body of an alcoholic, the doctor did not introduce himself nor question them on their medical histories. Speaking only in monosyllables, he took full-body photographs of them, complete X rays, then blood samples.

Next, the orderly gave them each day-glow orange fatigues and tennis shoes, and hurried them back to the van.

"Dig these jazzy uniforms," Gadgets sighed.

"Camouflage," Lyons said. "For an invasion of Las Vegas."

Another short ride and the van dropped them at their barrack. The building sat at the edge of the base. It looked like a prison unit. Two electric gates and a glass-walled guard booth completed the impression created by the chain link fence and razor wire.

A man standing six-foot-eight stomped from the barrack door. "Stop rubbernecking, new meat. In here!"

They filed through. The interior was one large room. Two rows of ten steel bunk beds ran the length of the barrack. Though there were scuffs in the linoleum and chips in the paint of the steel beds, the place had the smell of a new house trailer, just months old. The sheet steel walls had the original enamel. Not one of the windows was cracked.

"I am Sergeant Cooke," the three-hundred-pound soldier told them. "Until Captain Pardee is positive on your identities, you stay here. When you clear Security, you will join the other men. Until then, you sweat. Here are the supplies you need for the next few days."

He pointed to a table. There were three identical piles of sheets, pillowcases, blankets, soaps, razors.

"I suggest you make your bunks now. Tonight you might not have it left in you." Sergeant Cooke threw back his immense shoulders, glared at each of them for an instant, and added: "I'm taking you out for a long walk."

* * *

Ten miles into the rocky foothills, Sergeant Cooke collapsed. He floundered in the dust, trying to stand, but got no further than his hands and knees. He fell onto his back, gasping, his face gray and streaming with sweat.

Blancanales sat at the side of the trail, watching Sergeant Cooke struggle. Gadgets looked down at the huge man. Lyons squinted into the afternoon glare. He shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon.

"You think they're training over there?" Lyons pointed to the east. "Every once in a while, I hear booms. Thought I saw a helicopter."

"Take a break, Morgan," Blancanales told him.

"We got a problem here with the D.I. Looks like heatstroke to me."

"Textbook case," Gadgets agreed.

"What's with you guys?" Sergeant Cooke croaked. "Pardee hire you straight out of the Special Forces?"

Gadgets flashed a grin to Blancanales and Lyons. "Sort of."

The second day, Sergeant Cooke rode a 1200cc dirt bike while Able Team double-timed.

* * *

High above the rocks and red dust of the Texas desert, Tate Monroe surveyed the maneuvers of his mercenary army from the helicopter of its commander, Colonel Furst. Monroe leaned against the nylon safety webbing to peer down at the other helicopters circling beneath them. In the brilliant sunlight, his hair looked like strands of ceramic, the skin of his tropics-scarred face like translucent plastic molded over a skull. He wore antique sunglasses, round black lenses on a wire frame. The round lenses looked like black eye sockets.

"There's the objective," Colonel Furst shouted over the rotor noise. Furst was square-shouldered, with muscles straining his tailored fatigues. Years of combat and prison had not marred his movie-star good looks.

Furst pointed to a series of concrete buildings alongside an asphalt road. The buildings had only walls and roofs. Along the road, several old cars and trucks were parked.

"Here comes the lead ship now," Furst shouted. "Inside that helicopter, there's a hundred steel tubes, all loaded with 106mm recoilless rifle rounds and triggered electrically. It's very effective. Watch."

Dropping down, a Huey paralleled the road at a hundred miles an hour. An instant before it came to the buildings and the parked vehicles, the Huey climbed suddenly, then banked. Fire flashed from its side.

A chain of explosions ripped the road and clustered buildings. Blazing seconds later, gutted hulks burned on the road. Dust and billowing smoke obscured the buildings. Wheeling in the sky, the Huey swept down again. A second chain of explosions hit the buildings and vehicles from the opposite direction. Shattered concrete and twisted metal was all that remained.

"That was twenty rounds," Furst announced, "leaving eighty rounds in reserve. Now here's the clean-up squad. The other troops take blocking positions."

Three Hueys swept in low, the door gunners spraying the target with machine-gun fire. One touched down near the wrecked trucks. The second and third split, the second landing on the road three hundred yards to the north, the third three hundred yards to the south. The squad from the first helicopter sprinted into the smoke and fire. The other two squads fanned out along the road.

"The clean-up squad makes sure that everything is dead," Colonel Furst concluded.

"Excellent," Monroe nodded, leaning back against the seat. He rested his head against the bulkhead and mouthed the word again. "Excellent. Excellent."

* * *

Electronic funk filled the interior of the limousine. Half-smiling, her face a mask of Quaalude pleasure, Mrs. Monroe swayed slightly to the rhythm. Her features revealed her heritage, her defined, almost aquiline nose and high cheekbones showing her Indian blood, her full lips and round eyes the Spanish. Designer clothes and gold jewelry revealed her wealth.

Dr. Nathan, Tate Monroe's personal physician, glanced into the searing blue of the midday sky. A thin, pale young man from New York City, he sucked hard on the last inch of a cigarette, opened the limo door for an instant to flick the butt outside. Then he lit another with the limo's gold lighter.

"Mrs. Monroe, this is absurd. Your husband contracted me as his doctor. I have no responsibilities other than his health. I cannot — by contract — ever be more than one minute away. I am on call twenty-four hours a day. Which is all very reasonable, considering the condition of his heart.

