Invasion Usa: Border War Read online

  Ricardo Benitez looked out across the desert where the silver starlight shone on the lonely grave where Rosa Delgado lay, and he murmured, “I’m sorry.” He meant it, too.

  But there was nothing he could have done to prevent her death.

  Being an undercover agent for the American Drug Enforcement Agency came first.

  Twelve

  Agent Morgan left the Simms house a short time after Tom and Bonnie arrived there, taking most of the other agents and detectives with her. There were other kidnapping victims, thirty-nine of them, in fact, and Morgan intended to touch base with all of their families before the night was over. There was no telling where the break in the case might come.

  But it would come. She was sure of that, and said so before she left. Criminals always slipped up sooner or later.

  Tom was glad to see Morgan go. She hadn’t really accomplished anything while Tom was there.

  Bonnie persuaded Kelly to go lie down for a while. Tom was left sitting in the den with a couple of officers from the Laredo Police Department and the technician who was still monitoring his equipment in case the kidnappers called. After a while, Tom went over to the table and introduced himself to the man.

  “Pete Yarnell,” the technician said as he shook hands with Tom.

  “Are you an FBI agent, too, Mr. Yarnell?” Tom asked.

  “That’s right,” Yarnell said. He was in his thirties, but premature hair loss had left him mostly bald. “Not usually a field agent, you understand. Most of the time I work in the lab at our San Antonio office.”

  “I thought the FBI lab was back in Virginia or somewhere like that.”

  “Well, the main one is, of course. But every office has lab facilities of its own.”

  Tom nodded. “If the kidnappers call, do you think you’ll be able to tell anything from the recording you make of it?”

  “All we can do is try,” Yarnell said, “but the filtering and enhancement software we have is state-of-the-art.” He patted the laptop computer that was sitting on the table, the gesture almost as fond as if he had been petting the head of a favorite dog.

  Tom leaned forward in his chair. “You can pick up any background noises and things like that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could let a civilian ... say, me ... listen to such a call after you recorded it?”

  Yarnell frowned. “Of course not. That would be interfering in FBI business.”

  “It’s my niece who’s been kidnapped, along with all those other girls. Naturally, I want to do anything I can to help. Maybe I could hear something—”

  “Not without a court order, Mr. Brannon,” Yarnell said firmly, “which I seriously doubt you’d be able to get.” The agent’s tone softened a little. “Besides, they haven’t called yet, and we don’t know that they will.”

  “They have to, if they’re going to make a ransom demand. They have to get in touch somehow.”

  Yarnell shrugged. Like everybody else, he seemed to assume that the girls had been kidnapped for ransom— but so far there was absolutely no proof of that, Tom realized. The only contact had been the lone e-mail from Colonel Guerrero, claiming that the girls were safe. From that, everybody had jumped to the conclusion that Guerrero would be back in touch again later with his demands. That was the way these things always went.

  So what were the authorities doing in the meantime? Waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Nobody was actually out looking for the girls.

  Tom’s misgivings grew stronger as he turned those thoughts over in his mind. He recalled his earlier conversation with the Texas Ranger and the possibility that Guerrero had had some reason besides ransom for kidnapping the girls. Maybe everybody was playing it all wrong. Maybe Guerrero was counting on the authorities biding their time and waiting for ransom demands, when actually he had other plans.

  But what?

  Tom didn’t know, but he figured the tension in his gut was trying to tell him something. He was no cop. He was just an average guy—but an average guy who had been through the fire, an average guy who had stared into the very face of evil and madness and come to the realization that you couldn’t always count on monsters to do what you expected.

  You couldn’t reason with them, either. In the end, all you could do was kill them.

  Bottom line, though, he didn’t really know anything. Like everybody else involved in this case, he was just as far away as ever from figuring out where the kidnapped girls were being held.

  And as that thought went through his head, Tom felt his gut tense again. Why was he even thinking about such things? It wasn’t like he could do anything to help rescue the girls. A whole horde of law enforcement personnel was already on that job. He was just a civilian, he reminded himself again, a guy who owned an auto-parts store.

