Invasion Usa: Border War Read online

  “What can you tell us about Mrs. Simms? How is she holding up?”

  “Kelly’s a strong woman,” Tom said. “Of course she’s upset and worried about her daughter, but at least she has her sister and me here to give her some support.” He paused as if an idea had just occurred to him, then went on. “You know, it might be a real good thing if the families of all the missing girls could get together. That way they’d be able to help each other get through this.”

  The reporters scribbled furiously in their notebooks. They could get behind the idea of assembling the families of the victims. It would make a great story.

  He started to turn toward the door. A reporter asked quickly, “Do you have any other comment, Mr. Brannon?”

  Tom paused. “No, only that we’re hoping and praying for Laura’s safe return, and of course for all the other girls, too. I just hope somebody will do something to bring that about.”

  He ignored the other questions they called after him as he went inside. He hoped he had gotten his message across.

  There was a good chance he would know before the morning was over.

  Morgan got back there first. She stormed into the house, confronted Tom, and demanded angrily, “What the hell did you think you were doing when you talked to those reporters?”

  “Just answering the media’s questions honestly, Agent Morgan,” Tom replied, his voice cool. “That’s what a good citizen’s supposed to do, isn’t it?”

  “A good citizen keeps his damn mouth shut,” Morgan snapped. “Your comments were reported on TV less than an hour ago, and already we’re getting calls from the families demanding a meeting with all of them at the same time.”

  Tom shrugged. “Sounds like a good idea to me. That way you only have to explain once why you’re going to just let those girls rot down in Mexico.”

  He could tell that Morgan wanted to punch him. She couldn’t do it, though, with both Bonnie and Kelly sitting there watching, along with the young Asian man who had shown up a short time earlier to relieve Pete Yarnell.

  Before Morgan could do anything more than glare murderously at Tom, Roy Rodgers arrived, walking into the room with his white Stetson in his hand. He didn’t look happy, either.

  “Mr. Brannon, didn’t we have a talk about what you should and shouldn’t say to the media?” the Ranger asked.

  Tom turned toward him. “I didn’t give out any details of the investigation. I just referred the reporters to Agent Morgan. I didn’t say a word about how those poor girls are being abandoned down there below the border.”

  “We haven’t abandoned them,” Morgan said through clenched teeth. “We’re working through proper channels on locating and rescuing them.”

  Tom folded his arms across his chest. “We both know proper channels don’t work in Mexico.”

  “What about the idea of that comment about getting all the families together?” Rodgers asked.

  From the sofa next to Kelly, Bonnie said, “I think that’s a good idea. We’re all scared. It’ll help people to get through this if they’re sharing it with someone else.”

  “Impossible,” snapped Morgan. “It would just be a media circus. We don’t need that.”

  Rodgers’s anger seemed to ease somewhat. He rubbed his chin as he frowned in thought, and after a moment he said, “You know, that might not be such a bad thing, Agent Morgan. You’ve interviewed all the families separately, haven’t you?”

  “You know I have. That’s why I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours.”

  “If you put all those folks together, maybe something would come out that hasn’t so far ... like a reason the girls were kidnapped in the first place.”

  “We know why they were kidnapped. Ransom—”

  “Wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans where the Night Wolves are concerned. Mr. Brannon and I talked about this yesterday. It seems to us that there may be something else behind the whole thing.”

  The fact that the Ranger seemed to be taking Tom’s side in the argument didn’t endear either of them to Morgan. She glowered at them for a long moment, but finally said, “This is your state. As long as you don’t interfere with the Bureau, you can do whatever you want.”

  “Much obliged,” Rodgers replied dryly. He turned to Kelly and went on. “Mrs. Simms, I’ll see what I can do about arranging a get-together like Mr. Brannon talked about.”

  “Thank you, Ranger,” Kelly said. “I ... I think we should do anything that might help.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Rodgers looked at Tom. “Let’s go talk in the kitchen, Mr. Brannon.”

  Tom followed the Ranger into the kitchen while Morgan left the house after curtly instructing the FBI technician to remain at his post in case the kidnappers called. By this time, Tom was convinced that was a forlorn hope, and he suspected that Morgan was, too. She wasn’t going to do anything that went against government policy, though.

  Maybe Rodgers wasn’t quite that inflexible. He put his hat on and thumbed it to the back of his head, then leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. “Is that coffee I smell?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve been keeping it warm. We had some breakfast earlier, but it got ruined when Agent Morgan showed up and announced that the investigation was being turned over to the Mexican authorities.”

  “I sort of figured you’d heard about that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come up with the idea of getting all the families together to agitate for the government to do something.”

  Tom got a cup and poured coffee for Rodgers, using the action to keep his face turned away while a smile played over it. “Is that what you think I’m doing?” he asked as he handed the cup to the Ranger.

  “At the very least. I don’t know what else you might have in mind, Mr. Brannon, but I do know you make me a mite nervous.”

  “Why don’t you call me Tom? Mr. Brannon was my father.”