"But what does he do? He goes up in a helicopter. What does he say to me? 'Wait here, I'll be back in an hour.' Do you have any idea what kind of stress that will put on his heart? I don't mean just the excitement of flying around in the sky with his security personnel, I mean the altitude!

"The higher someone goes, Mrs. Monroe, the more demand on that muscle, and your husband has one sick muscle in his chest. I cannot believe what he..."

"Only another month, doctor," Mrs. Monroe interrupted. She turned to him, her eyes heavy-lidded with drugs. "Perhaps sooner. Can you not have patience with... your patient..." She laughed at her pun, throwing her head back against the seat, and the laugh died. She closed her eyes, rubbed her cheek against the leather of the seat. "Only another month," she murmured.

"Mrs. Monroe," Dr. Nathan began.

"Please call me Availa. I tell you so often..."

"Mrs. Monroe. Your husband may not survive the year if he continues disregarding my instructions. I don't want to have..."

Availa Monroe came upright, her eyes suddenly hard, her lips curling in disdain. "You don't want! What does it matter what you want? If my husband..." she spat the word "...has another month of life, he will have his revenge. And that is all he wants. What you want, what I want, it is nothing. Want..."

Her anger gone, she lay back against the seat again, her eyes closing. She spoke without opening her eyes. "Tell me, doctor. What is my age?"

Dr. Nathan studied her face with concern. "Those pills are dangerous. They are habit-forming and have long-term toxic effects..."

"My age, doctor."

"Twenty-five and months."

She laughed. "Thank you for lying, doctor. But I know I am so very old. I have so much to forget. I must be old."

"Mrs. Monroe... Availa, please. I don't know your troubles, not all of them, but if you want help — counseling, medication, or just someone to talk to you — you're a very rich woman. You don't need to suffer in silence, you don't need to drug yourself so..."

Dr. Nathan reached out to her.

She jerked her hand away, hissing. "Don't touch me!"

They heard the throb of approaching helicopters. Dr. Nathan lit another cigarette from the butt of the one he smoked, and stepped into the hot desert wind.

* * *

In the red glow of sunset, Able Team jogged back to the base. Salt crusted in sweat patterns on their orange jumpsuits. Sergeant Cooke roared past them on his dirt bike, his wheels throwing dust and gravel into the air. Running blind through the dust, Gadgets tripped on a rock and fell.

Lyons helped him up. "That Cooke irritates me."

"Yeah." Gadgets wiped blood from his torn hands. "I think he's doing it deliberately."

"Lots of deliberate things can happen to him, too." Lyons ran alongside Gadgets. "But that has to wait."

"But how much longer?" Gadgets gasped. "This waiting is about to kill me. We must've done a hundred miles today."

Lyons laughed. "It's good for you."

"Ughhhhhhh," Gadgets groaned.

Ahead of them, where the trail met the asphalt road, they saw a jeep. The two previous evenings, after their forced marches through the desert and hills, it had been the closed van that had taken them into the base. Now they saw Blancanales swing into the jeep.

Lyons sprinted to the road. "All right! Did we finally get our clearance?"

"Sure did, pal," the driver told him. A crew-cut, muscled man with a black mustache, the driver extended a strong hand to Lyons. "I'm Perkins. Welcome to the Texas Irregulars."

* * *

Cold wind from the Andes banged signs, carried newspapers down the avenue. The wind penetrated the old weather-stripping of his Volkswagen's doors, chilled Bob Paxton's stump despite the heater. He massaged the ache where his right leg ended, not bothering to downshift until he came to El Negro's villa. Then he threw the shift into first, and chugged up to the iron gate.

Paxton kept his hands on the wheel as the guards approached. There was one man on each side, both with folding stock Galil assault rifles. Then a third man shone a flashlight in Paxton's face. He waved the light over the interior of the small car. He signaled the guard window. An electric motor opened the heavy gates.

Ex-Lieutenant Navarro approached as Paxton parked in front of the villa: "Senor Paxton, do you have everything?"

"Most everything." Carrying a folder of photos and papers, Paxton limped after the young man into the villa. Hardfaced men with Uzi's and sawed-off shotguns watched them from the shadows.

The warmth of the foyer washed over Paxton, relaxing him, easing the ache where his leg had been. They paused while a guard went over Paxton with a hand-held metal detector, then they continued to the library. Navarro opened the door for him.

"It is my pleasure to introduce Master Sergeant Robert Paxton, Retired." Navarro announced.

El Negro stood to greet the American. Unusually tall for a Bolivian, almost six feet, the man had coarse features and blue black hair, swept straight back from his forehead. He shook Paxton's hand. "My aide tells me you have important information for me."

"Information, yes. But I hope it is of no importance to you." Paxton spread photos across El Negro's walnut desk. "Lieutenant Navarro brought these photos to me. He believed them to be either a new American gang in Bolivia or new Drug Enforcement Agency officers. Three men I can't identify, yet. But this man is well known in the United States.

"He is Hal Brognola, formerly of the United States Department of Justice. Specializing in organized crime until last year. What he's doing now is unknown..."

"Organized crime?" El Negro asked.

"The big gangs in North America and Europe. The Mafia, the Syndicate. Anyone who has the smarts to get organized. But most of that is over now. In the last year of Mr. Brognola's service, the gangs took heavy, heavy casualties. Most of the gangs were wiped out."

"And the other three men?"

"Nothing on them. Zero."

"Lieutenant Navarro, you will work with Mr. Paxton. Whatever it costs, wherever you must go. I want to know why they are in my country. It is, Mr. Paxton, very important to me."