Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [88]
Hector caught the body and lowered it to the ground. He nodded to the driver, who pressed a button on the truck’s dashboard that lit up a light in the enclosed back.
Hector walked around the truck again and went to the RV. He opened the door and called, ȌHey, guys, come out here for a minute and give us a hand.”
The other four members of the detachment emerged from the vehicle a moment later, a couple of them yawning sleepily. Hector waited until all four of them were out, then shot the last one in the head, just as he had Adam.
Before the other three realized what the coughing sound behind them really was, several men armed with automatic weapons stepped out from behind the first truck parked on the highway and covered them. The FPS troopers reacted instantly and started to swing their own weapons up, but Hector said, “No! Stand down!”
The men were well-trained, so they hesitated. Only for a second, but in that second, every hope of fighting back was lost. Hector said, “Put your guns on the ground.”
“Reyes, you son of a bitch,” one of the men said as they reluctantly complied. “What’s going on here?”
“Destiny,” Hector said.
A few minutes later, all the troopers except Hector were dead, each shot once in the head after Hector made them remove their helmets. The men from the trucks stripped their uniforms off them, and five of the men from the cartel began to put them on. Hector handed around lists of the day’s call signs and radio broadcast protocols.
“There are three more checkpoints,” he said. “One on the state highway on the other side of town, and on the farm-to-market road north and south of town. Colonel Grady talked about how there would be checkpoints on the smaller roads, too, but that was just a bluff. General Stone decided it wasn’t necessary to go to that much trouble.”
“Why not? “ one of the killers asked.
Hector waved a hand toward the town, which was out of sight in the distance except for the barely visible water tower. “Because those people have given up. Hell, they let the government come in and take their guns. Most of them swore they’d never do a thing like that, but when it was their own skins on the line, they caved. They’re beat, man. Beat down all the way. They got no fight left in ’em anymore.”
“I hope you’re right,” the other man said as he settled one of the FPS helmets on his head. “But in the end, it won’t really matter, will it?”
Hector smiled. “Not one bit, man.”
The ringing of the phone on the table beside the bed woke Alex. She groaned and rolled over, reaching blindly for it. She couldn’t find the phone and had to open her eyes and, when she did, the first thing she saw was the clock. It was only a few minutes after seven. She had planned on sleeping in this morning in hopes of making up for some of the sleep she had lost over the past few days, and she had gotten a start on it, but now that plan was ruined.
Because nobody was going to be calling at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning with good news.
She finally got a hand on the phone and lifted it from its base. She thumbed the Talk button and said, “Yeah?”
“This is Ed Ruiz, Alex. Sorry to call you so early, but I thought you’d want to know.”
Alex sat up and pushed tangled hair out of her eyes with her free hand. “Know what, Ed?” Why couldn’t the mayor just spit it out, whatever he wanted to tell her.
Ruiz did. “Pete McNamara died early this morning, about an hour ago.”
Alex drew in a deep breath and blew it out. “Damn,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” Ruiz agreed. “I guess we all knew it was coming. Nobody expected him to last this long, especially the doctors. But it’s still hard.”
It was. Pete had never really regained consciousness after the stroke that had felled him in the courtroom, although he had shown signs of awareness on occasion. He didn’t have a DNR order on file, and he and Inez hadn