  He couldn’t help but remember, though, what a difference a bunch of common people had made in Little Tucson. Just your average, everyday Joes and Janes who had risen up against evil and driven it back to where it had come from. It was foolish for people to sit on their butts and assume that somebody else—usually the government—would take care of them.

  More than foolish, sometimes that attitude was downright deadly.

  It was a long night, and contrary to the old saying, things didn’t look a bit better in the morning.

  The telephone in Kelly Simms’s house had rung several times, prompting a surge of hope, fear, and adrenaline each time, along with a burst of frantic activity from Pete Yarnell as he got ready to tape the conversation, but on each occasion, when Kelly answered, the caller proved to be only a member of the media looking for a quote. After the last call, Kelly had slammed the phone down with a heartfelt comment about goddamn bloodsucking vultures.

  Tom Brannon couldn’t have agreed more.

  He didn’t know how much sleep Kelly had finally gotten. Judging by the haggard look of his sister-in-law’s face, not much. Bonnie was exhausted, too. She had stayed in Kelly’s bedroom all night, sitting up in a chair while Kelly tried to get some rest. Bonnie had dozed in the chair, but only fitfully.

  Yarnell and the cops had been awake all night. They were on duty.

  Tom figured he had gotten more sleep than anyone else, because eventually he had gone off to the guest room and crawled into bed. Given those circumstances, he thought it was only fitting that he prepare breakfast the next morning. When he got up, he spoke briefly to Bonnie and Kelly as they sat in the living room, then went into the kitchen. He started a fresh pot of coffee and rummaged through the cupboards and refrigerator. Soon he had pancakes cooking in one pan and bacon and sausage sizzling in another.

  Yarnell came into the kitchen, yawning prodigiously. Tom looked at him and said, “Coffee should be ready. Help yourself and I’ll have something for you to eat in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Yarnell muttered as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Heard from your boss this morning?”

  “Special Agent Morgan?” Yarnell shook his head. “Nope. I imagine she was pretty busy all night, checking in with all the victims’ families and following up on any leads.” He summoned up a faint smile. “She may not be the most likable agent I’ve ever known, but she’s a hard worker. Seems to be, anyway, in the time she’s been down here.”

  “She’s new to the San Antonio office?”

  “New to the Bureau, period. Relatively speaking.”

  “She’s not that young,” Tom pointed out.

  “She used to be a lawyer. Federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. Scuttlebutt is that she lost some big case on a technicality and got so disgusted with the courts that she quit and decided to go into our end of the job instead.”

  Tom hadn’t heard anybody use the word “scuttlebutt” in a long time. He thought it was a perfectly good word and was glad to know that it hadn’t been completely forgotten.

  He wasn’t surprised to hear that Morgan had been a lawyer, either. That explained, at least par
tially, her combative and superior attitude.

  “I shouldn’t be gossiping like this,” Yarnell said.

  “Your tongue was loosened by the smell of bacon and pancakes.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Yarnell agreed. “They smell great. Where’d you learn to cook, Mr. Brannon?”

  “Just something I picked up in my bachelor days and haven’t completely forgotten. I guess it comes back to you, like riding a bicycle... . You want sausage or bacon?”

  “Uh ... both?”

  With a grin, Tom piled sausage, bacon, and pancakes on a plate and set them on the table in front of Yarnell. Tom took syrup and butter—real butter, not that greasy stuff made from soybean oil—from the refrigerator and put them on the table, too.

  “Thanks,” Yarnell said. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  Tom turned away so the agent wouldn’t see the frown that appeared on his face, replacing the grin. He wished that what Yarnell had said was true. He wished there was something he could do to save the lives of Laura and all the other girls who had been on that bus.

  Bonnie came into the kitchen and smiled at Tom. “I thought I smelled coffee,” she said.

  He poured a cup for her, fixed her a plate of food, and then sat down to eat, too. It was a little awkward, the married couple sitting at the table with the FBI agent, who was almost a stranger to them.

