Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [126]
Bud didn’t know if being dropped would make the gas start to escape, but he didn’t want to take that chance. He made a desperate dive forward, stretching out his arms as far as he could.
The canister dropped into them, and he stopped its fall a handful of inches before it struck the pavement.
Realizing that he held death in his hands, Bud cradled the canister carefully against him and rolled over. He saw Chief Alex Bonner standing at the corner, her service revolver grasped in her right hand while her left gripped the other wrist to steady it. Bud knew she was the one who had made the shot that killed Stone.
She lowered the gun and started toward him. “Is that—” she called.
“Yeah,” Bud said. “It is.”
A harsh voice demanded, “Give it to me!”
Now what the hell?
Bud hoped the radio was still transmitting. He looked over his shoulder and saw a dark-faced man in military fatigues stalking toward him, covering him with a rifle he held one-handed while dragging Wilma along with the other. Bud was happy to see that she was still alive, even though she was a pain in the ass sometimes.
“Give me the canister!” the man said again.
Alex called, “Drop it, Garaldo!”
So this was General Garaldo, the leader of the cartel forces, Bud thought. It figured. No sooner was one dangerous maniac put down than another one popped up to take his place.
“Back off, bitch!” Garaldo snarled at Alex. “I’ll shoot that fool and the canister, and the gas will be released.”
“Then you’ll die, too,” Alex warned.
“Better death than defeat!”
“Wilma!” Bud yelled. “Catch it!”
He threw the canister high in the air.
Just as Bud had figured would happen, Garaldo let go of Wilma and turned his head to follow the flight of the canister. She turned and sprinted to get under it.
Alex shouted, “Bud, get down!”
He sprawled on the pavement, getting as far out of the line of fire as he could. Garaldo pulled the trigger, making his rifle chatter insanely, but shots came from all around him and slammed into him. The impacts jarred him back and forth in a bizarre dance for what seemed longer than the two or three seconds it really was.
Then the rifle slipped from his fingers and he followed it to the pavement, landing in a bloody heap that didn’t move again.
Bud watched as Wilma caught the canister. He pulled the radio from his pocket and saw that the switch was still locked in the transmit position.
“This has been Bud Conway reporting,” he said hollowly. “I hope you folks got all that.”
Then he fainted dead away.
“Mom! Mom!”
Her son’s voice was the sweetest thing Alex had ever heard. She saw him rushing toward her and ran to meet him. Rowdy and Delgado limped after him, bloody from minor wounds but still alive.
Alex caught Jack in her arms and hugged him like she never intended to let him go. She whispered his name over and over and asked if he was all right. She felt his tear-streaked face against hers as he nodded.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, and at that moment, she was. She was surrounded by death, destruction, and tragedy, but she had never been finer.
Her son was alive.
Epilogue
Emergency responders from the county seat arrived less than fifteen minutes later, followed shortly by the State Police, the Texas Rangers, and the National Guard. They were able to contain the fires that had broken out, as well as arresting the members of Rey del Sol who had survived the battle. There were only a handful of them.
All the members of the Federal Protective Service had been killed in the fierce fighting. For a short time, bureaucrats in Washington tried to deny that the helicopter and the black-uniformed men came from the FPS, but the presence of General Weldon Stone’s body,