Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [84]
Callahan spoke up. “Wait just a damn minute. I been listenin’ to what you boys are saying, and while I’m as upset about what’s goin’ on as anybody, you’re talkin’ about the U.S. government murder-in’ a whole town-ful of its own citizens in cold blood. You really think they’d do that?”
“I’d like to believe they wouldn’t,” Ford said, “but I’m convinced it’s the FPS that’s been trying to kill the three of us for the past week. I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
“You’re right, though, Fargo,” Parker said. “It’s not going to be a test. That doesn’t make sense when you factor in the business of disarming the town. I think it’s just a coincidence. The President and his cronies saw their chance to make a move when the lawsuit came up, and they grabbed it.”
“Yeah, but there’s something going on here,” Ford insisted. “My gut tells me there is, and I’ve learned to trust it.”
“Mine, too.” Parker’s finger tapped the map again. “I think when we leave here tonight, we’d better head for Home.”
CHAPTER 35
Callahan called six of the local ranching families and invited them for a barbecue at his place that night. Five of them accepted. The other family already had plans.
But that was enough. Counting the kids, there would be more than twenty people at Callahan’s house that evening. With the two agents and Earl dressed in boots, jeans, Western shirts, and Stetsons, they would blend right in and be able to leave without being noticed when the barbecue was over.
That was the plan, anyway. They would just have to wait and see how it played out.
Ford and Parker had mapped out the route they would take in Callahan’s old pickup. They checked the guns and ammunition they had taken from the dead FPS agents. Callahan used his tractor to haul a trailer loaded with bags of feed and fertilizer up to the patio. They unloaded enough of the bags to form a hollow, then concealed the weapons in it and covered them with some of the unloaded bags. Callahan drove the tractor back into the barn and hid the guns under a tarp in the back of the pickup. The truck was full of gas and ready to go.
All that was left was waiting, and while they were doing that, they tried to figure out the connection between the disarming of Home and the town’s proximity to Casa del Diablo. As Parker had said, the whole thing might be a coincidence, but the agents were going to try to prepare for any eventuality.
That was the way they had stayed alive in such a dangerous profession.
That afternoon, Callahan asked them, “What’re you boys plannin’ to do once you get there?”
“We’ll get the lay of the land, figure out what’s going on there, if anything.”
Callahan snorted. “No, I mean about this whole nerve gas shit. You can’t let those people in Washington get away with plottin’ against our own citizens.”
“We have to get proof, and we have to get the word out,” Parker said. “If the public knows about the gas, the government won’t dare use it. They wouldn’t be able to cover it up. There would be such an uproar, the President would probably have to resign.”
Callahan shook his head. “I don’t know about that. I ain’t sure you’ll ever get that fella out of office, now that he’s there. If he can get enough of the military on his side, he’ll just up and declare himself President for life, like those little tinpot dictators down in the Caribbean.”
“The country won’t stand for it,” Parker insisted.
“And while General Stone and the FPS may have signed on to do his dirty work,” Ford said, “there are enough members in the regular branches of the service who have enough sense to know they’re not supposed to be fighting their own countrymen. Remember that mess at the Alamo a few years back?”
Callahan nodded and said, “Hard to forget about it. You’re talkin’ about a military takeover, though. That ain’t the way we do things in this country.”
“I know. And so do enough members of the President’s own party, or at least I hope so. I hope enough of them still have enough decency to stand up to him once they find out what he’s been doing. They’re the