  The awkwardness vanished a moment later when Tom heard voices in the living room, and Kelly began shouting angrily, “You’re not doing anything to find them! You’re not doing anything!”

  “Oh my God,” Bonnie said as she got quickly to her feet. “What now?”

  Tom and Yarnell stood up, too, as a voice that Tom recognized as belonging to Special Agent Sharon Morgan said sharply, “Take it easy, Mrs. Simms. It’s not going to do anybody any good for you to have hysterics.”

  “Hysterics?” Kelly repeated as Tom, Bonnie, and Yarnell reached the short hallway between kitchen and living room. “I’ll show you hysterics, you cold-blooded bitch!”

  They burst into the living room just as Kelly threw herself at Morgan, ready to claw her eyes out. The FBI agent caught Kelly’s wrists neatly, twisted them, hauled Kelly around, and forced her right arm up behind her back in a hammerlock. A few steps away, the two uniformed cops who had spent the night there looked on, tired, befuddled, and clearly unsure what they ought to do in this situation.

  “Relax, Mrs. Simms,” Morgan said. “You don’t want a dislocated shoulder on top of your other troubles.”

  Bonnie said, “Let her go!” and started toward Kelly and Morgan. Tom grabbed her around the waist, holding her back. She cried, “Damn it, Tom, let me go!”

  Tom was tempted. But even though Bonnie was athletic and in top shape, she was still older and lacked the hand-to-hand combat training that Morgan had no doubt received at the FBI Academy. He said, “Agent Morgan, why don’t we all stand down, and you can tell us what’s going on here.” He hadn’t heard Morgan come into the house this morning, but obviously the agent hadn’t brought good news.

  Morgan let go of Kelly’s arm and gave her a little push that sent her forward a step. At the same time, Tom let go of Bonnie, and his wife rushed forward to hug her sister. “My God,” Bonnie said to Kelly, “what’s happened?”

  “They’re not even going to look for Laura and the other girls!” Kelly said as tears coursed down her face.

  Tom stared grimly at Morgan. “Is that true?”

  Morgan adjusted the blazer she was wearing this morning, despite the fact that it would be hot in Laredo before the day was over. “I didn’t say that we weren’t going to continue searching,” she said. “But for the time being, the Mexican authorities are going to take the lead in the investigation.”

  Tom felt his heart sink. His talk with Rodgers the night before had only confirmed what his instincts had already told him—the Mexican authorities couldn’t be counted on for anything except stonewalling. Too many of them had been paid off or scared off—or both.

  “Why?” Tom demanded. “Why turn things over to the Mexicans?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Because that’s where it appears the girls were taken. The Rangers and the Border Patrol were able to follow the tracks of the vehicles that left the scene of the attack on the bus. They made a wide circle around Laredo, mostly cross-country, and then crossed the river at a ford north of Falcon International Reservoir that’s known to the Border Patrol.”

  “If it’s a crossing that the Border Patrol knows about, why didn’t they have anybody watching it?” Tom asked.

  “There was no time. Guerrero and his men got there first.”

  “What about after that? Did they follow the tracks across the river?”

  “Of course not.” Morgan sounded shocked that he would even suggest such a thing. “We have no jurisdiction in Mexico.”

  Tom’s teeth grated together. He remembered Rodgers’s comment about a time when the Rangers wouldn’t have let a thing like that stop them. Now bureaucracy and political red tape had tied the hands of anybody who just wanted to do what was right.

  “We asked the Mexican government for permission to fly in their airspace so that helicopters could cross the border and carry on the search,” Morgan went on. “That permission was denied, of course. We have to respect international boundaries. We’ve passed along all the information we have to the Mexican authorities, and they assure us that they will carry out a search with all due diligence.”

  In other words, Tom thought bitterly, they were abandoning those poor girls to the mercies of Los Lobos de la Noche, the Night Wolves.

  “Did they ever call?” Bonnie asked hollowly. “Have there been any ransom demands to any of the families?”

