Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [108]
Ford slammed the butt of his pistol into the back of the guard’s head a split-second later. The double blow, front and back, was enough to knock the man out cold.
Parker lowered the guard to the ground and took his rifle. They had left the rifles they’d brought from the ranch with Callahan and Earl, since the weapons would have been in the way while the agents crawled into town.
Parker looked at Ford and nodded, then went into the station, moving fast. Ford was right behind him, pistol gripped tightly and ready for use.
They were in a hallway that led past an open door into the station’s lobby. Several men armed with rifles were in the lobby, looking out the windows and the open front door. One of them must have spotted the two American agents from the corner of an eye, because he yelled a warning in Spanish. The men whirled around and raised their rifles.
Parker had already dropped to a knee and brought the rifle he had taken from the guard to his shoulder. He opened fire with it as Ford began shooting over his head. Their bullets raked the lobby and sent the gunmen tumbling off their feet, except for one who dived through a window in a shower of glass to escape the hail of lead.
“Damn it,” Ford said. “He’ll fetch his friends.”
“The shots would do that anyway,” Parker said as he lowered the rifle.
They had just started past the open door when shots blasted inside the room.
The explosion made Garaldo snatch up the gun from the desk, and Alex cursed herself for missing her chance. He sprang from his chair and covered her.
“What was that?” he asked as a snarl pulled his lips back from his teeth.
She shook her head. “I don’t have any idea.”
“If any of your people are foolish enough to think they can fight back, they will all die!” Garaldo practically spat. “They cannot interfere with destiny.”
“They don’t care about your so-called destiny nearly as much as they do their freedom.”
Garaldo laughed. “Then why did they allow their own government to come in and disarm them? Why have they allowed their own government to take more and more of their rights away from them? Your people willingly gave up their own freedom long ago, Chief, in return for cheap handouts.”
As sick as it made her to agree with this maniac about anything, Alex knew that what Garaldo had just said contained a kernel of truth. In return for more and more “entitlements” paid for by confiscatory taxes on anybody the government considered rich—meaning anybody who was actually willing to work hard and make a little money—people had handed over power to those who would insure that the system would remain in place. And now there were too few people working, and they were having to struggle too hard just to keep their heads above water, for that downward spiral to be reversed.
At the moment, though, politics was the farthest thing from Alex’s mind. Survival was front and center. With Garaldo’s gun pointing at her, she stood up slowly and backed against the wall when he gestured for her to do so. Outside in the hall, one of the guards trotted by.
A minute later, someone in the lobby yelled in alarm, and guns started to go off. Some of them were right outside the door in the hall.
The fight didn’t last long. As the shooting and the echoes died away, Alex heard something from the other side of the door. Voices … American voices. Two men, from the sound of it, and they were about to step past the opening, even as Garaldo leveled his pistol at the door, obviously intending to ambush them.
Alex wasn’t going to let that happen. She launched herself at Garaldo.
She got her hands on his arm and shoved it up just as he started pulling the trigger. Several shots roared out, deafening in the small confines of the modest office, before Garaldo jerked free from her grip and backhanded her with the pistol as he cursed frenziedly in Spanish. The barrel of the pistol smashed against the side of Alex’s head and sent her spinning backward, stunned.
Not too stunned,