  “Who was murdered by that gang out in Arizona,” Rodgers said, not pulling any punches. “A gang you wound up practically annihilating.”

  “They attacked us.”

  “Just like Los Lobos de la Noche attacked your family here by invading this country and kidnapping your niece.” Rodgers took a sip of the hot coffee. “You know how much shit you could get into by doing something the federal government doesn’t want you to do?”

  “I’m not saying I plan to do anything ... but if I get in trouble with the government, at least I’ll still be alive.” Tom’s voice hardened. “We don’t even know if those girls are alive, and if they are, how long they’ll stay that way. We don’t know anything, and the Feds want to abdicate their responsibility and turn everything over to people who won’t do squat. How can we just abandon those girls like that?”

  “Nobody wants to abandon them. There are issues... .”

  “Political issues.”

  Rodgers shrugged. “Certain folks think it would look mighty bad to the rest of the world if we sent troops and planes and choppers across the border into Mexico.”

  “Even if it was to rescue American citizens who had been taken there by force?”

  “The reason doesn’t matter. The world already thinks we’re a bunch of imperialist warmongers. Washington doesn’t want to give them any more ammunition to use against us.”

  “You know what I think, Captain?” Tom asked softly. “I don’t really give a shit what the rest of the world thinks of us. I want my niece back safe and sound, and the families of all those other girls want them back safe and sound, and right now, that’s all any of us really care about.”

  For a long moment, Rodgers didn’t say anything. Then, finally, he nodded and said slowly, “I know. And I don’t blame you for feeling that way. That’s why there’s a man I think you ought to meet.”

  Fourteen

  Laura’s sleep was haunted by dreams. She saw Sister Katherine thrown backward by the bullets striking her body; she saw the way all the muscles in Rosa Delgado’s body went limp as the nerve impulses ceased flowing from the destroyed brain.
She saw these pictures painted in the dark red of blood, the thick black of night, the stark flashes of death from the muzzle of a gun. Even though she was asleep, she wept from the tragedy of the dreams as they played out, and in the morning when she woke, she felt the dried tears on her cheeks.

  The knowledge that those were not just dreams, that those terrible things had really happened, crowded in on her brain and made her breath catch in her throat. If someone had forced her to be honest about it, she would have had to admit that she never particularly cared for Sister Katherine. The nun was strict, domineering, bossy, and had never really seemed to like the girls and boys who went to school at Saint Anne’s. And Rosa Delgado was little more than a name and a face to Laura. She knew the other girl when she saw her in the hall, but they hardly ever spoke. In fact, once Laura thought about it, she realized that the last words she had spoken to Rosa before the frantic cry the night before had occurred the previous spring, during gym class, when Laura had asked her to throw back an errant basketball.

  Despite that, Laura wept for them, and she hated the men who had killed them, and if some divine Providence had placed a machine gun in her hands at that moment and provided the opportunity, she would have blasted the living shit out of the bastards without a second’s hesitation.

  She sat up and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands as fresh tears threatened to well up. Although she couldn’t have said why, she felt that it was important not to sit around and mope and cry. She didn’t want her captors to see her like that.

  Dawn light stole into the cell from the high window. The day before, the rays from the setting sun had entered that window, telling Laura the cell was located on the west side of the building—wherever the building was. That meant the morning light was reflected, not direct, and that softened it. When Laura, who seemed to be the only one awake, looked around at the faces of the other girls, she didn’t see terror etched there, as it had been the previous day. She saw exhaustion. She saw wet streaks on their faces, too. She wasn’t the only one who had been crying in her sleep.

  Quietly, she got to her feet and went over to the bucket in the corner, glad that she could use it before the others were awake. When she was finished, she walked over to the door and leaned against it, grasping the iron bars. She looked directly across the corridor into the opposite cell. The window in it was red with the sunrise, but its occupants still slept. Laura knew all of them, too, but again, none of them could be considered close friends.

  They were closer now. If they survived, they would share a bond of terror and danger and hope that would always link them, no matter how much physical distance lay between them. She suspected that people in prisoner-of-war camps and political prisons felt the same way. Maybe men in regular prisons did, too, although she thought that it might be different there. Criminals always had a certain isolation about them, an inability to connect properly with other people and the society around them. And despite their constant protestations of innocence, most of them were there because they really had done something bad, something that showed that in the end they didn’t really give a damn about anybody except themselves.

  She was thinking too much. She had a habit of doing that. But it helped to keep the fear at bay—the fear that pushed at her brain when she looked at the ruddy glow in the window across the way and knew it was entirely possible she would never see another sunrise.

  When somebody tugged at her jeans, she shrieked and grabbed the bars hard, as if she wanted to try to climb the door.

  “Geez, don’t have a hissy fit,” Shannon said from the floor, where she was still lying in her sleeping bag. “It’s just me.”

  Laura’s scream had disturbed the slumber of the other girls. They were starting to stir around as she said to Shannon, “Why did you grab me like that?”

  “I just wanted to know if you can see Ricky anywhere.”