  Morgan shook her head. “There’s been no further communication with the kidnappers.”

  Nor would there be, Tom realized. His gut told him that Guerrero had never intended to ransom any of the girls. He had taken them, and he wasn’t going to give them back.

  And according to Special Agent Sharon Morgan—and by extension, the United States government—there wasn’t a damned thing anybody could do about it except to rely on the Mexican authorities for help that would never come. Not a damned thing ...

  Tom Brannon took a deep breath and felt something inside him turn cold and hard, like steel.

  They would just see about that.

  Thirteen

  The two cops were sent on their way. Yarnell would remain on duty at the Simms house until another FBI lab tech arrived to relieve him. Although it seemed from Morgan’s attitude that she shared Tom’s belief the kidnappers would not be in touch, as long as that possibility remained, they had to be prepared for it.

  The barricades had been removed from the street, and most of the media were gone. A few reporters remained, as did the satellite uplink truck, but if there was no news here, they would probably leave before the day was over, too.

  After all, the story was almost twenty-four hours old now. It was already losing its news value.

  The breakfast Tom had prepared was ruined. He didn’t care. He didn’t have much of an appetite anymore. As he sat quietly in the living room with Bonnie and Kelly, he turned over his options in his mind.

  It was easy to be gung-ho, easy to say to yourself, By God, I’m going down there into Mexico and finding those girls and bringing them back! And I’ll kick Colonel Alfonso Guerrero’s ass while I’m doing it! Figuring out a way to accomplish either of those noble objectives was another thing entirely.

  To start with, he couldn’t do it by himself. He could handle himself in a fight pretty well—the events in Little Tucson had proven that—but one man against a hundred or more highly trained commandos just wouldn’t work. All he could accomplish by going it alone would be to get himself killed, probably before he ever got anywhere close to those missing girls.

  He couldn’t count on any help from the FBI. If Morgan knew what he was thinking about, she’d probably arrest him and claim it was for his own good. Other agenc
ies of the federal government—the Border Patrol, the DEA, folks like that—wouldn’t be able to provide any assistance, either. Some of the individual agents might sympathize with him, but their hands were tied by the reams of red tape, not to mention the attitude of the current administration that it was more important to curry favor with the scum of the world than it was to protect American citizens.

  The only one who might be willing to give him a hand was Roy Rodgers, the Texas Ranger captain. And there was only so much Rodgers could do.

  There were other people, though, who had a bigger stake in this than the law enforcement agencies that were involved. Those people were the families of the missing girls. They had the biggest stake of all—the lives of their loved ones.

  That was where he needed to start, Tom decided—the families of the other girls.

  He left the living room and walked out onto the front porch of the house. The morning newspaper was there, as he had hoped it might be. Nobody had thought to bring it into the house.

  As he bent to pick it up, several reporters charged across the lawn like bull elephants who had just spotted a guy in a peanut costume. Tom straightened, thought about darting back into the house, but decided against it. He didn’t want to be rude—and besides, he might be able to turn this encounter with the minions of the press to his advantage.

  “Sir?” one of the reporters called. “Sir, could we ask who you are? Are you a family member? Do you have any information about the kidnapping? Has there been a ransom demand?” The other two reporters were shouting variations on the same questions.

  Tom smiled at them as he unrolled the rubber band from the newspaper. “My name is Tom Brannon,” he said. “I’m Mrs. Simms’s brother-in-law.”

  “Do you have any new information?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss the case,” Tom said with a shake of his head. “You’ll have to talk to Special Agent Sharon Morgan of the FBI.” He opened the newspaper to the front page and saw the banner headline that read GANG INVADES TEXAS. Quickly, his eyes scanned down the page, hoping to see a list of the names of the kidnapped girls. There wasn’t one, though, just a mention in the lead story that their identities were being withheld because of the paper’s policy of not naming juveniles in its stories. Tom thought that was a good policy, but not this time. It meant he would have to work a little harder to get the ball rolling.