  “Is that all you can think about? Some guy?”

  “I thought maybe he’d bring us some breakfast.”

  Shannon had a point there. Ricky had delivered their supper the night before. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that he might bring breakfast this morning. Laura looked along the hallway as much as she could, though, and then shook her head as she looked down at Shannon.

  “I don’t see any of them.”

  Shannon sat up and ran her fingers through her red hair. “You think maybe they’re all gone?”

  “I doubt it. I’ll bet there are guards around. They’re just not here in the corridor because they know we can’t get out of these cells.”

  The next few minutes proved Laura right. She heard a key rattle in the lock of the door between this cell block and the rest of the building, and a moment later it swung open. By now all the girls were awake, and Shannon had stood up to join Laura at the door.

  A couple of men carrying rifles came through the door first, followed by Ricardo, or Ricky as Shannon called him. He pushed a cart that had platters of sandwiches and six-packs of water on it. “Breakfast, ladies,” he said with an attempt to make his voice cheerful, at least.

  Laura just looked at him emotionlessly, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of responding to his phony cheerfulness. Shannon smiled brightly, though, and said, “Hello, Ricky. I knew you wouldn’t forget about us.”

  “Small chance of that,” he said.

  “Does that mean you’ve been thinking about me?”

  Laura gritted her teeth and tried not to roll her eyes at the flirtatious tone of Shannon’s voice.

  “Step back, please,” Ricardo said. “Away from the door.”

  The two men with him hefted their rifles to emphasize the request that was really a command.

  Laura and Shannon moved back, and the other girls in the cell, who were still lying on their sleeping bags, scooted against the wall. Ricardo unlocked the door and opened it enough to put a plate of sandwiches and a six-pack of water in plastic bottles on the floor. Then he hurriedly closed the door and relocked it, almost like he was afraid the occupants of the cell were ravenous beasts who might leap at him.

  And of course, where Shannon was concerned, he might actually have something to worry about... .

  Hunger and thirst pushed that thought out of Laura’s brain. As the girls in the other cells were given their breakfast, Laura and her companions fell on the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. This diet was going to get awfully old, but at least it would keep them alive.

  Shannon ripped the plastic rings that held the bottles together off the six-pack of water and tossed them aside. The girls had thrown the empty bottles from the night before into a corner, along with the plastic rings that had been on them. As Laura sat down to eat her sandwich and sip at her bottle of water, she looked at the rings Shannon had just discarded. After a moment, with a faint frown creasing her forehead, she picked them up and studied them. When she finished eating, she idly twisted the rings, which gave her a strip of plastic about seven inches long. She held it by each end and pulled hard.

  Then she untwisted the rings, smoothed them out, folded them into a small bundle, and slipped them into the pocket of her jeans. A few minutes later, she snagged the other set of plastic rings from the corner and squirreled it away, too.

  As Ricardo pushed the empty cart past the cell after passing out breakfast to all the other girls, Shannon jumped to her feet and called, “Ricky! Ricky, wait a minute.”

  Ricardo paused and cast a quick glance at the two men with him. “I cannot stop and talk to you,” he said to Shannon. “It is not allowed.”

  “Sure you can,” she said. “It won’t hurt, just for a minute, will it?” She pouted. “Pretty please.”

  Laura couldn’t stop the eye roll this time. The urge was just too strong.

  “There is nothing I can do for you,” Ricardo said in a low, intense voice. “Make it easier on both of us, Señorita, and do not even ask.”

  “I’m not asking you to let us go or anything. I just want a little company.”

 
; Ricardo shook his head and said curtly, “Sorry.” He turned away from the cell, opened the door and pushed the cart out.

  Shannon stared after him, a look of disbelief on her face.

  “What’s the matter, Shannon?” Carmen asked. “Not used to having a boy say no to you?”

  Shannon turned away from the bars and glared at Carmen. “That’s right, boys don’t usually run away from me like they do from you, you Mexican dyke.”

  Carmen scrambled to her feet. “Just because I haven’t put out for half the guys in school doesn’t mean I’m a lesbian.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m just sayin’... . You soccer girls hang around with each other all the time, and God knows what goes on in the locker room... . I bet it gets all slick and steamy in there sometimes, doesn’t it, Carmen?”

  With a growled curse, Carmen launched herself at Shannon, knocking the redhead back against the cell door. Carmen tried to get her hands around Shannon’s throat as Shannon screamed and fought her off.

  Laura and Stacy grabbed Carmen at the same time and pulled her back. Shannon took advantage of the opportunity to reach out and rake her fingernails down Carmen’s face. Carmen howled in pain.

  While Stacy hung onto Carmen, Laura got between them. She drove an elbow into Shannon’s midsection. “Stop it, you two!” she said. “Have you gone crazy?”

  “I’m not a lesbian!” Carmen cried. “And I’m not a Mexican! I was born in Laredo. I’m as much an American as she is!”

  “What’s the matter, chica?” Shannon asked with a sneer. “Don’t you think brown is beautiful anymore?”